August 7th - August 13th 2006
Sunday Wapping
Saturday Terrorfied
Friday Oooh nooo
Thursday Wapping
Wednesday Dyke fight
Tuesday Brighton
Monday Good bye
Sunday 13th August
Wapping, Summer 2006
Saturday 12th August
When my electricity returned at around 3am yesterday, I turned on the BBC World Service television. There were a series of powerful explosions which shook the house - just as they vibrated across all of Beirut - as the latest Israeli air raids blasted over the city. And then up came the World Service headline: "Terror Plot".
Terror what, I asked myself? And there was my favourite cop, Paul Stephenson, explaining how my favourite police force - the ones who bravely executed an innocent young Brazilian on the Tube, taking 30 seconds to fire six bullets into him - had saved the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians from suicide bombers on airliners.
I'm sure Independent readers will join me in watching how many of the suspects - or "British-born Muslims" as the BBC defined them in its special form of "soft" racism (they are surely Muslim Britons or British Muslims, are they not?) - are still in custody in a couple of weeks' time.
And I'm sure it's quite by chance that the lads in blue chose yesterday - with anger at Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara's shameful failure over Lebanon at its peak - to save the world.
After all, it's scarcely three years since the other great Terror Plot had British armoured vehicles surrounding Heathrow on the very day - again quite by chance, of course - that hundreds of thousands of Britons were demonstrating against Lord Blair's intended invasion of Iraq.
So I sat on the carpet in my living room and watched all these heavily armed chaps at Heathrow protecting the British people from annihilation and then on came President George Bush to tell us that we were all fighting "Islamic fascism".
There were more thumps in the darkness across Beirut where an awful lot of people are suffering from terror - although I can assure George W that while the pilots of the aircraft dropping bombs across the city in which I have lived for 30 years may or may not be fascists, they are definitely not Islamic.
- The indomitable Robert Fisk writing in today's Independent
Friday 11th August
Say what you like about Big Brother it certainly makes you think.
It makes you think: hang on, didn't thousands of people pay money so that they'd never have to see some of these people again (provided they never pick up a copy of Hello or Heat magazine, never read a tabloid newspaper and never tune in to anything on Channel 4, or BBC4 after midnight)?
It invites the speculation: is the Welsh for 'innit' really pronounced 'nyameanbeb'? And how many ways are there to pronounce 'gutted? (gootet, guhdded, gotted, gahdid..)
It makes you think: is it just me, or does Mikey look like Rose West? (Whereas Grace, of course, is Rose West.)
It obliges you to muse: given that Grace and boiling acid is an irresistible combination, which part of her would I start with?
It forces you to ask: if Nicky falls pregnant by Pete, how long would it take to introduce compulsory eugenics?
It obliges you to reflect: how can I get Nicky a job with Unicef?
It leads you to ponder: was that really Michael I saw in the White Swan, 24 hours after being evicted? And are there any conceivable circumstances in which I would contemplate having sex with Richard?
It compels you to muse: exactly what physical forces are involved in Leah staying upright?
It encourages you to consider: if I could only slap just one housemate, which one would it be?
And then it makes you wonder: why am I watching this nonsense, when I could be reading Grace Dent's entirely marvellous Big Brother Blog?
Thursday 10th August
Wapping, Summer 2006
Wednesday 9th August
Tuesday 8th August
Brighton Pride, Summer 2006
Monday 7th August
Composing a pithy message for a colleague's leaving card is never easy, even at the best of times.
But especially so when you never really got on.
Even more so when you blame him or her for pretty much everything that's gone wrong in your department since he or she joined.
And even more more so when, in recent months, you've become so exasperated with his or her bullshit that you've taken matters into your own hands and effectively sidelined him or her in the process.
On the card I wrote: "One thing at least we can be certain of: things won't be the same round here without you!"
Which, under the circumstances, strikes me as pretty damned restrained.
......previous week
