October 16th - 22nd 2006
Sunday Ill-treatment
Saturday On the Thames
Friday Concealed
Thursday On the Thames
Wednesday Commissioned
Tuesday On the Thames
Monday Bi-ass
Sunday 22nd October
Spam, of course, is the devil's spawn. We know that.
But when God gave the devil the best tunes, he also handed over a small locked box of good jokes, and such - very, very occasionally - are the accidental bulls-eyes thrown up by broadcast spam.
Not "I have a site http://www.hair-loss-doctor.com which is looking for quality link partners and your site is ideal for the purpose.." though that did amuse me.
Nor the email addressing me (thanks to a random comment I once made about the benefits of having your own domain and being reachable with pretty much any name as long as the domain name was correct) as "oiyoufuckface@iansie.com".
No, what got my attention was the message that began "What are you up to? Ill-treating the boys, you covetous, avaricious, in-sa-ti-a-ble old fence...?"
Obviously someone who knows me, I thought, preparing to read on, only to discover that it was nothing more than a random extract from Oliver Twist...
(Only, of course, Dickens - not in danger of being censored under suspicion of promoting Viagra - never felt the need to decorate 'insatiable' with random hyphens.)
Saturday 21st October
On the Thames, Autumn 2006
Friday 20th October
Your starter for ten: who said to whom, as reported third-hand by the Telegraph last week: "Surely there must be some way of concealing your penis"?
(Clue: the organ in question belonged to a Cabinet Minister.)
Thursday 19th October
On the Thames, Autumn 2006
Wednesday 18th October
In these days of Schott-jacketed security men and florally-ornamented receptionists, I may be the last man left in London who remembers Commissionaires, burly bemedalled men in gold-piped uniforms who guarded the doors of cinemas, department stores and office blocks through the fifties and sixties.
Hotels still seem to have them, but they're a shadow of their former selves.
I always knew they were ex-Army, somehow - though I never made the connection with, doh, commission in the military sense of the word.
And it's only just now that I've come across the apparently legendary Corps of Commissionaires, founded in 1859 by "Captain Edward Walter, who established the organisation to provide gainful employment for ex-servicemen returning from the Crimean War."
All of which may, or may not, go some way towards explaining Stuart - the marginally odd little roly-poly man who mans reception at our offices, with a wheezy chuckle and a deferential nod for everyone who passes legitimately through his portal.
No uniform for him, no gold braid or peaked cap - but no standing in the cold outside, either: just long lonely nights at the front desk, enlivened by regular circuits round the empty coridors, checking each outside door as he passes, flicking lights on and off as he goes.
More often than not, he's snatching forty winks by the time I leave work, but the other week he was busy on the telephone."Yuss..I'm putting out feelers for you about the dog..ahhh. Well, you see, when we say 'putting out feelers' it, um, means we're, like, asking around..."
So now I'm mildly intrigued. Who does Stuart know well enough to be putting out feelers for, who isn't English, and to whom he can speak at 2 o'clock in the morning?
Can't help feeling there's a Channel Four movie in there somewhere.
Tuesday 17th October
On the Thames, Autumn 2006
Monday 16th October
A woman of my acquaintance (I would hesitate to call her a friend) is sharing the details of her ordination training with an lgbt mailing-list to which I subscribe.
I'm confident she'd be happy to share her (thus suitably anonymised) reflections on a debate which said list encouraged her to inaugurate following her reported misgivings about a lecture to which she and her fellow ordinands were subjected, on the subject of transsexuality:
The dialogue that ensued was as
one might expect. [Our hero] tamed her tongue apppropriately, but her body
language gave a few ordinands cause for fright.
In particular the
Evangelical who asked how it is possible to ethically endorse bi-sexuality
when, clearly (in his opinion) bi-sexuals fly in the face of the Lord by
always having two partners...
......previous week
