…one of the great things about this country is it is a democracy and you are entitled to put your view but I’m also entitled to make my speech…

said Blair to the protester. And with that, the argument was over.
Some of us are beginning to wonder if, at the next election, Blair will not just push Gordo out of the way, but the rest of us as well.

…look, one of the great things about this country is that you are entitled to put [forward] your view every four years. But I’m entitled to tell you where you went wrong. Mr Bush, Mr Schwarzenegger and I are acting on behalf of the higher power of God, and we haven’t finished yet.

As a proud member of the new “coalition of the willing”, I am delighted to be a citizen^H^H^H^H^H^Hsubject of a country that is supporting the strong against the weak in so much of the world. As some thoughtful nobhead wrote to the Metro, let’s not forget the Israeli casualties. Yeah, every Israeli is worth 100 Lebanese peasants^H^H^H^H^H^Hterrorists. So, we must thank God for the American cluster bombs which are being sold to the Israelis by the planeload (via Scotland). These holy bombs are surgically taking out the pockets of terror (or “towns” as the terrorists call them) whilst under the brutal bombardment of the Lebanese indoor fireworks.

Where would we be without Israel, the little scamps ? Well we’d probably be very, very concerned about Iraq and Afganistan where the western-induced civil wars are killing people at a rate that only the Rwandan Hutus could comprehend. Or perhaps we’d be worried about one of the many wars being waged in Africa.
Probably not though…Fox news doesn’t seem that interested so why should the general public ?

Meanwhile, my utopian dreams about a cool, air-conditioned America are being shattered by news of power cuts and soaring temperatures. It’s almost as if the evnironmentalists and anti-capitalists were right or something!

So, I looked on the Internet for details about solar powered aircon. Of course it exists, but it’s expensive and not too environmentally friendly. Unless that is you go for a home-brew solution. It was comforting, and highly predictable, that an Aussie would have published tehnical details of his home-brew, solar powered air-con system, but I was even more comforted to know that the Romans had invented solar aircon first.

The Cook Islands have their own top level domain and the authorities there wisely decided to follow the example of the UK and have logical sub-domains for different types of organisation. So, if you’re a non-profit group you’d get an “.org.ck”, if you’re an academic body you’d get an “.edu.ck”, ISPs would get a “.net.ck” and so forth. Obviously a lot of thought went into this so surely they wouldn’t be so stupid as to lumber commercial organisations with “co” would they ? Because that would mean you’d end up with ludicrous domains like perfumes.co.ck and gifts.co.ck….oh FFS…

Outside our bedroom window is a little courtyard with a 10ft wall that separates us from the general public. This wall provides the local community with several valuable facilities including a rubbish disposal service and drunk-person-amusement arcade. When drunk people are not walking along the perilously high wall, shouting, they are busy finding the most bizarre and dangerous objects to throw over it. This picture shows the latest flying curio we discovered. It looked so intriguing through the window that we had to rush out and see what it was to prevent our imagination taking a grip; Michele was convinced it was some sort of explosive.
We still don’t know what it is but suspect it might be a thing that grows grassy hair when wet, because it looks like it has seeds on its head. So, we’ve wet its head and keep its string suspended in a bottle of water in the hope that some sort of funky capillary action will make it grow.

It has been disgustingly, insufferably, inhumanly hot over the past week. In fact the last month’s average was about 10 degrees C over what I consider healthy. I CAN’T COPE WITH IT! Really! It’s killing me. Never is there a moment where I’m not, at best, uncomfortable, and at worst, feeling ill. My clothes are either soaked or covered in a salty pattern that looks like a map of Narnia; very attractive.
My breathing suffers too and I’ve been hitting an inhaler. Yet still people manage to go to work on 50C+ busses and 40C+ tubes. How do they do it ? It’s bizarre.
I took the day off work yesterday; let’s face it, I wasn’t going to be able to work in this surreal weather. It’s not like heat in other places, this is like warm Jelly all around you. If the propect of moving to a country that can do air-con wasn’t immiment I would move abroad…if only to get away from all of the pratts who say things like:

• It never gets hot enough over here.It reached 34C this year and it’s only JULY for christ’s sake. Haven’t you noticed that for the past 35 years at least August is hotter ?
• Yeah but it doesn’t stay hot for very long over here. For at least two months now my pants have been like some sort of hydroponic experiment.
• I love this heat!You’re a sick weird fuck who should be living in the rainforests

Praise be to the Walpole for fixing their aircon. It was blissful. Stepping outside afterwards reminded me of North America: the bit between the house and the car where it’s way too hot. The difference is that over here it’s like that everwhere without a break! ARRGGGHH!

It took several years and lots of money, but

I now have a U.S. Immigrant Visa!

It consists of a tantalising, fat, yellow envelope that we’re not allowed to open. In the next six months I have to take it into America and give it to them, at which point they will probably get me to pledge allegiance to the federal reserve and the new world order or something.
All very exciting, but we now have to seriously start thinking about how we get over there! Eek!

Time is passing alarmingly quickly at the moment; sometimes it feels like Michele, Humph and I are just watching it shoot past the window as we share food and watch the telly. The US visa application has been taken as far as it can be and we await the next chapter with a combination of excitement and dread. Honestly, all we want to do is live together, that’s it. I’m not trying to seek my fortune in the land of opportunity or anything like that. But a bunch of people who have assumed some sort of power are stopping us.
Michele’s just gone to bed to get some sleep before her new job tomorrow. Meanwhile Humph has realised she is tired after all and has flown off my head and onto her cage.

Some indications that the world is, owing to the relentless passage of time, moving on:

• Alex’s blog. One of the first posts outlined the blog as an attempt to prove to me that his life was not the “impossibly glamourous and interesting” party I believed. Bad luck Alex, you falied on that one. What with Vikings, 5y, laser nurses and powerpuff girls, it looks pretty fucking glamorous and interesting to me.
• Dan is back. Two years…two years.
• We’ve been married nine years. I mean…honestly…that can’t be right
• My little sister is 31

There are loads more, but I don’t want to scare you (me)…

Grammar and language fascists really annoy me, yet recently it’s been a struggle not to join them.
Once you learn a few simple rules like:

• Don’t end a sentence with a preposition.
• Don’t split infinitives.
• That’s not what “begging the question” means.
• Only trains are due, everything else is owing.
• And finally, don’t start a sentence with “and”.

you may have many years of smug fun laughing at the howling errors made on TV and radio (even Radio 4) and thus prove to your friends that you are an erudite and clever individual.
The truth is, the language is changing! Yes, it’s often changing through ignorance, but what does that matter ? That’s how language changes. It’s evolution; mutations that will either stay or die, regardless of their ‘correctness’.
And what is “correct” grammar ? Despite the opinion of most of the middle classes, much of it is as bogus as what the kids talk, innit.
Arses…this wasn’t supposed to turn into another anti grammar rant. The point was going to be that despite hating these arbitrary and innacurate rules, I got most pissed off with “London Tonight” this evening, because there was not one single English sentence in the programme. They had an entire segment about the new “child poverty czar”…another rant in waiting…and neither interviewer nor interviewee managed to say anything for three minutes. It was all the sort of hollow meaningless twaddle the modern business world relishes. The presenter couldn’t even use a cliché properly:

“The proof is always in the pudding”.

No no no! For fucks sake, if you’re going to brandish your lack of imagination on the TV at least do it properly.
And while we’re on the subject, a couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to hear some bigwig government/quango nob actually say:

Well, Pandora is now well and truly out of the box and she’s not likely to be going back in…

on the Today programme.
(answer: she’s in the front room watchin’ telly)

“Why,” asked the American “don’t you have air-conditioning over here ?”
“Well, it’s not really hot enough over here” replied the Englishman, with sweat pouring off of his face and looking like he’d entered the City of London Mr Wet Shirt competition.

Since Michele arrived in London (ie over ten years ago) the summer has been unbearably hot for at least a month every year. However, the English choose not to remember this, favouring the traditional false memories of summer consisting of wearing full-body bathing costumes, in bathing machines, by a brown sea…in the rain.

OK, I know aircon is an environmental evil, I know using too much energy caused the problem in the first place and I have seen Dogma, but damn I wish we had fucking aircon in the UK. Last week I had to spend 3 hours a day on the tube with a load of other poor sods travelling in the dangerous heat in their suits. At least my current employer doesn’t insist on that nonsense.
You must wear a suit because it’s smart. Is it ? What looks more “un-professional” in your eyes ? A bloke in a t-shirt and shorts, or a bloke in a suit that is so soaked in sweat you can see his bollocks ? Oh but look at the nice tie! You can hardly tell his shirt has buttons!

It was 95F today, humid as the rainforests and totally bearable. Why ? The house has has aircon, the car has aircon and the house we went to had aircon.

Americans take A/C for granted which is bad I know. But the sheer, pure pleasure of walking into a house with central air is enough to keep me going. I apologise. It’s wrong and dirty, but it feels so good.

The other thing the Engish don’t have, which is far less dangerous, far simpler, and such an obviously good idea, is the “screen”. English people, imagine this if you can:

Keep your windows open and prevent insects coming in at the same time! Difficult to believe ? Read on..
Have a parrot ? Imagine being able to let it fly about the house, but with the windows open! It’s true! It can be done! And there’s no magic or witchcraft!

I can say no more because this invention is too cutting edge and I’m sworn to secrecy. But look out for branches of “Screens and Cheesesteaks” coming to an out-of-town shopping mall near you soon.

From bitter experience I knew that getting though the metal detector without a beep requires taking my belt off and so I successfully managed to pass through Gatwick security without a hitch. Michele wasn’t so lucky and was subjected to a search of her hand luggage. This would have been slightly embarrassing at most but for a couple of things:

1. Buried deep in her evil make-up bag was a pair of scissors. We elected to surrender them.
2. The laptop bag in which she was carrying her make up triggered the explosives detector – a tad more serious.

The nice security guard explained that this is quite common and nothing to be worried about. He fetched the supervisor and then tested the bag one more time; again the machine beeped excitedly. The expressions on the faces of the guys looked more serious, but they did their best to calm us down. I asked if we were allowed to know what substance had been detected. “TNT” the supervisor replied. Michele and I were so shocked that we stopped arguing about her noxious make-up chemicals for a moment in order to stare open-mouthed.
To cut a long and tedious story short, they called special branch who, probably on the basis that we didn’t look middle eastern and had no criminal record, told them to let us go. They narrowed the ‘contaminated’ region down to the front pocket of my old laptop bag and so we asked if they would be kind enough to destroy it; the thought of the U.S. DHS bully boys finding it was frightening enough to persuade me to dump 50 quidsworth of bag. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always wanted to go to Cuba, but orange really isn’t my colour.
Pity, it was such a useful bag. It was just the right size for taking my C4 along to the local Jihadi meetings. That was just one of the many crap jokes I decided not to make at the time. In fact Michele and I thought we shouldn’t mention the entire episode until we were safely out of sight of Philly airport; discussing TNT in any context near airworks being considered bad form these days.

We still don’t know what set the alarm off.

U.S. Airways are, in our opinion, a total bag of shite by the way. Once seated on the plane the captain came over the P.A.:

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to flight 099 to Philadelphia. We’d like to offer a warm welcome to our Gold, Select and First Class customers, and to our economy customers we’d like to offer a luke-warm welcome. Economy customers may also like to pay for some headphones to help them alleviate the frustration of watching our selection of films without sound for the duration of this 8 hour flight. They may also like to pay our brassy, pursed-lipped, hatchet-faced staff for some alcohol which is, of course, not complimentary. When we reach Philadelphia International airport, there will be a period of around 40 minutes where we remain on the tarmac while our ground crew faff about for ages trying to sort their arses from their elbows. Customers missing connecting flights as a result are welcome to pay us a load more money so they may join later flights. Have a mediocre time, and we’ll try not to crash this bargain basement A330 that is held together with sellotape!”

Well that’s not word for word but you get the idea.

But since we’ve been here it’s been wonderful. Lovely weather, and so, so much superb food. Michele’s mum had stayed up the night before our arrival cooking a massive lump of ham for me to pick at during my stay, and since then I’ve had a Philly cheesesteak, an Italian hoagie and one of the biggest and most wonderful Italian meals available to mankind.

I fear that if we stay here too long, I may risk losing my sylph-like figure.

As the presenter says, “Be prepared to take action after watching this interview.”

I would urge everyone, especially American Taxpayers, to watch even five minutes of an interview with Arron Russo about his new film. The longer you watch, the more astounding, and frightening, it becomes.

JML, the 21st century’s answer to Ronco, have won this weeks award with their TV ad that provides an incongruous link between the World Cup and……ironing board covers! Rrrespect due!