Our Deputy Prime Minister seems to be slowly turning into Roy “Chubby” Brown. When he’s not rogering his secretary, punching protestors in the face, playing cowboys with American businessmen, commenting on the environment from the back of one of his Jags, or playing croquet, he occasionally finds time to discuss world affairs and illuminates us all with his insightful thoughts using his trademark, colourful, working-man’s language. So John, what do you think of that George Bush then ? “Well he’s crap isn’t he”…

This man should not be Deputy Prime Minister, he should be Prime Minister! It would be wonderful! Like some sort of liberal Nosher Powell. For the first time since Margaret Thatcher we would be goverened by someone who speaks their mind. No more would we have to cringe as we watch our supremo fetching sticks thrown by Bush, or wonder what is really going on in his mind; he would tell us in terms we can all understand. And what a wonderful statesman he’d make; any crap from the foreign johnnies and he’d be right in there and clump them – that’ll be the end of that.

Ange asked:

“Do you think there’s any market for a computer program that just sits there and occasionally compliments you ?”

Now, Friday night is the traditional night for sitting in the pub, talking rubbish, getting inspired, and making resolutions, that in the cold, sober, light of the following day I don’t recollect at all.
But this one I remembered! So simple and yet so brilliant, it could rid the world of all bad vibes! So, I went ahead and wrote kimibhut: Winblows only at the moment, it sits on the system tray and occasionally pops up a message telling you how great you are. And, for the first time ever, I’m keeping it running all the time because it really does make me feel better about the world. It also has a mode for masochists that insults you instead. Something for everyone.

This evening contained another huge reminder about how fast time is passing. After one of my mum’s award-deserving roast lamb and yorkshire pudding dinners, my parents’ neighbours turned up to say goodbye as tomorrow they are moving away. This made me quite emotional because, apart from liking them, we’ve known them for about 15 years. We’ve watched them have a child, who is now a young lady, had Christams day with them, helped Dad and friend try to sneak back into the house when they were so pissed they could hardly walk, and generally enoyjed having them as my parents neighbours. I’ll miss them.

Despite incurring much derision from friends and workmates, I really like Lily Allen…in fact I might even be a fan. So, how excited was I when we discovered she was filming a music video right next to the office I work in? They’d redressed a launderette as a cafe and a cornershop as a fruit stall…I don’t know…and neither did the production team when I asked them. When my mate Andy told them I was a fan they told me Lily was only standing round the corner and suggested I said hello. Suddenly I turned into a giggling 12 year-old and ran off, just like I did when I met the Blakes 7 actors. It’s a funny thing, but I’m normally pretty irreverent; as soon as I come into contact with someone I admire I turn into this schoolgirl twat. Later on I tried again; another workmate, Lisa, walked up with me to where Lily and the possee were hanging about. As soon as I saw her red dress from a distance it happened again and I buggered off. What a berk eh ?

Somewhere between 20,000 (the Police estimate) and 100,000 (the organisers estimate) people turned up in Hyde Park yesterday in order to trudge to parliament square in protest at Blair’s support for Israel’s massacre of the Lebanese. It was all good, angry fun (apart from the sweat and thigh-chaffing) and very reassuring to see such a huge turn-out.
Afterwards, Tony and I had a couple of pints. One on the chavvy deck of the Tattershall castle floating pub, and one in the Sherlock Holmes surrounded by loud German tourists. Nothing like it. Under normal circumstances we’d probably had a few more but the night before was a tad heavy. In fact I was lucky enough to witness some of Tony’s pre-puke drunken yoga moves.
A friend of mine wasn’t happy about the whole idea of this protest as she felt that it was simply a huge anti-Israel/pro-Hizbollah movement. There were lots of reasons why I disagreed with her and we had a brief email debate about it before I went. During the march a little kid gave me a sticker that read “Hands off Muslim Countries” which I proudly wore for the rest of the day. It was only as I removed it today that I noticed the little URL at the bottom: www.hizb.org.uk. Oops.

Vodaphone, clearly recognising the profit potential of 100,000 people all trying to meet up with their friends in a huge park with mobile phones, sent a bunch of “promotions girls” along to give out lollipops to the protestors and coppers. I wonder if that same little boy managed to persuade them to wear hizbollah stickers on their vodaphone t-shirts ?

…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)