Cockney Reject

Rats.

My submission to Popbitch's weirdly apt names section was rejected this week :-(

Ho hum, if I can't get recognition on PB's weekly slander-mail, then I'll just have to publish here.

From this week's news of the QEII running aground in Southampton harbour, the name of Cunard spokesperson was:

....Eric Flounders

Clearly too poetic for the tittle-tattle merchants..

Don't Believe The Hype

However you look at it, Marrakesh, in my humble, is way, way, way overrated. If the truth were told, it's a shithole.

**I must state upfront, that these are all my own opinions and in no way reflect those of my good lady wife -- who is a pioneer, traveller par excellence and woman of exquisite taste. She loves the place BTW.

If you're a consumer of British media - everything from weekend broadsheet supplements, lifestyle, fashion and travel magazines - you can't have missed gushing photo-spread feature after fawning photo-spread feature PR-ing this noxious little outpost in deepest Morocco. For the last four or five years it's been building a reputation as *the* place to go if you crave easy-to-get-to poverty, street hassle, sickness and tourist crap.

We went there last week and it was poo.

It has no architectural merit. It's not picturesque. It's not even quirky. There is seemingly no point to it.

Why would one go? It's dirty. Smelly. Overcrowded. Intimidating. Irritating. Dangerous.

I mean, how many brightly coloured slippers can a person reasonably have? Who needs a tatty carpet, lantern, bowl, necklace, lamp, shawl, drape, belt, bag, photo frame, rug, tagine pot, dervish knife or sword, tribal mask, joss stick, joss stick holder, rucksack, plate, saucer, vial, soap dish, soap, oil, incense…

All this -- and lots of it -- is available for haggle at the infamous souks.

But buyer beware. Souks are narrow, poorly lit, overcrowded hellholes where you're overtaken by the deafening bids of shopkeepers on all sides pimping their shoddy wares. That and all the random people -- milling tourists; just looking tourists; on the trader's line tourists; being reeled-in tourists; and poor, resigned-to-the-rip-off tourists. Not to mention the locals -- flitting hither and thither; pulling carts; leading over laden, broken donkeys; panhandlers; beggars; chancers and thieves. Oh, and scooters. Thousands of then. Toot toot toot. With their collective exhaust, the place smells like a lawnmower convention held in a sewer.

And then there's the food. Tagine. Big wow. It's not a culinary epiphany, it's a pot. Into which, the Moroccans put principally chicken or lamb. That's it -- lamb stew. Intriguing n'est pas? Stand down Heston, it's not the discovery of the century..

I'm being unfair, of course. Very unfair.

But the problem is -- I got food (or water) poisoning mid-way through the visit and have carried it for eight days now. The experience (I'll spare you) does, ehem, colour the experience. I lost half a stone (~3 kilos) as indication of the voracity of the viral or bacterial infection of my guts.

All this is most unfortunate, as I did manage to ape those Conde Nast Traveller-type shutterbugs with some damn fine pics taken on the iPhone's meagre camera, see below.

Anyway, that's me done with the exotic. In future, I'm not straying far from the tried and tested golf resort in southern Spain.

"I'm Caliban-I-Am I-Am,
I'm Caliban-I-Am I-Am."

**Expression of jaundiced views is a raison d'etre here. But editorial wilfulness can sometimes get me in trouble Chez S.

Random alley

Random alley

Door -- down a random alley

The Square

The Square

Donkey looking very forlorn and forlornly, ehem, very sad

A souk -- shudder to think..

Ceiling of our fancy room in the Rihad

Courtyard in Rihad

Pool and private courtyard in suite No.1 in Palmerie

Blossom In pool, suite No.1

Flower at our 2nd suite in the palmerie

The pool, suite No.2 -- a Hockney-esque study, innit

Wall of 2nd suite in the Palmerie -- A shadow play(ish and -esque;-)

Wall in suite No.2 courtyard in Palmerie ..Isn't the blue divine?

Cactus against [magnificently blue] wall of Palmerie suite No.2

Le posh hotel thingie

Graffiti -- Gooners get everywhere ..and probably pissed up the wall too

Airport -- brilliant architecture and a vitally important and welcome route home!

Airport -- another view. Quite magnificent

Ever Feel Like You've Been Cheated?

I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that we havn't been touched too directly by the rampant crime of grimy north Gotham.

We aren't completely untouched, but nothing bad. P had her phone snatched from her hand on the street a couple of years ago. Some dullards pinched three topiary planters from our light well. A moron broken into the car over the first May Bank Holiday, but only caused a broken rear passenger window and nicked the TomTom from the glove box. ..And last night I was scammed at my front door.

At about 20:15, half-way through a (homealone)dinner consumed in-front of a rerun of British Style Genius, I was disturbed by a knock at the door. A very apologetic smartly-dressed (business casual) gent in his late 20s/early 30s introduced himself as our new neighbour (on the right). Not completely implausible as the house next door has been sold and this same chap introduced himself as such to P on Monday evening too.

Him to me (and also on mobile phone to supposed wife): "I'm very sorry, but we're awaiting a delivery and I have no cash and my wife is stuck in traffic. I wouldn't ask, but the delivery will be here in a few minutes and I need £7."

My mind: Tick. Tick. Tick. He seems OK. P did say that she'd met the new neighbour. He looks tidy and is neutrally well-spoken. Does he want me to take his delivery? I'm kinda pissed off as I'm half-way through my food. All I want is for him to go away -- and quick. OK. Here's a tenner.

Him to me ('corrected' via mobile phone by 'wife'): "Oh sorry, that's £27 not £7."

Me: "OK, as your going to be living next door -- heck, I know where you live. Here's £30. Pay me back next week sometime."

And about 15 minutes later, our neighbour (a real one this time, on the left) knocked on the door and asked me about my ...brother.

Me: Eh? I don't have a brother.

Legitimate neighbour: "That's funny, a guy saying he was your brother knocked on the door a few minutes ago asking for money to cover the cost of -- yep, you guessed it -- a delivery."

Thinking back too, a couple of bobbies did come by on Monday evening responding to a call from two doors down regarding a man asking for money at their door..

Ddduuuummmmmm. Eureka moment. I've been done up like a kipper.

And here's me, Meldrew of the North, out of the goodness of my heart and against my better (or worse) nature, being taken for thirty quid on my own doorstep.

So as an additional security precaution and should matey boy be planning to inflict greater injury to my property, the heavy wooden doors in the lower ground floor bay are tightly shut until the pooch returns at the weekend.

And I never thought I'd be actively welcoming the return of the dog's most annoying habit -- loud, incessant barking at the front door. But it's a great deterrent to n'er do wells of all stripes.

And if I ever see that 'neighbour' of mine again ...I'll call the cops, of course.

The Fall

Dobbin the horse accidentally slipped and fell in the exercise yard yesterday.

....


Vets were quickly on the scene and by all accounts, old Dobbin is in a stable condition.

Oh Boy

We had scan #2 this morning and I'm very pleased to report that baby S is fine -- the right size, weight, brain OK, spine good, the right number of fingers and toes and is 'swimming' in the right amount of amniotic fluid, fed from a right sized placenta.

Oh, and he's a BOY! Yay!

And the Easter Island angularity of the first scan seems to have passed to more naturally human features.

..So now we throw away the baby name books (we were undecided on girl's names) as George Frederick Haymer S is alright as he is thank you very much.

(Haymer, btw, is a name given to the males on my wife's side of the family).

While all I wanted was for a healthy baby and its sex was immaterial, I am looking forward to a more evenly balanced gender spread at home.

"Oh My, And A Boo Hoo"

Well, the England football team wasn't entirely convincing against a plucky Kazakhstan, but 5-1 is a comfortable victory in anyone's book. And in football, it's the result that counts. You grind 'em out and take the points, right?

Take a trip to a trip up Stamford Hill to N17 on any grey Wednesday afternoon and ask the residents of that grotty postcode how they'd feel about achieving a few dire victories with a four-goal advantage -- or even for that matter, a paltry one-goal up. I'll wager they'd swap the entertaining but goalless worst start in over a century for a bit of that as quickly as you can say, erm, Danny Blanchflower very quickly..

And that's my point and why I'm so incensed at the cowardly and unsporting booing by the Wembley crowd -- and the equally banal bleating of the tabloid backpages -- of Messrs Cole (A), Lampard and Gerrard whenever they don the lilly white Three Lions.

Yesterday, Ashley Cole was booed at every touch after haphazardly gifting the visitors a sitter. Hey, everyone makes mistakes, and I'm sure Cashley would be the first to admit he's made more than his fair share. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of the puking, preening adulterer either, but he is giving it a go on the left.

But frankly, I resent the griping, booing and hissing of 'fans' from Scunthorpe, Market Harborough or Telford -- or whatever God-forsaken parochial hole these morons come from.

In football it's club firmly over country.

The boys, more habitually in Blue or Red, have more important priorities in their obscenely over-paid day jobs. These silly national games are a mere distraction and potential threat of costly injury.

I was pleased -- pleased, I tell you -- when England tumbled out of Euro 2008. No more of this international silliness. For what's the point? If the nation hates Super Frank and Stevo, then why should they bother? What thanks do they get for their efforts?

Zip. Zilch. Nada.

So chaps, let's just throw it all away, again, and get back to what's really important -- the Premiership and Champion's League -- and leave the provincials to their piffling Conference League tedium.

Carefree.

Are You Receiving?

So here I am happily taking advantage of the weekly luxury of working from home on Fridays. Yay. :-)

It gives me an extra couple of hours a day without the commute and affords a bit of a lie-in and a really good long walk avec pooch first thing, while providing a sense of an extended weekend. All this, and I still get started earlier and run a wee bit longer into the evening. All in all, very efficient and most equitable. :-))

However, all this efficiency is rendered merely theoretical as the VPN from my work laptop don't work too well today. Actually, now I think of it, the VPN hasn't worked very well for nearly a month now. And without a VPN I have no email or network connection - therefore the point of efficiency is somewhat compromised and I can't actually do any work. (Well I do have a connection of sorts, but it's very intermittent - 2 minutes on, 10 minutes off, and impossibly slow and narrow-band when on). :-(

Of course, my connection via the pretty iMac is perfect, but then I'm not using this machine to send and receive kilobytes, megabytes and sometimes gigabytes of data..

Lo. Instead of doing anything productive, I'm just getting more and more irate. :-((

So I begin the arduous and frustrating task of locating and fixing the problem. :-[

The IT guys at the office can't see a problem with my equipment. So I determine to check my broadband speed with Virgin, my ISP. :-p

After nearly 15 minutes negotiating the Kafkaesque complexity of Virgin's automated call centre, so-called customer service operation, I finally land in Bangalore or some such place on the Indian subcontinent. And after another 10 minutes of re-treading my 'problem' and listening to muzak, the 'fault' is detected. :-]

Virgin, in its infinite wisdom, decided to upgrade my already 'Large' broadband package to 'Gargantuan' with effect start of September. ..Which is nice. :-)

The only problem is that they didn't think to inform me of this service enhancement. Nor did they think it relevant or necessary to arrange delivery of a new modem capable of handling the monstrous bandwidth hike. :-[[

Doh!

Thanks for nothing, Mr. B. you arse. :-L

..And the Apple bugs reappeared yesterday with the iPhone needing its first re-boot after freezing. Not bad though -- an Apple device that lasted six weeks before its first stall.

Damn, I sometimes hate technology. Or rather my reliance upon it..

I wonder how on earth we managed before the Internet.

I know. I'll Google it.

Aw, Bugger

You've go to feel for the poor [sic] geyser quietly going about his digging business this morning when he haphazardly located the Victorian water pipe..

..And if the weather isn't bad enough.

Speaking In Tongues

I received this nonsense as a pitch for an advertorial this morning. ..Well I can't fathom its meaning, but then I am suffering a virulent bout of manflu.

You have a go.

"We are reaching a wide audience who may or may not understand the opportunities that exist in the industry and really hit home with a number of key benefits geared to transform curiosity into action."

Eh..?

And Here We Go Again..

Parking suspended on our street from midnight tonight to midnight Tuesday.

Now wondering who will be digging up the road and why and even if anything will happen at all.

Moreover, I'm wondering at why the midnight limits. Do these works happen at night? I hope not as they're just outside the bedroom window.

Mmmmm..

Dumb And Dumber 2

..And lo today, the parking suspension signs have disappeared.

Clearly, that very special olympic torch handover planned for Brighton Road was diverted to Mare Street at the last minute..

Chaos averted, but will those poor sods ticketed overnight be able to successfully appeal? Will they ****!

Dumb And Dumber

So Hackney Council - in its infinite stupidity - has struck again.

There are notices the length of Brighton Road that parking is suspended along the whole street for two days from midnight tonight to midnight Friday.

And the reason for this wholesale suspension of parking privileges? ...Unknown and unfathomable.

Are they going to resurface the whole road in two days? ... Highly doubtful.

Is one (or more) of the nation's magnificent utilities going to dig a very long hole, effect necessary works, refill and resurface in a couple of days? ...See that flying pig?

These are typically the two reasons for suspending parking. And when there are works, suspension is usually phased.

So why close a whole street for 48 hours?

Surely not to generate revenue? Tsk.

The same thing happened on our street too -- you may recall my giddy note about a few months ago. Parking was suspended then for the better part of a week and through all that time there wasn't a hint of works, repairs, deliveries, police actions, protest marches ot ticker-tape parades. But still PCNs were liberally issued.

I shudder to think how many weaselly little parking wardens the council has drafted-in to patrol (erm, skulk around) in the wee small hours and stick in-disputable penalty notices on the unsuspecting homeowner's Mini, GeeWizz or (ehem) Land Rover..? A small army I'll be bound.

And closing off parking in Brighton just means that everyone from zone E must move their vehicles and park half a mile away. ..Because of course, if we were to park conveniently around the corner, we'd be in the wrong zone and liable to further penalty. ..Probably clamped given the council's malicious, inept and preposterous planning strategy.

Damn. I really hate Hackney Council.

I could, of course, be proven wrong and there might be a brilliant, logical and wonderfully altrusitic reason for this 48 hour disruption.

..But then we're right back to those porkers upon high.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Apparently it's not enough to merely home, feed, water, walk and generally tend to the every need of one's furry friend. No sir-ee.

As Kate Muir noted in her Sunday Times magazine column today, the right-on PC brigade demand that our critters are afforded a level respect hitherto reserved for royalty and the mega-elite.

So for fear of offending the delicate sensibilities of our canine and feline companions, they are no longer to be classed as pets, but animal companions.

Are they soon to be awarded suffrage too?

Has the world gone mad?

Gang Of Four

P had her first trimester scan yesterday and this is junior S at week 14. ..Humm, it's not exactly flattering is it?

And while mum and (evolving) 'grub' are doing nicely thanks, we're hopeful that the angular, squared features are on account of the poor scan quality, not some unknown and distant hereditary disfigurement. But, hey, this image does bear an uncanny resemblance to an Easter Island statue.

And as for dad? On the strength of this evidence, I now must fulfil my promise and quit smoking. And it's so easy to say with grand pronoucements weeks in advance, but damn it's hard in practice. Am weaning with very infrequent puffs on mega, mega lights.

Sweet And Dandy

A colleague returning from vacances delivered a large packet of the Gallic delight, Carambars, to a desk very near me. Yum.

Entente cordiale is alive and well in NW1.

SCB v2.4

Yet another in my very randomly observed series of Stupid Corporate Branding (SCB).

Spied in Bloomsbury this morning, an eCourier delivery van with the legendary tag..

"Happieness Delivered"

What cock.

Chelsea Dagger

Magnificent. Absolutely magnificent. Chelsea 4, Portsmouth 0.

What a way to open the season.

That's Pompey thoroughly humbled. And they're a decent side too.

Scolari really has made his mark and boring, boring Chelsea looked like a Brazil squad on top form (hyperbole dictates that I compare them to the 1970 World Cup winners) -- quick, open, forward, energetic, tight, inventive, entertaining..

And unless ManUre get one more against the Magpies, then we start top of the table -- where we'll stay until Sunday, 24 May 2009.

Oh. They didn't (ha) and I'm liking this a lot..

Carefree.

Isolation

Home alone ..and for the whole weekend. Yay.

I should be enjoying things at my own pace -- and I am, I guess -- but damn, I'm bored.

I'm not completely alone. There's still the dog who's minxing it up as, ehem, top dog and demanding a LOT of attention. But pooch doesn't exactly qualify as stimulating adult company. She's a dog, can't talk and is happier licking her arse and rolling in poo than discussing the pressing issues of the day -- like the sublime brilliance of The Last Shadow Puppets (beyond debate and just statement of fact); whether Gabby Yorath is hotter than Kirsty Gallacher (did I say that out loud?), or is Natty really that good or is it just very good PR (mmmmm)? And of course, the MASSIVELY CRITICAL start of the footie season.

Actually, thinking about it, I don't think P would be terribly interested in any of these topics of conversation -- they're really only my own personal pressing issues ..but you get my drift and I am home alone..

Home alone. Yay.

I can stay up late. I can lie-in late. I can listen to loud music. I can eat junk. I can grow a (wispy) beard. I can go days without washing. I can watch all of the Godfather films (well, the first two anyway) and I can generally behave badly (heck. I'm not a father yet). In short, I can go completely feral.

..But then that's the order for every weekend. P isn't exactly a meanie authoritarian and kinda lets me be ..me. Sweet thing that she is.

So enough, what have I achieved to date all on my lonesome since P departed at 08:00 yesterday? quite a lot.

I've:

- Eaten two pizzas (large)
- Drunk three pints of larger (strong)
- Drunk two and a half bottles of average Australian Chardonnay (circa £6.00)
- Smoked two and a half packs of Marlboro lights (see below -- caning it)
- Had one packet of crisps (Walker's cheese & onion)
- Ate one chip butty (with curry sauce)
- Ate English breakfast amid foul Gooners (and wished them all food poisoning as well as a drubbing by West Brom)
- Ate one ham and cheese sandwich from the local Ukranian cafe
- Watched three crappy horror DVDs. The Hills Have Eyes (remake but good), The Wicker Man (the original and totally excellent) and To The Devil A Daughter (very poor apart from the nubile Nastassia Kinski dressed as a nun -- which is disturbing, but I'm working on it with my therapist..)
- Listened to bad-to-the-bone rock music (Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Nirvana, Oasis, Lynyrd Skynyrd, (eeks) Meatloaf and ..I admit it, MIKA)
- Cleaned, weeded and watered the garden
- Had four very long walks (avec la Moo)
- Did quite a lot of work and had two conference calls (yesterday -- I work from home on Fridays. Yes, I do work..)
- Done four loads of washing
- Done a bit of clearing in the VERY scary second bedroom -- the boudoir (a mad person lives in there..)
- Washed the car (well, paid a gang of Russians to do it)
- Laundered my shirts (well, took them to the Turkish laundry)
- Googled a bit to resolve the Gabby / Kirtsy question (still unresolved, and it's subjective and sexist -- blonde or brunette. Don't start me on Davina..)
- Watched the Olympics a bit
- Read The New Yorker (liked it too)
- Tried reading Harvard Business Review (got bored)
- Read The Guardian (all of it apart from the pointless Family, Your Money and Travel sections)
- Dowloaded apps for the iPhone (lovin' the London tube map with service alerts and PacMan)
- Tried and failed to get some sense from local estate agents re potential sale of the house (it'll happen one day ..really!)
- Pondered the ineptitude of local estate agents (with the credit crunch, have they all gone off to be tour guides in Georgia or running bars in Malia?)
- Bought The Mighty Lemon Drops back catalogue from iTunes (why..?)
- Bought a new pair of Golas (check em -- gorgeous)
- Oh, and missed P (quite a lot)

Busy boy. Well done. But still bored.

So what's on for tonight? More DVDs (Dog Soldiers, yay!) and a curry I think..

Disappointed in the content? Look at the masthead, dumb dumb. It clearly states pointless musings on minutiae. Deal with it or click onto something else.

Home alone. P comes home tomorrow. Yay!

Oh, and as noted, the season started today..

How many trophies? It can't be any worse than close second in everything last year ;-)

CAREFREE

The Final Countdown

Eleven days to go and counting...

I've set Tuesday, 26 August 2008 as the day that I give up smoking once and for all.

This is not a wholly arbitrary date. It's the day that P has her first trimester scan to check-up on the progress of little S. And at week 14, we're as confident as we can be that all is going well in wombland.

P has already paid a visit to a midwife and has been subject to much medical prodding and poking and all is at it should be.

So why set a date? Why not just quit now?

Well a pedantic creature of habit where all things are ideally diarized long in advance, it seems the best way for me to prepare for the loss of an old, if dangerous, odious and undesirable 'friend'.

Not just that, but for the last two months, P -- avec Roo -- has been a paragon of virtue.

No smoking, no drinking, no fun.

Heck, if she can just go 'cold turkey' at the flick of a switch, or rather a pee on a chemical stick, then so can I.

Alex A too has kicked the fags into touch and replaced his addiction to the weed with an obsessive half marathon habit.

..And of course, it's illegal to smoke anywhere nowadays, so why would you?

So here I am a dinosaur. A throwback. A social outcast. Last man, ehem, smoking, if you like.

But my motives are far more fundamentally founded. It's a very very unhealthy thing to do. And becoming a Pa in my (very ;-) early forties, I'm already going to be nearing retirement when junior departs for university or popstardom, or whatever.. So the very least I can / should do, is make every effort to stay alive for as long as possible.

So while I can, I'm caning it for the next week and a half. I'll either keel over with nicotine poisoning (defeating the point of it all), or even better, become thoroughly sick of the evil things. Either way, Tuesday, 26th is D-Day.

While I'm looking forward to a life sans wheezing and with a renewed ability to smell and taste, for now at least, you'll find me behind the proverbial bike shed ..for a few more days yet.

Shiny, Shiny

Last week I bit the bullet and have completed the triumvirate of shiny Apple gear. The iPhone really is a marvel and it's sooo cute.

I could and maybe should say more, but my pretty new precious demands attention..