Dave's Reviews of Stuff

Gordon Yamamoto and The King of the Geeks

2012-01-28T12:14:00.000-08:00

I love a great graphic novel and Gene Yang is my new favourite author. His first work that I came across was American Born Chinese which is more powerful, in my opinion, then any other book I have read on racism and how it feels to be in the minority.

Yang has an incredible ability to write absurd and bizarre plots which are cram-packed full with thoughtful critiques of society and the human psyche. If Gordon Yamamoto and The King of the Geeks were a novel, it would fail to work as a meaningful piece of literature. Aliens up people's noses, doughnut vortexes and animal embodiments of our emotions would seem ridiculous, but somehow the combination of black and white cartoons alongside the crazy plot really works. GYaTKotG grapples with the issue of forgiveness and the good it does to the forgiver rather than the forgivee and does so in a provocative and interesting way.

Some scoff at the graphic novel as a credible art form which seems weird to me. Art and literature when they stand alone are admired and respected, yet when they are put together, they are mocked as being sub-literate. Read this and think again.

Agricola

2012-01-16T11:21:00.000-08:00

I am a bit of geek in some respects: graphic novels and board games are where I'm at my geekiest. I feel like graphic novels are credible art forms that are just misunderstood by many, but board games cannot be argued for in quite the same way - there is little artistic or cultural value to be found in sitting in a room for three hours and arguing about the value of sheep, but there is a lot of fun (if you like that kind of thing).

Agricola is my new favourite board game which has driven myself and four other like-minded gentlemen to create a league. On Saturday night, I danced in a friend's kitchen after securing a victory and securing my top of the league position; I often find that the near-victory buzz causes me to act in an obnoxious and ridiculous way that I think I rarely replicate in other social ciricles, but I like to think that my obnoxculous behaviour makes me an enjoyable opponent to face as beating me must be pretty satisfying.

The game is basically competitive farming where the winner is the one who successfully grows grain and vegetables, produces sheep, wild boar and cattle and extends their hut and grows their family. The first night of game play left me and one of my brothers-in-law grappling with the rule book for a good hour before we got round to any gaming, but once we did, we realised the beautiful complexity of the game.

A good game is a one where luck plays virtually no part, and the best strategist wins and this game is pretty successful at this. There's no dice, so it's all down to the decisions you make, but the range of cards you receive at the beginning of the game can make a pretty big impact: the 'Wet Nurse' is a particularly coveted card to find in your hand. The game has been recognised as a good one by the authorities that be: boardgamegeek.com, winning awards in both 2008 and 2009 and I imagine it will long be played by funny little men like me.

By the way, the image at the top is not the game, but a cake version of it. That's going a little bit far (having said that, I would struggle to contain my excitement if I was presented with such a thing).

'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' - BBC Adaptation

2012-01-14T13:17:00.000-08:00

It's approaching Dickens' 200th birthday, although the man born Charles John Huffam Dickens is not around to celebrate the day - no one lives to 200 nowadays. He died half way through writing this novel. I guess everyone who dies is probably half way through something in their life, and novelists are no different. Unfinished novels don't really get much attention, but Dickens is a pretty important chap with people keen to devour his every word, so his unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood must be the most read unfinished novels ever. Actually, I've just paused in my writing to do a little Google research into unfinished novels and there are quite a few out there. Jane Austen left three and Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is unfinished and that has probably been read more than TMoED.

Before reading TMoED I told all who like to discuss reading habits that an unfinished novel was worth reading because it reflects what life is like. Mysteries don't get solved because people die and things often remain mysteries. However, books that don't have endings (lots of postmodern books have weird non-ending endings, but that doesn't count because they are still endings of a sort because that is where the writer intended to close the book) are frustrating and as you approach the end, which is really the middle, you wonder why you bothered. I bothered because I wanted to read all of Dickens' books and because I think his later work is his best - his last finished novel Our Mutual Friend is my personal favourite, but reading his TMoED left me a little unfulfilled.

Anyway, the BBC adapted TMoED last week and I have finally found time in my evenings to watch it. I'd arranged with Helen that we would both watch the first part on separate evenings when the other one of us was out, but Helen scuppered this somewhat by inadvertently watching the second part by accident and thus making the mystery element even more complicated having missed the crime altogether (although it turns out the crime was a bit of a hallucination anyway).

Gwyneth Hughes was behind creating the ending and she created something that twisted and turned in a way that forces you to sit a little further forward on your sofa and rest your head in the palm of your hand to force your brain to concentrate as the mystery unravels. Dickens seemed to hint clearly enough that Edwin Drood's uncle, John Jasper, was the villain of the piece, motivated by his desire for his nephew's fiance Rosa Budd. Apparently, Dickens told his son and illustrator as much, so there is little doubt that the opium intoxicated Jasper was the villain.

Perhaps the intended novel would have followed a fairly systematic journey towards the unveiling of this truth and the comeuppance of Jasper, but Hughes made it a whole lot more complex with Edwin Drood not actually being killed at all, instead his father, who was assumed dead but wasn't really, being the victim of Jasper's rage a year earlier than the rest of the action of the novel even takes place. She had it that Edwin Junior's absence got everyone curious and the investigation led them to the real truth before Edwin Junior strolls back in, totally unaware that everyone even thinks he's dead.

It is a proper complex conclusion that satisfies are desire for increasingly incomprehensible reveals in mystery dramas - it seems that the more people that don't understand it, the better. Did Dickens intend such complexity? Perhaps. The absence of Edwin's body leaves his return possible, and if he was to return, then there would surely be a subplot that becomes the main plot.

I liked the adaptation by the way. It satisfied my perpetual desire for all things Dickens - it was clever, dark and beautiful and well worth watching.

The Lion King

2012-01-08T08:19:00.000-08:00

Back in 1994, my aunt took me to the cinema to see The Lion King. I remember being well impressed - I've always had an appropriate fondness for animals and the combination of big emotion, a funny farting warthog and aaaaaaaaarrrrrvinya-abadeechimalawa (I love singing that at top volume early in the morning) was a winner for me.

Seventeen years on, the film became the first cinematic (other than a Peppa Pig short) experience for my three year old boys, Ned and Jarvis. We made a quick decision between it and The Smurfs, both of which were a bargain one pound entry at Cineworld. It was only after buying the tickets that I remembered the intimidating hyenas, the death of Mufasa and the big fight scene between Scar and Simba at the end. My anxiety was unnecessary however: Jarvis proclaimed the fight to be his favourite moment in the film and a dead lion was only sleeping according to Ned (despite lots of kids shouting out, 'He's dead'). They were more concerned about where the baby lions had gone once Simba had grown and when Simba had grown up, he looked an awful lot like Mufasa and then Mufasa turned up in the stars, so the plot got all very confusing from a three-year old's perspective.

They did understand though that there was a good lion and a naughty lion and there was joy to be found in Scar's downfall. Going to the cinema with three year olds was a different experience. They know nothing of cinema etiquette (although many adults struggle with that concept also) and Ned was a particularly loud commenter on what he saw before him. His favourite moment was when Scar brought his big ol' paw down on top of a scampering mouse - 'That made me jump' was Ned's loud comment and the sensation of his stomach lurching upwards was the defining moment for him. The mouse played a big part in his plot synopsis later in the day despite the fact he featured for minute one, but failed to return for the ensuing 88. It was fortunate the 'pound an entry audience' were equally as talkative as Ned with some loud weepers who had to be carried from the auditorium when the action became too much for them.

The Lion King is still impressive - a neat captivating story about finding yourself and defeating evil accompanied by some great songs, but what is also great is watching films for a quid and it being a form of parenting. I think a return trip is on the cards at some point.

'Ender's Game' by Orson Scott Card

2012-01-02T02:17:00.000-08:00

My Christmas gifts tend to mainly be books, and normally I direct the purchaser towards a book that I quite fancy reading to avoid receiving wasted unread chunks of trees, but this year I gave my brother the freedom to select a book with no direction given and Scott Orson Card's 80s sci-fi 'Ender's Game' was his choice. It is a book I would never buy, being not particularly interested in science fiction, but having received it, I decided to read it.

Ender is a 6-year old boy at the start of the story - he's a genius, already far beyond clever adults and is a bit of a nutter (sort of) - the opening chapter has him killing someone by booting them in the face. The combination of extreme violence with such youthfulness is a little unnerving, but his genius makes it difficult to imagine him as such a young child.

The book tells the dual story of Ender's fast-track training which will see him lead a bunch of children into a war with the 'buggers' (insect-like beings who act as one body through a kind of queen (a bit like bees)) and his brother (Peter) and sister's (Valtentine) attempts to take over the world by posing as right and left wing political gurus online, slowly gaining respect from society's big thinkers.

The bulk of the text describes cyber wide games between the young future soldiers and these do get a little repetitive, but there are a number of big ideas lurking behind descriptions of violent encounters between genius children: the manipulation of politics; the rights and wrongs of war; and the rigidity of eduction being some.

I did find some enjoyment in the book, particularly the human interactions between the Wiggin children, but I found the combination of Ender's extreme and calculated violence and his seeming righteous blamelessness something hard to reconcile. His violence against his enemies (usually bullies) is always presented as the only option, which complicates the book's pacifist ending, although pacifism does get a little complicated if it is carried out to its 'turn the other cheek' conclusion.

Next year, the story is put onto the big screen with little Bruno (Asa Butterfield) from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas playing the role of Ender. It's difficult to imagine him kicking someone to death.

Noel Galllagher's High Flying Birds

2011-12-31T04:56:00.000-08:00

I struggle to give up on bands, even when their output ceases to please my soundbuds and so my music collection consists of lots of albums by the same set of bands. Oasis are one of those bands. After feeling like their first two albums, Definitely Maybe and What's the Story Morning Glory? defined me in some way (although in reality they defined my temporary arrogant teenage apathy), I continued in my purchase of Oasis albums, through the atucally quite good Be Here Now, to the start of the malaise: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, to the forgettable Heathen Chemistry, to the slightly better Don't Believe the Truth and then finally to the dreary Dig Out Your Soul. With a live album and an album on B-sides among my collection, that makes nine Oasis albums adorning my shelves and whilst each of the latter albums have some cracking tracks on them, none of them touch the glorious heights of those first couple.

There are many potnetial reasons the Gallaghers lost their midas touch and most of them aren't musical: a) they ceased to be young and cool, b) Noel starting singing too many songs, c) they introduced a string section, d) the edgy brotherly love-hate tension became boring and unsavoury, e) going to their gigs involves getting other people's urine thrown at you and it is hard to feel quite so warm towards a band when they are linked to such an unpleasant memory, f) it is difficult to find admirable qualities in these men. All of these made them slightly less magical in my eyes, but haven't stopped my buying their albums because Liam's voice is still gravelly beauty and Noel's tunes are unashamedly simple singalongs that seem to capture the rhythm that my heart beats to.

But now, the brothers are no more a warring musical rollercoaster, but two seperate musical entities forging new careers in their forties. Liam went first with his band, Beady Eye's album Different Gear, Still Speeding. Released from the angst of sibling rivalry, Oasis without Noel which is what Beady Eye are, produced an album of growling rock anthems and the occasional Lennony ballads. It seemed that this was the direction Liam always wanted Oasis to go in and it was Noel that kept insisting that they moderate the distortion pedal.

Noel followed suit at the tale end of last year and his album finally made it to my CD player through the route of being wrapped in Christmas paper first. Noel's has proved more popular with the purchasers of music, with Beady Eye's album reaching number three in the album charts, whereas Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds topped it. It's a decent album is my opinion, having had limited opportunity to listen to it alongside the chatter of three-year olds. It seems that the Gallgher brothers' best work came when they worked together in their early twenties, but now, and somewhat sadly, it seems that they are better apart so that Liam can growl and Noel can mockingly reach those high notes that he knows Liam can't.

There are no surprises with the album; it is much like Noel's tracks on Oasis albums, but when they stand alone, they no longer nestle uncomfortably like a badger in a swallow's nest, but stand alone as something actually quite beautiful. The lyrics, as Oasis lyrics tend to do, are emphatic glorious aspirational arrogant nonsense: "I wanna piece of the world and you can't make me spit it out" seems like the same bold defiance of Rock 'n' Roll Star. The Gallagher brothers will never be what they once were, a voice of a generation despite Liam's claims that Beady Eye could be bigger than Oasis ever were, but both brothers are still achieving the task of making music that I quite enjoy listening to.

Great Expectations (BBC Adaptation)

2011-12-30T04:37:00.000-08:00

I first came across Great Expectations in 2003 when I worked for a car insurance firm on a temporary basis answering the phone to customers who had been sent a letter in error. I had been specifically employed to tell them, "Sorry, that letter was sent to you in error." I had no other responsibilities and was told to bring a book in for times when the phone ceased to ring - this was a truly wonderful job (other than when the phone rang). At first the phone rang a lot, but after a few weeks, it rang less and less - one day I timed how much time I spent on the phone during my seven-hour working day and it came out at 35 minutes, which gave me plenty of time to read. I raced through a number of John Grisham crime thrillers, but then decided to turn my attention to some classics as an English Literature degree was a potential future course of action. Oliver Twist, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Great Expectations were devoured in a six day period (don't forget I was being paid for this).

Since then, Great Expectations (whilst not my favourite of Dickens' novels - that award goes to Our Mutual Friend) has played a bigger part in my life than any other novel. I reread the novel at university, have watched a number of different versions of it: David Lean's 1946 version, a 1998 BBC adaptation, South Park's surprisingly faithful version, Alfonso Cuaron's 1998 modern day film starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Tanika Gupta's stage version of it where the action of the plot is transported to India. I have taught it to three different GCSE classes and regularly try to get it back on the syllabus with no success - teaching it has always been a good experience and one of the few times I've managed to engage students with a text so old. Last year I worked with students and teachers on writing a screenplay for a prequel to Great Expectations telling the back story to Miss Havisham's weirdness (which one day soon will make a brief appearance in a cinema), and so when I saw that the BBC were back in the graveyard recreating once again Pip's encounter with Magwitch the convict, I knew that this was the only Christmas viewing that mattered to me (that and the Liverpool vs Newcastle United game on Sky tonight).

Every version of GE chooses a slightly different emphasis: the sexual allure of Estella as she executes the misandrist Miss Havisham's desires (Cuaran); the universality of class conflict (Gupta) or the comic genius of Dickens amidst dark and grim realities (South Park). The BBC's latest version opted for the pain of the working classes in Victorian times with the roles of Joe Gargery and Orlick given far more attention than in most interpretations.

Joe, who is a paternal brother-in-law to Pip, is often portrayed as a good honest simpleton who cannot stand up to his wife and Pip's sister, Mrs Joe - in fact, the text seems to portray in this way also, but Shaun Dooley's version of Joe is a man who is proud of his trade and position in society, a good and generous man, nothing like the kindly buffoon of most versions. This depiction of him means that Pip's neglect of him once he becomes a 'gentleman' is all the more powerful and means that the class conflict that this novel is all about is brought into a sharper and more interesting focus.

Orlick, played by Jack Roth, is given a bigger role than most adaptations also with many versions choosing to write him out completely. He shares Joe's working class background, but is consumed by bitterness at the way life has treated him. Orlick, the hammer-fiend, is certainly evil, but this version makes an attempt at getting to grips with where this evil came from. If a job you are able to do is denied you; if future careers are ripped from your grasp; if society functions by placing its heavy boots upon your head, then the desperately bad decisions that a man finds himself making become somewhat understandable. If Orlick strolled the streets of London today, I don't think he would have paused before snaffling a pair of trainers from JJB Sports. This is perhaps what this version of Great Expectations does best: it allows the audience to empathise with the good working class man in Joe, but also, and unusually, with the bad working class man in Orlick.

Ray Winstone is fabulous as Magwitch; Gillian Anderson doesn't quite feel like the Miss Havisham of my imagination and I like my Estella (played by Vanessa Kirby) to be a little more beautifully aloof, but there is no doubting that this is an excellent version of the novel - it drags a little in the middle and lacks the humour of Dickens, but it captures something of the brutality of the Victorian class system, and Joe's sideburns are mighty impressive too.

Reading 4

2011-08-27T14:23:00.000-07:00

I am here again and Nicholas Nickleby is still the book that dominates my reading time. I am properly wanting that nasty Ralph Nickleby to get his comeuppance now, but I still have 170 pages until that will come about. The knowledge that I will be satisfied helps me chase that book down to its completion.

I did a little calculation just now. I guessed that Barnaby Rudge is about average length for a Dickens' novel, long but not the longest, and then I cut and pasted a 15th of it into a Word document and did a word count and it said that it was 17,000 words long. I multiplied that number by 15 to work out the word count of the book and then multiplied that number by 16 to figure out the total word count of all of Dickens' books and it came to just over 4,000,000, so that is how many of Dickens' words that I will have read upon completion of NN. I don't know why I need to do mathematical calculations about the books I read. I should probably just read them.

Sorry to boringly go on about Nick. I'll have finished it soon and will start another book.

Reading 3

2011-08-19T11:34:00.000-07:00

I found an hour in my day today - in fact my wife Helen found me the hour my looking after our wheezy Jarvis - to sit in Starbucks and continue Nicholas Nickleby. It's all getting a bit heated and exciting just past the half way mark with Nicholas extremely angry about the treatment his sister is getting at the hands of various rogues. I had to go online and read the synopsis for the bit I've already read to figure out what exactly he is so angry about and whilst the rogues are pretty roguish, the villainy and righteous anger are all a bit Victorian although the brief whip fight was fun.

To slow the pace, Dickens has introduced a pair of twins, Ned and Charles Cheeryble, to provide benevolent help for Nicholas. I informed my twin boys, Ned and Jarvis about this and they showed very brief, and I reckon, feigned interest. The name Ned means 'wealthy guardian' and it seems that Dickens has used the meaning of the name in the creation of his character as the Cheeryble twins are certainly wealthy and seem to be intent on guarding the victimised Nicklebys. I wonder if my Ned will be a wealthy guardian. If he is, I will get a little worried because Jarvis might go on to fulfill his name meaning: spear warrior, a rather dangerous profession. Jarvis Cocker doesn't seem to have taken that route yet, so perhaps it is only in Dickens novels that people fulfill the meaning of their names.

I have also got myself a bit of toilet reading on the go. I have selected Russell Brand's 'Articles of Faith' which is a collection of his football columns he did for The Guardian during the 2007-08 football season. I find his take on football amusing and that combined with my obsession with football means it is a humourous read.

Reading 2

2011-08-13T14:41:00.000-07:00

Today was a busy one and didn't offer much time in which to bury my nose within a book. My only book-reading came at my boys' bedtime when I chose 'The Odd Egg' by Emily Gravett as the brief tale to read whilst Ned and Jarvis supped their milk. My boys have a voracious appetite for books and on days when we spend a lot of time in the house, I reckon I often read between 20-30 books. There are a number that I can say without looking at the pages which comes in useful when my blurry 6am eyes are called upon.

Some children's books are enjoyable reads even when they are read repetitively whilst some seem tortuous in their dullery - Thomas the Tank Engine books are particularly terrible and almost anything that is a money-making spin-off from a kids' TV programme is not worth wasting your money upon.

'The Odd Egg' is a nice one - not one of my absolute favourites, but a brief and amusing tale of a duck mothering a crocodile that viciously snaps at all her snobbish bird companions. The feather-flying colossal snap conclusion is satisfying and delivers the important life lesson that snobbishness should always be treated with crocodile threats.

Another thing I enjoyed reading greatly today was 'Lawrence missed pen' on 'Final Score' which meant that Brighton had triumphed for the third game running, 1-0 over poverty-stricken Portsmouth.

Reading 1

2011-08-12T13:42:00.000-07:00

I like to start my holiday days by reading in the bath, so once I had dropped Helen off at work, I returned and spent a good hour soaking, dozing and reading in my bathtub. The novel I am currently reading is Charles Dickens' 'Nicholas Nickleby' which upon completion will mean that I have read all of Dickens' novels. There is a sense where completing the list has somewhat taken over my desire to read his books purely for pleasure. I obviously enjoy them immensely, otherwise it would be have been masochistic lunacy to have attempted such a feat. However, whilst some Dickens books have gripped me and sent me hurtling into a Victorian grimefest, others have been harder work and 'Nicholas Nickleby' is proving a bit of a toil at present. I think a big part of this is because I pretty much know the story already, having watched the film a while back, and this absence of mystery is taking something away from my enjoyment of the book. I am currently at page 291 of 811, so there is still a bit to go. Once I am finished I feel that I can legitimately go back to some of the ones I really enjoyed for a reread.

In case you're interested, this, in my opinion, are the top ten Dickens' books:
1. Our Mutual Friend
2. Great Expectations
3. David Copperfield
4. A Tale of Two Cities
5. Bleak House
6. Barnaby Rudge
7. The Old Curiosity Shop
8. Hard Times
9. Martin Chuzzlewit
10. Little Dorrit

A top ten means that only five are omitted and to be honest, unless you're super keen, I'd stop after number eight. I'm sure many people have read all of Dickens' novels. Certainly, my university tutor who set me on my way by demanding that I read close to half of them in just ten weeks had read them all. A guy I work with has as well. I was trying to beat him to it, but he was only two off when I first met him and I was still four shy at that point. Desmond, out of that weirdly addictive series 'Lost' - didn't it get a bit rubbish towards the end - had read Dickens' work, chronologically I believe and he was saving his last completed novel and my fave 'Our Mutual Friend' until he was close to death. This must mean he can't of read Dickens' unfinished novel 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood'. I read it, mainly to fulfill my quest, but also because I generally prefer his later work and you can't get much later than a book he died in the middle of writing, but it is a most frustrating book to read because as the title suggests, it is a mystery and I thought that the notes in the back of the book would reveal the mystery, but they didn't and I was left with no certainty over who the killer of Edwin Drood was, but I guess that's what real life is like - stories start and don't conclude because someone dies right in the middle of them.

I have chatted at rather a great length about my reading of 'Nicholas Nickleby' without actually saying anything specific about the book, but we'll leave that for now because I want this new bloggeration to take in more than just the novels I'm reading, but also every other word that passes across my eye. In one day, we subconsciously read loads of stuff. As I'm writing this, I am reading the words that my tapping fingers create. I just glanced across the room and read the word 'Dickies' on the side of a cardboard box and as well as discussing books, I also want to consider over bits and pieces of text that come before my eyes.

Amongst my various duties today, I was requested by Mrs Atherall to buy a stamp and post a letter and I used this opportunity to browse the front pages of some of the newspapers. The pictures of flaming London have been replaced in many of the papers with stories of individual rioters and their circumstances. One of the petitions on the government's new e-petitions website is a call to take benefits away from convicted rioters. On 'Question Time' last night, one bloke who I generally didn't agree with made the important point that decisions in the middle of this heated situation may not turn out to be the best decisions. However, what struck me about some of the stories that I read was that the people on the front covers of some of the newspapers weren't people that fitted my media-generated image of a rioter. The media, and probably quite rightly in many respects, have painted a picture of disillusioned young people who feel that society has nothing to offer them and that the reckless violence is coming from a place of anger at the hand society has dealt them. However, one newspaper led with a story about a 24-year old who had just completed university and was about to embark on a social work career - this individual, in a moment of opportunism, swiped a television from a bricked-in Comet. Wracked with guilt, she handed herself into the police and now her decision to be on the streets that night has left her future in the balance. Other papers led with a story about an 18-year old who is (that should probably now be was) an Olympic hopeful for next summer's Games in London. Another told the story of a Grammar School girl who has a fistful of A*s and As in her GCSEs and had also achieved highly in her A-levels and was about to go to university who deemed rioting to be an okay thing to do. The fact that these people seemed to have promising careers ahead of them, but still got involved with the rioting paints a different picture to the image of only poor estate kids causing havoc. I don't want to come up with answers because it seems that everyone's got answers and most people's answers (particularly the politicians') seem to fit with the political agenda that they already had - neither David or Ed seem to have had their minds changed by these events, but these stories certainly ask a few questions that don't seem to be being asked at the moment.

One more brief thing while I rambling on about the riots and losing the general thread about what this blog was meant to be about in the first place: some responses to the rioting seem to be suggesting that these riots are something humanity has never seen before, but my Dickens reading - number 4, 'A Tale of Two Cities' and number 6, 'Barnaby Rudge' - tells me that rioting has happened before and it seems that sadly, humanity does seem destructive at times.

My other reading of the day was the Bible. I am reading the Bible chronologically which means that all the books are chopped about a bit, so that they happen in the historical sequence in which they happened. The current place I reside is in King David's undated Psalms that are all grouped together just after he dies. Reading Psalm after Psalm can be tricky to digest properly, but I was struck in my reading today about how much suffering David went through, yet how, throughout it all, he was able to recognise God's unconditional love for him, which is a real challenge for Christians in times of difficulty.

That'll do for now. Perhaps I shall return soon to share my thoughts.

The Hobo and the Oboe

2011-01-18T12:14:00.000-08:00

Two things happened this week to persuade me that I must resume blogging: 1) Someone asked me about my blog and 2) A student I teach asked to leave my lesson to attend his oboe lesson and the student sitting next to him asked him, "What's a hobo?" And so, with a readership of one guaranteed and inspiration for some tappetty-tap-tap action supplied by this odd exchange, I have decided to relaunch, not with the constraints of things that begin with the letter 'D', but with the looser umbrella-title of 'Things That Capture my Imagination'. Here's number one:

The Hobo and the Oboe

He didn't have two coins to rub together

And if he had, he wouldn't waste them on meaningless friction

He'd use them to shield him from the biting cold weather

As he hadn't felt his toes since the inevitable eviction

He'd squandered his last pound on a horse named Slim Jim

But his days had been fated since the words, "We're letting you go"

Months went by where more went out than came in

And now all that was left was a fedora and an oboe

He sat on the cold hard ground with a sixty-day stubble

I averted my gaze and looked anywhere but his eyes

And I felt awkward, and annoyed and momentarily troubled

My desire to do good often trips over compromise

And then a penetrating piercing melancholy sound

Arrests my steps - I feel relaxed, tense and weird

And my mind starts to fret as my feet run aground

Beauty it seems often hides behind beards.

Departure

2010-10-02T11:37:00.000-07:00

This blog entry marks the 100th thing I have written about beginning with the letter D. I started with a blaze of enthusiasm a few months back, but I feel that this landmark number should be a place where I make a departure - perhaps temporary, probably temporary but possibly not - from this particular form of bloggeration. Other writing ideas are floating around my mind, but I shall leave them mysteriously swimming until they launch themselves into some kind of actual activity.

I feel that this blog entry should in some way mark the things that I have written about by looking back upon them and wondering how hindsight affects my thoughts on them, particularly the entries that were about something that was in the news at that time, so here goes.

Blog Entry 1: Democracy

I dallied with the the possibility of voting Liberal Democrats in the election, but I couldn't bring myself to put a cross in the Lib Dem box and I'm glad I didn't because I think that I'd now feel that my 'x' had been tippexed out by a compromising Clegg. I want to believe in democracy and I do, but had I followed the momentary wanderings of my heart my belief would have received a painful kick.

Blog Entry 4: The Duffalo

The scary and fearsome Duffalo, Damien Duff, met a similar fate to the wart-nosed Gruffalo - defeat. The Duffalo's defeat was at least a little less embarrassing as they lost to a pretty good footballing team: Atletico Madrid in the Europa League Final and not to a feeble lying mouse.

Blog Entry 14: Duffy, Gillian

The electoral moment that swung me back into Brown's arms was his infamous "bigot" comment directed towards Gillian Duffy. He probably wasn't right to call her it even if her views verged on bigotry. An honest debate over the subject of immigration, this was the gripe that earned her the b-word, would have been better. But, what this moment revealed to me about Brown was that he is passionate about equality. It was interesting to see Gillian sitting listening to Ed Miliband's speech the day after his victory over his brother. Her presence seemed a slightly cynical way of saying, "I'm not like that Brown bloke" and was surely a moment of spin-doctory. Perhaps I'm the cynical one though and she just fancied coming to see whether the new Labour leader thought she was a bigot too.

Blog Entry 17: Debate

My moment of standing in for the absent Labour leader in the school election proved to win very few votes for Labour as they were smashed into third place. The Lib Dems won by an absolute shedload.

Blog Entry 24: Davids (An Ode to England Internationals Called David in the Last Twenty Years)

Unless David Bentley gets a lot better quickly the England football team face the future without a David. I wondered as the World Cup sat on the horizon whether David James would be the first English David to lift the World Cup. The only previous David to have lifted the trophy was David Trezeguet for France, but England were their usual tentative and torturously bad selves and two other Davids got their hands on the World Cup instead: Villa and Silva.

Blog Entry 42: Digestive Brain

Lots of fairly reputable websites seemed to affirm the digestive brain, but when I discussed it with a Science teacher at school he acted as if I was wasting his time with quackery and I felt, without just cause I think, a little bit ashamed of myself as if I was a spreader of wild unverifiable Science nonsense. I hope that's not what I am.

Blog Entry 62: David Ngog

I made a few wild and unlikely claims in this blog entry: one: that David Ngog would scored more goals than Fernando Torres and two: that I would also score more goals that Fernando Torres. The season is only a few weeks in but Ngog's got seven, I've got four and, oh dear Fernando, Torres has only got one. The chickens are being counted nice and early.

Blog Entry 72: Deity

This blog entry sparked someone who didn't believe in God to create their own blog to write about why they disagreed with the fact that I did believe in God. The idea that people who I don't know read my blog is very exciting. His blog, which only became a blog because the comment box wasn't big enough to include his objections, wanted some verifiable proof that God existed. I told him how I believed God had answered prayers that I had prayed and suggested that he read Tim Keller's The Reason for God, but acknowledged that an element of faith is required to believe in God, although an element of faith is required to not believe in God also.

Blog Entry 95: Drusillas and the Escaped Llama

It turns out that it wasn't a llama that escaped from Drusillas, but a lemur - that makes much more sense. My friend had misheard the radio broadcast and when he gave me a subsequent call earlier this week, I started to doubt that it was a llama when he described it as red-bellied. No wonder I couldn't find anything about it online. Someone else had made a similar mistake in mishearing the obviously inarticulate radio presenter; my blog was found on Google by someone who typed in 'escaped lama drusillas'. Surely they don't cage Tibetan teachers of the Dharma at Drusillas. I apologise, that is a terrible joke about a spelling mistake.

And, so farewell for now. I will pen my thoughts on some subject or other in the future I'm sure.

Didier Drogba

2010-09-30T12:02:00.001-07:00

He falls on the floor at the mere fluttering of a butterfly in his vicinity; I'm not too keen on his hair and he plays for the team that grates on me more than any other. Chelsea apply a cheese-grater to anything but cheese and cheese-graters need to be kept to cheese or they become very irritating. Crystal Palace should be the team that incurs my wrath the most, but their inconsistency and regular comical defeats amuse me rather than frustrate me, but the dour blue-shirted trophy-laden anti-f00tballers consume me with a rage unlike any other football team. And Mr Drogba with his histrionics and non-conformist striking ways is almost as bad as that Frank chap. I recognise that their ability is part of what angers me. If they were rubbish, I'm sure I wouldn't mind them so much.

Yet (this small three-lettered word represents a drastic mood lurch), Didier is a man to be admired in some respects. Five years ago Ivory Coast qualified for their first ever World Cup and their talismanic striker, DD who had been instrumental in their success, used the euphoric moment to bring a political shift that helped (how much help is impossible to measure) bring about peace in his homeland. As the cameras came into the changing room after the game Drogba sank to his knees and begged the warring factions in the Civil War that had been raging in the Ivory Coast for five years to lay down their arms. Within a week peace had been found and the leaders of the warring factions stood side by side at an African Nations Cup two years later in 2007, a moment when Drogba felt that Ivory Coast had been reborn.

Drogba is maligned regularly by the press and supporters - my opening rant is an example of that - and is surprising that this incredible and powerful act has not been focussed on more to bring a balance to his oddly marred reputation. He will continue to frustrate me because he doesn't need a strike partner, because he scores goals that make me unhappy, because he doesn't always seem to play fair, but more important than that is that he is a man who is passionate about peace and has made his voice heard to bring it about. That's more important than football.

Despair

2010-09-28T12:54:00.000-07:00

I found a cool blog today: www.stuffnoonetoldme.blogspot.com and one of its cartoons (the one pictured) caused me to utter an unuttered silent smirk, but also flashed a pang of fear across me that sitting young people down in a classroom is a disastrous concept. Perhaps tomorrow I will instruct my students to run around the field screaming until they feel that their scream can be interpreted into something meaningful. Whilst despair could be a potential route this thought-path could take me down, it won't as whilst I think education makes many mistakes, I hope and think and believe that it has a power for good as well. Thank you Alex Norlega for sticking a probing finger into my mind.

Data

2010-09-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

I was approached at work today to be part of something to do with a data-handling initiative. My phrasing is deliberately vague to match my understanding of what is required of me, but all will become clear I hope: I was sucked in by the flattering claim that youth and charisma were required for this task and I to some degree I met both criteria. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with data to be honest - at times I obsess over it to the point where it floods my dreams. One of my favourite night-time activities is to start with the number one and keep doubling it to the point where the number is too long for me to hold in my head. I also quite like inventing maths puzzles out of motorway signs. Yet, despite my soft spot for the numerical chaps, at times they infuriate and frustrate me to the point where I want to claw out my own brain.

You'll be glad that this blog entry is going to feature the more positive version of the numerically schizophrenic me and discuss the curious data behind this very blog. For the last 44 days I have had Google Analytics telling me all sorts of interesting stuff about my readership. 356 people have paid a visit to this blog since August 14th, the most visited day being a sultry Wednesday in August (24th) on a day when I chose disfigurement as my discussion topic of choice. However, it is not this subject that has prompted the most mouse clicks, but the subject deity followed closely by dugong - a serious discussion of my faith and a whimsical poem about a visit to a dugong in Australia.

The United Kingdom is unsurprisingly where most of my readership are based, but 48 different countries have taken a peek. My top ten reads: UK, USA, India, Indonesia, Germany, Australia, Poland, France, New Zealand and Canada, but it is Malaysia who linger longest, spending an average six and a half minutes perusing my ramblings. 182 regional locations are listed also with Hove topping the list and Budapest at a lowly 13.

My most favourite bit of information Google Analytics yields though is what people type into Google to find my site. 52 people have found me through a search engine. Many are attempting to find things beginning with the letter 'D' which is an odd search by someone who clearly has too much time on their hand: 17 of the 52 searches come under this category. My favourite is "ways to escape reality starting with the letter d" which is surely someone trying to look up drugs without typing in the word "drugs". They must surely have been disappointed when they arrived. The next highest search is for my own name which is very satisfying. Oh yes, in 44 days nine people have typed my name into Google, although I'm not sure they were all searching for me. There is another Dave Atherall who lives up north somewhere who rung me up once. He also has twins, but his are girls. We chatted at length about breast-feeding and other matters on the phone some time last year. Other searchings that have found my blog that please me are "rspca put a card through my door after a meddling neighbour", "dansak healthy?" and "dungarees that dangle down at the front". Surely none of these searches found what they were looking for. My one other favourite is "disadvantaged character in of mice and men" because this relates to a new controlled assessment task in the English GCSE course. I hope the students who read my ramblings about Lennie and determinism which flowed into a consideration of Phil Mitchell's inevitable tragic storyline found it helpful.

I will leave you with one last piece of data if you have stuck with me to the bitter end: people like to read me most on a Wednesday.

David Miliband

2010-09-25T11:36:00.000-07:00

I am an older brother David who has chewed on the pill defeat.

It tasted pretty foul, I wish it was something I was never forced to eat.

I had six and bit more earth years to prepare for the battle

When Jethro was born - he posed little threat holding a rattle,

But as he grew older, the competition would start.

The battle lines were drawn over the wondrous Mario Kart.

Victories were easy over the sausage-fingered fool;

P'raps I was complacent, but life tempted me out as I finished school.

My fingers became less nimble as I found mosh pits in the city centre.

Mario and Yoshi just couldn't give me enough adventure,

But young Jethro stayed at home honing his skills

Preparing to slip me those poisonous pills

And as I rose blearily from my bed one morning

I should have been wise, should have spotted the warning,

But my pride was about to take a colossal blow

As I nonchalantly switched on the Nintendo.

Jeth's technique was sharper and more exact

While my partying in the centre had left little intact -

Victory was his and I still hang me head

And wonder if I should have stayed at home instead.

And I wonder whether David Miliband feels the same?

Does he look at himself and accept some of the blame?

Did he party too long in the political centre?

Did he neglect his roots when he stopped being a backbencher?

Younger brother Ed was left at home carefully preparing his voice

And in 2010 presented himself as a marginally better choice;

When the votes were counted he got 50.65%

And David's ego took a battering ram dent,

And as the dust settles and DM clears his head

Will he, like me, wish he stayed at home instead?

Drusillas and the Escaped Llama

2010-09-24T12:13:00.000-07:00

Two hours ago the phone rang. Having failed to grasp the receiver and dropped it behind the television cabinet in a moment of tired oafishness, I then had to scramble amongst the furry dust to find the voice of Phillip Miles. "A llama's escaped from Drusillas Zoo," he said excitedly, "I thought you'd like to know." This titbit of interesting and obscure information was the entirety of his conversation with a brief lowdown on how the police were trailing Mr Llama included; perhaps the unusually spelt hairy one was attempting to find his or her home in the Andes. Whatever the reasons for the llama's flee, I enjoy the fact that when Phill heard this piece of news, his first thought was to contact me.

I have since trawled the internet for further details, but it seems that the incident is shrouded in secrecy with not a whiff of it on the Drusillas website or anywhere else Google has sent me.

The llamas escape, whilst perhaps just a figment of a tired nurse's imagination, has taken me back to a time a little over a year ago when my fondness for llamas came to a culmination when I took a llama for a walk. My sister had given me the birthday present of a walk with a llama and so I turned up at the Ashdown Forest Llama Park to take Toby for a stroll. There was a llama who shared my name, Dave, but the llama park worker said that our personalities were ill-suited, which seemed to me to be something of a presumption considering she had only met me moments before. What can it have been about Dave the Llama that meant that we were likely to argue? If I had taken him for a jaunt, would I have ended up with a face-full of llama phlegm? Or, was the llama park attendant misjudging both of us and would we have, in reality, got along splendidly and found that we had much in common? I will never know, but I will not complain as Toby was a perfectly adequate companion apart from an early roll around which slightly unnerved me.

Perhaps the escapee, if he is still on the loose, is looking for a llama-friendly home, a like-minded person who knows the joys of wandering through misty glens. If so, perhaps he will alight at my door in the early hours of the morn and invite me for a stroll across the South Downs. I shall sleep lightly tonight in the hope of hearing clattering hooves striding through the streets of Moulsecoomb.

Duffy, Carol Ann and Dad

2010-09-22T14:20:00.001-07:00

I never studied poetry at school to my recollection - I'm sure I must have done, but it was so lacking in memorableness that it has completely disintegrated from my memory. Being an adult who enjoys poetry, you would assume that the child me would have had some appreciation of the form, but introductions must have always been far duller than the Liverpool transfer news which occupied my infant brain.

At A level, my English course included zero poetry, a sizeable lack in a subject which surely demands that attention be paid to it. Furthermore at university, I was given the freedom to choose the subjects of my choice and other than a tedious reading of William Wordsworth's The Prelude and a dabble into Goblin Market, my experience of poetry was again rare and meaningless to me as focused almost entirely on novels.

And so I became an English teacher without ever having engaged with a single poem. I stood before teenagers doing more learning than effective teaching, but during my three and a bit years of trying to get people to listen to me, I have fallen in love with the beauty of poetry, the wondrous delivery of meaning in short sharp intoxicating phrases. Current poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy is someone who I have come across because she appears on the syllabus and whilst at times I grapple uncomfortably with her refusal to hide from grimness, she without doubt often writes beautiful and effective stuff. One poem in particular, 'Before You Were Mine', inspired me to pen my own poem. She looked at a photo of her mother before she herself was born and weaved her mother's life onwards from that image. I did the same with a picture of my dad (he's the one that looks a bit like a girl in the picture that heads this blog entry) and this is what came out:

Prickly World

1969 so the back of the picture says,

Vietnam, Woodstock, Harold Wilson and hippies

and I'm not a thought yet, not a blob, not a speck

in your smiling squinting bespectacled eyes.

Long hair was your chosen statement of intent.

A purposefully fought-for freedom fuelled your dreams.

Snug-fitting knitwear was your uniform of choice,

Trying to find yourself in a dark foggy maze.

You were a boy with boy's joys,

adventure scrambling within.

But honey and a sting are a bee-keeper's world.

Alongside the nectary, innocent smile was a prickly world

with prickly truths and a prickle eleven years away called me.

A decade ensured lost to madness, narcotics, oblivion and pain

Until foetus-me knocked on your door and asked for a room.

Nothing you owed me, nothing at all,

Yet you said, 'Come on it, I've room for you in this battered renewed heart.'

I found the biological truth when I was the age of your smile.

I cried because I wanted our blood to be the same,

But what is blood? A red mess on the floor.

What is love? It's what you did when you opened that door.

Diana Ross and the Supremes

2010-09-21T13:16:00.000-07:00

In 1963 Martin Luther King climbed onto a stage to utter words that would become a clarion call for equality for African-Americans. The winds of change were swirling, aggressively demanding justice for a people that were still living under the dark shadow of the abolished but not forgotten slavery. It was an exciting, although not a comfortable time to be an African-American. Women like Dorothy Height (previously discussed in this blog) stood not only against racism, but against sexism too, but there were also less obvious pioneers who planted a stake in the ground that would would be shaken but never moved again.

One year on from King's speech and three African-American women, Diana Ross, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard, were finding a success in the mainstream market that no one of their sex and colour had known before. 'Where Did Our Love Go?' was the first of five consecutive number ones. The second, 'Baby Love', made the number one slot in the UK as well and whilst this was their only number one outside America, their catchy motown sound achieved them a total of twelve number ones in the States, the last coming in 1969 shortly before Diana Ross' departure from the group.

I'm not sure Diana Ross and the Supremes were about making a statement about race, but that is surely what makes them such an effective statement. Ross said, "You can't just sit there and wait for people to give you that golden dream. You've got to go out there and make it happen for yourself," and that's what she did. She must have been aware of the potential barriers, but it seems that the Supremes clattered through them nonetheless. Other African-American all-female groups had eschewed femininity and tried to replicate the limited success that some African-American males had had, but the Supremes were proud girly girls who took to the stage in heavy make-up and elegant gowns. King was clearly a hero, but Diana and her mates are important too, if only for being a cultural phenomenon that crossed destroyed barriers by just being pretty good at what they do.

Dogs

2010-09-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

A dog wandered past me the other day. It was a muscular black thing, the kind of dog that people purchase as intimidation devices, but this chap seemed quite friendly. Ned and Jarvis both shouted "dog" repetitively as it trundled past us unmarshalled by an owner. I wondered what I should do: I could attempt to catch the escapee, but then what next? And this would be a very tricky task to accomplish with a buggy in tow, so I did nothing, feeling like this was the only realistic course of action, and hoped that someone else would do the good deed and reunite Mr Dog with Mr Owner.

As I walked I observed the dog's antics and my heart shuddered at its recklessness as it gambolled in and out of the road with no sense of the pain that could come if a car boshed it on the conk. I don't know the end of this tale - the last I saw of the dog was when he sent his snout around a block of flats at the end of my road, but the point in it is to comment on the stupidity of dogs. Apparently you're either a dog person or cat person and being a cat person can feel uncomfortably effeminate, but these needy canines that can't venture out alone without putting their life in danger are surely inferior to those clever felines who you can take or leave at your pleasure and don't lick you into a state of extreme unhygienicness every time you walk through the door. They can keep their needy pseudo-love; the cattish aloof affection is where its at.

Discombobulation Limericks

2010-09-13T13:04:00.000-07:00

I was standing at Brighton Station

In a state of exaltation

When I was told I was in France

By that old actor Charles Dance

Leaving me in a state of discombobulation

I woke with a discombobulated feeling

As I gazed up at my transparent ceiling

I peered into the sky

And a bird pooed in my eye

While I'd slept, the roof-lovers had been stealing

It's easy to discombobulate Ned

By telling him that blue is red

But when I mistook a blue ball

For a tasty apple

He laughed and said, "The discombobulation has spread."

Deconstructivism

2010-09-11T14:00:00.000-07:00

Deconstructivism: it's a long old word that refers to those modern buildings that look a bit like they've been designed by a child struggling to get to grips with Lego instructions and ends up creating something that looks kind of good in a peculiar way, but nothing like the original plan. It has its roots in Jacques Derrida's deconstruction theory which is a complicated concept that had me grappling for an ungraspable understanding when I was at university. Deconstruction says that texts have multiple interpretations that contradict each other, and that these interpretations are limitless, thus making the art of effective interpretation impossible.

This impossibility of finding interpretation was adopted by the world of architecture in the 1980s as designers started to produce fragmented odd looking structures. The link with Derrida's deconstruction is that rules, meaning and the observer's understanding are no longer important with artistic expression allowed to express itself in a whole new seemingly meaningless void. With beauty undefined, fresh undefined beauty was allowed to flourish.

It has its critics however, and Kenneth Frampton from Woking is one of them. He reckons that it is "elitist and detached" and it is true that ownership of such buildings is obviously beyond most people, but we all get to have a look at it don't we, even if our houses aren't likely to resemble crumpled Coke cans in the near future.

I'm personally not sure about all this deconstruction stuff - it is true that understanding of the world around us is complex and often beyond us, but we devalue the understanding that there is out there to be found if we allow ourselves to sit still in a foggy maze without at least attempting to find our way around. When we sit still and deny that meaning is important, I fear that a deconstructive approach to all art forms can be a bit pretentious and pointless, but at the same time, when we start searching and throwing off the straight-jackets of beauty, we can find fresh, invigorating wonderful things.

Disposal

2010-09-08T06:41:00.000-07:00

Virginia Woolf, Totteham Hotspur and Richard Henry Biffa: 1882 was a good year for English literature, football and waste disposal as each crawled out of their literal or metaphorical wombs to take their place on this earth. Thirty-seven years later, as England enjoyed a respite from the First World War, the trio each started carving their own little space in history. Woolf released her first work, obscurely entitled Modern Fiction; Spurs were enjoying a season that would see them promoted to the top flight for the first time and Biffa was on the cusp of launching the business that would become a leader in the world of waste management and would obsess a small group of men in a train-spotterish way another 73 years on.

Founder of Biffa, Richard Henry Biffa had a son, Richard Frank Biffa who had a son, Richard Biffa who is the current man in charge of the Biffa empire. It is refreshing that the Biffa name wasn't chosen because of its aggressive connotations, but merely because it was a bloke's surname. There is a danger that we fulfil our names and I imagine the pre-1882 Biffas were playground bullies who graduated to become boxers. Grandad Biffa stopped the cycle of violence with his entrepreneurial venture and the succession of Biffas have seen Biffa transformed from a London-based company collecting clinker and ashes to a forward-thinking national company leading the way in waste management: "It's time to change the way we think about waste," claim the Biffa website, "to see it as a resource with real value that can be secured through recycling, recovery and the generation of energy." They certainly seem to talk the ethical talk. This is less biff and more biffy-wiffy.

As uninteresting as their waste management is, it hasn't stopped some friends of mine whipping their mobile phones out of their pockets to snap a Biffa bin/lorry/skip/worker every time they stumble across one. Their obsessive behaviour has led them to clamber inside bins and has got the most passionate of Biffa-lovers (although the rest of the group will probably claim that they deserve this crown) to get himself into a spot of bother after a company took umbrage at him sneaking around their property snapping rare Biffas. Last night I was at a party and not even my riveting conversation could keep two of these obsessives from scampering out the door when rumour of a Biffa bin up the road met their ears.

As you can probably guess, the gender of the Biffa Barmy Army are predominantly male. There seems to be something in the male psyche that is able to get disproportionately excited about something relatively meaningless. I am not immune to this, with my fondness for badgers and perhaps even this blog residing in an obsessive area of my brain, but the Biffa-love seems to take this a step further, somewhere completely outside the area of interest-value. And yet while I recognise the ridiculousity of their fetish, when I drove past a Biffa bin today, a thrill of excitement burbled somewhere within and I wondered whether their enthusiasm had infected me. We shall see.

Determinism

2010-09-06T11:47:00.001-07:00

My sleepy drooping lesson-planning eyes have stumbled across a word beginning with D and rather than give myself the rest that I crave, I instead will stumble around my thoughts and attempt coherence on the subject. The word is determinism and it is the philosophical idea that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. There are a number of different branches to determinism, but the essential nub of it is that life is mapped out on an unalterable course. Do we have no free will in this deterministic worldview? Well, that is a complicated question with further complicated words such as libertarianism, compatibilism, incompatibilism and indeterminism all getting involved. Determinists seem to disagree on whether free will is a myth or not and a simple answer is that determinism complicates the possibility of free will.

I came across this word because it is a word that has been thrown critically in the direction of John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men, a book that has resided on the GCSE syllabus for many a year. Critics say that Lennie's fate is deterministic in that there never seems a viable alternative with Big Len careering unerringly towards his final tragic demise. I guess determinism as a criticism is something that could be thrown at many simple plots with characters often stumbling headlong into tragedy. As I tappetty-tap-tap, Phil Mitchell is slurring nonsense in a drug-induced haze in the background and this is surely also weak determinism, but the criticism is only valid if it doesn't reflect life, so do these tales bear an accurate image of life? My personal stance is that the existence of God who grants us free will creates a paradoxical situation where a determinism of sorts and free will both exist. The criticisms of Of Mice and Men, I think, are misplaced: the plot's simplicity is part of what makes it beautiful and poignant and the apparent lack of free will for the protagonists feels like an accurate reflection of the limited free will the poor and disadvantaged were given in 1930s America.

Defeat

2010-09-04T12:42:00.000-07:00

My aging legs (in footballing terms I am reaching the twilight of my career) trotted back across the white line today as I captained CCK (Church of Christ the King) Seconds. With kick-off minutes away I was summoned hither and thither to pluck dog excrement from the grass with a plastic bag and my warmup routine became a jogging between poo treasure hunt. Once the pitch had been cleansed I walked towards the centre circle to shake stinky hands with a chap, Antony Turner, who I haven't shared conversation with for fourteen years, since we went our separate ways at the end of secondary school. His inclusion in the opposing team was slightly concerning because I remembered that he was a far better footballer than I was when at school, but perhaps time would have been kinder to me than to him. I doubted this and my doubt was a justifiable position for he headed our opponents, Montreal Arms, into a lead within two minutes.

From that moment on, our goal was peppered with shots with only brief respite when our strikers made rare forages forward, but our bluntness in attack which yielded just one shot on target during the first half was in contrast to the Montreal Arms' sharpness as they dispatched six past our stand-in goalkeeper Tim Lumgair. I rallied the troops at half-time with tales of a time when we'd come back from 5-0 down to draw 5-5 and tried to draw a crumb of comfort from the fact that the wind and the incline would be on our side in the second half.

The team kept up a wonderfully positive attitude as my words proved to be mere words, powerless to prevent our net bulging at a similarly rapid rate in the face of a breeze that was failing to cause a rustle in any local leaves. The six was quickly doubled to twelve, exceeding my previous biggest defeat of 11-0, but then a moment came which pencilled a stunning silver line around the thrash shaped cloud. After a spectacular (fortuitous and bumbling) run into MA territory from myself, the ball popped about a bit and someone kicked someone and the result was a free-kick forty (twenty-five at best) yards from goal. I'd already fluffed a free-kick in the first half and I wasn't particularly confident that I could actually reach the goal with any power, but I brushed others aside who fancied themselves from this range and stepped back for an excessive run-up. I recognised that the only chance of troubling the keeper was to boot the ball as hard as my puny legs could manage and hope for the best. I did just that and the ball flew centimetres above the grass, straight as a car that's being driven by someone whose forgotten to take the krooklok off into the bottom corner (the picture at the top of the page is the goalkeeper wrapped around the post after failing to grasp my fizzler). My celebration was undignified and embarrassing for my teammates as I whisked my shirt from my torso and performed some odd vaguely acrobatic movement which was a forward roll combined with poor attempt at a break-dancing worm.

We conceded two more, but it now felt like, as Harry Redknapp would brand it, a "great defeat", but perhaps that was just me. However, it wasn't just my goal, but our cheery manner in the face of humiliation that made it great and I guess it gives us a benchmark from which to move forwards. It also, as I'm sure you're well aware, draws me level with my nemesis Fernando Torres, who has taken four games to reach the same tally as me.

Dwain Chambers

2010-09-03T14:34:00.001-07:00

"It was either be regular or not. There were a lot of things flying through my mind. A lot of people have said that if they'd been in my shoes they would have done the same thing. I wasn't intending to cheat the system. I just wanted to get even. I was fed up with losing. As far as I was concerned everyone else was doing it. I thought other people were doing wrong. I was losing and I thought, 'I'm not busting my arse to lose.'"

Dwain Chambers divides opinion. Frustration at consecutive defeat and a suspicion that others were cheating to win led him to a position where he willingly submitted his body to guinea pig experimentation to see if he could shave crucial milliseconds off of his 100 metre sprint time. He got caught, did the time and is now back, penitent and desirous of a clean slate to apply his running spikes to.

Whilst some are happy to see Chambers return to the track, many high-profile names such as Sebastian Coe and Kelly Holmes have spoken out against Chambers' return and the British Olympic Association agree - whilst he is allowed to run in other athletics events, the Olympics are a closed door to Dwain.

Life bans for drug cheats make for good headlines, but I feel uneasy about the unforgiving attitude of the athletics hierarchy. Part of Chambers' unpopularity is rooted in the forthright honesty with which he, perhaps unwisely, answered BBC questions in 2006, when he claimed that drugs were needed to compete. This sticky smearing of the athletics world was what caused many to abandon their mercy towards Dwain. An honest assessment is surely better than insincerity though. And surely if he has fulfilled the punishment for the crime he should be allowed to return: where is the justice in denying him? A common argument is that we need to give a clear and harsh message about drugs to youngsters, but surely a message about life being redeemable despite mistakes is an important message too, even if it isn't as headline-friendly.

Doodles

2010-09-01T14:09:00.001-07:00

I returned to school today (I am a teacher of English) and during a day of meetings I found my pen wandering across the page whilst writing down things that I need to remember for the coming weeks ahead. I was quite pleased with the result and thought I would share it with you. It started as two brackets reminding me of meetings on Monday and Tuesday, but developed into a duojawed chap in smart attire. His name is Graham Meetingeater.

Death

2010-08-31T02:54:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in a toilet that was not my own - this opening sounds as if I had intruded into someone else's toilet unbeknownst to them, but this was not the case: I was perfectly within my rights to be there. The toilet, as all good toilets do, had a few books on the window ledge - it also had no lock. The books were an interesting mix: Christian theology, surfing and The Brothers Karamazov (a book I read a while back after Philip Yancey claimed that it was the greatest book ever written: I thought it was alright, but I wouldn't give it quite such elevated praise).

Knowing my time would be brief, I plucked a book of quotes from Welsh Protestant minister Martin Lloyd Jones. His is a name I am familiar with, but I actually know very little about him: it turns out he was a passionate evangelical Christian who ministered at Westminster Chapel during the Second World War. The collection of quotes was alphabetised around theme and so naturally I flicked through to the letter 'D' where I found one of the more challenging subjects I have been asked to write about: death. He said something along the lines that death of the body was not something to concern yourself about in comparison with the destiny of the soul.

I didn't go any further into his thoughts on other subjects and that proved to be fortunate because my aunt opened the door mere seconds after my trousers were back around my waist.

I rejoined my extended family for our Bank Holiday gathering and thought no more about Jones' words for the moment, but the subject of death was not over for the day. About an hour and a half later I stood looking at the blank eyes of my childhood cat, Chessie, under a bar of light with my dad. Moments earlier the decision had been made to put her out of her suffering (something was hypersomething in her throat, she had a dodgy leg, was deaf and she was 93 in cat years). I had been chosen to accompany my dad because I was the least likely to cry. My dad briefly discussed the destiny of Chessie's soul. I said that she'd be able to hang out with Bootylicious, my dead bottom-wiggling rabbit, Brian, my dead long-haired guinea pig and Charlie, my dead and rather vicious gerbil. I have no idea whether that's actually true and Martin's words don't really offer anything on the matter either. Perhaps she'll be able to listen to the man she was named after (Chesney Hawkes) for all eternity, although his egocentricity would surely start to grate after a while.

I shall conclude with the lyrics of another song, one my sister Susanna used to sing about our cat when she was too young to realise that she was only brown and not brown and white:

I'm so happy,

You're so happy,

We're so happy,

My cat is brown and white.

Donkeys

2010-08-29T05:09:00.000-07:00

I like donkeys. They briefly sat proudly at the top of my favourite animal list, but their stay was short-lived and they have since slipped down into the category of animal I am quite fond of. They share that podium with the llama, the raccoon, the orangutan, the hedgehog and the dugong, but they fail to inspire enough awe to compete with the tiger or enough personality to compete with the current number one, the badger (the badger has sat proudly at the top of the rostrum for so long now, that my badger fondness, in some circles, precedes me).

People have many questions about donkeys that they sometimes feel a little nervous to ask, so I shall now attempt to answer the ten most commonly thought, but never uttered questions about the braying beast.

1. Do donkeys kill more people a year than planes?

One expert (expertise unknown) once said that he wouldn't be surprised if donkeys killed more people than planes, but there seem to be no statistics to back up his ponderous words. This claim was first put into print by the London Times in 1987 to help people to get over their fear of flying, but it wasn't intended to be taken literally and donkey-lovers have angrily refuted it ever since.

2. How do donkeys kill people? [This ignores the previous answer that suggests that perhaps they don't]

With no one claiming to be have been killed by a donkey, it is tricky to say. Rumours have it though that they get you in a headlock and suck your brain out of your ear.

3. What's the difference between a donkey and a mule?

They are spelt differently; donkeys have one extra chromosome; a donkey has a coarser tail; a mule can jump; a mule can bear a heavier load and donkeys can breed.

4. How and why did the 'Pin the tail on the donkey' game start?

It is an odd phenomenon amongst donkeys that they are occasionally born with no tail and this lack inspired the game. Some think that the pinning of the tail was also done as a symbol to ward off evil spirits for the coming year and that is why it became a birthday party game.

5. Who is better: Eeyore out of Winnie the Pooh or the Talking Donkey out of Shrek?

This is a tough one - both have severe social problems that would make them difficult to live with, but surely Eeyore - pre-Disneyfication - is the king of the Donks.

6. Why is a female donkey called a jenny?

They seem to have acquired this name in the 1640s, but quite why is an answer I do not have. I imagine that either a wonderful woman called Jenny who loved donkeys inspired the name or a big-eared woman with an odd laugh was nicknamed Jenny. We will never know.

7. Is the only difference between a donkey and a monkey the consonant that starts their name?

There are some other differences, but it is thought that the donkey's name was in fact influenced by the monkey. The 'don' syllable was from the archaic 'dun' which means dull greyish-brown and the final syllable was added to make it sound like monkey as some sort of insult to the wannabe horse. Donkey was originally slang with ass the official term. The first written use of the term donkey wasn't until 1785, long after the term jenny.

8. Because the sound a donkey makes it spelt onomatopoeically in English (as most animal sounds are), does that mean it is spelt the same in other languages?

No. There are actually two variants in English: hee-haw and eeyore. Other language spellings include i-a i-a in Albanina, chuuchuu in Bengali, hihan in French, eselet skryter in Norweigan and asnan skriar in Swedish.

9. If you call someone a donkey, what are you suggesting about them?

My experience of the donkey insult has either been football-related in that the donkeyish football player boots the ball thoughtlessly and has no finesse about their play or is to do with the size of the male genitalia. Urban Dictionary offers a few other alternatives on top of these: donkey could mean a girl with a large rear; a bad poker player who thinks they are good; a stupid person; someone who will carry stuff around for you; a person who takes pictures of themself in the mirror; a groovy rocking amazing person; a short man who wears all black, likes Slipknot and drives a truck or someone who carries a lot of drugs around. I think I shall avoid the term to avoid confusion.

10. What alliterative name could I give my donkey?

Donkeys 'R' Us website gives a whole host of options. My top five are Dreamweaver, Dudette, Dogzilla, Detonator and Darth Vadar.

Drowning

2010-08-28T06:45:00.000-07:00

In the last book I finished, number9dream, the main character Eiji's twin sister Anju drowned when attempting to swim out to a large rock in the middle of the sea. In my last post I discussed The Decemberists' album The Hazards of Love which tells the story of Margaret and William who both end up drowning. It got me thinking that story constructors use drowning far more commonly than it actually occurs in real life. Ophelia's suicide-drowning in Hamlet; siblings Tom and Maggie's tragic drowning in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss; Compeyson's drowning at the hands of Abel Magwitch in Great Expectations and Harold Bishop's suspected drowning which turned out not to be a drowning because he returned seven years later in Neighbours all spring to mind.

Theorists differ on the matter. Some say that drowning is often used because it plugs into one of our deepest fears. Others say that is is symbolic of Christian baptism and that the character drowning is on their way to a new life in eternity. I think that perhaps it is because death by drowning ensures that the person dying can retain their beauty unlike the chainsaw victim. In all the examples above, other than Compeyson, the reader/viewer would want to ponder upon the dead warmly and the drowning scenario allows us to hold an idyllic image of the departed.

Other than the ugly villain Compeyson's drowning, Harold Bishop's drowning sits the most uncomfortably with the theorists, probably because it was far more weakly plotted than the other examples. In 1990 I had watched the Bish wander hand in hand with Madge down the aisle in my assembly hall - it wasn't a wedding, just a extra-exciting assembly. A girl had won a competition to have the famous duo attend as they were appearing in the local Brighton Pantomime. I was in charge of pressing the play button on their entrance music that day and I have to say I did a pretty flawless job of pressing the button at the appropriate moment and then fading it out as they stood at the front of the hall ready to address the young crowd. I felt warmth towards this chubby chap who brought about the first of my very few brushes with celebrities in my life. But, just one year on and Madge was standing staring at the waves with no big balding head piercing the shifting surface. Hazza had drowned, yet, oh joy of joys, of terrible plots twists of terrible plot twists, he had not. Seven years on, he was back in Ramsey Street with no recollection pre-immersion. He gradually regained his memory and was integrated back into the plot of the show. His reappearance means that I shouldn't have really have discussed him in this article at all, but I allowed myself to follow the tangents of my mind and here we are.

The Decemberists

2010-08-27T01:04:00.000-07:00

I have happened upon an album of musical wonderment. I shall tell you the journey though before I discuss the album. Recently I posted a poll on this blog asking my readership which CD I should buy. The bands all began with the letter D and were: The Dandy Warhols: Odditorium; The Decemberists: Hazards of Love; Dirty Pretty Things: Romance at Short Notice and Dinosaur Jr.: Farm. I had selected these artists by flicking through the letter D section in a record shop in Leicester and they all met the criteria of appropriate starting letter, released in the last year or two and looking like they might be my sort of thing. You see, I have allowed myself to become one of those people that only listens to music they listened to when they were a teenager. My only recent musical purchases have been new releases from bands who have been around for over half of my lifetime: Oasis: Dig Out Your Soul and Delirious: Mission Bell, and my CD purchase rate had slipped to an annual 0.29 average over the last seven years. HMV and Virgin used to be my second home, but now I content myself with the same songs that were my nightclub anthems in the days when jogging home after an evening of extravagant dancing and bone-jarring moshing until 2am wasn't an unusual occurrence.

I imagine many people are similarly stuck in a musical time warp, but I regret the fact that recent years don't have the soundtrack that my teenage years had. Certain songs evoke powerful memories: Idlewild's When I Argue I See Shapes reminds me of playing darts-cricket in my friend John Golds' bedroom; Oasis' Cigarettes and Alcohol reminds me of 16 year-old disillusionment and my parents' staircase; Richard Ashcroft's Song for the Lovers reminds me of when my friend Jason Oatway stole a poster from a nightclub and Ben and Jason's Adam and Lorraine reminds of the time my flat got burgled. The past seven years have sadly been a musical void. I think this is partly because I no longer give myself a space to listen to music in. It used to accompany my playing of computer games, but I no longer do that and my current activities are generally not conducive to extra sound. I shun music for Radio 5 discussion when I drive: I like to get angry about people's intolerant attitudes to immigration, and car music rare, my life has become tuneless.

Back to the poll which would remedy this lack; it was a dead heat with a minute to go between The Decemberists and Dinosaur Jr. My only link with either band was that when we (my family of wife Helen, and twin boys Ned and Jarvis) swapped abodes with some friends' friends this summer; the friends' friends had a framed picture from a Decemberists' show. I've never met the people that own the flat we stayed in, but their retro interior design, red fridge and decision to categorise their books not by author or genre, but by spine colour led me to the shallow conclusion that these were cool people and that anything they appreciated must also fall into the category: cool. With this in mind, I (in a slightly cheaty way) added the last vote to The Decemberists causing the vote to swing 60%-40% in their favour. A few minutes later and £5.99 had been spent and all I had to do was await the album delivery.

The album arrived yesterday and I genuinely think that even if I had widened my poll beyond the alphabetical constraints I would not have found a better, more interesting and beautiful album. The musical style is a combination of twangy acoustic dominated revelry and more grindy aggressive rumbustiousness. How do music journalists manage to keep their writing fresh when essentially they have to describe very similar guitar sounds? Music is one of the hardest things to describe. I feel I have failed to recreate what their music actually sounded like with my eccentric choice of words. I will throw into the mix that the Wikipedia author says they are "indie folk" and perhaps that will add to your imaginative recreation of them.

Fortunately it is not their music that I want to focus on primarily though, as whilst the music is at times tantalising and at times simply lovely, it is the story of the album that gripped me. Unbeknownst to me on purchase, this album is a kind of folk rock opera with the the combination of songs telling one coherent, although challenging to decipher, story. There are three vocalists voicing four main characters: Margaret, William, the Queen and the Rake. The story, in brief, goes like this: Margaret finds an injured faun which turns out to be William who is a shape-shifter (a faun by day, a man by night). They fall in love, get jiggy, get pregnant. The Queen is William's adoptive mother and she rescued him after he was abandoned in a "reedy glen". She put the shape-shifting spell on Will and she is none too happy that he has found a lover, but she agrees to let him join her for one more night. But, disaster strikes and the Rake, who has killed his three children after his wife died, abducts Margaret and the Queen, seeing this as an opportunity carries the Rake and Margaret beyond the Annan water and far away from William, but he goes in search of his beloved and manages to rescue her from the Rake, who is driven mad after being haunted by his dead children. However, they cannot recross the water and both tragically drown. It is a complex narrative to weave into seventeen songs with some of the tracks lyricless such as The Queen's Approach, forcing the listener to read the music to figure out what is happening. I love the ambition though and the lyrics are poetic and poignant: "O Margaret, the lapping waves are licking quietly at our ankles / Another bow, another breath: this brilliant chill has come to shackle".

The album is masterful, adventurous and I feel fortunate to have begun the refreshment of my music with such a great uninterrupted flow of tunes that create a genuine experience rather than an aloof detachment. It this personal inside-your-guts interaction which makes this album so special. I guess part of the reason that music has passed me by in the last few years is that it hasn't offered me anything new (I confess that I haven't searched very hard), just a recapturing of previously articulated emotions, but this album gave me a whole new musical experience. If you fancy a listen, start with The Rake's Song on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULSKZ7IP930

Deal or No Deal

2010-08-26T04:10:00.000-07:00

In my last blog I made an offhand criticism of Deal or No Deal and received a torrent of uproarious anger at my belittlement of the show from my readership: actually one person asked, "What's wrong with Deal or No Deal?" And so I find myself critiquing the show which actually persuaded me to linger at Channel 4 a while back, but now receives a quick channel flick if I ever happen to stumble across Noel Edmonds' beardy grinning face.

"What is wrong with it?" you ask (singular). Well, it's not so much the total lack of skill required to play the game that frustrates me, but the constant personification of chance which grates. Noel champions the abandonment of mathematical probabilities and acts as if a mystical force is dictating the events inside the television studio. I don't know why this should annoy me but it does. The silent smug banker also deserves a beating. I once played the Deal or No Deal board game and the lengthy dull procedure which resulted in defeat for me further hardened my distaste for the red box lottery. Another factor is that it follows the magical Countdown, which despite its new aquamarine garish blue set design and lack of the legends Richard Whiteley and Carol Vorderman, still manages to be watchable and wonderful in its simplicity. This is not Deal or No Deal's fault, but the contrast highlights its turdishness in comparison to Countdown's fragrant beauty. I once got to the point of filling in an application form for Countdown, but failed to go further. Perhaps I will revisit this ambition. Anyway, I hope the original question is somewhat answered.

Perhaps it is nostalgia, but quiz shows from my childhood seem masterfully superior compared to today's twaddlesome banality (Coundown is exempt, having been around for 28 of my 30 years on earth). Here are my top five from yesteryear:

1. Going for Gold - the multicultural quiz show which involved a lot of waving.

2. Blockbusters - the simple joy of waiting for someone to say, "I'll have a P please Bob".

3. Bullseye - the regularity of failure made this show beautiful: "Here's what you could have won."

4. Supermarket Sweep - riding a trolley is one of my favourite activities and SS featured trolley mayhem aplenty.

5. The Crystal Maze - pretty much Indiana Jones featuring a bald nutty bloke (Richard O'Brien) and occasionally a weird mystical relative of his.

Disfigurement

2010-08-25T04:53:00.000-07:00

Channel 4 at its worst shows Hollyoaks omnibuses sandwiched between Wogan's Perfect Recall and Deal or No Deal. But at its best it flits into subject matters that few dare to dabble their toe in, and they do it with a creative zest. Big Brother has for a while been tediously dull, but it started out as a fascinating social experiment. As Big Brother staggers to its death watched by a surprisingly substantial audience (4 million for Tuesday's final), Channel 4 have grabbed the headlines once more with a new show that has divided opinions. The programme under attack, due for airing around the end of this year, is Beauty and the Beast. In it two people, one with a physical disfigurement and one obsessed with beauty share a house while those who are uninterested in Holby City or Corrie watch on.

This week, on a drive to collect my trousers from the dry-cleaners (which were closed) I listened to two people fiercely debating the shows morality. The attack was that it was another 'freak show' and that it would only damage those involved. The defence was that it would challenge people's assumptions and attitudes towards those with physical disfigurements. As the arguments went back and forth I found myself frustrated with the critic who seemed to view the people with disfigurements as weak people who would never be able to handle seeing themselves in a mirror. I was already feeling that the show had potential merit when Adam Pearson's name was dropped as someone who is working on the show. Adam is a friend of friends, someone I know well enough to be his friend on Facebook, but not any more than that. Adam has a facial disfigurement and his involvement in the programme filled me with a faith that this show is not out to exploit people, but to help to create an alternative way of seeing beauty. The Five Live defendant argued that the show would make the viewer see our obsession with beauty as the real beast. I hope it does. It's got to be better than using disfigurement as a symbol for inner evil as Freddy Krueger and the James Bond films do - there didn't seem to be much criticism of those film-makers.

Dying Daffodil

2010-08-24T10:01:00.000-07:00

There was a dying daffodil

Who whispered to me: "I have a will,

I want to leave my crinkly petals

To those pesky stinging nettles.

Then they won't cause a nasty itch

And cause poor stung ones to writhe and twitch.

My bequest will fill the world with glee,

But will ruin a brew of nettle tea."

I pondered as the daff ceased to live

And thought even stingers have something to give,

So I gave the petals to a big old oak tree

And I hope the daffodil would accept my elegy.

Dave Kitson

2010-08-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

Dave Kitson is a frustrated man. His 5.5 million pound move to Stoke City two years ago should have been his platform into the England team, but he has struggled to score: his total of five goals in two seasons mean he has cost £1.1 million a goal discounting his wages. He now finds himself on the edge of the squad and hasn't even made the Stoke bench in the opening two games of this season, but it is not this that frustrates him - it is the iPod, or rather the effect it has on a dressing room. Of the smooth, curvy white music machines he says, "I find iPods one of the most anti-social things to have come into the changing room. Changing rooms should be buzzing with anticipation and energy before a game. But more and more I see players slumped around in their own world, generally looking miserable". It must be galling that these misery-guts trapped in a looping Radiohead (I doubt it's Radiohead) soundtrack are taking his place in the team.

It is Kitson's views that I wish to discuss rather than his football ability, for what he says perhaps shines a light on the effect of technology on culture in general. Many technologies encourage isolation rather than community: games consoles, computers and television in some ways. However, whilst some argue that they erode community, they also create a platform for a different kind of community. People play computer games across networks against each other, discuss the previous evening's television and the computer gives us chat-rooms, discussion forums and Facebook. Whilst Bookface has been accused of creating a place for unreal and inane communication rather than real and beautiful face to face stuff, it does provide people who can't get out and about with a view of the world, allows old friends to reconnect and lets me play Scrabble against people. Through Bookface I have gone to football games with two old school friends, won 60 games of Scrabble (lost 72) and been informed of various minutiae of people's lives. This weekend I met someone who I knew had spent the previous week with a sore throat that I felt far too acquainted with and this meant I didn't have to start the conversation with, "How's your week been?", but could leap straight to, "Are you feeling better?", squeezing valuable extra space for us to choose a matter to converse upon; I used it to inform him that I didn't want to see him using Bookface for any more of this self-pitying nonsense again.

I'm wandering away from the original argument I feel and straying into personal anecdotes from my weekend, so I'll stop and lurch to an inconclusive conclusion. Kitson is right, probably about the Stoke dressing room; I don't really know, but also about the wider world in many ways. Technology is crushing human interaction. Perhaps even my tapping away at the keyboard is part of this - aaaarrgghhh. However, technology gives us avenues for a new and worthwhile kind of interaction. Perhaps even my tapping away at the keyboard is part of this - oooooh. I shall leave it on that meaningful verbal ejaculation.

Dice

2010-08-22T05:26:00.001-07:00

I was playing a board game (Settlers of Catan if you're interested) on Friday morning and I was in need of three consecutive rolls of the die to land with one dot pointed to the ceiling. They were long odds for sure. To do it once gives me the long odds of 6/1; to do it twice lengthens the odds to 36/1 and to do it thrice, well, the odds lurch to 216/1, yet I celebrated as a die roll of one was followed by a die roll of one and was then followed by a die roll of one. I proclaimed the skill of my dice-wielding hands while my Maths teacher opponent (Nathan Wriglesworth) almost exploded at the mathematical improbability of my success.

The precise origins of the little fellers who granted me such favour is unknown as many cultures independently created their own dice thousands of years ago and used them for a variety of purposes: dividing inheritances, choosing rulers and as a method of prediction. In ancient Roman religion it was believed that Zeus's daughter Fortuna was the controller of the dice - if that were the case, she clearly liked the way I did my hair on Friday morning.

The modern dice is a development from the use of fruit stones, sea shells and sheep ankle bones (the above picture is of children playing a game with sheep ankle bones) as providers of random progression in a game. Whilst I have often clutched dice in my sweaty paws (actually I generally demand that we use a plastic cup as a shaking implement), not everyone is a fan with some game-players scorning the random element dice bring to game, voicing the old English proverb: "The best throw of the dice is to throw them away", but I am a fan of cuboid chaps, especially when they contrive to bring me good fortune.

Distributism

2010-08-20T01:26:00.000-07:00

Socialism or capitalism? It seems that few people are comfortable aligning themselves with either, although I have met a few people happy to wear a socialist badge. However, most seem to shun these terms, wary of the connotations and the checkered history that people baring these labels have done under these very labels. There is another label though, one that attempts to balance the practicalities of capitalism with the moral conscience of socialism: it is distributism.

Distributism doesn't deny ownership of property in the way socialism does, but at the same sees hugely wealthy individuals and monopolies controlling industry as a huge problem. Their middle-ground is that ownership of productive property (my understanding of this is that productive property includes anything that enables someone to be productive, whether it be tools, land or a computer) should be spread as widely as possible between the citizens of a nation.

In practice this would mean that people would be able to have ownership of their own company, business or simply way of providing an income without facing competition from mass corporations. I guess some sort of limiting law would have to be put into place to prevent companies expanding to non-competitive levels. The Middle Ages is seen as a time when distributism worked effectively with people earning a living through small ventures unopposed by corporate monopolies. If distributism returned to today's society, I guess huge supermarket chains would be replaced by small independent stores and companies offering computer support and services would be replaced by clever little men who understand the complexities of a motherboard - these would be amongst other shifts in our day-to-day working lives.

Distributism was formulated by Roman Catholic thinker G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc and has rather unfortunately been highjacked by the British National Party which seems an unlikely desired direction for Chesterton and Belloc. Genuine distributism doesn't seem to fit comfortably with any of the mainstream parties. David Cameron's 'Big Society' chat is perhaps the closest anything comes, but so far the practical outworkings of this don't seem to be hitting the distributism mark, not that that is what he is aiming for necessarily.

I'm not sure what I think. It sounds good: it gives people an ownership and a motivation and introduces a leveller playing field, but it is difficult to imagine Britain going in this direction. Would it be a good thing for the people on the bottom rung of society, which is always the crucial question? The answer is perhaps which is the answer to any unknown hypothetical situation I guess. I can see its strengths, but I'm not about to wear the badge.

The Dong with a Luminous Nose

2010-08-19T05:53:00.000-07:00

Anton Green is a man of exemplary taste. The selection of writers he has referenced on his Facebook page is testimony to this: the diverse list includes the likes of travel-writer Paul Theroux, down to earth theologian Phillip Yancey, the epic George Orwell and soldier-poet Wilfred Owen. The bookshelf in his front room is a bustling thing of beauty and he also sports a tasteful beard and is the father of my good friend Ed.

So, when AG suggested a oddly titled poem by Edward Lear as a subject matter to write about, I took the suggestion seriously and went in search of the said poem. If you want to read it before I ruin its plot, it is here: http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ll/dln.html

The poem tells the tragic tale of the Dong's infatuation for a Jumbly Girl who sailed to his shore in a sieve with a group of other Jumblies. The Dong romanced the Jumbly Girl with his pipe while the Jumblies danced, but the day came when the Jumblies boarded their sieve once more and the Jumbly Girl's absence drove the Dong mad: "What little sense I once possessed has quite gone out of my head". In a moment of nighttime madness he wove himself a nose "of vast proportions and painted red... with a luminous lamp within suspended". The poem ends with the Dong walking the plains every night in a vain search for the Jumbly Girl. I shouldn't have expected anything less from Mr Green.

Some people like to write essays about poems; some like to sit and let them soak into their soul; I prefer to use them as trampolines into poetic invention myself. I going to pick up the Jumbly Girl's story which is unexplored by Lear as she sails away from the admiring and devastated Dong:

What Happened Next to the Jumbly Girl

The Jumbly Girl felt quite morose;

She'd never see the Dong's luminous nose.

Tears dribbled down her sky-blue cheeks

As she sailed the ocean: Zincky Flink.

Karrash: the sieve started to sink;

Her tears were adding to the sieve's numerous leaks.

The clouds above were a violent pink.

The Jumbly Girl cupped her hands round her mouth

And sung a sweet tune in the direction: south.

The melody came from the tips of her toes;

It's hard to repeat, but it went a little like this:

Burbly crumb urgalee so polotix priss

And it summoned an army of indigo crows

Who each gave the Jumbly Girl a delicate kiss.

Then they lifted the sieve up into the air

And the Jumblies cheered loudly and let off a flair,

But their joy was short-lived I'm sorry to say:

The crows grew more weary towards the end of the day

And one by one the Jumblies took a sacrificial leap,

Landing in the mouth of a hungry Crocosheep

Until the Jumbly Girl was the only Jumbly alive

And the crows put her down in the Rumblechunks' hive.

It was true that the crows had delivered her from death,

But the Rumblechunks had cauliflower breath.

They'd been chomping on the cauli for many a year

And they thought they smelt fragrant, like a sweet summer rose

But the Jumbly Girl sat in the hive holding her nose.

The Rumblechunks looked at her, gave her quite a leer

And then Rumblechunk Six did unromantically propose.

The offer from this cauli-gobbler was a bed in their abode,

A smouldering tuft of knee hair and ride on his xchimode

If she decided that smelling his cauli-exhale 'twas wrong

She would be thrown from the hive into the hole of kroogwace.

She had little choice and the wedding took place

Jumbly Girl reminisced about the fabulous Dong,

But 'twas no use, her horrible fate she must face.

Years flew by and Jumbly Girl's diet was dreary:

Cauliflower followed by cauliflower made her stomach grow queery.

Her beautiful blue skin turned white and bobbly.

Her green hair became green leaves that were flimsy and wobbly.

She lost her ability to speak or to think

To breathe or to dance, to eat or to drink

And years later the Dong visited the hive wearing a nose glove

And ate cauliflower cheese and wept for his lost (and quite tasty) love.

Doughnuts

2010-08-18T06:50:00.001-07:00

As Steve Morrow tumbled from Paul Merson's shoulders in a moment of calamitous celebration in the wake of Arsenal's Coca-Cola Cup triumph, resulting in a broken arm for the goal-scoring Morrow, I shovelled doughnut number seventeen into my mouth. My family were at Big Jenny's house, the host given the unfortunate adjective 'Big' to differentiate her from my little sister Jenny - she wasn't overweight, just an adult. I think it was a birthday party of some sort, but my obsession with Arsenal and Sheffield Wednesday competing for the non-event of the Coca-Cola Cup had sent me scuttling to a bedroom where I found a tiny television that I could watch the event on.

Every eight minutes or so I made the short trip from bedroom to front room to pick up a tasty doughnut. Now, whilst the adjective 'big' was largely inaccurate in paragraph one, the adjective 'tasty' is entirely appropriate for these doughnuts. They were the type with sharp jagged sugar attached to the outer bun, not those deficient soggy articles that come in packs of ten and have had sugar sweated onto their outer shells. The jam within was lively and lurched from the doughnut on the first bite, far superior to the congealed tasteless injection of red nothingness that is commonly the filling. Their sublime tastiness meant my journey to the plate was repeated time and time again until I felt slightly queasy and wide-eyed from my afternoon's snacking which had gone unnoticed by my parents who surely would have issued an, "I think you've had enough" warning had they been aware of my excessive consumption.

As a child I seemed to be able to consume extraordinary amounts of food. Shredded Wheat's slogan in the early 80s was, "Bet You Can't Eat Three" with their advert showing a shocked hotel staff when Ian Botham ordered a bowl of three for his morning snack, yet as a young child, on one particularly ravenous morning, I chomped my way through eighteen full-size cardboardy wheat cocoons.

Something must have been wrong with me to have taken so much food into my infant belly. Did I have worms? If I did, it was never treated and the worms trundled away unnoticed at some point, because I would never be able to achieve such eating feats nowadays although I do have a custard doughnut sitting in the kitchen that I'm going to pay a visit to when my fingers have stopped tappety-tapping, but it will just be the one.

Deity

2010-08-18T02:48:00.000-07:00

I was reading Tim Keller's book recently, The Reason for God, and in it he addresses what I think is a major problem in the communication of faith between people who believe in God and people that don't: respect. Because positions on faith are emotive, a common response for both people with faith and without is to laugh at the opposing viewpoint. There is of course a place for humour in any (perhaps not any, but most) discussions, but if the laughter comes from a position of ridicule, then it doesn't really aid effective communication. What is surely more helpful, regardless of what you believe, is a respectful listening of each other's ideas and beliefs. Since reading the book, I've tried to put that into practice a little bit more and have enjoyed coming to the common ground with atheists (I'm a theist by the way) that at least we've made up our mind unlike agnostics, but then I guess if you're unsure, then agnosticism is an honest position to be in although I would suggest that the existence of a God is a pretty important question and one worth pursuing to see if an answer is findable.

My theistic position came from a position of assumption that God existed as a young child (having been taken to church by my parents) to a place where I realised I needed to make my own mind up about it. I came to an independent conclusion that God did indeed exist when I was seven years old. It seems a young age to be making such a decision, 'tis true, but the validity of the decision has stood the test of time unlike my decision to become a tiger vet or my decision to only wear orange clothes. The decision came about after my Year 2 Infant School teacher Miss Pilgrim (a suitably religious name) told our class about Christianity. She explained that the reason Jesus died was to fulfil cosmic justice between God and man; Jesus death was him taking the punishment for the stuff we'd done wrong - our wrong stuff being offensive to God - and because he'd died we could have a relationship with God, and because he had risen again, he had beaten the power of death meaning that we could have eternal life in heaven with God after our bodies had died. Up to this point God had been a kind of mystical force that I had been aware of, but her simple explanation (a lot simpler my recreation of it) made me realise that the reality of God was about having a relationship with him. So, when the bell for break-time rung, I scampered to the toilet, locked myself in a cubicle and prayed, I guess, my first non-parrot prayer. I believe that this moment was a moment when I actually experienced God and it is this experiential nature of my faith that has meant that it has never been shaken off.

That is not to say that it has never been shaken; it has been vigorously battered back and forth by complicated (sometimes impossible to answer) questions and challenging circumstances. At every stage of my life I have had to reexamine my faith - as a teenager; as an immature adult; as a slightly less immature adult - and I have always found it to hold true; it has never been shaken off of me and it still clings close today. The world makes sense to me with a faith in God - difficult questions are important to ask because what is faith if you ignore things that challenge that faith? Challenging circumstances are confusing, but I have found that my faith has helped me to see them in an eternal context; if I could not seen them in that way then they may have defeated me. Intellectual arguments fascinate me, but it is my ongoing experience of God that gives me faith in an interactive deity.

Dugong

2010-08-17T01:17:00.000-07:00

Steller's sea cow was hunted to extinction by the Georgians

And if it wasn't for the dugong we would could only ask historians

About the dugongidae family, a friendly bunch who live in the sea;

They invited me round to their home in Shark Bay for a mug of Earl Grey tea.

I couldn't refuse such an exciting invitation,

So I swam all the way to Australia in a state of exaltation.

They told me they used to be mistaken for mermaids which was hard to believe;

Between sips of tea and paragraphs, they visited the surface to breathe.

They said their grandmother was the red-headed Ariel from Hans Christian Anderson's tale.

Mistaken for a mermaid, I thought, She looks more like a whale.

I asked them all sorts of questions: What's your favourite colour? Your favourite dish?

They all agreed that pink was nice and they said: "We never eat fish.

We prefer to graze on the grass of the ocean for a full eight hours at a time.

We're herbivores. We think that munching on little fishies is a crime."

"Your life sounds so perfect: eating and chilling until it gets dark."

"Our existence would be without fault if wasn't for the tiger shark.

That stripy mean old razor-tooth likes to bite us on the bum

And once it's got the taste, it doesn't stop till it's eaten every last crumb.

We've lost so many siblings to this sixteen foot long menace:

Beryl, Trevor, Chloe, Matilda, Ralph and dear old Dennis."

"I'm sorry for your loss," I said, "and thank you for the tea,

But I'm afraid I'm must run now because I've a date with a mermaidy manatee".

Dungaree Memories

2010-08-16T03:25:00.001-07:00

Dungarees have played a big part in my life - mainly stopping people seeing my underwear. I wore them as a young child and then between the ages of 17-23, they were my main trouser-type item of clothing, normally worn with the top half left free to dangle. Here are three memories of times I have been wearing dungarees.

1985

I'm guessing the year and I'm also slightly guessing the fact that I am wearing dungarees for this particular memory, but if you look closely at the picture, it looks like there is snow adorning the rooftops in the background and this small detail has sent my memory down this particular avenue. As a five-year old I lived a mere 29 houses away from Brighton sea-front and it was on a regular basis that I would clutch the hand of my mum or dad and wander seawards to gaze out at the watery expanse in front of me. I was always trying to see France, but never could and I grew doubtful whether it really was as close as the maps suggested. There was a playground next to a lagoon at the bottom of the road and I used to enjoy clambering into the tunnel on a climbing frame and sitting enclosed in the red plastic and imagining that I was living an adventure and not just sitting on a climbing frame waiting for the call to go home. There was an arcade next to the park where I used to watch the claw grabber attempting to snatch up a soft toy, but always fail - that has turned into Heather Mills-McCartney's vegan cafe now - I have a lot of sympathy for her; she seems to be hated for inconceivable reasons.

But back to the eighties: this dungaree day was a day when snow had turned the playground into an assortment of abandoned white shapes as everyone chose the hill leading down to the park to be the new place to play accompanied by sledges or bin-liners. Careering down the hill on a sledge was a thrilling moment of abandon. In my memory my dad carefully crafted the sledge in his workshop that very morning, but thinking back, he didn't have a workshop and my memory must have invented this detail. The hill seemed enormous - years later as I stroll down towards the park and choose against expensive vegan ice cream I can't quite believe that this tiny slope is the same hill that sent my stomach somersaulting with ecstatic terror. The picture you see, I imagine, is me with my rosey-cheeked sister, Jenny, standing by the radiator getting warm after one of the most exciting mornings of our lives.

1999

I was working for Newfrontiers, a worldwide group of churches, on a campsite near Coventry manning the Information Desk for a big conference church holiday type thing. I was into the third week and an early shift in the third week of camping is a painful one, but I had the previous night's leftover curry to keep me company and that made the world a better place by far. I pulled on my dungarees that were slowly ripping and shredding and were held together at the trouser seam and knee by gaffa tape and chose against waiting in a queue to have a shower and headed straight to the place where I would be dispensing information for the morning.

When I look back now I realise that an unwashed man with gaffa taped dungarees and mop of bleached hair munching his way through a cold curry is probably not a man you want information from, but if there was something you needed to know, you had little choice but to smell the combined fumes of curry-breath and stale sweat whilst receiving instruction. At least I was equipped with the correct information.

2003

My band was called Bungle and we specialised in a combination of thrashing our instruments with fierce energy and microphone growling. For this particular gig drummer Tim Gordon had decided that a drum solo would be an appropriate opening, so while he clattered away I performed some improvised dance so as not to look like a spare piece. I had the perfect dangling dungaree look going on, but whilst my appearance could not be faulted, it was not ideal for the kind of shapes I was throwing and as I attempted some kind of forward roll ending with a jerkish leap to my feet propelled by my shoulders, I found that my feet had become entangled with my dungaree straps and I was helplessly trapped in a sort of crab position; not wanting to look like foolish, I continued to dance whilst becoming disentangled. I finally achieved disentanglement and continued with the show, but I fear the rock star persona that I was attempting to create for myself had been replaced with a combination of Mr Bean and Frank Spencer.

Dunking

2010-08-15T13:41:00.001-07:00

To dunk or not to dunk is a question that determines your outlook on life. A dunker is a grabber of pleasure, dipping the biscuit into the cup of tea to deliver an instant mouthful of warm mushy delightfulness, recklessly ignoring the fact that the last sip of tea will be a grim retching moment that spoils the whole relaxing tea-slurping process. A non-dunker is someone who is happy to play the long game, knowing that the last mouthful of tea will be as good as the first. The dunker might argue that you could simply leave the biscuit-infested last mouthful undrunk, but who remembers this in the heady moment of drinking? I, a self-confessed dunker, never do and have to accept that my pleasurable moment of dunking must be paid for as the tea-break concludes.

Fellow dunkers will be glad to hear that studies have been done into the world of dunking with issues such as the biscuit best to dunk, dunking technique and dunking etiquette covered. Physicist Len Fisher was the man behind this important scientific study. The first issue of which biscuit is best to be dunked needed a hi-tech Instron stress-tester to calculate the breaking point of each biscuit when plunged into a steaming mug. There is nothing worse than a biscuit breaking off mid-dunk and having to be retrieved by careful, but inevitably scorched, fingers. The winner of the dunkability test was the Chocolate Digestive which managed to withstand an impressive eight seconds submerged without breaking under the pressure, doubling the time that most of the competitors could handle. My personal favourite biscuit is the Chocolate Hobnob, but this can manage less than four seconds and was beaten into sixth by the likes of Rich Tea, the regular Hobnob, the regular Digestive and the Chocolate Bourbon.

Fisher had practical tips to offer on the practicalities of dunking also: "Dunking [Digestive] biscuits calls for a return to the wide-brimmed porcelain cup. The best strategy is a flat-on approach, biscuit-side down to minimise chocolate bleed into your tea or coffee and maintain the chocolate layer as a crack-stopper. For other biscuits I recommend a full, wide-brimmed cup of tea with a biscuit dunked at a shallow angle with the imprinted surface down. The art lies in the journey twixt cup and lip [that is a fine sentence]. The biscuit - held as you would a penny - should be removed in a smooth fluid motion with the dunked half swivelled, so that it is supported by the dry section of the biscuit, to reach your mouth first." I'm not sure about the flat-on approach - that doesn't sound very practical, but nevertheless, this bloke is a legend whose name should be honoured alongside Einstein, Newton and other scientific bigwigs.

His final comments come on the subject of etiquette, warning the dunker that in some circles dunking is seen as somewhat uncouth - wise words from Fisher; he doesn't want his fellow dunker to be looked down upon by the non-dunking snobs of this world. He also reveals that dunking a biscuit releases ten times more of its flavour than if the biscuit is munched dry - that's a stat to throw in the face of the nonnies. I, for one, will use his scientific endeavour to better my life.

Druids

2010-08-15T04:39:00.000-07:00

Apparently, modern druids who dress up in white and hold hands at Stonehenge are unrelated to ancient Celtic druids of the Iron Age that were suppressed by the Romans - Getafix, the beardy druid from the Asterix series, encounters this suppression from the Romans as he hands out his magic potion to the Gaulish villagers. However, it seems we know very little about ancient druidism because they never wrote anything down and all reports about them are from people who didn't approve of what they did.

One thing we do perhaps know though about druidism is that our esteemed war time leader Winston Churchill was initiated into the modern druid society as a 33-year old, two years before he became Home Secretary. Pictorial evidence shows Churchill standing with a bunch of druids at Blenheim Palace on August 15th 1908 and it is a common belief that this was his ceremony. However, this photo seems to be the only thing that people base his druidism on and it could potentially be an example of a photo not really telling the whole story. He never spoke of druidism and the modern media has taught us the important and accidental lesson that we shouldn't trust them. Truth and newspapers are not a happy couple that wander through the park whispering sweet nothings to each other, but an ideological position that editors struggle to contort themselves into. Perhaps Churchill was a druid, but I don't think he brewed any magical potions for the British troops and when he became Prime Minister as a 65-year old, I'm pretty sure he'd left any hocus-pokery behind him.

Dannii Minogue

2010-08-13T08:26:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about the double i in Dannii Minogue's name and wondering why it is there and what statement it is trying to make. She was christened Danielle Jane Minogue, but at some point in her life she decided or it was decided for her that Danielle needed to be shortened - Danielle is a variant of Daniel, meaning God is my judge, and has 36 potential variants including Danette, Danyell and Danitza, but the unusually spelt Dannii is not one of them. Minogue, with her two men throwing top hats into the air on a far horizon at the end of her name, was perhaps seeking uniqueness and individuality in her choice of name alteration.

Few words go for the tricky double i combo - my research has only yielded ten and skiing, taxiing, shanghaiing and alibiing all feel a little bit dishonest because the 'ing' has made their leap into the double i hall of fame a little too easy for them. The other six words are denarii (plural of the ancient roman coin), radii (plural of radius), torii (the gateway of a Shinto shrine), genii (plural of genie), gastrocnemii (the chief muscle of the calf of the leg) and shiitake (a big old mushroom). Perhaps Dannii was attempting to align herself with these words when she changed her name: the denarii, a symbol of her wealth; radii, a symbol of her curvaceousness; torii, some sort of statement about indigenous Japanese religion; genii, symbolic of her magical ability to light up a stage; gastrocnemii, a symbol of her athletic ability and shiitake, a nod to her favourite type of mushroom. Hawaii and Wii, whilst not being words in the dictionary and not admissible in a game of Scrabble, also boast a double i.

Whatever her reasons, I hope Dannii puts her double ii to good use and bashes Louis Walsh over the head with them next time he utters nonsense (the next time he opens his mouth) on X-Factor.

Dog Poo

2010-08-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

My experiences with dog poo have been entirely negative. I have regularly been inconvenienced by someone else's negligence and been forced to go through the process of extracting dog poo from the sole of my trainer with a thin stick. Why do trainers always have such intricate patterns on the sole, making this task infinitely more difficult than it needs to be? By far my worst experience of dog poo I have endured is when my hand plunged into a warm sticky mound of the stuff after a hefty tackle on a football pitch. With no water to cleanse my hand I had to do my best with a grassy hand rub before trying to keep my hand as far away from my nose as possible for the rest of the game.

I wonder what percentage of dog owners relieve the rest of us of their pet's waste. The percentage in my road is surely pretty low - I pretty much have to perform a hopscotch down the road to escape faeces-free and when I am pushing a bulky three-wheel buggy down the street my odds of completely the obstacle course of poo decrease dramatically.

Poole Council have had enough of this scourge on their streets - they no longer want the nickname Pooey Poole (they haven't really got that, I just made it up) and they have come up with an odd and quite likely ineffective way of battling the polythene bagless brutes. They have decided to spray-paint dog poo bright green. Shaun Robson, head of environmental services says, "We hope the paint will help highlight the size of the problem [it will literally do that] and change people's behaviour." The painted poo will sit there as a statement for a week before being removed. Poole Council assure the public that pavement poo will be dealt with and their experiment will be limited to poo on grass verges and the like which makes their choice of green paint a slightly odd one. Surely a lemon yellow or ocean blue would stand out better against the green grass.

This council policy has created political discussion through their actions in Poole with the Conservatives, who have long been the most popular party in the area, receiving criticism from the Liberal Democrats for their "bizarre" way of dealing with the problem. Poole residents have also had their say about the issue on the Bournemouth Echo website. Bourne Free says, "I hope the seagulls don't think they are large caterpillars" while EGHH, in response to the fact that this is a waste of people's council tax, says, "They could sell it to the Tate Modern". Hmm... I just hope I don't have a repeat of the hand-to-poo scenario this football season.

Dan Reeves

2010-08-11T05:29:00.000-07:00

It was an ordinary summers day in the middle of a six-week holiday. I'd read a couple of chapters of some book or another, cooked myself a sausage sandwich and now I was off out to play Dan Reeves at squash. Little did I know that this would be my last time on a squash court, perhaps ever. A few days earlier Reeves had beaten me by the embarrassing scoreline of nine games to nil. His unfair playing of other opponents in preparation of our match meant that my playing partner who was fairly equal in a talent to me had accelerated far beyond my feeble skill level. I seethed as I walked sweatily from the court. His puppyish bounding excitement infuriated me and when he rubbed my nostrils in the pungent stench of his victory by phoning someone to boast my temper boiled over and I emptied my water bottle into his groinal region. The leisure centre manager walked in seconds later and I had to explain that I had been beaten by the gangly wet one and apologise for causing a dangerous dampness to the floor.

This game would not be a repeat of the former embarrassment: I had a teeth-clenching determination that his superior skill would struggle to overcome my tireless determination. The match started well enough. I won a game, which already meant that I had done better than the recent encounter, and then I had lost a game. The scores stood even as we entered game three at one game apiece - we proceeded to match in this game and the score stood at 3-3. My hand was dripping with sweat and my desire for victory in a sporting arena had rarely been higher as drew my racket sharply back to send a backhand crashing into the wall. As my racket went back I knew I made contact with more than just air, but I completed my shot to ensure that the point was won.

I turned to find Reeves having some kind of fit on the floor. I was pretty scared as he gyrated like gerbil who'd stumbled into an electric fence. He finally lay still and started to groan and I saw that blood was pouring from his nose. I went to grab him some tissues (and my camera - this moment needed recording) and returned. Once I made sure he wasn't going to spasm again and had taken a quick photo I went to get help. The manager came to our assistance and I couldn't resist the wisecrack, "He was beating me again" even though this wasn't actually true - I had just taken the lead. The floor was mopped up and Reeves seen to and I picked up my racket ready to resume, but reluctant Reeves resigned from the match and handed me a hollow (although I grabbed it with both hands) victory.

It turned out I had hit him so hard that I'd collapsed the middle bit of his nose - the septal cartilage (the bit that separates the two nostrils). It was now lying in one of his nostrils and stopping oxygen flow; he had to have surgery to have it reconstructed and take quite a bit of time off work. We both agreed that whilst this was inconvenient, at least it made a good story to tell and here it is: told. What was he doing so close to me anyway?

Dorothy Height

2010-08-10T06:34:00.001-07:00

I have realised that my bloggeration has been somewhat male-centred so far. Fourteen of my 63 posts so far have had the name of a man (or a couple of men) at the top whilst only one has had the name of a woman: Gillian Duffy (you remember, the lady that Gordon Brown labeled a bigot before a quick retraction). I have had ignored the Danielles, the Dianas, the Denises, the Delias, the Deidres, the Dawns, the Daisys, the Delilahs, the Daphnes and the Dorothys. This post is a shift from the male-dominated direction that my blog has been driving in as I pause to take notice of a woman worthy of notice.

Dorothy Height was born in 1912, an African-American woman born into a racist American society that wouldn't see the Civil Rights Act for another 52 years. As a child her colour was used to prevent her using a swimming pool; as a young adult she was refused admittance to Barnard College because they had already used up their two token places for black students. Frustrated and angered by injustice, she didn't let this stand in the way of her achieving academic success. In her early 30s she met a 15-year old Martin Luther King. At the time she had no idea what King would become and what his name would come to stand for, but as the years passed and as she worked tirelessly alongside him barriers of inequality towards African-Americans and women were slowly broken down.

Unlike King she lived to see America turn from a place that treated African-Americans as second class citizens to a nation led by an African-American man. In April this year, at the age of 98, Height died. At her funeral Barrack Obama stood and paid tribute to a woman he said "deserves a place [in the history books]. She never cared about who got the credit. What she cared about was the cause: the cause of justice; the cause of equality; the cause of opportunity: freedom's cause."

A selfless woman who fights for equality against the odds is truly a great woman. Her own words attest to this: "Greatness is not measured by what a man or woman accomplishes, but by the opposition he or she has overcome to reach their goals". Her words on the progress we have made and the battles still to fight held true in 1964 and still hold true in 2010: "We have come a long way, but too many are not better off". Men and women like Dorothy are all too scarce.

Dangerous Dampness

2010-08-10T00:39:00.000-07:00

The word dampness holds certain negative connotations, but when combined with the word dangerous, it takes on a far more sinister tone. Here is my top ten of dampnesses that are unpleasant, annoying and occasionally dangerous.

1. Wet Door Handles

When you reach for a door handle and find that it has unknown moisture attached to it, this is extremely distressing. This is often the case with bathroom doors and whilst you could return back into the bathroom to rewash your hands, you would then have to manipulate yourself back out without using the damp door handle to make this a worthwhile exercise.

2. Falling Asleep with a Guinea Pig on Your Lap

My guinea pig Brian is now dead, but he regularly used to join me to read a bit of Dickens while reclining on the sofa. Inevitably I would slip into slumber and Brian's warning squeals that a toilet break was needed would go unheard to my sleepy ears and a nasty yellow stain would result.

3. Gutter Puddles

It is one of life's great joys to drive fast through a puddle and soak a pedestrian, but if you are the pavement stroller, it is not such a joyous occasion.

4. Socks on Damp Grass

It is a gamble never worth taking to venture into the garden with just a pair of socks in the false hope that the grass will be dry. It never is.

5. Spilt and Invisible Water on the Floor

My stride around the school corridors in term-time is often a quick one, but on a couple of occasions I have slid one-footed inelegantly across the floor to chuckles of glee from watching teenagers. I have, so far, always stayed on my feet unlike some of my colleagues, but my day will come if I persist in speedy strolling.

6. Overfull Nappies

A story being read to one of my twins is a pleasant experience on the whole even if the literature leaves a little to be desired, but if I have been negligent in my nappy watchfulness, then the pressure of full nappy on knee can produce a slightly smelly damp circle.

7. Inaccuracy

I will not go into detail with this one, but a visit to the toilet, a momentarily lapse of attention, damp trousers - you get the idea.

8. Drink Spillage

I am a serial drink spiller and it always seems to be a full container across an inappropriate surface. Just this week I have spilled a glass of wine, poured just a minute before, all over the in-law's tablecloth. My worst spillage was a pint of Ribena over our new cream carpet which didn't make me particularly popular.

9. Over-eager Clothes Collection from the Washing Line Resulting in Damp Pockets

When you're desperate to wear a certain pair of trousers for a particular occasion, they always seem to demand a time-bending washing process before they are ready to adorn your legs. My impatience has often lead to the horrible feeling of damp undried pockets.

10. Damp Glasses

When you're young, you think nothing of getting wet. As an adult it seems a threat that prevents even leaving the house and perhaps my feelings have something to do with the blindness incurred by windscreen-wiperless glasses that I didn't have to wear as a child.

David Ngog

2010-08-09T11:31:00.000-07:00

Growing up I always had a favourite footballer. When I got my Panini sticker album in the spring of 1989, the beaming smile of John Barnes shone out of one of my first packets and Liverpool and Barnes were adopted as my team and player of choice. Barnes' brilliance seems to be forgotten thing with his portly belly, inability to be a lucid pundit and even greater inability to manage a football team now being what he is known for. But, in the late 80s when Liverpool were the greatest team in Britain, Barnes was the greatest player in Britain. Everything Liverpool did went through Barnes in the same way everything Manchester United did went for Ronaldo a couple of seasons back.

After injury, weight-gain and retirement Robbie Fowler became my new favourite. His five goal haul against Fulham early in his career grabbed my attention and imagination. This was followed by an incredible four and half minute hat-trick against Arsenal; I was listening to the game on my personal stereo on a family car journey to Devon and my dad refused to believe my repeated claims that Robbie had scored again. Sadly, Robbie went much the same way as Barnes with injury and weight-gain hampering his ability to thrill the crowds. I still follow his progress: he made his debut for Australian A-League side Perth Glory on Friday, but he failed to find the net in a 3-3 draw and I fear the magic of Fowler is something that rarely flickers any longer.

Last season was the first season I didn't have a favourite player playing in England. I had to rely on early Saturday morning internet sessions following Fowler's progress and that is no way to your life. So, this season I have chosen a new favourite player: David Ngog. He fits the bill perfectly: his first name begins with D - in fact he shares my first name; he plays for Liverpool, and he's a striker, so the glory days are sure to come. On Sunday 23rd of May I wrote 'Davids: An Ode to England Internationals Called David in the Last Twenty Years'. There were many greats: Beckham, Seaman, Platt, James and er... Batty. The poem ended with a line questioning whether he (David James) could, "be the second David to grasp the Jules Rimet in his paws". The World Cup ended horribly and sourly for England and the giant-haired stopper got his fingers nowhere near the World Cup, but whilst it was a disaster for this David, it was actually a triumph for Davids in general as rather than one David joining Trezeguet in the list of Davids to have won the World Cup, two did: David Villa and David Silva. If this is not proof that it is the year for Davids to walk onto football pitches with their heads held high, then what is? David Villa outshone his striking partner Fernando Torres by a considerable margin and it is my belief that Ngog will do exactly that for Liverpool this season. Would anyone like a wager that Ngog will outscore the once-mighty El Nino? Beware, Ngog is already 3-0 up having scored three in two games against Europa opponents Rabotnicki.

This wonderful news for footballing Davids will gladden the hearts of the other eleven Davids plying their trade in the Premiership: Dunn and Hoilett (Blackburn Rovers), Elm and Stockdale (Fulham), Kitson (Stoke), Healy and Meyler (Sunderland), Bentley (Spurs), Edwards and Jones (Wolves) and Silva (Man City), but more than that it gladdens my heart as I too will return to regular footballing action this year. My team CCK (Church of Christ King) have only rarely called on my services of late for the main reason that I'm not really as good as most of the other players, but this year a second team has been launched and I anticipate far more action. In fact I would go as far as to say that I anticipate scoring more goals than Fernando Torres myself this season. You might think that sounds like a foolish boast from someone who has never scored more than six goals in a season and you would probably be right, but my fierce fervour for success of Davids taking the field of play knows nothing of the bounds of realism. Let's bring back the days when a team of Davids would have Beckham and Ginola supplying wonderful balls onto the head of Hirst; when a moustachioed Seaman would keep the goal safe from players with inferior names; when the Everton trio of Watson, Unsworth and Weir would crush opponents' hearts between their bare teeth. David Ngog, Davids everywhere, your time has come.

Dr Zeuss

2010-08-08T05:05:00.001-07:00

My wife Helen went to a car boot sale this morning and returned with a miniature table and chair set, a toy aeroplane, a plastic wheelbarrow and a fistful of books including Dr Zeuss' debut work, The Cat in the Hat, released an incredible 53 years ago. Reading it to a book-hungry Jarvis has inspired me to imitate his work and create my own fast-paced rhyming narrative about an animal in an item of clothing. Protagonist options include the Macaque in the Anorak, the Fly in the Tie, the Rat in the Cravat, but I have settled for the Goat in the Coat.

Here goes:

The evening arrived and

The sun said goodbye.

"It's bedtime," was heard as

The moon rose in the sky.

The news was unwelcome;

Wide-eyed Ned wore a frown.

Jarvis hid his dismay

But he still felt quite down.

Once tucked up in bed,

The lights were turned out.

Misery flooded the room;

Fun was no longer about.

A dull night of nothing

Was all that lay ahead.

As the boys lay there

Sleepless bored and in bed.

Then rat-a-tat-tat

Was heard at the door.

Were they dreaming?

No, this was real, for sure.

Then in burst a goat

Wearing a crimson fur coat;

Clearing his voice

He uttered from his throat,

"I'm fantastically brilliant

I'm the Goat in the Coat,

I'm the best in the business,

Though I don't like to gloat.

I'm here to take you

For a night on a boat

Battling sea monsters

While bobbing along afloat."

Ned looked at Jarvis

And Jarvis looked at Ned.

Indecision was brief;

They jumped out of bed.

The Goat in the Coat

Had a strong notion

That nights weren't for sleep -

He led them to the ocean

Where they jumped in the boat

And sailed out to sea.

This was probably wreckless

I'm sure you'll agree.

No health and safety would let

Two toddlers in a boat

In the middle of the channel,

Their guardian, a goat.

The Goat in a Coat said,

"There's a battle to fight"

Ned looked a bit nervous.

The words gave Jar a fright.

Then out of the water

A scaly green monster rose.

It had deadly sharp claws

And shot bullets from its nose.

The twins were shocked

And momentarily froze.

The Goat in the Coat

Gave Jarvis an spear.

And Ned got an axe

He said, "There's nothing to fear".

Ned hacked at the monster's

Gargantuan neck.

Jarvis threw the spear skywards

From the tiny deck.

While the monster's flailing limbs

Threatened a wreck.

The spear hurtled up

Then hung in the sky

Then rushed downwards

Into the monster's eye.

Ned spotted his chance

And sent the axe through

The last few neck tendons.

The blood that spurted was blue.

Victory was theirs.

The Goat gave a cheer

And then said, "Oh no,

Morning is near".

He grabbed the oars

And paddled like crazy.

The sky was lightening,

Turning greyish and hazy.

The Goat in the Coat

Rushed the boys home

And said, "I'll be back

After my holiday in Rome."

And as the goat fled

With a clickety-clack

Mum and Dad arose

From their slumbersome sack.

"Good morning," Mum said

"Have you boys slept well?"

They looked at each other

And knew they never would tell.

Destiny

2010-08-07T05:29:00.000-07:00

Destiny, hold my hand, protect me from this world

And fly me to a past not far away

Where fireflies and the stars in the sky

Coax the shadows back to let

You concentrate on your neverthought.

Funny what you find in your mixed up mind

At two o'clock by the fountain down the road.

Today it all feels fine, but

Today will always be tomorrow

And I love you all the same.

I complied this poem from ten lines from ten songs from ten of my favourite bands. I am partially happy with it. Being constricted to other people's words is both freeing and inhibiting at the same time. If I had limitless time, this could make for an interesting project, but I will leave it at that for now. How many bands and songs do you recognise? They are all from songs released between 1993-2003, the era when CDs sponged by wallet dry.

Dinner

2010-08-06T12:42:00.001-07:00

I was struggling to see what direction I could take the subject of dinner in. My dinner times are made up of stuffing food quickly into my face while saying: "Ned/Jarvis, throwing spaghetti at the windows is not a good way to show appreciation to the chef". My helpful advice is giggled at and I am forced into confiscating bowls until the game of spaghetti lasso has quelled.

This repetitive dinner time one-way conversation is not everyone's dinner time experience, so tonight I texted ten of my friends asking them the simple question, "What did you have for dinner?" Some of my friends I hadn't seen or spoken to in quite a while (over a year in some cases) and they may have been perplexed by the question. The text was sent an hour ago and so far six have responded. This is how:

Person One:

Them: Tomato soup. Watching the Norwich game? Me and Molly are there.

Me: I'm watching Question of Sport at the moment, but I might flick over later. I'm at Leicester vs Macclesfield on Wednesday.

Person Two:

Them: Diced donkey and doughnuts. Not really, curry I believe, but we haven't had it yet.

Person Three:

Them: A carvery roast........ [that is an excessive amount of dottage; you should really stick to three dots] Why?

Me: Tasty. Just a little survey I am doing for the purpose of writing a blog entry. I'm back on Thursday if you still have the balls [some footballs that he has offered to donate to my football team].

Them: Cool, yes mate I do still have the balls. Gimme a shout when ya free.

Person Four:

Them: Hmmm, I'm guessing you didn't mean to send that to me, but if you're interested I had pizza :)

Them [again]: Ah no, I get it, things beginning with d :) how's things anyway.

Me: Tres good Signor John. We should have a beer soon. I'm away at the moment, but return on Thursday.

Them: Sounds like a plan, it's been a year since our last one. Maybe you guys could come round one night for curry.

Me: Give us a date when you're up for it and we'll see if we can get a sitter.

Them: Ok cool, will have a chat with the missus and get back to you :)

Person Five:

Them: Erm... [much more appropriate dottage] Spaghetti and meatballs. You?

Me: Pasta carbonara

Them: Am I missing something?

Me: No

Them: That's alright then.

Person Six:

Them: Why do you want 2 know buddy? Pizza! What did you have?

Me: Pasta carbonara. I'm just taking an interest in your life.

Them: Thx bro. I just sat on da loo and past da pizza if you want 2 know more about my life! Hope you having a good time.

Me: My real reason is for a blog entry. I'm going to include your text if that is okay but I'll keep you anonymous.

Them: Weird!

A range of meals were had and pizza was the only replica. Meals came from a range of cultures: three Italian, one Indian, one British and one Peruvian (apparently that's where tomato soup originated). What was more interesting though was the range of ways in which people responded. Two guessed at my intentions and three questioned my intentions. Only one person could just take the question at face value and leave it at that and that should be commended. Do we have to have a reason to ask each other fairly meaningless questions? I also enjoyed the opportunity people took to give me extra information such as what they were doing that evening although I didn't really need to know about someone's toileting. The invitation to dinner was also a rather pleasant by-product of the initial text. This sharing of information with each other is, in my opinion, a beautiful and wonderful thing. Details, seemingly irrelevant, help me to feel slightly closer to people and this moment on digital text exchange has been a mildly enriching experience.

Dave Gorman

2010-08-06T02:35:00.001-07:00

I sat down the other night to watch 'Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure'. A googlewhack is two words that when put into Google produce just one result. 'Atherall ignoramus' is a googlewhack because it produces just one result: a website giving the Victorian history of Bedford. Under Gorman's rules this would in fact not count because Atherall is not in the Google dictionary, but you get the idea. Gorman's task, administered to him by another man called Dave Gorman who he met when he was trying to find lots of people with the same name as him, is to find two googlewhack websites and contact the creators of these website who he then visits. The visitee then has to find two googlewhacks of their own and Dave contacts the the new googlewhacks and they are set the same task. Completion of the task comes when he has met and visited ten consecutive googlewhacks in the same chain before he turns 32.

The show tells the story of whether he was successful in his strange quest. I enjoyed the show, not because it was funny although it sometimes was, but because the odd quest captured my imagination. My quest to find a live badger and my following of the letter D through the World Cup were similarly obsessive oddities. Tim De Marco, reader of this blog, commented that yesterday's decision analysis was a Gormanesque thing to do, little-knowing that the night before I had been watched the bearded fellow perform his show, and even though the idea had formed pre-watching I guess the watching propelled me more energetically towards my task.

I had a look at his blog before penning my own and found that Gorman is currently presenting darts for Bravo. He has also been attempting to hone his own darting ability and has earned himself the darts name: Dave "The Badger" Gorman. He has his own shirt (pictured) which I am very jealous of. Apparently the badger nickname comes not from an affection for badgers, but for a similarity in darting ability between Gorman and the striped mammals. Surely very few animals, other than perhaps the orangutan, are any good at darts. I may locate my own set of darts, throw them until my skill levels match the days when I was jobless and able to spend hours lobbing the tiny spears and then purchase for myself a furry orange shirt with Dave "The Orangutan" Atherall emblazoned across the back. The word "may" is perhaps slightly misleading in the previous sentence.

I've just noticed that my quoting of the googlewhack 'Atherall ignoramus' has made it no longer a googlewhack. If you type 'Atherall ignoramus' into Google, you also get this website and that makes me look like a bit of an ignoramus.

Decisions

2010-08-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

I have been on a brief sojourn in Frome of late before moving onto Leicester earlier today. Whilst in Frome I went to visit the Wriglesworths: Nathan, Helen and Anna, who were staying in nearby Bath. We spent the afternoon chatting - Nathan and I squeezed in as much football conversation as we legitimately could - and one of the (non-football related) topics that came up was decisions. It was in light of this blog that our conversation veered that way. We wondered how many decisions were made in a day and Nathan confessed that he had made the decision to allow himself to get wet by walking under the overhanging dripping bushes and not pushing me into the road to relieve him of this nuisance. I questioned whether this really was a decision as there was no real likelihood of him actually pushing me into the road; decisions were surely choices between two legitimate choices of action. I had actually chosen to walk on the left of him, which just happened to be drier, as my left ear was partially blocked and I wanted to give him my right ear so that I didn't mishear him: that is surely a more legitimate decision. We got onto the subject of how many decisions in a day we make that are selfish in comparison to selfless and he told me an anecdote about someone who always took the biggest slice of cake and I realised that I often shamefully do that.

At the end of the discussion I decided that I would commit a day to analysing my own decisions and see what information I could garner from such a task, so today I kept a piece of paper in my pocket and noted down every legitimate conscious decision I made. I ignored illegitimate decisions such as the fact that I chose not to murder anyone, run through the streets naked or make a guitar out of a giraffe's intestines: these are courses of action that I would never have taken. I obviously missed lots out and had to be careful not to drive my wife Helen insane by producing a scrappy piece of paper every thirty seconds.

The eventual crumpled list had 75 decisions I had throughout the day. I won't share them all, but here are a few highlights:

Decision 2: To change Ned's nappy or to leave it to Helen.

Decision 7: To apply wax to my hair or to leave it au naturel.

Decision 16: To investigate the pooey manure smell coming from the boot of my car or not to bother.

Decision 25: To wipe my hands on my jeans after washing them or to use the Dyson Airblade available in the public toilet.

Decision 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46 and 47: To pick up Jarvis' soft toy bear that he had thrown from his car seat and then moaned about not having or to leave it lying on the floor.

Decision 45: To choose a CD of my own choice to play on the car journey or to allow Helen to choose the CD.

Decision 59 and 70: To gamble on no one entering while I went to the toilet at my in-laws or to go and find the key so as to ensure I was uninterrupted.

Decision 63: To change channel from the Welsh language channel at my in-laws' house or to leave it on.

As you can see from this selection I had a very complicated day. My analytical approach is to investigate whether my decisions were largely selfish or selfless. My unbiased analysis reckons that 27 of my decisions were neither (things like what t-shirt to wear), 15 were selfish (such as reading the paper rather than playing with my boys) and 33 were selfless (such as changing a catastrophe of a nappy). However, 19 of these selfless acts were the repetitive task of picking up toys that the boys kept throwing to the floor whilst sitting in their car seats and although the awkward position that I had to force my back into to retrieve the soft toy bear and tiger was mildly uncomfortable, essentially this was a sort of selfish decision because if I had not picked them up I would have had two screaming one year olds in the back seat of the car on a three hour journey and that would have been considerably worse, so I shall discount these from my list leaving me with just 14 selfless acts and to be honest these could probably be analysed similarly. So, my findings say that I was selfish 52% of the time today which I guess is not too bad although it is a frustratingly narrow defeat - decision 74 to finish the bottle of wine rather than giving it to someone else proved costly.

However, I have been too simplistic I fear because many of my decisions had a range of motives and many of my selfless decisions were partially influenced by the fact that I knew I was going to be accountable for my decisions to people who read my ramblings. For instance, decision 34 was to get Helen to take over the driving which was a largely selfish decision, but I could feel my eyes grappling for closure and the selfish decision was also a safe, sensible and in some ways selfless decision at the same time. Likewise, selfish decision 29 to quaff the Liquorice Allsorts like they were going dangerously out of date within five minutes was partially motivated by a desire to stay alert whilst in control of a vehicle - that doesn't sound so believable does it.

My study though was not useless. It was useful, if slightly annoying, to weigh up my decisions in this way because it made me examine the habitual way in which I make decisions and helped me to see selfishness in myself that I was pretty much unaware of. It was also interesting to think about the way a family makes decisions and how a lot of decisions are made for you and how a lot of the decisions you make affect more than just yourself. Thousands of decisions are made each day - I decided which car to overtake on the motorway, which child to pick up first, which bit of my dinner to leave till last and to apply a microscope to each of these would leave little time for enjoying the random direction life can often take you in, but I guess each day has a few key decisions which shape the mood and tone of the day and getting them a little bit more right can only be a good thing. I won't do this again, but I'm kind of glad that I did do it once.

Derivation

2010-08-01T05:35:00.000-07:00

Derivation in terms of linguistics is the process by which new words are formed from a root word. For example slowness, slowly, slowed and slowing are all derivatives (derived from) the word 'slow'. An affix (an extra bit) is added to the word to change the tense, mood, gender etcetera of the word. Affixes can be prefixes (bits at the beginning of the word, e.g agree to disagree), suffixes (bits at the end of the word, e.g jump to jumping) or infixes (bits in the middle of words - these are rare in English and exist mainly in slang, e.g saxophone to saxomaphone). Derivation can also occur without a change in the actual word - for example badger (noun: black and white ultra-cool animal) has an unchanging derivative: badger (verb: to repeatedly ask for something in an annoying way). In this case, it is said that a null morpheme is affixed to the root word.

Mrs Badger badgered Mr Badger about late-night badge-collecting. Badger has four derivatives (badger (verb), badgers, badgered, badgering). Surely it is time that other animals get the treatment that badgers have been so fortunate to receive and have null morphemes affixed to them. Here are some suggestions:

Crocodile (verb): to bite someone's lips when kissing.

Koala (verb): To eat without anyone else noticing.

Penguin (verb): To be the first person to wear shorts at the merest hint of sunshine.

Raccoon (adjective): to look beautiful, but smell like a dustbin.

Here they are in action:

Ralph and Cecilia's relationship seemed to be going well. Cecilia didn't mind the fact that Ralph raccooned - no one could tell in photos and Ralph ignored the fact that Cecilia crocodiled him when he only wanted a quick peck as he walked out the door. However, things took a turn for the worse when they went out for dinner on a cold January night. Ralph penguined out the door and Cecilia bit her lip, keeping silent her desire that Ralph would dress a little more smartly for the occasion. When dinner was served Cecilia koalaed it down in a literal blink of Ralph's eye and Ralph had the embarrassment of eating alone while Cecilia glanced every thirty seconds at her watch. When they got home, they were finally frank about the way they felt about each other's odd habits and that was the last conversation they ever had.

Devo

2010-07-31T11:55:00.002-07:00

May 4th 1970, Kent State University - 21 year old Gerald Casale witnessed two of his friends shot dead as they protested against America's invasion of Cambodia announced four days earlier. Casale described the day years later as "the day I stopped being a hippy". He had come to the conclusion that humanity wasn't evolving, but was in fact going backwards, de-evolving. Three years later he launched the bizarre electronic pop group Devo with his new world view the catalyst for the group's work: "We grew up in a time when hippies became hip capitalists... We saw subversion as the most successful form of change" - their music and distinctive style is certainly a subversion of something. Questions pop into my head which I'm sure Casale would be eloquent on: what exactly needs to be subverted? Can it be as simple as to say that all of humanity is moving backwards? And, if that is true then where to they fit into that de-evolution? Is their subversion a step forwards? I guess they would conclude that it is - hmm.

They're formation is a fascinating one - the creative route tragedy can take someone in is fascinating - and their influence is seen in the likes of Nirvana and Lady Gaga; Casale's services have been called upon by Foo Fighters in recent years. They released eight albums between 1978 and 1990 with 'Whip It' being their biggest hit climbing to the heady heights of 14 in the American charts. This year they have re-entered the musical arena with a new album, 20 years since their last offering: Something for Everybody has finally been compiled after they invited fans to vote for the tracks that they thought worthy of inclusion, and even if you don't buy it, which I won't and you probably won't either, they are still a band worth being aware of and having a quick look at on Youtube.

Door-to-door salesmen

2010-07-30T11:47:00.000-07:00

I have been awaiting a door-to-door salesman so that I can fulfil this D request and today,, as my boys: Jarvis and Ned battled over a small plastic goat, there was a soft rat-a-tat-tat on my plastic door. I opened it up to be greeted by a quick-speaking gentlemen who fired questions at me about my loft and the insulation of my walls which I felt obliged to answer. Cold callers don't get a single word out of me; high-street direct debit desirees get a swerving wide berth, but when you're on your doorstep, there's nowhere to run and a slammed door seems a little bit rude, so we discussed joists and stuff for a few minutes.

Once I'd shown myself to be thoroughly ignorant about the insulation of my house, he told me about a government law/initiative and I zoned in and out of attention before agreeing to have a bloke come and tell me whether my insulation in my loft meets government requirements or not. It's a free service, but there is obviously a desire to extract some cash from my bank balance somewhere along the line.

Immediately afterwards I felt like I'd just scored a complacent own goal in the final minute of a Cup Final - I'd failed the doorstep test and allowed myself to tricked by his official approach leading me to believe that he had something to do with government policy. I was caught off-guard because I had assumed he had come to read my electricity meter, but these are poor excuses. Once a Monday afternoon appointment had been arranged he lost all sense of formality and told me how his hands can't stop shaking because he's been riding around on the back of someone's bike all day gripping their saddle. I wondered whether my wife could provide him physio services and reverse the doorstep dynamic, but I was eager to end the embarrassing emasculating process and catch the start of Igglepiggle's exploits on In the Night Garden.

Whilst I have been beaten once by the door-to-door salesman, the ultimate victory is not his yet as cash has not been exchanged and I could quite easily be out when he revisits on Monday, or I could find out whether my loft has adequate insulation - transforming the loft into an extra bedroom is a potential long-term project, so the information could in fact prove useful and the initial root around is free.

I'm searching my memory to find if I have ever been made a mug of by other door-to-door salespersons. I once opened the door wearing just a towel to find that a girl that I used to go to Sixth Form College was at the door trying to sell me Seeboard's services - we pretended we had never seen each other before (in reality she probably had no recollection of me).

Someone once tried to give me some speakers, but that wasn't at the door; it was when I was walking along Western Road in Brighton. They were offering them to me free of charge out of the back of a van and were rather annoyed that I didn't want them, but I didn't want to carry speakers round with me on a night out and it seemed an extremely dodgy situation.

I once got given a pair of Y-fronts in a club - it sounds a bit dodgy, but it wasn't - the bloke was giving away pants willy-nilly (that is perhaps an unwise choice of vocabulary) and they bore a logo advertising something or other. How many people did he think would see my pants? I guess my washing line was overlooked by a few houses and once in fact I had a jumper stolen from my off of it. A couple of days after the item had gone missing I saw a girl who was friends with my next door neighbours wearing my jumper. I accused her of the theft and she denied it and then we were stuck in a bit of a stalemate. I couldn't wrestle it from and her refusal to acknowledge the theft meant that conversationally we were at a standstill and I had to walk away and let her walk the streets in my jumper. It was most frustrating.

I guess she sort of beat me, but no door-to-door salesperson has yet got the better of me. Shall I hide on Monday?

Disturbance

2010-07-29T05:29:00.000-07:00

A fire engine sits at the end of my road,

A ladybird trapped in an ants' cul-de-sac.

A trickle of numb fear caterpillars across my stomach

As I momentarily wonder whether my belongings are on the barbecue.

Women in pyjamas scuttle from their doors

Proudly displaying their pink baggy silk trousers.

A balding man approaching forty cranes his neck

In a blue toweling dressing gown that ends worryingly mid-thigh.

The bright yellow helmets have disturbed the street's slumber,

Bare feet and bulging eyes investigate the disturbance.

The Pyjama Party has been paused by these oleander aphids

Who have come careering into our habitat at five to twelve.

My interest in the matter dwindles when I see that my anthill isn't scorched

And as I rest my antennas, the ladybird backs beeping away

And the street rests its many legs beneath the grey hazy sky.

Dictatorships

2010-07-27T04:38:00.000-07:00

Now that the summer is here and the demands of teaching lessons, marking essays and wearing trousers are no longer upon me, I am able to pick up a book or two and give them some serious attention. With the boys spending the morning in nursery, I sat in the bath and read some of Russell Brand's Irons in the Fire followed by some of J.M Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year. The first book follows West Ham United's 2006-07 season, which included the double-signing of Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano; the takeover of the club by Eggert Magnusson and a last day victory at Old Trafford to ensure their Premiership survival. The second book, so far, is split into two narratives: one is the writings and complainings of an academic about what is wrong with the world and the other is his diary which has so far included him meeting a beautiful girl and employing her as his secretary. Every page is split into two halves with the top half an academic discussion and the bottom half his personal diary.

Coetzee is a master at reinventing the novel format. I first came across him in my first year at university when I partially enjoyed his novel Disgrace which won the Booker Prize in 1999. It was his autobiographical trilogy Boyhood: A Memoir, Youth and Summertime that really captivated me though. The last, Summertime, discusses Coetzee's life from the perspective of a third person interviewing people who have known Coetzee at various points in his life after he has died. The people he interviews are blunt and honest and it allows Coetzee to be hugely critical of his own life in a way that very few autobiographers are.

I have barely touched the heading at the top of this page yet, so I must press on: the theme of dictators arose in one of the opening chapters of Diary of a Bad Year. In the academic discussion topping the page, Coetzee discusses the nature of democracy in relation to dictatorships, claiming that their is little freedom in either. Dictatorships demand that you follow Person A and democracy forces you to choose between Person A and Person B when the reality for most people is that they want neither or a little bit of both. In both scenarios people are led by people that they don't really want to lead by and they have no choice about that. He criticises the fact that political debate doesn't take place outside of politics, meaning that people who don't agree with the two main parties don't get to have their voice heard. I can see where he is coming from, but I think he ignores the fact that people surely do have more power in a democracy because if the person in charge keeps doing things that the majority of people disagree with, then they are likely to lose power the next time an election comes round, whereas with a dictatorship, the dictator is pretty much free to do whatever they want because there are few consequences, although a deeply despised dictator may find themselves disposed.

His discussions branched out towards religion and it got me thinking about the relationship between democracy and religion. A faith in a religion will put what that religion says above what the democratically elected person says although a lot of people who don't align themselves with a particular religion will have strong convictions that they will stick to regardless of what a law demands of them - I guess whatever world view we hold is a sort of religion. God is not elected to the position of God, so in some ways he could be accused of being a dictator, but from a Christian perspective God gives us free will to follow him or not making it clear that our destinies are dependent upon this choice as all of our choices have consequences of some kind. This freedom is a key distinction. There's also the fact that Christianity is not about laws, but about a relationship whereas governing a country is about maintaining stability, order and that sort of thing, so the aim is completely different.

I guess my conclusion is that democracy is limited, but is certainly distinctive from dictatorships. However, I also concede Coetzee's point that forced democracy is probably not always the wisest step forward - surely it needs to be discovered, not demanded.

Dead Rabbit

2010-07-26T03:20:00.000-07:00

The Ballad of Bootylicious

A £20 price tag sat on her head.

She felt like an undesirable loaf of bread.

People walked by choosing others instead.

She started to dread the lonely years ahead,

Then in I walked with a purplish note;

I noticed her beautiful patchwork brown coat;

Her ears hung low, on her I would dote,

So I emptied my wallet and gave her my vote.

Her sexy wiggle meant she was christened Bootylicious

And for a while she lived with Brian* before she got a bit vicious.

The interbreed abode was perhaps not so judicious;

She was banished to her hutch where her life became repetitious.

She drank water and hopped gaily in the grass.

Her 3-60 jumps were truly world class.

Trying to catch her was tricky; she was always quite fast,

But she always made me feel special when she wiggled her ass.

Things seemed so perfect; it seemed that nothing could afflict,

But our happiness was in danger; we were about to be tricked

By a roguish thief - while on holiday she was nicked

From our garden by a lapin-loving convict.

We searched and we searched and I lost all hope

When a boy down the road said he'd seen her on the slope

Of the park in a box and I ceased to mope

And went to his house which stunk of dope.

His mum said she'd sent her off to the RSPCA.

I sat waiting for opening time the very next day

And as I entered there she sat saying, "I've not been astray,

I was petnapped and I thought my life had turned grey,

But now you're here and we're reunited,

I can barely control myself, I'm so excited."

She gave a joyful little hop and I invited

Her home and our relationship was reignited.

Three years passed and she started to get old.

I worried that the winter would prove deathly cold.

Her golf ball sized poos were something to behold.

They stuck to her behind, glistening like gold.

I went on holiday last week and disaster would come.

Maggots attacked her beautiful bum.

It was sad to see what her wiggle had become.

The vet gave me some medicine but she still looked quite glum.

This morning I got her out of her bed

To return to the vet and when we got there he said,

"For nineteen quid I will inject her in the head,"

And now sadly, Bootylicious is no more - she's dead.

* Brian is a guinea pig who briefly shared a hutch with Bootylicious, but they kept biting each other and had to be separated.

Dialectics

2010-07-25T11:27:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to get my head around dialectics in order to deliver you (my reader) with a clear, amusing and educational five minutes diversionary reading, but I fear that this subject is one of those subjects that won't jump into my brain properly; every time I think I have squeezed some sort of understanding between my ears, another bit of understanding pings away like a grasshopper whose just been tickled on the behind by a curious finger. Retaining this information feels a bit like attempting to carry a whole shopping-load in from the car in one go: fingers go numb from strangulation by plastic bag straps; the red wine smashes to the ground and you just know that the eggs have failed to make the journey intact. That kind of chaos went on in my brain during every Science lesson at school and whilst in the past I would have walked from the battle bloodied and beaten, this time I will fly the flag of victory above my brain and leave you confuzzled and no less knowledgeable than you were when you started reading my ramblings.

Okay, dialectics is a type of argument where you attempt to arrive at the truth by the exchange of logical yet opposing arguments. It's been developed over time by the likes of Plato, who didn't like the sophists who took pride in their ability to make nonsense sound true, Georg Hegel, a 19th century German philosopher, and the big-bearded Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who were also German philosophers, but they disagreed with Hegel on a number of points.

There are apparently four main rules of dialectics, but one of them is controversial and not accepted by all dialecticians.

Rule One: Everything is made up of opposites - Objects need opposing forces to hold them in place apparently. The earth and the sun attempt to escape each other's company, but gravity holds them in place, thus the opposing force of gravity makes the earth-sun combo work for us. Dialectics says that this works for things like hunger as this desire leads us to eat stuff. I guess this works for things like love and hate too. Loving someone combines itself with the opposite emotion of hate in that you intensely hate harm that could come to the loved one. This in argumentative terms means that understanding the opposing argument to the one you are espousing needs to be understood and debated before you can arrive at genuine understanding. This demands a willingness and openness to listen to others.

Rule Two: Gradual change leads to turning points - This is the idea that lots of quantitative changes will end up in a qualitative change. This idea fits with politics in that lots of rule changes for the better will end with quality of life being improved in a qualitative way. This can be demonstrated in simpler ways: after you study and think for a while, you get to a point of understanding.

Rule Three: Change moves in spirals, not circles - Dialectics reckons that change doesn't move round and round in circles, but rather in spirals with some degree of change coming about after every rotation (I'm starting to confuse myself). I guess every day feels quite similar, especially when you're going to school, but after each rotation the student returns slightly different. Politics feels like it keeps going round in circles with the Labour Party passing the baton onto the Conservative Party and repeating the process a few years later, but change has occurred for better or worse on each rotation.

The Controversial Rule Four: Everything is transient and finite, existing in the medium of time - I don't quite know how this affects arguments, but it seems to me that a faith in God questions this rule, as God would not need to operate within time's constraints although I guess he might choose to do so.

In terms of coming to definitive truth in dialectical terms when in debate then, we should seek to understand the opposing opinion to our own, recognise that changes in our thinking and decisions result in changes in who we are and recognise that repetition isn't always repetition - there will always be some subtle difference.

I'm sure my understanding is flawed and I guess the one thing that seems positive about this is that it encourages people who disagree to seek understanding of each other's viewpoints. Too often unnecessary tension is created by disagreement, no more so than between people who hold different faiths. I'm a Christian and believe God exists, but I make a mistake if I don't seek to understand why and how people have come to different conclusions to the one I have, and from my very simple understanding, dialectics seems to create this safe place for debate.

Dead Badger

2010-07-16T08:41:00.000-07:00

On the Hampshire-Wiltshire border lies a sad sight, an unrecognisable mess which once stood as a proud black and white beast of the night. It is a common sight, and one I witness regularly on the way to from school each day. It is estimated that 5,000 badgers meet this fate every year and with the badger population of the UK at 25,000, that is a staggering statistic.

This particular badger though has made the news for another reason: that the council workmen commissioned to paint the double white lines along the middle of the road chose to pause at the corpse before resuming their painting. Apparently it wasn't their responsibility as part of the Hampshire County Council to remove the badger; it was the New Forest District Council's task. Badger road death is a sadly common thing, and so is the ridiculous 'not doing things because they aren't technically my responsibility' attitude. Every time I come across this attitude, which I am going to name badgerbuckling from now on, I chuckle, but also feel a little sad that we don't just do things for each other out of a furry fuzzy place in our hearts that thinks, 'why not?'

Dreams

2010-07-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

Dreams have sat waiting to be written about for a while now and they are getting impatient. The problem is I only ever remember snatches of dreams and these never seem enough to write about. Some budding writers keep a notebook by their beds and scribble down dreams throughout the night as and when they awake, because the theory is that a dream is forgotten forever if you fall back asleep. The only way to remember a dream is to give it some focused attention directly after waking. With actual dreams lacking material, I have turned to songs that feature dreams and come up with a top seven songs involving dreams.

1. Purple Haze - Jimi Hendix

Apparently this euphoric track featuring knee-crumbling guitarmanship was inspired by a dream where Hendrix found himself wandering around under the sea in a purple mist. He only survived the engulfing purple haze through Jesus' intervention.

2. Ernold Same - Blur

This track from Blur's The Great Escape album starts with the lyrics, "Ernold Same awoke from the same dream in the same bed at the same time." Blur's narrative songs were some of their best and this juxtaposition of Ernold's dream life and his dull day-to-day existence show "Poor Old Ernold's" repetitive life in post-modern monotony.

3. Daydream Believer - The Monkees

I struggle to hear this song without thinking of Peter Reid and rude lyrics, but whether it is sung by a Geordie crowd or monkeys who struggle to spell, it is a fantastic song.

4. California Dreaming - Mammas and Poppas

The Beach Boys are the perfect summer time band and whilst delving into who they really were reveals some slightly odd truths, their music stands for innocent and utter summer joy.

5. Gone the Dream - Ash

Ash's big nonsense rock numbers are what I really love them for, but Gone the Dream is a listenable quieter track.

6. Number 9 Dream - The Beatles

This is actually a pretty appalling track, but the fact that it nestles in the Beatles' untitled album dubbed The White Album somehow makes it fascinating as you wonder what was wandering through John Lennon's dreamworld that night.

7. Dreams - The Everly Brothers

This is the first song that comes to mind when I think of dreams. The cooing repetitive "Dre-ee-ee-ee-eams" lulls the listener into bliss or perhaps rage.

D Engraved on the Jules Rimet

2010-07-11T14:40:00.000-07:00

The Letter D 1 (Forlan 51) The Letter V 0

The D Team: Diego Godin, Dennis Aogo, Diego Lugano, Diego Perez, Nigel De Jong, Dirk Kuyt, Diego Forlan.

The Letter D lifted The Alphabet World Cup after a narrow victory over The Letter V. The dangerous strike partnership of Robin Van Persie and the traitorous David Villa was predicted to be too much for the D defence, but it proved not to be the case. It was thought that V would be for victory after 90 minutes, but the V team's tactics meant that violence was a more appropriate word for the brutal manner in which the likes of Van Der Wiel, Van Bronckhorst, Van Bommel and Van Persie conducted themselves - they all found themselves in the referee's notebook for naughtiness.

The first half was a full of crunching challenges mainly inflicted on the D team while they attempted to play their beautiful brand of total football. They weren't entirely innocent though, with Dennis Aogo crunching Van Persie's leg after just four minutes and Nigel De Jong karate-kicking Rafael Van Der Vaart in the chest, both offences worthy of red cards.

It was early in the second half that The Letter D broke the deadlock when Diego Perez cut the ball back from the byline to Diego Forlan whose volley bounced into the top corner.

The Letter V were struggling to make chances, but did come close when a defensive error gifted David Villa the ball at his feet just four feet from goal, but a despairing lunge by World Cup debutant Aogo diverted the ball up and over the bar.

It was in fact The Letter D that came closest to adding to their solitary goal when Forlan bent a freekick against the crossbar deep into injury time. The final whistle brought delirious delight to The D team and their traveling fans, nicknamed dans because a lot of them bear that name. Sadly, the Alphabet World Cup has received little media interest with a handful of people following its progress because they don't have a great deal to do with their time. The ABC division of FIFA are hoping that interest will increase when the World Cup reaches Brazil in 2014.

Stepping outside of the sports journalist role for a moment, I am well pleased that my following of The Letter D through this World Cup led to them actually being the greatest footballing letter. I'll leave football bloggeration alone for a while now and concentrate on other things beginning with the letter D because I fear that I have thoroughly bored people with my odd obsession with meaningless football trivia.

Donkey Kong

2010-07-10T11:12:00.001-07:00

In 1989 my family entered the technological age when a family friend updated their Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K to an Amiga 500 and Speccy was passed down to us. It was a moment of intense excitement for the Atheralls - the box full of cassette games bearing mysterious and enticing titles such as Jetpac, Fantasy World Dizzy, Kenny Dalglish's Football Manager and Donkey Kong would occupy hours of our childhood from that moment on.

Gaming in this low-tech era demanded more patience than today's instant 'insert and play' culture. Before you grasped the joystick like your life depended upon it, you had to wait for the screechy loading process. The tapes emitted a sound not dissimilar to my sisters' ear-chastising violin playing and whilst most of the time this high-pitched squealing was normally concluded with the opportunity to play a game, this wasn't always the case with games often stuttering and stumbling to a crash just as your anticipation had reached a point of heart-thumping desperation to shoot an alien; collect a meaningless coin; purchase an exciting young striker or vault a rolling barrel. The excruciation you feel as a child having to wait for something you desperately want is like little I have experienced in my adult life. Perhaps I learnt some patience through this procedure that modern gamers know nothing of, although I'm not so sure.

Donkey Kong was not the most regular cassette to play me a discordant tune, but it was a game that featured in my childhood. The first stage, which I never made it past, put you in the position of Mario and your task was to climb various ladders whilst avoiding barrels thrown at you by a monkey called Donkey Kong. Once you reached the top, you freed Mario's girlfriend Pauline from her apish enslaver and proceeded to complete a similar task. There's a theory that Donkey Kong was originally meant to be called Monkey Kong and that a mistake in translation from Japanese to English led to the odd choice of name. Creator Shigiru Miyamoto denies this however, saying that the name was chosen to reflect the big ape's stubborn nature. That isn't the only controversy surrounding the name-choice: Universal Studios felt that Donkey Kong's name infringed on the King Kong copyright, but they failed in suing Nintendo and ended up having to pay $1.8 million in damages.

Donkey Kong and Mario have gone on to huge fame since their introduction to the gaming world in 1981 and have become figureheads for Nintendo. My Spectrum though has been stolen by my brother who gets it out now and then when he is feeling nostalgic. If you to experience the unbridled joy of early Donkey Kong, you can do so by visiting: http://www.classicgamesarcade.com/game/21595/Donkey-Kong-Classic-Game.html

D in Dreamland, T down Toilet

2010-07-08T11:22:00.000-07:00

The Letter D 1 (Forlan 41) The Letter T 0

The Letter D: Diego Godin, Diego Perez, Demy De Zeeuw, David Silva, David Villa, Diego Forlan, Dirk Kuyt.

The Alphabet World Cup is in danger of descending into farce as all four semi-final teams struggled to raise a team comprised of players whose first names or surnames begin with the appropriate letter. The Letter T were one of the worst hit and when they made the incredible decision to start with just one player, The Letter D must have thought their moment of World Cup glory had come. Piotr Trochowski was the man who carried the heavy burden of T hearts. The D team managed to field seven players and it was this numerical advantage that surely swung the tie in their favour.

However, the predicted goal-fest that the fans hoped for was not delivered. A tense first half yielded little goal-mouth action with Trochowski putting in an inspired performance to keep The Letter D at bay. His tireless running couldn't prevent Diego Forlan though, and when he found space (there was quite a lot of it) 25 yards from goal, he rasped the ball into the roof of the net.

In the second half Toni Kroos replaced the weary Trochowski and in one last desperate throw of the dice, misfiring Fernando Torres was thrust into the action to swell the T numbers to two. Torres, who has scored a whopping 56 in 79 appearances for Liverpool, couldn't match the prowess of Diego Forlan, who managed just 10 goals in his 63 appearances for Manchester United. It can only be concluded that wavy blond locks are the key to finding the net in this tournament, and Torres with his new close-cropped hazelnut brown hairdo is no match for the yellow-maned Diego.

The victory sets up a final with The Letter V, which means that David Villa who has been instrumental in The Letter D's success will be ineligible for The Letter D because surnames take priority over first names. The Letter V with Villa and the multiple Vans of the Netherlands are now firm favourites with the bookies after their 1-0 victory over The Letter H thanks to a Giovanni Van Bronckhorst thunderbolt.

Dirty Den

2010-07-06T13:44:00.001-07:00

Den before dirtyness was once a slick-haired assistant to Commander Lytton on Doctor Who named Kiston. He was based on a satellite called Riften 5 which orbited the planet Vita, 15 centuries in the future. Den's Doctor Who link wasn't forgotten when years later Lytton made a surprise time-traveling trip to Walford. He popped into the Queen Vic and mistook Den for his former assistant. I guess this isn't surprising because they are sort of the same person pretending to be someone else for the sake of a TV programme.

But this small incident only recorded in the Doctor Who magazine goes a long way to explaining Den's miraculous reappearance on Albert Square. I proffer that Den's murder in 1989 that turned out to be only an attempted murder in a terrible twist of appalling story-telling was actually a real murder and that the subsequent return of Den fourteen months later was actually a pre-1989 Den time-traveling forward to 2003. However, this explanation doesn't explain the second murder problem which would have made it difficult for Den to return to a time before 1989 to allow himself to be genuinely murdered. This can only be explained when we consider the assumed shape-shifting potential of Lytton who I reckon must of taken on the shape of the dirty one and allowed himself to sacrificially murdered in Den's place by the three angry ladies that Den had pained. This allowed Den to return to the 80s to pay the Sixth Doctor Colin Baxter the tenner he owed him and allow himself to finally meet his end and satisfy the watchdog of coherent narrative structure. Why didn't Eastenders just explain this to the audience at the time and avoid accusations of reintroducing Den just to steal viewers back off of Corrie?

Demographics of the Netherlands

2010-07-05T14:19:00.000-07:00

I am in the mood for exposing things unknown at the moment, and today I realised that my geographical knowledge, which is pretty much entirely based around football, contained a nugget of knowledge which not everyone knows. It is that Holland and the Netherlands are not the same. I always preferred the name Holland to the Netherlands as a boy, feeling that Holland matched the flamboyance of Ruud Gullit's dreadlocks whereas the Netherlands sounded oldy worldy and slightly dull, but now the same connotations don't hold for me any more. The Netherlands sounds far more romantic and enticing and not boring at all; the Netherlands holds mystery and sounds like it belongs somewhere across the sea from Narnia. It somewhere where otters talk and leopards invite you out for a stroll.

Anyway, back to the matter in hand - Holland is not the same as the Netherlands, but an area within the Netherlands. North and South Holland make up just two of the twelve provinces of the Netherlands with Drenthe, Flevoland, Friesland, Gelderland, Groningen, Limburg, North Brabant, Overijssel, Utrecht and Zeeland the other ten. These twelve haven't always made up the Netherlands though - in the early 16th century Belgium and Luxembourg were included in seventeen Netherlands. Conflict between the provinces and Spain led to the Eighty Years' War or the Dutch War of Independence and as a result a Dutch Republic emerged made up of seven provinces. It has since expanded to the twelve that make up today's Netherlands.

I am a quarter Dutch myself, but have never set foot on Dutch soil. I do, however, like to follow their World Cup process - could this year be their year? - and convince myself that if England persist in ignoring my footballing ability, then I will offer the Dutch my services, although sadly I don't qualify as neither of my parents are Ducth, I don't have a Dutch passport and I wasn't born in the Netherlands. Oh well, at least I know what they are.

Digestive Brain

2010-07-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

While driving along the A27 from Moulsecoomb to Southwick yesterday, with burbling boys in the back-seat, I found out an incredible piece of human biology which seems to be largely unknown to the masses: humans have two brains. Danny Baker was the deliverer of the information and whilst he might not be the first port of call for scientific enquiry, it seems he wasn't talking out of his second mouth, but from a position of scientific authority. We do indeed have two brains.

Brain number two, known as the enteric nervous system, finds its home in our bowels. I guess some kind of definition of what constitutes a brain is required here, and this is where I start to stutter and stumble and annoy anyone with any level of scientific knowledge. The key seems to be that a brain is a coordinating centre and our belly-brain coordinates digestion and that sort of thing, making it a brain. Sometimes it works with the main brain - for instance, butterflies fluttering in the stomach are some sort of neurotransmitter confab between the two. At other times it works independently - when we get windypops, that is brain two telling our body that the food we've recently eaten is not to be consumed again in a hurry.

This brain, that was only discovered about thirty years ago, can apparently affect our sense of well-being, and whilst brain two seems to stick mainly to sorting our peas and carrots, I wonder whether the fact that emotions seem to be felt in the stomach is something to do with our extra encephalon. Often when the English-language Bible talks of the 'heart', the actual Hebrew translation is 'guts'; the Bible writers are recognising the link between emotions and the belly. Perhaps it is time for brain two to usurp the long-held dictatorial power of brain one, or perhaps not.

D-elight for D as They Reach the Semis

2010-07-03T13:25:00.000-07:00

The Letter D 2 (Forlan 55, Villa 83) The Letter K 2 (Klose 68, 89) - The Letter D win 1-0 on penalties

The D Team: Dani Alves, Paulo Da Silva, Darlo Veron, Diego Lugano, Martin Demichelis, Angel Di Maria, Nigel De Jong, Dominic Adiyiah, Diego Perez, Diego Forlan, David Villa.

The Letter D won their second consecutive penalty shoot-out to march into the semi-finals of The Alphabet World Cup. The Letter K were always likely to be a threat with their three-pronged strike-force of Miroslav Klose, Dirk Kuyt and Kaka always likely to test the D defence.

The first half was a dull affair with both sides looking tentative and nervous of making mistakes, but after half-time orange segments, both teams returned to the field with a more adventurous spirit. The Letter D took the lead in the 55th minute when Diego Forlan sent a fizzing free-kick past the wrong-footed Richard Kingson, the jabulani flying like a pigeon on heat.

Miroslav Klose restored parity shortly afterwards with a simple finish from all of three yards before David Villa looked to have won it for the D Team when his close range finish hit both posts before nestling in the onion bag. But, Klose wasn't finished yet and his controlled close-range volley one minute from the whistle sent the tie to extra-time.

Extra-time yielded little excitement and penalties followed. An incredible inability to find the back of the net from twelve yards by almost every player meant that Diego Forlan's composed finish gave The Letter D a 1-0 victory in the shoot-out. They face The Letter T in the semi-finals who beat Players' Names Who Start and Finish with the Same Letter 1-0.

Quarter-final Results

The Letter D 2-2 The Letter K (The Letter D win 1-0 on penalties)

The Letter H 0-0 The Letter L (The Letter H win 12-11 on penalties)

The Letter T 1-0 Players' Names Who Start and Finish with the Same Letter

The Letter R 1-1 The Letter V (The Letter V win 2-1 on penalties)

Semi-final Draw

The Letter D vs The Letter T

The Letter H vs The Letter V

Dinosaurs

2010-07-02T12:24:00.000-07:00

The dinosaurs all looked up to a diplodocus

called Denzel who was a master of hocus pocus.

He'd written a spell book and in it was a chapter

about how to transform a velociraptor.

If you ate an erotic slug and whispered, "I'm a quarter Hawaiian,"

then the aggressor would instantly become a dandelion.

This drastic magic, Denzel warned, should be done in dire need.

because no one wants to be overrun by a yellow weed.

But the dinos were gobbling down slugs

to protect them from the razor-toothed thugs.

The delicate balance of the ecosystem

surely needed a little bit more wisdom

than a slug-slurping stegosaurus

singing the latest Beyonce chorus.

They were foolish, I'm sure you'll concur,

but the worst disaster had yet to occur.

Enter stage left, an illiterate triceratops called Doug

who misread ' an erotic slug' for 'a narcotic drug'.

He got high and spluttered the words

and suddenly all around were badgers, whole herds.

He looked down at his body, saw black and white stripes

and muttered, "Oh bother, oh fiddlesticks, oh cripes."

The witless herbivore had brought an end to his race

with a moment of madness, getting off his face.

And now we know it was not the Ice Age

That ushered these vertebrates off of centre stage.

It was Douglas who caused their extinction.

with a moment of stupidity worthy of distinction.

There is a message in this, that we should not meddle with magic

or we may end up with a moment quite tragic.

And now you know why badgers, not dinos are here

Or have I just had a night in on Sangria?

D Hold Nerve in Shoot-Out to Reach Quarter-finals

2010-06-29T13:17:00.001-07:00

The Letter D 2 (Donovan (pen) 63, Villa 63) The Letter G 2 (Higuain 33, Gyan 93) - The Letter D win 5-4 on penalties

The D Team: David James, Paulo Da Silva, Martin Demichelis, Daisuke Matsui, Nigel De Jong, Angel Di Maria, Clint Dempsey, Diego Perez, Landon Donovan, David Villa, Diego Forlan.

The Letter D held their nerve in the penalty shoot-out to book their place in the quarter-finals and send The Letter G back to the lonely land of gnomes, giants and grasshoppers. It was The Letter G though who started the stronger and they took the lead after a calamitous piece of defending from Paulo Da Silva. A lapse in concentration saw him present the ball to Gonzalo Higuain. The potent marksman snaffled up the present and rounded David James before popping the ball into the empty net.

The Letter D huffed and puffed, but repeatedly found themselves frustrated in front of goal until a dramatic minute 63rd minute in which they scored two goals. The first came from the penalty spot after Clint Dempsey was bundled over. Landon Donovan picked up the ball and calmly slotted the ball home, off the post. Not even sixty seconds had passed when David Villa found himself in space inside the box. His first effort was parried, but he kept his composure and flicked the ball over the prostrate keeper and off the kindly woodwork once more.

The D Team thought they were home and dry, but deep into injury time a long ball caught out the D-defence and Asomoah Gyan took advantage, out-muscling Martin Demichelis before hammering the ball beyond James.

A cagey period of extra-time ensued with both teams seemingly happy to offer up their Alphabet World Cup future to the penalty gods. Spotless spotkicks from The Letter D put Steven Gerrard in the unenviable position of having to score to keep the letter G in the competition. With James grinning like a gibbon, Gerrard's nerve failed and his weak penalty was easily palmed away by veteran Dave. The Letter K await The Letter D in the quarter-finals.

Second Round Results

The Letter D 2-2 The Letter G (The Letter D win 5-4 on penalties)

The Letter B 0-2 The Letter H

The Letter K 2-1 The Letter P

The Letter L 6-4 The Letter M

The Letter T 4-1 The Letter U

The Letter V 2-2 The Letter R (The Letter V win 2-1 on penalties)

Own Goals 0-0 Players' Names Who Start and Begin With the Same Letter (Players' Names... win 1-0 on penalties)

The Letter Y 0-2 Players' Names That Appear in the Dictionary

Quarter-final Draw

The Letter D vs The Letter K

The Letter H vs The Letter L

The Letter T vs Players' Names Who Start and Begin With the Same Letter

The Letter V vs Players' Names That Appear in the Dictionary

Duffel Coats

2010-06-29T11:25:00.000-07:00

I have owned a couple of duffel coats in my time: a nice deep green one that I wore in my early 20s and a chocolate brown one that currently hangs on my peg, but rarely gets worn because it is a little too big for me. I am not the only person to don the duffel however; many have gone before me. These are the top ten style icons that have chosen the thick Belgian wool to keep themselves warm and looking good simultaneously.

1. Paddington Bear

The Peruvian bear's decision to leave home with a battered suitcase, an outlandish hat, wellington boots and a duffel coat was controversial, especially when the wind was up, but whether Paddi wears his pale blue or deep red number, he always looks like the King of Bears who would have Winnie the Pooh in a fight any day of the week.

2. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery

The British general hit the headlines when he led his army to victory in the Battle of El Alamein in the Second World War. His distinctive duffel coat distinguished him from his troops and earned him the nickname 'Monty Coat'.

3. Michael Foot

The leader of the Labour Party between 1980-1983 received much criticism for choosing to wear his duffel coat to the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday. People thought his informality showed a lack of respect, but The Sunday Times appreciates his individualism: "Foot's duffel... represents a time when politicians weren't afraid to be themselves". In the modern era of media spin and personal stylists we may never see the duffel coat creating static electricity on Westminster coat-pegs again.

4. Liam Gallagher

Liam's apish swagger was completed by the duffel coat whipping around his knees. The Oasis frontman has recently started his own fashion label: Pretty Green Black, and the duffel coat is an expensive potential purchase.

5. Britney Spears

Britney's loose sandy-brown number is for days when she wants to communicate disaffected nonchalance to the paparazzi, which is surely a better look than desperate fragility.

6. Cheryl Cole

Cheryl's snugly-fitting pink coat has reopened the duffel-door to the modern British woman.

7. Dudley Moore

Cuddly Dudley has been known to wear a duffel beneath his unkempt mop.

8. Alex Kapranos

Lead singer and guitarist of Franz Ferdinand's chestnut brown number is perhaps an attempt to find a place for himself in the rock and roll duffel dynasty.

9. Jonathan Creek

Jonathan Creek has only ever been a programme that I will watch as a last option, but whilst the plot delivers a merely watchable hour, the duffel coat that clings to his back cements the detective's spot in the style list.

10. Bing Crosby

Duffel coated musicians are not a modern thing: Bing and Perry Como caused kerfuffles with their duffels in the 1930s and 40s.

DangerMouse

2010-06-27T05:42:00.000-07:00

Why are there so many cartoon mice on our screens? Mice are the only animal to feature twice in the Top Ten Most Famous Cartoon/Comic Characters, with Mickey coming in at number 2 and Jerry sharing 5th with his hapless pursuant Tom. Whilst these two rodents have made it on to the Celebrity A List, they are not the only mice that have enjoyed time in the limelight: Mighty Mouse, Stuart Little, Fingermouse, Itchy, Maisy, Reepicheep, Speedy Gonzales, Three Blind Mice and of course DangerMouse have all held a special place in our hearts, which is a pretty staggering achievement for an animal which is largely seen as an irritating pest. Surely no other animal has, despite being disliked by the masses, held such a position in society as the not-so humble mouse.

Troy Patterson, a movie reviewer, has a few theories on this. Firstly, he reckons that mice lend themselves to anthropomorphism. We assume that they are jaunty, fun-loving and prone to outrageous behaviour, and thus they fit well into cartoons which have larger-than-life stereotypical characters. He also reckons that they are a symbol of the misfit in society, another popular character in stories, and whilst this probably fits with the rat persona more easily, it is somewhat true of the mouse also.

DangerMouse never tempted me over to ITV, but he seems to have attracted many and become a cultural icon, and according to Troy, it is his mousiness that meant he was always likely to be a hit.

D Smash A to Reach Second Round

2010-06-26T00:10:00.000-07:00

D 4 (Defoe 22, Demichelis 77, Di Natale 81, Donovan 92) A 0

D Team: Demerit, Da Silva, Demichelis, Durica, Dempsey, Diarra, Diaby, Di Natale, Di Maria, Donovan, Defoe

The Letter D coincidentally found themselves in exactly the same position as the only team in the World Cup beginning with the letter D: Denmark. Both teams faced their rivals for qualification knowing that only a victory would ensure progress to the next round, but while the Danes stuttered and stumbled out of the competition, The Letter D comprehensively beat The Letter A, a team in disarray after star striker Nicolas Anelka was sent home for saying naughty words.

After a slow start, Jermaine Defoe settled D nerves with his volley into the roof of the net after 22 minutes. This was the striker's first start of the tournament and D fans will hope that he has cemented a place in the team for the Second Round.

While the D Team dominated possession for much of the game, it wasn't until the 77th minute that they caused finger-nails to be left alone. Martin Demichelis settled nerves when he rose high to meet a header from an inswinging corner from Angel Di Maria. The header didn't hit the back of the net, but the ball returned kindly to his feet and he smashed the ball home to send the D fans into delirium.

With A heads looked into the abyss of a first round exit, D took advantage with Antonio Di Maria popping a sumptuous lob over the goal-keeper's head in the 81st minute and Landon Donovan scoring the goal that ensured that D would finish as group winners when he finished from close range.

The Letter B's surprise 1-0 defeat to The Letter C meant that the D Team avoid top scorers of the tournament so far, The Letter H, and face the Letter G in Round Two instead, who drew all three of their group games.

Group ABCD

1. The Letter D: 6 points, +3 goal difference

2. The Letter B: 6 pts, +2 gd

3. The Letter C: 3 pts, -1 gd

4. The Letter A: 3 pts: -4 gd

The Second Round Draw

The Letter D vs The Letter G

The Letter B vs The Letter H

The Letter K vs The Letter P

The Letter L vs The Letter M

The Letter T vs The Letter U

The Letter V vs The Letter R

Own Goals vs Players' Names Who Start and Begin With the Same Letter

The Letter Y vs Players' Names Who Appear in the Dictionary

Rule Changes for the Knock-out Stages

To avoid dull 0-0 draws, now that half the players have left the tournament, first names and surnames now count towards a letter's total goals in a game. So, Diegos, Davids and Dereks now all qualify to play for The Letter D. However, a player cannot appear in two games, so the surname takes priority (David Villas would play for The Letter V if they faced The Letter D). If the match goes to penalties, the team whose players score and save the most penalties in shoot-outs will win. If this brings about a tie, then goals scored earlier in the competition will decide the game. If this is still a tie, then lots will be drawn. Players' Names Who Appear in the Dictionary also get the advantage of getting goals from players whose first names appear in the dictionary. Own Goals and Alliterative Names remain under the same constraints.

Dusty Doorknobs

2010-06-24T12:57:00.000-07:00

Dusty doorknobs

Fusty jaw-globs

Rusty floor throbs

Gusty snore-slobs

Musty bore-jobs

Deafening Shrimp

2010-06-23T15:04:00.000-07:00

I was called upon to cover a Science lesson at school today. My scientific knowledge doesn't extend beyond the D grade I achieved at GCSE and most of that knowledge (although guessing scientific words isn't really knowledge) is now forgotten. I took the Year 7 class to a computer room so that they could research hearing in the animal kingdom. Elephants have the biggest ears; starfish don't have any ears; grasshoppers have ears on their knees were some of the interesting facts that were found out, but the most interesting of facts was about an incredible little creature that I'd never heard of before: the pistol shrimp.

The shrimp, which only grows to between 1-2 inches, has a unique and utterly brilliant way of catching its prey. It snaps its claw, generating a high-speed vapour bubble (the metaphorcial bullet from its pistol claw) that generates acoustic pressure. The bubble flies through the water at 60 miles per hour and releases a sound that reaches 218 decibels which is louder than a volcano's eruption - Krakatoa registered at 180 db - and more than the human ear can sustain. This makes it the loudest animal on earth. I was expecting a trumpeting elephant or a roaring lion, not a tiny little shrimp that swims around at the bottom of the ocean. The purpose of this aquatic racket is to kill small edible fish who cannot handle the pressure level created by the sound. The amazing facts about Shrimpy don't stop there though: when the bubble collapses it reaches temperatures of 4,700 degrees centigrade. The surface of the sun is estimated to be around 5,500 degrees, so this is pretty hot stuff. Fortunately this super-powered fish seems to pose no danger to humans although I wouldn't be too keen on going for a swim with one.

D Humbled by The Letter B

2010-06-21T14:30:00.000-07:00

Scroll down a bit and you'll see that The Letter D made an impressive start to The Alphabet World Cup, defeating The Letter C 2-1. I have been following the World Cup from two perspectives, one as an obsessive football fan and the second as a studier of surnames. After each round of games I complete a fixture list, adding up the goals scored by each letter and seeing how they get on against each other. These last few days, The Letter D have been involved in a pulsating clash. Here's what happened:

The Letter D 2 (Donovan 48, Drogba 79) The Letter B 4 (Birsa 13, Bendtner 33, Blanco 79 (pen), Bradley 82)

The D Team: Dikgacoi, Di Maria, Demel, Danny, Diaby, De Jong, Duda, Dempsey, Donovan, Drogba, Dindane.

The Letter B secured qualification to the knock-out stages of The World Cup with a free-flowing attacking display of football. The difficult-to-keep-out-of-orbit jabulani was expertly dispatched into the top corner by Slovenia midfielder Valter Birsa, when he found space 25-yards from goal to open the scoring. Critics pointed to The Letter D's unusual tactics of playing without a goalkeeper, but news from the camp suggests that, despite criticism and apparent disharmony amongst goal-keepers beginning with the letter D, they will continue with this tactic in their final group game.

The Letter D were given a huge helping hand by the referee when Valon Behrami was harshly sent off for throwing an elbow in the direction of two Letter D defenders, but replays suggest that the elbow-chin connection was unintentional. The B Team quickly recovered however, with Nicklas Bendtner sliding in from close range to double their lead.

After the break The Letter D pulled a goal back when Landon Donovan smashed the ball past Miso Brecko from a tight angle. The game was teetering on a cliche when an incredible four minutes of football produced three goals. Didier Drogba, playing with a broken arm, guided a header into the bottom corner just seconds before the referee punished Angel Di Maria for a rashly clattering veteran striker Cuauhtemoc Blanco, who became the oldest player to score this tournament when, after dusting himself down, he guided the ball into the bottom corner from the penalty spot.

Michael Bradley's powerful half-volley into the roof of the net in the 82nd minute finished the game as a contest and left The Letter D in a nerve-jangling position leading into the final game. The Letter A's 1-0 victory over the Letter C, thanks to a goal from Hugo Almeida, means that The D Team will only progress if their win their final game against C.

Elsewhere in The Alphabet World Cup, The Letter H narrowly beat The Letter F 5-4 in a thrilling encounter with Gonzalo Higuain scoring the first World Cup hat-trick since 2002, when Pauleta hit three goals. Incidentally, it has been 72 years since a player with a surname beginning with the letter D has scored a hat-trick: Leonidas Da Silva (pictured) was the man, scoring three against Poland. Oh, for a such a prolific D in the modern game.

Group ABCD

1. The Letter B: 6 points, +3 goal difference

2. The Letter A: 3 pts, 0 gd

3. The Letter D: 3 pts, -1 gd

4. The Letter C, 0 pts, -2 gd

Dads

2010-06-20T04:24:00.001-07:00

On Friday, the much-awaited Celebrity Dad of the Year was announced. It's an odd award as most fathering goes on in private. I have absolutely no idea how good any celebrity is at fathering and am unsure whether it is something you can rank in a top ten list, but I guess it is a positive thing to honour the role. Single parent Peter Andre topped the list with Gordon Brown finishing two places above David Cameron in 5th: Cameron makes a better leader, Brown a better father seems to be the conclusion of a nation. Ronan Keating, in the headlines for the wrong reasons, finished 8th with our World Cup non-performers Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard in 9th and 10th.

My weekend focusing on fatherhood was far less public, although in some ways I guess my typing fingers are now turning it mildly public. It started yesterday when my whole family got together for the first time in two years to celebrate my dad's birthday which unfortunately for him, always falls within a few days of Fathers' Day. We had a picnic and did a Wimbledon sweepstake (I feeling good about Roger Federer and Justine Henin). I wrote my dad a poem and this morning he sent me a nice text and it all felt very special.

This morning I waited to see what my twins Ned and Jarvis had done for me. Ned started the day by poking me in the face while I was still half asleep before begrudgingly handing over a present: he was enjoying the vehicle-themed wrapping paper too much to part with it happily. Inside was the new Oasis collection of singles, Time Flies. Neither of the Gallagher brothers made it into the top ten fathers list; perhaps there is a connotation in people's minds that links cheesy pop with effective fathering? Jarvis also chose today to finally, after nineteen months and two days on this earth, take a few steps: giraffes take just one hour from birth to be able to achieve the same skill.

Once my gift had been wrenched back out my hands, we were off to church where I sang songs to God. The day got me thinking of God as a father to me; one of the lines in one of songs about his love knowing no limit reminded me of his incredible selfless sacrifice that meant that, if the Bible is to be believed which I believe it is, I am adopted into his family. I don't understand it all, but I know that I'm grateful and it is an inspiration to try and be selfless in my own fathering, and I guess the rotten nappy that I changed this morning is a small step in the right direction.

Diarrhoea

2010-06-19T12:10:00.001-07:00

Diarrhoea has sat on my requested list of things to write about for a while now and has rarely been a subject that I have felt tempted towards. No one wants to hear personal anecdotes and the subject is one that I have struggled to see an angle for. In the Western World diarrhoea is an uncomfortable and irritating illness, but in underdeveloped countries it is far more serious and the second greatest killer of children, killing more a year than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. The main cause is unclean drinking water and UNICEF are one of the charities that are battling to raise funds to take the simple steps necessary to save lives. The gap in wealth between the rich and poor worldwide is absolute insanity and it surprises me that commitment to Third World aid never seems particularly high on the political agenda when it comes to voting time. Surely anyone in a position of power and say-so over public spending needs to be getting this a little bit more right.

I hadn't meant to get political; my first thought when discussing diarrhoea was to think about the etymology of world, so here goes. It is always a tricky word to spell with the rogue 'o' seeming to offer very little to the mix. The sound of the word is both beautiful and disturbing at the same time. The harsh 'd' sets it off on a dark footing and the words 'dire' and 'ire' both seem relevant to the experience of diarrhoea, but after its unfortunate opening two syllables, it proceeds with a flamboyance and exoticism that goes against its definition, squeezing nine letters snugly into a quadrisyllabic word.

The word itself, like many of more beautiful words in the English language, comes from Medieval Latin roots. Diarrein in Greek means to flow through and interestingly and slightly weirdly the River Rhine, which flows through seven European countries over 766 miles, comes from the same root word, rhenus being the Latin for flow. It's odd and pleasing that these two words come from the same place and perhaps when we see something beautiful like the Rhine it will be an inspiration to do beautiful things.

Drawing

2010-06-17T14:12:00.000-07:00

American Elf is a fantastic online comic strip that has inspired me to buy an Artline pen and attempt the occasional sketch. Drawing has never come naturally to me although I did once win a competition to draw a corgi for the Queen and won a trip to Wimpy as a result, but other than that brief moment of glory my artwork has rarely been admired. American Elf is James Kochalka's autobiographical daily diary, recording moments from every day from 26th October 1998 right up to today. That's over 4,000 mini strips and I've read every single one. Every few days I visit his site - americanelf.com - to check out what he's been up to. The most recent moment of excitement is when a canoe hitching a ride on the back of a car collided with his head - he's still struggling with a scabby eye. The normalness (most of the time) of his experiences is what makes his strip so special. Watching his children grow up at a day by day rate has made me think about what's coming up for my boys. He's honest about his relationships and his approach is unique and refreshing.

This week one of his strips was a drawing lesson, so I thought I would dig out my underused Airtip and follow his instructions. The result was Desmond Frogtongue, Colin the Cyclops and Punk Giraffodile.

D triumph in World Cup opener

2010-06-16T09:34:00.000-07:00

The World Cup is in full swing, a wonderful time when I am suddenly captivated by Slovenia vs Algeria - actually I fell asleep after twenty minutes, and other discussionary topics are thrown off the agenda. With blogeration and a miniature football pin-balling around my mind, I came up with the fascinating concept of the Alphabet World Cup. My car-share actually thought that it was either utterly boring or weirdly compulsive rather than fascinating, but I shall share it with you anyway. The idea is that players are no longer defined by nationality, but by their surname, so all the players with surnames beginning with the letter A play for the same team. There are 26 letters and 32 teams in the World Cup, so as to make the fixture list work, I allowed Own Goals, Disallowed Goals (a frustrating team to support), Alliteration, Palindromes, Players whose surnames are in the dictionary and Players whose names start and end with the same letter each enter a team also. Then I put each of the teams into groups and worked out what their first game results would be. I will continue this throughout the World Cup to see which letter goes on to lift the Alphabetical Jules Rimet. Here's how The Letter D got on in the first game against the highly-fancied letter C:

The Letter C 1 (Cacau 70) The Letter D 2 (Dempsey 40, De Rossi 63)

The D Team: Demichelis, Demerit, Da Silva, Diaby, Dempsey, De Jong, De Rossi, Deco, Donovan, Dindane, Derdiyok.

The Letter D made the unusual decision to play without a goalkeeper, but still managed to clinch victory in their opening encounter against The Letter C. They opted for a 3-5-3 formation hoping that a packed midfield would outwit their opponent's more conventional 1-4-4-2 line-up. C boasted a strong defence with star player from the previous World Cup Fabio Cannvaro marshaling the back-line. Angelos Charisteas of Greece and Germany's Jeronimo Baretto Cacau led the line in what looked like a powerful attack.

It was D though who broke the deadlock in bizarre fashion as the first half was drawing to a close. Clint Dempsey found space 25 yards from goal, but his tame effort looked like it wouldn't trouble experienced goalkeeper Iker Casillas, but his fumbling grapple with the ball resulted in it bobbling over the line beyond his reach.

As C looked to be getting back into the game in the second half, disaster struck when Tim Cahill slid in late on Jay Demerit. The tackle looked innocuous enough, but the referee saw fit to flourish a red card and it was end of Cahill's night and perhaps his World Cup.

Shortly after, Casillas came flapping off his line from a corner kick, leaving the goal exposed for Daniele De Rossi to stab home from close range to put D two up. There was time for Cacau to finish from close range to give C hope, but it was D who finished stronger with Eren Derdiyok hitting the post late on after evading the close attention of the defenders inside the box.

Elsewhere in the group, the Letter B triumphed 2-1 over the Letter A with an own goal from Daniel Agger and a bundled finish from Jean Beausejour. Antolin Alcaraz replied for the Letter A. The Letter B face The Letter D in their next group game with both teams looking to cement their place in the knock-out stages.

Group ABCD

The Letter B: 3 points, +1 goal difference

The Letter D: 3 points, +1 goal difference

The Letter A: 0 points, -1 goal difference

The Letter C: 0 points, -1 goal difference

Dansak vs Dupiaza

2010-06-12T05:59:00.000-07:00

Scientists at Nottingham Trent University, probably after a couple of shandies, got chatting about the addictive qualities of curry. The discussion led them to examining the data and they concluded that the thought of eating curry is something that actually makes people high whilst the eating of it arouses the senses that make the heart beat faster. The thought of having a curry is a thought that takes place in a whole different part of my brain to the thought I have about all other foods. It totally seems to fit that curry has druglike qualities: it's why I can eat it at any time of day, why it tastes great hot or cold, why just the smell of it turns me into a slavering moron. The choice of curry, however, is often tricky: my current favourite is the Chicken Murgh Massala which combines chicken and minced lamb in one dish. Bhunas, Dupiazas and Rogans have also found their way onto my plate on a Friday night. This blog entry takes one of my personal favourites, the Dupiaza: "a medium strength dish made with freshly cut onions and green peppers and fried briskly with spices", with one my wife Helen often orders, the Dansak: "a hot, sweet and sour dish cooked with lentils". I have chosen ten categories that a curry needs to be judged on and for each I will give a mark out of ten.

Healthiness

I guess this depends somewhat on the way it is cooked, but my brief research suggests that the dupiaza is significantly more healthy than the dansak. The dansak has almost double the amount of calories, 315 to the dupiaza's 161. When you order a curry though, you kind of want something unhealthy. The idea that a curry is good for you seems an abhorrent concept, so the dansak wins the first battle.

Dansak 8 Dupiaza 4

History

The dupiaza translates as "double onions" and was apparently first created by Mughal emperor Akbar Mullah Do Piaza (surely not) when he accidentally added too many onions to his dish. The dansak has roots in the Parsi community of India. It is traditionally made on Sundays because it takes so long to make.

Dansak 6 Dupiaza 7

Look

Look is really not that important; most curries are not the easiest on the eye, but the dupiaza is a structural masterpiece of curling, climbing onions compared to the dansak which is a sloppy pasty mess - no contest.

Dansak 1 Dupiaza 10

Morning-after effect

Much is made of the after-effects of a curry, but I find that the following days eructations are the only reminder that curry was consumed the day before. Spicy burps are surely better than sweet and sour ones.

Dansak 6 Dupiaza 8

Name

The name dansak sounds like an oversized satchel that a young schoolboy would carry whereas the name dupiaza conjures connotations of beauty and wonder or perhaps an Italian restaurant.

Dansak 4 Dupiaza 8

Popularity

I couldn't find a definitive list of curries in order of popularity, but the number of pages that reference each curry is, perhaps, an indication of how popular each curry is. The dansak was a clear winner with close to 400,000 pages with the dupiaza struggling, getting less than 150,000. Neither get close to the tikka massala though.

Dansak 8 Dupiaza 3

Potential to stain

An important part of getting a takeaway is getting a nice yellow stain on the work-surface, which is bound to annoy at least one member of the household. For some strange reason Helen doesn't seem to appreciate the attractive yellow glowing spots that erupt in our kitchen the day after a curry. The dupiaza is far superior stainer, with perfect yellow oily drips leaping from the takeaway containers without fail on each order.

Dansak 5 Dupiaza 8

Price

Both meals are classics and often appear on the favourites list rather than the specialities. Thus, they are both amongst the cheapest of curries.

Dansak 10 Dupiaza 10

Punability

"If you have one of those, you'll be vin da loo all night," is a line that Indian waiters must really enjoy hearing. Neither the dansak or the dupiaza lend themselves to punning particularly. Perhaps, if you have a friend named Dan who is carrying a sack there is an opportunity, but there are slim pickings on the pun front with these two.

Dansak 3 Dupiaza 1

Taste

I am only one person and plenty of people prefer the dansak to the dupiaza, but when I dipped my naan bread into my wife's curry on Wednesday night, I was not impressed. It was not unpleasant, but I expect a lot more from my curries and the dupiaza is a deliverer of heart-racing delight on the taste front.

Dansak 6 Dupiaza 9

The Final Score: Dansak 57 Dupiaza 68

Drifter

2010-06-06T04:52:00.000-07:00

As a child my pocket money each week would be divided between sweets and football magazines. The sweets would fly down my throat and the football magazine would be emptied of posters of Liverpool players that would then be attached to my wall. Any posters of other players would be neatly stored inside an exercise book to be traded at school later in the week. My small collection of coins had quickly become a tatty pile of paper on the floor by Saturday afternoon.

Birthday money was a whole different affair though. The money was suddenly multiplied and the opportunities for expenditure suddenly seemed endless and I would be far more careful to spend my cash on things that would last a little longer: I think I bought slippers once. One birthday however, I decided that sweets were where life's pleasures were really at and so my request for presents was simply a list of sugary treats, the Drifter heading the list. I got plenty of sweets, but that wasn't enough. The money I'd been given too demanded to be spent on sweets and so over the course of three days I spent and consumed £50's worth of sweets: a quarter of rhubarb and custard, three Rolo eggs, a king-sized Slurpee from 7-Eleven, Fruit Pastilles, a tub of mint-choc-chip ice cream, a Sherbert Fountain, a small but expensive quantity of Pic 'n' Mix from Woolworths, a bar of Cadbury's Whole Nut, a banana Frijj milkshake, a Bounty and yet more Drifters (including some banana flavoured ones). Every sweet that had ever tempted my pocket money from my pocket was suddenly bought up in one frivolous spending spree. My parents marveled as after consuming one load of sweets I walked back down the road to buy yet more.

At the cessation of consumption, my wallet was empty and my stomach was full in a slightly dissatisfying gurgling gooey way. I regretted my purchases a little, but whilst most of my birthday money as a child was spent on forgettable things that seemed wonderful at the time, this spendathon is by far the most memorable and for every adult birthday I've had, my mum gift-wraps some Drifter bars so as to raise a commemorative and nostalgic chuckle. My expenditure might of been wasteful, but I'd unwittingly bought a memory.

I don't much like Drifter bars now. I'm sure they used to be far chewier; now they taste like cardboard rocks. They disappeared for a while in the noughties because they included too many transfats apparently and perhaps their relaunch with reduction of these transfats has contributed to their decline in tastiness. I imagine Nestle had hoped that the Drifter would have been met with a similar excited fervour that the Wispa encountered, but it seems that Drifter does not hold a place in the chocolate hall of fame, just a slightly odd place in my brain.

Drang

2010-06-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

I have been absent from internet access in the sun-lavished (other than a rainy Tuesday morning) county of Cornwall. As ever my eye was on the search for things beginning with the fourth letter in the alphabet. Penning a poem about a crab fell one letter short, cycling leisurely along the coast from fishy Padstow to stony Wadebridge didn't supply me with material either, but then a sign caught my attention and I made our traveling party pause while I pointed my mobile phone camera in its direction to capture it: the sign, mounted twenty foot up in the air in simple black capitalised text, read 'DRANG'.

An initial internet search didn't seem to yield any answers. A German literary movement throwing off the constraints of rationalism didn't quite fit with the lively and increasingly commercialised Padstow. It also seemed unlikely that the sign was commemorating the first major battle between the Americans and the Vietnamese in 1965. It was not until I researched Cornish slang that I found that this sign simply means alleyway. If I had known I would have wandered down a drang and relayed to you an authentic drang experience. I could have even returned late at night and considered how drangs compare with more traditional alleyways as haunting locations for stories. In the absence of drang experience though, I shall conclude with attempting to communicate a small part of my holiday in the Cornish dialect:

I paused in my reading of Wuthering Heights to chomp through to the nub. Helen wandered out to watch the dimixey, but Will (Helen's brother) had a touch of the tictolaroo and some thought (no one did really) that he had swallowed a paddypaws. He hadn't.

Damon Hill

2010-05-27T14:30:00.001-07:00

Formula One racing briefly held my attention in the mid 90s, but while everyone else talked about Michael Schumacher's controversial collision with Damon Hill, I kept my eye on how the Ferrari duo of Gerhard Berger and Jean Alesi were doing. The bright red Ferraris were easier to spot and seemed so much more exciting than the dull blue Williams cars. Gerhard and Jean never seemed to win, but that the fact that they had the best look was good enough for me.

Damon's car and the fact that he seemed to pay no attention to his hair meant that I had no sympathy for him when the Drivers' Championship was denied him in 1994 and by the time he eventually claimed the drivers' crown in 1996 I had realised that watching cars go round and round in circles barely ever overtaking each other is actually pretty sleep-inducing. Now, the background sound of a Grand Prix merely grates on my eardrums and prompts me to do the irksome Sunday afternoon task of cleaning out the rabbit's hutch.

Hill however, whose name heads this entry, lives on and as the years go by he seems to have moved from skinny bloke who might try to talk to me about car engines to shaggy haired bloke who rocks out to cool tunes. Since leaving the steering wheel behind Hill has played guitar with George Harrison and featured on Def Leppard's album Euphoria. Hill has that enviable quality of, like wine, getting better with age. While Schumacher continues to soldier around the track he must occasionally glance enviously at Hill's greying locks.

Davids (An Ode to England Internationals Called David in the Last Twenty Years)

2010-05-23T11:51:00.000-07:00

Ten tournaments of hopeless hoping

all defined by moments involving men named David.

Glorious moments of cloudburst joy and

moments where we had to swallow our apples whole.

We'd stumble-tripped into a sweaty night in Bologna.

Gazza lofted our expectations into a rectangular cauldron

and there stood David, his eye on the falling orb,

a sweet moment of pinpoint precision and suddenly we all believed.

But belief was brief as we entered Graham's regime.

A solitary goal in Sweden from that same right foot.

And then Ronald dragged our David and our dreams into the dust

and Diana was closer to scoring than David in the US of A.

As football floated along the Thames and to Wembley's door

a caterpillar crawled across the face of our new favourite David.

His kaleidoscope shirt was blinding at just twelve yards.

His begloved sprawling hand kept our nightmares at bay for a few extra days.

Golden David's time had come as we sailed the Channel,

but he was stung by a nettle of frustration and rage

and he bit back with a ballerina's flick and left

less-exciting David to scuff the final kick.

Moustachio and Glamourboy were the Davids of a new dawn.

In Charleroi David grasped at grey clouds, but couldn't catch the dying sun

and two years on the fist-pumping revenge of the ballerina

didn't make up for slippery fingers selling our dreams cheaply.

The gloves were handed on to another David

A smiler, a joker, but not a calamitous choker?

He stood face to face with his opposite number

And one minus one proved to be zero for us.

Davids had succeeded but ultimately failed and the inevitability

of tears before bedtime in Gelsenkirchen

and tears before tournament-time back at home

have become the familiar tale of the international David.

The joker remains, probably the last David for years,

the last time such a man will carry our bold fearful boasts

to another shore to see whether he can be the

second David to grasp the Jules Rimet in his paws.

Driving

2010-05-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

Sucking on a tangy seat-belt

buckle for as long as my tongue

can handle. Are we nearly there

yet? Just seven real minutes pass,

but a whole lifetime of longing

has passed for seven year old me.

Excited and eager, I squirm

for my freedom, but time stands still

but time speeds on just above the

speed limit and I convince my

self I'm car sick and stare out of the

window in an attempt to force

the spider in my gut to sit

still and Mum asks, What's a baby

swan called? And we never know

the answer and time just stands still

but it crashes on and on and

now I reflect on reflections

of C.S. Lewis and realise

that I can find my joys and my

despair within ancient songs and

Dad glances over and is it

just retrospect or did we both

think that this was the last time and

that this was the first time that it

was me at the wheel, calluses

eroding on the sand-paper

surface. As I take a corner

at just above the speed limit

a millipede dances on Dad's

heart and then rests as we squeal to

a halt. We gasp, breathe and laugh and... time trundles on.

Dawson

2010-05-16T05:24:00.000-07:00

A somewhat self-centred request some might say, but a request it was and honour it I shall, so here goes with Stephen Dawson's request for me to discuss his own surname. Meanings seem a sensible place to start and unfortunately Dawson doesn't have the most exciting of origins, meaning son of David whether it is a first name or a surname. Dawe used to be a nickname for David in the 12th century and by the 14th century had become a surname. Some anti-Dave campaigners claim that this is rubbish and that Dawson is a corruption of the French surname D'Ossone which originates from Ossone in Normandy, but this theory seems to be scorned by those in the surname know.

Dawson as a first name has never been particularly popular in England, but since the first airing of that painful vomit-inducing programme Dawson's Creek, it has risen up the American baby-name charts rapidly. The show started in 1998 and the following year Dawson leapt from 734th to 175th before hitting an all-time high at 136th in 2000. It's been on a steady decline ever since, but still sits at 285th. Amongst those surveyed 69% of Dawsons like their name and 57% would advise prospective parents to consider it for their child. A quarter of Dawsons are occasionally bullied because of their name while 7% claim to receive constant name-related jibes, the most popular being, "Hey Dawson, where's your creek?", but the majority of Dawsons seem to be able to avoid this cruelty unlike Dicks, 96% of whom are victims of harsh tongues. While checking out these stats I wondered what effect my own choice of child names would have on my children: 70% of Jarvises love their name and 39% are teased because of it while 44% of Neds love their name and a whopping 79% are teased... hmm.

Returning to Dawson, I shall conclude with the twenty-five Dawsons who held the most prominence in the Google hierarchy:

1. Michael Dawson: Tottenham Hotspurs centre-back called up to Fabio Capello's 30-man England squad for this summer's World Cup.

2. Dawson Leery: protagonist of American drama Dawson's Creek played by James Van Der Beek.

3. Shane Dawson: Youtube comedian and actor whose online channel is the third most subscribed of all time.

4. Jill Dawson: novelist, poet and journalist.

5. Alexander Dawson: owner of an estate agents in the West Midlands.

6. Rosario Dawson: Hollywood actress whose most famous role was in Sin City.

7. Trevor Dawson: commercial property consultant in the North West.

8. Lynne Dawson: classical singer who features on the soundtrack of The Queen (that film with Helen Mirren).

9. Andrew Dawson: another estate agent; this one's in Cheadle.

10. Stef Dawson: a bloke who has a website dedicated to random things and proclaims himself a "weirdo".

11. Ben Dawson: a manufacturer of specialist furniture for offices.

12. Dr Angus Dawson: senior lecturer at Keele University who lectures on Medical Ethics and Law.

13. James Dawson: a technological bloke who specialises in hoses for the commercial diesel engine market.

14. Les Dawson (pictured): comedian who presented Blankety Blank and was able to screw his face up into peculiar shapes.

15. Lucy Dawson: author of books that I don't think I'll ever read.

16. John Dawson: a researcher into the innovation of retailing.

17. Graham Dawson: a solicitor.

18. Robert Dawson: an ex-headteacher turned children's author; he's fond of writing about gypsies.

19. Donna Dawson: a psychologist specialising in personality and behaviour.

20. Andrew Dawson: hand model.

21. Ian Dawson: artist who makes piles of colourful paper look nice.

22. Paul Dawson: wedding photographer.

23. Barry Dawson: also a wedding photographer.

24. Jacklyn Dawson: another solicitor.

25. Stan Dawson: reclaimer of timber and steel.

I was hoping that my friend Stephen Dawson would appear somewhere but, alas, like former rugby player, Strictly Come Dancing contestant and Question of Sport captain Matt Dawson, he was not to be found.

Dali, Salvador

2010-05-15T05:18:00.000-07:00

Fourteen years ago I went to collect my GCSE grades. Amongst them stood my rewards for creating a cardboard box replica of Brighton and Hove Albion's former home, The Goldstone Ground. The examiner saw fit to give me an E and both the ground and my handiwork were destroyed soon after.

My attention to the art world has been minimal ever since, although it has been one of those things that, for a while, I've wanted to know more about. The BBC series Modern Masters has enabled me to do that. Week one was about Andy Warhol, showing how he reinvented what could be considered art and predicted our current obsession with celebrity. Week two was about Henri Matisse and how his experimentation with colour has influenced fashion and advertising as well as the art world.

Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali remain and this morning on a visit to the library with my twins, while they bum-shuffled their way around pulling books from shelves, I took the time out to flick through a book of Dali's work. His Swans Reflecting Elephants (pictured) leaped out at me. I found it beautiful and mesmerising, finding it impossible to spot the difference between the swans and their reverse elephant images reflected in the pool below. At this point Ned had clambered onto my lap and was growing impatient that I wasn't turning the pages quickly enough and we had a brief page-turning battle so that I could further examine the painting. I don't know if Dali was trying to say anything about the world or if the similar shapes of swan and elephant head just struck him, but it made me think about the nature of reality and how truth is not necessarily what we perceive it to be. If the truth of our lives were reflected in a pool, then I imagine they would take on surprising shapes also. I guess I am veering towards my own faith in spiritual realities which is perhaps part of the reason why this painting appealed to me, or perhaps I just appreciated the oddness of it.

Like Warhol and Matisse, Dali was a character that influenced places beyond the art world. Sesame Street are one of many to parody his work; he designed the Chupa Chups logo; Noel Fielding cites him as inspiration for his own surrealist brand of comedy; he had a carefully waxed and extravagant moustache and he walked an anteater around Paris on a lead. Why wasn't any of this discussed during my Art GCSE?

He wasn't a man lacking in confidence, speaking about himself, as boxers often do, in the third person: "Every morning, upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dali, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dali." I look forward to seeing what Alastair Sooke makes of him a week Sunday.

Decagon

2010-05-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

"I do not love prestige, I do not love

titles, I do not love ceremony,

I do not love the flashes or tabloid

splashes and now you see the ashes. What

will emerge from the gashes of twenty-

one million slashes as Nicholas

sashays towards David's gaze and we all

watch and wait and wonder about our fate...?

I loved the job for its potential to

make this country I love fairer, squarer."

David Dickinson

2010-05-08T08:27:00.000-07:00

"Aren't genetics peculiar?" mused David Dickinson as he thought back to his grandfather's life walking the streets of Manchester. A century ago Hrant Gulessarian travelled to England from Armenia to take advantage of the trading links between Manchester and the Ottoman Empire. As a teenager, before a three-year spell in prison for fraud, Dickinson traded on those same streets with no knowledge of his grandfather's previous wheeling and dealing.

David was adopted as a baby, a private agreement between Eugene Gulessarian and her hairdresser Joyce Dickinson. After an affair with a married man, Eugene had fallen pregnant. The public image of the family was important to Hrant in 1941 and he demanded that nothing bring the family shame and so baby David was handed over to the Dickinsons.

David attributes his flair for finding a bargain to his grandfather and it is striking that he followed his footsteps unknowingly but so closely. He finally met his mother in his early twenties where he found out the truth about his family tree. Genetics are indeed peculiar; people I've known who seem to have a natural skill in one area have found out that that skill is one that features in their ancestors also. I wonder if Hrant had a cheeky wink and a penchant for cheesy catchphrases too.

Doofus

2010-05-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

In a search for socially acceptable insults, sausage-brain, banana-face and badger-kisser are my personal favourites. The combination of loosely connected words lightens the mood and helps to quell my anger although I worry sometimes that these insults are more suited to someone a quarter of my age.

William Shakespeare was the master of the insult: "Your brain is as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage (As You Like It);"Thou appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours" (Hamlet); "Would the fountain of your mind were clear again, that I might water an ass in it" (Troilus and Cressida). It would be great to be able to draw upon such a vast array of insults to suit any situation. Thoughtful insults would surely make the world a better place. Whilst perhaps the ideal would be an insult-free world, there is surely occasion to shout, "Your utterances make less sense than an dalmation's cock-a-doodle-doo" when someone claims something absurd.

Insults fads come and go - I was particularly fond of 'spanner' as a teenager - and one that bore a brief prominence in my life in the early noughties was doofus. I'm not sure I ever shouted the word in anger myself, but it certainly invaded my ears on occasional occurrences. It is reckoned by wordy types that the word comes from the Scottish insult doof meaning fool and goofus (goof) which comes from the French word goffe meaning stupid. Combining insults to create new words is perhaps the way forward: dumbecile, looncompoop, dundertwerp, twitnoramous are all potential additions to the dictionary of the future. Treating people the way you would like to be treated yourself is a pretty fine principle for life and I would be happy to be called any of these names when I do something particularly foolish although I wouldn't like any of them to become my actual name as was the fate from birth of Ducktales' star Doofus Drake.

Debate

2010-05-05T10:17:00.000-07:00

David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Lord Pearson stood waiting for the much-anticipated pre-election debate on the eve of the big day, but where was Gordon? No one knew. The polls were in and only 9% of the population were voting for Labour and now the PM couldn't even manage to turn up on time.

Cameron stood calm and tieless in an attempt to appear approachable. Clegg had a slick pin-striped suit and a tasty yellow tie. The Lord appeared somewhat unkempt with a black shirt hanging loosely below the waistline accompanied by a thin grey tie, but Brown remained invisible. Word finally reached the restless audience that incredibly, with the tide of the public seemingly against him, Brown had stood down. Peter Mandelson was willing to take up the prickly baton, but his Maths teacher was refusing to let him leave. With Labour in disarray, an elderly gentlemen in a yellow flowery shirt clambered out of the crowd and stood in the position of reigning Prime Minister even if would only be for a day.

If my school were the nation, this would have been the farcical Election Eve happenings. I stood as Gordon and it was a rather odd experience. I tried as much as I could to take on the role and the policies of Gordo rather than using the opportunity to put myself in the position of political guru. As I stood talking about his policies to the meagre lunchtime throng I realised that sometimes I agree with him and sometimes I don't and I walked away slightly befuzzled, but still pretty clear in my head where my cross will be going tomorrow. Politics is complicated stuff and I'm never going to agree wholeheartedly with any one party, but I guess you have to come to a conclusion about who you agree with the most and that's what I've tried to do although tactic plays a small role too. Tomorrow will tell whether I won any voters in this miniature version of the real thing, but I doubt I made any meaningful difference as only 2% of the voters were present.

Deranged Ducks

2010-05-03T06:26:00.001-07:00

This blog is starting to consume my brain. Wherever I go I am keeping an eye out for things beginning with 'D' that might provide potential inspiration. If I'm with a group of people, I pay most attention to the person whose name begins with 'D'. I go to bed with the 'D' requests floating around my head wondering which direction I should take them.

Last night with the knowledge that I was visiting a farm today I wondered whether the request to discuss deranged ducks might present itself. So I stood there at the edge of the duck-pond holding one of my seventeen-month old twins - Ned - in my arms watching carefully for any sign of derangement, but all was peaceful and calm.

Then, suddenly a flurry of frantic wings landed in a heap in front of us. A hen (female duck) was first to emerge but was quickly bitten on the head by a drake (male duck). The drake was halfway through mounting the hen when a second drake got involved and started dragging the first drake away by the head. Now three ducks heads were attached to each other by clamped shut beaks. I was close to intervening, but I thought that this was probably natural mating season behaviour. It turns out that drakes often get left out - I guess because there must be more of them - when its time to get fruity. These drakes don't take this well and wait for an opportunity when a hen is isolated from the other ducks and take advantage. Ned and I must have witnessed two desperate ducks this morning.

The story ended as the hen wriggled free and flew away and the drakes carried on head-biting before pursuing her. I'm hoping her mate came to her rescue from these lonely, but somewhat nasty deranged ducks.

David Hirst

2010-05-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

David Hirst is a cult hero in one half of Sheffield, a player who scored 149 times for the Owls and who still holds the record for the fastest ever shot in the Premiership - a 114mph half-volley that slammed against the Arsenal bar at Highbury.

That shot seems to epitomise his career though: whilst unquestionably brilliant, it was millimetres away from actually grabbing the headlines. Instead another striker, Ian Wright, scored a hat-trick and his broad grin filled the back pages the following morning.

This afternoon it took me a while to recognise a portly Hirst sitting in the Match of the Day studio lamenting the relegation to League One of the team he played for and loved: Sheffield Wednesday. Their 2-2 draw with Crystal Palace meant that the Eagles sent the Owls in this battle of the birds.

In the 90s Wednesday were a far better side and even attracted the support of school-children who had never even visited Sheffield. They boasted the likes of England internationals Chris Woods, Des Walker and Chris Waddle in their side and under the management of Ron Atkinson won the League Cup in 1991. Hirst was the figurehead of this team, the bustling number nine whose eye for goal meant that the Owls were an established Premier League outfit at its formation in 1992.

At the same time England manager Graham Taylor was on the lookout for a new striker to take on Gary Lineker's mantle with the big-eared goal-getter close to retirement and Hirst's chance came in a friendly against France. It was Hirst's third cap and his opportunity to lay his claim to the coveted centre-forward spot for years to come. He was partnered in attack by another chancer hoping that this wouldn't be his only England cap: Alan Shearer. As half-time approached and with Lineker champing at the bit on the sideline, things were looking good for Hirst. He looked the part and Shearer was having little impact on the game, but with the whistle perched on the referee's lips the ball fell to Shearer and he did was he does best. Hirst was replaced by Lineker at half-time and never wore an England shirt again. Had the ball fallen to Hirst, perhaps he would have become the England legend that Shearer did, but it was not to be. Instead he was listed at 45th by The Daily Mail in the '50 Worst Players to Play for England' list. That's pretty harsh for a player who scored one goal in 135 minutes football for his country. That's actually a better return than both Shearer and Lineker if you'll accept that manipulation of the figures.

Hirst had another opportunity to write himself into footballing history rather than just Sheffield Wednesday's history when Alex Ferguson came looking for a striker who would revitalise a United team that hadn't won the league in a quarter of a century. Six times Fergie put in an offer for Hirst and six times Wednesday denied him. He finally gave up and bought Eric Cantona instead. Manchester United finally landed the League title with Cantona in the team and have been doing so ever since.

To label Hirst as a 'nearly man' is unfair though. He was a wonderfully complete striker who could score goals from distance, was a natural poacher and great in the air. He had skill, but also strength and determination. He is adored by Wednesday fans and whilst a Shearer misfire and less-determined Sheffield Wednesday board could have altered his career in an incredible way, he was a Yorkshire lad who scored goals for a Yorkshire team and was loved by Yorkshire people. What boy kicking a football around in a park wouldn't take that?

Duffy, Gillian

2010-05-01T00:23:00.000-07:00

"Gordo, let's go to Rochdale to get us some votes," said somebody*,

"To the home of Gracie Fields, Anna Friel and Bill Oddie."

He hoped to meet the lovable, excitable badger-cuddler Bill,

But on arrival he found angry Old Labour Grandma Gill**.

"All these Eastern Europeans what are coming in," she grumbled,

"Where are they coming from?***" At this Gordo stumbled.

His temper was rising and curdling within,

But he delivered his answers wearing the politician's grin.

Bigot alert had gone off in Brown's brain,

But he didn't utter this word, he managed to refrain

Until back in the car and in a foul mood

He let his tongue free and from it this spewed:

"She's just a sort of bigoted woman" were the words he did choose

Little did he know that he was speaking into the mic of Sky News.

His gaffe was revealed to him by Jeremy Vine on Radio 2.

Brown was worried that his rash words would turn the air blue.

Back on the road, straight to Duffy's door

Where he said, "Sorry, my choice of words were poor."

And Cameron and Cleggy both had a smile on their face

They jointly claimed, "This is now a two-horse race".

But that moment of brutal honesty held some truth and some compassion.

I prefer his anger than the current political fashion

Of refusing to say what you really think

In case it causes your chances of governing to sink.

I was feeling yellow, but now those words that were probably not clever

Have left me, like Gordo's temper, redder than ever.

* perhaps Sue

** Grandma Gill deserves respect for refusing to sell her story to The Sun

*** surely this question demanded the answer: "Eastern Europe"

This poem came after teaching a Year 7 class about the election. When writing their own political speeches, one of the boys wrote: "Don't vote for Gordon Brown. He called your nan a bigot". That's a great opening line, but it made me realise that this little storm in a Rochdale teacup had come to define the Labour Party in his eyes.

Desperate Dan vs Dennis the Menace

2010-04-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

In the mid to late 80s Desperate Dan and Dennis the Menace vied for my attention from the comic book rack at Cherry's Newsagents. A five minute scamper down Boundary Road brought me through the door of the fruity seller of necessaries with my one pound worth of pocket money. Dennis almost always won out and Dan only ever got a look in when I felt rich enough to purchase both The Beano and The Dandy or if The Dandy offered the sweetener of a free lolly.

I never understood what Dan was desperate about and never felt like I connected with a chubby, unshaven bloke that was older than my dad. His legs were so thin and surely would have struggled to carry his bulky torso. Apparently the 'Desperate' adjective was because of his shady past. When Dan first made his appearance in The Dandy in 1937, he was not the nice cheerful chap we now know him to be, but a desperado on the wrong side of the law. Dennis has never switched sides and joined the softies although modern times have seem him become less of a bully to Walter and his mates and more of a cheeky chap. His bullying did sit a little uncomfortably with me, but I'm not sure depriving him of his pea-shooter can have improved the comic strip.

Desperate Dan has reached lower levels of desperateness since I left the comics for football magazines. As his 60th birthday approached Dan achieved millionaire status and announced that he was leaving The Dandy to swan around with The Spice Girls. The Spice Girls?! I rarely take the drastic action of combining a question mark with an exclamation mark, but surely Dan and Ginger Spice setting off on a cruise together demands such punctuation extremes. However, I have not reached his desperateness yet. His desperateness lies in the fact that the entire thing was a sham to draw attention to his 60th birthday. I turned thirty last month and it's always nice if people wish you a happy birthday, but I didn't announce that I was jetting off to the Bahamas with Girls Aloud in a desperate grasp for my friends' attention. Few would have believed me I'm sure, but surely no one believed that The Spice Girls had invited a cartoon character on their holidays even if he had recently acquired a large amount of cash.

Dennis's iconic red and black hooped jumper, the fact that he's got a pet pig and his slipper-prevention tricks make him infinitely cooler than Desperate Dan. Recent accusations of political correctness are nice soundbites for the media, but Dennis is still doing his stuff while Dan has still [yawn] got his face stuffed in a cow pie. I would still choose The Beano over The Dandy any day.