On the iPod today...

I’ve been listening to a fair amount of new music recently, especially in the morning on the train from WGC to King’s Cross. There’s nothing quite like passing through Potters Bar whilst digging a cool tune. Oh, the exhilaration!

Here’s a roundup of what’s currently on me iPod…

The Horrors – Strange House

I was never a Goth during the 80s (although I did fancy a Goth girl named Eleanor at 6^th Form and loved the Sisters of Mercy), but remember the movement vividly. The Horrors have been touted as a Goth revival band, but I think this is unfairly diminishing the excitement of their musical output. If anything they seem to be more of a furious mix of garage, punk and, yes OK, 60s organ-driven Hammer Horror theatrics. I’ve only listened to this album once, but I know I like it. Particularly the wild single ‘Count in Fives’ and the melodramatic opener ‘Jack the Ripper’.

Mr Hudson & the Library – A Tale of Two Cities

I loved the Madness-alike single ‘Too Late Too Late’, so invested in the album by this London band. I’m a bit underwhelmed, sadly. The first 5 songs are really interesting, then it seems to run out of musical imagination. I’m listening to it now, hoping it might be a grower. Albums like this raise the iTunes dilemma – on the one hand, new music is more accessible than ever, on the other hand it’s also more disposable. I now tend to have less patience with albums, giving them less time to get their hooks into me.

Air - Late Night Tales

This is an eclectic mix of stuff from Air’s record collection. It’s nice and melodic, but ultimately a bit wispy and lacking substance. A bit like Air’s music in other words. Mind you, any compilation that brings together the Cure, Lee Hazelwood and Ravel has to be considered a worthwhile listen.

The outro from Layla by Derek & The Dominos

I’m not a big fan of Clapton (any man who pushes his own son out of a window to get a hit is decidedly dodgy), but I was reminded how great the last bit of this song is by a Scorsese/Sesame Street piss-take on YouTube. It was genius of Scorsese to pick out this bit of music and use it in the way he did in ‘Goodfellas’.

Devlin Waugh Doodles Today

I've been doodling today. This is my fumbling attempt to draw the 2000ad character Devlin Waugh. He's a hugely entertaining creation: an English (Eton educated) gay vampire bodybuilder who happens to be the Vatican's foremost occult troubleshooter. I've been rereading some of the stories in which Devlin appeared and you wonder how the writer, John Smith, got away with such a bizarre and camp character in a mainstream comic.

Virgin Media Proves Good Copy Isn't Good Customer Service

Having discussed copywriters on Friday, I feel the need to talk about the art of copywriting today.

You may have noticed the launch of Virgin Media (the communications equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster, with an array of sub-standard corpses stitched together into a shambling, incoherent hulk) in the press and in those ads featuring Uma Thurman. From a professional standpoint, I was interested to read and listen to the ads as I’ve always admired Virgin’s tone of voice. It’s always admirably human, cheeky and clear.

I happened to be an NTL customer before it was subsumed by Virgin media, so received a lot more literature telling me how well looked after I’d be and how this was a fresh start and so on. Again, lovely copywriting – lots of chutzpah.

Then I moved house and needed to reconnect my broadband and upgraded to get cable telly too. Virgin Media sent a load of information in advance of the reconnection, including essential pin-codes and account numbers. The engineer came on Friday to install it all and arrived when they said he would. Then I came home to make everything work. There were instruction booklets dropped off and, again, the copy had admirable clarity. Goodness me, it looked like connecting my Mac to broadband would be remarkably simple.

Of course it wasn’t. The copy was nicely written, but it was ALL LIES. They’d missed out several crucial steps in the set-up. I had to ring their support line to get the address of a web page on which I needed to register my details to complete the connection process. It would have helped if this crucial piece of information had been available in the instructions. As it was, I spent 30 minutes on my mobile phone trying to get through to an autistic man in an Indian call centre (I hate to think how much that cost me).

All pin numbers and account numbers Virgin had sent me and told me that I’d need to set up broadband? None of them were used – the pin number I actually needed wasn’t in any of the literature – I had to get it off the man on the phone.

OK, so after 2 hours of brain-mangling the broadband was working. I sat down to relax in front of the telly. I then discovered that all the channels I thought I’d signed up for were locked. I rang the support line again. This time it was shut down for the night. Then I tried again this morning. I rang 8 times and was disconnected before I spoke to a human being.

Utterly, utterly infuriating. I’ve just gone from NT-Hell to Virgin Vexation. I have now sworn to buy a ground-to-air rocket launcher from any passing Iraqi insurgent and shoot Richard Branson out of the sky as he begins his next ridiculous round the world balloon trip. As the bearded buffoon spins to his flaming death, I’ll be waving all the great literature I’ve received from his company and reflecting on the power of good copy.

What Do You Call a Group of Copywriters?

I had an entertaining time last night at one of my favourite pubs, the Eagle in Farringdon, with a gaggle of assembled copywriters. There were about 10 of us at one point and, as usual, there was wordplay and cynicism a-plenty.

I did wonder what the collective noun for a group of copywriters would be (you know, as in a murder of crows, a pod of dolphins, an arsehole of account directors). I think a ‘grumble’ of copywriters seems appropriate as we’re a jaded bunch of moaning motherfuckers.

If anyone has any better suggestions, though, do leave a comment…

Nazi Uniform Faux Pas Horror

In an excruciating plot twist straight out of a Ricky Gervais script, I have a mortifying update on the Nazi uniform issue.

Some of my colleagues and me were discussing the relative merits of World War Two Teutonic military garb this morning. In that typical London creative agency way, we were having a bit of a post-modern ‘how shocking can we be?’ laugh about it. I happened to notice that a freelance Information Architect nearby, an American woman, kept looking up and scowling. Not much of a sense of humour, I thought.

So, a little later, I had a meeting with her about some work, and I said up front that I’d seen she’d been uncomfortable with the conversation and I hope she realised that I wasn’t a fascist and that my interest was unsympathetic.

She looked really shocked. “Sympathetic?!” she said.

“No no no! God no! UNsympathetic!”

“Oh OK, well – I did think it was a little peculiar. You know, a number of my relatives were killed in the holocaust.”

This was when the floor dropped from beneath me and I began to seriously rue what can only be described as a god-given ability to say the wrong things in front of the wrong person. Not to mention regretting my crass, prurient personality, of course.

It was also when I began to eat a huge serving of humble pie. Then came back for seconds and thirds at the foot-in-mouth buffet.

I am still genuinely horrified. Thinking about it seriously, it’s no different to discussing how cool Ku Klux Klan outfits look in front of a black person.

I hasten to add that I’ve never made THAT particular faux pas.

Does Anyone Else Do This? No. 5 in an Occasional Series

Er...Guiltily Want To Try On a Nazi Uniform

OK, first things first. It’s just so wrong isn’t it? I abhor what the Nazis did, I really do. I’m not a fascist, anti-semite or misanthropic sexual deviant. However, I’m going to bare my warped soul and admit that I think Nazi uniforms look pretty damn good and I’d love to parade about in one, perhaps clicking my heels a bit and smoking a fag in a cigarette holder.

While the Britisher Tommies were stuck with skulking around crappy khaki serge, the Gestapo were swanning around in sexy black with silver death’s head skulls. In fact, even ordinary German soldiers had far cooler kit than our boys. When I was a kid, I’d always dress my favourite Action Man in the German uniform (even though the Germans were always the villains in my games). Then, when I was slightly older, I have strong memories of seeing a still of Charlotte Rampling in ‘The Night Porter’, wearing a Gestapo peaked cap and very little else.

I suppose the reason the Nazi uniform looked so transgressively sexy on Rampling (and was indeed, I think, designed that way in the first place by the image-obsessed and theatrical Third Reich) is that the SS was, essentially, a death-cult. It’s this air of evil that attracts those with darker imaginations. Admittedly, unlike the elegantly scarred Aryan stereotypes in war movies, they were all inadequate bespectacled freaks. Banal monsters indeed.

After having kind of admitted the fascination to myself, I had a look on eBay for WWII German uniforms and found there’s a disturbingly strong demand for Nazi memorabilia. I don’t know whether they’re people like me, or fucked-up members of the BNP in Farnborough looking for something to put on their mantelpiece with their Samurai swords. I suppose the difference is, I wouldn’t, in reality, go as far as buying this stuff…

Stan Plays It Cool

I think it’s true to say that we really couldn’t have moved into our new house without the help of Emily’s family. On top of labouring long and hard to help us shift all our stuff, Emily’s sister, Lucy, also took some very charming pictures of Stan. As you can see from this one, he was pretty unruffled by the move!

The Retreat to Welwyn Garden City

I’ve been thinking about class a lot since moving to Welwyn Garden City. I get the feeling that it’s a bit of a dead issue these days, apart from a few columns in the New Statesman and whatever Trotskyite groups still survive on University campuses.

A delightful view of WGC

I’m thinking about class because I feel irredeemably middle class having moved to Welwyn, with its John Lewis, Waitrose and Daily Mail Model Village. Of course, although I come from a working class background, I was irredeemably middle class before I moved. I work as a poncey creative and read the Guardian. I just think that living somewhere as white, affluent and just plain NICE as WGC has confirmed it in some subtle way.

According to my leftist mother, leaving Leytonstone for Hertfordshire is a form of cowardly retreat – as urban neighbourhoods need a mix of classes to stop them from becoming even more deprived. I’m not sure I really understand this argument, as part of the reason we didn’t buy a place in E11 is because house prices are booming to the extent that we couldn’t find anywhere we could afford. If anything the middle classes are moving in.

So is it better to stay on the frontline and live somewhere gritty, urban and deprived? I remember particularly how Stoke Newington changed as the well-off middle classes colonised with their 4x4s and 3 wheeler buggies, driving up house prices, patronising ridiculously expensive organic bakers and vegetarian toddler-friendly restaurants. It feels like a form of tourism – getting off on the ‘vibrant’ authenticity of a poor area, while causing that area to lose its identity through your presence.

Of course, it’s particularly middle class to worry about these things. I think I’ll just enjoy the bird song, trees and politeness of WGC without guilt.

Life – a few observations

Here are four quick observations on our existence on this delightful plane of reality, based on recent experience.

When you throw up, it’s generally a meal you really like

Emily and I had gastroenteritis over the weekend. It was a wonderful experience, full of surprises and frenetic activity (primarily centred on the bathroom). As I was bent over the tired pink porcelain of our toilet, I was saddened that it was chicken sweet and sour that was being forced forth from my tortured gullet. This is because I really like a bit of sweet and sour. And. As I looked at it in the context of the toilet bowl, I knew I was going to be put off it for a long time. Possibly years.

People are predictably greedy

We’re moving into our new house on 10 February after exchanging a couple of weeks ago. Before exchanging, however, there was a brief flurry of drama when the people at the top of our chain pulled out. They’d pulled out because they got offered £20,000 more for their house. Greedy fuckers. I suggested to our vendor that I should go round to their property (the people at the top of the chain, not my vendor’s) with a can of petrol and burn it down. Then they’d have trouble selling it for more money! Oh yes!

He went very quiet and I realised I sounded like a psychopath.

Babies are dangerous

Lack of sleep leads to hazardous lack of concentration and responsiveness. A bus is about to hit me? What, oh, move? What, now? Bugger. Diseases are brought home, unleashed in the plague-pit that is known as ‘the nursery’. Yes, considering they’re here to add to the population, babies do a good job of thinning it out. Stanley is no exception. However, he does look very cute when he smiles.

We are all drones

OK, I’m a geek, but I watched a Star Trek Borg boxed set recently. If you’re not a sad sci-fi sad person like myself, you may need to have the Borg explained to you. They are a collective entity made up of cyborg zombies (drones) who shamble about mindlessly doing the business of the ‘hive mind’. Attempting to exit Farringdon station this morning, I noticed that the swarms of commuters had the same shuffling gait and vacant expression as drones. And, in a way, they’re all connected the cultural hive mind via their iPods or mobiles. All we need now is for Steve Jobs to offer us drill-grabby-pincer-thing arm replacements and we’re living in the Borg collective. Except we’ll still have to put up with above-inflation fare increases when we travel in and out of London. It’s a lose/lose scenario, my friend.

Ray Mears Hulk Hogan Wrestlemania Wild Food Photoshop Hell

I'm sure you'll agree my Photoshop skills continue to grow apace.

Knackered

It’s been a week of knackeredness since the last time I updated this blog. This is partly due to Stan getting his first cold. The poor lad couldn’t sleep because he was so congested, which meant that Emily and I didn’t sleep either. Add getting up at 6am to get the boy to nursery, attempting to keep our house in some kind of order whilst servicing Stanley’s practical needs, organising the purchase of our new home, plus the usual work pressures, and it’s an exhausting combination.

In fact, I’m beginning to see why our birth rate is declining – working and parenting don’t really mix in the UK. The cost of childcare, for instance, is scandalous. Putting Stan in nursery for 4 days a week costs roughly £200. I can’t imagine how a low-income family could cover the costs. No wonder people are dependent on benefits. If I were in a position where most of my wage was being eaten up by childcare, I’d be tempted to stay at home and claim benefits too.

Unsurprisingly, women are penalised most as parents. A recent study revealed that the pay gap widens after women become mothers. The disparity in terms of career progress also increases.

Of course, my mum was faced with this dilemma as a single parent when I was a kid, so I’ve experienced it first hand. I wonder how many intelligent, skilled women are still being trapped in poverty as she was.

Ohh, bit serious today! Don’t worry, I’ll get back to torturing chefs and venerating the mighty Ray Mears next time round!

Celebrity Chefs, Final Solution.

The question

Having watched Nigella Lawson’s faux-erotic Christmas programmes and having ranted about Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recently, I’m beginning to wonder about the cult of the celebrity chef. My question is this: are all of them insufferable arseholes?

The evidence

Firstly let’s think about Nigella. Apart from mimicking fellatio with a spoon and giving the camera come-hither looks, she’s unbearably smug and patronising. The subtext appears to be ‘you can never be as rich, sexy and talented as me, but let’s see if you can learn something here’.

She also two-timed her dying husband (the journalist John Diamond) with Charles Saatchi. Of course, we wouldn’t have heard much about that as she is close friends with that other member of the media elite, PR guru Matthew Freud.

Now let’s consider the case of Ainsley Harriot. Imagine living with him. Can you visualise anything more ghastlier than waking up to his gurning, camp countenance every morning, knowing that he was going to give you an over-enthusiastic, painful seeing-to?

Then reflect upon Anthony Worrell-Thompson, the fat, opinionated fag-peddlar (he’s spokesman for Forest, the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco). Loathsome slug of a man.

Gary Rhodes, the spiky-coiffed 80s throwback. Egotistic cock.

Actually, the more I consider it, they’re all scum.

The solution

I’m not generally in favour of capital punishment, but I think a pogrom ridding the country of this culinary televisual malignancy is urgently needed. I suggest that we create a new reality television series named ‘Cook’s Cannibal Castaway’. I think the name is fairly self-explanatory, but the idea is this: we stick all celebrity chefs on a barren island with no food, but excellent cooking facilities. A grateful nation could watch as they descend into a kind of chef Lord of the Flies scenario, with a naked, pink Anthony Worrell Thompson strung up squealing by Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal, ready to be bled and slathered in one of Ainsley’s branded marinades.

By the way

I’m desperately hoping that the exception to the ‘celebrity chefs are tossers’ rule will be my hero, Ray Mears, who is making his contribution to the genre tonight with ‘Ray Mears Wild Food’.

Happy New Year to My Reader!

So the Yuletide season is over and we enter a new year of possibilities and hope. Or, as the cynical evil twin that lives in my head would put it: New Year, Same Old Shit.

I’m back at work, feeling very mellow and happily exchanging the usual “how was Christmas for you?” pleasantries. I know this will last precisely as long as it takes for some fuckwitted client feedback or a similar obstacle to be put in my grumpy path.

Mind you, I think working is preferable to house husbandry. This isn’t because I didn’t enjoy my time with Stan – I absolutely loved being with him. It’s primarily because at least I’ll be weaned off my addiction to David Dickinson’s Real Deal and Paul O’Grady.


Highlights of the festive period

• Seeing the Mila, Frankie and Stan opening their presents
• Stan scratching on his Leapfrog DJ Activity Centre
• Christmas dinner – yes, we used goose fat on the spuds ala Nigella and they were delicious
• Having a go on a Nintendo Wii –it was funny to see Emily’s competitiveness come out playing tennis against her sister, Lucy. It was like watching a cave woman having a fit – Lee (Lucy’s boyfriend) and I nearly pissed ourselves laughing.

Festive lowlights

• Telly was shite – particularly Little Britain Abroad – the jokes have worn thinner than Matt Lucas’s hair
• Washing up after aforementioned festive feast
• New Year sales – the frenzied look in the eyes of consumers was extremely scary
• The weather was shitter than the telly

New Year’s Resolution

• Really get fit this time, honest

House Husband

I'm at home for the next week or so, looking after Stan. I'm discovering that there's a whole weekday world I never usually experience. Oh, the joy of Tescos at 10.30am - full of pensioners and mentally ill people, all accompanied by grumpy care workers. The pleasures of daytime televison! I've never seen so many programmes about antiques, property and white trash infidelity. Whoever comes up with a series that combines all three is onto a winner, I tell you.

Does Anyone Else Do This? No. 4 in an Occasional Series

Stick with a Favourite Toilet

I realised this morning, whilst engaged in my usual morning constitutional (or ‘comfort break’ as I believe our colonial cousins call it), that I always use the same toilet at work. This suddenly struck me as an odd thing – that one could have preferences over such a mundane and utilitarian thing. It’s not like having a favourite café or bar, or even favouring an armchair in your living room. And all the toilets are basically the same. Therefore some form of psychology has to be at work here.

I notice, for instance, that I never choose a middle toilet cubicle, wherever I work. Is this because it is somehow too prominent? I suppose it’s natural not to want your bodily functions to be too conspicuous. Unless you’re a bit odd, like a girl I used to know in Leamington who had a fetish for weeing in phone boxes while I watched.

Aside from psychological nuances, I suppose that human beings are ruled by habit. Sometimes we like to break routine, but this merely confirms the patterns into which we’re normally locked. Therefore my morning constitutional is always performed after two coffees and the Guardian Concise Crossword is habitually attempted, so that I have a mental grapple as I engage in the physical struggle with last night’s curry.

Actually, thinking more deeply about it, in many ways, the morning constitutional is one of the most serene moments of my day. It’s hardly surprising that I have strong preferences as to the venue.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - a Fair and Balanced Critique

I notice that Steve, my friend and ‘nearly made it’ Best Man, has written a paean of praise for Gordon Ramsay on his blog. I actually dislike Ramsay’s bullying demeanour intensely, but he doesn’t get my goat half as much as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Christ, the more I see of that man, the more I want to burn his fucking cottage down and put him in concrete boots before throwing him in that fucking river.

Why do I hate Huge Gurning-Shittingstool? I’ll give you 5 good reasons:

1. It’s all a lie

I have it on good authority that Hulk Cunting-Fuckingpool actually spends most of his time tending to his burgeoning media empire in London, rather than his ‘small holding’. If he was really a drop-out who wanted a simpler life would he be writing books and cookery columns or appearing on Channel 4? No, he’d be happily pulling up turnips in his plot and fucking his goats. Just like any real farmer!

2. That braying, upper class voice

He sounds like a Dalek who went to Eton. His voiceovers drive me mad, as he honks on like a goose plagued by haemorrhoids. There’s no genuine feeling in any of his monologues. I strongly suspect he’s actually autistic. No, I lie. He’s just a twat.

3. The way patronises people

Part of Hung Frankly-Wanklyfool’s shtick is the way he apparently fits into his community, palling up to the locals. In fact, his manner is more that of the local lord who likes to think he’s matey with his serfs. The worst example of this was he met some black people to learn about Caribbean cookery. I’d liken his performance to David Attenborough interacting with Mountain Gorillas. I almost expected him to say “oh, so this is what you jolly negroes eat!”

And were there any black people at his ‘caribbean pirate feast’ when he ripped off their recipes? No, of course there weren’t! But at least he got to patronise some local lifeboat crewmembers. The racist cock.

4. The hippy props

The tepee, the Land Rover, the stupid pebble necklace and, especially, that leather jerkin. All no doubt sourced by a branding agency to connote the appropriate ‘alternative’ earthiness. I feel like stabbing him in his blinking piggy eye just thinking about them. Arrrgghhh!

5. He gratuitously kills animals in every programme

Now, I know animals have to die so we can eat meat. However, it’s like Hump Fuckly-Cuntyflap is intent on producing farmyard snuff movies. It’s all about context. When a pig died in the Godard film ‘Weekend’, that was art. When Hugh kills a chicken, it’s meant to be educational, but in fact it’s titillating entertainment for Guardian readers.

Hitched!

I’ve finally found some time to reflect on the wedding. It’s hard not to sound mawkish when discussing it, so – fuck it – I won’t try! My chief thought is how lucky Emily and I are to have such good friends and lovely family.

Being a rather insecure only child, I always regard myself as a loner. This means I appreciate it when friends come through for me more than most. My biggest anxiety about the wedding was that people just wouldn’t turn up. As it was, almost everyone did come and we had a great party (what I remember of the reception is vague after my first bottle of champagne!).

As for family, well, I’m always loved and respected my mum, but I’m also very lucky with my in-laws. Emily’s mum and dad have been wonderful throughout our relationship and especially so throughout the planning of the wedding.

The only thing that went a bit tits-up was that my Best Man, Steve, didn’t make it to the ceremony after getting stuck in a traffic jam. I feel bad for him, as I know he had the journey from hell (as the M11 is sometimes known). As it was, my friend Franco stepped in and made an able substitute!

Anyway, thank you to everyone who came – you really did make my day.

I'm Gettin' Married in the Mornin'!

This is my last day as an unmarried man, as I’ll be hitched to Emily tomorrow. It’s poignant (for me at least!) that this blog started as a record of a divorce and is now recording a marriage.

I’ve been doing all the last minute things – checking my suit still fits (yes, thank the heavens), writing my speech and sending out further directions to guests. It all feels very calm and sensible, but I know that serenity won’t last long tomorrow!

No doubt I’ll report back in after the wedding, but until then I’m signing off. Have a good weekend!

Sprains and Climate Change

It’s been a frenetic week at work, so I haven’t had time to give an update on the wedding wrist scenario. Well, it isn’t a fracture and the cast is off, so I’m enormously relieved (and Emily’s happy I can get my right arm into my suit!)

I went to Whipps Cross Hospital on Tuesday and, after hours of waiting and different x-rays, the final diagnosis was a sprained ligament and the cast came off. Thank Christ for that.

On an entirely different subject: climate change. Why isn’t there a big hullabaloo about the fact it’s almost DECEMBER and the LEAVES ARE STILL ON THE TREES. I notice the weeds are still happily flowering in my garden too. It’s all very, very wrong…

My garden yesterday

Broken My Bloody wrist!

I've had a typically idiotic accident, nearly falling down some stairs, and broken my right wrist. Oh, the joys of Whipps Cross hospital casualty dept. and the itchiness of a forearm in plaster. Unfortunately this means a) my arm will still be in plaster when I married next Saturday (I'll have put my arm behind emily in all the photos!) and b) I can only type with my left hand! Therefore entries will be short and snappy on this blog for a while!

Does Anyone Else Do This? No. 3 in an Occasional Series

Find displacement activities more boring than working but still do them anyway

It isn’t until you’re bored at work that you realise just how dreary the Internet is. At least, that is, if you’re a PC slave like me. It’s amazing – a whole world of people, endless novelty, so much…er…stuff and yet it all quickly becomes tiresome. After all, there’s only so many times you can check your Hotmail, browse the BBC news site for stories about sharks giving birth to robots or check the latest price of the things you’re selling on eBay. The elasticity of time perception is stretched to its limit, dragging like an iron ball on a prisoner’s fetters, as you read yet another review of the Nintendo Wii.

And, interestingly, when you’re flat-out working, time passes really quickly. Your brain becomes stimulated by solving problems, getting a proper work-out. I write and find that hours have flashed by.

Yet, despite knowing this, there’s always the period before I get down to business, where I’ll put it off for as long as possible, desperate to find a worthwhile distraction. There never is one – but this won’t stop me looking…

I'm in an abusive relationship with Steve Jobs

Call me a sucker, but after my 4g iPod died (and thank you to everyone for their condolences), I’m going back for more. I ordered a 30gb 5g iPod from Amazon yesterday (£20 cheaper than the Apple shop) and it should arrive today. So, considering the disappointing lifespan of my last iPod, why am I buying another? Am I mental?

Is it the power of brand loyalty? In the case of Apple, it often feels like being hopelessly in love with an abusive partner. No matter what they do to you, you try to see their good side, make excuses for them ("Steve didn't mean to rip me off, it was that Jonathan Ive and his bleedin' form factors") and always go back in the end. But are there rational reasons for buying another iPod?

There are 4 reasons actually…

1. Seamless synchronisation – no fiddling about with files. Maybe I’m lazy, but I like the fact that everything just…works.
2. The closest rivals to iPod are Zen and Sony –their products in this bracket are more expensive and have less memory.
3. Call me eccentric, but I actually prefer to buy music. iTunes is a great place to do so – and, again, it’s integrated with iPod
4. The ipod just looks so bloody good

Mind you, if the next iPod dies after less than 2 years, I’m definitely saying goodbye to my one-sided relationship with Apple.

RIPod

Hey, my obituary to my iPod has appeared on the US Wired site - glad someone takes my grief seriously...

Death of an iPod

Death came suddenly for my 4^th gen 60GB iPod, who died today, aged just under 2 years old. It could be said that it died young, but given the early mortality rates of these MP3 players, it had a comparatively long life of giving musical pleasure.

This rather portly but capacious character was born in China, before emigrating to the Apple Store on London’s glitzy Regent Street. Soon after having arrived in the West End, it went down in the world by moving to Leytonstone with me.

Having come to East London, my iPod was forced into an arranged marriage with a now sadly obsolete 12” PowerBook. This marriage was a happy one – as the couple were highly compatible – and lasted up until my iPod’s demise. They had a love of music and photography in common, hooking up frequently to share the latest tunes and pictures.

My iPod was widely travelled, having toured the Far East, North Africa and many parts of Europe. Its favourite journey was between E11 and EC1, a commute we enjoyed together many a time.

There were few intimations of my iPod’s mortality until the last week or so, when frequent resets became the norm. This morning it passed on in the streets of Leytonstone, with one last simple poignant message for the world: a hardware failure icon.

It leaves behind one rather pissed off and bitter former Apple loyalist and aforementioned PowerBook.

iPod 60gb, MP3 player; born early 2005; died 22 November 2006

My Tribute to David Shrigley

I like David Shrigley, although his handwriting is disturbingly similar to my own, so I drew this in 'the style of'.

Witty Wordplay on the Streets of Walthamstow

On the way to work in the rain this morning, walking to Walthamstow Central, I was kindly informed by a young man that he was going to ‘fuck me up proper’. This is the kind of sophisticated discourse one is used to hearing on the streets of London, and it is always a pleasure to engage in a little spirited badinage as one perambulates around town.

It was partly my own fault. I was walking past a bus stop and there was a crowd of people waiting, so there was only a narrow path behind them. I could see a fifteen year old lad walking towards me, shaping up for a shoulder-charge if I didn’t get out of his way. I, for my part, wasn’t in the mood to do that and so our shoulders met and he was bumped rather than me.

I really don’t understand this aggression from lads around my way. It’s like they’ve always got to prove their machismo, even in the pettiest situation. However, I suppose I was doing the same thing.

Anyway, this lad turns and shouts at me in a fury. I guess he sees a nice safe middle class wanker over whom he can assert himself. As usual, as much as I’d like to say I came out best from the incident, I don’t think I did. I ended up shouting back, telling him that if he had a knife, he’d better get it out now, because otherwise I’d kick his fucking head in.

Of course, this is the point where everyone at the bus-stop turns and stares. Now I’m making prejudiced assumptions about youth and probably race as well. Suddenly I’m the bastard. And also a coward, because as he stands there continuing to shout at me, I scuttle off. I’m walking quickly away, feeling like an arsehole and looking behind me frequently in case he does have a knife and stabs me in the back.

Noel Edmunds is Mad (and so is Bill Gates)

It’s a wet, windy morning here in the Big Smoke. The sort of day where you’d prefer to hide under the duvet than face the commute to work (yeah, admittedly every day starts like that for most of us). Especially as I’ve now been told by a rheumatologist that working at a PC all day “is just very bad for you on all sorts of levels”.

I saw the consultant yesterday because I routinely get neck and shoulder problems. The problem is, according to this geezer, postural – just sitting in the wrong position at the PC, probably due to a bad ‘workstation configuration’. But even so, apparently working at a PC is bad in itself. You could extrapolate further and say that employment is bad for you. At least, employment in an industrial society. Admittedly neck ache isn’t quite as extreme as being crushed in a cotton loom or a miner’s emphysema, but it does reinforce for me that working is crap.

This leads me to thinking about people like Noel Edmonds and Bill Gates. People fulfilled only by work. Positive, driven people whose demented search for validation makes them the most successful individuals in our sick society. People whose lives are empty outside the boardroom or the television studio. Bill Gates, according to his biographers, worked 18 hour days and slept under his desk for most of the 80s. It’s just not healthy is it?

The Semiotics of eBay Photography

I was flicking through Roland Barthes’ ‘Mythologies’ over the weekend, in which advertising and popular culture are analysed semiotically. Afterwards I browsed for stuff I really don’t need on eBay. This led me to wondering what the philosopher would have made of Internet culture if he hadn’t been run over by a laundry van in 1980.

One particular online phenomenon with its own semiotic nuances is item photography on eBay. I imagine that this would interest Barthes, not only because there are subtle visual codes at work, but also because the codes change over time. There’s collective code creation going on, with customer demand affecting the way things are shown.

What the hell am I talking about? For one thing I think that photography that looks professional is now a sign that the item lacks authenticity. When I first started selling on eBay, I’d try hard to make the photos look at professional as possible. I would put together a white background and arrange the composition artfully. Now I sling the items on the carpet and take snapshots.

Why? Because the codes have evolved.

The rug that the items sit on, or the door on which a suit hangs, are now signs that the seller and the items are genuine. The everyday backdrop now signifies authenticity. The genuine bargain, the unearthed gem, the ethos that is at heart of the eBay user experience.

Amateurish photography equals authenticity

Professional-looking photography actually makes the item look like a fake or creates an anxiety that the seller isn’t in possession of the item. This is particularly true of listings for electronic goods from Hong Kong and China, where the manufacturer’s product shots are used.

If you look at clothes, the reason that authenticity is at such a premium is that eBay is more thoroughly awash with fakes than a street market in Istanbul. If you look through menswear you’ll see a million Paul Smith jeans or D&G tracksuit tops advertised as ‘BNWT’ (Brand New with Tags). The photographic code changes from product to product, with jeans shot from above on the floor, for instance. What will always be the same is the prominently displayed product tag acting as a sign of authenticity. The irony is that the photograph of a tag is now a sign that it is almost certainly a fake.

The display of the 'genuine' tag now equals a fake

The interesting thing is that the label, that other potent brand signifier, is still a sign of genuineness in second-hand clothes photos. Most listings for second-hand designer clothes include a close-up of the label. So the tag means that the item is too good to be true, but the label still means authenticity. It’s all about context; the way meanings slide.

Why do photographic codes get established and change? I suppose the simple answer is that people copy each other. eBay is a marketplace like any other – and ways of selling evolve around what gets the highest price.

So where does this leave us? Well, in the 1950s when Barthes began writing the articles that were collected in ‘Mythologies’, mass media was produced by corporations and government, pushing their own agendas. Now eBay puts the creation of advertising in our hands – and it turns out that we’re just as manipulative and mendacious as the big boys.

Does Anyone Else Do This? No. 2 in an Occasional Series

Go on about how rude people are in London while getting irate with tourists for dawdling

I was in a hurry to get to work today, but as I emerged from Chancery Lane tube station I found my path blocked by a group of about 10 German tourists. All wearing the traditional costume of the European tourist in London – the luridly-hued waterproof rambler anorak - they had decided to stop in the middle of the stairwell to consult a guide book.

I must admit that, when I worked in Piccadilly, one of my biggest bugbears was the way tourists strolled around slowly, getting in the way, gawping at everything, cluttering up the pavement with their aimless meanderings and Kipling backpacks.

I thought I was free of this in Farringdon, but obviously these Germans were lost.

So did I help them, demonstrating English politeness and tolerance? No, I pushed past them, muttering darkly.

Drawing from a long meeting yesterday...

Click to make it bigger

Scootering No More

The time has come to sell my trusty old Vespa ET4. I’ve stuck it on eBay (see the ad here) and it will belong to someone else by next Saturday. No more road-rage incidents, bus lane fines or trying to find a rare parking space in central London.

Why am I selling? Primarily because we’ll soon be living in Welwyn Garden City, so I won’t need it. Partly because my insurance premium is going up to £300 a year, which is probably half the value of the bloody bike. And, finally, because I’m tired of being fearful that someone’s going to nick it.

Arrivederci, plucky ET4 - it really is the end of an era!

Does Anyone Else Do This? No. 1 in an Occasional Series

Having a race with someone in your head

I left the house at the same time as our next-door neighbour, a rotund Spanish bloke named Paolo, this morning. We always say ‘hello’ a bit awkwardly and then leave it at that. So imagine my horror when I realised that he was walking to the station at the same time as me. I had visions of either having to engage him in uncomfortable conversation or walking with him in nervous silence.

Thankfully he headed off in a different route to my usual, so we could legitimately part ways without any social ill-grace. I then decided to see whose route was quicker – was mine better? I didn’t cheat and run it or anything – I’m not that competitive – I just walked briskly. This desire to get there before my neighbour was balanced by a desire not to bump into him again at the station and have to make conversation again.

After striding up to the tube, I found he was already in the queue for a ticket. I had to concede his route was quicker – especially as I could hardly believe such a fat fella could walk faster than me. Bastard! However, I’d already bought my Oyster travel card the night before, therefore didn't need to queue. So, as Alan Partridge wrote repeatedly in his autobiography 'Bouncing Back': needless to say, I had the last laugh!

Hungover, Bruised, Abashed.

I’m really not used to drinking these days, so I got hammered far too quickly when I went for beers last night. This eventually led to the embarrassment of nearly fainting in a Clerkenwell bar – and a severely bruised gluteus maximus this morning.

Picture this Nathan Barley-esque scene: three embittered hack copywriters from three different agencies, all approaching their 40s, in the Eagle on Farringdon Road, drinking Staropramen and Kirin. After discussing women, family and art directors over a few pints, I receive a call from a Strategy Director friend of mine, who’s in a nearby bar with her boyfriend, who’s big in online media.

Yes, my life is a cliché.

So, anyway, we go to this bar and drink more beer. I’m wearing new Jeffery West boots with leather soles. The loos are down some wet stone steps (maybe someone didn’t make it to the urinal in time?). I’m a little unsteady on my feet anyway. You can guess what happens next…

I fall down the fucking stairs – my arse and elbow (no, I couldn’t tell them apart at the time) taking the brunt of the tumble. The pain – Christ – it hurt! I curse and pick myself up, go to the toilet and, as I’m unloading waste beer fluid, I start to feel rather queer (as they used to say in more innocent times).

As I zipped myself up and went back up the stairs, everything went like a cheap video effect from Top of the Pops circa 1978. It was the closest I’ve come to a psychedelic experience without drugs. I’m told I went ghostly pale and I remember leaning against a pillar, desperately trying to keep my wits. Luckily, my strategist friend knew what to do – and made me put my head between my legs – otherwise I’d have passed out completely.

This is after 5 pints. Humiliating.

Loose Lips Sink Ships

I realise that I don’t often talk about the people that I work with or go into specifics about my agency. I suppose this demonstrates some kind of discretion on my part, but it does make me wish I’d made this blog anonymous. I’d love to have the freedom to gossip.

I’ve always found copywriters to be the biggest gossips in the agency world. Every time I meet a freelancer to look over their portfolio, we end up discussing this person or that agency like two old women nattering in the queue at the Post Office.

This is partly because copywriters are (or should be!) natural storytellers – and gossip is undoubtedly a very seductive form of narrative. However, I also think we tend to be bitchier and grumpier than other creatives.

Apart from me, of course…

Jimmy Dean Pancakes and Sausage on a Stick

I was reading an article about revolting novelty foods in the Guardian today. As a result I’ve grown morbidly fascinated by Jimmy Dean Pancakes and Sausage on a Stick – Chocolate Chip flavour.

Just typing out the name of the product makes me realise that this foodstuff is wrong on so many levels. Let me itemise the wrongness:

1. The brand name: dead film star with pubic lice, wrapped around his steering wheel. Is the meat in the sausage actually Jimmy’s flesh scraped off his Porsche Spider, like some form of Method Actor biltong?
2. Pancakes and Sausage on a fucking stick: like a kind of meaty lollypop. A dog’s cock in a fluffy batter sheath.
3. Chocolate Chip flavour: Just as you’re getting past the prospect of microwaving Jimmy Dean’s road scrapings in batter, this new detail blindsides you. I know the Americans have a thing for mixing savoury and sweet things, but this is surely deranged?

What human being would eat such a thing? I must try it – just to satisfy my own perverse curiosity…

Jamelia's Dirty Bone

The blog’s been quiet this week as I’ve been manically busy on a job for a new client. It’s meant a lot of drawing, which is always a pleasure. When your main mode of work is typing stuff in Microsoft Word, messing about with a marker pen and paper is a joy.

As I draw, I’m listening to ‘Beware of the Dog’ by Jamelia. I’m not usually big on R&B, but it’s got a great sample of ‘Personal Jesus’ by Depeche Mode. Apparently the dog in this case is ‘dirty to the bone’ and best avoided by discerning ladies. I assume that Jamelia is referring to a cad of the human variety, as opposed to bestial acts with a spaniel after he's dug up the flower beds.

Wrong Side of the Leamingtonian Tracks

I had a night in on my own last night. Em and Stan had gone up to see her mum and dad for the evening. Although I missed them both, I have to say that I revelled in the peace and freedom. I even gained immense satisfaction from ironing shirts as I listened to music.

The Young Knives
I’m listening to the Young Knives a lot at the moment. They’re an interesting band, with a kind of choppy, new wave slant to their music and mordent wit in their lyrics. That a really good band could come out of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire is, frankly, astonishing.

The ‘Leamington Scene’
Though not as astonishing, admittedly, as the fact that I saw an article in the NME about a thriving ‘Leamington scene’. Now that really is bizarre. I know the NME tends to hype up excitement around ‘the next big thing’ in music without much substance, but the idea of Royal Leamington Spa as some kind of new Madchester makes me feel like I’ve stumbled into an alternative reality where the normal rules don’t apply.

Musical Memory Lane
When I was a teenager in ‘Leamo’ I remember there were only two bands of any note in the town – Bad Beach and Mortis. Bad Beach was a kind of thrash metal outfit and the short-lived Mortis were Goths. Each Mortis gig would start with the lead singer screaming ‘WE ARE MORTIS! YOU WILL DIE!” at the audience. In fact, Mortis may well have been ahead of their time, as the Horrors and Marilyn Manson have a lot of their moves.

Both bands used to play in venues down the bottom end of town (past the railway bridge, where all the poor and black people were hidden away). The favourite place to see live bands was the Bath Place community centre, which was full of crusties and ‘alternatives’.

The Neat End Paragraph
Ahh, them were the days – when sniffing marker pens was the only high readily available and sunglasses weren’t security tagged, making shoplifting a doddle. I can’t imagine that the 17 year old me could picture a point in twenty years time where he’d be listening to an album on a tiny white box holding his entire record collection, bopping around like a lunatic as he ironed fifteen shirts.

Welwyn Garden City: Nice!

OK, we've completely changed our plans and have decided to withdraw the offer on the house on Walthamstow and move to Welwyn Garden City. Although it is true that Welwyn Garden City is possibly the least cool place on Planet Earth (apart from Crawley), we went there on Saturday and fell in love with the place. After years of living in London, it's safe, green middle class heaven. By god, it has a Waitrose and a John Lewis! It has nice streets lined with apple trees! The feral teenagers aren't armed! It's...er...really nice! I genuinely feel like singing the praises of Welwyn Garden City from on high.

We've had an offer accepted on a house (it's a nice house!) there.

Yes, I'm now officially middle-aged and middle-England. I'll be going on holiday at Centre Parcs next...

The only thing I'm dreading is ringing the Walthamstow estate agent to tell him we're pulling out. I'll keep you posted...

East London Estate Agent Babylon

After my self-piteous rant about the property market in London, we found a nice house in Walthamstow that we can afford and had our offer accepted. Which is great, apart from the fact that this has pulled us into the orbit of the pushiest estate agent I’ve ever met (you can imagine that he’s pretty bad then). The estate agents in East London are especially appalling currently because of the Olympic effect. You can see the greed has gone into overdrive.

Since we had the offer accepted, this particular estate agent has been on the phone four times a day pushing me to engage a solicitor, which I don’t want to do until after we’ve had the house surveyed. He obviously wants to tie up his sale, but his tone borders on bullying. I’m almost at the point of telling him to stick his property up his shiny-suited arse.

Pointing out that London estate agents are venal wankers is hardly a startlingly original observation, but I do wonder whether these people are bred like it or indoctrinated. This guy turned up in his company Vauxhall Corsa with a ridiculous hairstyle slick with gel, driving along as he shouted into his mobile. He never listened to a word I said as he showed us around the house, apart from pausing in order to appear to listen, then making it clear from his next bit of patter that he hadn’t taken in a word I said. You could see his brain whirring, desperate to close the deal, figuring out his percentage.

Still, this is progress. Of course, now we’ll find out that the street we’ll be moving to is full of crack fortresses, but until then we’ll enjoy having found a potential home.

The house we found

Tigger's Fury

Tigger takes offence at Pooh's pathological honey greed.

Leytonstone at Night

E11, it's so mysterious and beautiful...

Property Prices and X-men

I had insomnia last night after getting so worried by property prices that my head was reeling. Emily and I are finally able to buy a home for the family and once I started looking for somewhere we could afford, I became utterly obsessed. It’s like a psychosis that sucked me in and filled my brain with postcodes, stamp duty, house prices and overwhelming despair as I realised we are priced out of the whole of London.

I then compounded the angst by watching two superhero DVDs in a row until 4am. The first of this Marvel double bill was X-men 3, which included some unforgivably clunky script clichés. When Magneto gazes in horror at Jean Gray/Phoenix wreaking destruction and utters a horrified “What have I done?!” you know that it’s script-writing on autopilot (especially as he was happy for her to wreak destruction a few minutes earlier (not that any internal logic to the plot appeared to be important)).

Please believe me when I tell you that X-men 3 is utter, utter shit.

But it isn’t nearly as bad as Daredevil, with Ben Affleck as New York’s blind avenger. It cost £3.25 from Tesco and even that wasn’t good value for money. If I hadn’t been pinned to the recliner by exhaustion, I think I would have blinded myself to avoid seeing any more of this cinematic turd-dribble, possibly by stabbing my eyes out with my own thumbs.

Holding Hands

Emily and I went out for dinner last night, with our friend Gill very kindly babysitting Stan. It was the first time we’d been out alone together since Stan was born. As we walked to the restaurant, Emily pointed out that it was also the first time we’d walked holding hands since the birth, as one of us is usually pushing the pram. After that, I was very conscious of the soft warmth of her hand in mine.

Egos and Insecurities

I feel a little embarrassed by my fit of insecurity yesterday. I suppose I should really have more front, like Creative Directors seem to. It often strikes me that most of the creatives I’ve met (I’m including everyone from the humble designer to ‘proper’ artists) are continually caught between extreme insecurity and raging egotism (not necessarily fuelled by the old Cameron Candy).

This seems to be especially true of men, who always vie to be the alpha male, with the ‘best’ idea or the most profound observation. They communicate in order to dominate. Women, in my experience, tend to communicate in order to cooperate, which is more productive. It’s unsurprising that in a creative world ruled by aggressive, insecure, emotionally underdeveloped men, women are somewhat under-represented.

Tits Up Time?

After a weekend of tropical storms in dear old London, I made my way to work in sunshine this morning, listening to Bonnie “Prince” Billy, fretting about my job. Having had a poor upbringing, in which my mum’s luck seemed to be permanently crap, I always start to worry when things are going well. A nagging fear creeps up on me – an anxiety that I’m going to lose my job and fall through the financial cracks into poverty. So, as I’m getting married, may finally be freed from my mortgage with Lucy (and therefore be able to buy a home) and appear to be making a success of my job, I’m waiting for everything to go tits up.

My current paranoia revolves around the fact that I’m going through a quiet patch at work. Only about 50% of my time is billable at the moment and in the agency world that’s enough to make one extremely insecure. After having felt rather pleased with myself for building up the copywriting practice at my agency, I’m now worried that not enough work is coming in.

This is my version of the immutable law of creative life: it’s either too busy or too quiet. The busy end of the spectrum leads to stress, hair loss and comfort eating. The quiet end leads to paranoia, insecurity and comfort eating.

And, in my experience, there is never a happy medium.

Battery Joy

I'm typing as my children watch the Fantasic Four on DVD, ruminating on my lack of traditional male skills. If I hadn't already realised that I'm useless media fop, I'd have caught on after a few hours working on my scooter. For instance, I had to ring a friend to confirm what colour connections I needed to attach to the positive and negative thingies on my battery. How crap is that?

The ad:tech Jester Experience

I’ve just come back from the ad:tech trade show. This Internet sell-fest is an alluring combination of boorish young men in Ted Baker shirts, hired ‘hospitality’ girls in leotards and cheap promotional gewgaws (“oh, they’ve given me a juggling ball with their logo on it, I must give them a £ multi-million contract!”) in the shabby scuffed bowels of Olympia.

It’s possible that the exhibitors may offer something of value to someone in this benighted world, but as a copywriter I was horrified by the debased techno-jargon that streamed forth like a turd tsunami raging through the already despoiled Cheddar Gorge of my head. I waded through ‘end-to-end solutions’ that were, of course, ‘scalable’, ‘flexible’ and indeed offered ‘significant ROI' per 'click-to-conversion'. I briefly came up for air, only to find myself confronted by a man dressed as a jester promoting an online casino.

I left after an hour or so, making my way past the online marketers outside the main entrance, their delegate passes fluttering in the wind as they indulged in a sneaky fag. If the Internet is the wild west of capitalism, ad:tech is the Deadwood, with Ian McShane playing a dead-eyed clown.

Scooter Rant

My impotent urban rage is reaching dizzying heights this week. My scooter has been kicked over in the middle of the night, scratching the paintwork. It was also knocked over by a pissed South African driver recently (I know he was South African from the cheery accented “Shit!” yelled as he hit it and drove off). My scooter, battered to shit by idiots, now looks like it’s been test-ridden by Richard Hammond on crystal meth. All because some twats have no respect for other people’s fucking property.

I’m currently considering buying an anti-personnel mine from eBay (I haven’t looked, but I’m sure they’re on there) and rigging it so it explodes when my scooter isn’t vertical. Of course, judging from previous frequent experience of trying to ride off with chains still on back wheels, I’d forget it was there and blow my own senile arse up.

Dwarf Fear

Writing about Frankie yesterday reminded me of the abiding fears that parents have for their children. I haven’t conjured up any fears over Stan yet, but I’m already getting anxious about Mila and boys. Having now bought two swords from eBay, I’m sure that I’ll greet any boyfriends by sharpening my sidearm on a whetstone and threatening them with it when she’s out of the room.

My biggest fear for Frankie used to be that he’d turn out to be a dwarf (or midget, but I’m not getting into that debate here). He went through a number of years of being somewhat under-sized for his age – fitting t-shirts for 3 year olds when he was 5 and the like. He’s shot up a bit recently, which has eased my worries. However, I’ve recently started thinking – well, would it be so bad if he turned out to be a dwarf?

Let’s face it – he’d always have a career in show-biz to look forward to. I’ve never seen a dwarf at a Job Centre and I’m convinced that’s because they’re all still living off the money they made being Ewoks in the Return of the Jedi or down Shepperton Studios being made up as gnomes for the latest Harry Potter epic.

I’m pretty sure that, with his winning personality, Frankie could even be up there amongst the dwarf megastars like Wee Man from Jackass.

Ahh, a father can dream…

Wee man on the pull

Jungle Japes

My son Frankie and I had a great day together yesterday. We walked far and wide across London under Indian summer skies, taking in everything from Pokémon in Forbidden Planet to mummies at the British Museum.

We started out with lunch at the Rainforest Café, a huge tourist trap located in Piccadilly. I don’t know what made me suggest it, as it’s the kind of global franchise I generally loathe, but Frankie seemed enchanted by the fibre glass jungle setting, fake waterfalls and tank full of tropical fish we sat by. The service was also good, if a bit mechanically good-natured. The waitress made a special fuss of Frankie because it was his birthday. This included standing him on his chair and insisting that everyone around us sang happy birthday to him.

The food, however, was extremely average – my steak was utterly tasteless and Frankie’s meatballs could have come out of a tin. We also discovered the downside of being sat by the fish tank – dozens of kids and parents trooping around us to look at the aquatic wonders within. I had to have words with one four year old lad who tried to use my chair as a climbing frame to get a better view. He was German, so couldn’t understand a word I said, but my tone made him cry, which was a satisfactory outcome.

All in all, the Rainforest Café is the kind of soulless experience that you try to make the best of because you think your kids won’t see the cracks in the fibreglass trees and the regimentation behind the friendliness of the staff. For me, it evokes a world where the real rainforests have been destroyed and the fake jungles of franchise restaurants are the only distorted historical record.

Sunflowers and Spiders

I was feeling a bit sorry for myself after a day of feeling rank, so this evening I went for a little saunter around the garden to take some photos. Most of it's a bloody mess, but I'm really proud of my sunflowers. I planted the seeds with Mila and Frankie in May and now they're bloody gigantic (the sunflowers, not my kids).


There are also loads of spiders in the garden. Apparently there's a spider epidemic due to the hot, wet weather. They're certainly everywhere I look in Leytonstone.

Man's flu and Children's Parties

I’m at home today with what I call the flu and Emily calls ‘man’s flu’ (i.e. a heavy cold). I think I caught it from Frankie, who was complaining of a sore throat on Saturday and is known for his plague-spreading abilities. One Christmas, as a baby, he passed on a stomach infection so severe that the whole of Lucy’s family came down with it. Lucy’s dad was convinced he’d given everyone food poisoning with the salmon he’d cooked. But, no, it was ‘Typhoid Frankie’.

It’s Frankie’s sixth birthday this week and I’m feeling melancholic over the fact I won’t be with him on the day. Lucy has organised a party for him at his school and made it pretty clear that it would be awkward if I came along.

I admit that I’m secretly relieved, as I detest children’s parties. This is, I’m fairly sure, a man thing. We kind of stand around on the periphery of the chaos, grinning and bearing it as the mummy network marginalise us and other people’s kids try to punch us in the knackers or smear chocolate on our trousers. This is bad enough, but it gets much worse when you’re a divorced dad. Rather than being ignored, you are the villain who gets glared at by the mummies.

At the same time, I know that Frankie was keen to have me there and I think he’s vaguely anxious about being pushed out of my affections by Stan. He’s certainly been a bit out of sorts on the last few weekends we’ve spent together. Frankie doesn’t like to articulate his feelings, so it’s hard to get to the bottom of things with him.

The solution I’ve negotiated is that Franks and I have a ‘boy’s day’ together next weekend. I’ll take him out to lunch and then we’ll go to Forbidden Planet to get him more Pokémon cards.

Assuming we’ve both got over ‘man’s flu’ of course…

Wedding Date Set

The big news in the Fitz-Allport household is that Emily and I have set a wedding date – we’re getting hitched on 2 December. We’ve planning to do the do all year, but impetus suddenly built up after we registered Stan’s birth and found that Walthamstow actually has a really nice registry office.

Now all we have to do is organise everything. This will, no doubt, be a fucking headache. If one reads wedding magazines, this involves everything from sourcing bespoke bone china napkin rings to having seasonal flowers flown in from the rain forests of Borneo.

It’s more likely that we’ll spend all our money on booze and have a party at the house…

Bunk bed built!

Last week my friend Franco very kindly took me to IKEA to buy a bunk bed for Mila and Frankie. Oh, what fun I had building the fucking thing on Saturday! I understand why IKEA supplies purely visual instructions to multiple countries with different languages. However, when the diagrams appear to have been drawn on an Etch A Sketch by someone with advanced Parkinson’s Disease, this hardly makes life easy.

Of course, after spending three hours sorting through the random bits of wood and erecting the noble sleeping edifice, I found a bit of paper at the bottom of the box telling me to use one type of plastic nail and not another. Naturally I’d used the wrong type of nail already.

One question for IKEA – WHY INCLUDE THE WRONG TYPE OF FUCKING NAIL IN THE BOX?

Arseholes.

By the way…

I’ve decided to discontinue the Fitzness blog, as it makes pretty boring reading for anyone but me. Do you really care that I went to the gym 5 times since the last entry and am now lifting 47 kg on the bench press?

Thought not.

That being said, I’m pretty chuffed at how quickly I’ve felt revitalised by a bit of exercise. Obviously that long weekly walk to the Forbidden Planet and back with my friend MJH wasn’t enough to keep me fit!

Most Incomprehensible Client Brief EVER

Client briefs are often not easy to follow, but I’ve had possibly the most incomprehensible client brief EVER land in my inbox and I must share it. It’s from a Korean client, so it’s pure Engrish. I’ve removed brand names etc to preserve his anonymity!

Here’s the brief in full:

Project overview

1) Invitation to the XXXX exhibition at Salon international

Target: Female consumer age 24-44 whom would spend 100 pound p/y for skin care product.

Format: A5

Project deadline: 8 September

Project objective: Sing copy line on front, short description on back.

We need a copy line which representing product benefit with female manner. The word should be simple but intentional and attractive.

Here are examples of copy that I have discovered while having a brain storming with designers.

Front

“Make up doesn’t improve your skin but XXXX does”

“Even better than a bottle of water”

“You don’t need worry about limescale on hair”

“Wash your hair which you actually can drink”

“No point using hair conditioner if your hair ware already damaged by water”

Back

XXXXX

Find out ultimate skin care product XXXX at

Salon International 2006

ExCel London

Time: 9:00 -17:00

Date: Saturday 14 – Monday 16 October 2006

www.salonexhibitions.co.uk

2) XXXX product AD

Target: Female consumers age 24-44 whom would spend 100 pound p/y for skin care product.

Format: A4

Project deadline: 8 September

Project objective: Sing copy line and short description on front.

This AD campaign will be place on HJ (Hairdressers Journal Salon) magazine.

IDEA 1

Rescue you skin/hair

Picture: Skin looks very dry as if it is look like dried grass. Firefighter try to rescue you dried skin.

IDEA 2

Picture: water vain on human skin.

As blood supplies minerals and oxygen to our body cell, filtered water gives energy and good minerals to our skin.

This will give the idea that filtered water is essential thing for your skin.

IDEA 3

How much do you spend or take care of your body?

Picture: a Person and arrows points part of body

e.g.: mouth: Organic food £00.00
Clothes: Eco Friendly £00.00
Skin: XXXX £ 42.95

However I would inform you once we have been generated more ideas for XXXX product AD.

Best regards,

XXXX

Hitler Plays Aragorn

I’m about half way through Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream. As previously discussed in this blog, it is a novel within a novel, imagining a sci-fi story (named ‘Lord of the Swastika’) written by Hitler (in an alternative timeline where he becomes a hack writer in the US).


The novel works brilliantly as an exercise in sending up Hitler’s obsessive, repetitive nature (the same histrionic phrases like ‘smashed it to flinders’ are repeated endlessly in the text), the allure and warped morality of fascism (the fictional hero Feric, with a fetish for black leather and phallic metal truncheons, rises to power like the real-world Hitler, but is a tall, strapping Aryan Übermensch) and the conventions of sci-fi and fantasy novels (lone hero, destined to become king, subhuman hordes of enemies).

However, as a novel it becomes increasingly hard to endure. The stylistic satire – repetition and ridiculously over the top prose – becomes unbearable. Perhaps this is a bit like spending an evening with Hitler, who was prone to rant on about the same things over and over as his cronies sucked up to him.

As I love bizarre things like this, so I probably will persist with it. However, I’m guessing it wasn’t end with a debilitated, deranged Feric trapped in a bunker as the ‘hordes of Zim’ advance through his ruined nation…

The Demon Scriptwriter

We’ve had my mum down to visit this weekend. There are two things that are guaranteed to happen whenever she comes down from Leamington Spa:

1. We’ll have a heated debate about politics where we end up shouting and Emily sits there quietly, trying to stay out of it
2. My mum will lament how little she sees her grandchildren and I’ll nag her to move back to London so she can see them whenever she likes. This will infuriate her and an awkward, polite phase will follow

Both of these things happened, as expected. It’s strange how one ends up in the same old scenarios with relatives, time and again. It’s like they’re scripted by some demonic hack who likes conflict and repetition. All you can do is repeat the lines you’re given on the mental autocue.

Night Fears

Well, the first episode of the Sopranos has, frankly, fucked with my head. I’m thinking of the sequence where Eugene Pontecorvo, doomed by Tony’s diktats, looks at photos of his son in happier times and then hangs himself. This put me in a very dark place. It wasn’t simply the way the camera lingered as he jerked around on the noose; it was the man’s despair at his boy’s loss of innocence and heroin addiction. As father of two sons, that taps into a deep fear for me – the prospect of being alienated by your own children as they drift into hopelessness.

This didn’t particularly hit me until I was disturbed at 4am by a fly crawling on my hand. Ironically, it was the dying, drowsy fly that I thought I had killed before I went to sleep. When I had swatted it from the wall with a magazine it must have fallen onto the bed. Still half-asleep I brushed it from my hand.

Then I dreamt that Amazon actually worked by employing flies with their wings pulled off to sort information in a shoebox.

I think I heard the buzzing of the fly and awoke to find it crawling on my duvet. I flicked it onto the floor and tried to crush it with a book. Although horribly injured, the bloody thing just wouldn’t die. It just kept righting itself and crawling feebly. This obviously put me in mind of Eugene hanging in his garage, the life taking forever to rattle from him. Then my thoughts turned to his son and my sons, night fears seizing me.

I suppose good drama provokes an emotional reaction. Or was it the parmesan I had on my pasta?