:: Mid-week Fling ::

In a change of tactics, I've decided to avoid the dreary once-a-week Friday round-up megapost. This is partly due to the fact that I have a bit more time on my hands. My boss has returned from a two-week stint in Croatia and I no longer feel obliged to hit the desk at 7.30am. All things considered, it hasn't gone too badly in his absence: no doubt I'll receive compensation for my efforts in the form of a Chupa Chup or something equally derisory. Anyhow, the boss' return was marked by going for a departmental picnic in the local park. This was partly for the benefit of the new starter in the department, but served well as piece of ritual coy embarrassment. Amongst the topics of conversation was this gem from my head of department. Eager to capitalise on the hour-long lunch break allocation, he and another colleague headed to a pub to play pool. However, the hostelry in question had recently been refurbished, ni the course of which, their table disappeared to make space for extra customers. He remembered seeing a sign near the tube station with a vaguely trianglar symbol and so they headed there. Unfortunately, this venue happened to be the local branch of Chariots and not a pool hall at all. The following conversation with a grubby man behind a grille ensued:
"How much is it?"
"Ten quid."
"Is that for an hour or can we play all day?"
"You can stay as long as you like."
"How many tables have you got?"
"You do realise this is a gay sauna, don't you?"
"...!"

Issues to rant about today include: the proliferation of ever-more stupid email disclaimers. Apparently the legal validity of many of this is questionable - and some appear to be downright contradictory. It's not just me on my high horse, either. A teachers' union has denounced mickey mouse degrees from fourth-rate new universities. All sounds a bit Daily Mail to me but makes some sense. Nevertheless, I perfectly happy with my BA in Inebriation Studies from the University of Clerkenwell Green. And New Yorkers have been getting in a huff about the potential branding of subway stations...

In Other News... Dr Rufus appears to have enjoyed stunning success in his apicultural endeavours. I look forward to tasting the fruits of his buzzy friends' labours soon. And when Google got well and truly whacked recently, I started using blinkx. I'd certainly recommend it - not as a replacement for, rather as a complement to Google.

Back to work related matters. I noticed today that Boerhinger-Ingelheim has an amusing company logo. If you find that puerile and unfunny, you can fuck of to Felixstowe and watch Rik Waller performing with his band.

:: Can It Really Be Summer? ::

After a pretty drab and unpleasant July, today's burst of summer weather came as something of a shock. Was the squidgy damp mess of St Swithun's Day not set to be repeated for 40 days according to the old saying? Of course I don't believe in that bullshit, but I did notice a marked inconsistency. Some people refer to this 9th century bishop, who was canonised for putting some eggs back together by the power of prayer, as St Swithin. The Grauniad concurred with the latter spelling in its net notes of two years ago...

Today also marks the first time that I have felt able to purchase an ice cream during my afternoon "constitutional", a fact which neatly coincides with the news of wacky ice-cream flavours appearing in the Orient. What started as a piece of amusement, has now turned into a quest to find and taste the bizarrest palatable ice-cream recipe available. Starting with the flavours I have tried: brown bread ice cream is surprisingly nice, even verging on delicious, and ginger ice-cream is frankly anodyne. Compare to this, the prospect of garlic ice-cream makes me retch and pumpkin ice-cream could only come from a country where stodgy orange sweet-savoury mush passes for food. Actually I have no aversion to savoury ice cream whatever - as an inter-course amuse-bouche or even a daring starter, there seems nothing wrong with making and freezing a creamy non-sweet puree for gourmet consumption. And I've often been caught noshing on a handful of frozen peas straight from the freezer. But... that garlic ice cream recipe has sugar in it! Maybe I'll just have to get my hands on an ice-cream maker and start making this Guinness-based concoction. All submissions and serious recipes considered. However, I draw the line at pilchards.

So, what to do in a hot summer city? The truly masochistic can spend all day on the tube, helping to collect tube gossip or spend a sweltering evening in the Royal Albert Hall at the Proms. Others attempting to avoid the sun's harmful rays might keep extreme pets in their tropically-heated apartments, or just settle down in front of the computer to have a wank cultivate delusions of divinity. Even if you try to get away, there's no guarantee you won't be assaulted by drunken flight attendants or made to sing karaoke every night in some hell-hole on the Costa Brava to everybody's favourite popstar. No, kids, it's safer to stay at home in The Smoke and moan about it.

So that's why I'm planning to take time off work for the first time since March and visit my mother in The Lake District next month. And, who knows? I might even be able to sneak along to Edinburgh too. Adventurous, eh?

On a final note, if you're into extreme sports, I recommend this guide to getting the largest piece of pudding. The implications for self-service cafeterias are terrifying.

:: Moan, Moan, Moan ::
 
Um. there's no excuse is there? Unlike Dr Rufus, I haven't been sunning myself in Liguria or drooling over aa new pair of sneakers. No, I've been stuck in the office since 7.30 each morning for the past 2 weeks, trying to keep abreast of the workload as my colleagues sun themselves in places like Ligura (Romania and Croatia, actually). One of them's back now, so I treated myself to a lie-in and got to my desk at 8 today. Before I turn into a po-mo faux-mo homo Eeyore, I should point out that something that made me laugh last week: Stickmen. This is a highly amusing sketch show starring Matt Kirshen. I giggled uncontrollably at this riotous feast of edgy narrative and even engaged in some audience participation. Needless to say, I was heard singing, "...and I've got a beard of bees" for days afterwards. Your final chance to see this marvellous show before it moves up to Edinburgh is this Sunday at 7pm. It's at the Canal Café Theatre, handily located above a pub near Warwick Avenue. Last time I was in there, I saw Charlie from Busted. Is that a recommendation or a warning? In case you were wondering, Matt is a stand-up comedian. This is his first outing on stage.
 
I keep thinking it'd be nice to head to the cinema for some light relief, but then I realise that there's so much re-hash trash on offer: remakes and sequels, or remakes and sequels. That is why I hope to be heading to the still-quite-hip ICA (hopefully with Hypatia) to watch the sporting movie of the year Ping Pong!
 
And what have we learned this week, other than that no-one with a peerage should write reports on the government? Well, apparently those Nigerian scammer-types are just as gullible/greedy as they hope you will be when you read one of their exciting emails. And blondes really are as dumb as they seem... but only because they take heed of jokes about being dumb.
 
I suppose that's it - I'd better get back into this blogging thing gently and lie back with a bag of tasty wasabi peas.

:: Newsfelch... ::

In the week when some double-jointed mobilista broke the record for the fastest SMS message, I've been rushing around like nobody's business. In case Ms Yeo chipped a nail whilst achieving this feat, she can always print new ones, with a handy new design of inkjet printer. And I can at last kick back my heels and indulge in the latest technology for somnolent souls.

In fact, I won't be able to rest at all this weekend. The relentless toil in pursuit of social acceptance has meant a recent neglect of things domestic. So rather than heading to the pub with m'colleagues, I'm going to head home to clear my bedroom. Hell, I might even hang around in lady's clothes (I only do ladies' things!) and mop the floor before the plumber turns up.

My favourite work-related (vaguely) story of the week is Unilever's exercise in rebranding. This is a masterful exercise in corporate bullshit, anodyne fuzziness and fake compassion. I love it almost as much as I hate it.

In other news, the Grauniad gamely investigated gay prejudice at Scottish b&bs and the Beeb revealed that the Daleks have finally been exterminated. With a lack of better things to criticise, the New Yorker's finest grammarian railed against innaccuracy in Lynne Truss's bestseller. Many in this country - including myself - have been slightly aghast at the pedantic vitriol meted out in this article. As the War Of The Commas rages on, it seems inevitable that the rather toungue-in-cheek tone of Eats, Shoots and Leaves was rather lost on that particular reviewer. John Mullan's article stresses one positive effect of the book: it has, at least, opened up a lively debate on use of language, which can never be a bad thing. As in much art, I think the power of experience writers to break the "rules" in a considered way has produced some beautiful work. Nevertheless, the line between clarity of expression and bloody-mindedness can wear a little thin, and those of us who indulge in pedantry might do well to do so sparingly.

On, finally to retail therapy - that beginning-of-the-month blow-out before £20 has to last me a week. Armed with a new bag from Muji, I now head off into the weekend sunset to pamper myself with Molton Brown skincare products. Tigger's predictable reaction was "Oooh, you're such a metrosexual!" - my equally predictable riposte should have been that I thought there had been a typo, but I refrained. New CDs I shall be listening to this weekend are: the new album from Razorlight and also that of The Killers. I'm still waiting for the Kings' of Convenience latest opus to arrive. On a final note (yay for puns!), I think The Hives currently have one of the best band websites. Their new album, Tyrannosaurus Hives, should be a blast, too.

/exits, silently headbanging to Walk Idiot, Walk...