Soccer is amusing, but not through playing or watching.

Among the inconsequential annoyances that I gain amusement from by inflicting on other people, by far the most entertaining is by mocking those people who think that soccer is important. 
This sentence contains two irritations to soccer supporters: my assertion that soccer isn't important and secondly that it is called soccer. The usual response is "It's called football, you bastard!" Look, I couldn't give even the remotest of shits what people call the game, I just say this to get a rise out of people. However, I am genuinely of the view that soccer just doesn't matter.

"Oh my God, I tripped over a lump in the pitch
near another player. I'm fucking dying."

Because of New Zealand's national sport being the oval ball code, rugby, the natural assumption by the offended party is that I take this view because I am an adherent of said oval ball code. This is somewhat true. I played rugby inconsistently but enthusiastically for around twenty years and have spent many happy hours cheering on local teams both live at a ground or on television. It is the reason why I have a long list of injuries and of happy memories. However, I enjoy creating friction with round-ball adherents because they are just as fanatical as militant feminists, fundamentalist Christians, or even fundamentalist atheists for that matter. I know that they will not be swayed in their (incorrect) opinion and I enjoy the journey of taking them from annoyance to purple-faced invective with absolutely no intention of changing their minds.

Footballists, or as I shall name them, Soccerites, abjectly refuse to accept that staring slack jawed at a screen of a game being played on the other side of the earth, where there is a distinct prospect of a scoreless draw, is completely absurd. Honestly, nil all is a result? The offended Soccerite may point toward a five day cricket test ending in a draw, but there will be hundreds of runs scored and dozens of wickets taken. In the entire history of international rugby there have only ever been 19 scoreless draws, none since 1964. When you sit down to watch even the most dour game of rugby, there will be points scored. When you sit down to watch a game of soccer, a nil all draw is as likely as there being a result.

Soccerites are impervious to the obscene notion that their purchase of each season's kit funds the astronomical salaries of the players. Yes, pay them a good salary, but are they really worth tens of millions of dollars? The highest paid footballers are on over US$1.3million per week, the equivalent of 1,219 full-time nurses, all for flouncing around a pitch, kicking a ball at a goalkeeper and being stretchered off when their hairspray gives out. Sorry, but there's summat wrong wi' that. In 1966 England football players were paid £60 per match. How on earth did it get to be as perverse as this? I realise soccer isn't alone and sits amongst basketball, boxing and golf in the colossal salary stakes, but it certainly creates a high benchmark in paying super-fit nonces to flop around on a field while pretending to work. Ask yourself, if you were building a utopian world, who would you pay more money to, the soccer player or someone putting you back together after a severe car crash?

Then there's the diving. Soccerites believe the comical dives of players who are stretchered off only to return minutes later to the field of play. They howl with righteous anger at the real or perceived wrong of their opposition, or scream their disbelief and denial that their player even touched the guy. This mirrors what occurs on the pitch. When a referee makes a decision in a game they are surrounded on all sides by gesticulating, slavering, overpaid ponces who shove, abuse and scream at the referee. This is sanctioned by the soccerite despite there being absolutely no tolerance for this in any other sport. The only time most cricket players will address the the umpire is to enquire after the state of their health*. When emotions run that high in a game, it's a sign it's being taken far too seriously. Let's not forget the impressionable children who watch this game. They will do what their heroes do.

Now that's worth a dive.

Then there's the teams these people support. They're usually English Premier League teams, sometimes Spanish La Liga teams and are usually chosen for the most tenuous connections. The Soccerite often hasn't been to the city, seen a game at the ground, has had no relative from that town and often has no English blood at all. Often it's just because they're almost certainties to win their championships. I recall seeing one Soccerite tear his shirt off after his team lost the championship, vowing to support the team that won... there's loyalty. I support the Tasman rugby team because I was born there. I support Canterbury and the Crusaders because I live there. I support the All Blacks for both reasons. I could support Hull City in the EPL, having a parent born there and having gone through the ordeal of living in such a colourless city, but I can't be arsed because it would involve potentially having to watch a game and definitely having to talk to a Soccerite about the game.

Then there's FIFA. John Oliver does a better job of picking FIFA apart than I ever will and he makes a good point that the acceptance of corruption on this global scale by those who participate in the game is utterly ridiculous. Seriously, Qatar to host the next World Cup? Good luck with that one.

Then there's the name. Soccer. Not football. Or rather, yes, football. 
I was having a beer the other night with a couple of blokes who also happen to be Professors of Law. In mid conversation a chap who I believe to be the most vehement Manchester United supporter walked past and I refused to let the chance to let the soccer dig go by unused.
"Hey Charles," says I, "... soccer isn't a proper sport."
"It's f-----g football, you c--t." he replies. Then one of my learned off-siders says:
"Well actually, it is soccer as well. It's a contraction of the words Association Football and despite its corruption, it is a perfectly acceptable piece of colloquial parlance."
"F-----g what?" says Charles before turning away and stalking off muttering the letters UC. 
In addition to my learned off-sider's argument, I contest that it may well be called football, but it shouldn't have exclusivity over the name as there are other competitive sports that involve contact between feet and balls**: rugby union football, American football, Australian football, arena football, Canadian football, Gaelic football, Harrow football etc. Calling soccer football invites ambiguity - "I went to watch the football last night." "So did I, the Crusaders pants-ed the Sharks in Christchurch. It was fucking brilliant." See? Rugby union football. Calling it soccer is a clear way of saying that the person in italics, who wasted ninety minutes watching a game with no scoreline and where no-one got hurt, was watching association football. 
Another argument the Soccerite will summon is that only the Americans call it soccer. The crushing response, particularly if the particular Soccerite is English***, is "Yeah, and they're better at it than you." 

Soccer just isn't important enough for me to be bothering with, but I retain the right to mock it and its acolytes. Stick your soccer... you blouse.

*(I paraphrase John Clarke)
** Yes, I did that on purpose.
*** And the Russians, the Danish, the Swedes, Nigerians, Japanese, Australians, New Zealanders and so on,

I am soooo not negative, Liz you're completely wrong...

If you're happy and you know it...

I have been told that in general my blog posts are angry expletive-riddled rants by my friend Liz, in whose own blog on family the entry on her children learning the word vagina had me helpless with mirth to the extent that I may have weed a bit. In this post that boils with the irony of me negatively declaring that I am not negative, I say to you Liz, you're wrong. Wrong wrong wrong: I do like things; I can enjoy the sunshine without saying "We'll pay for that later"; I can feel contented; and I can live and let live. Here's why. My beloved Attila the Wife and I went away for the weekend and it was bliss... bliss interrupted only by her forcing us to go for a bike ride in gale-force winds for "a half hour tootle."¹

I don't offer recommendations lightly, but this one is
worth your left one.

A week ago Attila the Wife explained deliberately and slowly, so that even I could understand, that we were due some time away together as normal husbands and wives do. I couldn't help but agree because in this Attila has a point. If it were left to me, a trip away would be as far down the road as The Twisted Hop, maybe The Brewery, Mitre 10 Ferrymead if we are feeling expansive. When it comes to going out to places other than the pub, I am "...hopeless"² We wouldn't have stood a show of going to other places mentioned in this blog were it not for the careful planning and forethought of my beloved. So with this in mind, Attila took the proverbial by the other proverbial and booked us accommodation for a weekend away in tropical Little River. Now Little River isn't the most exotic location you could think of for a weekend away. As a town it is mostly unremarkable but for the art gallery. It is rightly seen as a stop for a pie before the rigours of the drive over hills that sit between it and equally tropical Akaroa, or as a place where those who enjoy recreational riding (not me) begin their odyssey on the rail trail back toward Christchurch. But then Little River now boasts remarkable accommodation that had Attila literally squealing with delight. SiloStay appeared on television to an enraptured wife who vowed then and there that we would sample the delights of temporary living in a purpose-converted grain silo, and so we did. We pottered half an hour out of town on Friday night, arriving to a literal warm welcome. The conversion from steel silo to living quarters was remarkable and we were delighted with our find. The photos here do the place a bit of justice and we found that Little River was a grand wee base for a tourist-incursion into Banks Peninsula without feeling too far from town. We really cannot recommend it highly enough.

Saturday saw our venturing take us to Barry's Bay to buy cheese and for a three course dinner at The Trading Rooms in tropical Akaroa. Students of this blog understand that I have a longstanding ambition to be one of those peculiar old men you see in a gentleman's club beside a fire in a wingback chair, gibbering incomprehensibly to themselves. When I have reached that vintage and I have a balloon of brandy in one hand and a cigar or a pipe in the other, amid the waffling about "...extraordinary thighs she had on her, looked like someone had filled a latex condom with sausage meat...", I shall be reminiscing about the pork terrine, the duo of roast lamb and a crème brûlée that left me speechless. The matched wines completed the picture (dry riesling, Cotes du Rhone and Beaumes de Venise)³ and as Attila and I walked arm in arm along the Akaroa waterfront in blissful, full-stomached satisfaction, I wouldn't have swapped positions with anyone, anywhere. It was that good and made better by the excellent company of Her Majesty the Wife.

So there, you see? All good positive stuff.

¹ Bullshit. It was closer to an hour of wind-blown misery, but I thoroughly enjoyed having a bloody good moan about it.
² The word hopeless is usually preceded by "You're fucking..." and applies only from the perspective that there is no hope for me.
³ Our grateful thanks to our wonderfully talented hosts Kathryn Curtis and Stephen Gilchrist.

An overflowing bucket of fucks

Now I ask you, is that any way to hold
a cricket bat?
And what is she looking at?

In the back corner of my garage, next to my golf clubs and underneath an empty brewing tun, is a bucket filled with the fucks I couldn't give about the royal visit. I could have gone down to Latimer Square and given a few fucks as the Duke of Cambridge bowled his wife a few badly bowled deliveries, the Duchess awkwardly flailing a plastic cricket bat, but even though the bucket of fucks I have in the garage is close to overflowing, I couldn't be bothered giving the royals any. Nope, this visit got the same amount of fucks I have to give for Justin Bieber, New Zealand's Got Talent and English Premier League football - zero. There are things I go out to the garage to get some fucks to give, but when Wills, Kate and their screaming shit-machine* popped down for a $1.2m visit to give us a metaphorical pat on the head, I only went out to the garage to trouble the beer fridge.

"The Japs have invented this amazing
vibrating throne. This is why I haven't
abdicated and let Charles have a go.

I would understand if you thought I was a republican from the unchanged level of fucks in the bucket, but I'm not. I won my high school speech competition holding a picture of the Queen and with a Union Jack draped around my shoulders. I have guarded the Queen at Government House when she visited in 2002 and to be honest I rather like most of the royal family (especially Phil the Greek). I think the Queen is a practical, capable, conscientious and charismatic woman who has done credit to her role as head of state by being even-handed and even-tempered since taking the reins in 1952. She's been a paragon of dignity, when at times her own family has let her down. I do also think that New Zealand being a constitutional monarchy is an anachronism, like closing the pubs during Easter. We're as far away from London as we can geographically get and it's not as if we're beholden to the Crown for any reason. After all, it's 2014, not 1914, why have a New Zealand monarchy at all?

However, I'm not a republican either. 
There hasn't been one convincing reason the republican movement has offered that has swayed me one iota:
The head of state is not a New Zealander and having a G-G who is, is not adequate.
A republic reaffirms New Zealand's sense of nationhood.
A republic would make New Zealand more democratic.
A republic remains an effective constitutional safeguard.
I shan't be bothering to head out to the garage for any of these, particularly any aims to further democracy considering how flawed I think it is. Our monarchy is a constitutional convenience, if anything. We operate autonomously and the Queen has absolutely no say in how New Zealand is run. The only power she holds are the reserve powers to approve law and appointing and dissolving the government which are exercised by the proxy of the Governor-General. Even then, the approval of law is blindly applied to rubber-stamp legislation and the out of term dissolution of government has never happened in New Zealand. The monarchy is mostly harmless and would only apply its powers in the absolute worst-case scenario. Based upon this, my opinion of retaining the monarchy is one of unimpressed ambivalence. You just have to look through most of my previous posts. I also find the vehemence of those who argue for republicanism to be spectacularly unedifying. If anything the name calling and questioning the value everyone is supposed to get from the royal family galvanises my resolve not to give a fuck. But then I'm not going to go out of my way to argue for the monarchy either. Were it not for their position and lives of privilege, they would be almost unable to function in the real world, and I think that's what alienates them from their subjects... that and calling them their subjects.

Now, if you monarchists and republicans don't mind, I have some very important ironing to do.

*My grateful thanks to the broadcaster Dave Ward for introducing me to this term when writing about the over-publicised birth of some 'celebrity' baby about seven or eight years ago. I loved the Private Eye headline when Prince George was born satirizing the media over-reaction: Woman Has Baby.

Jono explains life through graphs 2: the pub bore.

Last month's post, where I explained to my friend how (and if) young men think during break-ups using graphs, was so successful that I decided that graphs can be used to explain a few other truths about the world. In this post I look at pub conversation and how to do it successfully. This can be applied freely to other arenas, but a pub is a microcosm of life and a place where strangers are more likely to indulge in conversation. This is considerably less likely in other places and conversation between two people who actually know each other is more likely to see the diagrammatic circles interlock, as we shall see shortly.

"Oh for fuck's sake, if I wanted to talk about teaching I
could be made miserable by it at home."

How often have you been cornered at a bar by some raving, drooling, drunken, bigotted wanker; or some midget cocooned in their own self-righteousness; or an angry pinko feminist lesbian who seeks to blame the problems of the world on some group that you may have been slightly aligned with politically? Yes, I have been cornered on occasion and these types bravely plough on despite my telling them that I don't care or, in the case of the self-righteous midget who was attempting to convince me that on his first day of university he got his entire class to walk out of their lecture because he knew more than the boffin at the head of the class did about agricultural chemistry, that I don't believe them. Tiresome bores will sometimes appear and in an effort to extricate myself to enjoy some hard-won pub time, I sometimes have to resort to drawing them a graph as to why they should leave me alone.

First, let's look at how successful conversation happens. Imagine you are leaning on the bar with a pint. You managed to find a bit of time your other half doesn't know about and you sup at every precious pub second like a draught of the water of life. Idle conversation with the barstaff breaks out sporadically while you search for inspiration to solve that nagging cryptic crossword clue and then out of the corner of your eye a bloke you never met before, Joe Lunchbox, begins to say something to you. Joe begins his sentence "It was good to see McCullum get some runs at Eden Park yesterday." In a flash this opening gambit offers an insight as to whether the conversation will be successful or not and it all depends on how interesting you find the keywords Brendan McCullum, cricket, or Eden Park. You may have an interest in just one of those things (i.e you don't like cricket, you find Eden Park ugly and boring but you're related to NZ Captain Brendan McCullum or have some photos of him in the shower that he doesn't know about), a mixture or all three. As long as you have some sort of interest, the conversation is away. I now refer you to the first diagram. 

Diagram 1. Successful pub conversation.

In this Venn diagram you will note the two rings. One signifies Joe's attempt to talk to you about Brendan McCullum's double ton against India at Eden Park. The other indicates your interest in all things related to Brendan McCullum, cricket and Eden Park. As long as there is some intersection  between the ventured topic and your areas of interest, then interesting, erudite and informed conversation and debate may flow, even if you don't agree with Joe's support of the contraversial 'three nations' ICC proposal and that you believe he's an idiot for not agreeing that Jonty Rhodes and Chris Harris were the two most exciting and able fielders in the modern game. They plainly were, but discussing this and the topics flowing on from that initial proposal from Joe Lunchbox will seem more edifying than not as long as the two circles on the diagram continue to interlock. 
But what happens if they don't?

Diagram 2. Where interest is non-existent or
suddenly disappears

Let's go back a moment. You look up from your crossword to see that Joe Lunchbox is looking at you and this sentence falls from his foul lips: "I think Kyle Chapman has a point: we should be proud of being white, we built Western civilization and now we need to defend it from the Asian invasion." Your eyebrows join your hairline in concern and you've started looking for where the camera is in case you're being punked. You want no part of this and given half a chance this vile piece of human wreckage will talk at you ad nauseum until you either leave in disgust or attempt to stab yourself in the eye to make it all stop. If we refer to the second diagram, what has happened here is that the circles no longer interlock and we have an indifference zone appear. This may even occur from a position where the circles had interlocked before but interest may have been diverted by boredom, the arrival of something more interesting such as your favourite barmaid/barman*, or you've had a flash of inspiration and you absolutely have to write down the solution to several crossword clues in succession.
*Whatever floats your boat. It's not my place to judge.

These handy diagrams can be drawn to explain with graphical bluntness that the conversation Mr Lunchbox wishes to pursue should be drawn to a hasty close. After all, your pub time is precious and should not be wasted suffering fools.

Next time, my diagrammatic series examines the phenomenon of coming home late from the pub. 

Jono explains life through graphs

I have a friend. She's a lovely young thing who has had a bit of a poohs time recently and has returned from doing good works in Asia to take some time out to get over a relationship break-up. The man in question must have a head full of sawdust because she's gorgeous, bubbly, optimistic, intelligent and has a sweet nature and so when it came to her asking me why boys act like him I had to look back upon my own personal experience (thus, I would add that I am in no way immune from my summations)

To illustrate predominantly why young men break up with their girlfriends I drew her the first graph. Now, when men of this particular vintage are responsible for breaking up with their girlfriends, their reasons can be pigeon-holed in varying degrees anywhere in this triangular continuum. You'll note at each axis point the behaviours stupid, selfish and horny. Let's take for example Bloke 1. He broke up with his girlfriend because she didn't know the words to Kenny Rogers The Gambler, which he thinks is the greatest song ever written. Now there's some validity to their break-up because the two are fundamentally unsuited to each other because our girl has better taste than wanting to have The Gambler played as she walks up the aisle. Bloke number 1's break-up reason is stupid. He's not especially selfish because he wanted them to do something together (i.e. get plastered and sing The Gambler) and his reason isn't based on horniness because he's not chasing anyone else.

Graph 1. What sort of idiot my friend's ex boyfriend is.

Bloke number 2 broke up with his girlfriend because instead of letting him play X-Box for 14 hours a day on the weekends, she wanted to go out to a concert and meet up with other couples and have fun. Bloke number 2's reason is borderline stupid, but has its own validity because it demonstrates that he is too self-centred for their relationship to be a success. Our girl will be better off without him drawing the curtains and entertaining himself while he drools gently and she sits in the kitchen hoping the flickering lights and constant noise gives him a stroke.

Bloke 3 broke up with his girlfriend because he met another girl at a party, got her number and wants to rub his private parts against her instead. As long as he has a string of chances with other girls, he will keep breaking up. Bloke 3 is archetypal horny and again, our girl is better off without him. Then we get to Bloke 4, who is my friend's ex-boyfriend. I won't go into particulars. but I was tempted to drag him across into the hornier part of the continuum because his friends took him to a strip joint just after they broke up. I cannot be sure he wanted to go with them, but I'm tempted to drag him into the street and give him a fucking good hiding anyway.

While my friend absorbed this first graph, she said she understood, but she felt like crap. "Okay.", said I. I have a graph for that too. The second graph offers an explanation as to what happens to men and women's contentment post break-up. I want to elaborate why I use the word contentment as opposed to happiness: happiness is the temporary state of what contentment is long term. You can be happy one minute and miserable the next, however contentment is the result of collective feelings. In this situation, men experience a surge of euphoric happiness arising from their sudden freedom. They can eat and drink what they like, they can spend hours doing stupid things like playing computer games, going to the pub, watching cricket and attempting to fornicate with anyone with standards low enough to allow them. It really is terrific. However, over time, the typical man will start to feel that their life is devoid of order and while there may be plenty of people in their lives and around them, they just feel lonely. As their contentment ebbs away, they will find that they begin to crave the very thing that they shrugged off at the very beginning.

Graph 2. Her ex may be flushed with freedom now, but
believe me, it's a slippery slope.

Women feel differently. The experience of a break-up starts off as an act of trauma that is followed by a definite grieving process. However, women experience improvement over time as they realise the full array of new options open to them along with the surge in their self-confidence. Their self-confidence is the key to having their contentment improve over time until they feel comfortable enough within themselves to want to fuck up their next victim's life. As both sexes proceed along the timeline, they find both themselves in a position to enter their next relationship. Anything else is just too soon.

By this stage my friend at least had a smile on her face, but it helped her realise that the path to getting over our man Bloke 4 was going to be a process and not a matter of her listening to someone telling her to cheer up, or from the temporary relief of getting liquored. On top of all my advice, I have offered her my other unique service: I have offered to break into his house and do a shit on his pillow.

Thoughts during a recent trip to the supermarket

So, everything that appears in regular non-italics was said, everything in italics was thought, but was perilously close to being thought out loud. Warning: this is a post with quite possibly the most swearing in it I have ever written.
I arrived home from work tonight at around 6pm for Attila the Wife to ask me to drive to the local supermarket to get a loaf of vaguely specialty bread for her to use in the making of dinner. 
"Oh for fuck's sake, what a colossal embuggerance. I just wanted to slump on the couch and wish I was dead for a while. The supermarket? Really? You must fucking hate me."
Spend five minutes looking for my wallet, only for Attila the Wife to find it in the trouser pocket of the shorts I was wearing in the weekend. Attila then completely unable to suppress a look of smug triumph.
"Shut up. I fucking hate you." 
"Shut up. I fucking hate you."

Stomp to car. Reverse out of driveway only to have to wait for old lady in motorised shopping trolley, white knuckles clutching at her steering wheel in fear, to drive past at 5 miles an hour.
"Hurry up you stupid fucking whore!"
Now following at five miles an hour then waiting at a quiet intersection for her to decide which way she's going to turn and then for another two minutes while she waits for the car that is five hundred metres away to pass by. 
"Oh my good fucking God! How have you not been beaten to death by a queue of traffic yet! Fuck! My! Life! Where the fuck is Morgan Freeman when you need him?"
Drive up to narrow chicane and dutifully wait for on-coming van to drive through. On-coming van driven by dreadlocked hippy lady meanders up to chicane and then stops just short to let me through despite me having waited for her.
"Jesus fucking Christ almighty, what the fucking hell is wrong with you?! Have those shitlocks piled on your stupid fucking head caused your brain to overheat?! Fuck me, why aren't you in a commune somewhere in fucking Bolivia! Fuck off and die."
Drive through traffic lights and then straight through roundabout, noticing both cars in front didn't indicate when exiting.
"Am I the only fucking person in creation that obeys the fucking road rules? Bastards."

Approach supermarket, notice Christmas decorations in adjoining shop windows with smiling stock-photo families smiling inanely.
"Fuck off you bastards. I hope someone finds a pipe-bomb under the fucking tree."
Enter supermarket. Walk through fruit and veg section, scowl at other dreadlocked hippy lady.
"I hate all you hippy bastards."
Get detained near butchery counter by woman with a horde of children, all dithering idly through aisle.
"Hurry UP you bastards! Why couldn't you keep your legs together you stupid fucking trollop. Fucking hurry UP!"
Finally get clear only to nearly get cleaned out by some wanker coming out of a bisecting aisle who doesn't even apologise and then runs into another trolley rounding the aisle-end.

Ha. Not this time. Or any other time.

"Why don't you think that there might be someone coming from the other direction, cunt-chops? I hope you die in a house-fire. Arsehole."
"Arsehole."
Locate bread. Find only bread that almost meets but falls just short of Attila's expectations. It might as well be mouldy, baked by Hitler and be in Sri Lanka. Grab the least worst and turn, only to be cut off by a large, puffy, tattooed, female Bogan-thing.
"Ugh. Look what you've done to yourself. Underneath that thick layer of greasy white fat is a thin, un-tattoed person but sadly is still a fucking idiot."
Get to check-outs only for the dreadlocked hippy lady to take the only free one with her half-full shopping trolley, oblivious to the fact I have only one item.
"What's yellow and red and looks good on hippies? Fire."
Pay for my item and walk up to self-opening doors. Doors only start to open when about a foot and a half away.
"Just another fucking thing to add to the litany of inconveniences deliberately put in my way by the rest of mankind."
Start to move through middle of door, only to be obstructed by a horde of other people coming the other way who cannot think far enough ahead to look through the doorway to see if there is anyone in their path or to think about maybe making some space for them.
"What am I, fucking invisible?!"
"Let me through, I'm a doctor."

Move to car, reverse out of carpark and drive toward carpark exit. Shitbox car stops ahead of me on the other side of the driveway, lets out passenger and then within twenty metres of me, does a U-turn, forcing me to stop suddenly.
"What sort of fucking arsehole are you, you fucking arsehole! As long as you're alright you stupid fucking shitbrained ring-sausage dickhead wanker!"
Muttering in this manner went on for as long as this car was within eyesight. Finally lose sight of this vehicle and turn off to my street. Avoid four wheel drive on wrong side of road driven by contractor who has a phone up to his ear.
"Oh my, aren't we important, you selfish bastard!"
Pull into driveway. Sit dejected and scowling, overcome because of the recognition that as I get older, there will be more and more that the world offers me that will confuse, irritate and outrage me. Car door opened by Attila who asks if a cuddle would make me feel better.
No. I need a gallon of rum and a taser for when I'm next out in public. That'll make me feel better.

Incidentally, the bread wasn't right either.

Just a quick one before putting up the new site...

Okay, I admit it: I've been a bit of an idle bastard and haven't moved particularly fast on transferring everything over to the new site. Trust me though, it is in the pipeline. But just as a sweetener for your continued support, here's a couple of letters I've written to Members of Parliament recently.
Love from Jono the BArSTewARD