Just Killing Time in Cologne...

I have a 3-hour wait at Köln Airport before my flight to Liverpool.

Köln is full of grinning, spotty-faced, adolescent Christians…all pimples and straggly beards…and that’s just the girls. They all look suspiciously as if they are about to hop about in pure Christian bliss and burst into a verse and two choruses of Lord of the Dance…
You see, Köln has been host to the Catholic Weltjugendtag which seems to have been going on and on for weeks.
There was also a guest appearance of the new superstar of the Catholic Church on Thursday last week, I think… Pope Doodah the 9⅜^th or whatever. He grinned and waved…and they all grinned and waved back.

Since then politicians of all shape and size, gender and persuasion have been queuing to be photographed having an audience…this is very important as there is a general election in Germany next month…well, maybe.
It depends whether the Supreme Court here ever decides if Gerhard Schröder's call for an election was in fact constitutional…maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t – no-one seems to know.
The politicians are campaigning though, albeit a bit half-heartedly, just in case - but I think they were taken a little unaware by the whole thing and have been caught with their manifestos down.
You really get the impression that they just don’t know quite what they should be campaigning about…so they are treading water, sitting on the fence and umming and ahing.

Or…maybe they do know but they don’t yet know how to dress up the bad news in enough finery to get the people to vote for them.

In the end it is the same before every election. The politicians of all the parties have to prepare themselves for what, basically, is an extreme binge of falsehood with great dollops of deception and long lists of lies.

It makes you wonder how stupid they think we are.

How many elections do you have to go through before you start to realise this? The scheme is always follows a pattern. Let’s say the present government has been somewhat austere…then the opposition will talk about tax cuts, increased benefits, cutting crime, raising living standards…etc, etc…

The electorate believes it...votes them in…and then…well, all those things they promised…hmm…well, now…they are just not possible…yet…the new government has now seen what a truly awful mess the previous government had made of things and the situation is much worse than we all thought and so…unfortunately the tax cut/benefit increase/crime reduction will have to be delayed until such time as everyone has forgotten all about them.

I mean, how stupid do they think we are?

Then, remember Helmut Kohl. He had a fine story to tell the German voters…and myself I suppose as a payer of German taxes.

“To finance the reunification of Germany there will be no new taxes…”

Well, there weren’t…but there was a “Solidaritätszuschlag” – a “solidarity extra payment”…not a “tax” you see!

And come to think of it we are still paying it 15 years later.

Then there was George Bush…the father, not the nincompoop son with his scandalous “read my lips – no new taxes” fraud.

How stupid did they think we are?

Why is there no come back? If you go on TV and tell people you manufacture a car that runs on fresh air and costs nothing, you are going to get into trouble, so how come the politicians get away with it all the time?

Is it perhaps something to do with the fact that they write the rules?

The most amazing thing is when they get together and spend months to decide about paying themselves more money.

“Talks have commenced today in the government’s salary think–tank on the percentage by which MPs’ salaries should be increased…”

Months later we learn that, yes, they have decided to increase their salaries…well, hey, what a surprise!

Imagine the voting session:

MP 1: “I propose that we increase our salaries by 10%.”

All: “Ok!”

So what do they talk about the rest of the time? Probably how they are going to spend it all.

How stupid do they think we are?

They obviously think we are very stupid…and for once they might be right.

I have to check in for my flight soon. Perhaps I just have time to go over and listen to verse 146 of Lord of the Dance.

...and by the way...afore I go...

So that no-one is left in suspense... here is the first sheet printed with my super-duper tight-fisted-old-bastard printer refill kit...

It is great - there is even a pair of plastic gloves in the thing to keep your hands clean should you be totally incompetent! Then you have to sit there and inject an old cartridge with the ink after holding up the little bottle and drawing the stuff into the syringe...got some funny looks from people passing by the window...but I gave thema drug-crazed kind of look and they soon skedaddled...I almost gave the syringe a little squeeze like they do in ER before they inject people but that would not have gone down too well...

A Rain of Terror...

In Munich it is doing nothing but rain. Day and night rain, night and day rain....no walks to the beergardens, no cycle-rides...also to the beergardens...

Drip drip. Rain, rain...

BUT...

...tomorrow I am off to sunnier, more exotic climes; the north-west coast of a famous island...known to the Greeks for its tin mines and to the Romans as the home of many warlike tribes...home of football and fish and chips, mother of parliament...ancient Albion...

...yes, bloody rainy England.

This means that there may be a few bloggy gaps in the next few days but as hardly anyone is reading my blog anyway...I feel this will be forgiven, assuming it is even noticed!

I will however be reporting on the events over there so stay tuned, both of you.

The Anfluence of Inkohol

I was really proud of my little Canon BubbleJet 250 printer when I bought it…er…4 years ago(?) but I was not prepared for the seizure I nearly had when I went to buy the first replacement cartridge after the ink in the one supplied had run out…
70DM they wanted…35€…$42.6064... ₤23.7622 (yes, I did look up those last two amounts). Bloody hell – the printer only cost 120DM…erm…let’s see…60€…um…oh do it yourself.
Well, today as I was loitering suspiciously in the local computer shop I found for 9€ ($x, ₤y) what might be the answer to my inky prayers...

...looks suspiciously like...drugs -
will I become an inkoholic??

I love this kind of thing…
It’s a fill-up-the-old-cartridge-yourself-and-get-ink-all-over-the-fucking-place kit
which is aimed at save-a-few-pennies-but-end-up-paying-out-more-than-you-would-have-
if-you-had-bought-the-normal-thing idiots like me who tend to do-it-ourselves-and-regret-it-forever….
Sorry, have to break off for a moment – I just hyphenventilated.

Anyway, this is a really sinister looking kit. When you peer through the packaging you can see the cute little bottles but what attracted me was the plastic syringe in between them. I very nearly said, “w o w, c o o l” in the shop. But when you open the package… W O W, C O O L …there are all sorts of little devices…yesss!

I haven’t actually tried it out yet but I will. There is a little instruction booklet with it too…but I don’t need that – I will use my inkstinct.

Did Someone Say "Bar"?

You are here...

There is a bar at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy - our home! Brilliant...now I know where to go when I have eaten at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe...

(Ok, ok... although it is interesting I really posted this because I have just found out how to make snapshots of websites with "Hello".)

I like bars. I like them so much thatI once considered becoming a shepherd...
...they are surrounded by baahs...

I will get my coat....

Oooooh...Aaaaah!

Now that is what you call a beer!

I have been meaning to post a picture like this for yonks. This is one of my favourite sights in the summer...my faithful golden friend...

A magnificent beer brewed in a monastery near Munich, Kloster Andechs

That is one thing that Henry VIII really cocked up...messing about with the divorce laws...hmm...ok. Founding your own church...why not? Having one of your wives (or was it two) beheaded...it's not really the PC way any more admittedly...

But closing the monasteries - where they no doubt brewed and distilled wonderful drinkable things...that is just plain stupid!

There are loads of little monasteries around Munich that brew their own beer...and it makes me feel extremely spiritual to visit them.

I will just have to do a photumentary trip there again - for YOU lot...what a bloglife!

Isn't She Lovely...

I am an S.O.F. ( sentimental old fool). I was thinking about Nicky's birth last night...at around ten to eleven on August 12th 19xx.
That incredible moment when she finally just popped out...all covered in yellowy wax, eyes all screwed up as if she was being awoken from her sleep - she still looks like that in the morning now actually...well, apart from the yellowy wax.
The midwife put a pair of sinister surgical scissors in my hand and I cut the cord..."I declare this life open...", then they put her in my arms...a fabulous feeling. She opened her eyes at that moment and seemed to give me a look (I know this is supposed to be impossible - newborns can't focus etc etc). It was a penetrating look and seemed to say..."hmph...who's this then..?" and then, "uh huh, ok".
I bathed her - carefully supervised by the midwife, thank goodness - and gave her to her mother. All the time I was looking at her...looking - in that strange goofy way you "look" at your newborn children.
At some point in this dreamlike period it became time for me to go and let everyone sleep. So I went outside and climbed in to my very old but heroic VW camper and turned the key....

Ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra...no.
Ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra...no.
Ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ahem-ahem-ahem...no.
Ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra...no.

The old camper was not getting up at this time of night. So I got out, strangely unconcerned about this reluctance of my vehicle to start and wandered, still in my trance, through the dark corridors of the hospital to the front entrance...

LOCKED.

So I had to look around for someone to help. I finally found a little cubby-hole office where reception was and inside a very Bavarian receptionist who spoke very Bavarian. I tried to explain what I wanted - my German at the time was not very good...and to be honest, neither was his...but he finally realised that I wanted to get out and so after carefully heaving himself out of his seat, he came with me to the door, unlocked it and released me.
I needed a taxi...there was a telephone box...but it turned out to be the only telephone box in the whole of the unvandalised Munich of the eighties which didn't work...
Finally I flagged down a taxi, got in and sat there with a soppy grin on my face and a glowing warm feeling of just-having-watched-my-child-come-into-the-world-iness.
Back home the friends who had come to stay to help out sat me down at the kitchen table and poured me out a big balloon glass of Remé Martin. I told them the story and they got all excited; then I phoned Liverpool and told my mother and father and they got all excited.
I put the phone down and started to drink. And then I began to cry...uncontrollably..tears of relief, joy and about 16 other emotions I didn't even know I had...
The next thing I remember is being upstairs on my bed, another good dollop of cognac warming in the glass in my hand and listening to a loop of Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely" on the headphones and crying and crying and crying...
S.O.F. - sentimental old fool...actually, S.Y.F. sentimental young fool.

Happy Birthday Darling Nicky!

Do you recognise my daughter?

It's Nicky's birthday! She's xxxx today! Well, she will be at 22.50 this evening.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

And The Winner Is....not me...

For those of you (no-one?) who have been waiting with baited breath to see how I got on in the UK Songwriting Contest…(see below: UK Songwriters' Thingy) and to find out whether the contest is a scam or not…here is the mail I got for BOTH the songs I entered…

Hi,

SEMI FINALS POSITION

Congratulations. Your entry has been selected as SEMI FINALIST in the 2005 UK Songwriting Contest.

Please note that most entries did not make it this far. Only approximately 30% - around one in three - of total contest entries were selected as semi finalists so you can be sure that the judges considered your work to be among the best songs entered this year.

As you know, we do not give prizes for semi finalist positions - we are giving you this information so that you have a clear idea about where your songs ended up in the final contest results.

We know it is dissapointing (sic) not to get to the finals but we hope that you will take comfort from the fact that your song was considered to be one of the best entered. We have to draw a line somewhere between sem finals (sic) and finals. In another year, with a different mix of entries and judges, it might have made it to the finals or beyond. So please do not be disheartened and we hope you will continue to write and perfect your craft and improve on your undoubted talent.

…so basically, “wow, you are really good…but you don’t get nothing, pal! But don’t give up, try again…yeah, send off more money to our Swiss bank account…” hmm.

I mean, if one had got through and one had been rejected, I would be less suspicious but the fact that I got the same mail for both songs….and the bad spelling…hmm, hmmmmm….

VERDICT: SCAM!!! (Possible second verdict: SOUR GRAPES!!!)

Actually, the mail reminds me a lot of the letter (yes, letter – on paper…yes, paper) I got from Blue Peter (non-Brits will not understand the next few sentences but never mind) – including Blue Peter Badge! – many years ago…erm 41 years ago to be depressingly exact – after I had written to them about the judo course I was doing. I can still remember the gist even now…

Dear Philip

Thank you for your letter. It was so interesting we read it again and again.

We hope you will like your Blue Peter Badge…

Yours sincerely,

Biddy Baxter

It took me years to realise that the reason for the different font on my name was because it was a STANDARD letter…arghhh! - the pain…the disappointment. I ceremoniously melted my Blue Peter Badge under the grill in protest - quite a long time later…but I still feel the scars…

However, I see there is a John Lennon Songwriting Contest which might just be legit…watch this space…

Er...Houston...We Have A Problem...

I mentioned, did I not, that my laptop was behaving erratically? Well, I ran - or rather - tried to run McAffee on my system after someone had told me it was a good virus catcher. Now, maybe it is but it couldn't seem to progress beyond a certain group of files buried deep down in the murky depths of the WINDOWS folders...
So as I am wont to do, I put on my virtual e-scuba equipment and plunged over the side to plumb the ranges of Lappy's disk, the barren e-sea 20,000 leagues beneath the user-surface...

Let's see...bubble bubble...WINDOWS....bleep -bleep....Profiles...bleep - bleep...My Folders...bubble bubble...bleep...Application Data...bloop - bleep....getting deeper now...Profiles again...bleep - bleep...ah...Outlook Express...
...by now I was breathing pure e-helium...so the rest of this blog would be in a squeaky voice...oh yes...here we are - all kinds of strange files with unknown tags... .spb ? .dat ? Strange inhabitants of the deep...and hundreds of MBs which are probably slowing down my poor old Lappy...
So I started hacking at them..chopping them to pieces...clearing great swathes of space on my harddisk...yoohoo this is the life...
"Are you sure you want to delete this file?"
Indeedy-do...my little HAL cousin...
"Are you absolutely sure??"
Never been surer, my old mate...come on let's get rid of all this rotting mail slowly decomposing on the e-bed...whoosh..delete...whosh whoosh...delete delete...
"Are you really QUITE sure??"

I made it back to the top breathless with the excitement of the wanton destruction I had carried out for the sake of my trusty e-friend, Lappy. Pressed restart...waiting to see how much quicker he had become...
Oh yes, definitely booted quicker! Ha!

Now let's have a look at my Thunderbird where all my recent emails are - unlike the old, festering ones I had just butchered...

Gone! The lot! All my folders...all my mails!! FUCK!! GONE!!!

Just now all I can do is emit little squeaky helium laughs...no doubt this will count as a major catastrophe over the next weeks when I discover how many important mails have simply vanished...but now...tee-hee...hee hee hee...

Lappy is a bit quicker too...but he is also a little more resigned to my very human capriciousness than before and there seemed to be a slight hint of depressed despair when he asked me if I really wanted to switch him off...

Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh

On Saturday the "Sommerfest" started in the Olympic Park here in Munich. Now, even you linguistic dumbos out there should be able to work out what a "Sommerfest" is..."Sommer" - summer, "-fest" - festival. And the only problem with the Sommerfest this year is that we are not having a summer.

Blustery cold winds, grey pendulous skies, sudden violent rainstorms...it's like bloody England!
And this in Bavaria where the summer normally seems almost to get switched on in June...zee Chermens und zer Eeffitziency...

Yes, the weather last week was awful...all the more amazing then, that my kids, who had gone off to Camp for a week with about 50 other kids, came back on Saturday saying they had had a good time.

Well, when I say "good time".... William (10), my youngest, very sensibly developed a serious case of homesickness and had to be picked up last Monday...a four hour round trip into the wooded Alpine foothills...
But Nicky (21) my oldest, she enjoyed it...well, except, that is for a midweek bladder infection...as she said to me on Saturday, "I could have had a proper holiday!!"
Jimmy, then? (13)...yeah...it was...cool...ok - just that we had to rush him off to hospital on Saturday with a very painful ingrowing toe-nail which had troubled him all week...
But Biddy (18)...she had had a good time? YES! One out of four...not bad really...

Hello Muddah - Hello Fadduh
Here I am at - Camp Granada.
Camp is very - entertaining
And they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining.

etc...etc...

-- Original lyrics by Allen Sherman

Computer Capriciousness

Sorry, I have been somewhat absent from the blogosphere this week. This is due to my computers having this kind of "partner" thing - a rage-inducing, foaming-at-the-mouth-causing, about-to-reach-for-the-hammer-provoking tendency to CRASH every five minutes.

It is amazing how many different ways they have to crash too. My laptop - whose name is "Lappy" - seems to favour suddenly switching to a rather fetching pinstripe pattern on the screen - after which you can do nothing...or somewhat less frequently it shifts a section of the screen a little to one side so it looks like a badly aligned slide rule (anyone remember slide rules??). It has lots of other charming idiosyncratic ways of driving me round the logical bend, though

The PC is more robust and straightforward in its crash-behaviour - by the way, in German the word for computer, "Computer" is masculine...so it's "der Computer" which means that when Germans talk about their computers they tend to say "he", as in "he has crashed" or "he has a virus" or "I laid into him with a hammer" which can cause a bit of confusion - now, where was I? Oh my PC...yeah well he...sorry, it kind of just....crashes....just ...stops... in the middle of nowhere - that's fun too.

So, now I have some semblance of normal operation - touch silicon - I can start to tackle the backlog of work which has mounted up...and then I might get back to being my bloggy self.

I DO have the hammer by my side though - just...in...case...

What the...!!!!?

I will really have to reconsider having these Adsense adds on here...just because I write about turning 50 they have all kinds of adds about "Find Your Sexy Senior Date", and " Old Age Bliss" and probably "Prosthetic Love"...

...the next thing you know kids will be standing up for me on the underground.