Skuds' cooker in the immediate aftermath of the beans on toast incident

Here is a photo of what happened when I felt a little peckish and made some toast under the grill.

My new theme song is:

I’m the self inflicted, mind detonator.
Yeah. Im the one infected, twisted animator.
I’m a firestarter, twisted firestarter

During an interval, a bloke came up to me and asked if I went to the Spizzenergi show earlier in the month at the 100 Club.  It turns out that he had bought a couple of tickets for it but forgot to go!   He had bought them, he said, about 6 months ago and in the meantime lost track of exactly what day it was on…

Oops.

In case anybody is interested, my team won the quiz by a point after a tie-breaking extra round.  The prize was a huge tin of choccies (Celebrations) but being Christians my team-mates decided it should be shared not only by the team but by everybody else in the room too.  Managed to bag a couple of Galaxy truffles though.

Headline in Saturday's Express

A question we have all pondered, but not dared to voice aloud… see the Guardian for an explanation of exactly why and how the Express ended up with such an eye-catching headline.  It turns out there is a perfectly logical explanation – they cocked up!

Apparently this was a couple of weeks ago but I only just noticed.  All that time I have been feeling guilty about the ever-longer grass, not knowing that I actually had a brilliant excuse for not cutting it.

For all your eletrical needs

Saw this van on the way back from Worthing.

Either he really is a eletrician or he should be asking the bloke who paints his van for a hefty discount.

Question Time 16th July 2009 screen grab

On Thursday I actually had the TV on during BBC’s Question Time.  I had my back to it and the sound turned quite low, so I wasn;t really paying attention to it until near the end when I hear Dimbleby mention that they were in Colchester.

I thought to myself “I wonder if my old mate Bish managed to get into the audience?” and considered turning round to watch until the end.  But then I figured that the chances were pretty slim so why bother – and then on Friday I got a text from Bish himself asking if I saw him on the telly. D’oh!

I had to watch the thing on iPlayer so I could see it.  Fortunately he told me roughly when it was, so I didn’t have to watch the whole thing.  Still, I’m glad to see that he had more luck getting his say than I did when I was in the audience earlier in the year.  Maybe I should have made an effort and worn a suit and tie like he did…

I wouldn’t like to see the picture in his attic though.  The bugger was in the same year as me at school, but now looks about ten years younger.

Q Magazine, August 2009. In the shops from the end of June

Over the weekend it has been hard to ignore Michael Jackson.  His name was on the front of all the papers in the newsagents, his songs were all over the radio and there was an unfeasibly large display of his greatest hits in HMV.   On top of that there was Q magazine with Jackson all over its cover.  Knowing that magazines have a bit of a lead time from the writing to appearing in the shops this looked like quite an achievement, but it turned out to be just luck.  Not sure whether it is good luck or bad luck though.

Is this the sort of thing that magazine editors dream about or have nightmares about?I imagine they will pick up a few extra sales, being the only glossy magazine with MJ’s face all over the cover – at least until the others catch up, but given that it was all written before he died and in anticipation of the now-cancelled (surely!) tour who knows what hostages to fortune may have been written inside.  There must be something unsavoury in there with the potential to upset fans, because the editor has published an apology already.  He says:

Work on this issue was completed a fortnight ago and it was printed shortly thereafter. When news of Michael Jackson’s death broke in the early hours of Friday morning, it was already being distributed. As such, we have had no opportunity to change any of the editorial content within the issue. Such is the risk inherent in producing a monthly magazine – that events may overtake a story that you are committed to.

If you do take offence to any part of the issue in light of Michael Jackson’s tragic passing, I can only apologise on behalf of Q. Hopefully, you will understand that no offence was intended or meant.

It will be fun looking through to see what they have written.   Its a recipe for disaster because Jackson’s bizarre life and behaviour encouraged suitably ripe comments, all packaged up in a magazine that must currently be a magnet for obsessive Jackson fans.

Of course, the (valid) excuse about preparing a special issue to tie in with the comeback tour applies to HMV as well.  When I saw the large number of Jackson CDs on Friday I was impressed that they could have gotten so much stock within 24 hours.  I had a mental picture of CD-pressing plants and printers working overtime to get them done but although there probably were CD plants suddenly turning to churning out extra copies of Jackson CDs, I realised that it is more likely they already had a substantial stock in the back in anticipation of the tour.

Back to Q though.  I haven’t read any of the stories yet, but I have read the editor’s introduction which says, ironically:

At the time of going to press, the self-styled King of Pop was due to play the first shows of his proposed 50-night stand at London’s O2 Arena within a matter of days.  But as Q has learnt in the process of putting this issue together, there are no certainties in Michael Jackson’s world – besides the one that suggests anything that can go madly, will go madly.

No certainties indeed, except that plaudits for the, admittedly rather good, Thriller will result on the equally good Off The Wall being cruelly overlooked, and that Quincy Jones’ contribution will be even more cruelly overlooked.

With that sort of cack-handedness I think I was lucky to manage mowing the lawn with no more than the normal minor injuries.

Pay up or we send the boys round...

At last – a provider of social housing that has a worse attitude to its tenants than Crawley borough council who may have lied to their tenants and tried to coerce them but have never (as far as I know) resorted to outright blatant threats.

This card was sent out to tenants of a housing association in Merseyside.

Really though, you have to wonder how this ever got sent out.  People must have such bad ideas all the time, but somebody with a bit of common sense stamps on them before they escape. (The ideas I mean)

The housing director said:

It should never have got out there but it was an idea that ended up in the big wide world.

I’d love to know what other bright ideas there have been in various organisations that didn’t make it: the PR campaigns that got stopped before leaving the drawing board.   There must be a website somewhere…

The mystery was solved when an eagle-eyed Garda spotted that Prawo Jazdy is ‘driving licence’ in Polish and not a name so Mr. Jazdy is no longer on the most-wanted list over there.

I expect a whimsical Hollywood film to be made about it soon.