Where the hell have I been!?

It's the usual excuse. Work. When someone acquires the muddleheaded opinion that I might have a clue what I'm doing, they will occasionally offer me financially remunerated work. And so it behoves me to down blogging tools (a computer, cup of coffee, a furrowed brow, a look that tries to suggest cleverness to the casual onlooker) and just bloody well get on with it for fuck's sake.
My other excuse is tonsillitis. I have just suffered my first, and I hope last, dose of tonillitis. A disease, I previously thought of as the disease of sickly 14 year olds.
It goes like this.
Stage 1: Flu + Sweating
Stage 2: Flu gets better but you get a 'sore throat.'
Stage 3: The 'sore throat' becomes a 'seriously fucking painful. No really, I'm not joking. Seriously fucking painful' throat.
Stage 4: You can't sleep.
Stage 5: You see the doc who laughs at the size of your tonsil which is now a fat, bloated slug, covered in white slime, lying, not tucked away at the back of your throat, no, it's moved out, it's now just in your mouth. You can see it. You can see the veins in it.
Stage 6: You take penicillin.
Stage 7: Gradually it stops hurting, you stop sweating.
Stage 8: Health!

I am somewhere between 7 and 8. Sometime during Stage 5 it can develop into Glandular Fever which is exactly the same as Tonsillitis with the addition of liver problems. Turns out my liver's fucked anyway so it's not that worrying

ICC - The Mighthy Ightham (cont.)

ICC. Here is the pav. It is over a hundred years old, made of wood and if it ever catches fire, a deathtrap. 

Right where was I. Ah yes.

Pete Fryer aka Pete: Yes, we simply have no nickname for Pete. 'Deep fat' might work. Though when the nickname is roughly the same length as the actual name it defeats the point a bit:
A stalwart of the club where, apart from a 4 year sojourn to France where they don't play cricket (Typical French) Pete has been gracing the squad for many years. A versatile player he can bat at any number in the lineup with equal effectiveness. ie 20-24 runs in under 18 deliveries and then he gets caught down at third man (for non-cricketers 'third man' is a place on the field where the ball rarely comes and as such is a place greatly desired by the less athletic cricketers, especially if it is a) in the shade b) near the toilets c) near the cakes or d) near a seat).
He can also be relied upon to bowl occasionally with similar results. ie 20-24 runs in under 18 deliveries. That's right. In a game in which he is called upon to bowl, he more or less cancels himself out.
Fielding is very Ighthamesque. In other words Pete puts on a display of fielding that varies wildly between brilliant, shin-sacrificially dangerous and hilarious.
But it is to his batting we must now turn. Pete finds it impossible to hit the ball anywhere but down to third man. His wagon wheel (I sense I have lost my one American reader - don't worry. I'll be ranting about wheelie bags again soon) only has one spoke. A very thin one that extends behind him and to the left a bit.
Which explains his consistent batting scores. How so? Well it usually takes the opposition captain about 3 overs (there's the 18 balls) to realise that no matter what they bowl to him and no matter where he aims to hit it, the ball will fly in a lazy arc to the third man boundary where, due to its completely unexpected arrival, it will trickle over the boundary for four. At which point he usually sends all but the two of his players who can actually catch, off for a cup of tea. Then puts those two next to each other down at third man where one of them invariably catches him next ball.
In this Pete is the batting equivalent of the bee.
How? Physicists have determined that, aerodynamically, it is impossible for a bee to fly. Yet fly it does ( I know this because I was overtaken by an airborne one when I was out on my bicycle last summer).
Similarly physicists have determined that some particularly wide leg side deliveries are impossible to hit to third man without dislocating one's spinal column. Yet Pete does it with the ease of the master. And they're not all off the edge either. Many is the fast in swinging yorker aimed at leg stump we have seen Pete dispatch nonchalantly to third man OFF THE MIDDLE OF THE BAT.
These so-called physicists have deduced that just before the bat makes contact with the ball at the point in his shot when Pete usually shuts his eyes, his bat achieves light speed, slips through a tear in the very fabric of time itself, jumps the event horizon, picks up some Higgs Bosons near the handle end and shifts the fucking leather down to third man.
Pete Fryer. Cricketer. Man. Bee.

ICC - The Mighthy Ightham

During the summer, such as the one just gone, I play cricket for a small village in Kent (England's doorknob - located at the extreme bottom right of our wonderful island) called Ightham. Why is it spelled funny? No idea. Anyway here is our logo (designed by my own fair hand).

Note impaled rabbit on the sword. The date at the bottom is possibly inaccurate as I simply made it up.

And here is a photo of the Sunday team that was putting on a display of textbook cricket last Sunday (As long as the textbook is entitled "How to be shit at cricket.").

Left to right. Top row : Howard Mills, Matt Leggett, Steve Dawes, Sean Ashfield, Pete Fryer.
Seated: Andy Moodie, Richard Bridge, Me.
Front row: Joe Adam, Joe Austin, Tom Bentall.

Here's a lowdown of the team in picture order:

Howard Mills: AKA Millsy (Nickname arrived at by using the highly imaginative British expedient of adding a "y" on to the end of someone's name. :

Infamous throughout the length and breadth of the Kent Village Cricket League Div 2 for his hilarious bowling run up. It all starts smoothly then when he nears his delivery stride he embarks on a frankly bizarre series of very small, very fast steps. What would take a boringly traditional bowler one medium to medium/large stride can take Millsy as many as twenty six tiny little steps, his feet a positive blur. It all makes for marvellous entertainment for the batsman and wicket keeper (usually me) as we wonder when, if ever, the ball will be launched towards us. Two or three times a season the steps get so small that forward progress can be only be measured in microns and it dawns on him that at this speed it will take three weeks to reach the delivery stride. Thankfully, in these instances he gives up altogether and starts again. Known as a refusal. The groundsman is delighted as the top end gets a good scarifying from Millsy's boots.

Matt Leggett: AKA Leggett (but pronounced as if you are French. No one knows why):

Remarkable for only ever catching difficult catches. Matt inspires much mirth in his teamates (and a sweary despair in his skipper) by finding ever more comical ways to drop easy catches that my Mum could take, followed by open-mouthed dumbfoundedness when he holds onto ones that would test a professional. There's no explaining it. You just accept it.

Matt uses the little known (outside Ightham) "Confusion" method of bowling. ie the first 5 balls in an over will be a motley collection of wides, no balls, aerial wides, double bouncers, refusals, beamers and ones that actually bounce on a different pitch to the one we're playing on. Then comes the masterstroke. A straight one. By the time this highly unusual delivery has been brought into play, the batsman (and, indeed, everyone - including Matt) is so confused, the last thing he is expecting is what is known in the trade as "a good ball." It will then either clean bowl the hapless batter or be gently lobbed directly to a fielder who is often so embarrassed they are reluctant to take the catch. But who's the mug we have to ask ourselves? The batsman, that's who.

Steve Dawes: AKA Steve (Mysteriously he isn't known as Back, Front or Patio - again, nobody knows why):

Known as a limpet like opener, Steve gives his wicket away dearly and occupies the crease, doggedly seeing off the shine of the new ball and running out the rest of us willy nilly. He got me this season by confidently shouting "Yes!" at which point I hurtled (a relative term - when hurtling, in reality I achieve a speed only slightly faster than just standing) down the pitch. When I reached halfway down the pitch, only then did Steve perform a risk assessment of this run we had so lightheartedly embarked upon. Sadly for me he assessed it was too risky. He then informed me of this assessment by yelling "No! No! No!" and strolling back to his end. In years gone by I would have stopped on a sixpence and darted back to safety. These days, however, more practical emergency measures must be brought into play.

Now, there was little point in stopping because:

a) Rather like an oil tanker it takes six nautical miles for me to come to a complete standstill.

b) Once halted it takes ages to gather enough momentum to escape the gravitational pull of the earth and achieve forward motion again. 

So, while maintaining top speed (again a relative term), I attempted what, in naval circles, would be termed "hard a'starboard." However in real terms, was a long, slow turn of a radius that, if completed, would have taken a full minute to execute and would easily have encompassed the pavilion, the church and some detached housing. The result? Run out by three feet. 

Admittedly I nearly got him later on in the season by contrasting, enthusiastically setting off on a run, with confidently shouting "No!" His face was a picture of confusion matched, I suspect, only by my own.

To be continued.....

Sean Ashfield: AKA Shozzer, Wides, The Seanado (to rhyme with Tornado).

Though Sean is a member of Ightham Cricket Club and, indeed, was its Chairman for a few years, he actually plays for Underriver Cricket Club. Eh?  He used to play for us and still occasionally does (see picture) but in the all important Kent Village Cricket League Divs 1-6 he prefers to ply his trade for Underriver (currently promoted to Div 4) rather than Ightham (Mid-table mediocrity in Div 2). Why? The seeds of this conundrum lie in notoriously fragile mental makeup of the fast bowler. That's right. Like many members of this elite group of finely tuned athletes Sean is both fragile and mental. How does this manifest itself on the field of honour (cricket pitch)? Wides that's how.

I am the wicket keeper. In the normal run of things a wicket keeper's lot is thankless drudgery, enlivened only by chatting to 1st slip about important topics (who's doing the tea, who's got quite big tits, agreeing that the catch we have just contrived to drop probably didn't carry anyway). So we don't take kindly to bowlers who bowl wides down the leg side. To anyone who isn't au fait with the "Art of wicket keeping" as I like to term it, allow me to explain what you have to do when someone bowls a "wide down the leg side."

1. From the crouched position you have to rise. This happens every time a bowler bowls but you have to get up a bit quicker than normal because, frankly you're going to be busy.

2. Set off for the leg side. Best at this stage to overestimate rather than underestimate just how wide it is going to be by the time it gets to you. You won't regret this.

3. On your journey down the leg side your view will be temporarily obscured by the batsman. In the kind of circles we pay cricket in, players are not renowned for their sleekness of frame. So this blind spot is usually pretty big and consists of two great big fat arse cheeks.

4. Emerge the other side of the batsman and pull away from his gravitational field, hoping vainly that your next view of the delivery will reveal it to be "not too bad." 

5. Depending on wideness either dive full length with left arm outstretched hoping to get some glove on it, hurtle after it hoping not only to catch it but be able to arrest your accumulated momentum before you hit the fence, simply catch the bastard.

6. Glare at the bowler.

7. Mutter at the mirthful antics of the rest of the team.

All it takes is for Sean to pop one down the leg and he gets the yips. Then every succeeding delivery follows it. Why don't I just stand down the leg side and wait for it, I hear you not unreasonably ask? Because usually he will over compensate with at least one delivery by bowling a massive wide down the off (the other side to leg) that if I didn't catch, would clunk sickeningly into third slip's kneecap.

Mysteriously this doesn't happen when he plays for Underriver for whom he bowls very well and is the terror of the tail, intimidating 14 year olds, OAPs, and the blind with spells of devastating fast (relative to a bee in flight) bowling.

Well it's been a long time hasn't it

I haven't blogged for bally ages and literally no one has been demanding that I do. So tough shit. I've done it anyway. Here's a picture I took at Waitrose's.

Wrap your lips around them

Textbook stuff.

I'm in Nero's having a coffee and putting off writing my great novel that will make my fortune. My latest ouevre is about a man, much like myself, who.... that's as far as I've got.

I've been back from Shitburg (Hamburg) for one and a half weeks now. Very pleased not to be going there anymore. The work was quite well paid but it was astonishingly badly run. Everyday I was rendered dumbstruck by their antics and I gradually lost the will to live. I started to realise that the skillset I was using wasn't the traditional one for a copywriter (that of writing copy) it was, rather, trying to look like I give a shit. In advertising this is now a very important skillset. Much more important than doing your job.
So what else has been happening?
Me and Liz went to a pub called The Palm Tree in Mile End. It is a throwback to the 1950's and as such, is brilliant and well worth a visit. There was no one in there but for two old couples on one table, one old couple sat at the bar, the barman (old) and me (in comparison, a fresh faced youngster) and Liz. As we sat there a pigeon hopped up the step, strolled in through the front door and walked towards the bar. All of us in the pub obeseved it quietly as it walked in, behaving in exactly the way an underage drinker does when they try to brazen their way into a pub for the first time. The barman shouted "Oi. Out you go, we've got too many birds in 'ere."
The pigeon turned round and walked out.
Made me laugh. Made the old women cackle like crones. The barman was rightly proud of his joke.

What also makes me laugh is the shop downstairs from my flat. It is one of those places women go to have their fannies dewaxed, their eyebrows attacked and their skin stripped from their bodies with a laser centrifuge or something. At day's end they always put a bin bag on the pavement outside the shop. Now I'm no detective inspector, as you know, but my guess would be that the bin bag is full of fanny hair. A big spherical ball of springy, fanny hair contained in a bin bag about the size of a beachball.
Why on earth am I telling you all this? Apart from I just like saying "fanny hair" I am really tempted to kick it. You know how sometimes you want to bite into a cake of soap, not for the taste or anything, but just to experience the sensation on your teeth.
Well I want to kick it to feel the sensation on my foot. If my guess is correct I reckon it would feel really nice and once airborn, would float somewhat, on the breeze, making for a good game of fanny hair ball keepy uppy.
I'll let you know if I do.
In the meantime a few more photos.



A magnificant pair of jugs.

Me in Nero's with my new contact lenses. They're taking a bit of getting used to.
Also check out the new boots. Redwings. Oh yes. Redwings.

I have no idea what this says.

I liked it though so I took a bloody picture of it.

This is weird because I didn't post the above. It appeared all by itself. What is Google up to? (I think we know  It's up to no good.)

Hamburg Hamburg Hamburg

I've been here quite a lot over the last few months. I tend to fly out on Monday mornings. To do this I have to wake up at 5AM! I ask you. Anyway I stay out here until Thursday and then get the plane home in the evening. Then I do nothing all day on Friday.
So all in all it could be a lot worse.
So, rather like George Clooney in his madcap aeroplane film Up In The Air, I have developed a routine that gets me to the airport, through customs and onto the plane, quickly, efficiently and keeping contact with other human beings to a minimum.
I think we all know that airports are full of idiots. They mill around, stop suddenly, often hurtle, stand on moving walkways and block thoroughfares with their stupid luggage. Airports are, of course, a magnet for wheelie baggers. Wheelie baggers are all, it goes without saying, bastards but here are the worst ones.
Novice wheelie baggers:- They have either not been on holiday much, are very old or very young. Either way this is their first time with a wheelie bag and it shows. They have no driving skills and, despite its weight and the fact that it is actually attached to them via an arm and a hand (one of Mother Nature's most noticey of bodyparts), are completely unaware that they are dragging something the size of a hill behind them.
Child wheelie baggers:- Usually a tiny girl wheeling a pink wheelie bag just big enough to keep some air in. These ones are noisy, incredibley slow and completely unpredictable.
Camp wheelie baggers:- Usually businessmen. They are often of a stature I would refer to as dainty. They wear expensive suits and have the latest kit. Their wheelie bags are the size of a laptop with an extendable, slightly curved stick to pull it along with.
"What's the problem with them Andy, ya big homophobe?" I hear you ask.
"If they're dainty and their wheelie bags are small, they should be fine." You go on to opine.
Well you have a point. But what gets my goat is that
a) They could just pick the bloody thing up and tuck it under their arm.
b) We're in an airport. They're camp. Do you see? It's an impossibly glamorous place. Pilots in uniform, shops with shiny things in, heavenly scents and unguents, duty free iPads, lounges and and the possibility of sighting someone off of X-Factor. That's right. They don't know if they're coming or going. You can't blame them but they're wheeling all over the place, stopping abruptly, shrieking, darting hither and thither, Tweeting, Facebooking and generally getting in the way.
Anyway, I've gone off on a rant.
Print your boarding pass and fold it in half four times so that the QR code is on the outside. Put this in your passport. Put your passport in the back pocket of your jeans.
Ruthlessly edit your luggage until it all fits into a shoebox. I exaggerate of course. Just don't take much stuff and what little you do have put in a ruck sack. Leave all your coins at home. Have your toothpaste etc in a plastic bag at the top of your rucksack.
Get the Heathrow Exp. Walk all the way to the front. Most people just jump on at the end nearest the conkcourse, so if you take the trouble to stroll onward for 2 mins you get the whole of the front of the train to yourself.
Have a kip.
Jump off at Terminal 5. You will be opposite the Exit. Walk to the lifts. There will be a melee of cretins here from the train but they don't know where they're going so you should be able to jump into the lift before one manages to stop the door closing with their arm. like one of the quicker zombies you sometimes see in a zombie film when a potential flaw in the plot can only be averted by one of the zombies being significantly faster than every other zombie in the film.
Out of the lift like a jackrabbit. (to be conktinued...)

Spag Bol

Hardly anyone has been asking me what my recipe for my Infamous World Famous Spag Bol is. People who have tasted it have reported that it is:-
"The best Spag Bol I've ever tasted!"  - Liz's brother.
"My best one yet!" - Me.
"Goes down a real threat." - A person.

So I bring it to you here.
Ingredients:

500g of minced beef (Lean. Not lean. Who cares? Not me that's for sure).
1 onion about the size of a large apple or a normal sized onion.
1 carrot. Get one of a size that you feel uncomfortable having in your basket in case anyone thinks you're planning to use it as a dildo.
1 Beef stock. (Use a cube, liquid, one of those stockpots or the posh stuff from Waitrose's. Again I simply could not care less).
1 pot pourri. Not pot pourri. I mean one of those little tea bags full of herbs that you drop in...what are they called? It's like pot pourri. I want to say "salad garnis" but it's not that either. Anyway you know what I mean.
Red wine. Just pour some in.
1 large can of chopped tomatoes.
1 small can of chopped tomatoes. (Sometims I get 1 small can of plum tomatoes. Why?
By mistake. The bloody cans look the same - it's ever so annoying.)
Some galic paste out of a tube of garlic paste. (See below)
Some tomato puree out of a tube of tomato puree (The trick with these last two items is to look in your cupboard before you go out to buy the minced beef, to see if you already have some. This avoids one of two things happening.
a)You cook everything and then find you have no tomato puree/garlic paste and then have to go back down to the bloody shop you were in 20 minutes ago.
b) You buy some then when you come to cook the Bol, you discover you already have three fucking unopened bloody tubes from the last three arseing times you went Spag Bol shopping without looking to see if you had any - Just look, is all I'm saying).
Some Mushroom Ketchup. Don't question it. Just do it. This is the secret ingredient.
1 some olive oil. Just olive oil. It dosn't get more complicated than that.
1 sugar. Takes the edge off of it.
Spag.

Method

Look in the cupboard for a frying pan and a big saucepan. Place them on the hob.
Switch the radio on. My preferred station is Radio 4 Extra.
Take your jumper off. You're probably going to be losing your temper later so you don't want to be overhot.
Maybe crack a beer open, maybe not. Depends.
Get the onion, take off the outer layers to a depth of about one more than you really wanted to. Cut it in half. Then chop the bastard into really small pieces. Use your knife to move this little pile to the side of the breadboard.
Peel the carrot. I use a carrot peeler. May as well.
Cut it in half and then chop that orange bastard into tiny pieces too. That'll teach it a lesson it won't forget. You may find the little pile of chopped onion interferes with your smooth knife action. It can't be helped.
Pour some olive oil into the large pan and turn on the burner. Scoop all the little bits of carrot and onion into the pan.
About 3 mins later pour a bit more olive oil into the frying pan and turn on the burner. Open the packet of minced beef and tip it into the frying pan. Remove the little bit of paper from the bottom of the minced beef - Ponder for a minute how tempted you are, to sink your teeth into the raw minced beef. Snap out of it.
Break the beef up and fry the fuck out of it.
Worry that you should have started cooking the beef 2 mins earlier as the onion is starting to go a bit brown.
Turn the heat up on the beef and really let it rip.
When there are no or not many pink bits of beef left, tip the beef into the saucepan.
Relax. That's the worst bit over.
More or less just tip all the remaining ingredients into the saucepan. In these amounts.

Red wine: Start pouring then stop. You will have not put enough in. Pour in some more then put the bottle of wine down. Then pick it up and put a bit more in. That will be the exactly the correct amount.
Garlic paste: Think to yourself how much you like garlic then start squeezing the tube. When you think you have put in a bit too much Stop. Perfect.
Tomato puree: Just go for it. Squeeze it in there. Until the Bol goes red.
Mushroom Ketchup: You can over do it. Say this to yourself as you pour. "Not too much...bit more...bit more... that's it."
Sugar: About a teasponful. You know. Just to take the edge off of it.

Put the lid on the saucepan (You will find this lid either in a different cupboard than the pan or a cupboard you've never noticed before).
Pop it on the smallest burner on the hob and turn the heat down. Cook her for as long as you want. She just gets better and better the more you cook. She is not a cruel mistress and will reward you for patience.
When you have watched something about World War 2 on the History Channel, pop out and give her a stir. After Scrapheap Challenge, pop the kettle on. When it's boiled pour the water into ANOTHER saucepan and put in some Spag. No need to put an amount here, you will find that you will naturally put in way more than you can actually eat. Add a pinch of salt and boil the bejesus out of it for 10 mins.

Serve.