Chap Sticks

Why bother?

2011-07-04T16:19:00.000Z

I mean it's not as if I blog regularly anymore. We have, afterall, smashed the filthy socialists and will soon be on our way to the glorious sunlit uplands.
Also all the great and the good have quit. Dizzy is almost no more. Mr Eugenidies has vanished and the Devil has paying job, Guido is a shadow of his former self now we have eliminated them and all the left can offer is blandishments from their filthy union paymasters is People's Revolutionary pronouncements in the home style of British Leyland circa the Maxi1000 era.

Oh well I thought. I am now married, on the bench workwise and seeking to drag The Dere Northerner back to God's country and try and occupy the day while I furiously tout my body south if the 52nd parallel.

Thought it would be worth spouting daily news-inspired bollocks here for a change.

However - I may gloat first. I'm buggering off to Ibiza for a week's sailing and sitting about. Crikey. I sound like an UnNamed Union Boss. The working class can kiss my arse, I have a Public Sector backed gold plated pension at last. All out brothers! (except not me the trust fund for my three trustafarian daughters needs topping up....)

Right I'm off to spunk my money up the wall on expensive London dinners while keeping a homeless family who don't grease their money out of the Public Sector gravy train out of my council flat. Nothing is too good for the party connected eh? Wankstain.

Solidarity eh, Reg?

Outraged? I promise to ignore any public protests regarding the fact I have been creaming it off your backs for yonks and have an overinflated sense of intitlement. Now fuck off an enjoy proper communism. Drop me a line when the chloroform has worn off and you have woken up in a ditch somewhere outside Pyong Yang ready for punishment duties.

Cunts.

Picture removed as the bastard will sue me.

Tarka and the Bilge

2010-07-09T13:35:00.001Z

Warning. This is a bit nasty.

Shortly after I met the Dear Northerner she came and me and chumrades to Sardinia for a spot of yachting. Being a lady of delicate sensibilities and somewhat vapourish we decided to practice our nautical wit upon her and suggest that as it was a nature reserve there would be no using the heads for solids at all. Not just wipeage, but jobbies as well.

On her arrival I presented her with dutifully labelled freezer bags and six squares of Mr Andrex's shiniest and said there you go dear - this is your very own personal collection for the week.

Poor dear was so traumatised she was astonishingly constipated for a whole week. A feat she bettered in India mind you - with events coming to a grisly conclusion in a deserving Hotel in Munnar. (Another story - but it took a double Tarka Dhal and three Senokot maxis to dislodge it......)

So Her next sojourn upon the ocean wave was to require a more wholesome methodology for relief.

A plan was hatched.

Now the marine facilities are small-bore by comparison to the British Standard Bog. They tend not to account for neither the modern diet, not the fact they may be needed in a seaway.
A stance must be maintained such that one does not fall off the throne, yet ensure one doesn't feel the effects of one's remains accidentally and at the same time cope with any pitches and rolls, without falling off at the wrong time and Tarka making a break for the bilge to join his mouldering chums below the decking.

Hence was born The 'Tip and Grimace'.

Just think - using grab-rails over-head and wedging the feet against the door one can accommodate all eventualities and not have any embarrassing accidents at the same time - whilst encompassing all the actions and outcomes and grisly nature of it's failure.
For some strange reason we both found this highly amusing (her humour clearly dragged down to my schoolboy level).

The word has now morphed in to merely requiring the bath-room.

Tip and Grimace.

Kind of a ring to it too, eh? Think of it next time you are caught short in the Dog and Duck and need to void yesterday's curry.

I did say this was a nasty post.... :-)

Petroleum Spirit

2010-07-08T16:30:00.003Z

It will please old readers to know that I am the owner of a new chapmobile. Well - new compared to the old Alvis. It is actually coming up on her third birthday and her first with me.

It is NOT green. Oh No. A throbbing 3.2 litre hippy thrashing V6 petrol guzzling non-green car.

The tax now costs me as much as my first car did.

Also probably why I don't drive it very much.

The Life Aquatic 1

2010-07-08T16:28:00.002Z

A busy Greek Supermarket, yesterday.

The privations of the life aquatic tends to suit a chap. One can cheerfully eschew the drawing room, unlimited real ale and access to the new chapmobile for a few weeks bobbing about on the briny, taking potshots at the French and a god-given right to drink rum for breakfast. Sodomy is optional, the lash essential.

Not the usual scumsail flotilla life for us in the Aegean, either.

Rampant individualism oft flying in the face of folk wisdom or marine training calls the day.

And it is as thus one flew out t’other week off to the Cyclades to introduce the Dear Northerner to a life on the ocean wave - a ruse to the idea that we should retire to a marine existence – sort of a pensionable version of water-world, sans avec Kevin Costner.

I have taken two prior Miss Chaps to this place with limited success. They prob don’t read this anymore which is just as well. Neither were suitably amphibious to cope.

Now there is a separate post coming about her appreciation of the marine facilities known as the ‘heads’ however it is worth reflecting previous and recent experience on the daily privations of life afloat.
Namely: supplies.

I have known a couple of girls get through fresh water at ludicrous rate. Now, every chap knows the trick for making his pants last a month – and lets face it – most of the time one can spend the time in one’s birthday suit as there isn’t a soul about. Add to that baby shampoo to wash in the sea (it really works) and shaving the head to keep the worst of the weevils at bay then one can settle into pelagic squalor with joy.

Previous Miss chaps have tended to guzzle fresh water – but they have neglected seamanship duties normal to a fellow afloat – such as tidying up after themselves.

Dear Northerner is the complete opposite. Like a good Yorkshire lass, she is exceedingly house proud and if the boat had a front step, she would have scrubbed it. Now admittedly she had a Yorkshire taste when it came to the local food....nothing ‘dirty’ , ‘greazy’, 'garlciky' or ‘oily’. (That excludes almost all Greek food)...
But she took it upon herself to supply a level of 'tween decks cleanliness that would make an Admiral proud. However she did tend to use a lot of the valuable fresh water for this - and .....a lot of 'products'.
Now, a chap tends to sluice everything out with sea water, pump out the bilge and then set about a large Aubreyesque dinner of sea-pie, moussaka, baklava, salad, fish, baked chicken and spotted dog, washed down with ouzo, retsina, metaxa and liberal quantities of mythos.
The Greek Islands.
They are somewhat remote, pleasingly non-commercial and backward and ideal for basic comestibles. Sun baked, whitewashed Choras reveal little but tomatoes, salt fish and grizzled old widows scowling over their fly-blown laps. Sea-miles away from Blackberry reception and modern conveniences. And I might add - Tescos super store.
I had provisioned our little ship with all the kit we needed for a fortnight afloat. Undaunted I was dispatched when first we touched ashore (Skhinoussa, as it 'appens) to acquire some 'products'

It is indicative of the dear gel that I got this as a shore-going shopping list.

Rubber washing up gloves
Antibacterial wipes
Femifresh
Antiseptic gel
Floor cleaner
Toilet cleaner
Stainless steel cleaner
Washing up liquid
Tin foil
Pan scrubbers
Metal scourers
Brillo pads
Sponge cloths
Kitchen Roll
'Dinner'.

To her ongoing horror I returned with Anchovies, Ouzo and Coca-cola.

PS: Ouzo + Coke is a particularly astonishing tipple. Heartily recommend it.

Indian Vibes 1: Luke warm in Ooty

2010-06-09T22:15:00.004Z

It all seemed like such a good idea at the time. Skinful of Ale, sit through Slumdog, wistful memories of being there as a child - and plenty of travel shows on the box - with the Clarkson trio galavanting across Indochina on motorbikes. I mean, to a chap-about-the-empire travelling around the sub continent ought to be child's play.
So with heady dreams of walking the trail of the mutiny and chuffing steam trains, punkah-wallahs and palanquins, Dear Northerner and I strolled into the Leeds branch of a well known flight brokerage and bought ourselves a couple of return flights. Into Bombay and back home from Madras.

There are many tales of this trip - all quality blog fodder so I am shall reminisce of them from time to time to share with my readers - and I hope both find it entertaining.

The South of the Sub-c appealed to us both. I could swelter in linen suits and a pith helmet while DN wafted in and out of scented bazaars regaling herself in Ill Fitting Ethnic clothing and acquiring a taste for curry a life in Leedshire inexplicably deprived her.

We had been in the true tropics for about a week and were plotting the break-out into the ghats. The brochures all waxed lyrical about cardamon scented groves and chirpy tea stalls - but after a week away from the more cosmopolitan Bombay the image had been corroded away into the filthy grime that is, frankly, the third world.
As both in our 40s, and reasonably well travelled, the sort of gaffs that would appeal to the average wide-eyed gapper or earnest Guardian reading teacher desperate-to-prove-how-down-they-are-with-the-desperately-poor (Ill fitting ethnic clothing again) would certainly not do. No sharing of rooms in railway retiring rooms - inside loos a must unless in some tree house or boat and a source of bottled water or a container I could sterilise was a must.
This part of the world does back-packer or four star - not a lot in between.
So we had abandoned ideas of strolling into towns and finding clean and tidy accommodation and had to do some serious planning in Ernakulum.
Our destination was Ootacumund - Ooty for short. Weeks poring over the guide books had told us of a fine hills station with classical architecture, pleasant parks and lakes and the like. All sounded a bit like Sussex in the tropics.

The problem was getting there. With Christmas fast upon us we had a reservation in the hills and we really had to get there.

Ernakulum station dealt us the sort of arranging one has to make with the lesser spotted station guard in Penge we found - except rather than sullen ignorance, the fellows here are only too eager to please. They will assess you for what you want and tell you precisely what they have calculated you wish to hear - with no relevance to mere reality. Which is why buying a train ticket in India is worse than getting your name off the Reader's digest mailing list.

Desperate questioning and refusing to accept the first head waggling answer giving to us by railway staff revealed a new horror to add to the amoebic discomfort.
Our route to Ooty was not there.
Gone.
Ceased to be - Doctor Beeching's revenge on the empire and all that.

The rains had come and washed away the railway and the fast coach route to the station.
No steam trains for us. No canteen bearing char-wallahs to while away the hours bartering with.
We had to negotiate a way from Ernakulum via Munnar across Via the road-head at Coimbatore to Ooty itself.

I shall share with you the delights of Munnar another time - suffice to say what lay ahead was not the genteel rail journey to the junction across into the Ghats and across the nature reserve and finally up to our end destination but 300km across the most dangerous roads in the world.

The last 90km was forecast to take 4 hours with the roads open. More as we couldn't go the direct route.

So after a five hour drive to Coimbatore (losing camera on the way - another story) we sound ourselves at the rat infested sewage spotted eastern depot in Coimbatore looking for an Ooty bus.
The journey may have cost us 50p each but the ramshackle vehicle and bus driver urinating against the wheel said we may be getting value for money.

Oh how us mighty have fallen!

However we took heart from how they drove. Buses in India are notoriously dangerous - mostly as their drivers drive extremely fast. They over-take on blind bends and race each other in the face of oncoming traffic fearlessly.
It's only 90 odd K we said - surely we will be ok.....!

The bus was busy - DN and I were separated. A fruit seller cam about selling sliced pineapples - a sure source of worms but we were hot, and thirsty. I chanced it having already suffered at the hands of Shiva's Revenge and therefore reckoned I was used to it. Two minutes later fruit wallah is back demanding more money.
I damned his impudence and sent him on his way. Blasted wallahs cant be trusted.
He came back immediately - white lady sent him. Turned out DN had bought herself some too and sent the boy forward for me to pay. She didn't want to get her money out as the old lady next to her was coughing and eyeing up her watch. No doubt hoping diphtheria would flatten DN and she would have the watch away.
Oh well - I handed his coins over.

And so in 32 degree heat we bounded and crashed and hooted our way off the road to Ooty.

It was all going swimmingly until the climb up the hills. Unable to read due to sheer terror the hilly landscape proved a welcome relief to watching the repeats of one's life every five minutes.

A road sign! Ooty 65KM....looking good.

It was now getting dark - not that seemed to indicate to the driver we needed any lights.

Hairpin bend....over-take tuk-tuk.
Hairpin bend....over-take tuk-tuk.
Hairpin bend....over-take tuk-tuk.
Hairpin bend....over-take tuk-tuk.
Hairpin bend....over-take tuk-tuk.
Hairpin bend....over-take tuk-tuk.
Hairpin bend....over-take tuk-tuk.
Hairpin bend....over-take tuk-tuk.
Hairpin bend....over-take tuk-tuk.

It started to rain and get cold. The bus heaved and groaned and I was marvelling at the strength of the chap throwing the wheel around - arms like popeye.
Two buses stuck on hairpin - neither giving way, much hooting anf shouting.

Half the road gone - much hallooing and hooting shouting and comings and goings.

Another sign: Ooty 65KM

And another: Ooty 70KM.

We had already learned the numbers on the road signs are merely there for the amusement of the sign writers and bear no relationship to actual distances, directions or locations.

Ooty 55KM

Police Check point. Lady behind me is sick into hanky, tries to hurl it from the window - rebounds and covers window with a fruity tang. Shivaite next to pees himself. Women weep, men curse, children sob and still we climb on into the deepening night.

And lo five hours into the now freezing night we round a curve and we see lights in the valley to our left - not miles away but close - could this be Ooty at last? We get stuck again. This time going down hill for the first time in the journey - so near yet so, so far.
We speed up into brighter still lights....bone shaking terror as we scream past goats and pariah dogs.
All desperate for the loo as we bounce and shake into a town ahead - it's now 9pm - we have been under way since 3.

Now Dear Northerner had arranged this part and after all manner of woe in the Munnar Fawlty towers we had a reservation at the Taj. Comfort, safety and civilisation would be restored at some point. The challenge of course is getting there in one piece.
Our experience of the Taj in Bombay was one of genteel elegance, refined civility and all very pukka and up our street.
We had had enough of rip-offs, dirt, filth, rickety transport and appalling roads and driving.

We were deposited at Piccadilly Circus in Ooty. The rain was leaving rivulets in the dust and brake grime on our legs as we shivered to extract waterproofs from our packs. It felt very much like Yorkshire in November. We were supposed to have escaped this. Garish neon winked through the stinging drops as tuk-tuk drivers hawked inflated prices. When we first arrived in India we laughed up our sleeves at rickshaw drivers ripping off prickly-heated coated indignant Sahibs for a pennies in our money. After a week since Aleppy being charged a pound still felt expensive - but we paid it all the same.

This was a chap reduced the status of some awful back-packer. No howdah to carry me forth, just rain, shit and slowness. Not to what I was accustomed at all. But resolution is all in these matters and a stiff upper lip and a stern resolve works wonders with the natives I have found.
So spattered we were as we chugged up into the mist past lights and cows sheltering from cold in doorways.
Down a dark unmade road. We read of tourists being taken up back roads and robbed - and fearing the Northerner's life and my manly virtue we clung to one another - mostly for warmth mind.

The road opened up to a gate house and a uniformed and turbaned guard peered into the back and stood smartly up and lifted the barrier.
Dropped by a door way in a car-port from the rain we collected our things and trudged into the reception. Soothing yellow lights and a huge vase of lillys adorned the desk. Mustachioed white jacket at the desk looked up and beamed.
'Mr D? We have been expecting you.'
We suddenly felt dirty, ragged and not at all well heeled in such salubrious surrounds.
'Welcome to the Taj, sir - please I will get a boy for your bags - you needn't carry anything here, sir."
A warm glow not unlike peeing yourself on a wetsuit came over us both.
'Table for Dinner sir and a drink at bar first perhaps while the boy runs you a bath and lights a fire in your room?'

Civilisation indeed. After the tribulations of even getting alcohol at all in Kerala let alone any without formaldehyde preservatives - a wine list at all had me soaring to elysium. A cigar humidor with burning embers to light it, a half decent red, a soak and a fire with which to warm DN for bed and you know - it might even have been worth it. The very mention of a bath had the Dear Northerner pink with delight.
Oh the water wasn't as hot as she would have liked - but it had a plug, some salts in a glass jar and our suite really did have a fire. Christmas at last............

Ooty, through a hole in the clouds

From the shadows he will rise

2010-06-04T09:51:00.003Z

Okay, okay.

It has been two years since I have written anything here largely because I have been frightfully busy.

Busy with the Dear Northerner.

Busy with cleaving myself twain from the yoke of Big Grey, setting up my very own boutique consultancy dedicated to earning filthy lucre.

Busy moving house to North of the 53rd Parallel and inveigling myself in James Herriot country.

Busy acquiring suitable tweeds for hearty strides across the moors.

Busy buying 'gay' car but with a whale skin interior, baby seal eyes for headlights and huuuge V6 engine.

Busy not knowing what to write and finding out that the Dear Northerner was reading this with alacrity and searching the archives. Not Good. Especially when I said things about her

Anyway - my dear readers have spoken and they want more.

Better get cracking hadn't I? And there is so much to go on now..........

Trawling the Net

2008-05-30T13:20:00.014Z

Claiming her 'find love, your money back' from Match.com.

Some of you know that a while a go Chap went 'net dating. It was pretty paltry clench, if you ask me.

One recalls that the vapidity of the things the 'gels 'put of there.

Is it the medium, one wonders? Or those driven to use it? There seems to be an ongoing air headed cheeriness of those that use this - the saccharine smile of the end of pier beauty queen transcribed into two hundred easy words.
If you are considering it - here's a handy primer to help you decipher the sinister wiles the phillies use to try and convince you that they are not desperate heifers who's clock has gone off:

Translation into chap in italics.

I'm an optimist

The pills have kicked in.

I like to treat my glass as half full

or I would cry

I love life!!

I'm desperately boring

I love my alone time!

I have three-alarm PMT

I enjoy everything life throws at me!

The most interesting part of my day is reading the Metro over someone's shoulder

I have a colourful character

I will cook your pets when you leave me

I love Yoga,

Every woman puts this in her profile - they will think I'm weird if I don't

And Pilates,

I have no life

And Keeping fit,

I really have no life

And going to the gym,

save me from the interminable boredom of my own company

And going out for coffee

I have no imagination to invent a lifestyle beyond last night's Sex in the City

I'm active in Politics,

I voted Labour last time and regret it now

I Love environmental issues,

I once signed up to Greenpeace at Glastonbury

I love live music

I listen to Chris Moyles

I love seeing my friends

to cry

I have a travel bug

I went to Australia once

I enjoy my food

I weigh 16 stone

I have a few extra pounds

I am the walrus

I enjoy a drink or two

I will drink lighter fluid

I'm a social smoker

Fag-ash Lil.

I don’t do recreational drugs

My face is on the Bolivian banknote

I'm considering children

I will use a turkey baster if you are not careful.

Any others from my readers?

A blatant attempt....

2008-05-30T12:57:00.003Z

The Northerner has stated publicly that she will convert me into being a Northerner such as herself.

Tricky, as you know you can take the Chap out of the Colonies, but not the Colonies out of the Chap.
My moral aversion to whippets runs deeper than a Cornish tin-mine and no matter what she may wish to persuade me is the done thing north of the 53rd parallel - the bathroom is no place for Amyl Nitrate.

Watch this space, reader. If 'Eckie-thump' becomes currency, let me know, what?

Two weeks since I posted?

2008-05-30T12:48:00.002Z

Criminal I can hear you say, dear reader.

But why?

Well the Northerner has been keeping me chained up in the Frozen Wastes and away from my usual sources of inspiration.
In fact, inspiration has been a bit dry of late - I have been doing a fotherinton-tomas and skipping about going Hullo Clouds Hullo sky.
The only thing worthy of any kind of comment was the my espying a bottle of what appeared to be Amyl Nitrate next to the candles in her bathroom.

Turned out it was aromatherapy bath oil - sparing my imagination the joys of juxtaposing said believed content with limitless hot water and 'wet-room' fittings.

The aviating has been a bit pants of late too. No decent thermic activity leaving me desperate to do my Silver distance - despite having picked up my licence to fly to the scene of my own demise at a field other than mine own.

Got some Uncle Chap requests to deal with - but they are pretty thin stuff, frankly.

More Uncle Chap

2008-05-16T11:53:00.002Z

Dear Uncle Chap,

I have increasing begun to notice that some of my circle have not been able to find new jobs (after redundancy). The credit crunch has rendered others unable to re-mortgage & are presently selling their properties.

All & all, I am find my life depleted through their sudden lack of means to socialise. I was wondering if you could advise how I can begin to quickly generate some new friends?

Anon

Dear Anon (I know who you are AND where you live...)

I have found the following to be most advantageous:

1. Improve your personal hygiene routine.

2. Give away vast amounts of recreational pharmaceuticals and lascivious sexual favours.

3. Never mention the pustules.

4. Avoid underwear and especially in your case, admitting that your are (or have been) a socialist.
Such admissions draw derision outside of a few remaining pockets of idiocy in Hampstead and student common rooms.

Follow these simple rules and your will find yourself popular at Yacht clubs, Rubber Balls and opium dens all over London.

RIP Plumbo Jumbo

2008-05-16T10:44:00.004Z

Students of Chapsticks and my existence will be vaguely aware of my rather cynical take on the world of drainage.

As the recently-promoted-from-prospective-paramour-to-status-of-Miss-Chap once bemusedly asked of a chumrade - 'Why give him a drain-rod for Christmas?'
Chumrade commented - 'you haven't known him very long have you!'

My drains have been a source of both material for this blog, modern art coverings for parts of my house and a regular pensionable income for the likes of Plumbo Jumbo.

But this would now appear to be at an end.

I have recently reached into my pocket and shelled out for some horny-handed sons of the soil to re-lay my patio and block pave my drive.

No small feat this - and a Augaen stablesque task beyond the means of the local pikeys.

In the removing of the 40 tonnes of concrete and rubble form the old drive I received telephone call from my clerk of works who was somewhat excited by his find. In true Augean fashion they had discovered the source of all my drainage woes.
My main drain had collapsed a while ago. rather than a clean hygienic flow into the sewerage there was a festering pit of quicksand revealed from 'neath the concrete crust.

I arrived home at high speed and in a state of what can only be called High Dudgeon.

There was a spongey depression in the middle of what was my drive. A glance down the hades pit of a man hole cover revealed horrors beyond description. All backed up and oozing away.

There then followed a two-day long rant at insurance company, loss adjuster, drainage contractor, driveway contractor, more loss adjusters and the insurers again.

Best thing to do? I slunk off to stay on a yacht for a long weekend.

Instead of running around fretting about things in the 'danger area', I spent the time gunkholing on a boat - tiding oneself into a pool off well named Brownsea island getting 'anchored and wankered'. Instead of sitting at home surrounded by sewage, I decided to sit on a boat in a tidal pool. Surrounded by sewage.

And now a full week later I can report that all is done.

My builders? Honest and good workers.
Workmanship? Excellent - everything is done.
Drains? Flowing freely for the first time in years.

What will I write about now?

Oh - forgot - I'm off to T'Races soon. Expect essay on 'The Glory Of Debt'.

Sigismund is in Thailand. He will doubtless come back with a rash and a sore bum.

Uncle Boris

2008-05-06T22:38:00.008Z

What can I say? We are looking at the end of municipal-Marxism in London, at last.

I'm hoping that the usual Gaurdianista commentariat lefty scum who were happy to keep the vile Livingslime in office because he wasn't a Tory - are now writhing with self loathing. Why don't you all move out of your Islington and Hampstead homes and practice your benighted champagne socialism elsewhere?

First step - London. Next step - the country. Labour will be reduced to a rump of the whingeing bunch of failed social workers, second rate comprehensive teachers and chippy unionists they always were.

Who was it from Labour two years ago saying that Conservatives will be reduced to a small rump in a New Socialist Britain? Choking on your Leninflakes now aren't you.

In the words of Bozza himself to tinsel-tits on Today: 'I think the media have been denied a target today.'

And to the rest of the apologists for the left - watch out.....your time is coming.....your hegemony is at an end. Blue Britain will be back - and your cosy do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do nannyistic views will be crushed. No more jobs for you lot.

Going Native

2008-05-06T22:38:00.005Z

Ahhh....the fresh fragrant air of the moors.....

Like Macavity - I have been nowhere to be seen….

Some of my detractors assume that this chap has been languishing in a police cell following an incident with a statue and some KY jelly.

No, I have been getting ever terser notes from my tailor about my bill there and notes from my flying club regarding overdue landing fees.

Not, as it happens. Because of poverty - but because a young lady of not inconsiderable pulchritude has been distracting me in the frozen wastes of T'North.

I am concerned that because of her fragrant charms and fine dining I fear I may be going native.
Once I would have shunned the Northern Breakfast for devilled kidneys, a dozen oysters, a bottle of champagne and a gramme of Bolivian - a fine breakfast that would set any Christian up for the day.

Now - I have been eyeing up Black Pudding and boiled ham with Piccalilli with glad rapture.
The final grim confirmation was when I saw a man with a terrier and holding a ferret I commented that it was 'reet grand'.

After our Anglo French dinner I commented on afterwards that it ' were proper belting'.

However, I draw the line at pretending York races are anything like Ascot. I fear that despite the fact we may going to one of the local race meets, she may be tempted to wear a hat more suitable for some of the gummier sloanes one finds in Surrey. I shall do my utmost, reader, to ensure she is restrained.

In the meantime I shall be perfecting the poise of a Northern gentleman - hunting tweeds, hearty breakfasts and rounding up the glowering small holders to have them flogged for the pettiest of misdemeanours.

Not for me the grubby commercialistic mill-owning with the inexorable slide into a gruesome paternalistic socialism!

A life on the ocean wave

2008-05-06T22:16:00.003Z

I am blessed with the sense and taste not to enjoy motorboats but instead with the virtue of liking my recreational travel to involve mother nature providing the motive forms.
Namely - if a fellow is to go on a boating weekend, it is not going to be in a 'Hoseasons' rubbish skip landing craft but in a genteel yacht.
Unfortunately I lack the resources to be able to swan about in a teak and mahogany number but I am able to at least scud about the south coast entirely under my own power and not be entirely reliant on Wight link and Red Funnel.

One of the manifest joys is the culinary delights.

Recent trip saw myself and others with particular tastes in the foodage line other than the requisite bacon sandwiches.

I rather enjoy utterly disgusting my crew with what I serve them - it is nutritious but inedible to all but the hungriest mariners.

Sample menu:

Breakfast (served aloft and underway)

Pickled herrings and salted Greek yogurt

Luncheon

Chicken thighs roasted in lithium grease

Supper

Stewing lamb flash fried and served with duck tripes.

Oatcakes with uncoloured margarine

Wines

Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon (Bottled yesterday for freshness)

Belgian Chardonnay

Naturally I guzzled the above with glad rapture.
Unfortunately my first mate took one look and declared it all to be 'Scandinavian Insanity Suppositories' and threw the lot over the side.

Flogging is too good for them.

Das Wrong Bike

2008-05-06T22:11:00.002Z

Awesome stuff - rest assured chap rides a triumph - fez doff to Dizzy

A new reader!

2008-04-24T16:20:00.004Z

Welcome to my dear friend and new reader who is availing herself of my wisdom and vacuous scribblings.

Let it be sung by the angels that she is a most delightful and fragrant individual!

Nothing to see here, dearest! Move along!

International Chappism (again)

2008-04-22T16:42:00.004Z

In the words of many a GI heard in the 70's - I'm gonna get me some R 'n' R!

Or in other words sample the fragrant delights of my old home soon...... chickens feet, boiled rat and rampant unfettered capitalism.

Joy.

UPDATE:
No scotty - this is Hong Kong, not New York. Prole.

More Uncle Chap

2008-04-22T16:29:00.003Z

Dear Uncle chap

I have recently been meddling in the very fabric of the universe and have acquired knowledge that clearly man was not meant to know. As a result of playing god and meddling with forces beyond my control, I now have need of an army of robot slaves. My problem is this after my space station is fully operational what is to stop them turning on me in some form of cyber-rebellion? Should I build a more mobile battle station? Perhaps a cross between a star ship and a battle station? What should I call this?

Dear reader,

I share your woes - as it is nigh on impossible to acquire half decent staff. Your solution is elegant and noble - robot slaves do not complain about health and safety, demand workers' rights or vote Labour.
I was however concerned by one or two of your points. You are guilty, I'm afraid, of lethal hubris. If you are going to embark on plans of global domination then one should at least keep one's feet on the ground.
Any recently apprehended global evil genius will tell you that Space Stations, Death Stars (tm) or Orbital Laser platforms are very prone to invasion by misguidedly honest forces of some Intelligence services hell bent on 'liberating' the world from your boundless munificence.
In addition, it is a proven fact that radiation released while raining 'god's cleansing fire' on the cities of the world scramble the brains of these robot slaves leading them to rise up, burn the sky and generally enslave us.

My advice is simple - your base and therefore plans should be based around either a volcano and some scheme to cause the major powers to waste their missiles on one another, leaving the world yours - or something in the sub-aqua line. That will combine great views with excellent facilities for torturing special agents, detaining world leaders and capturing rogue ballistic missile submarines.

In the meantime - one should consider the appropriate accessories for yourself to carry off the look with panache. White cats and Chairman Mao suits are very last century. The modern super villain should really only be seen in either a well cut Saville Row suit with a lining hewn from the skin of Japanese virgins or a traditional suit of golden armour.

Your tinfoil hat is entirely optional - but it may ruin your credibility when on the video phone to the U.N.

T'North - again...again!

2008-04-15T16:01:00.002Z

I have been in the frozen wastes of the North a lot of late. By north I mean above the 53rd parallel.
Imagine my surprise in finding one or two natives friendly. Very friendly.

I may be spending a while up here until she realises the ugly truth.

Delight!

2008-04-15T15:55:00.005Z

There is something uniquely chappy about devouring a plate of sauteed lamb's kidneys with toast, a shoulder of said lamb, fondant potatoes, kale and the most unctuous apple crumble I have ever tasted with light frothed custard - and then finding oneself so egg-bound from the custard that one is resorting to double-dropping senokot and a fibre tablets all washed down with a glass of fybogel to get it all moving again.

Thank god I have been laying off the Joy of Figs today as well.

I feel sorry for the Scot, who ate 10 eggs in a fish pie and is challenging the fellow who ate a box of dairy fudge with a bottle of cream soda for stickiness quotient.

More Chappy advice....

2008-04-15T10:11:00.005Z

Dear Uncle Chap,
My husband has been taken away on business overseas for an extended period of time. The house is cold & lonely without a masterful male presence, could you provide a solution? (Your favourite …. apple crumble (with custard) is being prepared by cook as we speak.)
H

The problem dear girl, is that in your rampant and thrusting desire for status and external validation you have clearly neglected the fact that the epicurianism in matters digestif and sexual have been neglected.

If you have paid proper attention to one's onanistic methods - such as 'The hedgehog' then you would feel neither cold nor lonely ever again. Under normal circumstances I would only be to delighted to administer the discipline you require, indeed, and the masterful direction you so clearly require! Does not a woman such as you blossom under the smack of a firm hand?

However, the fact you require cook (Or in Your case what you really mean is Mr. Mark and Mr Spencer) to prepare your custard simply reveals the paucity of your spirit and the barrenness of your desire. Go back to Chiswick and hang your head in shame!

As a consequence I am no longer available to listen to you crow about the price of what some estate agent thinks your rabbit hutch in the garden is now worth. Apple Crumble or not, old girl. My head has been turned by a fragrant young beauty - or rather one who hasn't said no yet.

Above us the skies

2008-04-11T23:06:00.003Z

OK not often I post before I fly - but time for a spot of seriousness.

Serious instability in the airmass tomorrow. Will over-develop into showers in the afternoon - but the models are suggesting the best day of the year so far. Cumulus developing hard from 3-4000 feet. Streeting all the way to the north-west.

Got my toy booked. Aerotow ready. Girl arriving later to hear tales of my aviating. With any luck will get the chance to climb aboard and take her to heaven and back too.

Fuck I love this sport.

Question

2008-04-11T23:01:00.002Z

Am I the only one who uses the buttons on the steering wheel of the car as 'forward firing machine guns'?

'Shit, too close Mav! Switch to guns...'

Fleeing the continent

2008-04-11T21:06:00.002Z

I've have been in Switzerland. Not filing the Swastikas of the ingots - but some tedious workshop with a squad of over eager antipodeans and Americans in a nauseating internationalist display of team work.

Two things amused me during my return to Blighty. And it is these I share with you.

One.
I was awaiting my train at a non-major Swiss railway station. I was suddenly struck by a sense of familiarity.
The low level platform.
Clock ticking.
A few uniformed conductor types pacing the platform.
Blond man in hat reading a paper seeming familiar but refusing to make eye contact.
Some people speaking German.
I could swear the chap in the hat reading the paper appeared to look like Ilya Kuryakin from the Men from Uncle.
A sense of unbearable tension. A few more types in hats looking nervous waiting for the train.

Yep. I was in The Great Escape.

Two.
Squeazy-Jet flight ex Geneva to Gatwick. French Crew serving over priced drinks and demonstrating kiddy-kraft dinghies.

I had a few Swiss Francs in my wallet and wanted to get rid of them.

The crew worked the aisles. A woman who looked like she had woken up from 1985 from her hairstyle alone - and two French waiter types serving with with aplomb, flair, style and flagrant homosexuality.

Monsieur?
I eyed the contents of my wallet.
'What can I get for Ten Francs?'

A shrug only a Frenchman could achieve.

Ze Stewardess Monsieur?

Have you got any change?

Asking chap again....

2008-04-11T20:50:00.003Z

Dear Uncle Chap, following on my hangover the other day I have been lured into a bizarre form of copro-sexual experimentation. Having shaven my head with a grade 4 hangover there was nothing else to do but embark on this voyage of discovery. Essentially I have been subsisting on a diet of immodium and boiled eggs for two weeks now. I must admit the swollen, full sensation in my abdomen is very satisfying. However a week ago for a dare i added banana and senokot to the diet coupled with 6 bowls of all bran all washed down with ducolax. So combined with the delightfull almost pregnant feeling of hyper-constipation i am now feeling the pressure of a week of crapulesence enhancing chemicals. My quandary - when do i break the seal? I have a chocolate teddy's arm that is likely to split my gusset assunder and since it has been brewing for two weeks must weigh about a stone. Your advice?

Dear Anonypoo,

I cannot decide if you have been watching '2girls1cup' (I wouldn't google it at work readers) or you are suffering from some Munchhausen version of Uvula Thrax - the disease of bran addiction ending with the sufferer living in the loo. (Nasty)
Few can deny the joy of a thundering good cable lay on a Saturday morning whilst you plough through Liddle Britain in your Speccie while the mistress hops up and down outside the facilities her back teeth swimming after all the fizz you have plied her with to get the Morning Service without too much fuss.
If the circumstances were true, then said Red October would slip out like an otter off the bank disappear requiring nothing more than a glory wipe.

I would therefore await said timing as above, take your Telegraph, Speccie a roll of freshly chilled quilted, a mug of Old Spoon stander and await the pile-popping glory.

Wedding dancing

2008-04-11T20:42:00.003Z

The only times a chap ought to be seen to dance is when he is in such a state as he cannot be aware of it (Booze, lust or extremely strong drugs).

Exception of course where you are best man at another chap's wedding.

I am pleased to report that at only one of those categories was unfulfilled.

Those of us who are familiar with Wally Lopez's sets at DC-10 and Space or his performances in general will be aware of a certain thing everyone does on the dance floor. (It's Ibiza, BTW)

I must report that to my shame and horror, photographs exist of me with the Groom's family doing the 'kneeling down' thing do a breakdown in a tune I knew (I did help the tuneage programming with the Groom after all).

Not pretty behaving like a caner in Ibiza with a group of bods in their late 60s - who are all copying you, jumping in the air when the music starts again with you and cheering and whistling just like it was Monday afternoon in DC-10.

Ask Uncle Chap....again

2008-04-03T15:34:00.003Z

Dear Uncle Chap,

while languishing in a bath over flowing with bubbles, I reached over to grasp a glass of Louis Roederer Cristal 1990 Krug; only to find that my toe is such in the tap.

Could you please outline a 5 stage rescue plan to come & save me. The bath water is now getting cold

Sincerely, H

Dear Miss H
What?! The drinking of such indicates that you are one of such that we call the particularly vulgar type of 'nouveau riche' - for whom the mentioning of brands as such some how validates your status - but merely serves to display your insecurity when faced with breeding or even the attendance at a decent public school. It indicates a soul wedded to the crudest form of mercantilism and a mindset unfitting for polite company. I shall give you no advice, for there you should stay.

If you had become stuck as you had been sniffing the tile adhesive in a futile attempt to get high or had fallen and broken something whilst servicing yourself with the power-shower head, my sympathy would be entirely with you. As such you are fit only for the pillory and in this case, prune-skin.

Keynes would have been proud

2008-04-02T15:18:00.004Z

I was delighted to hear this piece this morning on the way to the hamster wheel. Confirmed my suspicion that the goons running this nut house have actually returned to the 'post-war' consensus - or Keynesian idiocy as it ought to be known.

I'm sure they would call it investing - but like a sub-prime debt speculation - one thinks this doesn't really add value at all.

Last year 2.5 Million holes were dug, one for every couple of hundred yards of road - and yet the backlog is longer than these idiots have been in power.

Staggering.

Spending your tax pound wisely.

The Few - Crab-day

2008-04-01T23:06:00.005Z

Those readers with a keen eye will recognise my avatar. His name Is Group Captain Lionel Mandrake - and he locked horns with a Colonel 'Bat' Guano, and subsequently recalled most of the B52s in 'Doctor Strangelove' - one of the towering genius that is Kubrick's greatest movies.

Now - truth be told my leanings are somewhat nautical rather than one of the Spitfire johnnies. Those of us in the know realise that whilst the credit of the 'Battle of Britain' went to the RAF - Goering was quoted as saying that even without the RAF - trying to cross the channel - even with air supremacy in the face of the World's most powerful navy - would be 'sailing into a mincing machine'.

However - it is their day. The RAF was founded 90 years ago.

Gawd bless 'em.

Ironic that it is their birthday on April Fools' day.

Well known fact: If you learn to fly with the RAF - and then join the Fleet Air Arm - it is said you need to learn all over again. At least over land you have roads to follow to get you home.

Now, this chap both flies and sails - both of which he enjoys -but truth be told, whilst the Navy has traditions, the Army (Pongos) have standards, while the RAF (crabs) have bad habits.

However - interservice rivalry aside - faced with a decrepit and failing Marxist regime in this country we ought to stand by the RAF. They are starved of funds, decent aircraft and kit - like the Army and the Senior Service.

I know they all go home for their dinner - unlike all the other services. I know they spent 92% of every conflict they claim credit for - sitting in deck-chairs or playing footie at their dispersal -and I know that they got all the girls in the last big show - and have a reputation for outrageous facial hair - but we are all in the same pond.

Until such a time as we have a proper amphibious and littoral forces, we will have to rely on them. They have to make do with an aircraft designed by an Italian committee and leftover Comets. Just as the socialists have cut back on the Typhoon, 'leased' the tankers, denied them decent bombers, AWACS and the like - the chances of us ever getting the JSF for the raptor plus proper fleet carriers with catapults are pretty slim - while this lot have to keep employing 5-a-day fruit and vegetable coordinators to prop up their client votes.

So, despite the fact they are one tenth of the age of the Navy and one fifth of that of the Army - they are just about growing up.

Well done chaps. Remember - treat your woman like you treat your 'Kite' - jump in her seven times a day and take her to heaven and back - and no, not the Gay Club.

PS: Only the most craven knicker wetting liberal or self hating Marxist poltroon would not be stirred by the sight of the Red Arrows or the Battle of Britain Historic flight - I have flown alongside the Lanc in my glider - he waggled his wings at me and I nearly wept.

UPDATE

It will upset a RAF officer to a point of apoplexy by suggesting the New Typhoon is a Copy of a Mirage 2.

Ask Uncle Chap...

2008-03-28T22:11:00.003Z

I often get asked for chappist advice onto the ways of life.
How can I be a better chap? If I am to behave like a true chap - how should I deal with the vagaries that life hurls at one's miserable existence?

Well, every now and then I get an e-mail from my chums asking for such advice - and so - in an occasion series - I shall answer the questions as well as I can.

Dear Uncle Chap,
Recently I found my self suffering a terrible hangover but in need of shaving my head. What ought I do to?

Dear Reader,
The possession of a hangover can be a sublime introduction to the day, as for that matter is the essentials of appropriate grooming.
Nothing quite sets you up for a day of spanking mammon than staring at one's phisog through blurry eyes, shattered nerves and the delightful edginess of far too many recreational pharmaceuticals.
The sparkle of hot water, the waft of steam and nose tingling sprightliness of fresh dettol assaulting the senses gives you a particular edge and helps you get through the mind numbing tedium of the Today programme.

However your note suggests that you intend to shave your own head. This is not to be recommended unless you find yourself somewhere in the Vietnamese jungle, using a piece of broken windscreen from your downed F4 whilst your loyal batman and navigator holds the heliograph to reflect your dashing yet wounded visage.

No. Should one require to have one's head shaved for reasons other than lice, sexual gratification or whilst they write 'traitor' in felt tip on your forehead - then it is not done to do it by your own hand. One should at the very least engage the services of a peripatetic Turkish barber, Romany tinker or former Nazi dentist to do the act.

My chief concern is that you mention none of these, so one can only assume you have had too much stout and still wish to appear like either an East German dissident or Member of ASLEF. None of these are an acceptable way to start the day.

Inappropriate Advertising

2008-03-26T15:45:00.004Z

I was languishing in my lounge on Saturday morning whilst Donna da Lodga was taking a bath.
I heard the gurgling signifying her egress from said Tub and wandered in to the hall to prevail upon her to depart so I may use the facilities in the small room.

Yet another horrific site greeted me. Water was running down the walls from the bath area - and into my electricity meter and switch gear.

The thick end of a bath full of water had dumped itself out through the bathroom floor and onto my newly decorated hall.

I was somewhat vexed.

Now, the bath is tiled in to the bathroom surrounds and is sealed. Contact to my emergency plumber informed me that I would have to give the fellow access.

Dash to DIY hell to acquire bolster and 2kg sledge hammer (BIG JOBS!).

So it was with trepidation that I set about smashing apart the fine tiling that clad the bath to gain access.
The joys of noisy destruction and usefulness!
So with two black bags of rubble, wood, tiles and dead grout I beheld the mess before me.

I espied a piece of soggy paper nestling under the bath - about a foot inside and underneath.

Upon it - writing. Curious I picked it up to read in

'Tiling By Alan (the Artisan) and Alice (his dog). Contact numbers supplied.

Now - I immediately wondered - for whom was such a note intended? The next owners? Me Later? If the tiling had failed - would he want his number there?
Would such an advertising campaign actually work? Who is the target market - and how would you test the effectiveness?

I also wondered quite what Alice's involvement was - other than drooling quietly and chewing 'Bonzo', her favourite toy.

Other than medieval cathedral stone-masons - who would do such a thing?

Fine mess though. DDL has still managed to get water everywhere. time to revoke bathroom rights, methinks.

The Criminal Mind

2008-03-26T11:08:00.004Z

A modern chap has many career options.

Naturally the thought of toil makes one shudder in absolute horror and one's mind turns to alternative employ.

One has often thought that employment of some raffish gentleman thief would suit. Diamonds from dowager widows, paintings from one's own gallery - a sort of Thomas Crown meets Raffles. Or The original Sir Charles Litton (The Phantom)

In such a world, when caught for such a crime, the bumbling French detective will have let you go and you will be free to commit only the most worthy and notable cat-burglaries while impeccably dressed.

Alas - modern times bring changes wrought ill.

To-wit a modern crime - card fraud.

Now, this chap's Alvis is kindly fuelled by his employer and he is charged with barrelling about blighty imparting his guidance and wisdom. This is enabled by a 'fuel card' .

Said fuel card was recently 'cloned' in South London.

In the good old days you were either a gentleman thief (qv), an evil genius (Stealing Nuclear Submarines, stroking white cat etc) or a good honest old cockney robber (fair cop, guv, you've got me bang to rights..)

These criminal geniuses not only used the cloned card in the petroleum station where it was cloned, but put their own car registration against the log.

Society has, indeed, gone to hell in a hand cart.

Bit like the idiots who stole my bank card details, bought a mobile phone and ordered without realising it would only go to the billing address. IE - Me.

Mind you - health and Safety nowadays prevents the Police from actually apprehending anyone - so they are free to steal again.

PS: LG 52 NTC. You deserve to be caught.

Chap news

2008-03-18T22:29:00.005Z

It is always a rare treat to visit the frozen wastes of T'North, however my visit of last week left me gasping for relief.

My luncheon on Thursday last comprised what I thought would be a fair to middling low-fat snack to satiate the rumbles - a Tuna salad.

It is often said that something that starts quick goes quick. What I was about to endure could not have ended too soon.
Within a short fifteen earth minutes I felt the slightest of rumbles down in the engine room. This was shortly followed by a certain feeling a chap has when he knows that the Tube is loaded and it is very much time for torpedoes away.

The disabled facilities on the second floor beckoned. They served well - for the sink was within heave distance of the main bowl. However, it was rapidly apparent by the fact that despite lavish (and rather liquid) issuances from bow and stern - that I could not remain here.

I emerged from the privy sweating like a rapist and with eyes beady as ne'er before. I had to get out, and get out fast.

Five minutes and I find myself staring into the face of Modern Socialist Britain - the NHS drop-in centre. The bearded leftie punching keys and treating me as a nuisance who gets in the way of his targets stared at me as I stumbled my way through what I thought was wrong with me.

'Do you think you will need a Doctor?'.
Why are these people employed? No, surely not, I stumble in stinking of effluent yet in a suit cut so sharp you could clean your teeth by looking at it, I can only be here to take in the decor.
Instead of my normal witticisms I gave him a look of frantic desperation and demanded the toilet key.
The loo, whilst close to the desk had a certain Cuban appeal. Overflowing bin, stench of death, rust stains everywhere, yet sign posts everywhere saying how grateful we should be for receiving so little.

I re-emerged five minutes later clutching the key to horrified gawps from the numpties there for their chlamydia checks and lobotomy stitch removals.
By their frozen expressions of primordial terror - they had heard me.

The rending sounds of the fourth level of Hades had clearly alerted the gent concerned to the fact I was a little poorly.

A medicoe awaited.

Prodded, sampled, poked and temperature taken they concluded that all I could do is let this vile flux run it's course.

I am rarely ill. When I am, I know I have about two hours before I need to be prone to lose it. Time was ticking away.

I was issued a perspex jar, a rubber glove and baggy of the sort a fellow buys his weed in and told to sample my issuances and deliver to A+E for a speccy type to stare at it through a microscope and send me home.

A+E. Jar of 'bovril' delivered to bespectacled sort who scurried off to the lab. The Doctor sent me 'home'. I explained I was three hours drive from home - and that my current holding time was twenty minutes. This was greeted with confusion. Am I away on business?

Can't beat our edukashun, can you.

Time ticked.

I retreated to my favourite hotel.

I have blogged about it many times, suffice to say it is a genuine home from home. Crisp linen, sumptuous duvets and pillows, large rooms decorated in 'country' prints, elderly books and the best English Restaurant outside the M25 - with a christian cellar to boot.

I needed none of these things.

In desperate need of chilled loo-roll and a bed to shiver within I presented myself to reception - Trembling like a tranny in top-shop.

The dear girl recognised me and plumbed the depths of my plight. She took my bag and led me to my regular suite.
Furnished with a bottle of mineral water, a pint of flat coke and an extra soft roll of Mr Andrex's finest I locked the door and prepared for a long run. A doctor even telephoned at the hotel's bequest to see if I was OK. Marvellous.

I shall spare you with the details, suffice to say that it was barely 14.00 and I had until 11.00 the next day to check out.

There followed extreme violent issuances, and a hallucinatory episode reminiscent of the time I was persuaded to use equine anaesthetic recreationally.
By 3 am, the fever had broken - as had my waters about six hours before.

I poked my nose out of the door. A tray with parkin, bottled water, flat coke and a loo roll was covered by a fluffy white towel.

During the long night I had received calls of support and gales of laughter from my friends, but best of all a call from a chum who offered to turn up in a Nurse uniform and tend to my woes. It seemed inviting, except she used to be a vet nurse.

Discretion given such circumstances was the better part of valour. I preferred to puke alone. And will wait until my breath is fresher before renewing our blossoming acquaintance.

The day dawned bright, clear and I was exhausted and rather empty. The six pack stomach was back. A pot of strong tea and a Telegraph was by my door and a note asking after my health. Fantastic service.

They didn't even charge me for the room service.

Seven deadly sins (For a chap)

2008-03-13T11:59:00.002Z

I have read recently that the Papists have updated the seven deadly sins from those that are really worthy - like gluttony, avarice, etc., into the latest neo-Marxist (green) hair shirted nannyisms - such as using plastic bags, driving a thirsty car or not using the orange bin - I have been moved to update them from a chappy point of view.

So - without further ado - the seven deadly sins of chappism - one that will get you struck off the list. (Not that one exists).

1. Working hard
No gentleman should work hard. If you are forced to work for a living then one should strive to skive.

2. Auto Fellatio
It may seem clever at the time, in the dead of night to be a human hedgehog - but no amount of brushing will take that taste away.

3. Sobriety
It is unfortunate that Calvinistic swine who run the show think that the country they have created is best viewed sober. Take it from me, Mr Hendricks and Tonic takes the edge off the badger-budget.

4. Trainers
Instead of Brogues? See 2.

5. Faecal Fibre checking.
One's free time is precious. If you feel the need to do this, then you ought to be practicing 2 instead.

6. GAP
Nay, nay and thrice nay. Whilst I approve of the global manufacturing policy, one will end up permanently looking like a character on Home and Away - not for the civilised.

7. Voting Labour.
Oh 'Things will only get better' will they? They didn't and they have cut your purse open. Don't feel so progressive now, do you. At best you deserve pity, or satirical derision. Ideally pilloried and horse whipped.

Resignation

2008-03-07T13:20:00.004Z

The antipodean resigned her commission last night. This followed a short period of broad dissatisfaction and matters were swiftly concluded.

She was not up to the job of being Miss Chap, and consequently she can slink off. Presumable feeling drained, sexually exhausted and wracked with the shame of not being good enough.

Was expecting to have to sack her anyway. At least I got a drink and was spared having to shoot one's dog in the process.

Tabloidism

2008-03-07T13:10:00.001Z

I can imagine the journo has waited half his career for this headline:

LESBIAN VAMPIRE JAILED FOR SEX ATTACK

Filthy Garlic Soaked Swine!

2008-03-06T13:31:00.002Z

this chap is pretty ambivalent about our European cousins. Oh they are chummy enough when they want our dosh: the French make good wine, the Dutch grow good weed, the Gerry is good at making up rules and the Belgians know how to breed a good Paedo.

However it was with spluttering disdain over the kedgeree this morning that I heard on the Brownshow (Or Today I think it is called) the ritualistic crowing about the EU vote.

Better bloggers than I can expound on the guts of it. Suffice to say the Lefty political coves have sold our souls to Brussels - for what appears to be a political mess of pottage.

But why?
I cannot reason any fathomable purpose other than they want to be part themselves of some super-socialist club. Untouchable by our electorate they can dream up new ways to mendaciously cut our purses. without fear nor favour of ever being held to account - just like a true Lefty. Surely we are too stupid to understand the high-minded reasoning behind such altruism and therefore we are not to be asked if we want to give everything to the European unelected political elite.

In my experience, having to face down and explain just what you are doing with the money that you have taken off someone by force makes you think about it. One can only assume that such accountability rests poorly in their thieving consciousnesses and they therefore seek to distance themselves even further away.

I suggest we bring back the pillory, for this and other crimes.

Happiness is.....

2008-03-05T14:25:00.003Z

A hanky full of freshly blown thick, glutinous mucous.

One of the sincerest joys in life for me is after one has been suffering from a particularly vigorous bout of man-flu is the aftermath.

As one is now no longer suffering the ague, all one is left with is a sinus full of green rope dying to blown and pulled forth.

Satisfying ain't the word for it.
The weekend away with the anitpodean was thoroughly ruined by both this and the fact I was in the heartland of Socialist larceny.

Scotland.

She rather liked the place - being a unreconstructed Leftie (you know the type, comfortable city type, plenty of money and riddled with the hypocrisy of those who embrace such coffee-table points of view)
Frankly, them lording it up with all that stolen English gold churned my stomach a bit.

Cry god for Harry?

2008-02-29T10:48:00.003Z

So Harry has been doing active duty, as his Uncle did before him.
Andy was an Exocet target and I recall he was shot at more than once or twice, including diverting at least one live missile.
Phil, also, served, got shot at and in his case fought the Nazis and saw action in the Pacific and Crete.
But royal duties aside one shortly expects the usual guff from the Lefty media.

Simple question: How many of those criticising have served and seen active duty?

Saying that - how many of our actual government have even done a day's honest work in their lives?
At least our unelected Monarchs have had experience of leading people (in this case at risk of life and limb) rather that through some grisly self promoted activity of think-tank wonkery or human rights lawyership.

Say what you like about a constitutional monarchy - at least he has the decency to do something considered old-fashioned by our current political class.

Duty.

Good one Harry. You are now better fit to lead than the entire Labour government.

Les republiques du bananes

2008-02-22T13:47:00.002Z

An interesting comment by a chum of mine regarding two of the more odious fruit based dictatorships. These two fellows - Castro and Chavez - who have systematically destroyed the economies and wealth of their countries, set up evil police states, oppressed freedoms and killed hundreds of thousands, are 'OK' because they 'stand up to America'.

In what way do they stand up to America? Agreed US involvement in Latin America is hardly covered in glory - but it was largely pitched against some pretty nasty regimes with ugly motives. Interestingly those who opposed the Right Wing juntas and dictatorships South of the Rio Grande are silent about the human rights abuses committed in the name of Marxism in the region.

Political and economic oppression, and brutal police statehood is OK - provided you say it is 'for the people' and 'Anti America'?

This is the good old geopolitics of East and West again. Except that the Brothers Castro and Chavez have missed a trick on the economics front.

Remember - the wall wasn't built around the Iron Curtain to keep us out - and everyone else has learned the truism about Socialism will always test itself to destruction.

The G-Spot

2008-02-22T12:13:00.004Z

Ye gods, it has taken scientific research to find This out?

I would have happily helped, you know. Especially in the development of an 'inexpensive test'. It will be named the 'Nicodemus manoeuvre', and render a woman helpless with pleasure.

I have been perfecting it over the last few years and eargerly seek female volunteers to undergo the manipulation.

In my line of work, I seldom need more than this.

A blatant attempt to take complete control of space itself, for military purposes.

2008-02-21T13:17:00.005Z

Life is now a Bond movie. Although, I think this was launched from a destroyer, which is even cooler than shooting it down from a 'plane.

Satellite shot down.

Small prize for placing the quote.

Now, I would walk five hundred miles!

2008-02-21T13:07:00.004Z

Off to Jockland, where chaps wear skirts (I say!) soon with the Antipodean. Like any good tourist on holiday she will no doubt have a checklist of things to 'do'.

This has made me ponder: when does a 'Holiday' become 'Travelling'? Most of what the public call travelling - what Gap years, aimless over paid kiwis and the ubiqutous quoters of 'I Love Travelling' refer unto - I call Long Holidays.
In my mind 'travelling' = 'under one's own steam, intitiative and command'. Buying a ticket from Kiwiexpress overland special bus (Loo roll included) to me is an extended and somewhat dirty package holiday. Off the beaten track, interesting and a lot of fun, but a package tour, nonetheless.

Obviously if you strung a heap of these together, to build a unique voyage then it becomes somewhat more credible - but I feel the thrust of my argument remains. That is the difference between a fairground ride and an adventure. You can't buy tickets for real adventure.

If you disagree - consider this is what the very first concept of the package tour was.

Mr Thomas Cook invented it - his first one abroad in 1849 to Calais, so that the middle and working classes of Victorian England could experience his temperance excursions, (Modern eco tourism is a good comparison).
After that, they were sold as travelling adventures. particulalry in the Middle East.

Nowadays we look down on such things as nasty and cheap, and hold these trips for gappers and the like in some kind of higher esteem.
But remember, in the 1850s, A trip to Spain or Italy was as wild, exotic and far flung then, as these bundled trips over Central America or across the Serengheti might seem today.

It is worth considering, after all that the relief of Khartoum by sending troops up the Nile was done on ships rented from Thomas Cook. Napoleon's army was thrown out by Wellington - who was supplied by P+O.

Learn to navigate, learn the language, take a case of Lucky Strike, Johnny Walker and greenbacks (The language of border guard bribes everywhere) and sail, fly, ride drive yourself there. Ok, you may need to learn how to do those things - but I think that could be my point.
Slither your way about by your wits and charm as well, I say.

I think this could make me something of a snob.

I can't stand Radio 4 anymore

2008-02-20T09:48:00.003Z

Humphries, Naughtie and Stourton openly drooling at the White Hhouse nominee race churns my stomach. We all know they had a picture of GB2 on their wall labelled 'hail to the thief', but they are taking the biscuit.

My bet is that Obama won't be the next Kennedy. More like the next Carter. Remember him?

Ticked all the boxes the lefties just loved.

Turned out to be the most useless president the colonies ever chose. Whether it was because he opposed 'Nam in the same way Obama opposed Iraq or because Gerald Ford really couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time - either way he romped home, trashed the US economy, faltered over SALT, wet his pants in front of Breshnev and caved in to Khomeini.

There was light at the end of this polictical tunnel. Politicoe, turned actor, turned the Great Communicator came in afterwards. Holding Maggie's hand (May her name be praised) they ended the cold war and turned the Atlantic alliance into the Global salvation it was under Churchill and Roosevelt.

It may take 10 years, but we may see an improvement.

Our Gang

2008-02-20T09:37:00.002Z

I grew up in the 70's.
Now it wasn't all Life on Mars: spacehoppers, wombles, Slade on the radio and Cortinas the colour of Spangles.
It was a time of Britain's slide into economic obscurity as Keynsian governments bought votes by propping up dead industries. It was the Thatcher revolution which rescued us from this.
Thirty years on the world has changed.
Almost everyone bought into the idea of economic freedom. The nationalised industries are gone but we now face a sclerotic state as inefficient as 1978 - with votes being bought in Labour seats by nationalising a bank.
Naturally one wonders if it had been the bank of Guildford, if Labour would have gambled the cost of twenty aircraft carriers?

But this isn't why I felt moved today. After reading an article on the true winners of the Vietnam war 35 years on in the dear Speccie, I hear that Fidel has retired.

Naturally he has passed the power on unelected (sounds achingly familiar) to his brother.

But my mind cast back over walls falling and the missile threat vanishing to a poster my dad had.

It was called 'Our Gang'.

The photograph was of a football team posing with a ball.

The World XI.

The faces?

Mao
Ho Chi Minh
Papa Doc
Kim (Elder, of course)
Kruschev
Castro
Honecker
Hitler
Stalin
Mussolini
Idi Amin

Nice to see that last of them on their way, eh?

Back from outta space

2008-02-18T21:54:00.006Z

I have been away. Now of late, faced with dwindling audiences and the heady demands of the antipodean on my time I have been unable to publish much of late.

This is not good.

Much has come to pass, not in the least in real life, but with work, plus the other topics on which I usually write.

Of late it is normally yet another brush with failed plumbing or yet another descent into idiocy by my benighted lodger which prompts me to publish and be damned. However, I have to write more.
The subject and tone changes, of course.

There are plenty of better political bloggers out there. I cannot compete with the heavy weights for interesting comment. I know, I can be a stat-whore and put snappy politcal titles which get the random traffic up. I could cross post filth or witticisms to other blogs to drag the roving (bored) eye onto my pages.

But the point is - is it worth it?

Like so many - I have toyed with dropping the blog.

But, as I sit here high on night-nurse, and reeling from a java coffee enema I have decided a tack change is needed.

So.

The blog gets personal.

Firstly, I shall be blogging about some of the characters with whom I share my time. Not just dear Old Donna-da-Lodga. There are rich seams of lunacy around me.

I can cast my bloodshot eyes at what I survey. Wipe my crusty nose, sniff back and turn my chemically addled thoughts to others, too.

So. If you are one of my associates, great. You will no doubt take the poetic licence necessary to inject a bit of humour into life in your stride and realise that I speak here as I would to your face. With ribald bantering humour.

Secondly, work.
Being desperately under utilised means more time to write drivel. I shall spill the beans on the corporate lunacy I see before me, and comment on the tales I hear which make me cringe from within the city too.

Thirdly, relationships.
The chances of the antipodean finding this place is pretty slim, unless Sigismund or the Scot tries to shit stir again, and through tortuous routes of chain emails find a way to send her a link - I can share my witticisms about her here. She shall not be named, but known by this monicker alone. As AA Gill speaks of the 'blonde', thus shall the antipodean be known.

All told, I feel the time has come for a change. Out with the old. Year zero. I need to airbrush a few bits out.

So - to the two or three regular readers about - stick with the change in editorial taste.

You might like it.

If you are new, welcome. Sit back, and share a glass with me as I drone on.

The cast of characters in this grisly tale shall be introduced as I go on. Funny stuff lies within.

Les Alpes or Bust

2008-02-01T14:56:00.000Z

The hour is nigh.

At the wee hours of the morning I shall be loading the Alvis on to the boat train for Calais.

The horror of crossing the continent awaits.

Not only have I got the terrors of motorway services plumbing as they call it (Small-bore I call it) but the attentions of an over eager Gendarmerie hell bent on re-living De-Gaule's permanent denial of the Anglo-Saxon saviour hood of their nation - by trying to nab me for not obeying traffic laws more suited to a gauloise smoking peasant in a 2CV, than a lantern jawed chap about the continent in his souped-up motor.

How to speed my journey - or rather - how to minimise the horrors of having to stop?

The answer is to minimise wasted time mucking aorund at stops.

I have taken cues from my flying. In soaring, one is expected to endure 7+ hours solo in a cockpit whilst zippng about the clouds in the horsa.
Now, I reckon I will get about 7 hours endurance from a tank of fuel. I have a flask for weapons-grade coffee, and a non carb snack dispenser. But what if nature calls?

It works for pilots. It shall work for me.

I shall spare you the true horrors. Suffice to say, it is possible to have a widdle while flying a 'plane, it is therefore possible to have a safe, dry widdle when driving.

I will leave your imagination to work out the technicalities - but us glider pilots know how. Just as well I'm driving alone.

Still - I shall have 16 CDs of 'HMS Surprise' to listen to, a flask of coffee to consume and a tub of Foie-Gras to munch on. (Constipation under these circumstances is clearly to be applauded)
I even have a hundred old francs in gold, three pairs of silk stockings, a beret and a phrase book; lest I have to bail out somewhere over the Massif Centrale and make contact with the resistance.
Wish me luck, chaps. I shall let you know when I have arrived, buried my kit and started to shin up Schloss Adler.

PS: 'scuse typos. Spellcheck is down and it's nearly five.

My hols

2008-01-30T16:32:00.001Z

Are just around the corner......

She-tox

2008-01-30T14:25:00.000Z

Verb: to remove one's self from the civilising influence of a woman, normally when she is away for a short period. EG: Leaving your gentleman's literature out, or eating of curry out of the carton whilst wearing only your pants.

The Antipodean is reconnecting with what roots one can have with a country younger than my local post box.

Do I press on and complete matters and write her sweet emails everyday and dream wistfully? Or do I wait till Donna-da-Lodga's mates come round and get ripped to the tits on their GHB and weed whilst imbibing on unreleased quantities of Burgundy and trying to watch hypnotically grotesque erotica involving ice cream sundae glasses and some curious special effects.

That's a hard call.....

One of those days

2008-01-30T13:52:00.000Z

This happy-chappy is presently faced with returning to the slopes for more terror and muscle-twanning delight.
I am eschewing solo 'lone fox' operations in Austria mit Walter unt his Schloss Adler. Oh No.
this time I am travelling to France. I will be assured of a decent meal (if a little over-rich) with long queues and petulant service - such as we have become accustomed to a society benighted by socialism.

Still, the Snow is good, I have my fans with me to cheer me on and bask in my chaply munificence as I hold court nightly: champers in one hand, foie-gras nibble in the other - chest deep in an outdoor jacuzzi whilst i wonder if I will ever escape from such a hellish place.

It was seized with a bit of post holiday vim that i sought out my insurance documents. Should I break a nail, chip a tooth or worse - sprain something - I would want to be immediately airlifted by Chinook to a decent private hospital for convalescence and cunnilingus in a discrete private clinic nestling in the Chilterns.
Not for me spending 97 hours on a filth encrusted gurney in some garlic soaked sweat-pit of a breaks clinic - designed to cater for those of a more foetid continental persuasion.

However, I could not find my policy.

I regularly purge my life of many things and paperwork is one of them. It would seem that a recent iteration of removing scraps of prior life from current existence I had burned the policy document. It was no where to be seen. (Saying that - there is a good chance that Donna Da Lodga moved it in either a fit of pique or tidiness).

I recalled the underwriters and attempted to reach them. Some odd sounding address in town with an 'Axe' in it.
The girl was most helpful - but did ask some odd questions.

Particularly one which was to be the theme of the day:

'Good afternoon - I have lost all my policy information and paperwork, but I recall you may have set it up - can you help?'

'Have you got a policy in front of you?' Uh-oh...one of those calls.......

'No, I have lost all my paperwork and have no references.'

'Oh, have you got a policy number?'

'No, I have lost all my paperwork and have no references.'

'OK, have you got a broker or brokers cover note?'

'No, I have lost all my paperwork and have no references.' (Think it is going to sink in?)

'Ah, so you haven't got any reference information? What's your postcode - I could try a search'.

Ye gods.

Search produced nothing in my name - and she game me their Internet broker details to renew afresh. (I have particular insurance requirements as I tend to command vessels in international waters, things your £4.99 Tesco policy would seriously exclude)

'Can I not renew direct.?

'No sir, please use our broker...'

I braced myself for more fun on the phone.

'Good afternoon, ------ can I help you?' Uh oh. Sing song estuary English.

Repeat facts regarding paperwork. Grip desk in anticipation of more witless dialogue while I explaining I really don't have any details.

'Not a problem sir, post code and your name is all I need.......(clicky-typing noises) here you are sir - would you like me to email you a copy?'

My flabber was gasted.
It was like the re-worked parrot sketch at one of the secret policeman's balls - where Palin wrong foots the audience and Cleese by just giving him his money back and a gift voucher for the mrs..........

Still. Email is yet to get here. I may yet be looking forward to the joys of European Health care.

UPDATE: French healthcare is substantially better than ours. Go figure.

Nice shooting

2008-01-24T13:32:00.000Z

Good old Guido. This one is all over the blogsphere.

How Guido got Hain.....

This is the democratising beauty of the Internet. The Left sees it as a controlling mechanism or something that needs to be managed so they can control the truth they think we need. In reality we can all use it to campaign to expose the lying thieving gits who trough up our taxes.

Well done Guido. There are journalists and other so called importants wishing they could scalp like you.

Now......Who's for Red Ken?

Great Toy

2008-01-24T13:13:00.000Z

As the paucity of the concept of Socialism slowly reveals itself to a generation too young to remember the last time this country experimented with it, we find that the cries of the Left for 'more socialism!' grow louder - like a wounded beast.
The Right has recaptured the zeitgeist.
Gordo's so called economic miracle collapses like Keynesian economics did when the credit ran out in '73 and the fools who thought we could afford a Socialist state and have an international capitalist economy see their pension plundered to make way for who ever the Left's latest client group is today.

And so people realise that medicine is needed and as ever us Tories have to administer it to sick Britain.

Remember the last time this lot held the reigns, when our economy ended up as powerful as Albania in 1979?

So - in preparation for The Natural Party Of Government to return - I give you a toy I discovered on Iain Dale.

Election-Map

Cheers Iain. I have wasted an hour on a telco playing with this.

Chap approves.

Flying hat cheerfully waved at Mr Dale.

Reasons to be cheerful.

2008-01-22T12:40:00.000Z

It seems like so very long ago since I last wrote for my one and only personal reader.
However, I am back.
The Antipodean has been taking up a lot of my run time. Fragrant youth that she is, she is also in possession of the legendary thirst for which her countryfolk are admired. This is one of the reasons why I have not been moved to write much. The fumes of a red-wine hangover, combined with lateness at the hamster wheel (for it is there where I does write) have meant I have neither had time nor inclination to scribble things down.

But needs must. My public, as ever, have missed me.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to bring my own slant to the domestic and the ordinary - for a Chap sees things through a different spectrum. An insight to humour or thoughts gained either because one either knows better - or through the kaleidoscope eyes of bucket loads of high powered mind altering drugs - mean that I can even find my drains amusing. (And often have)

Such a rich vein of domesticity has reared it's foul bonce of late.

My Freezer has broken down.

It is for this reason alone I have been dining on roasted guinea fowl, monkfish and bacon paella and griddled scallops.
Naturally such repast cannot go unwined and it would have been criminal not to wash down Peri-Peri green lipped Mussels without a decent bottle of Pouilly Fume or Sancerre.

It is under such terrible conditions that I am forced to toil.

God alone knows how I cope.

2008 and all that

2008-01-08T12:25:00.000Z

Hello dear reader and before you go on I know I have been laying low.
Christmas is a grisly time of year. Dedicated to the duty of 'family' and in the seeing of people you choose not to do over the whole year one finds the horror is magnified in the fact that not only is one supposed to be nice to them, but nice to others.

It is in the clear blue water of the New Year that one can make the observations such as this without the unoriginal amongst the world branding one with unoriginal titles like 'Grinch' or 'Scrooge'.

My advice to those who spent this year going 'bah humbug' to me when I expounded the virtues of a minimalist Christmas is twofold.
One: go and learn another cliché with which to hassle right-thinking individuals. You sound like a nine year old.
Two: Look about your parlour. Is it now not stuffed to the gunwhales with unusable tat you never wanted? Books you will never read? A pile of clothes destined for the returns queue at Messrs Marks and Sparkies?
Do you not feel nauseous following the chronic overeating? Do your arteries not feel cloggéd following the cheese and roast tatties?

I tend to avoid the cliché that is Christmas such as I tend to avoid all clichés like the plague. (Thank you CJ).

However, a sequence of well lubricated drinking opportunities presented themselves and the good fortune of being able to upgrade an acquaintance to the status of associate with the minimum of dinners out and sufficient alcohol to allow her to succumb to my more dubious charms yet retaining wit and wisdom so as not to awake the next day wracked with guilt - ensured that even now the distension of my liver is felt still and a feeling that something must be done.
After all I am skiing soon and Johnny Foreigner won't show himself, will he.

Now, dear reader, you will recall I have always maintained that the Body Beautiful is bought in sweat or abstemiousness and one must endure the former lest you face the latter.

I have thrown this to the wind and actually given up the juice of the grape and the malt of the grain for January at least.

Cynics among you will insist that I feared (as this is my fortieth year) that this is due to concern for the lead in my pencil least not the liver in my guts, but that that I declare fie! Stuff!

For starters I am skiing with a bunch of chaps who take their PE rather too seriously for comfort. I have been pounding away at the torture machines at the S+M club (gym) for a while, but the less blubber I carry, the better I shall be at defending my position plus out-skiing them in the necessary dogfighting and challenges to my authority which shall come from the pups.
If I can stay off the ale for a month (exceptions to follow) then I shall be like a greyhound of the slopes (steely gaze to match).

Exceptions being the boat show - where once I have schmoozed my way through the champagne troughs of the boat brokers and charter chaps I shall be found propping up the Guinness tent. Exception two being the 'impromptu' champagne breakfast for associate. Hailing as she does from the Antipodes she does have hollow legs for diverse booze - but champagne in bed in the morning, combined with a caviar niblet and smidge of the smoked trout ever fails to loosen the knicker elastic I find. Personally I see such hardships as an occupational hazard.

Nevertheless. She is suitably impressed by my abstemiousness and for that matter my buffing waistline. (Told you my charms were dubious)

If all else fails, there is always the Norovirus. Shit yourself thin.

Where have I been?

2007-12-27T13:46:00.001Z

Oh well, you know how it is....Christmas, trouble at mill at work, egregious slithering activities resulting in hole in my bank account the size of Northern Rock's defecit and the a slight limp I am publicly attributing to overdoing it at Le Palais Du Sweat (Gym).

However my time is a little more liberal at the moment and I am able to blog once more. Now, I know that if you leave these things alone for a bit, your readership dies out. However I am uplifting it again.

In general news Donna Da Lodga was furious with me over the Elvis post. I shall say no more on it though. That what needed to be said was said. And we are chums again. I shall be more circumspect in wittering about my muses in future.

But a new year brings new challenges, fresh starts and old light through new windows. or is it New light through old windows..... oh well.

First challenge is renewing one's insurance. There is scant pleasure in handing over wads of treasure to the blinkered thieves of St Mary's Axe in town so they can parcel it out amongst themselves only to refuse payment on the flimsiest of grounds.

One fragment of joy is the discovery of the minor inclusion in my contents policy, in that it now includes liability for injury to 'Domestic Staff'.
Presumably should I take it upon myself to administer a thrashing to the scullery maid and the witless socialist takes it upon herself to sue me in some kangaroo court of leftieness in Europe, I'm covered - as she probably deserved it?

Elvis has left the Building

2007-12-07T11:41:00.000Z

I'm caught in a trap....there's no way back

I was eating a late supper when the phone rang. It was Donna-da-Lodga's grandmother wishing parley with her grand-daughter.

Passed phone over and in moments her face fell and she started crying uncontrollably. Through the sobs she said 'when did you find him?'. I naturally thought she was talking about her grandfather. I was very concerned and offered her team and sympathy as one quite rightly would.
She finished the call and I said gently - 'was it your grandfather?'

'No', she sobbed. 'It's Elvis.'

'Elvis?? what, like in Graceland? And this has just reached you?'

'He's My Nan's budgie.'

'He's called Elvis??'

'Yes', she sobbed - 'I tamed him.'

'You tamed him? Was he Wild?' (he was probably livid - hat tip to Rowan Atkinson's Gerald the Gorilla for that gag)

'No, from when he was 7 days old. They are very timid when they are chicks and I taught him to like people. He's like a doggie to them. .

'What, they take him for walks?'

'No but they let him fly around the house.'

'On a lead?'

'You don't understand what it is to love animals like we do in my family - look at my sister's
love for her rabbit.' (Sister's rabbit has had a hysterectomy - how they worked out it was menopausal is beyond me - let alone the outpourings of grief attendant with the procedure)

The conversation tailed off at this point…as the futility of reasoning and rationality became obvious - as her love for the quadrapedical slobber machine that is her dog is evident so much that she feels the need to keep him cooped up all day, doesn't change his water, wash his dinner bowl between feeds and needs nagging to walk him daily.

A reprise to the conversation came this morning when she asked me what had happened to the butterfly which had taken up residence in the light fitting in the bathroom.

'Donna, I put him out of his misery'
Her face clouded, tears begin to well.

'Look, I picked him up, he had two legs left and a broken proboscis. Attempted to feed it with some glucose solution and it couldn't feed. It was only right that he was dispatched.'

'You weren't cruel where you?' (Ye gods is there no end to this?)

'I buried him at sea', I said eyeing the Loo.

All this apparently makes me cruel and obviously I know nothing of animal husbandry. Anyway. Not enough meat on a budgie for my liking.

History repeating itself

2007-12-06T10:58:00.000Z

It is oft said that a rummage around a cupboard indicates much of an individual and the colour of their character.
I wonder what it could mean, then, when I am forced by a necessity to delve into a cupboard that Donna da Lodga has made her own.

The cupboard beneath my sink was claimed as hers when she moved in. She also claimed other drawers and the like in my clean minimalistic kitchen of epicurianism for horrors such as Smash, instant noodles and an unearthly amount of stale cake mix.
I haven't had the occasion to delve into such a well staked out territory until the other day. I will divulge why later. Suffice to say the cupboard under the sink has been her preserve for a while and it was with a slow childlike wonderment that I cast open the door and had to move out the stocks within.

Being an organised soul it seemed natural to sort out some of the contents. I shall leave you dear reader to fathom the inner workings of the dear girl's bonce - but there was either a degree of hoarding or reflex purchasing going on.
Contents:
4 separate (and full) bottles of bleach. Various flavours.
6 Magic tree air fresheners
30 assorted spongy scourer things (all unused)
cotton and thread, velcro fastening strip
4 bottles whiffy fabric softener
3 tins spray air freshener
Bounce - one box
Persil sachets - loads
Two bottles dishwasher rinse-aid
Vanish granules - large tub
Shake and vac - two tubs

This is a girl who is clearly fearful of some cleanliness catastrophe in the very near future or one which believes we may face wartime-esque shortages and is panic buying.

Why was I under the sink?

Plumbo Jumbo needed access.

With a grim certainty of the circle line failing to work; DDL cooking and using the waste disposal following the Boy lard's attempts to plug my drains with filler had the effect predicted.
A sure as eggs is eggs I was awoken from my slumber on Sunday afternoon to behold a sink full of brown and wet not going anywhere.
I attached the plunger to the spotlight in the garden, shone the silhouette onto the clouds and waited for the pink van and chap with turbo-reamer to arrive.

It was bound to happen, sooner or later.

PS: yes I know I have been away. Been terribly busy. Slithering and work.

The Joy of DIY

2007-11-27T22:20:00.000Z

Now the dust has settled and I can admire my handiwork I can reflect on the madness I unleashed in my domicile.

I was so focused on the 'deliverable' I didn't have time to log on and comment about the latest fiasco going on in the wide world - as we were inventing new words for Polyfilla.

Yet somehow I feel a connection between the useful application of 'Crevice Paste' and Alistair Darling. And these scoundrels want to log every move you make in your car? And putting all your details on a database?

That is as wise as me reckoning I can strip forty square yards of woodchip with three coats of gloss paint over in it in a couple of days.

I digress.

This incredible feat of amateur anti-decorating was achieved with no less than 8 bin bags and 8 bottles of Burgundy.
We consumed three pounds of bubble and squeak, six eggs, a full kilo of parsnips and one portion of 'sprouts mexicane'.
No requisite telco to Plumbo-Jumbo to sort out that which we flushed (as from the last overhaul) but I did catch The Boy Lard putting water soluble filler down the kitchen sink with a sadistic leer about his face.
Three new names for polyfilla - from crack engungement compound to crevice paste. Via soluble-smearable for good measure. (Grown-up, huh?)

When we transferred efforts to the Boy Lard's house - we managed to remove the plaster from only half the wall accidentally.
Built and et a legendary three-day cottage pie.

And joy of joys - I return to the real world to find the wheels had fallen off my hamster wheel and Gordo slipped even further into crisis.

Every time I go away on holiday Dave climbs two points in the polls. Just goes to show oppositions don't bring down government - governments bring down governments.
I have a theory as to why we get half a generation of socialism compared to a generation of conservatism - and it's the same reason why we get bubbles and slides in the city. People are too young to realise why we got rid of the left last time, just as the current chaps in pinstripes are too young to remember the debt boom of the late 60's and resultant credit crunch following an energy price hike / energy crisis in the early 70s. Or the resultant house price crash.

But they will remember soon enough.

I have walls to paint and dust to inhale. Regular blogging will return soon.

So Busy!

2007-11-21T20:41:00.000Z

I'm away from my PC decorating at the moment - and interesting tales abound regarding lead paint and 'crevice paste' (polyfilla)....but I need to crack on.......tales of chappiness to follow...

Not hugely original, but........

2007-11-14T15:00:00.000Z

Christmas with the family.

Hat tip -Punch - circa 1975.

The next target is:

2007-11-13T12:16:00.000Z

Now the nannyists have pretty much outlawed smoking for the plethora of reasons they pertain to - the next target is our next vice.

Drinking.

We will have all seen the furious press releasing going on of late - latest Here.

Of course - it is for our own and everyone else's good - how can we argue? mark my words - they have seen how well the anti-fag nannyists have stubbed out the habit in the UK - they take courage (bad pun intended) and doubtless move on to the next target.

It will be meat next.

This lot will not be satisfied until we are all Level 3 Vegans - and eat nothing that casts a shadow.

(Fez doff to Lisa Simpson for that nuttiness - but I still can't laugh)

UPDATE: Who pays the piper.....?
The humble devil shows us where the money is coming from.....

The Chap awards!

2007-11-13T12:08:00.000Z

Bit of a random one this - but the recipient is thoroughly deserving.

The Golden Pipe award goes to a Mr A. Farrugia of Winchester.

Why? I was aboard his yacht at the weekend - and he demonstrated chappiness beyond the call of duty.
when one is sailing, there is always an element of deprivation. It allows you to shed the clutter of the ordinary life and connect with the cruel mistress that is the sea. We may drink champagne and eat smoked salmon - but essentially there is an element of noble hardship that one expects with a sport that divides the chaps and the chavs.
Mr F has a 'new' boat. Truth be told the hull and rig is nearly as old as me - and the slow process of re-fitting goes on - however she is seaworthy and we took her on her maiden voyage at the weekend.
While underway a suggestion is made to take a dish of tea, on deck like good Christians - in the face of a force 7.

Mr F duly produced the tea - but in best maritime unbreakable cups and saucers.
No mugs for us, oh no. We were able to sit in the cockpit and take tea like honest men.

For this - the golden pipe award is truly well earned.

Passchendaele Nomember 1917

2007-11-09T09:39:00.000Z

One word.

Ninety years ago Today young men stood and died in the pouring rain in the fields of Flanders, defending the freedom of others against tryanny.

In hindsight the tactics and weapons appear crude. The reality is that the likes of Currie, Plume and Haig did everything they could to preserve the lives of their men.
The used the very best weaponry and tactics available. Airborne reconnaissance for the artillery - and the creeping barrage just about viable in the murk. Ground too wet for tanks meant that the armoured advances at Cambrai could not happen. Truth be told, the guns of the day were not accurate enough to coordinate with tanks and aircraft - as was seen at the Somme Canals in 1918 anyway.

The last gasp of the battle took place form the 6th to the 10th of November with Canadian troops attempting to hold a line against determined German counter attacks.

But what for? The Guardianistas of then and now sneer at the loss of life, and view the world through rose tinted spectacles. What was being fought over? As usual, the drawing rooms of Islington provide scant learning for the realities of warfare, then as now - especially as the legal eagles who make up the kleptocracy who run the show demonstrate when they fail to appreciate the men they send overseas.

Ypres was the gateway to Belgium - and the Salient was there to keep the ports open. Lose the hub at Ypres, it is a short march to Oostende and Zeebruge - effectively closing supply routes from the East of England to the front lines.

This was known by the generals and the men at the time.

Armies must be supplied - and supplied with the best. Unrestricted Submarine warfare and heavy mining by the remnants of the Kaiser's fleet meant any route to the whole of the western front had to be kept open, on land and sea. Flanders was about defending the northern flank, and keeping the arteries open. Attack is always the best form of defence - and the three battles which ended in the Passchendaele were as vital and as dynamic as 'Market-Garden', 'Goodwood' and 'Dynamo'.

The men who fought did so with the courage and determination and bloody minded professionalism of the Men who scrabbled for a beach head at Omaha, who cleared trenches - by hand - at Wireless Ridge or today - in Helmland province.
They stood their ground as did their forefathers at Rorke's drift or in at Quartre Bas - a place not so very far from the Ypres Salient.

And Brown dares to even speak of their courage?

It churns my stomach to see that thieving, mendacious, idiot of a coward even talking of the bravery of these men and then cutting their supplies today.

It is the nobility of those who stand on parade and honour the fallen in the name of our freedoms - in front of their Sovereign - which will stop them booing Brown.

He is not fit to hold the wreath, let alone lay it.

To my readers, remember: on the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh month, the guns fell silent.

Stand silent and stop - for their name liveth for ever more.

Wear your poppy with pride, chaps.

Happy Birthday Chapsticks

2007-11-05T14:21:00.000Z

A year old on Friday - but bogged down with system issues - so couldn't mention it.

Been an interesting year. All sorts of things to say an d do about it - suffice to say I would do it all over again.

I shall reminisce (with cake and candles) later - hamster wheel demands attention.

Here's to another year!

Nicodemus E Chap Esq, author, editor, correspondent at large, inspiration for and victim of all that happens here.

Chapsticks.
The blog where two's company, three's a readership and four is unlikely.

From Horror to Terror

2007-11-05T14:01:00.000Z

All is clearly not well with Donna Da Lodga and her tempestuous love-life. Readers of my little blog will know she lurches from car-crash to crisis with such alacrity one even begins to think she enjoys the adrenalin she clearly gets.

She returned from yet an other sortie into clubland Saturday morning whilst I was on my way out to sweat out the body-beautiful. She clucked and fussed while I left. So far so good.

All was not well when I returned.

She was moping around the place. A short cross examination revealed that the latest conquest was failing to come up to the grade in a number of areas, and despite denying having got her hopes up (which she clearly had) when things failed to measure up, she crashed to earth like a soviet era satellite hellbent on leaving a radioactive crater across the steppes.

It was when I went about completing my ablutive duties that the final terror reached me.

Merrily sudding myself down with the wire brush and extra dettol I could hear the ghastly strains of a certain type music emanating from below.

Think 'Power ballad'.

Think 'Leather and Lace'

Think 'Everything I do,' on karaoke. Followed closely by 'All by myself'.

I had to act quick lest my lower intestine leap out and strangle me in self preservation.

Dripping and betowelled I ran into the lounge, and there she was, karaoke machine in full swing belting them out tunelessly to the very worst 'romantic heartache songs ever'.

'Donna - this device uses more electricity than we have accounted for in the bill. I shall raise you rent immediately to £10,000 to cover the cost.'

She looked crestfallen.

'Look I know you are feeling a tad blue over this chap - but singing this sort of music is a cliché which you have bought into. Go out and occupy yourself instead of acting out this Bridget Jonesesque response.'

More crestfallen looks.

'OK - if you have to do this - at least wear some big pants. (Fig. 1), then you can wallow in the whole sad and lonely stereotype. Eat chocolate, get spots, complain then go out and pick up someone new for more meaningless sex. the Pants won't help, of course, but they do amuse me.'

Apparently she bumped into another old flame on the Saturday night. I have contacted kimberly clark and Cadbury just in case.

You will be 'all by yourself' in these.

BAN this NOW

2007-11-05T13:37:00.000Z

As usual dear reader, I am awaiting the screaming headlines about some poor tot/doggie/OAP/Vicar having been terrorised by fireworks.
We have all seen the terrible injuries wrought by these things and I am sure if not already then shortly some of the more reactionary members of the press, ably stoked up by the grievance industry with a bone to pick will campaign to have fireworks withdrawn from sale to the general public.
I am surprised that a member of Nanny's quicker stormtroopers / think-tank watchers haven't trotted out the dread stats on this matter already. And how we can all go along to an authority organised event with noiseless bangs for the nervous of disposition and colourless flashes unless some particular interest group could also be offended by whatever colour of light their particular issue of the week tells them is oppressive. All to celebrate a seasonal festival. Not stopping Guido blowing up the house. (Offensive to Catholics and left wing councils)

This year, my good self and some chums clubbed together and quite legally bought some very large display fireworks. Big 'uns. Ones with defined fall-out zones and safe launch radius. Ones that actually deafened me when I lit the barrage candles.

We did a 'risk assessment' - or in other words - 'if I let this off here, will it set fire to the barn?'
We had a 'safe area' IE: The back garden 15 yards from the paddock where we were launching them.
We followed the fireworks code. (Or common sense when handling explosives - like No Smoking).

No one got injured, burned or scarred.
No animals were harmed or alarmed during the full 45 minutes of explosions and whizz-bangs.
No property was damaged, other than some scorched grass.
We even drank champagne as they went off - and (gasp) used the occasion to dispose of a couple of pyrotechnics with likely marine applications because they were 5 years out of date.
No one went blind, and we all had a magnificent time.

Nevertheless - the usual grief-mongers, nannyists, hair-shirters, wet-blankets and other leftie kill-joys will seek to constrain the sensible (us) because some chav put a roman candle in his mate's pocket - or three feral teenagers threw a banger at a pram.

Banning fireworks because of a few idiots is like banning beer and knives because someone got drunk and stabbed someone. (Sound familiar......)

I think the answer could lie within the individual rather than the thing in their hand - but then they are a product of society - they're not to blame - take the toys away from them, and they will all hold hands and be peaceful.

Next year - we are going for bigger bangs and two-stage liquid fueled rockets.
I don't care if the Nannyists says I shouldn't. They should shut up, but don't.

PS: We had a marvellous time and I'm still a little deaf in my right ear.

The horror....

2007-11-01T22:57:00.000Z

I spent an hour an a half skulking at the modern torture chamber that is the palace of physique that is my local gym this evening.

Why?

I got home to see Donna-Da-Lodga fully togged up in her liveried finest - and wafting about my abode perfumed, scrubbed and presumably ready to present herself for inspection.
She was in a state of high anxiety and looking a little like Nurse Diesel herself and soon drove me from the house. I felt sufficiently uncomfortable to be prepared to exercise to escape the burgeoning nightmare within.

Ski ski run run lift lift run cycle sweat.

I arrived home to find a white van parked on my drive.

Horror.

Fortunately they have been hiding in her rooms all evening, bar the scurrying from room to heads from time to time and the furtive giggles issues through the ceiling, I remain unexposed the sordid goings-on and doubtless sexual extremism taking place upstairs.

I am retiring soon. Aviation grade earplugs are on stand by - but i fear I may sleep through the alarm in the morning.

Watch this space, reader.

School-boy error

2007-11-01T17:26:00.000Z

One of the joys of having Donna-Da-Lodga in the house is the fresh perspective she brings to my outlook - and the provision of fresh material for this blog.

I had been plotting a post about the schadenfreude I had enjoyed on hearing news of the Former Miss Chap In Residence and the hard times that had befallen her despite the pot of treasure she took off me - and some rather juicy speculation about the grisly nature of the rendition that is being exacted on her frame and fibre for the charity she currently receives.

However, discretion and good taste led me to think twice. So unbloggied I was expecting a quiet evening at home.
Instead I was greeted by the DDL in full flood of vigorous activity - doing house work, and house work with notable alacrity. Not only was she cooking dinner for the following evening, but hoovering, washing bedding, sweeping the lounge and setting about the bathroom with some vigour.

She was clearly due to entertain a visitor, one she wished to impress.
As I have so far been unable to employ a coolie for my domestic engineering I thought it useful to encourage these visits, provided they are well mannered, clean and show due deference.
So in a spirit of lively enquiry I thought it appropriate to ask about this chap who was coming to entertain her.

'You're not allowed to test him' she stated with a slight smile, and a refusal to make eye contact.

'Test, my dear?' Have I ever tested anyone who has come round that you dared to introduce to me? Anyway - should I find him wanting in areas then if he is put to the Inquiry?'

'Well, he's not like 'J'.'
That chap was affable, grown up, intelligent and pleasant. I found him good company.

A thought popped into my brain.

'Donna, how old is he?'

'I'm not telling you.' even less eye contact, more fidgeting.

'He's a lot younger than you, isn't he.' (Obviously - but how young?)

'Yes.'

'Go on. '

'He's 21.' (Ye gods. Barely out of short trousers.)

A moment's reflection considered that he probably wouldn't even notice the work she had done and would probably even pee on the toilet seat. But as the net effect was that I had no domestic engineering backlog to attend to, I thought I would keep schtumm.

A pause. Almost entirely for effect.

'Has he got a note from his mum then?'

'Why?'

'Staying out all night with a strange lady.'
Unprintable response.

I assume they will be staying in watching cartoons, drinking sunny delight and eating monster munch. Or whatever it is 'Yoof' do today.

A Police Priority

2007-10-30T17:47:00.000Z

As you know we now live in a glorious socialist workers paradise - where as a consequence of the boundless munificence of Gordo no one need want, as we have the middle classes to pay for everything.

As such all crime has been eradicated - and the police are free to devote their efforts and capital to automated crime - such as bus lane cameras, speed cameras, parking meter infringement, box junction crossing cameras and other ways to criminalise the tax-paying classes for the smallest of infringements that can enforced by a short subroutine.

It is not a police priority anymore to investigate Private Property that is now being broken into twice to three times a week.
Obviously because we have had another vehicle stolen, our club house trashed, radios taken, meagre bar takings (£5 in change...) robbed, hangars damaged and the property rendered pretty much uninsurable we cannot be considered as at being in any risk. After all, we are not a police priority. How can we be. Nothing left worth stealing.

I suspect if we winged one of the fuckers with a bird-scarer we would be in terrible trouble - but we live under Labour - which means as a sport club encouraging flying we are not a Labour client group and as there are no votes to be had from the aviation community we do not feature in the politicised priorities of the boys in blue. Except, of course - if I do 33 mph on the way home, then I deserve all I get - obviously.

I bet if one of the scrotes broke in, walked into a prop or tripped over onto one of the sharp objects we have lying around we would have to pay compensation.

Smoking

2007-10-30T17:39:00.000Z

Who googled 'Dunhill Junior Smokers set'?

That's madness. Everyone knows that - and I was wrong to suggest I was going to give my Junior school age nephews such trinketry.

I have given them fireworks instead.

Where there's muck....revisited

2007-10-30T17:32:00.000Z

I blogged a while ago in a singular piece of genius about how the invisible hand of the market would intervene where the Local council decide they will halve their rubbish service, yet charge the same fee.

In an interesting twist, not only have many of them decided to go to fortnightly (I am in one of those poor areas) but they have decided to charge extra if you create more rubbish.
Great idea - but only if you can then select with whom you pay for your services. Otherwise it is just another localised monopoly.

The bit that gets my gripe though is that these services are being reduced, but is the local bureaucracy which supports it going as well, and will my council tax bill reduce with it?
Will I get a discount if I don't fill my bin? What's stopping me taking my spare waste to the local tip and getting rid of it for free?

Methinks we will see rubbish on the streets again - just like the last Labour administration.

It is a matter of time until not only will there be an alternative to your fortnightly collection - but I reckon it will be cheaper, greener, cleaner and quicker than the one provided by the bloated state monopoly.

Just you watch.

Gunpowder, treason and pot

2007-10-25T16:59:00.000Z

Ahhh the joys of Autumn!

I have spent the last couple of days acquiring a license from the campaign against aviation to use a wireless set whilst airborne. These means I can whirl about the heavens broadcasting my particular brand of humour not only at the blogsphere, but also at bemused Air Traffic Controllers, other aircraft and mole-like military listening posts.
We were all issued a standard 'Bridget-Jones' bra for head adornment should we wish to call Tokyo as well.

But now I am back. My factory is live and my head in a space to venture forth into the world yet again with mischief in mind.

And Autumn is one of the finest seasons to do so! Oh, spring has all the joys of the sap rising - but autumn holds all manner of treats, cold weather racing, frosty mornings and the first log fires of the year to seduce phillies in front thereof. It is after all, magical the effect that a glass of champagne, a giant real fur throw, a dozen oysters and a roaring log fire has on a young lady's drawstrings. Not to mention a little Sodium Penathol to loosen the morals.

A season of autumn racing - and dark parties in dark towns to behave darkly within.
A season of epicurean delights, not to mention the bounteous harvest of the sea and woods!
A season of frosts and cold ears and 'Come by the fire my dear, you will catch a death!'

The first peak of the season which one gets to show off one's derring-do, is of course bonfire night.

The smell of powder, a slight whiff of petroleum and bonfire smoke! Roasted tatties and the best excuse to let off your out of date flares from the boat while getting blind drunk.
And we get to play with fireworks.

Lots of fireworks

Not for us chaps the weedy excuses of the stuff of Tescos. Oh no.
An hour's careful searching online reveals the joys of the Trade sector:
75mm mortars!
Rockets that require blast shields!
Cakes that fire for 10 minutes!
Starbursts!

The joys of leaping about the garden while a little taken with wine and having the joys of setting light to things and running away while the explode should be appreciated by all, young and old!
Then the joys of taking the starry eyed young lady wowed by your pyrotechnical prowess indoors to the fire, some spit roasted lamb a bottle of burgundy on the table and some rigorous sexual extremism is naturally to be expected, given the fact that all those bangs makes one heart pump so.

Now we all know the firework code. No cigarettes in the vicinity - but a pipe is ideal. Alcohol should not be taken, unless in cocktail form and be careful kids, remember - explosives and Ketamine DON’T MIX.
The explosives give you a nose bleed and the Ketamine doesn't burn.

Hamster Wheel

2007-10-22T17:50:00.000Z

Students of Nicodemus E. Chap esq., will be aware that today was a big day in the world of work.

For those of you who know / care / or frankly couldn't care less - I have a simple phrase which will strike envy into the: Government/NHS/Lefty cultural establishment/Public Sector IT delivery bods/Simpering apologistas for the political class of no-hopers. (delete as appropriate)

On time. On Budget. On scope. To the minute.

Don't hear that very often nowadays do you.... not with this lot running the show.

Chappy misbehaviour, regular pithy blog posts and more discombobulatory adventures to come!

I've earned them.

The pain and the sorrow.

2007-10-22T17:07:00.001Z

I say, rather close isn't he?

A weekend very much of two halves.

Uncharacteristically I awoke when Da-Lodga returned from yet another night sweating away the last of her youthful looks in one of London's louder establishments.
Full of vim, vigour and verisimilitude I at once decided to aviate.
Now, students of all things ~~metero~~ ~~metroli~~ weather will have noticed the whopping great slice of High pressure resident over Merrie Englande.

This still, pleasant autumn weather, whilst stunning, has killed off the thermal soaring. It's all to do with inversions, and is terribly complicated and will involve graphs to explain.

As the air was so still and smooth it would perfect for some formation flying. Therefore, I took the opportunity to renew my rating on solo-aerotowing.

Aerotowing is basically formation flying, whilst being dragged through the sky by a tug on the end of a bit of long string.

I shall spare you the details - but in terms of the beauty of the day (Cambridgeshire was breathtaking in the Autumn light) and the sense of achievement - I rated it better than my first solo - or first successful climb to cloud base solo.

I landed after enjoying myself thoroughly at two thousand feet and skipped about the peri-track like a spring lamb, filled with enthusiasm and a sense of complacent joy at just how bloody brilliant I am.

It was in this sense of tearing high spirits that I wended my weary way to 'Sarf' London to chums of mine for a spot of an Ibiza reunion with a certain Rugby match in for good measure.

You can see where this is going can't you.

A couple of bottles of bubbles, some cheeky Rhone and a half decent curry later we had become refreshed to the extent that going to the pub with requisite loud funk disco had become a reasonable suggestion and one that we embarked on with notable alacrity. Certainly a journey worthy of allowing us to forget the horrors from Paris.

It is very easy to criticise one's actions viewed through the prism of sober hindsight:

We shouldn't have gone to the pub at 11.

I shouldn't have had that strong Czech lager on top of fizz and red wine

I shouldn't have been involved in Donna-Da-Lodga's mad photography attempts to persuade us gentlemen to behave like celebutards for a camera.

Dancing. (Needs no qualifications whatsoever, does it...)

Nor should I have drunk quite so much (and the rest!)

What is worse, is that there are apparently photos of this debauched behaviour in existence as we speak. (Fortunately, they are restricted to a generic social networking website belonging to DDL - and therefore almost nobody I know will ever see them)

But dear reader - as you are all aware Nemesis always follows Hubris.

My Sunday was spent the clutches of a hangover of transdimensional qualities.

It crept up - I felt fine for an hour when I awoke. (No memory as to how I got to bed either - for the concoctions which had rendered me so cheerful and willing to participate in dancing, had also contrived to rob me of my memory of some minor details - like getting home, what I did for an hour with everyone else - and who I may have drunk-dialled on the wireless telephone).

And then, when I started some gentle re-hydration therapy, it hit. And it struck as fast and as hard as an Exocet out of a cloudbank. I have had similar experiences, normally when experimenting with cheap drugs when I was int he flower of my youth.

My day? Ruined.

My head? Aswim.

My Gulliver? On spin cycle.

A poor end to such an auspicious start.

The only consolation was that this hurt more than the defeat. So, I guess in someways the sorrows had been most effectively drowned.

Society is to blame

2007-10-17T11:05:00.000Z

AMAZING!
If I'm obese because I eat junk food it's actually not my fault any more. Funny - I thought it was up to me what I ate, drank and how much I exercised.
Now apparently I have no free will and it is the fault of the fact someone is still free to sell me what I want to buy. Food is too easy to buy and too cheap and I can eat fatty foods if I want to. Well blow me. Let's dismantle the entire capitalist system, introduce a board of supply, nationalise all food production and we should only have what nanny thinks we need - then we will all be fit an healthy. Just like rationing.

Rope will be made illegal next so you can't hang yourself if you choose.

Here's a quick question: Should I choose to drink myself to death and I was part of the client state - I would obviously be a victim of society - but would that still count if I am harming myself with a glass of claret a day?

Or, at what point I am I merely being a glutton or I am becoming a victim? Does it only count if I eat burgers and chips - or should I dine upon roasted fowl in oyster sauce, a shoulder of mutton,a race of hen lobsters, roasted potatoes, mash, suet pudding with vanilla cream and a bottle of Madeira everyday - am I part of the exploited or am a part of the exploiters - for such food is obviously plutocratic. Or the zero-summers will have it that because I have so much choice, I am clearly forcing those I exploit to eat McSwineys.

You know, thinking this one through - it wouldn't be beyond this socialist state to introduce rationing anyway. Along with it 'being for our own good' rationing was introduced in the last war not because of shortages - but to reduce fuel usage in distribution. Just you wait - the green lobby will want that one. Think of how carbon consumptive it is having a choice in the shops…… especially when we can queue up with our rations cards and save the environment.

Now, all we need is another created crisis to jump this one through…..terrorist stunts? Deliberate viral releases? Or another staged explosion at a fuel depot…..

Soviet Britain is upon us.

Time for a day of Chappy anti-nanny action. Better than that pathetic blog-action day.
A stay in and stuff yourself day, methinks.

Menu to follow.

All quiet on the bloggy front pt 345811

2007-10-15T12:44:00.001Z

My next toy.....

Yes, yes, I know I have been terribly quiet. It isn't because I have nothing to say either. I know it is all kicking off in the politcoes world and there are all sorts of things that have been catching my eye, but I have been rather busy.

'Ah-ha!' I hear you murmur, 'With what, to where and to whom?'

What with the old hamster wheel requiring an awful lot of amperes (Big Go-live this weekend dontchyerknow) the madness of Big Grey internal politics, food poisoning from dodgy food from Ibiza (NOT that luminous drink I consumed in DC-10 either) and a Man-Flu-with-complications (slight head cold) my time has been spread thinner than the margarine on a GNER sandwich.

On the aviating front - I have done my last flight tests - so I am in possession of the equivalent of a PPL (albeit for proper aeroplanes - sans big mincing machine to drill a hole in the sky) - and this has been taking up a lot of my run time of late.

So what next?

Well if my chum Jaguar is anything to go by, I ought to go and get a passenger rating then cue some industrial grade slithering.

He has already suggest that I should order 20 white silk scarves to give the ~~Victims~~ dear young volunteers a special and very personal souvenir of their little dash around the clouds. If that sort of behaviour is anything to go by it is a very slippery slope to wearing a cravat and a monocle with phrases like 'Let me get you out of those terribly wet clothes my dear, you'll catch your death.'

It does have it's merits - but Jaguar, whilst a yachtsman of average skill and caver of unfortunate renown, is the sort of individual only the foolhardy, deranged or sexually desperate should seek advice from. After all - he has fled at least three countries to escape paternity suits and is running out of continents in which he can safely show his face in the company of the fairer sex without the accompanying posse bearing flaming torches, baying hounds and a priest with good book and requisite noose in hand.
But saying that - he is a stout fellow and a good sport.

Also - on hearing this news, Scotty started texting me 'Top-Gun' quotes including the ludicrous 'take my breath away Maverick'. This is highly inappropriate, as under no circumstances could I accept a moniker quite as ripe Stilton as 'Maverick'. 'Algy', possibly. 'Binky' has a certain doomed Spitfire-ace ring to it. At worse 'Goose' - particularly as it has a certain lewd undertone.

However - the sport is far to genteel to allow such goings on - and as such I am happy to waft about skywards without resorting to grisly Americanised clichés about fly-boys offering rides on their 'jet'.

No. Gliding is more about flasks of stewed tea, curly fishpaste sandwiches and discovering new ways of peeing into bags while lying down and getting the resultant waste out of a perspex window two inches square while doing 70 knots - a practice which lacks the glamour of an F-14 and is hardly endearing when trying to impress the Ladies.

Back, from outta space

2007-10-10T19:56:00.000Z

Hello again reader dear.

As you are aware I have been off the grid for a bit. A couple of day's worth of yachting about Ibiza, with some exceptionally heavy drinking and some unfortunate food. I call it unfortunate as it has made me suffer a mild dose of the bloody flux.

We are not talking hallucinations and serious griping pain - but considerable discomfort has ensued and I am restricted in not being too far away from full-bore facilities, preferably with refrigeration close to hand.

Oh, the sailing was fine enough, the scenery is absolutely staggering - but all of us who passed through the apartment taken by my chums has suffered to some extent with 'the slackening'.

This has curtailed both my time and my blogging urges. It has even prevented me from the latest phase of my radio work this evening - which is fortunate as I completely failed to either revise True Bearing calls, nor prepared my flight plan. This I shall do tonight, hopefully between bouts of suffering terribly for my travels.

The only cure I can think of is a heroic dose of the old tincture, but Tesco won't sell it to me anymore and I daren't consume more than a thousand drops. Failing that I think I need to be bled and a slime draft.

More news to follow. If you are lucky it will be followed by sports and weather.

I will express my surprise, though, as in the brief interlude whilst I was off sunning myself and loafing about the White Isle - I return to find that Gordo has bottled the election, England beat Australia in the Rugby and we have even won a one day test series.

I should do these short breaks more often.

Burma - The North Korea of the Indian Ocean?

2007-10-02T12:54:00.000Z

One shares the usual horror at what is happening with Burma of late - The Greek Chap puts it much better than I - and includes links.

My mind casts back to the velvet revolutions of the late 80s - and the successes they had. Is the Burmese regime more brutal than that of Romania? It's hard to judge. What is different to then is the sponsor - the skin in the game as we call it in my profession.

Back in 89 - the Soviets were a busted flush. And as their support crumbled their satellite regimes did with them. It would appear that China - hardly a paragon of democratic openness - potentially sees Burma as a satellite - and would gleefully prop up it's regime, and clearly sees the lives of fellow humans as rather cheap.

One wonders why.

Perhaps we see the world slightly differently to them. The Cold war view isn't there anymore for us. We forget the great game between the blocs fought in the buffer states from Angola to East Germany. Things may look a tad different to our chums in Beijing. All that has happened is the Old Bear has gone bankrupt. But There is a lot of her claws left.

I also think there are a host of geopolitical factors clearly at play.

I'm no expert - but I am familiar with some of the terrain - so here's a few guesses.

Could it be unofficial empire - long memories there in the land of the dragons. From suffering at the hands of Japan in the 30s - and a hundred years before that through the colonial manufactories in the great rivers - the Pearl northwards - would suggest that a few satellite regimes with resources and friendly goons at the helm give china a sense of comfort as it grows and flexes it's economic muscles.
The Pacific rim is lined with hostiles - Japan, Taiwan and the Americano-Australian bloc. Recent interventions in the Celebetic Archipelago to defend interests of the old SEATO bloc obviously unnerve China - so landward borders with friendly or propped up regimes may tip a local balance of power in her interests.

Could it be an interest in challenging an Indian economic bloc? India represents the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism, free trade and democracy that clearly concerns China. How else to maintain the regime if you keep the people in ignorance. With a Maoist insurrection stoked in Nepal, ongoing hostilities in Kashmir - how better to play the great game with India - a Nuclear India after all, than by keeping a modern day East Germany fizzling away to her eastern flank - to hem in any pretensions an economic powerhouse waiting to happen that is the old Raj.
Also If you can keep Kim and his cohorts ranting at the Americans across the 38th parallel and Burma worrying the Europeans - eyes can be blind to other pressures that she may wish to push - Japan - or West into the Sino-Russian frontier. Not the first time they have come to blows either. With a stroppy Russia to contend with - the great game can be played up against the old west and at the same time the old bear can be baited at leisure.

Finally - good old sea lanes. China's navy and therefore her ability to project her interests beyond the Pacific Rim is hampered by her Pacific Navy being largely littoral and the fact as far as she is concerned the scrap with Shek and Mao isn't done yet in Formosa / Taiwan - and all that island represents is the same scale of unsinkable aircraft carrier as we were to the threat of Soviet expansion across the Elbe in 45-89. With the Sea of Japan sonar-ed as tight as the Greenland - Iceland - UK gap was in 88, the Indonesian Archipelago a theocratic bloc - and the Malaccan straits covered as far as fleet movements are concerned - a friendly port in the Bay of Bengal is an ideal place to project interests to your trade enemies.

Power projection is still rated in Flat-tops. When Saddam went buying petrol in Kuwait - Both Maggie and George's Daddy asked the same question - where are my carriers? George 1, of course knew of these things - being a decorated navy pilot himself. She hasn't got them right now - but you can bet they are being built - or bought. (Good article here: Here)

In short - is Burma the soft underbelly China wants to the Indian Ocean? Or a buffer state for security in a cold war mind-set? Either way - this could be the first move in the Dragon flexing Geopolitical muscles beyond her old backyard of the Mekong to the south and represent a push in her interests Westward.

Gweilo ought to watch his step.

Lois Maxwell

2007-10-02T12:41:00.001Z

Most of you know Lois Maxwell died at the weekend.

With IMDB crediting her with over 82 key appearances she will be sorely missed.

Many of us remember her for her regular slot as Moneypenny - M's long suffering secretary.

However - she has a certain cachet amongst the spods among us. Who can forget her dulcet tones as the Lt. Atlanta Shore of W.A.S.P. Troy Tempest's bit of stuff - however, why she hung around beat me because he was always chasing that annoying fish girl that Matt Munroe droned on and on about.

She was also a regular voice-over on Thunderbirds, and appeared in Several episodes of UFO. To complete the collection of cult 60's appearances - she also showed up in The Persuaders, The Saint, The Avengers and the ever silly Randall and Hopkirk (deceased). She was almost as prevalent a voice as the great Shane Rimmer.

Put simply - her transatlantic tones coloured the soundscape of my childhood.

Farewell, Lois.

House guests.

2007-10-01T11:15:00.000Z

As predicted Dulux thoroughly disgraced herself during her visit. Not only did she paralyse herself with faffing - but - as predicted - she fell asleep and dribbled on my sofa.

I picked her up from Stevenage station where she was negotiating with the ticket clerk over her failure to buy said billet. Giant wheelie case in hand - I enquired if she was planning on staying for a month or more? Tricky as the Donna-da-Lodga would be back soon and she would have to vacate the spare-room - and move to the parcel shelf in room 3.
Indeed prepared for the two nights only - but she 'felt the cold' and had brought her entire skiing wardrobe, jumpers and long johns. And she borrowed a fleece.... All this 'healthy living' has obviously broken her internal thermostat - and she must be in need of a decent sticky suet pudding to reintroduce a ready-brek glow.

Light supper followed by early night - as tomorrow we were to fly.
I roasted a little salmon which we ate with green salad and the like. All terribly abstemious - I had offered a small rib of beef with dauphinouse pots, mountains of fine Hampshire cabbage and some gravy to be washed down with a presumptuous Chateaux Neuf Du Pape. Apparently this represented all of her forbidden food groups - and could have killed her stone dead. Personally I would have preferred that than the self-imposed starvation diet of steamed grass roots and inedible stalks. Better to go like a burning comet than dying by degrees, eh?

We arrived at the aerodrome the next day with her half asleep and me needing tea. I introduced her to one of our more jocose instructors and soon despatched her to play with an aeroplane - in a state of bewilderment. The planes she is used to have jetways, stewardesses and airports attached. They are not towed around a grass strip by a golf buggy driven by an old man who smells strongly of pipe tobacco.

She's a nice lass, but she is prone to asking a lot of insensitive questions - a LOT of questions in a steady stream. This caused some amusement.

Much of the amusement was derived from her demanding to know how many years her flying instructors had been teaching for - and at one point refusing to fly with someone.
This caused hilarity rather than rancour - and a spate of the instructors insisting amongst other things - that they had been flying a week and had the book on how to fly (with the pictures all coloured in neatly too), they had a note from their mum, the charges were dropped last time and that he got away with it last time as he was wearing a parachute and the insurance covered the burial charges.

Despite spending a good half of the day pretending to be asleep in my car at the end of the runway when we all knew she was reading 'Hello!' she flew twice - and even soared for a few minutes on one. How someone can feel airsick though from 6 minutes is beyond me.

I, on the other hand spent the entire time in my flights scrabbling around at 1100 feet in two knots of sink and manfully failing to stay up for more than 7 minutes.

She completed the evening by dining on a particularly tasty roasted prawn and red pepper Provencal with basmati rice and a bottle of Savigny Les Beaune 2005 - which is clearly a grand, grand year - and delicious for a white only two years in the bottle.
A glass of Cremant completed the evening - and allowed her to fall asleep - entirely as seen in my prophecy - on the sofa. Head lovingly nestled on the Dog's arm-rest to commune and share in the sleepy world of dribble.

Her appearance in the morning on the sofa was akin to an old English sheep dog who had fallen asleep in a washing machine. Yet again she was paralysed with faffitude for I had been to the gym (I know, I know - but the body beautiful is paid for in sweat and self denial and I cannot brook the latter) and prepared breakfast before she had emerged into the world, dripping and betoweled from the only shower in the house.

'Sorry dahlink I didn't know you were back…are you being all organised?'
'Yep - and I am turfing you out. I have to be airside by 13.00 and it is quarter to twelve now.'

The rest is fairly tedious and doesn't bear much blogging. Drop off at Station (with attendant fashionista air-kisses), drive through countryside, duty at airfield - radios, clipboards and gliders zipping about the place.

Home for tea and curry.

And time, I think to wash the sofa arm covers again. They are getting a little sticky. As I don’t like the central heating too high I am loathe to warm the house purely to allow my guests and my lodger's doggy dribble to congeal into a brushable crust.

Dulux's day out.

2007-09-28T13:19:00.000Z

My chum Dulux is having one of her cathartic phases. We have a small book running as to how long this one will continue. It has got noticeably worse since the Scot slunk of to Greece in a futile attempt to capture the glories of my previous commands in the Aegean and the Ionian.
This particular phase involves a great deal of self denial washed down with activité. Last time I saw her - afloat - normally a haven for epicurean excess - she was living entirely on sprouting beans, carrot shavings and wheatgrass juice - with the attendant vapourishness that such hideous repast would incur. Consequently when the situation demanded something approaching a slot of exertion she fainted dead away.

I had put this out of my mind of late as I have had some of my own particular worries to concern myself with - on a professional and personal front - and my runtime has been pretty consumed. Hamster wheel has demanded a lot of amperes (Factory wide outages no less) I have had the CAA breathing down my neck demanding I learn their scripts as well. (I did rather well in in my exam by the way dear reader)

Until I received a text last weekend whilst I was rummaging in the farm shop.

It read about something about Lucinda and horse tack with mentions of Jodhpurs and riding and the like…..It was from dulux. Hello, thought I, she has finally discovered her inner pervert. I queried back - never one to let such a comment go unpassed.

The reality was she was actually riding in Gloucestershire - and immediately asked if she could come aviating.

Seems phase two of the project hair shirt is getting out of London and doing shit. Riding one day, flying the next.

'Nice to be of service', said I.
'Donna da Lodger is off sweating out what's left of her youth in Ibiza - you can use her room - Just don’t call me captain at the flying club. I will get more of a reputation than I already have.'

'What reputation is that skipper?'

'Never you mind old girl. What would you like for dinner?'

'No meat, dairy, yeast, alcohol.'

'No vegetables that cast a shadow? Bale of hay perhaps? '

She let that pass.

'Anyway Captain I'm absolutely shattered so please don’t be too alarmed if I just sit on your sofa, fall asleep and dribble all over it.'

'Be my guest', said I - 'you will be in fine - if a little desiccated company'

'How so?'

I indicated that there is a section of the sofa in which there is a special cover to accommodate the fact that is where Donna-da-Lodga's dog chooses to rest his head. He also is wont to dribble.
'Surely it can’t be that bad' she said and we rang off.
Little does she know. She will soon be languishing in oodles of dried doggy dribble.
How fitting.

Evil at work

2007-09-26T14:52:00.001Z

Been rather pre-occupied - but this is too important to let go.

The ephemeral nature of the interweb is exposed in it's erasability. To those who seek to silence us - we are but columns on an IP address list. We can be expunged at the click of the mouse.
As small individuals we are not protected either by legal budgets of the press or our ability to quote using parliamentary privilege.

'But, so what?' you might say - 'deleting a blog is just some nerd's website'
This is as big an assault on free speech as rounding up copies of fanzines and burning them in the streets. Except this is cleaner and attracts less headlines other than outrage in the blogsphere.

The whole point is put far more eloquently by the The Devil and The Greek Chap. They have done the research and say it much better.

All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. To my readers - get out there and comment, chaps.

All quiet on the bloggy front

2007-09-25T08:50:00.000Z

Sorry reader - I know you are looking to me to provide you with a witty look at the world and more tales of woe from my unusual existence - but you may recall I am doing an exam? Turned out it's not just radio - it's full Air Traffic control, radar vectored approaches etc., etc.
Complications - the written exam is actually this week - so I am somewhat snowed under in getting ready for this. Any slack time I would normally be blogging is taking up with running the scripts and the like.

The other consequence is that to get my head around it I am immersing myself totally in the lingo. It means I am barely able to write in English without it drifting into golp-alpha-charlie-descend-and-maintian-two-tousand-fife-hun-dred-feet-wessex-QNH-998-millibar-report-when-overhead-bourton-tower.

I'll be back on Friday. Lots of news going on, mind so I'm sure you will be fine.

What book am I?

2007-09-21T11:29:00.000Z

You're Babar the King!

by Jean de Brunhoff

Though your life has been filled with struggle and sadness of late,
you're personally doing quite well for yourself. All this success brings responsibility,
though, and should not be taken lightly. Life has turned from war to peace, from damage
to reconstruction, and this brings a bright new hope for everyone you know. These hopeful
people look to you for guidance, and your best advice to them is to watch out for snakes.
You're quite fond of the name "Celeste".

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Fez doff to the Devil for finding this.

Wine drive - reprise

2007-09-20T14:56:00.000Z

As I unpack and re-pack the cases for final stowage I have had a chance to reflect on the short annual pilgrimage to the haven of bacchanalian delights that is the Burgundy region of France.

We suffer a great deal for the privilege of the finest of wines. Having to spit the damn stuff out when tasting it is bad enough, let alone having to face the indignity of paying again for roads we have already paid for with the ruinous EU tithes levied upon us.
Burgundy is an area of natural beauty and empty property - but for some reason - affordable accommodation in the local area is somewhat stifled. Logis De France - basically restaurants with rooms - are the best value - and they leave more of the old spondulicks for the good stuff.

Oh, the places are clean enough - that well scrubbed old school sanatorium feel describe them best. 1970's décor, slightly threadbare linen and bathroom fittings out of an episode of space 1999 or UFO.
The food is often a true delight - with of course local wines setting the palate off just so. It can be rustic to exquisite - but almost always too much.

Much of the joy is the journey itself - 'La Route des Grand Vins' through sun dappled russet green corduroy landscapes, that scroll past our windows as we meander through names that read like a sommelier's wet dream.

Afternoons spent in low arched cellars tasting dips from the first crush to the Vins Anciens bottled many a year afore we arrived - and leading up the stairs to blinking into the daylight - to a heavier car but a lighter pocket.

And so - the cases shall go away - not to be seen until 2013 onwards. A moment of sadness, offset by a collection of a rather nice set that have been mouldering and ripening since 2000 - or before. (The 1er Cru '98 is particularly fine right now)

I shall enjoy - and of course share with glad rapture. For what is the point of all this Bon-Viveur behaviour - if one cannot share the spoils with one's chums?
Anyway - I'm on a diet now. I shouldn't be drinking a whole bottle - and it would be a shame to let it stand so.

Form an orderly queue, chaps.

They Came From Space!!

2007-09-19T10:49:00.000Z

Locals Here should be wary of the following:
Giant Ants
Walking Plants
Anything on a tripod.

A truth about flying

2007-09-18T16:08:00.000Z

A sad week for flying.

Firstly - they have downgraded the search for Steve Fossett. To some people he was just another rich idiot playing with aeroplanes - but in the short, short history of manned flight it has tended to be people like Fossett who have made those leaps or conquered the unconquerable in the name of either riches, adventure, fame or fortune. Afterall - Allcock and Brown didn't fly their Vimy across the pond just so we could get to New York - they did it for the prize money - and because it was there. Bleriot wasn't trying to get duty free either.

Fossett made his own money and set out to achieve things after his commercial career, so in my mind - fair play to him.

As a Glider pilot - one feels a certain affinity with Fossett. He flew from Omarama - where I have flown - he holds records in the sport - and is well known as part of the sport's aristocracy - should such a thing exist in a sport as egalitarian as gliding - a sport as yet untouched by drugs, sponsorship, television deals and the like. It is one of those past times where money, influence or the like counts for nothing. We fly gliders manually- without autopilots and largely without many instruments other and an airspeed indicator and an altimeter.

Every time we set out across country in an unpowered aircraft or go for our own personal best in altitude or endurance - we are touching the same part of our spirit as he was the day he went missing. When I run the launch control at the end of a day and as dusk colours the sky, I still get sweaty-palmed as we count back the cross country flights and fervently hope as the stragglers come home we count them all in. I have been on airfields (albeit sky-diving ones) when 10 people get out of an aeroplane but only 9 parachutes are counted. And the cold creeping horror is much the same. I also dread the day if, on my watch, someone doesn't come home.

Hopes fade into impossibility that he should wander out of the desert alive. My thoughts go out to his family and friends and I am sure that aviators of all shades send their condolences.
One another more horrifying scale we see what happened to that MD-82 in Phuket. Current talk is of wind-shear - with survivors telling of an aborted landing to boot.

I'm an early amateur pilot and all I have to say is that my most terrifying experiences have been cross and tail wind landings in turbulence. A single thought goes through your head - there is no getting away from gravity - I have to land this thing.

We are reminded about the wonders of modern technology and sat in comfort in the middle of 747 we can feel as safe as houses whatever the weather.

But despite instrument landings, weather radar and powerful computers there is one fundamental truth at stake here:

Most of the time, flying is perfectly safe. It is safer than crossing the road. But then there are a few tiny times when it is totally reliant on the skill of the person at the controls - often wrestling with them in near impossible conditions and there are going to be moments of extreme danger.
Ultimately every pilot has to fly as some time by the 'seat of his pants'. That hasn't changed since Wilbur and Orville flew a distance shorter than a 747 in the Kittyhawk. It is dangerous and sometimes it goes wrong.

Reports are sketchy of the final moments - but they could been brought down hard in a squall or run out of runway - but they were orbiting the strip - which could mean they knew this was going to be hard. The pilot had requested an abort to go around but by the sounds of things too late. The chances are - he saw, and knew, what was going on and did what he could to save the lives of the passengers - full in the knowledge that if you are going down - you - as the pilot are probably going to be killed in saving those lives.

When we see footballers being described as 'courageous' or celebrities talking of their 'struggle' my mind turns to people like these pilots I mention today who attempt to wrestle 150 tons of wet steel to the ground in a storm facing almost certain death to save a few lives - or the two guys at the exit pulling other out at their own risk.

My thoughts to the families - and to the crew - like those who have gone before - you have slipped the final Surly Bonds.

Wine Drive - continued

2007-09-18T15:40:00.000Z

Err... frantically busy with my 2008 OP budgets reader - and my direct reports have quadrupled in number so I am stupidly busy.
I have a draft to complete and edit though - so nearly there.

Problem, of course, is that I am building it up a bit.

The Final Frontier

2007-09-17T12:30:00.000Z

A whole ago - shortly after he purchased his Yacht - my mate 'Jet-Jaguar' proposed an adventure:

The North West Passage

Previously these attempts have ended with the crew entombed in the ice, going mad from the lead in solder in their tin cans - or worse dying from Vitamin A poisoning from eating Polar Bear liver.

It is one of those sailing adventures which has lured the brave and the bold to an icy doom.

But NOW - looks like it's a goer! Especially as SV Deep Blue has an armoured hull and is rigged for Polar operations.....

Just let me bring my own food, OK?

Booze Cruise Vs Wine Drive

2007-09-17T12:02:00.000Z

The hotel, Saturday

Back at the wheel today - and Big Grey is demanding lots of Amperes - so I must scurry like billio and you, my dear reader, will have to wait to hear tales of the best bit of my wine drive.

Teasers:

Space 1999 decor and snoring from 3 doors along!

Jumping the queue in Calais!

No Strawberry jam in the Club Lounge on P&O!

More to follow - including some descriptive bits I was proud of at the time - but I had been drinking.

From the chappy correspondant....

2007-09-14T17:19:00.000Z

Beaujolais
Gods reader, this is hard work. We are having to drive all this way and be forced to taste all this wine merely for the good of ones guests. In addition I am having to type on a French keyboard - which seems to forego normal punctuation in favour of extra letters.
Journey down was long and uneventful - despite the heroic intervention of one of Tescos finest summer puddings and some cream to fortify our resolve - it came in handy I can tell you - as the autoroutes are long - and Earl Grey will only sustain sanity for so long.
I took my own advice and rejected a pork pie on the grounds it ought to be in a cage. I am grateful to this day.

Our first night was spent in a simple Logis de France hotel - but equippped with a fine kitchen and Im sorry to report that we may have over done it slightly. Only slightly - but I believe the night terrors I suffered were due to the third round of cheese and second bottle of Cotes de Nuits.

It was when we arrived in Beaujolais today that purchasing begun in earnest.
I shall regale with tales later on, as there is too much detail for my constitution to bear - or bash out on this keyboard - suffice to say - we have been slaving away.
Three degustations before lunch is a heady pace indeed - and we had earned a break.
Lunch in Fleurie was a necessarily languid affair of only two courses, wine and coffee.
Under the watchful eye of the waitress - we were obliged to eat it all - what horros we have to endure shows we are made of stern stuff.

Exhausted from such efforts - we repaired to some of the better known cooperatives this aternoon - where we could take our leisure.
But - this is merely the starter for the main course.

For tomorrow we arrive in Beaune.

But tonight - rest easy dear reader: for we are in Julienas - a pretty town with a comfortable hotel - and a relxing menu. I shall dine lightly lest myliverishness flare up again. Or I drop dead from gout.

Wish me luck - for tomorrow I shall need every ounce of strength my aged sinews can deliver......

D-Day T Minus 15Hrs 20 mins

2007-09-12T13:50:00.000Z

Our objective....

It is upon us at last.

The cellar space has been cleared, marker pens ready.

Tasting notes and detailed vineyard charts downloaded.

The Burgundy Report consulted and read assiduously.

Messrs Peninsular and Orient primed to carry us across La Manche.

Passport, Driving licence, travel rug and alfresco dining kit with corkscrew and china plates at the ready.

Flasks for ludicrously strong coffee prepared.

Sunglasses ready.

'The Reverse of the Medal' loaded and 'The Ionian Mission' on standby - lest we complete the first 12 hours worth of Patrick O'Brian and still need more.

The annual Chap pilgrimage to the Cotes begins.

This time tomorrow - I shall be pottering through golden leaved vines in the slanting autumn sunshine. The Route de la Cotes - the N74 shall take us south from Dijon - Gevery Chambertin, Nuits St Georges, Fixin, and Aloxe Corton bearing witness on the sign posts to the Elysium on earth we shall be inhabiting.

A night at Chez Jeanette - where if one selects the main course before the wine, an eyebrow is raised, and they fetch the 'tourist' wine list. Cuisine De Sauvage it may be - but situated in the Walled vines of the Clos du Napoleon one really ought to make an effort.

A day is to be spent in the tiny caves of the Crus and Villages of Beaujolais - Cote du Brouilly, Moulin a Vent and the almost ubiquitous Fleurie.

We shall drive along the granite outcrop which marks the difference between a grand Beaujolais - where the Gamay gives her best - from the gruesome nouveau of the plains.

Shall we repair to Macon? Lunch in Beaune? The decisions are almost too much without a bottle of wine to assist. The journey itself, though, is as much of a pleasure as the arriving and the tasting - with picnics to eat, fresh air to breathe and the sublime beauty of the first hints of autumn fringing the vines.

And finally - a last day in our favourite haunt - Echevronne. For tucked away in the Haute Cote du Beanue, amongst the Framboise and Cassis lies our ultimate target and biggest drain on my wallet.

The souls of my unborn have been sold in a terrible Faustian plot.

2005 is in the bottle, and awaits our degustation, after, of course, tasting the 06 dips and having a rummage in the bin ends.

We will get our hands on the finest vintage the Bourgogne has ever produced and get it in spades.

Oh, and I shall be blogging from down there as well.

Our accommodation provides Internet access, so this chap will be able to send you the latest views and news from my travels. I sincerely hope that I am well fed, very much discombobulated in wine and have plenty of news and views to blog about. Not just what we had for dinner - (but saying that I do fancy Lapin Dijonaisse again…)

Au revoir for now dear reader - for I shall be deep in enemy territory when you hear from me again.

Radio killed the Video star

2007-09-12T12:38:00.000Z

A calm voice is needed when dealing with Air Traffic.

I have just started the course to my Aviation Wireless Telegraphy operators licence.

Now - you would have thought that being a pilot of little more than a string bag with a six-volt motorbike battery for power there would be a 'private user' variant.

Well - it is the same course as any civil pilot or air traffic controller. The materials are 198 pages long and not only do you have to know the codes, abbreviations and protocols by heart for the written exam (200 Questions, passmark 90%) but you need to apply it all in 'circumstance' for the Oral exam - pass mark - 100%

Not only that - but I have to be fully conversant with the airspace laws and definitions again and the Air traffic zone and height rules again. Okay, Okay I should be current with that all the time - but I'm rusty!

It's not as if I will be flying in controlled airspace often - if at all. I am more often than not trying to avoid these places as I need to turn and thermal at whim - not fly a specific course and heading.

Still - the law's the law. I have to be able to hold the licence to fly across country - so pass it I must, even if it costs me £300 odd for the 5 nights in the class room and the exam. And to be honest my transmitter may only be 5 watts, but at three thousand feet it's audible in Bristol.
The CAA also take a rather stern line and will track you down and impose incredible fines.

Gliding ain't like powered flying - we are constantly working to stay aloft - and we use a fair amount more of the Aviating time just staying up there. Navigating - well it's all by eye (Yes I follow roads…) - so we rarely need to communicate much - unless to call downwind to land at home.

(Don't even get me started on Mode S transponder and use of European GPS compulsion, by the way - I feel about that the way you would feel if you had to have a machine readable licence on your push bike and pay for the use of it with a computer checking to see if you have permission to cycle to the pub)

So anyway - I have reading material for my trip to Foxtrot Romeo Alpha November Charlie Echo. More on that trip coming up..........

How to know when you have had too much to drink (an ongoing series)

2007-09-11T13:59:00.000Z

Singing Simon and Garfunkle hits with one's sister thrashing them out on her guitar.

In the garden, at 11pm.

My liver hurts.

(I am just a poor boy, Though my story’s seldom told, I have squandered my resistance - For a pocket full of mumbles, Such are promises.....All lies and jest! Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.......)

We must have sounded as fan-fucking-tastic as I feel right now.

Extreme Chappism

2007-09-10T15:49:00.000Z

On my way home from the boat last night, I stopped over at arch-conspirator chap (with whom I buy Burgundy) for a cup of tea and a jaffa cake.

'You're looking a bit down in the dumps old boy' he said.

'Indeed - have been better.' I replied

'Well let me venture a suggestion that should warm your mood - I have some holiday owed and if you do as well - it could be time for a bit of a chap adventure.'

'Oh aye, sir?' somewhat interested am I by now - 'are you thinking of perhaps Bordeaux? For I feel it could be our Arnhem - a region too far - I can scarcely afford my Burgundy habit.'

'Oh no, I was thinking more....Morocco - Marrakech and the like...'

There was a short pause.

'Listen old chap, I know I have a dose of the blues, but dragging me in to some sordid boudoir in the back streets of Marrakesh and attempting to turn me with low-rent Moroccan cock is hardly going to cheer me up. Nature, it is said, provides for all tastes - but that old chap is not one of mine.'

'Actually I was thinking about eating loads of Tajine and indulging in industrial grade fez wearing.'

'So we are to go to North Africa simply to eat and indulge in permitted indoor millinery experimentation?'

'Why else??'

'Sounds brilliant. I will let you know in the fullness of time.'

Drifting home to Lymington

2007-09-10T12:35:00.000Z

It was indeed a pleasant weekend on the waves, despite it being utterly devoid of wind.

The boat the Scot had arranged was capacious, excessively comfortable and it basically sailed itself.

There were features aboard to which I have a religious objection in British waters - chiefly the presence of bow thrusters and a fully automated windlass operated from the binnacle.
I am sorry to report that our natural revulsion to such toys was rapidly overcome - and there was joy to be had - chiefly in seeing if we could combine an astern prop walk with a countered rudder and a bow thruster to see if we could actually make the whole boat go sideways.

We had absolute newbies aboard too - and I fear their sailing has been spoiled for such opulent luxury means that when they come to do some proper sailing they will be sorely disappointed.
The sun shone and the wine flowed freely - and as such when august company like this gathers - matters soon turn to discussions of unusual natures - particularly as the sailing was very gentle - we had time to dissemble.

One of these conversations stuck in my mind in particular - and I reflected on it on the way home.

One chap aboard was a keen windsurfer and decried the slow pace of yachting about (That's kind of the point in my mind). In particular the discussion hung around whether or not a race carried out at speeds of under 3 knots (walking pace) could actually be in anyway exciting? In some ways - he had a point. Spending a day carefully trimming a sail by an inch in either direction compared to launching skyward at 25 knots are worlds apart.

The hypothesis offered by myself was that as in life as with racing - sometimes it is that slow-burn - the long careful anticipation and chess master tactics required for a challenge like this which deliver the most satisfying excitement.

A wet and wild day where we are physically challenged is one thing - but a day where we need to maintain patient yet total focus over 6 hours when little appears to be going on is often more exhausting and more satisfying a challenge.

I believe it is in effect two different types of problem. Each problem obviously has it's own solution set: A long problem - to move slowly yet determinedly in the belief that your goal will be achieved through patient careful work and sticking with your tactics - compared the raw physical short problem of clinging to the rail in a force 9.

One is fast and furious - makes for great television and is exciting. The other - can be described as watching paint dry - yet it is still race and it is still winnable. It just takes a lot of patience.
I feel there is a parallel in the difficult problems our society face today.
We have become obsessed with the former type of 'race'. Fast, furious, quick results, glory and celebration of those involved.

Unfortunately I think that many of the problems we face as a country can't be fixed like that. We set hares to fix tortoise races - and become disappointed to the point of cynicism when the races are lost. Our culture now demands instant fixes and instant refreshment from problems. But I wonder - if it has taken 30 years for our polite society to decline - can a few quick extra laws, celebrity politicians and press conference solve it?

Long, slow problems may need long slow answers - for quick ones never quite work.
But long slow answers don't make good sound bites.

But I digress.

The sailing was pleasant - if a little crowded at the western end of the Solent - and the Needles were splendid in the early evening light.
Decided to pop in to Lymington to give our new crew a taste of venturing forth there and experience the joys of the river. Which were made ever more joyful by the presence of hot showers and cold champagne.

Ultimately well refreshed, we repaired to a rather good restaurant where we dined upon crab thermidor and fresh sardines amongst other things.

Unfortunately the rest of the evening is a bit of a blur, for once my captainly duties were discharged on return, I collapsed into my bunk only to awake fully clothed the following morning with a hangover from Hades.

The crew (bless 'em) had seen fit to remove my shoes and cover me in a sleeping bag. Mind you, they probably though I kept my banknotes in my shoes and were snaffling them for another run ashore.

Blogging will be light

2007-09-07T12:12:00.000Z

Something has gone somewhat awry so I shall be offline for a bit.

I will report on my latest venture on the waves, Monday.

have a good weekend.......

Working time directive

2007-09-07T08:11:00.001Z

Just as well I have opted out, eh?
As I work while I travel - it will exceed 70 hours. Not bad for a 5 day week.

Any wonder I have grown fractious?

The last post this week on Aviating, I promise

2007-09-06T12:22:00.000Z

Harry Hook had this one in his inimitable style - Goat sacrificed to save 757..
The original story is here in metro. Nepal Airways

Apparently the airline has a fairly sanguine approach to flight safety - borne out by the reluctance to clear out the wreckage from a previous crash at the end of the runway - a point recalled by Sigismund - as he pointed it out to his first wife on their honeymoon.

Now I have considered sacrificing many things to the weather gods to get the very best of thermals, but it normally takes the shape of one's own liver the night before (but 8 hours bottle to throttle, tho'...Ed.)
The next time I am spotted by the CFI slurping tea instead of doing my airframe inspection duties, I can claim that I am merely sacrificing the infusion to the gods, to guarantee the safety of my flight.

But - one for the flying club hangar door - for when we have finished packing the hangar (such a chore) - these chaps also celebrate in style.

Quite a barbecue!

Anyway - as a particular friend pointed out in one of her wittier moments 'If flying is Aviating - then is your Sailing 'Marinating'?'
It will be this weekend old girl. I intend to be suitable marinated.

You may recall dear reader that I been invited to hoist my broad pennant aboard the good ship 'Balooga' this weekend and the XO has sent a provisioning list. Clearly chastened by my tales of superior performance from the crew in the Aegean of late they have tried to raise their game.
On the cookery front at least, as well as in the provision of ample wine.

However:
I have a full suite of 'evolutions' prepared to put them through their paces - after all, if the First Mate and I alone can do a tail-end mooring into a crowded pitch with a force 8 cross wind and align first time and no bumps in half the time of a full boat of Italians in Patmos, then they are going to have to cut along and do better than usual.
And not just running the guns in and out either...Sailing off the mooring, night pilotage, tidal trot moorings and a Bermudan anchoring await....while I luxuriate with toasted cheese and some of that capital Madeira in my cabin.

Remember chaps: 'If it ain't raining, it ain't training'.

More Aviating....

2007-09-05T12:01:00.000Z

Much seems to be going on in the world of Aviaiting this week just passed.
Last week Paul MacCready died. He was an aviation and man-powered flight pioneer - but his name was familiar to this chap because an instrument in the old sopwith glider is named after him.
MacCready was an accomplished glider pilot and had won national competitions in the USA - and it was competitive gliding which led him to study the aeronautical behaviour of a glider in rising and sinking air - he went on to invent an instrument to help him.
The MacCready ring sits around the variometer - a kind of very sensitive rate of climb meter. The vario tells you if you are in air that is rising or falling - and allows you to judge if you are in a thermal or other lift source.
His device is a simple loop around the Vario - configured for each aeroplane and allows you to read off a recommended glide speed if you are in sinking air.
Thus in the aircraft I fly at the moment - 3 knots of sinking air I can instantly see requires an airspeed of 55 knots for best glide.

Simple and effective.

Have a read of his obituary here:
Paul MacCready

Another glider pilot with a record to his name is also in the news - of what we all hope is not the same reason.

Steve Fossett is an accomplished aviator and has a wealth of experience to draw upon.

Here
and Here

What caught my ear was the usual hyperbole from the lazy journalist on the radio - spouting a standard FAA line.

(The FAA is the US equivalent of the CAA - known here as the Campaign Against Aviation.)

'He wasn't wearing a parachute and flew from an unlicensed strip and failed to file a flight plan.'

That ol' chestnut.

Perhaps if the chap doing the reporting had done a bit of digging he would have discovered that in powered aircraft it isn't the norm to wear a parachute at all - except if you are flying distance at night.
He may have also discovered that almost all airstrips are 'unlicensed'.

He should at least have discovered and drawn a correlation between the purpose of his flight and the requirements to actually file a flight plan:

Fossett was seeking out dried lake beds to attempt a land speed record. You file a flight plan to fly in controlled airspace - which is normally many thousands of feet above the ground.
He wouldn't have been looking for long flat places from 5-6000 feet - it all looks pretty similar from up there.

He was probably below radar cover - so his transponder wouldn't traspond anyway - so no excuses there for them to harp on about his instruments.

So - he wouldn't have filed a flight plan, worn a parachute and taking off from an unlicensed strip is normal.

He's an experienced glider pilot - and as with power - you learn rough field landings.

Yet - it makes for better story copy to go on about the things he hasn't done - that you would expect from a civil airliner - and it makes the whole thing sound that little bit more risky.

We get this sort of hyperbole in sailing too.

We have all seen the sort of headlines:
''A man crashed his luxury 30 foot yacht in the Solent yesterday after failing to inform the coastguard of his movements''.

I know of very few 30 foot yachts that are 'luxury', and If you told the coastguard of movements in the Solent, they will tell you to get knotted.

Anyway - good luck Steve - we all hope you are sitting under your wing awaiting rescue.

UPDATE: Seems His 'wrist mounted' EPIRB (GPS distress beacon) is Off - meaning the chances are, He's bought the farm.
It's sad - but like many an Aviator - I'm sure it is the way he would have wanted to go.