A Year of Stroppiness in the So-Called Blogosphere
You know, DGR, I was just opening the editing-window of the present post when I received a phone-bell from Esmeralda. And whilst switching off the blower at the end of the call--without, however, having switched off the editing window in the meantime--I happened to take stock of a remarkable coinkidink, namely that the date stamped on my phone's display, barring an upgrade of one numeral in the rightmost register, was exactly identical to the one of my inaugural post to this here blog. Whereupon it suddenly struck me that it would hardly be amiss for me to devote the entirety of the present post to some form of commemoration of this here official one-year anniversary of my bloggerly lucubrations, and to postpone my re-up-taking of ye olde narrative thread to the next one. A year is, after all, a mighty long time by bloggerly standards, comprising as it does something like a full fifth of the entire history of the so-called blogosphere itself. And in casting about for suitable generic precedents for such a commemoration, my mind at once pitched upon an expedient that certain videotaped Yank sitcoms of my nipperhood availed themselves of when the time came round to commemorate the passage of such selfsame annual milestones. In point of fact, it pitched upon two such Yankogenetic expedients; but only one of these proved practicable within the constraints of the present blogographic moment. The first--thatistersay, the impracticable one--consisted in bringing back some long-departed and celebrated former cast member for a one-off reunion with his or her survivors on the soundstage; a reunion attended by much tearful okie-dabbing all round, and inevitably terminated by an episode-concluding airport-set set piece centring on the seeing-off of the CFCM to his transposed home town of Cleveland or Bangkok or Los Angeles (the THT in question being, ideally, the setting of some other simultaneously-running sitcom spawned by the same so-called production team). Well, seeing as how, yarn-spinning-wise, I'm still enmired in the raw wool of last July, in which no such return of a former Angry Londoner cast member figures, the instantiation of that particular genre of annual notch-marking is, as I was saying, utterly impracticable within the confines of the present post.'
'Am I then right in inferring,' says you, DGR, 'that were you absolutely au courant in your yarn-spinning--in other words, should you have got round by now to recounting the events leading up to and concluding with those of September 29th--this first genre of anniversary-celebration would be ever-so-eminently practicable; in other words still, that some such former cast member has indeed made an appearance in your so-called lifeworld in recent weeks or months? Of course, I'm thinking here specifically of Ron--'
'--Mind your fucking pees and queues, DGR, lest you spoil the narrative enjoyment of the next coupla posts for your fellow-readers. Now, as I was about to say: the second of these two Yank-sitcommerly-notch-marking expedients was of an entirely different stripe. It consisted, first, of a framing scene opening with the paterfamilias sitting solo at the kitchen table in the wee small ones, poring over a newspaper and tucking into a carton of ice cream; he having been presumptively lured downstairs beforehand by a sudden attack of insomnia-cum-night starvation. Then, by and by, the eldest son of the family traipses in, whining in Idunno-ish fashion about the same pair of ills, whereupon Dad obligingly invites Junior to pull up a chair-cum-spoon and to join in on the nocturnal noshing. So the two of them sit there for a bit, silently feeding themselves directly out of their shared trough, until one of them (I can't remember which) finally gets round to saying, apropos of FA, 'You know, Dad/son, it's been a mighty eventful year here in the Johnson household'; the other one immejiately chiming in, 'I'll say it has been. Why, to think that just one year ago today we were sitting here in the kitchen, eating ice cream together, just like now--and yet, what a different place this was then!' Where-squared-upon, the camera cuts to some bit hailing from an early episode of the present season. There follows a commercial break, at the end of which we find ourselves once again spectating on our two co-noshers, shaking their heads bemusedly and not-un-misty-okiedly over some year-old synthetic remembrance culled from the video-archives of yesteryear. Next, a second family-member traipses in, complaining about all the conversational ruckus here-below that is depriving him or her of his or her much-needed beauty-sleep; the two of them invite him or her to pull up a third chair-cum-spoon, and then there's another cut to an archival video scene of slightly more recent provenance than the previous one. This pattern is repeated until, come the end of the obligatory annual-specially-mandated 53 minutes, all eight or so of the present inmates of the house--along with another butcher's-three-fifth's-dozen assortment of neighbours, police officers, firefighters, schoolteachers, pimps &c.--are assembled round the aforesaid KT, scraping out the last gloopy gobs of the ice cream with their respective umpteen spoons and shaking all umpteen of their respective heads bemusedly and not-unmisty-okiedly over some bit of footage culled from the video archives of the most-recently-broadcast episode. At which point, of course, it's a wrap as they say in the bidness. Now, the only hurdle I can see to my realisation of a blogospheric analogue to that there sitcommerly set-piece consists in the fact that, as this here blog is a one-hundred-per-cent solo effort, I am utterly bereft of the obligatory posse of fellow cast members with whom I should share my year's store of prefabricated reminiscences.
'I beg your pardon, sir?'
'Of course, DGR, of course, how cuntishly thoughtless of me to forget: I have got you--not that I can think of any means, short of retroactive cloning, to cobble a whole household-cum-neighbourhood of fellow-synthetic-reminiscers out of your sole chinwaggerly person.'
'MDF, you vastly underestimate the extent of my elocutionary compass. I can do falsettos, bassos, burrs, brogues, sing-songs, twangs, lisps, glottal stops, intrusive arrs, dropped gees, gratuitously aspirated haitches, dee-ified tees--in short, the full panoply of vocal tics requisite towards populating your kitchen table with every conceivable national, ethnic, sexual, subcultural, social or professional stereotype you should see fit to have present there.'
'I'm sure you can do all of that and then some, DGR. But all the same, in toking deference to the principle of verisimilitude--albeit at great cost to the principle of generic fidelity--I think it would be best if we kept the whole run-through of the thing in the family, such as it is in its present, copular, class-transcending, knackwurst-immanent state; that istersay, if you were to confine yourself for its duration to your presently-allotted limited blokey chinless-wonder's repertoire of vocal tics.'
'Roi' 'nuff, guv.'
'What's that?'
'I said: Shiaah, issall goo', Nero.'
'I'm sorry: I'm afraid I didn't catch that.'
'I said: Quite.'
'Splendid. So then: why don't you pull up a chair, DGR, and help yourself to some ice cream (Cornish, natch)?'
'No, thank you: I'm not hungry.'
'Oh, come off it, laddie! Who's ever too un-hungry to take in a dollop or two of ice cream? Surely you don't expect me to polish off this whole tub on my lonesome.'
'No, I don't do; and to be frank, I am rather peckish. But to be equally frank, I do harbour certain ineluctable reservations on the score of sharing a trencher with another bloke--reservations which, I trust, you will not resent, in view of your willy-nilly circumscription of my conversational idiom to that of the ever-fastidious upper class.'
'Of course I don't resent them there reservations. Far from it: my gullet fairly palpitates in sympathy with 'em. TBF on this end, it was always enough to put me off my tea, the sight 20-odd prevailingly-non-sexually-intimate people swapping spit like that. But we pays our money our we takes our chances: these are the rules of the genre, to which I obdurately adhere.'
'To think from what a humble trickle this mighty blog fleuve rose: namely, a slapdash, two-hundred-word, off-the-shirtycuff report of a run-of-the-mill pissfest down at the Ape. Of course, back then, you weren't even a twinkle in your papa's okie, DGR...'
'...Of course not. But having long ago undertaken a thorough study of the prenatal archives, including the inaugural post, I can't help but observe that the episode recounted in that post may hardly be construed as a run-of-the-mill pissfest; assuming, that is, that something less than a plurality of your Ape-centred-night-outs prior to your inauguration of the blog culminated in your being dressed down in no uncertain terms by a pluperfectly-conditional paramour...'
'And would you care to adduce an example of such a comparatively poetic ACNO?'
'Sure I would do. Take, for instance, the night of Friday, October the 19th, 2005, a Friday night. Jimmy had just called last orders, and as I naturally had no stomach for sitting out the presumptively ensuing so-called lock-in, I thought I might as well make one last desperate bid for admittance into the knickerly good graces of such eligible and fairly toothsome bachelorettes as remained, for the moment, on the premises. And so, standing at the front door, in full view of the assembled puntility, I roared out, at a well-nigh-Phippsian volume, and with an equally near-Phippsian degree of peremptoriness, "OK! WHICH OF YOU YOUNG LADIES WANTS TO GET FUCKED REAL GOOD, TONIGHT, BY ME?" Well, needles to say, my proposal was greeted by nothing more or less than a full, house-spanning complement of ostensibly-embarrassed masculine sniggers and ostensibly-horror-stricken feminine jaw-drops, to which I made the sporting (but no less stentorian) rejoinder of "WELL, I'LL MARK THAT DOWN AS 'NONE OF THE ABOVE'. AND WITH THAT, I BID YOU ALL, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN ALIKE, THE FONDEST AND FAIREST OF GOOD NIGHTS," punctuated by a sweeping, forelock-smiting bow and a precipitate, doorknob-gainst-arse-colliding exit.'
[You, DGR, coughing and glancing ever-so-yearningly at the open kitchen window:] 'Well, erm, perhaps there's something to be said, after all, for first impressions of blog-post-epitomising unworthiness. Moving along, then, to the next post, viz: your one-off dedicated diatribe against London's then-and-present mayor, Ken Livingstone:'
'N-no, I'm not gloating. I will admit, however, to feeling slightly refreshed by the thought that the two of us are inhabiting the same epistemological plain for once.'
'As well you might feel, DGR, as well you might. But don't let it turn your head.'
'Am I then right in inferring,' says you, DGR, 'that were you absolutely au courant in your yarn-spinning--in other words, should you have got round by now to recounting the events leading up to and concluding with those of September 29th--this first genre of anniversary-celebration would be ever-so-eminently practicable; in other words still, that some such former cast member has indeed made an appearance in your so-called lifeworld in recent weeks or months? Of course, I'm thinking here specifically of Ron--'
'--Mind your fucking pees and queues, DGR, lest you spoil the narrative enjoyment of the next coupla posts for your fellow-readers. Now, as I was about to say: the second of these two Yank-sitcommerly-notch-marking expedients was of an entirely different stripe. It consisted, first, of a framing scene opening with the paterfamilias sitting solo at the kitchen table in the wee small ones, poring over a newspaper and tucking into a carton of ice cream; he having been presumptively lured downstairs beforehand by a sudden attack of insomnia-cum-night starvation. Then, by and by, the eldest son of the family traipses in, whining in Idunno-ish fashion about the same pair of ills, whereupon Dad obligingly invites Junior to pull up a chair-cum-spoon and to join in on the nocturnal noshing. So the two of them sit there for a bit, silently feeding themselves directly out of their shared trough, until one of them (I can't remember which) finally gets round to saying, apropos of FA, 'You know, Dad/son, it's been a mighty eventful year here in the Johnson household'; the other one immejiately chiming in, 'I'll say it has been. Why, to think that just one year ago today we were sitting here in the kitchen, eating ice cream together, just like now--and yet, what a different place this was then!' Where-squared-upon, the camera cuts to some bit hailing from an early episode of the present season. There follows a commercial break, at the end of which we find ourselves once again spectating on our two co-noshers, shaking their heads bemusedly and not-un-misty-okiedly over some year-old synthetic remembrance culled from the video-archives of yesteryear. Next, a second family-member traipses in, complaining about all the conversational ruckus here-below that is depriving him or her of his or her much-needed beauty-sleep; the two of them invite him or her to pull up a third chair-cum-spoon, and then there's another cut to an archival video scene of slightly more recent provenance than the previous one. This pattern is repeated until, come the end of the obligatory annual-specially-mandated 53 minutes, all eight or so of the present inmates of the house--along with another butcher's-three-fifth's-dozen assortment of neighbours, police officers, firefighters, schoolteachers, pimps &c.--are assembled round the aforesaid KT, scraping out the last gloopy gobs of the ice cream with their respective umpteen spoons and shaking all umpteen of their respective heads bemusedly and not-unmisty-okiedly over some bit of footage culled from the video archives of the most-recently-broadcast episode. At which point, of course, it's a wrap as they say in the bidness. Now, the only hurdle I can see to my realisation of a blogospheric analogue to that there sitcommerly set-piece consists in the fact that, as this here blog is a one-hundred-per-cent solo effort, I am utterly bereft of the obligatory posse of fellow cast members with whom I should share my year's store of prefabricated reminiscences.
'I beg your pardon, sir?'
'Of course, DGR, of course, how cuntishly thoughtless of me to forget: I have got you--not that I can think of any means, short of retroactive cloning, to cobble a whole household-cum-neighbourhood of fellow-synthetic-reminiscers out of your sole chinwaggerly person.'
'MDF, you vastly underestimate the extent of my elocutionary compass. I can do falsettos, bassos, burrs, brogues, sing-songs, twangs, lisps, glottal stops, intrusive arrs, dropped gees, gratuitously aspirated haitches, dee-ified tees--in short, the full panoply of vocal tics requisite towards populating your kitchen table with every conceivable national, ethnic, sexual, subcultural, social or professional stereotype you should see fit to have present there.'
'I'm sure you can do all of that and then some, DGR. But all the same, in toking deference to the principle of verisimilitude--albeit at great cost to the principle of generic fidelity--I think it would be best if we kept the whole run-through of the thing in the family, such as it is in its present, copular, class-transcending, knackwurst-immanent state; that istersay, if you were to confine yourself for its duration to your presently-allotted limited blokey chinless-wonder's repertoire of vocal tics.'
'Roi' 'nuff, guv.'
'What's that?'
'I said: Shiaah, issall goo', Nero.'
'I'm sorry: I'm afraid I didn't catch that.'
'I said: Quite.'
'Splendid. So then: why don't you pull up a chair, DGR, and help yourself to some ice cream (Cornish, natch)?'
'No, thank you: I'm not hungry.'
'Oh, come off it, laddie! Who's ever too un-hungry to take in a dollop or two of ice cream? Surely you don't expect me to polish off this whole tub on my lonesome.'
'No, I don't do; and to be frank, I am rather peckish. But to be equally frank, I do harbour certain ineluctable reservations on the score of sharing a trencher with another bloke--reservations which, I trust, you will not resent, in view of your willy-nilly circumscription of my conversational idiom to that of the ever-fastidious upper class.'
'Of course I don't resent them there reservations. Far from it: my gullet fairly palpitates in sympathy with 'em. TBF on this end, it was always enough to put me off my tea, the sight 20-odd prevailingly-non-sexually-intimate people swapping spit like that. But we pays our money our we takes our chances: these are the rules of the genre, to which I obdurately adhere.'
'To think from what a humble trickle this mighty blog fleuve rose: namely, a slapdash, two-hundred-word, off-the-shirtycuff report of a run-of-the-mill pissfest down at the Ape. Of course, back then, you weren't even a twinkle in your papa's okie, DGR...'
'...Of course not. But having long ago undertaken a thorough study of the prenatal archives, including the inaugural post, I can't help but observe that the episode recounted in that post may hardly be construed as a run-of-the-mill pissfest; assuming, that is, that something less than a plurality of your Ape-centred-night-outs prior to your inauguration of the blog culminated in your being dressed down in no uncertain terms by a pluperfectly-conditional paramour...'
*
So as soon as I finished, without missing a beat, as they say, [Maggie Elms] says to me, 'I take back the chav comparison. That was paying you too high a compliment. I see now that, even worse than that, you're nothing but a common, run-of-the-mill anorak.' And with that, she picks up her three-quarters-full glass of beer, drains it at one go, puts the glass back on the table, summons forth a mighty belch worthy of a 20-stone bloke, turns on her heel and marches out, leaving Ronnie and me alone with our two schlongs and our two half-glasses of Guinness and Stella.
*
'No, I guess you're right, DGR: according to a certain crudely mimeographic standard that was hardly a microepochally-typical Ape-pissfest. Nonetheless, I must aver that, with the passage of time--and my attendant incursions on the bird-pulling front (courtesy, I might add, of a bird who makes Maggie Elms look like Ckicken Little or the widow hen in the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons)--that there booze-off with ME has come to assume a comparatively prosaic aspect in my okies when juxtaposed with certain other Ape-centred-night-outs of that microepoch that, for one reason or another, I thought unworthy of epitomising in these here pages.''And would you care to adduce an example of such a comparatively poetic ACNO?'
'Sure I would do. Take, for instance, the night of Friday, October the 19th, 2005, a Friday night. Jimmy had just called last orders, and as I naturally had no stomach for sitting out the presumptively ensuing so-called lock-in, I thought I might as well make one last desperate bid for admittance into the knickerly good graces of such eligible and fairly toothsome bachelorettes as remained, for the moment, on the premises. And so, standing at the front door, in full view of the assembled puntility, I roared out, at a well-nigh-Phippsian volume, and with an equally near-Phippsian degree of peremptoriness, "OK! WHICH OF YOU YOUNG LADIES WANTS TO GET FUCKED REAL GOOD, TONIGHT, BY ME?" Well, needles to say, my proposal was greeted by nothing more or less than a full, house-spanning complement of ostensibly-embarrassed masculine sniggers and ostensibly-horror-stricken feminine jaw-drops, to which I made the sporting (but no less stentorian) rejoinder of "WELL, I'LL MARK THAT DOWN AS 'NONE OF THE ABOVE'. AND WITH THAT, I BID YOU ALL, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN ALIKE, THE FONDEST AND FAIREST OF GOOD NIGHTS," punctuated by a sweeping, forelock-smiting bow and a precipitate, doorknob-gainst-arse-colliding exit.'
[You, DGR, coughing and glancing ever-so-yearningly at the open kitchen window:] 'Well, erm, perhaps there's something to be said, after all, for first impressions of blog-post-epitomising unworthiness. Moving along, then, to the next post, viz: your one-off dedicated diatribe against London's then-and-present mayor, Ken Livingstone:'
*
The problem with Ken is, he's never driven a car so he doesn't know firsthand the hassle and aggravation of being stuck behind a lorry spewing diesel exhaust in your face for 45 minutes while you circle round the Hanger Lane Gyratory (make that Stationary) at the speed of an hour hand on a clock; he doesn't know what it's like to lose a dinner reservation in Islington because you've wasted an hour looking for parking, or to finish up with no money to pay for your meal because you've been mugged twice on your way to the restaurant during your half-mile walk through the ropiest stretch of road in Camden Town. (car park, unlike congestion charge, isn't a dirty word, Ken). Because he doesn't know what any of this is like (and of course, because he's a fucking megalomaniac), as long as he's mayor, day-to-day existence will be a living hell for car-owning Londoners. Yeah, I'll say it again: Fuck Ken Livingstone. Fuck him and the poncey little bike he rode in on.
*
'It's funny--if perspicacious--of you to call this here post a one-offer, DGR; inasmuch as, when I first signed on to blogspot, it was with an exclusive view to penning posts of such a specific, diatribic generic stripe. Indeed, compositionally--albeit not publicationally--speaking, the rudiments of this post of 6 October antedate my first official post by at least a good week. That there first post, you see, was more or less an off-the-shirtycuff trial run, which happened entirely by accident to dovetail with the subsequently typical slice-of-life-ic genius blogi of The Angry Londoner.'
'And yet I trust, on the evidence of certain asides dropped within the confines of these slice-of-life posts, that your subsequent departure from your original scheme does not betoken to the slightest degree any palliation of your animus against Mr Livingstone.'
'Indeed not, DGR. If I've not seen fit to essay any full-scale, upgraded repeat performance of that initial Kenophobic diatribe, it's only because the piquant pertinence of that diatribe, like that of an eighteenth-century vintage port, or Hamlet's signature soliloquy--or, indeed, my own Arsenalophobia--has only increased with the passage of time: for what do Ken's recent further markups of Oyster-free tube fares, along with his James-K.-Polkian westward extension of the congestion charge zone, constitute, if not a resounding affirmation of my prophecy that as long as he's mayor, day-to-day existence will be a living hell for car-owning Londoners?'
'Indeed so, MDF. But what about the sentiments expressed in your post of 28 October (a post which--if you'll forgive a one-off violation of the strict sequence of postal-chronological continuity--I can't help but regard as a companion piece to that of the 6th, in view of its self-evident generic indistinguishability therefrom)?/:'
*
Why should I pay 40 quid for dinner at some some over-the-hill Gerrard Street 'old-standby' ofa Chinese Restaurant, when I can get a meal that's ten times better at half the price at Emchai on Barnet High Street? Why should I pay 10 quid, at some shitey curry stand at King's Cross that dares to boast that it's got 'the greatest Indian takeway west of Goa,' for fluorescent-red sweet-and-sour chicken trying shamelessly to pass itself off as CTM, when, basically for the same price, I can enjoy a first-rate sit-down Indian meal with all the fixins at Curry Paradise?
[...]
All hail Barnet, and fuck the other 32 boroughs (especially the inner ones, [yes, including the City]). Fuck them and all of their respective (and decidedly un-MILF-ish) mums.
*
'What of these sentiments? Why, as vis-a-vis those expressed on 6/10, I second them to the tenth power. Imagine the piss-sparks that would have flown if I'd been acquainted then with that culinary-cum-pecuniary north-Londinian oasis known as Oriental City! Pity the whole complex is about to be bulldozed to make way for affordable (read: poshility-only-accessible) housing. But such, under the present Kenocratic dispensation, is the ineluctable fate of every consumer's loophole.'
'Alas, yes! Moving along--or, rather, back--then, to your post of 21 October, in which, inter alia, we were first apprised of your adamantine animus against a certain Highbury-based football club known as Arsenal:'
*
I support no football club. All I care about is seeing Arsenal lose. During an Arsenal game I'll cheer like a Buckinghamshire soocer mum for the opposing team, but the next day the lot of them can die in a bendy bus accident for all I care. [...] Burn alive all of Arsenal. Burn them at the stake. Burn them as retribution for their blatant defilement of themselves. Burn them for their neverending void of purpose. Burn them on principle alone.
*
'Correction, DGR: in point of fact, you were first apprised of my Arsenalophobia, under the auspices of an ecclesiastical metaphor, in my post of the 14th:
*
On the way [from Arnos Grove to Kentish Town], of course, we passed through the Arsenal stop; and naturally being a high priest of the church of all haters of the football club bearing the A-name, I crossed myself upside-down there.
*
'Of course we were, MDF, of course we were. But you will, I trust, concede, that a certain amount of condensation is in order--and, indeed, unavoidable--if we are to confine this post within the legible compass of 53 minutes.'
‘Even notwithstanding the fact that we’ll be eschewing the butchers’ quarter-dozen commercial breaks that brought our model flush with the full-hour mark?’
‘Well, yes, given that we’re already at the, let’s see—’ [here you extract your pocket watch from your waistcoat pocket] ‘—make that a couple of seconds shy of the eighteen-minute mark as it is.’
‘Fair enough. Condense away at your chronographic discretion, and proceed to the next stop on our jet-propelled itinerary, which would be--?’
‘--Which would be your post of October, in which you retailed a gustatory encounter with a manifestation of that selfsame culinary ethnic kitsch you’d so vehemently decried the preceding week, in tandem with an abortive romantic encounter with a woman who--at least to judge by her avowed appraisal of MFBT--bore a more than passing resemblance to her whom you'd so volubly upbraided the preceding month:’
‘Well, yes, given that we’re already at the, let’s see—’ [here you extract your pocket watch from your waistcoat pocket] ‘—make that a couple of seconds shy of the eighteen-minute mark as it is.’
‘Fair enough. Condense away at your chronographic discretion, and proceed to the next stop on our jet-propelled itinerary, which would be--?’
‘--Which would be your post of October, in which you retailed a gustatory encounter with a manifestation of that selfsame culinary ethnic kitsch you’d so vehemently decried the preceding week, in tandem with an abortive romantic encounter with a woman who--at least to judge by her avowed appraisal of MFBT--bore a more than passing resemblance to her whom you'd so volubly upbraided the preceding month:’
*
'Don't you see what this is all about, Sarah? The mabyar kernewek is a cornish hen! The dehen rew is cornish ice cream! And Kernevistan--it's Cornwall! Kernevistan is Cornwall, I tell you, it's Cornwall, don't you get it? And this here restaurant, Bosty Drog, is a fucking dishonest-to-badness Cornish restaurant!'
'What on earth are you talking about?' she barks back at me, visibly stropped. 'And will you please sit down? You're making a pair of spectacles out of us. I don't know how I got it into my head that it'd be worthwhile to come here with you. You provincial types are all the same; none of you appreciate the finer things in life. I once went with a guy, a Norweegian like yourself, who was exactly the same way; I couldn't take him anywhere without causing a scene.'
*
'What, if anything, ever became of Sarah Slother anyway?'
'Mercifully, for my sake--naturally, not qua that sake but incidentally thereto--not long after the turn of the year she quit the company.'
'And to what end did she quit it? Wait, allow me to guess: she made a lateral move to the public relations department of a competing concern.'
'No.'
'Why, then: she was called home to take over the family business upon the ensuing of her father's long-since-dreaded, lumbago-induced incapacitation.'
'No. Much more improbably than either of those alternatives, she came into quite a hefty inheritance, thanks to the death of her maiden aunt and namesake, who, on top of her Kensington-sited condominium, bequeathed to her a 40-grand annuity that she in turn had been bequeathed (so they say) back in the 80s by some nonogenarian Austrian First World War veteran who'd selected her (i.e., the aunt) as his sole heir by randomly thumbing through a London phone directory.'
'Upon which handsome-annuity-cum-ultra-posh-residence she's presumably, as they say, sitting proud and pretty, as we speak.'
'Presumably. I tell you, DGR, some cuntesses have all the luck.'
'Quite. On the other, roseate hand, some male front bottoms are vouchsafed luck of an arguably--albeit incommensurably--equally resplendant stripe.'
'Howjjier mean?'
'I mean that you in particular, for all of your unsought elusion of the Slotherian life of Riley, ought at least to thank your lucky stars for having met a certain woman who--on the evidence of your own testimony--decidedly puts Miss Slother to shame in point of a host of extra-pecuniary-cum-extra-real-estatic virtues.'
'And by "a certain woman" I presume you mean Esmeralda?'
'Naturally.'
'Well, of course, on balance--all recently-acquired sugarmommerly Slotherian perks having been factored into the equation beforehand--I would rather be with Esmeralda than with Sarah Slother. All the same, DGR, albeit at the risk of shattering your illusions on the score of tru luv, I gots to admit that my perduring attachment to Esmeralda is owing at least in some smidgin of a part to the selfsame sugarsonnerly piety that you so rightly--albeit implicitly--denounce. There is, after all, something to be said for consorting with a blokess who reflexivley rounds up to the nearest tenner when the bill comes round--'
[You, DGR, peremptorily, stroppily, nay--dare I even admit as much--enviously] 'Enough! Let us proceed to the next narratively salient post, that of 1 November, in which we were treated not only to the first of several memorable face-offs between you and your boss at Proctoligitex, Mike Ayhern--'
*
'Mark my words, McGyver. If I don't have that report on my desk by three this afternoon, your ass [not arse] is grass.''
And I guess you're the lawnmower?'
'You catch on fast.'
*
'--but also to your first--and, it is to be hoped, sole--encounter with a manifestation of that quasi-subcultural tribe known as the chavvility:'
*
[The trick-or-treater]'s wearing a flight jacket, a bloody Arsenal T-shirt, a plaid deerstalker-ish cap, khaki slacks and trainers. And behind him are standing four or five other blokes, similarly attired.
[...]
'So, what are you blokes--er, lads--dressed as this evening?' I say, desperately keeping the charade going for want of any better stratagem.'
We're dressed as members of the East Finchley chav posse.'
[...]
I manage to get back up on one elbow just in time to catch the posse emerging from the kitchen, with one of the chavs, a different yob from the one who punched me, carrying an object I recognise all too well under one arm, a boxy something about the same size (if not shape) as a newborn infant. Reflexively, as the red-white-and-gold crest passes, I reach out towards it with a choked cry of 'Stella!'
'Aaaah, shaaaaddup, yah schlongsucker!' the kidnapper grunts at me, following up with a kick at the corner of my mouth that sends me collapsing once again back on to the floor.
*
'I've a quick query and quibble apiece for you on the score of this post.'
'Query and quibble away as quiescently as you like, DGR. After all, it's you, not me, who's the stop-watch fetishist of this pair.'
'Query: the sense of the word bl**/oody. Were you employing it as a simple intensifier or as a proper attributive adjective? In other words, by its employment were you giving vent to your Arsenalaphobia or describing a shirt that was quite literally daubed or speckled with traces of claret?'
'The first. They were actually quite a clean-cut bunch, the old EFCP--hardly the types to show up at a bloke's front doorstep in togs besmirched by bodily fluids of any chemical stripe.'
'This piece of post-postal intelligence serendipitously dovetails with my quibble, which I shall expound to you as follows: you mentioned that the leader of the pack was wearing a flight jacket. Now, in my subsequent independent researches on the subculture in question, I happen to have discovered that the initiates' official outer garment of choice is not the flight jacket but a certain cowled, synthetic fleece-fibred version of the parka or anorak answering to the vulgar appellation of hoodie; on the evidence of which discovery I can only surmise either that your eyes or memory deceived you or that these self-styled chavs were, in truth or at best, chavs manqués.'
'Well, at arse, there's no way of knowing one way or the other, as my landlord couldn't have been (and still can't be) arsed to install CCTV cameras at the entrance of my dwelling. Still, I'm as sure as I am of any bit of memory-scrappage hailing from ought-five that that bloke at the head of the bunch was wearing a flight jacket and not a hoodie. Hence, all surviving evidence, such as it is, tends to affirm the second of your disjoined surmises; which should come as no great surprise, seeing as how these S-SCs' avowed home base of East Finchley (as against, say, Chatham or the Isle of Dogs) is hardly a New York or Paris of yobbish trendsetting; that, indeed, along with my home mini-district of Woodside Park it easily figures in the top ten list of Most Eligible Candidates for the Title of Cincinnati of the Southern Yobswelt.'
'Hence it is but a sextet of hops skips and jumps to an equally memorable post, one that saw you--within the span of a single night (and along with a little help from your friends)--envisaging, baptising and inaugurating the new Kingdom-wide transnational holiday known as Bloke Fawkes Day.' [You leaning back complacently in preparation for the cutaway to the post-quote]
[I cutting in stroppily in interruption thereof] '--Whoahwhoahwhoah DGR. Let's take two-fifths of a five for a query: just who are these paranthesised friends of mine without whose help Bloke Fawkes (ostensibly) could not have been envisiaged, christened and/or inaugurated?'
'Most generally, and with exclusive respect to the inauguration, they are your fellow punters at the Ape together with Messers Sedule and Phipps.'
'And most specifically and inclusively...?'
'...they--or, rather, he--is a single member of that larger set, specifically Mr Ronald Livingstone and with inclusive regard to the envisaging and the christening.'
'I see, DGR. And from the headlines of precisely what sort of green-schlong rife alternate universe has this piece of news on the provenance of Bloke Fawkes Day been snatched?'
'Why, from the actual, existent, green-jay-tee-barren one, of course. For in all candour, you yourself must admit that absent RL's copious queries, quibbles and qualifications, Bloke Fawkes Day would up to the moment of this chinwag be nothing more or other than a twinkle within a hypothetical twinkle in ou eye--i.e., that on your own, you very probably would never even have got round to conceiving BFD, let alone realising it; that, in short, if you are entitled to claim the sobriquet of the George Washington of Bloke Fawkes Day, then surely Ronnie Livingstone should at the very least be permitted to style himself the John Adams thereof.'
'Time limits be sinatra-esquely rogered: I ain't going to let this slide. Why, I can hardly remember the last time I came across such a malodorous heap post-hoc-propter hockian horseshite! Granted that I mightn't have been especially likely to come up with BFD entirely on my own, and that it was, in fact, only in conference with Ronnie that I actually did come up with it--still, in order to exalt Ronnie Livingstone to these Adamsian heights you have to be advancing quite a different pair of propositions, namely, 1) that Ronnie had all along been nearly if not equally likely as me to come up with BFD independently, and b) that Ronnie and Ronnie alone was capable of chinwagging me round to coming up with it; in other words, that a chinwag of equal length with, say, Jimmy or Mr Sedule never could have eventuated in the same eventuality; and surely you wouldn't be so Ronnie-fellatingly barmy as to assert either such thing?'
[Silence on your end.]
'Oh, come off it, DGR: in all candour, you must ("must" in the sense of had fucking well better) admit that giving co-founder's credits to Ronnie Livingstone for BFD is like appointing a colonic tumour to Assistant Chief Surgeon of the hospital in whose operating theatre it was removed.'
[Cuntinued silence.]
'Fair enough, DGR. Far be it from me to stretch my own worst enemy--let alone the fruit of me own authorial loins--out on the rack that is the shrink's couch (stretch...rack...shrink...huh?), but if I harboured no such scruples I'd swear this fellationary zeal of yours for Ronnie Livingstone arose out of some perverse sense of solidarity with him qua one-or-two-time real-world DGR counterpart--thatistersay, in affirming to yourself (in the teeth of all available Angrylondinian evidence, I might add), that he had been more than a match for YFCT, you were puffing yourself up by proxy in presumptive preparation for stepping into these ambition-goggle-magnified shoes of...Doh! I just realised--as I should have done from the beginning--that this has all beem a cuntishly underhand feint to try and get me to let the two-month old narrative kitty prematurely out of the bag. Well, it ain't gonna work.'
'I should think it has already done as much work as it needed to do. For in disclosing the existence of these empty Ronnie-Livingstonian shoes were you not also effectively disclosing that the position of Real-World Angry Londinian Second Wheel remained unofficially vacant through the 29th instant of the present month?'
'No, I was effectively disclosing nothing of the second kind, inasmuch as my disclosure of the first kind appertained to a pair of shoes that, so far as I knew, existed only in your power-addled gourdita.'
'Why, then, did you not make this existential qualification explicit?'
'Look, can we roll the fucking clip already?'
'I'm afraid not, DGR, as we have already long since squandered the allotted clip-screening block for the post of 1 November on this little digressive squabble of ours and must, accordingly, proceed post-haste to the postal dyptich of 30 November-stroke-1 December, "22.5-Hour Party People," in which you recounted the abortive efforts of yourself, Ronnie Livingstone and one Herb-AIR Hancock to make the most of the newly-enacted twenty-four-hour drinking legislation:'
*
[Ronnie Livingstone speaking through me v-mail]: 'Well, I trust you know what tonight's all about. It's about partying like it's still 1999, innit?; and in Las-fucking-Vegas, not in Salt-Lake-fucking-City.'
[Jimmy Phipps to me at the Ape]: 'What's November 25 got to do with it? Oh you mean the 24-hour-drinking thingammerbobby. Well, you'll have to take that question up with the padrone. Until he tells me otherwise (and so far he hasn't), I'm calling last orders at a quarter of eleven, like I always do.'
*
'Your designation of Mr Hancock as my new mate seems to betoken the quasi-proverbial beginning of a beautiful friendship, and yet, sadly, the person of Mr Hancock has not figured in any of the episodes recounted in more recent posts; indeed his very name has figured in but one of these, and only in passing at that. Why so? Is it that the friendship in question petered into mutual oblivion in defiance of your expectations; or that, although the friendship did in fact blossom as you had expected it to do, for one reason or another you have thought none of the episodes centring on it worthy of epitomising in these here pages?'
'A little of both, actually. We exchanged a coupla emails (all of them relating at least tangentially to my regional rhyming slang proposal), but eventually I concluded that there wasn't much point in staying in touch with some bloke from Leeds as long as my chances of passing through West Yorkshire long enough to join him for a proper pissfest were slim to none; for, to put it bluntly, there is something irredeemably queer built into the very generic fibre of bloke-to-bloke pen-friendships. But then, about a month ago, I learnt from Mike Ayhern that I would be attending, in early December, this year's National Accountant's Convention as Proctologitex's representative--and where should this here convention turn out to be scheduled to take place but the left cheek of the cartographic bum that is Leeds-Bradford conurbation? So I think I will drop him a line or give him a bell in the next coupla weeks just to see if he'll be in the area and up for meeting up with me then.'
'And if he will be on both counts?'
'If he will be on both counts and if I actually succeed in rendezvousing with him and--last but not least--if the rendezvous in question eventuates in any memorable masculine high-jinks, why, then, rest assured you'll receive a full account thereof.'
'And if any of these things fail to come to pass?'
'And if not: well, then you'll receive an express postal delivery from Fanny Adams in loo of such an account. I say, DGR, am I right in detecting a soup's son of a gloat in this line of inquiry?'
'N-no, I'm not gloating. I will admit, however, to feeling slightly refreshed by the thought that the two of us are inhabiting the same epistemological plain for once.'
'Come again?'
'I'll admit to feeling slightly refreshed by the thought that for once I am ignorant of something not because you refuse to tell me about it but because--as it hasn't happened yet--you know no more about it than I do.'
'As well you might feel, DGR, as well you might. But don't let it turn your head.'
'Of course I shan't let it do, of course I shan't do. I can't help but add, though, that it certainly gives rise to a number of interesting theological--indeed, cosmological--conundra, inasmuch as, from my point of view--not to put too fine a point on it--you are the Creator, J. Christ Senior, as it were--'
'--Oh, please, DGR, do spare me the analingual upsucking--'
'--There's no such sucking up involved. I'm simply stating a simple SOA. And yet, God though you may be in my world, vis-a-vis the larger world you are sadly deficient in point of one of the classic predicates of deity, namely, omniscience. Paradoxical, n'est-ce--?'
'--Save it for a chinwag in some alternate world where you and Cuthbert Todd happen not only to be both F&B blokes but also to share a local, gym or Turkish bath, or BYM, I'll show you who's G-d round these parts.'
'Fair enough, MDF--erm, MDG.'
'Now, what's next on the menu-stroke-agenda--the open letter from that teetotalling Hertfordshire huzzif, Mrs Ashby-Jones?'
'Yes.'
'Shall we skip that, for the sake of time-economising?'
'If it please you.'
'It doth. Well, then, it's on to...what?'
'The mighty blogographic tetraptych comprised by the account of your Christmas sojurn in your native town of Diss...,'
'...Norfolk...,'
'...East Anglia...,'
'...Trans-compassal Anglia, England, UK. Right, then: on to the footage from the first, erm, the first tych:'
*
As I take in the scene [viz., that of the frontage of the McGyver residence], the timeless melancholy lyrics of the Moz blare through the speakers of my mind's PA system and reverberate hollowly against the walls of my mind's deserted high school gymnasium: I don't want to go home, because I haven't got one...anymore. And so with a heavy heart, and an even heavier schlong, I get out of the car, walk through the front garden and up the front steps and, with grossly affected jauntiness, give a few raps to the front door.
*
'A remarkably prescient intimation of the spirit of the whole stayover, wouldn't you say, DGR?'
'Indeed, a bit too prescient by half, I'd say, in light of the fact that this post was penned well after your return to London.'
'You aren't by any chance suggesting that I was retrospectively reading the forthcoming shittiness of the visit back into its temporal left bookend, are you?'
'Erm no, certainly not--thatistersay, far be it from me to &c., and yet, one can't help but &c.'
'Well, I can't say as I'd blame you for it, in light of your ignorance of the particulars of my preceding butcher's-dozen trips home. Still, you must take my word for it that, compared to this last one, each of those was like a bloody cakewalk across a field of daisies; and that if I'd had any inkling of the depths of home-townial shittiness I was about to plumb, I'd most assuredly have been visited by an altogether more baleful set of song lyrics than those of "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out".'
'Such as, say, those of the Dies Irae as set by Giuseppe Verdi?'
'I was specifically thinking of "Nobody Knows the Troubles I Seen"--but, sure, anything hailing from the gloomier chapters of the Popish liturgy would just about as effectually cinch it.'
'Quite. Anyway, in your next post we were introduced to four of the six principal catalysts of your so-called bad trip, namely your mother and father, christened Martha and Stanley--'
'Such as, say, those of the Dies Irae as set by Giuseppe Verdi?'
'I was specifically thinking of "Nobody Knows the Troubles I Seen"--but, sure, anything hailing from the gloomier chapters of the Popish liturgy would just about as effectually cinch it.'
'Quite. Anyway, in your next post we were introduced to four of the six principal catalysts of your so-called bad trip, namely your mother and father, christened Martha and Stanley--'
*
*
*
'A shrewd enough conjecture on your part, DGR; but the fact is, thanks to certain as-yet-inchoate designs of Esmeralda's, my arse is already feeling a pretty strong occidental gravitational tug; point of origin thereof: Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorgan, Wales; estimated date of impact therewith: 24 December.'
'I see. What a pity the laws of filial and copular piety are not coefficient to those of planetary physics, else you might rest comfortably equipoised in London right on through to New Year's Day.'
'Indeed. Unhappily, as near as I can tell, F(P) + C(P) / 2 = 239; thatistersay, the length in imperial miles of that dreary, five-hour-long, insular-waistband-spanning trek from Norfolk to Glamorgan I have by default to look forward to on Christmas morning. Still, we mustn't discount the potential of prospective-avial piety to queer the whole pitch of my trajectory effectually and irrevocably westward.'
'How ever do you mean?'
'I mean that, seeing as how their common biological clock is fast ticking away towards the arse-crack of grandparental doomsday, Mum and Dad cannot but be mighty pleased at my present union with Esmeralda; and that, accordingly, they might very well be fain to exchange my presence this Christmas for an absence that bade fair--from their perspective, at least--to eventuate in the spawning of a litter of fresh McGyver whelps. Not that such an exclusively Welsh holiday sojourn would be a picnic by FA's stretch of the Eye: still, I can't help picturing it at its worst as a purely mechanical exercise in bending over and literally thinking of England, as against the active, no-holds-barred poo-fight I'd inevitably be roped into back at the homestead.'
'You rounded out the old year on a rather gloomy note.'
'I'll say:'
...I...thoughtlessly opened my gob to inquire into the whereabouts of Sidney, my still-at-home residing nineteen-year-old kid brother.
'I expect he's out on the town somewhere...carousing,' answered my mum through the merest soup's son of a grimace. 'Isn't that right, dear?' she asked my dad, as if seeking affirmation of her choice of this last word, 'carousing,' in preference to the hundreds of other available alternatives in Mr and Mrs McGyver's Private Thesaurus of Euphemisms.
'Mmm,' he answered gruffly with a nod, as he bit into his first gobful of rhubarbage--such that, until he resumed speaking a half-minute later after chewing and swallowing, I wasn't sure whether it was the word or the crumble that thus elicited his approval. 'I suppose that's about as good a word for the activity as any other, carousing. Nice Krauty-sounding word that, don't you think?--carousing. Frenchy-looking, but Krauty-sounding. Mind you, in this instance, I should have gone for something both Krauty-sounding and Krauty-looking--something along the lines of...mmm...I don't know................whoring?'
'Stanley!' my mum shouted across the table at him with outraged peremptoriness.
'Sorry, doveling.'
'I expect he's out on the town somewhere...carousing,' answered my mum through the merest soup's son of a grimace. 'Isn't that right, dear?' she asked my dad, as if seeking affirmation of her choice of this last word, 'carousing,' in preference to the hundreds of other available alternatives in Mr and Mrs McGyver's Private Thesaurus of Euphemisms.
'Mmm,' he answered gruffly with a nod, as he bit into his first gobful of rhubarbage--such that, until he resumed speaking a half-minute later after chewing and swallowing, I wasn't sure whether it was the word or the crumble that thus elicited his approval. 'I suppose that's about as good a word for the activity as any other, carousing. Nice Krauty-sounding word that, don't you think?--carousing. Frenchy-looking, but Krauty-sounding. Mind you, in this instance, I should have gone for something both Krauty-sounding and Krauty-looking--something along the lines of...mmm...I don't know................whoring?'
'Stanley!' my mum shouted across the table at him with outraged peremptoriness.
'Sorry, doveling.'
*
'--next, the subject of the preceding dialogue, your younger brother Sidney:'
*
I...ask Sid how things are going over at Just Beds, this furniture shop where, according to Mum and Dad, he's been working part-time since last summer.
'Well, druths, the pay is shite, but, on the other hand, lolling about all day in a showroom filled wall to wall with mattresses does have its perks. It has its ups and downs, you could say. Its ins and outs, too: you know what I mean? Eh? Eh? Ups and downs and ins and outs; ins and outs and ups and downs--'
'Well, druths, the pay is shite, but, on the other hand, lolling about all day in a showroom filled wall to wall with mattresses does have its perks. It has its ups and downs, you could say. Its ins and outs, too: you know what I mean? Eh? Eh? Ups and downs and ins and outs; ins and outs and ups and downs--'
*
'--and finally--'
'--Skewed me, DGR, for slackening the pace yet again; but whilst we were screening those last two clips, I couldn't help but retrospectively take stock of an apparent error in your maths. You spoke prefatorily of six bad-trip catalysts, whereas by my own reckoning there were only four, of which three made an appearance in the presently-retrospected post. Mind you, it's only by way of atonement for having so shamelessly exploited poor Aunt Agatha in the last post that I'm making such a fuss over this miscalculation of yours. For Chrissakes, she didn't mean anything bad in asking me whether I'd got a young lady friend in London. I mean, for Fucksakes, would you just let the old bird alone--'
'--For goodness's sake, would you please at least save your ire for the moment of my disclosure of the identity of this fourth catalyst, who, as it so happens, is not Aunt Agatha, but rather a certain person who was present at your Christmas dinner in image only, namely a certain gentleman--erm, scoundrel--surnamed Chavworthy:'
'--For goodness's sake, would you please at least save your ire for the moment of my disclosure of the identity of this fourth catalyst, who, as it so happens, is not Aunt Agatha, but rather a certain person who was present at your Christmas dinner in image only, namely a certain gentleman--erm, scoundrel--surnamed Chavworthy:'
*
*
'Number 151: If you've ever walked out on a dinner date with a girl 'cos you fought the restaurant was too quote-unquote trendy or ersatz, then guess what?'
'YOU MIGHT BE A CHAV?' the crowd call back in unison.
'Spot-cunting-on, you pits!'
This is all too much for me. I leapfrog right over the hurdle of SHIRTINESS on the rage-o-thon track, and alight smack dab athwart my co-jones on the hurdle that reads PALEOLITHIC MURDEROUSNESS. Crying out in a voice choked with rage, as they say, 'FUCK YOU CHAVWORTHY, I AIN'T NO FUCKING CHAV!' I seize on the nearest object to hand--in this case, the last remaining scone--and hurl it with all the fury I can muster straight at the power button of the telly; only I miss by about a half a foot and the scone goes crashing into, and through, the screen.
'YOU MIGHT BE A CHAV?' the crowd call back in unison.
'Spot-cunting-on, you pits!'
This is all too much for me. I leapfrog right over the hurdle of SHIRTINESS on the rage-o-thon track, and alight smack dab athwart my co-jones on the hurdle that reads PALEOLITHIC MURDEROUSNESS. Crying out in a voice choked with rage, as they say, 'FUCK YOU CHAVWORTHY, I AIN'T NO FUCKING CHAV!' I seize on the nearest object to hand--in this case, the last remaining scone--and hurl it with all the fury I can muster straight at the power button of the telly; only I miss by about a half a foot and the scone goes crashing into, and through, the screen.
*
'Of course I stand corrected, DGR, of course! How outside-the-box-thinking-incapable of me to write off Jeff Chavworthy so summarily, merely in virtue of his corporeal absence from the festivities! One could, indeed, make a fair case for JC's being the most active of all the catalysts, inasmuch as, had we not viewed his broadcast; my encounter with the fifth and final catalyst could never have been so effectually shitty--'
'--Here, I must take the liberty of interrupting to register a manifest error in your maths, for, in enumerating the final catalyst as the fifth, you have betrayed an unaccountable lapse with regard to the proper assignment of that ordinal to the antepenultimate catalyst, namely--'
'--Gormless as I am on the score of the identity of this AC, I commend myself into your mitts; for far be it from me, after that last bull's-schphincter-hit of yours, to question your judgement--'
'--Thank you. By this fifth and antepenultimate catalyst, I mean nothing more or less than your native municipality of Diss, which, I'm sure you will agree, occasioned no small amount of autochthonous angst in the episode recounted in your next post:'
'Just a friendly reminder, DGR: that pace in the last clip is not the root or imperative form of the English verb precisely signifying "walk (esp. repeatedly or methodically) with a slow or regular pace" (C.O.D) [talk about your recursive definitions!], but rather an Italian preposition roughly signifying "with all due fellationary suction to". In the original post, this point was made effectually clear through the use of italics, but unhappily, some bug in the Blogger software has rendered it impossible for me to get the same bit of work done from the opposite direction, viz. by romanising that selfsame four-letter bit of type out of its flashback-mandated italicised context.'
'Many thanks to you, MDF, but pace your pains on this score, in anticipation of the present screening session, I have already read the original post from beginning to end. And so, moving along to my scrap of commentary thereupon, I will only say--or, rather, ask--at the risk of being consigned, along with your as-yet-unnamed sixth catalyst, to the dustbin of de-friendedness (for from a strictly pragmatic view I am all too sympathetic to your insistence on maintaining a menage in London): is Diss Town, from a strictly aesthetic point of view, really as bad as all that?'
'I'm a frayed sew, DGR, I'm a frayed sew. Mark you these my words: there is nuffink but nuffink so certifiably guaranteed to siphon away a bloke's will to live as a town-council-sponsored, artificially up-propped spectacle of authentick olde Englishenesse.'
'Very well: de gustibus non &c. And yet: one can't but be slightly bemused by your preference for London in point of eschewing this suicide-inducing spectacle, given that the Capital is a city of not merely mediaeval but positively ancient Roman foundation.'
'Yeah, but the difference is that in London the pseudo-authentick antient crap is so overwhelmingly outclassed by the unapologetically inauthentick modern crap that it can pretty much be chuned out altogether. (Take, as an extreme example of the outcome of the crap-contest, the Square Mile [not that I wouldn't just as soon let it alone]: it's the oldest part of the whole metropolis, and yet, to judge by its dominant architectural theme, you'd suppose the first brick on the spot had been trowelled three decades ago at the outside.) Whereas in Diss, local heritage anorakism is pretty much the only game in town; hence, no Dissian can get by from day to day without either crawling to the local heritage puffers or (what amounts to an essay in anorakism in its own right) repeatedly thwacking their okies with his shirtytails. Hence--to reconcile my aesthetic preferences with my pragmatic ones (and thereby, I hope, to put your scruples to rest)--in my capacity as a bloke who would rather not be arsed to take a stand on one side of the issue or the other (any more than he would do on the question of who's a more kick-arse wizard, Gandalf or Dundamere?), I am all too grateful to be resident in a burgh where the whole K&C simply doesn't matter.'
'Grateful, indeed? You frankly avow yourself to be grateful to be living in London? Why, then, perhaps it would not be unseemly to promote the present, heretofore merely special, edition of The Angry Londoner to the peerage of extra-specialdom, courtesy of a rechristening of the entire endeavour in celebratory welcome of this newly-arrived bouncing baby of an attributive adjective.'
'Whoa! Hold your horses--or, rather, vicars--DGR: just cos I'm comparatively grateful not to be living in Diss, it by no means follows that I'm any less absolutely angry to be living in London.'
'Granted. But in so saying, you beg the question: are you absolutely angry qua Londoner or qua incorrigibly angry bloke?; or, to put it more concretely, albeit hypothetically, can you guarantee that you would be any less angry in any other city of comparable girth--say, Tokyo or Paris or New York--?'
'--Look, could we just move on to the fifth, erm, sixth catalyst before my shirt flies off, along with the the lid of this ready-to-hand aerosol tin answering to the hackneyed proprietary name of Whooparse?'
'As you list, MDF:'
'--Here, I must take the liberty of interrupting to register a manifest error in your maths, for, in enumerating the final catalyst as the fifth, you have betrayed an unaccountable lapse with regard to the proper assignment of that ordinal to the antepenultimate catalyst, namely--'
'--Gormless as I am on the score of the identity of this AC, I commend myself into your mitts; for far be it from me, after that last bull's-schphincter-hit of yours, to question your judgement--'
'--Thank you. By this fifth and antepenultimate catalyst, I mean nothing more or less than your native municipality of Diss, which, I'm sure you will agree, occasioned no small amount of autochthonous angst in the episode recounted in your next post:'
*
You see, it was in taking notice of the portability, the un-placededness, of these halos, and of the uniformly garish, monchromatic tinge they imparted to every square millimetre of the streetscape, that I was vouchsafed a singular revelation vis-a-vis the boutiques of Mere Street: namely, that every bloke Jack of them was simply a scaled-down, cut-rate, inferior version of its equivalent in Norwich or London. Sure, the buildings themselves were quaint enough, but their contents and purposes were anything but. I had never seen a Diss Strip Steak on view under the front counter at Cannell's, or a Norfolk Nosegay advertised on the sandwich boards out in front of Amity's; and if (as I was sure it must do) the Waterfront Inn now happened to dispense from its taps some undrinkable goo of semi-local provenance styled Lowestoft Lager or Somerleyton Stout, it was pound coins to peascods that the first keg of the stuff had been bunged not a day earlier than Whitsuntide of 1995, in envious emulation of some Leicester-or-Cambridge-originating so-called real ale dating from no farther back than the hoary old late 80s. And this revelation induced in its turn the more general and no less devastating revelation that, pace your Billy Braggs and Paul Wellers and other dirgesmiths of the grand old industrial British crap town, it was actually Diss and the hundreds if not thousands of other ancient market towns of similar size that comprised the real set of boar titties on the belly of this here Sceptred Isle (incidentally, I'd place the sceptre itself--i.e. the boar's craggy, atrophied little schlong--somewhere in the vicinity of Portsmouth), and had done for probably the better part of two centuries.
*'Just a friendly reminder, DGR: that pace in the last clip is not the root or imperative form of the English verb precisely signifying "walk (esp. repeatedly or methodically) with a slow or regular pace" (C.O.D) [talk about your recursive definitions!], but rather an Italian preposition roughly signifying "with all due fellationary suction to". In the original post, this point was made effectually clear through the use of italics, but unhappily, some bug in the Blogger software has rendered it impossible for me to get the same bit of work done from the opposite direction, viz. by romanising that selfsame four-letter bit of type out of its flashback-mandated italicised context.'
'Many thanks to you, MDF, but pace your pains on this score, in anticipation of the present screening session, I have already read the original post from beginning to end. And so, moving along to my scrap of commentary thereupon, I will only say--or, rather, ask--at the risk of being consigned, along with your as-yet-unnamed sixth catalyst, to the dustbin of de-friendedness (for from a strictly pragmatic view I am all too sympathetic to your insistence on maintaining a menage in London): is Diss Town, from a strictly aesthetic point of view, really as bad as all that?'
'I'm a frayed sew, DGR, I'm a frayed sew. Mark you these my words: there is nuffink but nuffink so certifiably guaranteed to siphon away a bloke's will to live as a town-council-sponsored, artificially up-propped spectacle of authentick olde Englishenesse.'
'Very well: de gustibus non &c. And yet: one can't but be slightly bemused by your preference for London in point of eschewing this suicide-inducing spectacle, given that the Capital is a city of not merely mediaeval but positively ancient Roman foundation.'
'Yeah, but the difference is that in London the pseudo-authentick antient crap is so overwhelmingly outclassed by the unapologetically inauthentick modern crap that it can pretty much be chuned out altogether. (Take, as an extreme example of the outcome of the crap-contest, the Square Mile [not that I wouldn't just as soon let it alone]: it's the oldest part of the whole metropolis, and yet, to judge by its dominant architectural theme, you'd suppose the first brick on the spot had been trowelled three decades ago at the outside.) Whereas in Diss, local heritage anorakism is pretty much the only game in town; hence, no Dissian can get by from day to day without either crawling to the local heritage puffers or (what amounts to an essay in anorakism in its own right) repeatedly thwacking their okies with his shirtytails. Hence--to reconcile my aesthetic preferences with my pragmatic ones (and thereby, I hope, to put your scruples to rest)--in my capacity as a bloke who would rather not be arsed to take a stand on one side of the issue or the other (any more than he would do on the question of who's a more kick-arse wizard, Gandalf or Dundamere?), I am all too grateful to be resident in a burgh where the whole K&C simply doesn't matter.'
'Grateful, indeed? You frankly avow yourself to be grateful to be living in London? Why, then, perhaps it would not be unseemly to promote the present, heretofore merely special, edition of The Angry Londoner to the peerage of extra-specialdom, courtesy of a rechristening of the entire endeavour in celebratory welcome of this newly-arrived bouncing baby of an attributive adjective.'
'Whoa! Hold your horses--or, rather, vicars--DGR: just cos I'm comparatively grateful not to be living in Diss, it by no means follows that I'm any less absolutely angry to be living in London.'
'Granted. But in so saying, you beg the question: are you absolutely angry qua Londoner or qua incorrigibly angry bloke?; or, to put it more concretely, albeit hypothetically, can you guarantee that you would be any less angry in any other city of comparable girth--say, Tokyo or Paris or New York--?'
'--Look, could we just move on to the fifth, erm, sixth catalyst before my shirt flies off, along with the the lid of this ready-to-hand aerosol tin answering to the hackneyed proprietary name of Whooparse?'
'As you list, MDF:'
*
...Mum suddenly takes it into her head to announce...'By the way, when you where out, your friend Tex called.'
[YFCT, blowardly, to Tex]: 'WHEN AND WHERE DO YOU WANT TO MEET UP?'
'HUH-HUHAAEEdunno. HUH-HUH-Horseshoes? Tomorrow-HUH-night? Eight-o'-HUH-HUH-clock?'
[YFCT to Tex]: 'So your advice to me, in short, is to lay off the fish 'n' poppers?'
'Well, yes, for starters (and, a fortiori, for the main course). But what you really should be aiming to do--and I know you're not going to want to hear this--is find yourself a new most-favoured beer brand.'
[...]
[YFCT, blowardly, to Tex]: 'WHEN AND WHERE DO YOU WANT TO MEET UP?'
'HUH-HUHAAEEdunno. HUH-HUH-Horseshoes? Tomorrow-HUH-night? Eight-o'-HUH-HUH-clock?'
[...]
[Tex to YFCT, in person]: 'You see, Rugger, I'd happened to catch the Chavworthy special myself on that day, and noticed, both in the contents of Chavworthy's checklist and in the guy's general stage presence, certain familiar traits--traits that, to put it bluntly, reminded me of you.'
[...]
[YFCT to Tex]: 'So your advice to me, in short, is to lay off the fish 'n' poppers?'
'Well, yes, for starters (and, a fortiori, for the main course). But what you really should be aiming to do--and I know you're not going to want to hear this--is find yourself a new most-favoured beer brand.'
[...]
[Tex to YFCT]: 'Are you really having such a miserable time here?'
'In all candour, yes [...]. I can't recall three consecutive days of such concentrated shitiness in all my natural.
[Ditto]: 'There's something about East Anglia that has never been surpassed on this island, or, I suspect, in any other corner of the western world...In four words, this is God's country.'
'In all candour, yes [...]. I can't recall three consecutive days of such concentrated shitiness in all my natural.
[...]
[Ditto]: 'There's something about East Anglia that has never been surpassed on this island, or, I suspect, in any other corner of the western world...In four words, this is God's country.'
[...]
[Ditissimo]: 'Well, Rugger [.. .], I think it's high time you channelled some of that negative [i.e., Arsenalophobic] fan-energy of yours into some more positive outlet.'
[...][YFCT to Tex]: 'I'm heading back to Diss toot sweet, and tomorrow, back to London. Get your hoss outta my hoss, and git!'
*
'Dare I venture to ask whether you have since so much as inquired after Mr Winckelmann's subsequent health-stroke-whereabouts, let alone communicated with him?'
'No, you durstn't, if you know what's good for you (and me); for, BYM, there are certain chords of the blokean heart that will not survive such strumming. Let's just rechristen him The Titanium Straw That Broke the Would-Be-Diss-Friendly Rugger's Back and leave it at that.'
'No, you durstn't, if you know what's good for you (and me); for, BYM, there are certain chords of the blokean heart that will not survive such strumming. Let's just rechristen him The Titanium Straw That Broke the Would-Be-Diss-Friendly Rugger's Back and leave it at that.'
'Sorry, Mum, Dad, but I'm afraid I've got to head back to London--actually, to Hertfordshire. I got a call late last night from work. They need me there today.'
[Mum to Dad:] 'All you care about is your Gilbert and Sullivan records...and that Trippett-Jones woman!'
Oy, vey!' Dad exclaims, rolling his okies. 'I can't believe what I'm hearing.'
[...]
[Mum to Dad:] 'All you care about is your Gilbert and Sullivan records...and that Trippett-Jones woman!'
Oy, vey!' Dad exclaims, rolling his okies. 'I can't believe what I'm hearing.'
[...]
So, grabbing hold of a bag in each hand, I step silently from the dining room, through the front room and out the front door.
*
'I must confess that of all the conjectural narrative lacunae in your weblog, this one--the one appertaining to your immediate family--according to my lights most desperately beggars explanation.'
'Howzzat?'
'Well, forgive me for seeming bit too U, or old-fashioned, or just plain sentimental, but where I come from--riotous, late-night, bloke-centered debauches aside--taking French leave of any set of persons amounts to a de facto declaration of a severance of all ties spiritual and temporal thereto. Hence, were it not for a passing and implicitly friendly reference a few posts ago to your brother--'
'--i.e., respecting the prospect of his hooking me up with a discount on a new mattress--'
'--That's right. Were it not, I say, for this passing reference to your brother, I should have assumed that, effective last 27 December, you had voluntarily rendered yourself incommunicado to your family for good (or, at any rate, for the first two-thirds of the present calendar year).'
'I can see where you'd have got that idea, DGR, but the fact is, I was fully communicado with two-thirds of 'em--thatistersay, Mum and Dad (Sid I've yet to speak to regarding the bed or anti-Fannie-Adams else since, but that's par for the fraternal course)--some days before the last calendar year had exhaled its expiring breath.'
'On your initiative or theirs?'
'Theirs. They rang me, you see, on the 29th or the 30th, to apologise for having made such a scene in front of me, to enquire into the state of my chin and other assorted members vis-a-vis the cleanup at the plant and to assure me that everything was absolutely copacetic on the matrimonial front, that this whole S&D regarding Ms. Trippett-Jones was just a sort of role-playing panto they staged every now and then betwixt themselves to keep the fires of mutual erotic attachment stoked--here Mum did most of the talking, to my duodenal schphincter's immeasurable discontent--'
'--To say nothing, I presume, of the discontent of your, ahem, oral sphincter, which needs must have been fairly convulsed by the temptation to interject, athwart this last clause, something to the effect of Balderdash! or Tommy-rot!'
'Indeed it was, DGR, indeed it was: but by dint of imagining that selfsame gob chock-full of toxic waste balls I somehow managed to keep it puckered like a duck's arse right on through to the end of the convo, barring the concluding love-yous-stroke-byes. Anyway, the upshot of the whole home-townial sitch as of now is that the two of them are still together, for what it's worth; that despite her presumably-still-unassuageable jealousy Mum hasn't moved in with Aunt Agatha; that Sid is still sponging off them whilst squandering the full balance of his meagre pay-packet on fuck knows what; and that the reason I haven't made mention of any of is that 1) being a static SOA it furnishes FA of narrative interest, and b) sited as it is in far-off East Anglia, which I have not since revisited, it's been of FA's relevance to my Londinian lifeworld and--most significantly--3) I can't be arsed to give a toss about it for two minutes running on my own account, let alone on yours, DGR.'
'Howzzat?'
'Well, forgive me for seeming bit too U, or old-fashioned, or just plain sentimental, but where I come from--riotous, late-night, bloke-centered debauches aside--taking French leave of any set of persons amounts to a de facto declaration of a severance of all ties spiritual and temporal thereto. Hence, were it not for a passing and implicitly friendly reference a few posts ago to your brother--'
'--i.e., respecting the prospect of his hooking me up with a discount on a new mattress--'
'--That's right. Were it not, I say, for this passing reference to your brother, I should have assumed that, effective last 27 December, you had voluntarily rendered yourself incommunicado to your family for good (or, at any rate, for the first two-thirds of the present calendar year).'
'I can see where you'd have got that idea, DGR, but the fact is, I was fully communicado with two-thirds of 'em--thatistersay, Mum and Dad (Sid I've yet to speak to regarding the bed or anti-Fannie-Adams else since, but that's par for the fraternal course)--some days before the last calendar year had exhaled its expiring breath.'
'On your initiative or theirs?'
'Theirs. They rang me, you see, on the 29th or the 30th, to apologise for having made such a scene in front of me, to enquire into the state of my chin and other assorted members vis-a-vis the cleanup at the plant and to assure me that everything was absolutely copacetic on the matrimonial front, that this whole S&D regarding Ms. Trippett-Jones was just a sort of role-playing panto they staged every now and then betwixt themselves to keep the fires of mutual erotic attachment stoked--here Mum did most of the talking, to my duodenal schphincter's immeasurable discontent--'
'--To say nothing, I presume, of the discontent of your, ahem, oral sphincter, which needs must have been fairly convulsed by the temptation to interject, athwart this last clause, something to the effect of Balderdash! or Tommy-rot!'
'Indeed it was, DGR, indeed it was: but by dint of imagining that selfsame gob chock-full of toxic waste balls I somehow managed to keep it puckered like a duck's arse right on through to the end of the convo, barring the concluding love-yous-stroke-byes. Anyway, the upshot of the whole home-townial sitch as of now is that the two of them are still together, for what it's worth; that despite her presumably-still-unassuageable jealousy Mum hasn't moved in with Aunt Agatha; that Sid is still sponging off them whilst squandering the full balance of his meagre pay-packet on fuck knows what; and that the reason I haven't made mention of any of is that 1) being a static SOA it furnishes FA of narrative interest, and b) sited as it is in far-off East Anglia, which I have not since revisited, it's been of FA's relevance to my Londinian lifeworld and--most significantly--3) I can't be arsed to give a toss about it for two minutes running on my own account, let alone on yours, DGR.'
'Each of which points certainly passes muster as grounds for the omission; and with particular regard to point number 3 I am assuredly grateful for your solicitude on both of our behalfs. Nonetheless, I cannot help surmising that you will soon enough be a***ed willy-nilly, and for a much longer consecutive stream of time than two minutes, to give something more than a mere toss about your East Anglian connexions. Indeed, insofar as the extant record of your travels may relied upon as a prognostic aid (and what else may be any further relied upon?), I should hazard a guess that your backside will begin to feel the telltale oriental gravitational tug, at the very latest, some two-months-and-a-butcher's-fortnight hence, namely at the commencement of the so-called Christmas season.'
'A shrewd enough conjecture on your part, DGR; but the fact is, thanks to certain as-yet-inchoate designs of Esmeralda's, my arse is already feeling a pretty strong occidental gravitational tug; point of origin thereof: Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorgan, Wales; estimated date of impact therewith: 24 December.'
'I see. What a pity the laws of filial and copular piety are not coefficient to those of planetary physics, else you might rest comfortably equipoised in London right on through to New Year's Day.'
'Indeed. Unhappily, as near as I can tell, F(P) + C(P) / 2 = 239; thatistersay, the length in imperial miles of that dreary, five-hour-long, insular-waistband-spanning trek from Norfolk to Glamorgan I have by default to look forward to on Christmas morning. Still, we mustn't discount the potential of prospective-avial piety to queer the whole pitch of my trajectory effectually and irrevocably westward.'
'How ever do you mean?'
'I mean that, seeing as how their common biological clock is fast ticking away towards the arse-crack of grandparental doomsday, Mum and Dad cannot but be mighty pleased at my present union with Esmeralda; and that, accordingly, they might very well be fain to exchange my presence this Christmas for an absence that bade fair--from their perspective, at least--to eventuate in the spawning of a litter of fresh McGyver whelps. Not that such an exclusively Welsh holiday sojourn would be a picnic by FA's stretch of the Eye: still, I can't help picturing it at its worst as a purely mechanical exercise in bending over and literally thinking of England, as against the active, no-holds-barred poo-fight I'd inevitably be roped into back at the homestead.'
'You rounded out the old year on a rather gloomy note.'
'I'll say:'
*
If I wanted to, I could devote a whole nother post to the New Year turnover itself, whose highlights included a near-shirtfest with Manish Shah, occasioned by a 12-pint-induced bout of pulling on his girl; and a 2 p.m. pigeon-peck-induced, half-naked solo reveille on a pavement in Hendon on New Year's Day. But all told, I think I've had just about enough of '05, and I think it best to put a full stop on my reminiscences of that terrible year with the final full stop of this very paragraph.
*
'But happily, events were destined to take a decided turn for the better in the new year chez MFBT. For after an admittedly rocky start--'
'--i.e., thanks to the explosion at the plant and Arsenal's trans-tabular rallying--'
'--Even so. After an admittedly rocky start, I say, you were at last vouchsafed, if not that positive transubstantiation of your "negative fan energy" so eagerly yearned for by Mr Winckelmann, then at least (and perhaps all to the better), a fraternal forum thereunto, thanks to your belated self-affiliation with the North London Arsenal Bashers.'
'--i.e., thanks to the explosion at the plant and Arsenal's trans-tabular rallying--'
'--Even so. After an admittedly rocky start, I say, you were at last vouchsafed, if not that positive transubstantiation of your "negative fan energy" so eagerly yearned for by Mr Winckelmann, then at least (and perhaps all to the better), a fraternal forum thereunto, thanks to your belated self-affiliation with the North London Arsenal Bashers.'
*
*
'If Thierry Henry were engaged to be married to my little sister...' (Of course, I didn't have a little sister, but they didn't know that.)
[Expectant Harrumph?s and Quite, quite...s]
'I wouldn't attend the wedding...'
[A chorus of Nyeeeeah!s accompanied, in my mind's okies, by the equivocating oscillation of 20 downward-orientated palms]
'...Even if...the wedding was to take place in Mallorca, and the groom, Monsieur Henry, offered to fly me there in my own personally chartered jet complete with jacuzzi and wet bar.'
[Applause, Huzzahs, finger-whistles and Arribas all round; and at a volume sufficient to provoke the barman to step into the room and shout, 'Would you cunts mind keeping it down a bit in here? We're trying to watch Little Britain out front.']
[Expectant Harrumph?s and Quite, quite...s]
'I wouldn't attend the wedding...'
[A chorus of Nyeeeeah!s accompanied, in my mind's okies, by the equivocating oscillation of 20 downward-orientated palms]
'...Even if...the wedding was to take place in Mallorca, and the groom, Monsieur Henry, offered to fly me there in my own personally chartered jet complete with jacuzzi and wet bar.'
[Applause, Huzzahs, finger-whistles and Arribas all round; and at a volume sufficient to provoke the barman to step into the room and shout, 'Would you cunts mind keeping it down a bit in here? We're trying to watch Little Britain out front.']
*
'Ah, DGR,' I says, complacently patting me ice-cream-glutted tummy, leaning back in me chair and waxing all sentimental-like, 'Them there were the days--I mean, literally the days, in a your-days-are-numbered-ian sense. I suppose I could get away with amplifying the eulogy by substituting weeks for days, but why should I bother, seeing as how the former's immijeately-abutting significant unit of time-marking--namely, the month--is strictly off-limits?'
'Indeed, for, alas!--within the span of two months, this idyll of fraternal conviviality was put paid to by petty faction, the ineluctable bane of all self-selected organisations (apart, that is, from the venerable English institution of the non-burlesque gentleman's club):
*
[...]
[Dave Ochs]: '...I know full well there's at least four of five us sitting here right now who are on the point of pissing themselves in anticipation of being allowed to say...' He breaks off to draw a deep breath and to cross himself upside-down briskly, before resuming, in a daemonic larynx-shredding falsetto fit to make your flesh crawl, 'Shouldn't we all get behind Arsenal now that they're the only surviving English Champions club?'
[...]
[Cyril the Traitor:] 'I'm simply suggesting that, out of respect for those of us who regard an Arsenal-spearheaded English UEFA championship as the least of eight evils, we should postpone our next meeting till Arsenal are eliminated from the rounds, or till May 17, whichever comes first [...]. I foresee no alternative to my plan other than our splitting permanently into insular and Pan-European factions...'
*[...]
[YFCT:] '"What do the rest of you lot think of the notion of doffing your respective colours and donning the lilywhite livery of Tottenham?"'
[Eddie the Crypto-Spoor:] 'I tried to join up with the Spurs, but they wouldn't have me. They said that, seeing as how I was from Highgate, I didn't qualify for membership in their club. So I joined up with you lot instead [...]. I am pleased hereby to announce that the inaugural meeting of the North London Shadow Spurs will convene in 45 minutes, at midnight sharp, at the sign of my local, the Indolent Lemur, in Highgate.'
[Eddie the Crypto-Spoor:] 'I tried to join up with the Spurs, but they wouldn't have me. They said that, seeing as how I was from Highgate, I didn't qualify for membership in their club. So I joined up with you lot instead [...]. I am pleased hereby to announce that the inaugural meeting of the North London Shadow Spurs will convene in 45 minutes, at midnight sharp, at the sign of my local, the Indolent Lemur, in Highgate.'
'But against the billows of this factious cloud there ultimately emerged a silver lining, albeit one of the thinnest sheen, which took the form of your elevation, first by ordination and then by default, to the presidency of an organisation into which you had been inducted a scant six-weeks-and-tuppence previous:'
'You're durn tootin' it would be. For Chrissakes, this is, after all, supposed to be a retrospective special post, not a prospective spoiler-hunter's boot-auction.'
'But for heaven's sake! You've already given away gratis the spoiler of so-called spoilers, namely your prospective copular status as of next Christmas.'
'I beg to differ, DGR--I mean, not as to my having given it away, but as to its spoilerly preeminence. For BYM: if the events of the last two months are anything to go on, the perduration of my connexion to Esmeralda will be lucky to make it into the top ten list of spoilable events-stroke-SOAs shay mwah in the last two-fifths of ought-six. All the same, it was mighty conscientious of you to flag the disclosure, the likes of which assuredly would never have made it past the first committee-edit of Cheers or Family Ties script--'
'--Talking of our generic model, I should remind you that we have, as of now, a mere eight minutes and twenty seconds left in which to--'
'--Why, then, in Kiwian parlance, we'd better rattle our dags. The next post, if memory serves me, centred on a surreptitious Ape-convening meeting of the rump Bashers; upon the adjournment of which, I soon enough (i.e., two posts later) found myself installed, phiz-a-phiz my fair-weather mate Manish, at a table sited within the precincts of that self-styled "surrogate-retro-themed" torture chamber answering to the name of Redford's--'
'--where you subsequently, later that same night, found yourself installed opposite that person who arguably, in concert with your ever-present self, was to form the narrative locus of the present weblog from that point onwards:'
'Arguably, yes, but indisputably, no. Of course, it all depends upon one's touchstone or main criterion for distinguishing persons from non-persons.'
[You, DGR, fanning away your blush of unwarrantable pride with an obligatorily ready-to-hand issue of the Times:] 'Ah, yes, of course it does do. Well, I most sincerely and gratefully thank you for waiving the ontological criterion of actuality for my sake; and I do so not merely on behalf of myself, but also on that of all fictive persons hailing from every nook of the globe and every cranny of history.'
[YFCT, snatching the Times away from your clutches, and fanning away my blush of fully-warranted stroppiness:] 'Actually, It wasn't the criterion of actuality I was thinking of; but rather, that of bipedality.'
[You, DGR, through a quivering slack lower lip, a veritable oral dam obstructing a flood of outraged reproaches and remorseful self-orientated-recriminations:] 'I see. Well, regrettably, ineluctable time constraints mandate the excision of all references to our--erm--your dear quadrupedal friend from the present retrospective. Now then: initially, on the evidence of a more-than-comradely common antipathy to Mr Kenneth Livingstone your budding liaison with Esemeralda bade fair to stand as an epitome of the proverbial match made in heaven:'
*
[Esmeralda (back at Redfords):] 'The main reason we hate Ken' [Ah! What music to my ears inhered in that single syllable we!] 'is that he's a bloody tyrant.'
[(YFCT, in narrative mode, recounting our first official date at Emchai:] [A]s it turned out, the two of us ended up kicking up quite a ruckus; what with our newly re-ignited Kenophobic passion receiving along the way a coupla dousings of petrol from our third, fourth and fifth Singha-rounds, such that, eventually,I'm in the midst of fairly belting out my tenth contribution to our second City Hall freelancer's portfolio ('If you Batavians aren't a hundred per cent on board my policy of installing turd detectors in the loos of all private residences in London towards offsetting the UK's involvement in the war in Iraq, why don't you move back to Belgium, I'm sure you'd get a much better deal from the..') I catch peripheral sight not of the okies, but of the diggits, of our old pal the gent next door, alternately motioning emphatically towards his own person and pointing no less emphatically towards our table.
'But alas! All such illusions on that score were soon enough put paid to, thanks to an untimely rencounter with a certain other Mr Livingstone, forenamed, Ronnie, that Eth--erm, Croydonian--in the fuel supply who forced into plain view a certain facet of the Ruggerian ethos less immediately congenial to your beloved:'
*
[Abdicating President Reg:] 'I can picture to myself no more suitable a candidate for carrying on the Reggian spirit of Arsenalophobia--albeit in a radically etiolated form--than Rugger here. [...] Yes [...], what Rugger lacks in seniority he more than makes up for in passion.'
'Well, Rugger, there is at least one bright spot in all of this,' says Ronnie.
'What's that?'
'You were promoted to President.'
[...]
'Well, Rugger, there is at least one bright spot in all of this,' says Ronnie.
'What's that?'
'You were promoted to President.'
*
'Apropos of your by-now semiannuated reign as president of the NLAB, I can't help repining at the scant advantage you've taken of that office in the meantime.'
'I'm afraid you'll have to explain yourself a bit further vis-a-vis those three lexemes: "scant," "advantage" and (especially) "meantime".'
'Well: as to "scant" and "advantage," I shall simply remark that whilst we've heard plenty regarding Arsenal-bashing in recent posts, it's been quite some time since we've heard any mention of the Arsenal-Bashers. And as to "meantime," well, erm, thatistersay...'
'...Thatistersay, by "meantime", you mean by default the four-month interval separating my installation as President from the most recent update on the Ruggerswelt, and therefrom infer that nothing Bashers-wise has taken place in the supervening two months.'
'Well, erm, yes, I suppose so.'
'A right c***tishly untoward and froward inference on your part, if I do say so meself.'
'Erm, quite. Would it be correspondingly frontbottomishly untoward and froward on my part to assume, then, that something Bashers-wise has taken place in the supervening two months, or corollarily to enquire into the episodic particulars of this selfsame conjectural something?'
'I'm afraid you'll have to explain yourself a bit further vis-a-vis those three lexemes: "scant," "advantage" and (especially) "meantime".'
'Well: as to "scant" and "advantage," I shall simply remark that whilst we've heard plenty regarding Arsenal-bashing in recent posts, it's been quite some time since we've heard any mention of the Arsenal-Bashers. And as to "meantime," well, erm, thatistersay...'
'...Thatistersay, by "meantime", you mean by default the four-month interval separating my installation as President from the most recent update on the Ruggerswelt, and therefrom infer that nothing Bashers-wise has taken place in the supervening two months.'
'Well, erm, yes, I suppose so.'
'A right c***tishly untoward and froward inference on your part, if I do say so meself.'
'Erm, quite. Would it be correspondingly frontbottomishly untoward and froward on my part to assume, then, that something Bashers-wise has taken place in the supervening two months, or corollarily to enquire into the episodic particulars of this selfsame conjectural something?'
'You're durn tootin' it would be. For Chrissakes, this is, after all, supposed to be a retrospective special post, not a prospective spoiler-hunter's boot-auction.'
'But for heaven's sake! You've already given away gratis the spoiler of so-called spoilers, namely your prospective copular status as of next Christmas.'
'I beg to differ, DGR--I mean, not as to my having given it away, but as to its spoilerly preeminence. For BYM: if the events of the last two months are anything to go on, the perduration of my connexion to Esmeralda will be lucky to make it into the top ten list of spoilable events-stroke-SOAs shay mwah in the last two-fifths of ought-six. All the same, it was mighty conscientious of you to flag the disclosure, the likes of which assuredly would never have made it past the first committee-edit of Cheers or Family Ties script--'
'--Talking of our generic model, I should remind you that we have, as of now, a mere eight minutes and twenty seconds left in which to--'
'--Why, then, in Kiwian parlance, we'd better rattle our dags. The next post, if memory serves me, centred on a surreptitious Ape-convening meeting of the rump Bashers; upon the adjournment of which, I soon enough (i.e., two posts later) found myself installed, phiz-a-phiz my fair-weather mate Manish, at a table sited within the precincts of that self-styled "surrogate-retro-themed" torture chamber answering to the name of Redford's--'
'--where you subsequently, later that same night, found yourself installed opposite that person who arguably, in concert with your ever-present self, was to form the narrative locus of the present weblog from that point onwards:'
*
'I'll tell you what it is that marks it as uniquely Kennish,' a chirpily stroppy feminine voice twitters in from my immedjiate right. 'It's that it doesn't make any bloody sense.'
[...]
[Esmeralda:] ‘I see you go for the continental look.’
‘Eh?’
‘Actually,’ she says, with an inscrutable little smile, ‘I rather like it.’
At last...she lowers a tweezerly-gingerly thumb-and-forefinger into the pouch and extracts therefrom a cookie-fortune-thin sliver of paper, which she then immejiately, without even giving me enough time to mouth a courtesy mute WTF, reaches over and deposits in my tit-pocket.
‘Eh?’
‘Actually,’ she says, with an inscrutable little smile, ‘I rather like it.’
[...]
At last...she lowers a tweezerly-gingerly thumb-and-forefinger into the pouch and extracts therefrom a cookie-fortune-thin sliver of paper, which she then immejiately, without even giving me enough time to mouth a courtesy mute WTF, reaches over and deposits in my tit-pocket.
[...]
[On the strip of paper I descry] a string of numerals, which, on account of its 020 prefix, I immejiately identify as a London telephone number.
'So it was 2b after all,' I can't help saying aloud through a belly-laugh. Then, louder: 'She loves me!' Then, louder still, 'SHE LOVES ME!' Then, loudest, of all, 'SHE LO-O-O-O-O-O-VES ME!'
*
'Arguably, yes, but indisputably, no. Of course, it all depends upon one's touchstone or main criterion for distinguishing persons from non-persons.'
[You, DGR, fanning away your blush of unwarrantable pride with an obligatorily ready-to-hand issue of the Times:] 'Ah, yes, of course it does do. Well, I most sincerely and gratefully thank you for waiving the ontological criterion of actuality for my sake; and I do so not merely on behalf of myself, but also on that of all fictive persons hailing from every nook of the globe and every cranny of history.'
[YFCT, snatching the Times away from your clutches, and fanning away my blush of fully-warranted stroppiness:] 'Actually, It wasn't the criterion of actuality I was thinking of; but rather, that of bipedality.'
[You, DGR, through a quivering slack lower lip, a veritable oral dam obstructing a flood of outraged reproaches and remorseful self-orientated-recriminations:] 'I see. Well, regrettably, ineluctable time constraints mandate the excision of all references to our--erm--your dear quadrupedal friend from the present retrospective. Now then: initially, on the evidence of a more-than-comradely common antipathy to Mr Kenneth Livingstone your budding liaison with Esemeralda bade fair to stand as an epitome of the proverbial match made in heaven:'
*
[Esmeralda (back at Redfords):] 'The main reason we hate Ken' [Ah! What music to my ears inhered in that single syllable we!] 'is that he's a bloody tyrant.'
[(YFCT, in narrative mode, recounting our first official date at Emchai:] [A]s it turned out, the two of us ended up kicking up quite a ruckus; what with our newly re-ignited Kenophobic passion receiving along the way a coupla dousings of petrol from our third, fourth and fifth Singha-rounds, such that, eventually,I'm in the midst of fairly belting out my tenth contribution to our second City Hall freelancer's portfolio ('If you Batavians aren't a hundred per cent on board my policy of installing turd detectors in the loos of all private residences in London towards offsetting the UK's involvement in the war in Iraq, why don't you move back to Belgium, I'm sure you'd get a much better deal from the..') I catch peripheral sight not of the okies, but of the diggits, of our old pal the gent next door, alternately motioning emphatically towards his own person and pointing no less emphatically towards our table.
*
'But alas! All such illusions on that score were soon enough put paid to, thanks to an untimely rencounter with a certain other Mr Livingstone, forenamed, Ronnie, that Eth--erm, Croydonian--in the fuel supply who forced into plain view a certain facet of the Ruggerian ethos less immediately congenial to your beloved:'
*
So how hangs it, Rugger? Still, as it were, basking in the afterglow [of Arsenal's defeat in the Champions League finals], I trust?'
'Basking away,' I rejoin tinnily, vamping on blood fumes.
'Basking away,' I rejoin tinnily, vamping on blood fumes.
[...]
'Unsurprisingly, in default of any overtures on your part, the mooting of the first practicable Arsenal-animus-curbing stratagem devolved upon Esmeralda:''So you two,' she says, indicating Ronnie and me, 'have got this club whose sole purpose or mission consists in the running down or bashing of the Arsenal football team? [...]
I think I'd like to be alone for a bit.'
I think I'd like to be alone for a bit.'
*
'Happily, though, Esmeralda's ressentiment on this score was destined (in the short run, at least) to be short-lived:'
[Esmeralda, v-mailically:] 'Hi, it's...me. Listen: I heard about what you did the other night, about your...shirt-off with what's-his-name. And I have to say, I think it was rather brave of you, taking him on like that. Anyway, darling, give me a call if you're up to it. Bye.'
[Ditto, in ye olde flesh:] 'I mean, just put yourself in your shoes, by way of mine: how might you have felt if your girlfriend, on learning of some trivial, innocuous little hobby of yours which she regarded as being utterly puerile, petty, anorakish and gratuitously time-hoovering, had, on the basis of that discovery, assumed that this hobby constituted the very essence of your being, and acted accordingly?'
'Happily, though, Esmeralda's ressentiment on this score was destined (in the short run, at least) to be short-lived:'
[Esmeralda, v-mailically:] 'Hi, it's...me. Listen: I heard about what you did the other night, about your...shirt-off with what's-his-name. And I have to say, I think it was rather brave of you, taking him on like that. Anyway, darling, give me a call if you're up to it. Bye.'
[Ditto, in ye olde flesh:] 'I mean, just put yourself in your shoes, by way of mine: how might you have felt if your girlfriend, on learning of some trivial, innocuous little hobby of yours which she regarded as being utterly puerile, petty, anorakish and gratuitously time-hoovering, had, on the basis of that discovery, assumed that this hobby constituted the very essence of your being, and acted accordingly?'
*
'Unhappily, in the long-run, and through the most improbable medium of a World Cup match-viewing, Esmeralda was destined to become apprised of the controlling share in your very being that this purportedly innocuous hobby of yours enjoyed:'
**
...[T]here did eventually...arise a moment in which my Arsenalophobic piss could not be so inconspicously held [...]. I'm talking here, of course, about that match-outcome-determining moment when Wayne Rooney stood with foot poised aloft a semi-recumbent Ricardo Carvalho, determined to mortarise the latter's scrotum into a sacklet of farina [...], a moment when I unaccountably found myself exclaiming--as jizzim-loads of tears gushed out of me okies and streamed down me face cheeks--the following words[..]:
'Ricardo, meu companheiro: aguarda os testículos!'
'Ricardo, meu companheiro: aguarda os testículos!'
*
'Which apprision eventuated, come...mid-afternoon?'
'It was more like mid-late afternoon.'
'It eventuated, I say, come mid-late-afternoon of the next day, in Esmeralda's framing of an ultimatum of sorts:'
'It was more like mid-late afternoon.'
'It eventuated, I say, come mid-late-afternoon of the next day, in Esmeralda's framing of an ultimatum of sorts:'
'Curb [your Arsenalophobia] [...]. Or moderate it, or sequester it, or, Christ! taxiderm the sodding thing, for all I care--whatever it takes to keep it from being an effectual presence here, or at your place, or wherever else we happen to be together[...]. If you truly value my companionship, you must swear to let me know the very instant any remotely-practicable Arsenal-animus-curbing stratagem occurs to you, and likewise to give a fair hearing to any such stratagem as occurs to me.'
*
*
'Tamsin's husband is a professor of philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire. More specifically, and to the point, he's the author of a monograph entitled A Prolegomenon Towards any Future Metaphysics of Football.'
'[O]n what basis do you found the assumption that...a chinwag [with Tamsin's husband] would be fruitful on the score of a perspective-in-putting of my Arsenalaphobia?'
'[A]ccording to his own testimony, he approaches [his] investigations not from the cold, antiseptic detachment of a scientist's laboratory but from the rough-and-tumble point-of-view of a genuine fan of the sport.'
[...]
'[O]n what basis do you found the assumption that...a chinwag [with Tamsin's husband] would be fruitful on the score of a perspective-in-putting of my Arsenalaphobia?'
[...]
'[A]ccording to his own testimony, he approaches [his] investigations not from the cold, antiseptic detachment of a scientist's laboratory but from the rough-and-tumble point-of-view of a genuine fan of the sport.'
[...]
'All right, touchay and fair enough: I'll meet him.'
*
'And so you did meet him:'
*
[YFCT:] '[You maintain t]hat the Arsenal of today is not and can never be the Arsenal of yesterday, let alone &c; and, secondly, that, in consequence of &c, every Arsenalophobe worth his salt needs must, &c. To which I reply: of course, within certain metaphysical and ontological limits, I'll grant you both your points.'
[Tamsin's husband, surnamed Todd]: 'But what other limits are there?'
'Well, ethical ones, for a start.'
[...]
[TT again:] 'OK, admittedly, we[Gooners]'ve been going through a bit of a theoretical rough patch lately, what with our shameful castration by the milquetoast Wanderers in the third round of the last Cup, and the atrocious rape of our legitimate laurels at Barcelona last May. But rest assured, ve shall rise again, und zoon, to reclaim our rightful fueherschaft as ZE GREATEST FAHCKING FOOTBALL CLUB IN DIE LEAGUESGESCHICHTE!'
*
'So, your would-be dispassionate delineator of the philosophical limits of Arsenalophobia turned out to be a Gooner in philosopher's clothing, leaving you, I trust, at evening's end the same unregenerate Arsenalophobe he found you at its beginning?'
'You trust aright, DGR.'
'And in precisely what spirit did Esmeralda greet your Arsenalophobic unregerenate-ness (assuming that you saw fit to make a clean breast of the matter upon your return to London)?'
'You trust aright, DGR.'
'And in precisely what spirit did Esmeralda greet your Arsenalophobic unregerenate-ness (assuming that you saw fit to make a clean breast of the matter upon your return to London)?'
'Oh, come now, DGR, don't be preposterous. You know as well as I do that this is a question fit to be posed no sooner than the opening of the next post.'
'Of course, how silly and impertinent of me. So then...it's a "wrap"?'
'Indeed it is. To each of my fellow non-plaster-cast members who failed to secure his 15 seconds of flashbackerly limelight in the PP--viz. Jimmy, João, Lou und co. (Thank Cor-stroke- knock on wood that doggies can't read!)--all I gots to say is: keep your pecker up and and, more especially, keep your Ruggersweltian profile up, so's you'll manage to hold your own against the competition in the cutting room come 30/9/07. That said-stroke-without further ado, on to Season Two!'
FINIS POSTIS ANNIQUE
posted by Rugby McGyver | 2:05 am
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