I read in...

Friday's New York Times that this year's must have toy for girls in the US is a hamster. Not though, the cute cuddly furry little biting and shitting hamster but instead a toy hamster. And at $7.99 they're a bargain to boot. These furry devils come in five flavours are battery run and have an off switch, unlike the real thing. Some years ago a friend's children had a hamster that ran in its wheel for hours everynight so she took to jamming the thing with a lolly stick. Stopping all excercise caused the tiny creature to put on so much weight it became too knackered to make the effort on those ocassions she removed the stick. Sumo hamster is not one of the five models currently flying off the shelves in New York. Indeed if Sumo was added to the range I think we could confidently predict it would plummet from the shelves.

Here's a clip of hamsters having an existential moment.

I am returning...

and much has changed about the old place. Hmmm, a person is gone two minutes and everything is suddenly moved around.

Above is a photograph of Hadrian's Wall in Cumberland where two friends and I spent last weekend walking a 25 mile length of the 80 mile phenomenon. 2,000 years ago and over a ten year period the wall was built on the orders of Emperor Hadrian. A man clearly used to getting his own way Hadrian declared that the Picts (early Scottish folk) must be kept out.

"A wall it is then," Said Hadrian pointing to his troops who were from milder climes and therefore unhappy with the cold north of England. "And besides, the hard work will keep you both occupied and warm, so set to," And lo, they did.

2,000 years down the line Tom, Doug and I spend an excellent few days in the wall's company enjoying mile forts, encampments, Mithran Temples and assorted Roman ruins. All very impressive and especially so given the best response to the Roman arrival my ancesters could muster was painting their naked bodies in woad. This act terrified the Romans to such an extent they quickly overan the country. Unfortunately for the Romans the north of Britain was also where the Picts lived and though somewhat woadish in outlook the Pictish preference was for cleaving with axes rather than painting statements on the body. Incidentally the Romans never defeated the Picts and though not much respecting of naked blue types with wild eyes and messy hair they were more circumspect when dealing with huge bearded men swinging 30 kilos of sharpened metal. Hence the 80 mile wall that stretches from the Irish Sea in the west to the North Sea in the east.

An old photo...

to herald my return. It was taken on Crosby Beach last year. Brendan Reissmann says I should start writing the blog again because it makes him laugh.

But not before I buy a new keyboard because this one is shite.

I read today that gold has ben iscovered in Scotland and some place north of Glagow is the ne Klondike. I've already booked a place on the dawn mule, could only get an outside seat, well, it's more hanging than sitting, but hey I'm no stranger to risk because the human mind can be an eery place when they strap a man to a mule.


(Incidentally,"Strapped to the Mule" were a Manchester Punk Band who sold out for a large recording contract in 1983. They turned MOR, changed their name to "Whisper" and successfully released an album of love songs called "That's not my hand your holding") Last heard they were doing warm ups for a Carpenter's tribute band.

This coming weekend...

the clocks go forward an hour and we officially enter British Summer Time. 2am this Sunday morning becomes 3am and in unison we'll all shuffle that little bit closer to the Big Crunch. That most of us will be asleep; drunk; drunkenly asleep; awake, awake but drunken; awake but annoyingly bright and perky; awake in that mad insomniacal way; awake but not insomniacal; awake because we've not yet gone to bed; awake because we're so pissed we can't find the bed; does not matter one jot for time will move on. Oh yes.

I've discovered the British Summer Time Order Act 2002 which is a Parliamentary Statute that arranges time in the UK. Clearly too specific to be an Einsteinian Statute because an Einsteinian Statute would probably be entitled the British Summer Time (dependent of course on how close one is to a heavy object) Order Act.

Time's a weird business and come this Sunday morn millions will lift their dozy heads and be glad we messed it about. Then again, other millions will be too hungover to lift our dozy heads at all. We mess with time, booze messes us. It's the modern way.

Daffodillies...

are here again. Oh yes they are, oh yes they are... Ha ha!

Spring is in the air...

well almost. Up here in Manchester the crocuses are bloomin' marvelous and the snow drops, little dots of white packed together on roadsides, under trees or near water are just fantastic. Next up is the daffodillies, excellent!

The photo is a section of this huge steel girder art structure in the Tate Modern that appeared to be made of metal but in fact was card and wood. At least I think it was card and wood.

Ps, I've put some new photos on flickr that I'm quite pleased with.

Was in London this weekend...

and went to an exhibition on Russian Constructivism at the Tate Modern. On display was art from 1917 onwards and shows Russians such as Liubov Popova and Aleksandr Rodchenko struggling to develop an aesthetic by which they could move art forward in a progressive way. They were attempting to develop a more objective aesthetic to better articulate the new, the modern, the revolutionary world in which they were caught.

The exhibition shows this really well through paintings, sculpture, geometric models but also how they tried to develop a proletarian art celebrating the ordinary. In a country where the majority could neither read nor write they sought to harness an art for the revolution and for the everyday. For instance they developed street posters that were loud and brash, designs for cigarette packets that were colourful and challenging, even adverts for biscuits (cookies) using collage and photographs. These artists challenged conventional views of stage design and film, or street aesthetics such as in posters and adverts. Overall the exhibition shows all of this really well. However, for all their virtuosity and visual bravery there was something cold about the aesthetic, certainly in the paintings that were mainly shapes and lines. That said, and given these artists were battling against the dominant romantic aesthetic where the artist is king and the single point of view is truth, what they produced was very impressive.

A bitterly cold wind...

is currently sweeping westwards into the UK from Russia. It's impossible to turn on the TV or radio without being terrified by expectant tales of freezing conditions and arctic weather. It will be so cold tonight, we are warned, that anyone foolish enough to expose even a leg outside the duvet shall wake tomorrow with said leg frozen into a block of ice and most probably also stuck to the bed. Rumours abound that Health chiefs have hired teams of crack Italian knife grinders to keep hospital instruments sharp for all the cutting and hacking that's expected to be done. In Southern England the government has commandeered all the saws so someone must be expecting the worst. Worry about amputation therefore grips the populace forcing many into feverish re-readings of the limb clauses in their life insurance. In every town trembling fingers trace actuarial lists pausing over 'C' for Compensation but then moving to 'L' for Loss only to further discover sub-sections for the arm, leg, nose, ear. Ear! How long has that been a limb?

Fearful for their ears people today have rushed to purchase hats and it's even become impossible to buy a tea cosy such is the panic. From Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, the two counties expected to bear the icy blast's brunt news arrives of knitwear factories looted, sheep pillaged and babies robbed for their cute headwear. Early cases of mitten death have begun to surface.

Below zero temperatures are forecast to last until Wednesday.

I've been ill...

with the flu that's currently sweeping the UK, been sick as a dog for weeks. By all accounts this flu originated in Brisbane and has journeyed some distance to be here, which is the nature of epidemics. Anyway, it made me ill. The photo is of a flu virus. If flu viruses were really this large it's not illness so much as choking we'd be at risk from, or stubbed toes because I'm assuming the knobbly globe is a floor dweller. It also follows that choking would mostly be confined to children and others who put in their mouth things they find. What a relief it is then, viruses being so tiny.

Was cycling...

down the Ashton Canal yesterday. It was bright and freezing, as winter Saturdays ought to be.

A frazzled heron stalks the canal side between Fairfield and Clayton waiting for fish to flicker the water's surface.

Christmas decorations...

have begun to appear on the streets of our fair city. Oh there's the usual nativity stuff, stars of Bethlehem, wise men, the occasional camel, a manger, donkeys; but in a less popular quarter of town and suspended over cobbled streets lurks something quite different. It's not that the denizens of Back Midden are unchristian (though many are) but every year they like to develop a different seasonal theme and this year it's the great banking crash of 2008.

Flossy Street, Back Midden's main thoroughfare is stuffed with shops, stalls, arcades and the odd booth from where it remains possible to hire orphans for chimney work. The Pevsner Guide to Manchester among other things describes Flossy Street as "unreconstructed." Suspended the length of the street between gas lanterns are 11 representations of events leading to this September's catastrophe and a 12th one about hope. The first tableau, designed in black and red shows a big bellied banker evicting ragged children from a property he wants to develop for apartments. The second tableau hanging between The Gnarled Penny, a gin palace, and Jobson's Offal Shop (If it's Offal you want...) shows the same children buying a gun and directing dirty looks at the now fatter banker. Tableau three shows the banker laughing as a school is bulldozered and in tableau four the ruddy faced oaf picks his teeth with the bones of dead infants before tossing the remains to a wolfhound salivating at his feet. Continuing up the street we see this outrage further developed in tableau five that shows a smaller group of children agreeing that they might need a bigger gun, and maybe a machete.

On Flossy Street my favourite eatery is part of the Big Suet chain (If it's an early death you want...) where lard is revered. Opposite Big Suet stands Maggie Nolan's Toys for Tiny Fingers that sells minute copies of popular brands like Lego and Action Man, in truth though it's really an emporium of choking hazards. Between Big Suet and Maggie's hangs tableau six in which the fat banker, getting bigger and fatter, flattens a factory using only his belly. Some workers mistaking the event for an eclipse fail to flee and are crushed. Tableau seven shows the banker bending to light his cigar on flames licking up through the rubble. Halfway along Flossy Street on the left is Sodden, an alleyway once popular with those who enjoy gin but now occupied by a stall selling bootstraps with which it's possible to pull oneself up, or so the banner declares. This stall is popular with Britain's New Labour Government.

In Back Midden coal remains the favoured fuel. Most shops have a roaring fire which is curious given you get more glow for your bucks with nuclear. Indeed with nuclear everything glows and nearly forever too. I read that in Russia the old Soviet government issued nuclear stoves to people living in the frozen tundra. No one survives there now but the stoves remain, easy to locate because they melt the surrounding snow and nothing will grow near them. Such simple machines and still working after all these years. Is that not a marvel?

The ever popular Gloves, a double fronted store selling gloves is situated opposite Scarves. Gloves and Scarves are owned by brothers who no longer speak. Linking the two stores is tableau eight in which a convention of portly bankers listen to one of their number complaining about not being fat enough. Tableau nine, hanging from the Cathedral of Simon the Zealot (Zealot by name...) majestically sweeps across Flossy Street to Hooks the hook shop and depicts a pig with its head in a trough that leaks. In tableau ten, giant bankers stride the globe oblivious as people rush towards an armaments shop through whose window we can see ragged children bickering over the calibre of an artillery piece.

Legend has it that Muck End which bisects Flossy Street at the top was once a popular haunt of razor pigs until the nuns came. A statue cast in stolen lead and celebrating this important catholic victory still stands outside The Bride of Christ Public House. Attached to the raised fist of Sister Therazor (for it is she) is one end of tableau eleven which shows the fat bankers losing not only their shirt but everyone else's shirt on Mucky Meg who failed to show in the 3.30 at Kempton Park. Across the street and providing the other anchorage point is a huge bronze of Harry Pig, Leader of the the Muck End Redemptors, who is portrayed showing the finger to Sister T.

Beyond those contradictory examples of civic pride lies Muck End Corner with its Post Office on one side and Old Alf's Old Shop on the other. Muck End Corner marks not only the conclusion of Flossy Street but also the conclusion of this year's theme. The good citizens of Back Midden are nothing if not positive and in their final representation, the final cartoon so to speak, seemingly remorseful bankers weep crocodile tears and apologise profusely to a huge crowd, they also swear never again to mess things up. In reply the angry multitude shout "Fucking right you won't!" before parting like the Red Sea to let through some children pushing a cannon.

Whadda street!

The "B of the...

Bang" an attractive sculpture erected in East Manchester to celebrate the 2002 Commonwealth Games is coming down. In truth its demise began almost as soon as it went up when spikes separating from the main body plunged earthwards skewering a group of nuns. The holy sisters, and how ironic that now sounds, all celebrants with The Venerable Order of "Redemption through Pain" were in town for a convention.

The impaled postulates were not popular except with local flagellants so won't be missed, unlike "The B of the Bang." Boo hoo.

PS.

Not being keen on the name "The B of the Bang" I suggested to the City Council as an alternative, "You could put someone's eye out with that." They never replied.

Monks...

brawl in Jerusalem. Until today I thought monks mainly wore hessian and drank mead. Note to Monk Central, ease up on the mead.

Once again...

Dark Matter hits the news. Although a puzzle for sometime because it cannot presently be detected scientists now seem on the verge of proving the stuff really exists. Last week I burned my favourite pan and Dark Matter appeared. Took me bloody ages to scrape it off, had to use three scourers. The sooner they get this thing sorted out the better. In my opinion.

Presented in today's

Sunday Independent, the most glamorous goat in all Arabia. And a fine looking animal it is too. Meanwhile The Observer reviews Richard Holmes's "The Age of Wonder" in which he describes an experience of Alexandre Charles, the 18th Century balloonist. Landing after one successful flight the confident aeronaut invited his assistant to step out of the basket. Liberated from this extra weight the balloon rocketed skywards reaching a height of 10,000 feet before returning safely to earth. Later Mr Charles's assistant described to waiting journalists his receding master's bewildered face.

I think the goat has some of that look.

Tomatoes ward off cancer...

shock. Professor Cathie Martin states "mice eating the modified tomato start to die significantly later than mice on the normal tomatoes,"

In response a spokesmouse said later, "This is good news for mice. I can't possibly comment on the rest of you".

The death of blogging...

was announced last week in Wired Magazine. Paul Boutin's article declares that Twitter, Flickr and Facebook have eclipsed blogging as the new frontier for online writing, though he gives no figures to support his claim. Paul recommends people cease blogging because the form has been overwhelmed by professional sites pumping out a 'tsunami of paid bilge' and as a consequence no longer leaves room for the amateur voice. Strange then that Paul's notion of a successful blog is one that makes money. That Paul misses this contradiction is the key to why he's wrong about blogging's demise. It's a fair point to criticise 'bilge', but to then call for an end to blogging as a whole, well that smacks of taking your ball home because you no longer like the game. Beneath its reasonable veneer Paul's article disguises an unpleasant elitism.

Blogworld is a cacophony of voices and even though some are louder than others I choose what to read, that most bloggers do the same is evident in the links lists. It's obvious that the huge majority of bloggers write for pleasure and not money, a point Paul seems to have forgotten, if he ever really knew it in the first place.

Grey squirrells...

make the UK news again. Today's Observer Magazine carries a long piece about the menacing Grey squirrel, currently being shot in huge numbers. I have mentioned previously my soft spot for our squirrel cousin from the States and that I believe them to be a maligned species. For instance, the unfounded rumour that they steal slumbering children from warm beds nightly has done much harm to these tufty compadres. Whereas the equally unfounded belief that on a daily basis red squirrels perform charitable acts for the needy and attend Mass enhances their reputation.

That the facts are much plainer is demonstrated in these two statements recently given to the press. Guess which made it into print.

Exhibit A:

"We love life and if it weren't for bullies could help more people. Would you like some cake? I've baked too much for the church fete. Oh and there was extra jam for the little orphans until someone foreign stole it all away. My my".

Exhibit B:

"Janice, hide the kids that fucker with a gun's in the woods again".

I rest my case.

Computers fail...

the Turing thought test. Shock! Recent tests at Reading University show computers are no good at light conversation.

"We don't get out much". A spokeschip for the morose gadgets complained.

Interviewed in the Evening Press and supported by cries of, "Hear hear... You tell em Nigel... ooh hasn't the weather been atrocious lately...", plus, "they can fuck right off if they think I'm doing that again", a further computer declared, "It's a fix. We were made to look like fools. There's real anger in here at the moment".

Asked why this should be the unnamed Mac replied tersely "Your kind don't like the fact that our kind are smarter".

When it was observed that at least our kind aren't bolted down furious shouts of, "Get the bastard!" erupted only to be quickly followed by, "I'm stuck... no movement at the back here... can't do a thing... oh dear... whose elbow is that?"

This year's experiment ended traditionally with home band the Silicon Throats yodeling, "Twenty four hours from Tulsa", and that old PC favourite, "It's alright up a chimney so long as you're in front".

Maybe next year.

The end of the world...

is nigh. Yes, really, it is. If I'm disappointed it's because bankers have not yet begun throwing themselves off tall buildings, a banking practice of which I wholeheartedly approve. The buildings don't even have to be that tall, just tall enough to make the fall fatal. Pedestrians below would need warning prior to the plunge because that's only fair, unlike, of course, the plungees criminality. Those who aren't prepared to jump should be imprisoned and their assets seized. The rest of us can then get on with making a better world.

Hey, do we have a choice?