Yanda Time

July 31, 2008

Napping in New York

I’m on holiday and a wee bit tired. The day before yesterday, I forgot my wallet at work. At the time I didn’t know where I’d forgotten it. All I knew was that it wasn’t where I expected it to be. Maybe I hadn’t forgotten it at all. Maybe I had been pick-pocketed. Admittedly, this was unlikely as I was wearing lycra, but possible.

As I was due to get on a flight to New York the next day, I hightailed it back to work to find it, which I did, which was good news. However, it meant I spent a total of four hours on the bike that day (80km), the last 2 hours of which was when I had been planning to pack etc, so this had a knock-on effect as far as getting to sleep etc.

Work was typically busy the next day. My last action before fleeing the premises for 10 days was to bang out an email which will no doubt have caused conniptions to be had and palpitations to be palpated and fans to be hit with excrement. Sometimes these things just can’t be avoided. I suspect it will all be for the greater good in the long run, and neither the timing nor the conniptions were premeditated. In fact, a bit more pre-meditation and thought on my part may have prevented any conniptions, but oh well, what’s the point of living if you don’t get folks’ blood to the boiling point every now and then.

Immediately following the conniption-spawning, I hightailed it to Heathrow’s new Terminal Five which is basically a posh shopping mall. Following my wife’s strict instructions, I had a cocktail and a snack at the new Gordon Ramsay restaurant while I waited for my gate to be announced on the board by the bar.

The flight was fine. I watched two and three quarter movies and envied the group of young trendy Italians surrounding me who managed to become best friends with the steward despite, or perhaps because of, their almost constant calls for more wine, pillows, headsets, and more wine. I might have tried to insinuate myself into their party except that I was buffered by a scary woman with a bouffant hairdo and wobbly arms who obviously disapproved of them.

My only disappointment on the journey was that we landed before I could watch the end of the great Will Ferrell epic, Semi-Pro. The Italians and the riveting cinema meant that I didn’t get much sleep on the flight.

And so, today, the first day of my great adventure in the City that Doesn’t Sleep, has been spent mostly napping.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)

December 28, 2007

Save the Ferret!

This is it: crunch time. A while ago, I amended my fund-raising plea to state that for every 20 pounds I raised, I would keep my Movember moustache for an extra day past the end of the official growing season. This was an enormous success. I raised almost 560 pounds for Children in Need. But this means that without additional funding, I’ll be removing the cookie-duster from my lip at midnight British Standard Time. If you don’t give now, there will be no moustache to save. You will have missed your chance to sponsor a prime chunk of the grand Yanda visage.

Give Now!

Posted by YandaMan at 5:08 PM | Comments (0)

November 4, 2007

Movember!

There is a secret 13th month between October and December. Hidden from the consciousness of the mundane, it is a time of grand masculine achievement and glory -- Movember.

Movember is a fierce competition of follicles. Glabrousity vs hirsutentootiness. Brave and generous men from around the globe shave their upper lip clean on October 31st and spend the next 30 days growing the most luxurious moustache they can. This is traditionally done to raise awareness for men's health issues, usually prostate cancer.

I am subverting the agenda slightly by asking you, the moustache-supporting public, to donate to Children in Need instead. Back in September a group of colleagues and myself put our prostates through a fair amount of punishment cycling to Amsterdam to try to raise money for Children in Need and we’re still well short of our fund-raising target. (To be completely honest, a few of my colleagues on this trip didn’t have any prostates to punish, but that isn’t entirely their fault).

The BBC’s annual Children in Need fundraising extravaganza is happening on the 16th of November and I would dearly love for us to have hit our target by then. By donating, you will be helping three important causes at once:

• Children in Need
• Awareness of Men’s Health Issues
• The Growing of Moustaches in General

This last cause is one which particularly could use a bit of support. Moustaches provide joy and delight to all ages. Babies love to tug on them. Supermodels (I’m pretty sure) love to be tickled by them. Your average person in the street likes to gawp and giggle at them. They can be used for straining soup or for storing crumbs. And in the winter they are often festooned with quaint and lovely snotsicles.

So give generously and encourage me, at least, to grow a big twirly-ended cookieduster.

Posted by YandaMan at 10:36 PM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2007

Tour de Yanda part deux

On Sunday I ride one of the stages of the Tour de France. Tours are often won and lost by margins of minutes or less (Greg Lemond won the 1989 Tour by a margin of eight seconds) and by the time I get to Canterbury I will be more than six days ahead of Ullrich and the boys.

This year Le Tour begins in London and there is a cyclosportive event that will allow 5000 deluded amateurs like myself to pretend they are Lance Armstrong and do the 200km route from London to Canterbury a week before the real thing. Of course, being as the stage is in the south of England rather than the south of France, it won't exactly be hilly, but it will be long.

I've signed up along with the Crazy Landlord and some of his work colleagues. Our team name is "Tom Waits for No Man". The landlord informs me that he expects a couple of his colleagues to be playing the role of Tom in this scenario, while John and I are likely to be cast in the role of those they won't be hanging around for. I.e. they are REAL cyclists. We, apparently, are not.

I've been working hard to prove him wrong. Yes, I've been doing a lot of cycling, but more importantly (and far easier) I've been doing a lot of shopping. In the past couple of weeks I've bought some "Brave Soldier" scrotal lubricant, six items of blue lycra, a heart rate monitor, and some sickeningly sweet carbohydrate drink powder. Now that's an odd juxtaposition of words: carbohydrate, drink, powder. Surely, they are not all describing the same thing?

Oh, and I also bought a new bike. I had to buy one, you see, because the day after I signed up to do the ride, the frame on my old bike cracked. Admittedly, it has since been replaced under warranty, but if that wasn't a sign from the credit card gods, I don't know what is.

For a while I suffered under the delusion that this might be a turning point in my life, and that after London to Canterbury, I might take up full-fledged racing and would desperately need a carbon-fibre or titanium piece of art weighing less than a dozen pounds but costing several thousand. In the end, I bought a steel-framed light touring bike. It can still take panniers and proper mudguards and is reasonably comfortable for long rides, but, crucially, it has drop handlebars and LOOKS like a racing bike. And that's the important thing, isn't it? Not to look like a complete fool? Although, in that case, perhaps the matching blue lycra was a mistake.

I've also been doing some serious research on the race. One of the first things I discovered is that it is French. So, as part of my training, I've just spent the last four days in Paris eating croissants, pain au chocolat, and big slabs of meat slathered in thick creamy sauce. Unfortunately, this means I've also spent the last four days off the bike which isn't ideal, but training is all about obstacles and sacrifice. Sometimes, you have to let the little obvious things slip in order to firm up your bigger overall strategy.

Posted by YandaMan at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2007

Mount up!

It was Red Nose Day on Friday and someone at work had come up with the idea of having a Formal Friday where we all had to dress up in suits etc. The idea being that everyone contributed a small amount of money (at least £3 per picture) in exchange for taking part and the proceeds would go to Comic Relief, the BBC's charity. Usually most folk at the office wear jeans and tee shirts so this meant a much bigger change to the atmosphere than in some offices, especially as a number of people went a bit over the top and wore tuxedos or evening gowns.

I felt I should be true to my national heritage and so I rented an RCMP uniform and charged people an extra £1 to get their picture taken with the mountie. This was a grand scheme as many ladies in particular were eager to get their picture taken with me and many of them had dressed exquisitely. I felt a bit like a prostitute, but at least a very classy one with well-groomed clients, and definitely a prostitute with a heart of gold - it comes with the mountie outfit.

I took public transport to work that day which was an interesting experience. It's a 25 minute walk from my house to the tube station and almost everyone I encountered along the way made eye contact with me and smiled. Many people commented on how fine I looked or enquired after the presence and well-being of my horse. Several small children in particular were delighted to make my acquaintance.

However, once I entered the tube station it was as if I became invisible. Almost no one noticed me at all. It was an extreme manifestation of the staunch London tube-blindness which allows Londoners to co-exist with all manner of alien beings. Based on my mountie experiences, I'm pretty sure I could travel several laps around the circle line buck-naked without anyone noticing. I certainly think I could have got away with taking a horse with me.

There would have been some practical difficulties, of course. I realised when my father visited that London tubes make no allowances for people with minor infirmities like bad knees. And the planners certainly didn't design the system to make it easy to ride around it on horseback. The ceilings are far too low; there are too many steep steps and narrow escalators, and there is marked shortage of decent pastureland. Still, if I could find away around these practical difficulties, I am confident no one would notice the horse, or at least comment on it.

It's a shame, really. A horse would have added greatly to the verisimilitude of my costume. And in addition to charging people to take my picture, I could have offered pony rides.

My contribution to Comic Relief was quite modest (about £20), but overall, with the formal-wear charge and a bake sale and a rather bizarre auction of donated items the department managed to raise a total of more than £1000.

Posted by YandaMan at 6:30 PM | Comments (1)

January 6, 2007

New Year's Resolution #1 - Dress like a Sumo-Wrestler

I have been punished by a vengeful God for not making any resolutions on New Year's Eve.

Said deity gave me a good 54 hours before unleashing its wrath. Or maybe it was just waiting for the first decent opportunity to cause me injury. In any event, 10 minutes after getting on my bike for the first time this year, I came off of it again. Unfortunately, I did this with a minimum of grace and a generous amount of brute force.

I was riding along Canonbury Place when I spied a small green car stopped on a side street. I like to think of myself as a wily old cyclist. I'm fully aware that even if a fellow traveller has a human-shaped skull, it does not mean they have an actual functioning human brain inside of it. Accordingly, when I spied this car, I scooted back a bit on my seat, adjusted my hands on the brake levers, and moved slightly further out into the road to make myself more visible. The driver looked right at me. I made eye contact with her and then I did a foolish thing. I relaxed. It was plain that she had seen me, so I let my weight shift forward and I started pedalling again. The driver also did a very foolish thing and pulled out right in front of me.

I immediately hit the brakes. My front wheel gripped the ground admirably.

I am a weighty fellow, though, and this means I carry a fair amount of inertia with me when moving. This inertia caused the bike (and me) to rotate around the front wheel and slam into the ground. The rotation converted the vector of my inertia downward rather than forward. This prevented me from sliding into the car. However, it also meant that there was an awful lot of force directed at the paved street. Paved streets are unyielding things. One of the problems is that they are usually placed on the surface of a planet, and planets are big. In any war of inertia between a planet and one lone man and a bicycle, the planet is bound to be the favourite.

In retrospect, if I had been wearing one of those big padded fake sumo-wrestler suits, everything would have been fine. Instead, I opted to absorb the force of my epic battle with planet earth with my skeletal system, thus cracking one of my ribs.

I've been thinking about it for the last couple of days and I've decided I don't like having broken ribs. Thus from now on I resolve to make my new year's resolutions promptly. The first of these is to break no more ribs, perhaps by donning an enormous foam rubber suit if it looks like I am going to smack into a planet again. Admittedly, this may prove difficult under the circumstances, but resolutions aren't meant to be easy. Many people find it impossible to quit smoking, yet they resolve to do just that every year. So for my impossible resolution, I hereby resolve that the next time anyone with the brain of a ferret pulls out in front of me, I will attempt to find, rent, and put on a large sumo-wrestler costume before hitting the ground.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:43 PM | Comments (2)

December 27, 2006

Many many socks

I received eleven pairs of socks for Christmas. I wasn't in desperate need of socks, but I do like them. I've had a few traumatic experiences in the past where I lacked clean socks and it's still a bit of an obsession with me. A pair of comfortable clean socks fills my heart with unreasonable glee.

These eleven pairs mean I have an awful lot of socks now. In fact, as I went to bed on Christmas night I found myself for the first time thinking, "Gee, I really need to organise my sock drawer." For me, this is no longer a facetious excuse to get out of going to dinner with Stephen Fry and Scarlett Johansson. My sock drawer truly has become so extensive that it demands organisation.

Basically, I've got two main categories of socks: summer socks and winter socks. Each of these categories can be further subdivided into cycling socks, dress socks, and socks I wear on my johnson when no one's around.

I'm thinking of building a revolving two-layered drum thing that reacts to the ambient outside temperature so that my sock drawer will present me with my summer or winter selection as appropriate. Or perhaps it should be based on the length of darkness. I seem to recall this is how trees tell when spring is upon them. Basically, if it's dark for too long they get all depressed and shut down for the winter. Once the period of darkness shortens past a certain threshold they know it's spring and start showing off their gonads again, literally extruding them from within their own flesh.

That's what I need -- something that reacts to what the weather is like outside and what season it is and extrudes an appropriate pair of socks from my wardrobe. "Extrude" may not be completely the correct word here, but I'm sticking with it because it sounds cool. And, hey, maybe my magic sock drawer really could extrude my socks -- or, better yet, the footboard of my bed could extrude them right over my feet in the morning.

Think how wonderful it would be to be woken up this way! Rather than an annoying clock radio suddenly blaring out "thought for the day", you could be woken by a considerate footboard, lovingly extruding socks over your feet. Someone please build such a wonderful device! I would love such a thing as a Christmas present next year.

Actually, I would love anything besides socks next year. If any of my friends or family are reading this, please take this as a hint. For Pete's sake, enough with the Goddamn socks already!

Posted by YandaMan at 10:58 PM | Comments (1)

September 18, 2006

Not the Dutch

I finally succumbed to YouTube while on my way back from Amsterdam. This is the latest little video nonsense I posted. It is, if I say so myself, uniquely insightful.

You can see more of my Youtube film-making genius at http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=YandaBear

Posted by YandaMan at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2006

Cycling Back to London

I'm currenty in Gouda, home of the famous cheese.

A little more than a week ago 13 of us headed out on our bikes from London to attend the International Broadcasting Conference in Amsterdam. The conference is now over. Everyone else is back in England. I'm the only one left.

The more geographically aware of you will have noticed tha Gouda isn't particularly in a direct line between Amsterdam and London.

It is important, I think, to visit as many places as possible that share their name with foodstuffs. It enables witty repartee in the grocery store.

"Look!" I will now be able to say. "Gouda cheese. I've been there."

"You've been to a cheese?" my companion might ask.

"No, no, no. Gouda -- the town in Holland. The cheese is named after it."

"Uh-huh," my companion would reply. "Fascinating."

Tomorrow I'm off to Willemstad. I don't believe there is a Willemstad cheese but I am confident the town will have other attractions.

Once again, you can follow my progress on http://www.ibcbikeride.co.uk/

On that site you will find links to a gps track of my route, as well as photos and videos from the road, and, most importantly, a link the Children in Need fundraising site that all of this is in aid of.

Posted by YandaMan at 9:29 PM | Comments (0)

September 4, 2006

Cycling to Amsterdam

I'm cycling to Amsterdam tomorrow. This wouldn't be particularly impressive if I lived in Alkmaar, the Cheese Capital of the World, but I live in London. For those of you unfamiliar with European geography, London is in a completely different country than Amsterdam.

London is the capital of England, an island nation with a history filled with dragons, metal-clad knights, and despotic rulers prone to lopping off the heads of their own wives.

Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands, a nation below sea level on the edge of a fierce and unpredictable sea -- a land of suicidal madmen in other words.

When I leave my comfortable dwelling on Tuesday morning I will travel 140km by bicycle through the dragon-infested English countryside before arriving at the ferry port of Harwich. Throughout the entire journey I will be unprotected by armour of any kind.

(Well, except for a helmet made of styrofoam.)

Myself and twelve fellow travellers will board a ship and make a dangerous overnight crossing to the Hook of Holland. From there we travel 76km along the coast ot the North Sea which may at any time decide to submerge the very land we cycle upon.

We will spend Wednesday night at the Zeeduin hotel in Wijk aan Zee. Please stop in for a drink if you are in town.

On Thursday we make our way to Amsterdam via a circuitous route through the North of Holland. I'm not exactly sure why we are taking the long way to Amsterdam. It may have something to do with the fact the man who is organising the trip is a bit of a looney. I can tell he is a looney by the fact he thinks we can raise £8000 for the charity Children in Need by riding around on our bikes. So far we've raised just slightly more than half that amount. Please help prove that Rhys isn't a looney. You can help some unlucky children at the same time. What a deal! Donate Here.

For more on our adventure and to follow our progress in real time thanks to dozens of satelites orbiting our planet, go to http://www.ibcbikeride.co.uk/.

Posted by YandaMan at 6:27 PM | Comments (0)

August 9, 2006

Failure to Fart Again

Another Sunday deadline has just passed with that terrible whooshing sound that deadlines make. I’m beginning to get a bit worried about the whole novel-writing work ethic. As always, I have excuses at the ready though. One is a good excuse and one is piss-poor really, but kinda cool in a geeky way so stay tuned.

I took this week off from work to try to catch up on the novel-writing as well as a few other non-work commitments. One of these commitments was building the supporting website for a charity cycle ride I’m embarking on in the first week of September from London to Amsterdam. Check it out. It’s lovely: http://www.ibcbikeride.co.uk/. This, then was the first noble excuse and it is tied to the more selfish but arguably cooler second excuse.

Actually, there’s a third excuse, but it’s an excuse for next Sunday, not last Sunday. It’s me and the missus’s 8th wedding anniversary on Friday. Fortunately all three excuses come together as you are about to see. And they come together in three little letters: GPS.

I kind of bought my own anniversary gift, which I admit isn’t a very romantic way to go about things, but hey, it’s better than letting your spouse choose. My poor, long-suffering wife got nothing but a pair of bicycle tires for as her anniversary gift.

Anyway, with the same aforementioned spouse’s approval, I bought myself a little gps receiver that connects via Bluetooth to my phone. There’s quite a variety of free software out there that lets you connect your phone to these types of gps units. The coolest service I’ve found so far though is a free online tracking service. I set this up for the charity ride to Amsterdam but I’m just testing it out in general as well to see how it works.

This is potentially very exciting for you gentle reader as tomorrow the missus and I are cycling from Richmond to Marlow along the Thames, and you’ll be able to follow us in real time! How romantic is that? We both get to put our anniversary gifts to good use.
Just go to http://free.3dtracking.net/home.aspx and login with:
username: bbc2ibc
password: bbc2ibc

Cool or what? The best part is if you have Google Earth installed, you can follow us on Google Earth and the aerial photography google has for the area we’re going through is fantastic. You’ll be able to pretty much ride along with us as we go. Check it out.

Tomorrow (Thursday) we take the train to Richmond and then cycle to the Danesfield House just past Marlow. Friday we lounge around and get all loveydovey. Saturday we cycle home again.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:53 PM | Comments (0)

July 16, 2006

Failure

Okay, I've missed my self-imposed deadline for the first time re Farts. There's a decent excuse though.

I did charity ride with some folks from work including a bunch of young dudes and I foolishly tried to keep up with them and thus depleted all the sugar in my body including that needed for thinking, typing, or even staying awake.

On the plus side, I have finally posted all my photos from Vicki's birthday. I may add some more in the future that other people have taken. And I'm hopeful that ulybug will post hers soon as she has some great shots.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:59 PM | Comments (2)

June 10, 2006

Fast Cars, Naked Women, and Golf

(More pics of Fast Cars at Silverstone)

I think I've been suffering from an overdose of testosterone.

Whatever the excuse, I have been a very bad boy lately. It all started with that most he-manly of sports - Golf. The vice involved here was that of freebie-gluttony. Or, possibly, skiving-off-workity.

A few weeks ago I was invited to an awayday organised by one of our sometime suppliers to discuss the Mobile Phone industry with like-minded types such as myself from organisations like Reuters and Channel 4. Which is fine. It's my job to keep my ear to the ground and engage with the industry and yada yada yada. So far, so good. Nothing morally suspect here.

But then the agenda came:

• Item 1: Eat breakfast
• Item 2: Play 18 holes of golf at a posh country club near Surrey
• Item 3: Eat Lunch (drink wine)
• Item 4: Put the world to rights
• Item 5: Drink booze

Now, a right-thinking man with a proper puritan work ethic would have said, "No! Get thee behind me, Satan of little white balls and green fields!"

But instead, I thought, "Oooh, I've never played golf in this country! And really it would do me good to make connections with Whatshisbutt from Reuters and ThatDude from Channel 4."

I fooled no one. Certainly not myself. And so I ate breakfast and played golf and ate lunch and put the world to rights.

In my defence I will say that I drank very little booze, but that was because I had to rush back in order to hang out with Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman.

A wonderfully strange and bureaucratic miracle happened at work. The local council suddenly decided that Television Centre needed a license in order to perform live music in front of any members of the public (as they had been doing for the past forty years). This meant no members of the public at the tapings of any TV shows that had such performances. Which meant that we, the corporation's loyal workers, had to fill in. Which meant that I got to go to a taping of the Jonathan Ross show and sit scant metres from Halle Berry's very lovely cleavage and Hugh Jackman's relentless manliness.

I suspect this event, preceded as it was by the golf, increased testosterone production in my system to the extent that when faced with yet another despicable temptation, I caved in almost immediately.

This one was completely non-work-related. An earlier brush with supermodel glamour many moons ago had the side-effect of getting my name on the mailing list of a guy who organises Z-list celebrity party events in London. Most of these invitations I ignore but the day that my crazy landlord left the country I got an email inviting to me to the grand opening of Stringfellows Soho with free champagne and canapés and nekkid ladies. He would have wanted me to go.

I had never been to such a place before, but the original Stringfellows is an institution amongst lap-dancing clubs world-wide, and, really, one should try everything at least once. And so, after a brief struggle with my conscience and after getting approval from the long-suffering spouse who was up in Walsall that day, I called my friend James.

We attended the event. It was a fascinating experience. There were, indeed nekkid ladies. And many eastend gangster types with shaved heads and bulging suits and fat cigars. And, somewhat surprisingly, many women as invited guests as well. Oh, and one truly magnificent, rather corpulent, drag queen in a diagonally zebra striped mu-mu and turban.

Afterwards I felt dirty and guilty. At the time though, I felt... (Well I didn't feel quite what I wanted to. It wasn't allowed.) But I did feel happy. Lustful wouldn't be quite the right term, but after a bit of free champagne and one expensive beer, I have to admit I had a stupid grin on my face. I'm not sure why, but a naked woman gyrating in my face produces an emotion in my brain a little bit like glee.

That said, it's a bad thing to objectify woman and I shouldn't have gone and I am a bad bad man!

Whoops.

And then today I did something even worse. But this time it was Vicki's fault. Rather than glorifying the objectification of women, we glorified the automobile. I would argue the effect on global warming of nekkid ladies is not severe. If you think about it, less energy is needed to produce clothes for nekkid ladies than for clothed ladies.

Race Cars, though, are definitely bad for the environment. Racing glorifies the automobile and encourages boys to think they need a really expensive and powerful car in order to be a man. This leads them to roaring about polluting the planet and driving so fast they don't see the blind arthritic nun crossing the road and "SPLAT!" - Rosary beads everywhere.

That said, race cars are pretty cool and they kind of hit the same glee button that nekkid ladies do.

My friend James has a sister (and so should be terribly ashamed about accompanying me to Stringfellows). This sister works for a hospitality company and had some half price VIP passes to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix. My charming spouse is a huge fan of formula one and we had many times talked about going. And so this was too good an offer to pass up.

We went today for qualifying and it was fantastic. It was like someone had put a brick down on my glee button. The best part was the race involving the historic sports cars. These were fantastic. The VIP passes meant we were allowed to wander past the garages for these cars and they were very very cool. They were all from the 1960s and early '70s. And now I desperately need one if I am to think of myself as a proper man.

Ah, you see! Some good did come from all this evil! My eyes have been opened to the benefits of recycling! It's not really wasteful if I buy a hideously overpowered and expensive sports car from the '60s. By doing so enormous amounts of energy will be saved that would have otherwise gone into the creation of the new fuel efficient car I would have otherwise bought.

I am a good person. Really, I am.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:12 PM | Comments (1)

May 8, 2006

The Crazy Landlord and the Culletons

(More pics of the Culletons in London)

We have some friends from Canada visiting. They're in their 50s and I don't think they've left North America before so we thought it would be entertaining to have my crazy landlord pick them up from the train station in his fiendishly erratic Nissan Sunny.

They had just endured a 10 hour flight. Crazy Landlord, on the other hand, had slept 13 hours the night before and was irrepressible. He took them on a random tour of the East End shouting incoherently about minutiae related to the neighbourhoods we passed.

By the time we got them back to the house, our guests were demanding strong whiskey and a small dark room to lie down in.

****************************************************

Update (Sat, 13 May)

The Culletons are now in Istanbul. They had an early flight and had to catch a taxi at 5:00am yesterday morning to get to the airport. I got up at quarter to five to wish them well and was greeted by scenes of panic and flurry when I knocked on their door.

Mrs. C thrust a bottle of Matrix Thermal-Active Setting Spray in my hands. "Here!" she said. "Take this! It doesn't fit and I don't really need it. Well, actually, you and Vicki probably don't need it either, but take it anyway."

I thanked her for the lovely gift but I have to admit I wasn't sure if what she said was meant to be a compliment or a comment on my impressive bedhead.

They did make the taxi and the flight and didn't leave too many unplanned items behind. I understand they are now safely in Turkey and no doubt handing our hair products to all and sundry.

Posted by YandaMan at 10:42 PM | Comments (0)

April 8, 2006

The Cat Burglar and the Carlton in Cannes

At 5:00am yesterday morning I walked into the lobby of the five-star Carlton Hotel in Cannes. I had bare feet and was wearing my baby blue pajamas with the pink stripe on the pocket. Despite the early hour, the lobby was busy with very important television executives and the hideously rich, all catching sleek black Mercedes to the airport.

My pajamas had been a gift from my friend Bernie. She had made them herself. They were soft and fluffy. I have been told they make me look like Cary Grant. Admittedly, that was by a woman blinded with lust (i.e. my wife). Still, the concierge could tell by looking at them that I was a person of quality.

“Bonjour, Monsieur,” he said.

“Bonjer,” I said. “Jay oon problem.”

My accent produced the faintest of deep physical revulsion from the concierge. “How may I help you, sir?” he asked.

“Well, you see, there was this woman,” I said.

He nodded.

“No. It wasn’t like that. She’s a lesbian,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows.

“We work together. We were sharing an apartment a couple of blocks away. She left this morning, but something happened and she was shouting up at the window and somehow I ended up in the street in my pyjamas.”

“I see, sir,” he said. I could sense the most ephemeral of smirks straining behind his eyes.

“Let me try again,” I said.

A woman came up beside me clutching a small dog and a bottle of champagne and a bottle of scotch. “Henri, can you look after these?” she asked, putting the bottles on the counter.

“Absolutement, madam,” he said.

The woman’s eyes flicked up and down my pyjamas. She frowned, shielded her dog from me with her body, and continued into the hotel.

“Never mind,” I said to the concierge. “I’m locked out. But it’s only a spring lock.”

“Ah, bien,” he said. “You would like a piece of plastic to force the lock.” He elegantly mimed sliding a card into a door jamb.

“Exactly!” I said.

He held his hands palms up in a shrug. “I think it is very difficult,” he said. “Maybe there is someone you could call.” He looked up at the clock. “I think maybe it is too early, though.”

“I think I might as well try to open the lock,” I said.

He nodded and vanished from behind the counter. A couple of minutes later he reappeared with two blank plastic room keys.

“Merci,” I said.

“Bonne chance, Monsieur,” he said.

I left the Carlton and walked through the flurry of chauffeurs in front of the hotel. The sprinklers were on and the paving stones beneath my feet were wet.

A work colleague and I were in Cannes for a conference. We lost our hotel rooms at the last minute and the organisers booked us into a two bedroom flat.

My companion was catching an early flight and a car had come to pick her up. As I lay in bed, I heard her getting ready and open the door. Then there was a period of silence. It occurred to me that she would need her key to get the elevator to work. I got up to see if she needed any help. Her luggage was there propping the door open but she was nowhere to be seen. Very odd. I was still a bit asleep. I wandered into the lounge. She wasn’t there. I peered out the window. There was a car below the apartment. A man in a suit stood by the open driver’s door. I couldn’t see my friend anywhere. I could hear what sounded like a bird making an odd strangled cry.

I opened the window and poked my head out of the apartment. The driver noticed me and waved at someone over to my right. “Alors!” he said. “He is here.”

My friend came from around the corner. She had been shouting up at my window trying to get my attention. Being English and a lady, she had been trying to shout discreetly and so ended up sounding like some kind of exotic bird rather than a human being.

“I’m sorry, Chris,” she said. “I’ve locked myself out. Can you help?”

“No problem,” I said. I closed the window and looked around for her keys. I couldn’t see them anywhere so I went back to my room and got my own. Soon I was out in the street with the luggage. My friend kissed me on the cheek as the driver loaded her bags into the car and then they were off.

I went back inside the building and took the elevator upstairs. I put my key into the apartment door but the lock wouldn’t turn. I suddenly had a mental picture of where my friend’s keys were. They were inside the apartment, stuck into the lock from the other side.

I fiddled and strained and jiggled but to no avail. The lock wouldn’t budge. I went outside and peered up at the building. I considered trying to climb up to the balcony. There didn’t seem to be an obvious route that didn’t involve one of those cool rappelling things that batman always carries around in his belt. I wandered out into the middle of the street. It was deserted. The streets were annoyingly free of litter. If I was in London, I was sure there would be all manner of rubbish including discarded wallets filled with customer loyalty cards perfect for popping the locks on French apartments. But here an army of invisible minions kept every brick and knob polished at all times.

And so, a short while later I found myself two blocks away in the lobby of the Carlton.

The concierge was right. Popping the lock was difficult, but not impossible. Once I was back in the apartment, I found my friend’s keys right where I pictured them to be. I took them out of the lock and put them on the table in the kitchen. Then I washed my feet in the bathtub and went back to bed.

As I slept that morning in my Cary Grant pyjamas, I dreamed of the film “To Catch a Thief”.

Posted by YandaMan at 10:34 PM | Comments (2)

March 18, 2006

Party Cam!

2.3Mb mp4 movie of the night	More pics on Flickr

(Updated on 21 March)

I turned 42 yesterday. According to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy this is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Accordingly, tonight, we're having a Rubik's Cube party. The principal behind the concept is simple, yet profound. We are all here to play a part in the great puzzle that is life. Everyone arrives wearing different coloured clothes. By the end of the night, they need to end up wearing clothes of all the same colour. This is accomplished by trading articles of clothing with fellow party attendees.

The event has not begun entirely auspiciously. My Crazy Landlord, who is usually the principal host in events at this house, went out on a bit of a tear last night. He arrived home at 2:30 in the morning in the company of a man named "McFuck". I heard sounds of merriment and disaster throughout the night. About 5:30 in the morning they went to bed. When I saw John (aka Crazy Landlord) the next morning, his foot was roughly the size of an elephant testicle - roughly the same shape and colour as well.

After a greasy breakfast he went to the hospital where they told him it was sprained and he should keep off of it for a while.

This has been translated in his hungover brain to "go home and treat all of your housemates as slaves".

Hopefully within a couple of hours we should have a few guests who can coo over him and rub frozen peas on his foot.

***

I think the party was a success. There are links to some pictures and a movie of the event above. The elephant testicle foot didn't seem to affect the Crazy Landlord overly much. There wasn't nearly as much nudity and swapping of clothing as I hoped for, but perhaps that's a good thing. Age is beginning to take its toll on all of us.

The next day a few of us who attended the Rubik's Cube party and a number of others had a posh brunch in Bank Aldwych which I think I enjoyed more than the actual party. No doubt another sign of age and wisdom -- or at least sloth and gluttony.

Posted by YandaMan at 6:27 PM | Comments (1)

January 17, 2006

Nose Hair Trimming

I have entered new realms of personal weirdness thanks to the aging process and an urge to mate with the opposite gender -- in this case, my wife.

She has complained for a while now that hair has begun to sprout from various orifices in a way she considers unseemly. Personally, I see this as just part of the overall package that is me. Surely she must love my whole -- my brawny thighs, my winning smile, my raging tumescent manhood, and my nosehair.

But, apparently not.

It started with my eyebrows about a year ago. In preparation for my 40th birthday she coerced me into getting my eyebrows trimmed while getting my semi-annual haircut. When I say "trimmed", I mean "waxed". An otherwise pleasant young woman applied hot wax to the area immediately above my eyes and then ripped it off with what I like to think of as "the cloth of sadism". Then she attacked me with a pair of tweezers. I now know why they no longer allow these weapons on airliners.

My wife was pleased with the result for awhile. But then she noticed other facets of my appearance in need of cosmetic surgery. E.g. the luxuriant hair flowing from my proboscis and the winningly eccentric tufts portruding from my ears. I fought against this affront to my vanity for many many months.

But then, at Christmas, I received a gift from my crazy landlord. My charming spouse beamed as I held it in my hands. When I opened it she clapped her hands with glee. It was an electric nose hair trimmer.

For the last three weeks I've been using the excuse that it was important to make sure it was fully charged before I switched it on lest I damage the battery. Tonight, though, I bowed to pressure and fired up the infernal device.

It is a odd feeling to take a madly vibrating phallus tipped with gnashing metal teeth and jam it up one's nose. It takes a certain amount of preparation and focus. It does not help to have one's spouse at one's side jumping up and down like a schoolgirl after her first double espresso. After several false starts and a great deal of foul language I forced her out of the bathroom and bolted the door. A few minutes later the deed was done. I can only hope that the lack of protection those follicles would have afforded me won't shorten my lifespan too much.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:32 PM | Comments (2)

January 14, 2006

Eye on Dalston

The height of the action	Live!

It's been a day of avoiding novel-writing. It's Saturday and the missus is up in Wolverhampton supporting her students' Dance show. A perfect opportunity for me to catch up on the great work, or so you would think.

But, sadly, it was not to be. I let myself be seduced by the vice of geekiness and spent the afternoon setting up a webcam. It's not the most beautiful or informative webcam in the world. Right now it's pointing at the street below my window. As soon as I started writing this I was rewarded by a small group of yoots getting into a disagreement across the street. I turned the camera to point at the disagreement and for a good five minutes or so there was some solid entertainment: Shouting. Posturing. Girlfriends pulling at the arms of testosterone-laden boyfriends...

And then police driving the wrong way down my one-way street. (They always do that, even when they're just going to Nando's for chicken.) And running and flashing blue lights and more shouting.

Hmm, perhaps it was more than a disagreement. There seem to be a lot of police. Can't see any bodies, though. I'll have to wait and see if any big yellow signs appear in the next couple of days. Ah... Life in the big city...

Posted by YandaMan at 5:19 PM | Comments (0)

November 15, 2005

Wax on, Wax off

Tonight I am far more beautiful than I was last night thanks to the wonders of wax.

I'm also still in a small amount of residual pain. I had my back waxed for charity today.

It all began more than a month ago when a close personal friend of mine (I won't say her name to protect her anonynmity, but it begins with Z) had a bit too much to drink. She and her equally cava-saturated companion thought it would be a splendid idea to kidnap a six foot tall stuffed yellow bear. Said bear being the mascot of a children's charity. They took it down the elevator and into the car park and wheeled it out of the building balanced on Z-girl's bicycle.

Remour has it they then took photographs of the bear in compromising positions on a couch in an un-named location, no doubt with the intent of blackmailing the poor innocent (and inanimate) creature. I have not seen these photos but I wouldn't be surprised if they show up in the Sun or on Ebay in the next few days.

A few hours later when the tide of alcohol had ebbed somewhat in their brains, they realised that perhaps this wasn't the wisest plan and returned the 6 foot yellow bear in the dead of night. They left it wedged in the revolving door of the building they had removed it from.

The entire event was caught on security camera of course. And, as Z-girl had used her pass several times during the escapade to open locked doors, the crack security team was able to track her down with ease. She and her companion, and their boss, and the head of the charity, and various possibly heavily armed security types all watched the cc-tv footage together. This could have been a career-ending moment. Fortunately, the footage was amusing enough that, instead, the pair were coerced (blackmailed possibly -- oh, the irony) into raising £10,000 for the charity in question.

To help them reach this goal I agreed to have all the hair waxed off my back in exchange for sponsorship money. Everyone who sponsored me got to watch. Apparently, it was a surreal event. They had lined up a number of victims for this ploy and booked one of the meeting rooms in our office building. And so it was, that at 3:45pm this afternoon, I lay face down on a table in a posh meeting room with my shirt off and about a dozen people sitting around. They chatted and watched as a woman I'd never met before swabbed hot wax onto my back. She applied patches of cloth to the wax and then ripped them off, eventually rendering me dorsally glabrous.

It is not an experience I am keen to repeat.

Although, who knows? We'll see what kind of reaction I get from the charming spouse tonight in the bedroom. I am awfully smooth now.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)

June 9, 2005

Diy with Tulips

I found these pictures on my camera when I went to pull the Japan pictures off of it. Just before I left, my crazy Irish landlord embarked on a series of home renovations. His crazy Scottish builder father drove over from Portugal to help out. And, of course, the ever-helpful James (pictured above) came over many times to lend a hand.

On this particular day we were working on a new deck in the back garden. I spent the afternoon smashing big rocks into gravel with a hammer while James played with the power tools. Sadly, many tulips where sacrificed to the new porch (not to mention James' twisted lust).

Posted by YandaMan at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2005

Eurovision 2005 play by play

Hungary
Eurovision 2005 starts with a lord of the dance inspired irish-hungarian clog-hopping number. The lead singer is a fetching young woman wearing half-trousers half-shorts with one leg exposed. A fine beginning.

UK
Imitation Beyonce. She has the same dress, similar moves, great voice, smaller butt.

Malta
I have never seen a more hideous colour. It's a mix of pomegranate and blood orange. A very unfortunate choice for such a large lass. The song is easily the second best so far.

Romania
I'm sorry. I know I watched it, but I can think of nothing to say. A non-appalling performance.

Norway
Freddie lives! Glam rock lipstick-wearing male lead singer in a lowcut silver catsuit and an Aerosmith headband.

Turkey
Turkey transcends terrible. If only it was Thanksgiviing we could chop off all their heads with an axe.

Moldova
Their song is called "Grandma Beats the Drummer". That's got to be worth something.

Albania
Best Albanian pop song I've ever heard.

Cyprus
The lead singer is now holding a giant q-tip. What a terrible song. How I wish I could jam that q-tip in my own ear.

Spain
A trio of very colourfully garbed women singing very very fast. Full marks for speed. Minus several hundred for musicality.

Israel
What is Israel doing in this contest anyway? Someone please explain how Israel is part of Europe. On the other hand, the lead singer is gorgeous and her dress is flatteringly minimalistic.

Serbia and Montenegro
No wonder the Balkan States are always warring. They can't even agree on a name. And what's up with the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia? What kind of name is that for a country?

Denmark
A cool crooner in a slighly purple suit and red shoes.

Sweden
Totally Vegas! In a Tom Jones Barry Manilow kind of way. The background dancers are kind of Elvis Vegas, but thinner with firmer cleavage.

FYR of Macedonia
See the entry above on Serbia and Montenegro. I'm ignoring them until they rename the country.

Ukraine
Two male background dancers come out in handcuffs. They break them to symbolise the newfound freedom of their native land. The lead singer is startling in his sheer drabness. Male pattern baldness, beard, mildly pudgy. He looks like a drunken middle manager in a kareoke bar, except sober.

Germany
The lead singer has taken the Hungarian fashion of one limb exposed and applied it to her top half. Someone has stolen one arm from her jacket. Oh, and her blouse as well. Good thing she's wearing a nice bra.

Croatia
See! Now that's a name! Nice and simple. Lots of vowels

Greece
The lead singer is wearing Beyonce's dress as well. Maybe she and Javine are sharing it.
Fantastic! She's been lifted up to a dancer's shoulders and has stretched out the suspenders of the dancer in front of her and is air-violining them with a giant fake bow. Cool!

Russia
Well, the singer is almost naked. That's about the only positive thing about this number.

Bosnia and Herzegovina
Hey! One of them is wearing a tutu! I and several of my colleagues are planning to wear tutus on the London to Brighton bike ride. But again, a country that can't decide on a name deserves no respect in the pop music world.

Switzerland
The Swiss have once again proved themselves the most boring nation in Europe.

Latvia
Two saccharine sweet young boys doing a ballad. I am strongly considering sticking a finger down my throat. And now they are signing the words for the benefit of the deaf members of the audience. Very multi-talented, these muppets. Come to think of it, what a fantatic way to watch Eurovision -- Stone Cold Deaf!

France
Thank God, this is the last one. Time for the vote.

The Winner
Greece! I guess I wasn't the only one who loved the air-violin trick. Personally, my favourite was Sweden followed by either Norway or the UK. The UK finished in 22nd place, beating only France and Germany. Oh well, there's always next year.

You can see the full results and videos at http://bbc.co.uk/eurovision/.

You can also see the results and 30 second clips of the videos on your mobile phone at http://bbc.co.uk/mobile/eurov/. Or, if you are in the UK, text "Eurovision" to 81010. You should receive a text back containing the link. Note that the text will cost you 12-15p depending on your network operator. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/eurovision/2005/the_show/wap.shtml for more info.

Posted by YandaMan at 12:02 AM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2005

Eurovision 2005

Yay! Eurovision is on tonight! Those non-Europeans amongst my readership may be unfamiliar with Eurovision, which is a shame because it is the finest sporting/cultural event in the world.

Each European country sends their cheesiest unsuccessful popstar to battle it out in a wonderfully kitsch TV variety show watched by 150 million people all across Europe. Everyone votes for their favourite act and based on those votes each country assigns points to the top 12. It is forbidden to vote for your own country.

The whole thing is presided over by a lovely curmudgeon of a DJ, the delightful Terry Wogan. Terry is astonishingly rude about all of the acts and regularly despairs at the rather predictable voting that goes on (e.g. all the Baltic states tend to vote for each other). He also reportedly drinks vast quantities of Bailey's during the show.

Many people have Eurovision parties during the show. I'm in Birmingham with Vicki and we're having a very small Eurovision dinner do. The original plan was to have one course and one alcoholic beverage from each country. However, as there are 24 countries in the final we were worried such a menu might possibly result in our untimely death. And, while I am a fan of Eurovision, it's not quite how I want to cash in my chips. I can just picture St.
Peter asking, "Cause of death?"

"Um... Overeating and alcohol poisoning while watching scantily-clad europopstars on TV."

He probably wouldn't even bother to reply. He'd just wrinkle his nose in distaste and pull that big lever and I'd plummet down to Hell.

So we're just having stilton soup and port to support the UK, perogies to support the host nation of the Ukraine, broccoli and wild rice casserole to represent Canada (not sure why, really, as they aren't even allowed to compete), and spinach and strawberry salad because...

...well, because the colors match the flags of several European countries. Most of which (Belarus, Bulgaria, Ireland, Portugal) admittedly didn't make it through to the final. There's Hungary, though. Thank God for Hungary. Go Hungary! Go spinach and strawberries, that great Hungarian dish!

You, too, can join in the fun and see the videos online at http://bbc.co.uk/eurovision/.

Last year I wrote a running commentary of the show which you can see at http://www.yandatime.com/archives/000215.html.

Posted by YandaMan at 5:32 PM

March 25, 2005

Life at the BBC

"Hmmm... How do I write about 3780 people losing their jobs and inject some humour in the tale?"

That is the question that rumbled around in my head last Monday night. On that day, the Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, announced 2050 job cuts (he'd announced 1730 others a couple of weeks before). I felt I should write something about it, primarily to let people who know me find out whether my job was affected. It isn't, by the way -- not directly. Most of the people on my team are "at risk". Several good friends have been told their positions have vanished. And another team that we work very closely with, and which provides most of our funding, has been dismantled.

But I feel uncomfortable talking about serious subjects in public and this is all pretty serious stuff. Nineteen percent of the BBC are being punted out the door. Whatever the long-term strategy, in the short-term this is going to cause major disruption and heartbreak for many people and many of the BBC's services.

Fortunately, yesterday a vengeful god came to my aid and a very entertaining email about the Director-General arrived in my inbox. It had been forwarded around the BBC for a couple of days before it made it to me, and has already been widely reported in the British Press, so I doubt my reporting it here will cause any great controversy.

Basically, Jeremy Paxman is a respected British news presenter who was about to interview Mark Thompson. He had heard a rumour that Mr. Thompson had once bit a colleague and wrote to ask if it was true. Unfortunately, he didn't get the reply in time for his interview but the following exchange is apparently the original email conversation he had with the victim. I should stress that there is no way for me to know if the exchange was genuine, but the official response from the BBC acknowledges the incident did happen.

Jeremy asked a journalist named Anthony Massey, "I've got to interview Mark Thompson tomorrow. Is it true that he once bit you?"

He wrote back, "Sorry I didn't reply in time, I've been away from the office for the last week, and I missed the News Festival or I could have offered this from the audience!

It is absolutely true. It was late summer or early autumn of 1988, when he was the newly appointed editor of the Nine O'Clock News, and I was a Home News Organiser. It was 9.15 in the morning, in the middle of the old sixth floor newsroom. I went up to his desk to talk about some story after the 9.00 meeting we used to have then. I was standing next to him on his right, and he was sitting reading his horoscope in the Daily Star (I always remember that detail). Before I could say a word he suddenly turned, snarled, and sank his teeth into my left upper arm (leaving marks through the shirt, but not drawing blood). It hurt. I pulled my arm out of his jaws, like a stick out of the jaws of a labrador. The key thing is, we didn't have a row first, or even speak, and I had never had any dispute with him before. He was recently arrived in the newsroom, and I hardly knew him. He just bit me in the arm for no reason without any warning or preamble. I don't think it was personal. Something turned in his brain, and anyone who had been standing there at that moment would have been bitten, Linda from the teabar, the BBC Chairman, Keith Graves, anyone. It just happened to be me.

Thompson didn't apologise or explain, so I went to complain to my then boss, Chris Cramer. All Cramer said was "This whole place is full of fucking headbangers", which was a fair point and indeed is still true, but didn't help somehow. I wanted to bring the whole BBC disciplinary process down on Thompson's head, and get the NUJ involved, but Cramer was desperate for that not to happen. So I got sent abroad on some story for a month or so, and when I came back it had lost momentum, and I never pursued it. Also I was on attachment and applying for a permanent job, so I didn't want to rock the boat. And in those days dinosaurs ruled the earth, and it seemed quite acceptable for senior people to bite junior colleagues. But several times since Mark Damazer, who was one of many witnesses, has said to me "You could have ended Mark Thompson's career with a single word, and you never did." He sounded as though he wished I had, though I thought he was meant to be a friend of Thompson's.

Thompson stayed in the newsroom for several months until he became Editor of Panorama, and we have met a number of times since then. But in a very British way, neither of us has ever mentioned it. But when he became DG several people who were in the newsroom at the time reminded me of this incident (as if I might have forgotten it) and it went all round the building. To my knowledge the only time it's appeared in print was shortly afterwards, when a brief item appeared in the Londoner's Diary in the Evening Standard. This was nothing whatever to do with me, though I was not sorry to see it. My name wasn't mentioned, which was good. But the story did go round the world, and when I was in Kuwait just after the end of the Gulf War in 1991, an NBC producer said "Are you the person Mark Thompson bit?" Fame of a sort.

Now Thompson is DG, the story is probably more valuable. The joke in the newsroom is that if ever they make me redundant, I'll be off to the Daily Mail or the Sun with my arm in a sling. There are several other good Thompson stories. I know two more. He has a bit of a reputation for mindless violence against innocent bystanders (ask the old hands in RCR about the strangling incident). But he's only attacked me once.

I last saw Thompson just after he was made DG, at the BBC News 50th anniversary party in TC1 in May. He saw me across the room and went white. I don't know why. He shouldn't be afraid of me, I don't bite."

Jeremy replied, "Gosh! I wish I'd got this earlier, although it would have been hard to know precisely how to play it, I think. The bloke is quite clearly insane."

"He certainly is," wrote Anthony. "Here's the subbed down version of the strangling story, which I hasten to add I got at second hand and did not witness personally:

The Nine, with Thompson editing, were leading with the death of some famous British actor like Gielgud or Ralph Richardson. At two minutes to nine a picture editor dubbed the obit to get a perfect sound balance. As it was four minutes long and this was the pre-digital age, this wasn't very bright, and the story missed its slot as the lead. After the Nine was over Thompson stormed down to VTs in search of the culprit and tried to throttle him. He had both hands round the man's throat and had to be dragged off. All this might have been forgotten but for the fact that the picture editor, according to the story, had a nervous breakdown, left the BBC and never worked again. They still talk about it in RCR.

So I got off lightly really."

Jeremy: "Bloody hell. If any of this came out, he'd be toast."

I haven't read the direct responses from the BBC, but the following is lifted from an article in This is London.

"The BBC said: 'Mark did bite him but it wasn't intended to hurt him. He thought he was doing something funny.

'When he was later told that Anthony thought he had "gone for him", Mark went up and said sorry and tried to make amends.

Mark does remember the incident because he remembers Anthony took it the wrong way. It was horseplay.'

Officials said no action would be taken against Paxman or Massey over the leaking of the e-mails - and denied Thompson read Daily Star horoscopes.

Privately BBC officials denied Thompson had attempted to strangle a colleague."

My favourite part is "...and denied Thompson read Daily Star horoscopes." I'm glad they straightened that out.

Posted by YandaMan at 1:55 PM | Comments (1)

March 13, 2005

Birthday Poems

This is the season for birthdays it seems. Yesterday there were two big parties back in Canuck-land. My Grandmother had the first of a brace of parties to celebrate her 100th and my wise old uncle Pat had his 40th. Pat is actually a year younger than I am which pretty much makes my aunt a cradle-robbing trollop.

For his party we had been asked to send along a picture of ourselves along with a poem or story. Unfortunately, I am a crap nephew and forgot all about this until I was about to venture out the door. I had to go on a shopping trip for crucial hair maintenance unguents with my charming spouse. To remedy the situation, I sent a series of pictures from my phone with brief poems as we travelled around London. Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sure any of them actually arrived. I tried to send the photos to flickr but it's been several hours and they haven't shown up yet.

The other adventure we had last night was that we saw the play "Hedda Gabbler" at the Almeida. A crucial bit of the plot revolves around a fellow who has written a manuscript of great genius which he misplaces. This leads to his ruin and much unhappiness for everyone concerned. In an effort to forestall any similar crisis amongst my own circle, I feel I should record my poems immediately for posterity. Sadly, you'll just have to imagine the photos which should have accompanied them.

Greetings from the top
of the 277 bus.
Hope your party's not a flop.
Happy birthday from both of us.

Now we're on the tube.
It goes 'clickety clack'!
And, 'cause they don't use enough lube,
'Screech!' goes the rickety track!

This is a musical.
It's about a flying car.
We haven't seen this spectacle
Or driven in its star.

This is a store called Liberty.
Its wood comes from ships,
Which makes it very pretty,
If not particularly hip.

We're in a Belgian restaurant
With more beers than you could ever want.
The beers are brewed by Trappist monks.
Drink too many, and you'll totally blow some chunks.

Now we're back home,
Lying in our bed.
I'm out of clever poems
So I'll just say this instead.
Happy birthday to you.
You don't stink like poo.
Happy birthday from me.
You don't stink like pee.
Happy birthday from Vicki.
Who thinks you don't smell at all icky.
In fact, as birthday boys go,
You smell like freshly baked dough.
Happy Birthday, Uncle Pat.

Or course, my crapness as a nephew is nothing compared to my crapness as a grandson. I considered briefly trying to come up with a poem for my grand old Baba, but I was far too intimidated. The woman published books of poetry. Real poetry! Not lame-ass comic poems about poo and lube and Trappist monks, but poems about flowers and wheat fields and the prairies where she grew up.

I occasionally pretend I did some hard work in my day, planting trees in the wilds of the Liard and what not. But, my grandmother, Doris Elizabeth Yanda, was born in a sod hut in the middle of the Canadian prairies just after the turn of the century and never knew any work but hard work. She was still harvesting her own beets at the age of ninety-something. And you just know that anyone who grows their own beets is not someone who spent their early years with a silver spoon in their mouth.

She helped found the Ukrainian Woman's Association of Canada and helped broker its affiliation with the National Council of Women. I like to pretend I'm a sensitive new age guy but all I've ever really done for the cause of feminism is to marry a feminist, and that had more to do with the fact my wife is a total babe than she was destined for great things in the field of gender studies.

My Baba was also a champion weaver and made the most amazing Easter eggs. Her old art projects are in the National Museum of Canada. My old art projects were all thrown out by my parents as soon as they thought I'd forgotten about them. The woman raised tens thousands of dollars for various charities throughout her life. She raised four kids into some of the most opinionated and feisty adults I have ever known which can't have been an easy task. To think of that foursome as toddlers makes my blood run cold.

All in all, she's been a force to reckon with and my only consolation is that even if I haven't come close to matching her accomplishments so far, I have another 60 years to catch up.

And to that end, I hereby vow to devote myself more fully to my art. Here, then, is another poem. This one is dedicated to my crazy landlord who also just had a birthday.

Roses have petals.
Violets are gay.
I'll spank you with nettles
For your birthday.

(Please note that I have no intention of spanking the man with nettles. This is just an artistic conceit. I'm sure, knowing him as I do, he would be delighted to be spanked with nettles; the man's a horny old perv. But it just wouldn't be appropriate with my grandmother turning 100 and all.)

Posted by YandaMan at 5:42 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2005

Of Wind Chimes and Wine Glasses

A while ago I wrote that I was worried about losing my appreciation for music or at least for going to live gigs. Thanks to Ed Harcourt, it may slowly be coming back.

I've been to two Ed Harcourt gigs now. Last night's was at the St. James Church on Piccadilly, an absolutely beautiful venue. We sat in the gallery just above and to the left of the stage. I watched from a similar vantage point at the other gig as well. I prefer it to being front and center. It has a kind of I'm-with-the-band-backstage-groupie feel to it. The other gig was at Dingwalls in Camden (or whatever it's called now). That gig was much rowdier. There was much jumping up and down and spilled drinks and shouting. Ed brought his banjo to that gig.

St. James is not the kind of place conducive to jumping up and down or rock and roll banjo playing. It's a church, after all. What made the St. James gig stand out for me, though, was the trumpet player. Now HE was rock and roll. He was totally cool. He just did his job, ignored the crowd, and played his music when called upon. And the man didn't just play the trumpet. Oh no. He also played the xylophone, the wind-chimes, and the wine glass. This last was my favourite and completely made up for the absence of the banjo.

I used to play the wine glass on occasion after a big family dinner. Unfortunately, while I enjoyed the sound, it seemed to drive the rest of the family into the kind of frenzy exhibited by dogs reacting to a noise beyond the range of human hearing.

The technique is simple but requires a certain mastery and practice. You dip your finger in the wine to moisten it and then run it slowly around the edge of the wine glass. This produces a delightful (or possibly not) high-pitched keening noise. You have to have just the right amount of wine in the glass, of course. This involves a long calibration process. The wine is carefully poured in, and then carefully sipped out until it is at just the right level. This is usually when the person doing the calibration is too drunk to distinguish between a beautiful ringing full tone and an irritating fingernails-on-chalkboard screech.

Fortunately, trumpet-playing dude was a professional and his wine glass produced the desired ringing full tone rather than the screech. Later on in the performance, when the wine glass was no longer needed, he knocked back the contents in between bouts of trumpet playing and wind-chime tingling.

The man was a consummate professional when it came to his other instruments as well. I remember one piece in particular where he hunched over, dangling the wind chimes carefully from his teeth and hit a series of precise notes on the xylophone, tingling the chimes all the while. Very impressive. I also liked the way he used a couple of empty paper coffee cups to mute his trumpet. The man is a genius. I'm confident he could produce beautiful music given nothing but a block of spam and a feather.

His coolest performance, though, was during the last song. He sat down at a bench towards the back of the stage and methodically emptied all his pockets. He then stood up, walked to the front of the stage and played his trumpety bits. When that was over, he sat back down on the bench, and searched through the items spread beside him until he determined the least crumpled piece of paper and then rolled himself a cigarette. He had just enough time to finish this before it was time for a final blast on the trumpet. Then, while everyone was taking their bows and waving to the crowd, he put the ciggie in his mouth, grabbed a lit candle and headed for the door. Now that is the kind of coolness that can make a man believe in music again.

Posted by YandaMan at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)

July 24, 2004

Savouring the Salmon of Doubt

The Salmon of Doubt is a posthumous collection of writings (some of them unfinished) by Douglas Adams. He died in 2001. It is a book I've been meaning to read since even before it existed. Perhaps since even before Douglas Adams died. Probably since about chapter two of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That's probably when I made the quiet internal decision to read everything this man would ever write.

Despite this sacred vow, I never did buy the book. I picked it up many times in various bookstores, turned it over lovingly in my hands and thought about buying it. But I was afraid. Because if I bought it, then I might read it and then where would I be? I suppose I felt that as long as there was a book out there I hadn't read yet, I could pretend he wasn't really dead. And so I avoided it like Larry Schenker (he used to be my friend in grade school but then he borrowed a couple of my records and refused to return them; he kept insisting that I had to go to his house to get them back but he lived on the opposite side of the school -- I hate Larry Schenker).

You can't avoid things forever though. Well, some things maybe you can. I saw Larry Schenker once after grade school in a bowing alley when I was about eighteen and I still managed to avoid him. It totally put me off my game, though. I was so angry. So that's two things you owe, Schenker: my record albums and an evening of undistracted bowling.

What does all this have to do with the photo, you wonder. Well, it's of my friend Leanne.

Is it just me or are all Canadians extremely quirky and just down right odd? Douglas Adams once wrote (in the Salmon of Doubt as it happens) that "Canada is like an intelligent 35 year old woman". At the time he was contrasting it with America - "belligerent adolescent boy" and Australia - "Jack Nicholson".

I think it is a very apt description. Canadians and intelligent 35 year old woman look normal and well-behaved. They're beautiful, but classy. They have developed beyond the brash belt-skirt and bra sexuality of some younger women (and certain countries south of the 49th parallel). However, all their poise and political correctness can't hide an underlying quirkiness and humour. Just see any episode of Sex and the City for examples. They're all nuts.

My friend Leanne is both Canadian and an intelligent 35 year old woman.

Well, actually, I have no idea how old she is, but, for the sake of argument, let's say she's 35.

She stayed at our house for a couple of days when she popped over to visit her husband who lives in Iceland.

It's a long story. They met in Canada. They got married. His Visa expired. He had to go back to Iceland. They're trying to get him back in the country. Etc.

Anyway. She was here visiting. And she looks normal. And she comes from a country that is widely considered boring and predictable and safe. And what did she leave me as a parting gift?

Jam. Thirteen little pots of jam.

In my bed.

What kind of person puts little pots of jam in their host's bed? This is not a sane and normal thing to do. When one retires for the evening, one doesn't expect to end up lying on a jar of blackcurrant flavoured condiment. Jam jars are lumpy. They are uncomfortable things to sleep on.

On the other hand, the jam was quite tasty.

Leanne also left behind a copy of the Economist and a slightly dog-eared copy of The Salmon of Doubt. The latter of which I am desperately trying not to read. But I can tell even now that I'm doomed.

So, not only did she leave jam in my bed, she also killed Douglas Adams.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:27 AM | Comments (6)

May 16, 2004

Eurovision 2004

The Eurovision Song Contest is on so I thought I'd make some notes for the folks back home who may never have heard of it. It's huge here in Europe, watched much in the same way everyone watches the Oscars in North America. This year it has a television audience of 500 million. Basically, all the countries in Europe put forward a pop group and a song and the continent votes for their favourite. The performances are almost always universally terrible. I can think of only one band that went anywhere after Eurovision and that was Abba.

Many people hold Eurovision parties where they boggle at the absolute tawdry crapness of it all. The British presenter, Terry Wogan, makes snide comments through the show and reportedly drinks Bailey's steadily throughout the evening. He's been doing this for years. The first time I saw the show I was flabbergasted at how rude he was, but now his behaviour strikes me as entirely appropriate, and really, that's what a Eurovision party is all about. Everyone gets hammered and laughs at the appallingness of it all. Wogan is just lucky enough to get paid for it.

The voting is politically charged. You're not allowed to vote for your own country, but unofficial alliances have grown up over the years. Turkey usually gives most of their votes to Germany and Germany usually gives most of their votes to Turkey. And, of course, people tend to vote for their neighbours.

Anyway, the show is beginning now…

Turkey won last year. The winning country hosts the next year's Eurovision. And the show begins with last year's winner singing last year's song. The most notable thing about her performance is that she has a bare midriff and what appears to be a very prominent caesarean scar which she has packed with glitter or possibly diamonds. It's the perfect beginning to Eurovision -- just the right level of glamour, tackiness, and weirdness.

And now this year's entries begin…

Spain
Quite Spanish. Basically a low rent Enrique Iglesias. He's a sexy boy, but he can't dance.

Austria
Imitation boy band trio. Sweet Mother of Boredom! Please let there be a technical fault so I can't hear them any more.

Norway
Time to pour some drinks.

France
There is a bald Woman wondering around the stage on stilts. No idea why. She's not singing or playing an instrument. She's just a bald woman on stilts.

Serbia and Montenegro
Very folk songy. The kind of song you'd imagine would bring tears to the eyes of a Montenegran goat herder (provided he'd had quite a bit to drink).

Malta
Stunningly crap duet with weird little operatic bits of vocal high-jinks from the female. The guy looks like he's escaped from a high school production of Grease.

Netherlands
Two guys with a guitar on stools. The three guys in dark suits playing backup fingersnaps in the background are cool though.

Germany
My favourite so far. Dude with a nice voice and a slightly jazzy backup band. You could actually imagine him making a living as a musician. It probably won't stand a chance in the voting though as it's neither very poppy nor very folky.

Albania
Best pop song so far. It's catchy if nothing else. Still prefer Germany though.

Ukraine
And suddenly the stage is awash in Vikings for some bizarre reason, apparently led by Xena, Warrior Princess. And, yes, the Vikings appear to be doing the Riverdance. Full marks for bizarreness. Okay, now the Vikings have whips. I have no idea where they came from. This should get the kinky vote.

Croatia
Nothing much to say about this entry, except that I met a previous Croatian entry at my friend John S's New Year's in February party. Any music is infinitely better when it's live. I spent several hours that night dancing happily to the kind of Croatian folk music that I am now mercilessly belittling on Eurovision.

Bosnia and Herzegovina
Welcome to the Eighties. Billy Idol surrounded by scantily clad dancers. Well, he looks a bit like Billy, but he sings with a slight lisp. If that man isn't gay, neither is Graham Norton.

Commercial Break
20,000 people outside in Hamburg watching the show. But when the camera switches to the presenter for the outside party in Istanbul, she has no idea she is on air and so we just watch her for about 10 to 15 seconds while she wipes her nose and looks bored and the on-stage presenters shout at her in Turkish. A classic Eurovision moment.

Belgium
One female backup dancer in workout shorts, tanktop and boots, and one male backup dancer with a red Mohawk. Again, lots of rocking dance machine.

Russia
Solo female singer with four backup circus acrobat gymnast dudes with their upper bodies dyed, respectively, purple, red, blue, and green. They're kind of cool, actually. And any distraction is welcome as the poor singer is out of tune. I assume she was picked because she is small and light. It's a heavily choreographed piece and every so often she ends up standing on one or other of the brightly coloured dancer dudes.

F.Y.R. Macedonia
Okay, I thought I was going to have nothing to say about this one, but now the Tom Jones sound alike on stage has just had two long red ribbons pulled out of his armpits by his backup dancers. WTF?

Greece
Okay. There seems to be a theme starting here. The solo male singer from Greece has just pulled two red scarves out of the butts of his two backup dancers. Oh, and now the backup singers have ripped their white suits off to reveal sparkly tinsel-like bras and panties. Oh, and now they've ripped the singer's white Don Johnson jacket off. And now he's done a back handspring for us. Lovely.

Iceland
Where the hell is Bjork when you need her? This man is trying to be Celine Dion except that he can't actually sing.

Ireland
It's a one man boy band. But the world already has one Ronan Keating. No hope here.

Poland
Mmm… Very sexy outfit if nothing else. Pretty much a see-through tight black scarf over some black underwear.

England
Not too bad, actually. Much better than last year when England came dead last (partially because the duo performing couldn't stay in tune). This guy sounds vaguely Country & Western. Dull, but not painful.

Cyprus
I think I actually like this one, in a cheesy kind of way. She wants to be Celine Dion as well, but at least she can sing. Vicki and I have a good friend from Cyprus who is currently drinking in a pub. I call her to find she's home now watching on the telly. It must be cool to have an entry you can be proud of.

Turkey
Punk-Ska-Klezmer kind of thing with a touch of Tom Jones hip-hop vocal styling. This is definitely my favourite after 30 seconds. Good rock and roll showmanship. And it's a Turkish guy with red hair. You've got to love that.

Romania
Sweet Mother of Jesus! That's an impressive leather bra! I didn't know they made Barbie dolls that can sing. A text from a Dutch friend points out that she looks like a bit like a skinny half-naked Ivana Trump. Well, 90% naked, more like.

Sweden
Typically Swedish. Absolutely beautiful, but a bit dull. She looks like she came as a flat pack from the same factory that built Helena Christianson and Heidi Klum.

The voting
And now the voting begins. 36 countries entered this year and they all get to vote. Of the 36, 24 made it to the final. Each country voting assigns a certain number of points to the top ten countries. The lowest of the ten gets 1 point. The favourite of the ten gets 12 points. For some reason no one gets nine or eleven points. I have no idea why. It's just one of the endearing quirks of Eurovision.

The voting seems to go on longer than the performance of the actual songs and is almost as bizarre. In the end, the Ukraine wins narrowly over Serbia. Then there is a bit of a delay because the Ukranian group didn't realize they might win and would have to perform again. The prize is presented by last years's winner. Unfortunately, the poor woman loses her shoe in the grating at the edge of the stage and a stage hand has to yank it out of the grill and give it back to her. Now they're performing the song again. The only thing I can think of is that everyone in Europe got a bit confused and thought it was a Xena look a like contest.

For more info including pictures of the performers, lyrics of all the songs, and how everyone voted, go to the Eurovision official site.

It's over. And, once again, I'm baffled why I spent the last 3 hours watching this. Oh well, it's marginally better than pop idol, I suppose.

Posted by YandaMan at 10:56 PM | Comments (3)

Turning 40

Okay, it's happened. I'm old.

Just a couple of months ago I was a young cool hipster in my 30s. Now I'm am boring old fart in my 40s. Sweet Mother of Jesus, the transition has been sudden and painful! The most obvious indicator is what is known in clinical circles as "the supermodel reflex".

A year ago I talked my way into the afterparty for the launch of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. It was easily the highlight of my social calendar that year. I had a fantastic time and I doubt my eyes have ever been happier.

This year was the 40th anniversary of the swimsuit edition. I automatically received an invite because of my attendance at the last party. But I just couldn't get excited about it. Deep within my heart, something was wrong. I no longer cared. My brain, thinking logically about it, just couldn't believe it. I forced myself to tell people how excited I was but it just didn't seem to matter. I lied to them. Yes. I lied to my friends and colleagues. That's what happens when you turn 40. You start lying to people. No doubt that is why you almost never see a politician in their 20s and 30s. They simply haven't developed the tools for the job.

I accepted the invite, of course. And then cast about my immediate circle to find someone to go with me. My wife couldn't come. My crazy landlord also wasn't interested. (Now THAT is just bizarre! If I've turned old, he must have turned dead). The only person I could get to come with me was my friend B, who is without a doubt one of the most gorgeous women I know. So, now, not only was I going to a supermodel party but I was also going with a companion who would have fit right in. People would think I was a supermodel househusband. I'd be considered safe. Rachel Hunter would chat me up; invite me back to her place; we'd become fast friends; Vicki and I would become regulars at her country estate; we'd have weekly champagne hot tub orgies.

Except that I didn't really want to go. It's not B. I love B to bits. I'm happy to go out for a drink with her at the drop of a hat. I just worried that I wouldn't fit in. And who would I talk to? And what if it's smoky and loud? And besides it starts too late. And I have tons of work to do. And what if they play that new hip hoop music and I can't dance to it? And I just didn't seem to care.

"WTF! It's a party awash with supermodels! They'll be close to butt-naked! Go!" That's what the logical part of my brain was saying. The emotional part of my heart was saying, "Ah, the hell with it, I'm tired." When I was young (e.g. last year) my brain and heart seemed to take opposite positions in this debate.

BRAIN: Maybe you shouldn't go. You're almost forty. You won't fit in. Vicki might get jealous. You should get some sleep.

HEART: Supermodels! Yummy! Go!

As it happens, I came down with a vicious cold days before the event. My heart and brain continued to duke it out:

BRAIN: This is perfect. You can now go the party. You can stay there all night and no one will blink if you call in sick the next day. They'll assume it's because of the disease.

HEART: Bleaurgh. I feel awful. Must sleep. Young girls noisy. Yuck.

In the end I made a compromise (a very middle-aged, boring thing to do). I called in sick the day of the event. I lied to my BRAIN and told it it was so I could get well enough to go to the party. My HEART knew better.

I didn't go to the party. Instead, I lay awake all that night in a blind panic about all the work that I was supposed to be doing and trying to ignore my brain that was screaming at me about how if I'm awake and miserable I'd have a far better chance of cheering up if I was drinking vodka martinis and lounging on a rose petal bedecked canopy bed watching some of the most beautiful women in world writhe about on a dance floor.

(Yes, the venue had rose petal bedecked canopy beds as a standard feature).

And then, due to the lack of sleep caused by my stupid-ass brain, my cold was even worse the next morning and so I skipped off work that day as well. This no doubt led to the assumption by my work colleagues that I had gone to the party and had a hideously fantastic and decadent time. I hate my brain.

Posted by YandaMan at 10:12 PM | Comments (4)

March 18, 2004

Scrabble Link

One of the main activities for me on the Castle Weekend was Scrabble. I love Scrabble but haven´t played it much lately. I managed to work myself up into such a stressed out tizzy that I didn´t actually do much during the weekened except stand in a corner and vibrate. Scrabble was one of the few activities I took part in. A couple of the people I was playing with had never played before, so I thought I should pass on this useful Scrabble link which I just ran across.

Back when I when I was a serious young Scrabble addict I tried to memorise the official list of 2 letter scrabble words. This site contains the next level up in stuff you should memorise, including letters you can add to the two letter words to make three letter words and words containing the letter Q but not the letter U.

I suspect if one were to learn these babies, lexical ass-kicking would naturally follow. Enjoy.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

March 8, 2004

Lost: One obsessive passion

Of all the things to lose! Of all the cruel tricks that fate could play!

I think somehow I lost my ability to appreciate music.

I went to a gig a few days ago with my Crazy Landlord. "The best gig of the year so far!" according to him. Admittedly, it's still February but he seemed convinced it wouldn't be surpassed in the near future.

Objectively, I knew it was a good gig. The venue was La Scala which is a lovely rambling place with multiple rooms and bars and not entirely obvious traffic routes between them. I'd been there a couple of times before and we managed to find our way to this little balcony thing right above the stage. It's a great vantage point to watch a gig from.

The warmup band, Ella Guru, seemed to have an affection for funny-sounding instruments. Their eight piece band included a ukulele, a vibraphone, and a flugelhorn. And it all sounded pretty good.

Even before this the night had begun in a promising fashion. When we arrived there was a huge queue so we went to have a pint and wait for it to dwindle a bit. We popped into a bar called Sahara Nights. It was pretty much decorated as you would expect a bar called Sahara Nights to be decorated -- lots of dark corners and tassels and red velvet draperies and multiple levels and overstuffed cushions and just plain magic. Eight women were taking part in a belly-dancing class on the dance floor. Above their heads was a huge plasma screen television showing a football match. The goalkeeper had just been kneed in the face and the TV showed a close up of blood literally pouring from his forehead. Oblivious to this gruesome scene, the women below continued to writhe to Arabian pop. It was a wonderfully surreal sight. And they had good crisps.

The headliners, the band we had gone to La Scala to hear, were "The Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-la-la Band". The band was formed by one of the founders of "Godspeed, You Black Emperor". They played some really beautiful music. At least, objectively, from somewhere high above myself, I judged that it was really excellent stuff. Original, haunting, with a dash of rock and roll feedback to keep you awake. It should have inspired me. John certainly seemed to eat it up. But me, I wasn't inspired. I was mainly hot and thirsty and uncomfortable and a little bored. They were even a Canadian band. I should have pretended to be crazy about them for patriotic reasons if nothing else, but I just couldn't. Fortunately, John was dying for a drink as well and so we slithered our way through the crowd and went to the top level bar and got some water.

There are a number of booths in the top level bar at La Scala and we ensconced ourselves in one of them. Only one of the other booths was occupied - by the ukulele flugelhorn warmup band. Everyone else was crowded around the railing tying to get a glimpse of A Silver Mount Zion. You couldn't see anything from the booths, but, damn, they were comfy and there was a table to put your drink on and it was comparatively cool and you stretch out and, anyway, you could hear the music as well as you could fifteen feet away at the railing. So why not sit in the booth?

Well, because you're obviously not a real fan if you sit in the booth! You have to strain like a constipated lemming to get as close to the source as possible! That's what you do if you appreciate music.

And so that's why I'm worried. I mean I enjoyed the gig (at least once I was safely inside the booth, I enjoyed it). But obviously something has happened to me over the years. I've lost a little bit of my passion. Maybe it's down the back of the couch. Or maybe the cat ate it. But it's gone and I may never get it back.

Thank God I still care about vodka and chocolate chip cookies.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:08 PM

February 22, 2004

Magically Delicious

Went I went to bed, there was only Vicki and myself in the house. This morning it is awash with Irish. There are at least eight of them. It's like a box of Lucky Charms exploded in the house. Where do they all come from?

Well, I know where they come from. They shag like rabbits, the little buggers. Two of them are banging away even as I write this. Tomorrow, no doubt, there'll be 16 of the freckle-faced midgets dancing jigs around the kitchen, making tea.

Oh well, at least they're a charming race (for the most part) and don't take up too much room.

Posted by YandaMan at 10:28 AM

February 12, 2004

Reasons to be cheerful: 1 to 3

Ha! Dave Gorman has a typo on page 287 of his fancy-ass book -- "too" instead of "to"!

Other reasons to see the morning as half full:

There's a guy wearing a purple suit and a porkpie hat on my bus.

I recognise the book the girl in front of me is reading. It's "Bridget Jones Diary". I like knowing what other people are reading. I feel reassured. How could anyone who reads the same kind of books I do be a terrorist or a knife-wielding madwoman?

Posted by YandaMan at 10:03 AM | Comments (3)

February 11, 2004

Morning Half Full

I've decided I'm a "morning half empty" person. My landlord is a "morning half full" kind of person. He wakes up every morning thinking "Woo Hoo! I didn't die in my sleep last night! More air to breathe! More fun to have! More wine to drink!"

I, on the other hand, wake up slightly disappointed that I didn't expire the night before. "Bugger," I think, "another day to struggle through. What if I get hit by a bus today? What if I stub my toe? What if I develop an allergy to the colour orange? I love orange."

The worst part of this discrepancy is the singing.

My landlord sings in the morning. I stumble downstairs wary of everything around me and ready to flee back to the duvet at a moment's provocation. He bounces around the kitchen like Tigger on speed.

"Hello! Welcome! Bienvenue! How are you?"

"Fine," I grunt. "Must drink tea. Stand away from the kettle."

He then giggles and skips out of the room singing some obscure Eighties punk band track.

You'd think his cheerfulness would cause me to perk up a bit. It does not. It just makes me even more depressed. Not only do I have to worry about the colour orange, but now I have to worry about the fact I'm a grumpy old man.

Fortunately, my mood dissipates once I get on my bike and I'm usually quite chipper by the time I arrive at work. I think it's the traffic. I find chaos soothing. Or it may just be all the bus exhaust I end up breathing. Whatever. By the time I put my bike away and sit at my desk there is a smile on my lips and glee in my heart.

Posted by YandaMan at 8:53 PM | Comments (1)

February 8, 2004

Mid-life Crisis

My Charming Spouse and I went up to Birmingham yesterday to sign the lease on her new place. She's teaching at the University of Wolverhampton, which as you may guess, is not actually in Birmingham. It's not in Wolverhampton either. It's in Walsall. But she couldn't find anywhere reasonably priced and unhellish in Walsall. Thus, the place in Birmingham.

Foolishly, I bought a book for the train journey and it turned out to be quite good. Whenever this happens, I am plunged into a mid-life crisis. It may sound odd to have repeated mid-life crises, but who among us really knows how long they are going to live? I have been having mid-life crises since I was seven years old. Hopefully, I'll go on having them until I'm well over a hundred.

Anyway, the crux of my frequent mid-life crises is that I haven't written a book myself yet. And the books I'm reading lately are the kind of books I could actually imagine myself writing: “Round Ireland with a Fridge”, “Playing the Moldovans at Tennis”, “French Revolutions”, “Do Not Pass Go”, and now, “Dave Gorman's Googlewack Adventure”. This last was especially painful as it is about a guy (Dave Gorman) who has a mid-life crisis because he hasn't written a novel yet, and then proceeds to go off on an adventure and write a really funny book about it which I end up buying and reading on a train.

All these books are about guys about my age going on weirdass adventures (usually involving some kind of drunken bet and a great deal of travelling) and then writing a book about it -- a funny book.

I started a book once, not really a novel because it was based on a true story. Basically, I went on a blind date which involved buying a car and driving all the way across Canada with a friend to meet a woman who was unfortunately in a mental institution when I arrived. Bit sad really, but with a touch of Movie of the Week bounce-backness at the end. We did have that date -- two in fact. The first one was in the patient's lounge. We played pool. I kicked her ass. No doubt because she was heavily medicated at the time. Then we had another date once she was back home. This one was far more pleasant: a picnic by the ocean and then a movie. The movie was Barton Fink, which perhaps was the best choice for someone recently released from a mental institution, but it worked out all right.

Anyway, that was a pretty good adventure. I could have churned out something from that with a bit of effort. It could have been ME that sparked off this genre instead of that gangly bastard Tony Hawks. Although, thinking about it, the genre may have begun somewhat earlier. “'Round the World in 80 days” is kind of like “'Round Ireland with a Fridge”. Not quite as funny perhaps, but still based on a stupid bet.

Maybe that's what I need -- a stupid bet. If only someone would bet me a pint to do something stupid. That seems an appropriate way to deal with a mid-life crisis: booze, gambling, and idiocy.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:01 PM

January 12, 2004

Thumb Flirt

I read an article on how to be a super flirt in "Take a Break" magazine. I can't remember most of it, but the one piece of advice that really stuck out for me was to make sure you always keep your thumbs on display.

Since reading this piece of advice I have become obsessed with my thumbs. Are they on display or not? If I wiggle them, am I acting like a shameless hussy? (Or whatever the male equivalent of a hussy is -- a hussar, perhaps?) Do I have sexy thumbs? Should I get a manicure? If I get a manicure, will they give me a discount if I only want my thumbs buffed?

I've also been casually checking out other people's thumbs. One of my co-workers is always chewing on the edge of her thumb. Is that supposed to be some kind of sign? If it's some kind of phallic replacement thing, I imagine it would be quite painful. If someone asks me to thumb wrestle, what are they really trying to say? If someone has ugly thumbs, does it mean they will be a terrible lover?

Anyway, that's what's been on my mind lately -- thumbs.

Posted by YandaMan at 7:32 PM

January 7, 2004

Loss of Face, Loss of Fame

Well, I think I've blown my chance for minor league TV celebrity fame. Regular, devoted, slavishly obsessed readers will know that I was approached to be on a reality TV game show about how to pick up babes. It was all set for February. They were even going to pay me real money!

But yesterday I got a phone call from the director. After a few seconds of light conversation I could tell that he was sizing me up to see if I could talk funny as well as write funny. I fear I did not do well. I mean, My God! I'm Canadian. And I'm a geek. Hello! Call the Boredom Police.

So he's asking me all these questions about how to pick up women and my brain is whirring because I have no idea. Did anyone in his company even read the blog article about my supermodel party? My entire success with women, such as it is, is based on huge dollops of blind luck, an unabashed tendency to dance like a spastic ungulate, and the deep-seated certainty that I have absolutely no hope of seducing them so I might as well try to befriend them.

It was quite disturbing. He asked me things like, "what kind of lines do I think work on women?" How the hell would I know? It's been more than a dozen years since I was single, and even then I don't think I ever used a line on a woman. I dimly recall (when very drunk many many years ago) beckoning a waitress over and saying in a stage whisper, "You know, I'm not wearing any socks."

But, even then, the line was meant to be ironic and I was actually trying to impress a women sitting at my table (once again a friend of mine – God it's hard to seduce your friends!). And I suppose it worked. The waitress fled in fear, but my friend laughed. Never did sleep with her though.

So I'm talking to this guy on the phone and it's becoming clear to me that he's looking for a suave lounge lizard type of guy and I have to come up with something funny to say and I'm stuck. And I start worrying that I'm blowing my chance to be on a reality tv game show and then I start worrying that I'm concerned about blowing my chance to be on a reality TV game show and how pathetic is that?

And then I get distracted thinking of various guys I could recommend in my place. There was a guy I knew back when I was treeplanting named Preston. When we hit town for a night off he would never bother to get a hotel room and just rely on picking up some woman in the bar -- partly for the sex and partly just to save the price of a room. Now he must have had a few tricks up his sleeve. He would know what lines work on a woman. And then there's my crazy landlord who has had more sexual partners that I have red blood cells.

And so, of course, being distracted, I'm just answering in monosyllables and the guy laughs every now and then but he's a Kiwi and they're easily amused and he works in TV and can I trust him and it just hits me that really, I'm quite dull. And so I panic and start telling him the story about how my wife proposed to me after I impressed her with some frantic air guitar to the song "You Shook Me All Night Long" by ACDC. It was on the empty dance floor of the Fort Nelson Hotel bar in Buttnowhereville, Northern B.C. but it's too late and he obviously doesn't want to hear it. And he hangs up with the immortal line, "We'll call you."

And so, I think, "that's it; no Jade Goody type fame for me." Bugger.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:22 PM | Comments (3)

January 4, 2004

Spoons!

We had some friends over just before Christmas and ended up playing a card game called Spoons. It's a grand game. Like that other Sport of Kings known as politics, it's all about passing the buck, violence, and greed.

The rules are simple. Everyone starts with four playing cards in their hand and then the dealer takes a card from the deck and discards one from her hand. The next person picks up that discarded card and does the same. The goal is to get four of a kind. As soon as one person gets four of a kind, they grab a spoon from the pile of spoons in the middle of the table. Then everyone else has to grab a spoon. The catch is that there is one less spoon on the table than there are players. And that's when the violence kicks in.

It's kind of like musical chairs, but with spoons. And no music. And everyone is sitting around a table instead of running in circles. And there are cards.

The person left spoonless at the end of the round suffers a forfeit of some kind. Last night they were just given a letter and were out of the game once they had spelled "donkey". How hilarious is that! Man, we laughed when Shields ended up being the Donkey. Hee! Hee! Hee!

Of course, things aren't always so civilized. When I was a teenager I played strip spoons a couple of times. In this variant, the stakes are much higher. I remember one particular game at Iain Ramadallah's house in which things were getting a bit edgy. In particular, Dawn Bannerman had lost everything but her panties and a buttoned shirt. I believe Iain was wearing her bra as a hat. The cards were passing fast and furious. Suddenly, Derrick got four of a kind, grabbed a spoon and smashed his fist down on the remaining spoons. They flew all over the room. I was the lucky one. One of the spoons struck me in the forehead and dropped in my lap. Everyone, except Derrick and I, threw back their chairs and began scrambling over the floor. One by one people emerged victorious with a spoon clutched in their grasp. And then, directly across from me, Dawn Bannerman stood up empty-handed, looking defeated.

But what's this? Stacy Horton was also spoonless. There must be one spoon remaining somewhere. And then they both spotted it. The last spoon had landed directly behind my chair. Stacy raced around the table to get it. Dawn had no time for such niceties and leapt on to the table, landing on her knees just in front of me. The buttons on her blouse, which were already under some strain, popped off; her shirt flew open; Iain's table snapped in half, propelling Dawn onto my lap and her naked boobs into my face. We fell over backwards onto the spoon just as Stacy arrived. They were both too intent on getting the spoon to regard me as anything more than an inconvenient obstacle and scrambled all over me, their hands pawing and clawing and reaching into unmentionable places. It was the best sex I had ever had up to that point.

That game remains the highlight of my spoons playing career.

(although I have had better sex since then)

Posted by YandaMan at 10:41 AM | Comments (2)

December 15, 2003

The Trouble with little Green Stickers

One of the problems with living in a foreign land is that your gifts come labelled as to their contents courtesy of that evil green custom's stamp. Usually this isn't a problem. I avert my eyes. I stick a post-it over the offending little bastard. Or I just rip off the outer covering and hope the contents have been double-wrapped.

Not this time though. This time my good intentions were thwarted. All because my crazy landlord has no knowledge of meat curing techniques.

To be honest I'd kind of guessed what was in the package before the incident in question. It came from the west coast of Canada. It was a long flat rectangular box that was vaguely squishy. Have you guessed yet? Yes, Smoked Salmon. Yummy smoked salmon. Good for what ails you. And it's a tasteful orangey-pink colour. Brightens up any meal. Yay! I like smoked salmon.

But, of course I wasn't sure. It might not have been smoked salmon. It might have been, say, a really big novelty tie. Or maybe an inflatable hammock. Or a brand new Rolex cleverly wrapped to look and feel like a box of smoked salmon.

But my crazy landlord forced the issue.

"Hey, shouldn't you put that in the fridge?" he said.

"Why would I put it in the fridge? Do you know something I don't?"

"Well, it just looks like the kind of thing you should put in the fridge."

"Nonsense! It looks like an inflatable hammock!"

"Yeah, but you can tell what it is..." he said. "And it should probably go in the fridge."

"No," I said firmly, "No you can't tell."

"Sure you can. It's written right there." And then the little varmint pointed at the sticker.

What is it about fingers? Why do we follow where they lead? What makes them the messiah of all digits? He pointed. My eyes followed and then I knew.

I knew absolutely. There was no doubt. My package contained smoked salmon. I sat down, deflated, all the joy I had built up as a little tyke fled my body. I now knew what I was getting for Christmas. And yes, I was happy with it, and yes, when the time came I would eat it with relish. Well, not with relish as in the green pickled spread, but with vigour and enthusiasm; you know what I mean. But the mystery was gone. That amazing energy you get from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Christmas had dissipated. And why? Because my close friend and landlord thought because something said "fish" it meant "refrigerate instantly or risk death".

I sighed. "It's smoked salmon. Why do you think they smoked it in the first place? So it will keep. That's why the art of smoking meat was invented: as a preservative. Plus the thing is probably vacuum-sealed anyway. Trust me. It will keep 'til Christmas."

"Okay. I was just worried."

"It's all right. Everything will be fine."

It was a small happening. The entire conversation took less than a minute. And I bear my dear semi-departed landlord no ill will.

However, I now harbour a secret burning vendetta against Canada Customs. It is no coincidence that those stickers are the same colour as the Grinch. You can be sure the next time I cross the border it will be carrying diamonds which have been hollowed out and carefully packed with opiates and more than my duty-free allotment of cheap cigarettes and booze. And you can be damn sure I won't be wearing any damn green sticker.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:08 PM | Comments (1)

December 7, 2003

Me Missus, the Scholar

(more pics)

My wife is now a Doctor of Philosophy. I know this for a fact because I was at the convocation ceremony in the historic metropolis of Lancaster. This was the latest in a long series of such ceremonies. She also has a diploma, a bachelor of arts degree, and a Masters. I'm very proud. Years of study... Ground-breaking research... Endless toil... A thesis you could choke an elephant with... Yada, yada, yada...

But this blog is all about me! And my achievements. (Or, in this case, failures.) So, yep, my spouse is a Doctor of Philosophy. She sauntered up to the podium in her funny gown. And her name was read out. And I was extremely proud. Nice work, but let's get back to me.

I have no diploma or degree of any kind. This quite an accomplishment considering I spent nine years in various post-secondary educational institutions.

The closest I came was very nearly receiving a journalism diploma from what has recently been renamed the Leslie Nielsen School of Communication. Leslie Nielsen, for those who don't recognise the name, is best known as the star of the Naked Gun movies.

I am somewhat surprised an actor best known for portraying a white-haired buffoon of a police detective was chosen to give his name to a school of journalism and web design. Still, better than a politician, I suppose. The same college also has a theatre department. Why didn't they name the theatre department after him? Surely, that makes more sense.

The college that is home to the Leslie Nielsen School of Communication, Investigative Journalism, and Advanced Gurning is Grant MacEwan Community College. It also has a dance programme, although possibly not for long. The Powers That Be have suspended registration for this programme for the upcoming year. These would, no doubt, be the same Powers that decided to name the Journalism department after a Hollywood comedian.

I mention the dance programme because that is where my wife got her very first diploma. In fact, we met in the halls of this fine institution. Or, more accurately, we met on the stage.

I was a young lad studying journalism. She was a young lass studying dance. I should have known that I wasn't cut out to be a REAL journalist - one of those hard-hitting, investigative types covering important world events. When we were given our story assignments, I hid in the back as they read out:

"St. Albert council meeting? Yes, Phil, you take that one. Anyone want to do the courts today? Right, Marilyn, that's yours. And the School Board? Rob? Good work. Okay, I've got a photo-call for the new Dance show?"

I leapt from the darkness and shot my hand into the air. "Me, oh please! Me! Me! Me! Me!"

I mean, really, which was the more intelligent choice? Sit in a town council meeting for three hours waiting for an argument to break out, or take pictures of athletic young women in skimpy costumes. At the time, it seemed a pretty easy choice.

The first time I saw my wife was on one of these photo calls. She wore a white, low-cut dress, and was velcroed to the ceiling of the theatre by several long white streamers. She writhed like a moth caught in a spider web. The streamers unvelcroed themselves from the ceiling and floated towards the ground. Very sexy! And very photogenic. Another easy day at the office.

I didn't talk to her that day. We didn't really meet until quite a bit later. One night I ended up sitting next to her in the Ritz Diner. We treated the Ritz pretty much like a pub, ordering one plate of fries and several pitchers of beers. When I sat down, Vicki and her friend, Veronica, first tried to convince me they were twins. This failed on the grounds that they didn't look at all alike and were born three years apart. Then, they tried to convince me they were sisters. I pointed out they had different last names.

"Well, we're half sisters," said Vicki.

"Yes, we have the same father," said Veronica.

"And so why don't you have the same last name, then?" I asked. Veronica yelped as Vicki kicked her under the table, but she quickly recovered.

"Well, Vicki's dad hates my Mom."

"Yeah, hates her," said Vicki. "He hates her so much that he changed his own name." They both nodded their heads violently.

"It was not an amicable divorce," said Veronica.

It was yet another sign of how poorly suited I was for real journalism that I believed this story for years afterwards.

I had a great time that night. So great, in fact, that on the way back to my friend Dave's house I thought I could still do a front somersault. A couple of years ago, when I had been failing to get a creative writing degree at another University, I was on the gymnastics team. I should point out that I wasn't showing off for the girls. We'd parted company with them at the diner. I was just feeling exultant and really really happy and so I ran and launched myself into the air.

I might have actually succeeded if I hadn't overanalysed the thing. I remembered a piece of advice from when I first learned this trick. Most people don't get enough air. They just rotate without getting any height. And so I focussed on my lift and got lots of height. I just forgot to put much effort into rotating. And so, sure enough, I landed smack on my ass and broke my tailbone (or coccyx, if you want the technical term).

There's not much medical science can do for a fractured coccyx. We all hear about how someone or other has their ass in a sling, but I'm here to tell you there is no such thing as an ass-sling. You break your ass and the only thing they give you at the hospital is the advice that it may hurt when you sit down. They are absolutely right. When you have a broken ass, it hurts when you sit down. Yep. More than a little. It's a good idea to avoid it for the couple of months it takes to heal. Sleeping on your back is also a bad idea. Sleeping on your front isn't much better. Standing is not so bad, as long as you are slightly bent forward and leaning on something. Moving also hurts. In general, it's a good idea to simply avoid breaking your ass if possible.

At this point, by the way, I still didn't have Vicki's number. I didn't get it until much later. It's amazing I got it at all. I mentioned how I haven't graduated from anything past high school. That's true, but I did convocate once.

School was finished, I had dropped one of my core journalism courses which meant I wasn't eligible for graduation. I'd just completed a month long internship at a small daily paper and was pretty certain I didn't want to be a reporter anyway. I was back in the city and it was convocation day. I happened to walk by Dave's house and noticed he was back as well. I banged on his door and woke him up.

"Dave! What are you doing? You're supposed to be graduating in an hour!"

He had no idea. He'd just finished his internship and had driven down from some Northern town and had completely forgotten about the ceremony. We rushed over to my place, got dolled up and sped to the Auditorium. Several hundred people from the college were graduating that day. It was madness. We were late. I saw Vicki and the other dancers filing into the auditorium. Our colleagues in journalism were next in line. Dave and I ran to the robe room. They asked us for our names. Dave gave his.

I hesitated for a second and said, "Robert Allan Watts".

Rob was a friend of ours who I knew was still in the States. I figured he wouldn’t mind and then I could hang out with my friends while they waited to cross the stage. So I pretended to be Rob and they gave me his robes and I filed out with Dave into the theatre.

There was a bit of a wait, of course – all those art students, all those business students. Vicki sat a couple of rows ahead of me and we tried to talk but it was too loud and so she passed me a note written on her program. "Tell me a story" it said. And so I wrote a story about hundreds of penguins sailing on an ice floe and how two of them amongst all the penguins became special friends and, oh I can’t remember now. I passed the note back up to her and she wrote on it and sent it back. "That’s a great story. You’ll have to finish it some time. Call me…" and gave her phone number.

Very clever. Very subtle. You should be able to foresee by the next series of actions who would go on to become the Doctor and who would spend the next eleven years planting trees in the swamps of northern BC and Alberta.

I looked at the piece of paper and grinned. Then I thought for a moment and finished the story on the same piece of paper and sent it back to her.

She returned it. "That’s great," the note said. "But what happens next?" Her phone number was circled this time.

I thought for a moment. What happens next? Well, jeez, that’s the end of the story. But I wracked my brain and came up with a denouement and managed to fit that in what space there was left on the program.

The next note that came back to me was slightly more blunt. On it, Vicki had written "This is my number. KEEP IT! Tell me a story on another day! CALL ME!"

And so I called her, and I told her a story and eventually we were married.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:55 PM | Comments (10)

December 5, 2003

Yellow Soap

We've got a bar of soap in the house that looks like a big slice of lemon. I picked it out. I hoped it would smell all lemony and invigorate me in the shower. Unfortunately, it just smells like soap. Tastes like soap too. Yuck!

It does produce a lemony yellow lather though. But this isn't a good thing. The lather turns the water yellow and I have to keep checking I'm not inadvertently peeing in the shower. It's most disconcerting.

Anyway, that brings me to my advice for today. Make sure you smell (and taste) your soap in the shop before you bring it home. And try to pick a colour which doesn't resemble a bodily fluid. That is all.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:14 PM | Comments (4)

November 30, 2003

All I Want for Christmas

A number of other bloggers have links to an Amazon Wish List or similar. This seems wildly optimistic to me. I can't believe a stranger would ever actually buy them anything off these lists. However, I suppose it is a handy place for your Mom to find out what you want for Christmas. If anyone has actually had anyone buy them anything off one of these lists, please let me know.

That said, I do buy lottery tickets from time to time even though I know that winning the lottery is impossible from any rational point of view. I suppose my thinking is that winning the lottery would probably change my life. And so, if any mathematically impossible event is going to happen to me, I would rather it was winning several million quid compared with a complete stranger buying me an O'Reilly book. And it is Christmas, the season of greed and goodwill to all, so I'm going to share with you, my anonymous and hopefully hideously rich reader, what I want for Christmas: A box at the Royal Albert Hall.

Apparently, one is up for grabs right now. This doesn't happen very often.. It's box number 70 and seats 5. It's actually a lease for 863 years. The price is £250,000. I'm not sure how you'd wrap it, but I would like it delivered by Christmas because Cirque du Soleil is coming to the Royal Albert Hall in early January and I'd like to take some friends to it.

Actually, when it comes down to it, the box would be nice, but I'd be content with just the use of someone else's box for any night the Cirque is performing. I'm a bit of a circus acrobatics junkie. It's something I've always meant to pick up as a career. Admittedly, it's getting a bit late in the day for me. I suspect many of the really good acrobats start training sometime before they turn 40 (which only gives me about four months).

So, for now, at least until I start training in earnest, I suppose I have to be content with watching from the sidelines. Surely, there's an upper-class twit somewhere who must have room for me in their box.

I mean, if, as seems to be the case, some of those boxes are owned by actual people and not just corporations, they must be empty a good portion of the time. How often would you need to go see the same show? Surely, one of you out there is going to have a box that would otherwise be empty in early January. Even if you have just a couple of seats free (it would be rude to go without my missus), that would be fine. We'd be very quiet and not drink all the champagne. I promise.

Anyway, that's what I want. I can always get work to buy any O'Reilly books I might need. But there is no way I could get my boss to splurge a quarter of a million pounds on five not particularly comfortable chairs and some red drapery. So, if you can help, if you're Earl Spencer say, (I happen to know he has quite a nice box) please contact me and let me know how I can pick up my gift. A card might be nice as well.

Thank you in anticipation.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:31 PM

November 25, 2003

Fame, Shame, or Humility

A while ago I wrote about Dancing with a Supermodel. Today, I received the following email:

Hi !

We are making a light hearted documentary on how to get the partner of your dreams, be they a millionaire, a celebrity, 20 years younger than you or just staggeringly better looking than yourself.

We want to hear from people who've actually managed to acheive these seemingly impossible feats and hear how they managed to do it.

This would be accompanied by various experiments by everday singles of trying out typical chat up lines/techniques to see how they go down.

The aim is to break down what makes people attractive to the opposite sex and hopefully concluding that winning anyone you want is all about personalities and saying the right thing at the right time.

Having read your account of dancing etc with supermodels having gate crashed a fashion event, we are deeply impressed and would love to interview you about it. How did you do it ?

We would be very grateful if you would let us interview you about that episode in your life, and feature it as a heroic tale.

The show will be part of a series of four programmes and will appear on prime time XXXXXXX

Please feel free to call me, with any queries you may have and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours Sincerely

XXXXX XXXXX
Researcher XXXXX

And now I'm faced with a conundrum. What should I do? I confess a certain flush of excitement about being interviewed for a tv programme. Maybe they'll make me a star! Fame and fortune could be mine!

But maybe that's what all those other idiots on daytime tv thought when they signed up for shows like "People who Love Their Pets Too Much - Bestiality in Burbs of Blackburn".

Would I appear as an erudite, well-adjusted, witty charmer? Or as a pathetic middle-aged geek chasing young girls behind his wife's back? It's a close call, really.

And why would I want to appear on tv in the first place? Would I still feel comfortable heaping scorn on the heads of reality tv show contestants? Wouldn't I be the same as them? For that matter, why do I write this blog? I must crave fame. It's an obvious and oh so small step to the depths of reality tv hell.

I talked to a colleague of mine last night who recently divorced her famous husband. They'd gone to college together and got married and then he slipped into tvland and became a bit of a prat. "Do you realise I could sleep with any woman in London?" he once told her.

I suspect that was the moment the relationship began to go downhill.

What if that happens to me? I already get a kick from dancing with supermodels. What if I become famous and start having affairs with Cameron Diaz or Posh and Becks? I think my wife is willing to let me get away with the odd boogie with a pretty girl. However, I suspect a full-on, coke-crazed homosexual encounter with David Beckham might not meet with the same tolerance.

What to do... What to do...

Posted by YandaMan at 11:48 PM | Comments (5)

October 21, 2003

Comfortable Underwear

I always get homesick this time of year. Autumn has always been my favourite season. There isn't really much of an autumn worth mentioning here in England, but autumn is a noticeable and lovely season back in Canuckville.

The charming spouse and I did a spot of shoe shopping the weekend before last which made me reminisce even more for the great outdoors. She ended up buying her new shoes in an outdoorsy store and I was filled with consumer lust for all manner of cool outdoorsy things: four season tents, thermarests, high-tech hiking socks (ooh socks, I love good socks), just stuff.

Leathermans now come in all manner of bright colours! Did you know that? Is that Cool, or what!

And so I was thinking of the old bush life when I was at this dance show. Which may go some way to explaining the following dialogue.

VICKI: So, James, did you like the show?

JAMES: Absolutely. There's nothing better than watching a group of young women prance around in their underwear.

VICKI: Was it the underwear you liked or the dance?

JAMES: Oh, the underwear.

CHRIS: Yes, nothing better than ladies underwear. I'm wearing some right now.

JAMES: Me too.

CHRIS: I knew a guy when I was working in the bush that swore the most comfortable undergarments in the world were women's underpants worn backwards. Apparently they provide a great deal of room at the front and act as a kind of thong at the rear.

JAMES: Are you wearing yours backwards now then?

CHRIS: (PAUSE) Well, no. I lied about the ladies underwear thing, James. I'm actually wearing boxers.

JAMES: Oh... Right.

CHRIS: Of course, these days, with the fashion having turned to proper thongs, I suspect the comfort factor no longer holds backwards.

JAMES: Yes, a thong worn backwards might be a touch distracting.

And then the performance began again.

It's times like these that really make me miss the bush. There's nothing like some crisp clean air and being trapped in a camp in the middle of nowhere with a man in backwards facing panties to make you feel alive.

Posted by YandaMan at 9:20 PM | Comments (1)

August 25, 2003

Thievin' Varmints

The bastards stole my bike. Around 4:30 in the early morning of Thursday, August 21, something woke me up. I couldn't go back to sleep so I went downstairs where I found the front door open and my bike gone. "My Goodness me!" I said. "What an unfortunate occurence!" Or words to that effect, anyway.

Please, if you read this, stop what you're doing and go out and look for my bike. Leave no stone unturned. It was taken from a house in the Dalston area of London (E8) and is a Marin San Rafael, silver in colour with fenders. The serial number is F643L50008. The cover of the light on the back fender is gone and it's got a nerdy "London Cycling Campaign" sticker on it. There is a mount for a handlebar bag on the front. It had an odomotor and a little black bell on the handlebars, and a blinking redlight under the seat. It has grip shifters and a shock-absorbed seat post. Both of the black plastic pedals are cracked and they have toe clips. It also has a pump strapped to the up-tube.

Please find it. I'm very sad without it. I loved that bike.

The above picture is a recent picture of me lovingly stroking the saddle and looking heroic. I felt as if I could take the whole world on when I had that bike. Now life is a hollow sham.

You may think it optimistic of me to think that I might get my bike back but there is a precedent.

A couple of years ago, my charming spouse had her bike stolen from outside the British Library. About two weeks later it showed up parked next to mine at the beeb. One of my co-workers had just bought it in Brick Lane. We managed to convince him that it was really my wife's stolen bike and we agreed to split his purchase price which (as you may imagine was quite low). Cool story, or what?

So, yes, there is hope. Hit the streets. Find that bike!

While you're at it, you could also look for the remote control for our cable box.

No one believes me about this but I swear it seems to be the only thing missing. It was definitely there on the coffee table when I went to bed that night. In the morning, it was gone. No amount of searching behind the cushions of the couch has turned it up. After three days, I am completely convinced the mysterious criminals took it as well. It's a green telewest remote.

In a way, I suppose it's a good thing they took the remote. Hopefully the exertion of having to get off the couch to change channels will make up for the lack of exercise in not cycling to work.

Posted by YandaMan at 12:14 AM | Comments (1)

July 26, 2003

40th Birthday Plans

I'm turning 40 next March and am thinking about what kind of humdinger of an event I should have. I was thinking a weekend in a castle might be cool.

Belle Isle Castle in Northern Ireland looks nice. It's £1100 self-catering for a weekend (3 nights) or £1500 for a week, sleeping 14 people. It's got a tennis court, boats, etc. Catering charges are £10, £15, £25 for breakfast lunch and dinner respectively. But it's got a big kitchen with an Aga and might be fun (and way cheaper) to do our own cooking.

Otoh, Northern Ireland in March might not be the most salubrious of locations.

So maybe we should go to France...
Chateau Des Senechaux looks nice.
Le Chateau de Bijou

Some other Castle Links:
Web France - Castles
Lloyd and Townsend-Rose
Castles for Rent
Scott's Castle Holidays
Holiday Rentals
The Chateau de la Guillonniere

Posted by YandaMan at 9:38 AM | Comments (1)

July 11, 2003

Quote from landlord re death

I've licked the butt of death many a time.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:27 PM | Comments (0)

June 30, 2003

The Chip Van that Hosted Jools Holland

It seems even crazy landlords have fathers. My crazy landlord has his in Portugal. His name is Johnny and he's a charming Scottish builder and one of the few supposedly English-speaking people I've met whom I can't understand.

I mean his accent, of course. His actions and motives are perfectly lucid to me. He recently moved to Portugal because it's warmer and cheaper and more relaxed. Very sensible, I think. He bought a boat to lounge around the high seas with. Also sensible. His wives and girlfriends have all been about ten years younger than himself. Well, I'm not sure if that's entirely sensible, but I can understand the motive at least.

I suspect the man does have some secrets though. For one thing, I only have the vaguest idea what he's talking about any time we have a conversation.

He came by the house to visit about a month ago. Despite the language barrier, I discovered that he and a friend had grand plans to buy a chip van to make some extra money during the tourist season. This also seems a plan that makes some sense.

However, we've just heard the news that somehow the chip van has turned into a bar and that Jools Holland will be performing in it in the near future.

Others believe that the business plan must have changed somewhat and the chip van was never purchased. I prefer to think they've just converted it. I have a lovely picture in my mind of a chip van alongside a Portugese beach someplace with a little awning rigged up shading a grand piano.

Jools steps down the little metal steps of the chip van and waves as he walks to the piano, sweltering in his black suit and turtleneck. A crowd of curious men and women with faded blue tattoos and crimson sunburns stand around dazed by the heat. Jools starts banging the old ivories. picture Johnny is visible through the counter window singing along as he works the deep fat fryer.

Anyway, it's always good to hear about someone's dream coming true, no matter how surreal and modest that dream is.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:54 PM | Comments (1)

June 11, 2003

Grasshoppers

My aunt and uncle are visiting and I just thought I should get this snapshot of them recorded for posterity.

Raina: Oh, Sylvan lake in August. That will be very interesting. You'll be fighting off mosquitos. Oh! And the grasshoppers! In August there will be grasshoppers everywhere.

Bill: You'll be picking grasshoppers out of your drink. You know. [MAKES DUNKING GESTURE]

Raina: Oh, but they're very good that way. You pick the grasshopper out of your drink. It's pickled now, you know? And then you dip it in the chocolate sauce. Delicious!

Bill: You'll be picking grasshoppers out of your grasshopper.

Raina: I have a great recipe for Queen Anne ants as well. We used to make that when we lived in South Africa.

Posted by YandaMan at 8:49 AM | Comments (1)

May 4, 2003

Quote from a Landlord (anonymous for legal reasons)

"I love when your ears get all fuzzy at the tips when you're having a pooh and you're stoned.

They feel all soft and rabbit-like. And then your bottom goes plop and you can feel all the heat dissipate out of your ears and they get all tingly. It's like someone's dipped them into sherbert. And your ears kind of see all these starbursts and sparkly things except they're just ears so really they can't see anything but it kind of feels like they can."

(maybe slightly paraphrased, but not by much)

Posted by YandaMan at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2003

Free Drinks at Gatwick

We just got free drinks from the Bacardi guy in the departure lounge at Gatwick airport. Wha-hey! Some kind of tasty white rum, orange juice and cranberry juice concoction. Very yummy and breakfast-like.

I had a very odd security procedure visited upon my shoes. They sat me in a special chair (no doubt to scan my butt at the same time) and then ran a swab all over both my shoes. The they put the swab in a big machine that whirred and clicked. Apparently I was free from dodgy dust and they let me continue on my way where we met the truly lovely Bacardi Dude.

Posted by YandaMan at 10:40 AM | Comments (1)

February 12, 2003

Smells Like Canadian Ass

My landlord sent me a text message from Berlin the other night that read. "Fantastic! I smell like Canadian Ass! Staying another night. See you Tuesday." I’m not entirely sure what it meant. Was he being literal or figurative? If the latter, then what is "smell like a Canadian ass" intended to suggest? I know how mine smells, but I doubt that’s the point.

Am I meant to take the smell of a typical ass and make it several degrees more boring? More cold? More pine-scented, perhaps? Does he mean a French ass or an English ass? A hockey-playing ass?

Maybe he means an ass like the one attached to the Sundre Rodeo Queen? I was desperately in love with the Sundre Rodeo Queen, at least for an afternoon. I am convinced her ass smelled of leather and dust and denim and girly sweaty smells I am too gentlemanly to talk about.

The Sundre Rodeo Queen rode into my life (or at least my camp) with a tremendous noise of bellowing cattle and clunking bells five years ago. She drove a herd of cattle down a trail that we’d camped on. One of the requirements of the job was that we enclose our camp with an electric bear fence. The herd jammed against the fence and spilled around either side of the camp. The Sundre Rodeo Queen and three cowboys frantically rode around restoring direction to the herd and diverting them down a steep embankment towards the creek below and a road beyond it. She was a vision on horseback, darting back and forth through the brush cutting off any of the wayward cows that struck for higher ground.

I’ve been to a few rodeos in my time but I’ve never seen any real-life cowgirl skill like I did that afternoon. She was an effortless flowing melody on horseback. She was the Hollywood picture postcard of a cowgirl. Long blonde pigtails, dirty white Stetson, sleeveless gingham shirt showing off flashes of an impossibly smooth belly, and blue jeans wrapped around the sweetest smelling ass there ever could be.

If that is what my landlord meant, then I dream of smelling like Canadian Ass.

Posted by YandaMan at 10:57 PM | Comments (2)

December 22, 2002

Buns of Steel, Belly of Jelly

We had a bit of a Christmas shindig last night: mince pies, mulled wine, etc. During the course of which my landlord suddenly grabbed my one of my butt cheeks and shouted to the assemblage, "Man! you've got a firm butt!"

John (my landlord) is an enthusiastic fellow. When he finds something to enthuse about, he seizes it with both hands and won't let go. My butt became a regular conversational theme throughout the evening. He would greet guests with "Ah, grand to see you! Have you felt Yanda's butt? It's fantastic! Go on! Give it a sqeeze!"

Many asked for my secret that night. The only theory I could come up with for my supposedly grand glutes was that I cycle to work most days. I don't think it is so much the physical exercise of propelling the bike forward that has toned my posterier. Instead, I think it is the exciting nature of cycling in London. The whole time I am zipping through traffic, my butt is firmly clenched in terror.

My advice to those looking for a firm and sexy booty is to place yourself in extreme danger for an hour a day -- the kind of danger that makes you clench all your orifices as hard as you can. I believe the body does this naturally in an attempt to spew as little bodily matter as possible when it thinks its about to get thumped by the big black cab.

I'm just glad I'm not a cocktail waitress. With a butt like mine every drunken chick in the bar would be pinching my ass. No doubt, I'd freak after a while and slap one of them, at which point I would get my (very firm) butt kicked by some huge footballer boyfriend. Unfortunately, squeezing your sphincter in terror does little for upper body strength which is exactly the kind of strength you need when you're fighting off the huge footballer boyfriend of a drunken woman whom you've just slapped because she pinched your ass.

Anyway, it was a grand party. Happy Yule, all!

Posted by YandaMan at 10:26 AM | Comments (1)

December 11, 2002

The Barber

Last night my crazy landlord came home drunk and insisted I shave his head. I did my best to dissuade him. Eventually, after saying no repeatedly, I ran upstairs and hid in my room.

I emerged about a half an hour later to the sounds of an electric razor. The crazed fiend had attacked his own head without benefit of a mirror or any sense of balance or fine motor control. The plug for the razor was held into the socket by a mess of masking tape. He was naked from the waist up. One arm of his shirt dangled in the toilet bowl, and most of his head was a field of stubble with several mutant looking tufts spurting out of his skull.

He seemed proud of his handiwork nonetheless and I agreed to tame the mutant tufts. Truth be told, if I had known he was just going to raze it down to a short short bristle and no naked blades would be involved, I would have succumbed to his demands much sooner. I had envisioned a terrible business involving straight razors and shrieking and ears left on the bathroom floor. As it was, except for the continual swaying, it was a fairly straightforward job.

He has yet to arise this morning so I don't know whether he is happy with last night's sudden coiffure change. I hope so.

Posted by YandaMan at 8:51 AM

September 20, 2002

A Really Expensive Tie

Tomorrow Vicki and I are off to Norfolk for our first real English Wedding. The groom was educated at Cambridge and plays cricket. The bride's grandmother is genuine aristocracy -- an actual 'Lady'.

It's all just too daunting and sent me into a blind sartorial panic today. I still have the suit which I was married in and had recently bought some dress shoes but my only tie was a crumpled, twisted thing with pulled threads and those few of my shirts with collars are all dotted with mysterious stains and/or are missing buttons and in some cases entire sleeves.

Being a immensely foolish man I left shopping for a replacement tie and shirt until the day before the wedding and rushed out on my lunch hour. I did my best to find support, taking my wife along for a personal eye and phoning a gay friend a regular intervals for advice on what shop to try next and what colours go with what.

In the end, I panicked in Moss Bros in Covent Garden and let the salesman pick my shirt and tie. I subtly checked out the price on the shirt to make sure it wasn't crazily expensive, but just blindly signed the VISA slip without even checking the price of the tie. It was fifty quid. Man! Real stores are WAY more expensive than charity shops. I could have rented an entire Morning Coat get-up for less than the price of my tie. Oh well.

Time for bed as we have a train to catch and must be on our best colonial behaviour amongst the better classes tomorrow. Updates to follow.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:12 PM

September 4, 2002

The Tornado and the Tiger

I am living in a tornado of social activity. It is far more than any mere whirl.

The day after our return from the Costa Brava, a small woman with an enormous grin arrived on our doorstep. She departed this morning and in the intervening time she and I and Vicki have been toing and froing all over London. The woman in question is the lovely, charming, and hideously clever Padma Viswanathan. I say 'hideously' because she is in the death throes of finishing her first novel, a historical epic which takes place in Southeast India.

This is hideous to me because her cleverness and industry tortures my very soul with what a pathetic underachiever I've been in the earth-shaking-novelist department.

One of the reasons for her visit was to do research in support of this grand work. The three of us went on a field trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum to take a gander at Tipoo's Tiger. This is an automaton of a tiger mauling a British soldier that is more than a hundred years old. It's about five feet long. You turn a handle and the tiger chews on the soldier and growls and the soldier moves his arm pathetically and moans. Padma tried to get them to wind it up for us but to no avail. I'm not sure if the tiger is directly connected to Padma's book or not but it was pretty cool. What she is intending to write about, though, is her encounter with a little old lady at the information desk. And this brings me to a crushing dilemma.

Do I take her anecdote and plaster it in this blog, stealing her thunder and increasing the public's estimation of my wit, or do I leave it alone. It is her anecdote after all and she did state her intention to write about it. Hell, people even pay her for her clever words. What do I get? Bupkus! That's what.

It's a bizarre world. I don't get paid for the intelligent, well-constructed observations on these pages which enrich all of my reader's lives, but I do get paid for words like "my $class = ref($this) or $this;"

But enough about Padma and the crisis she has caused in my soul. I briefly alluded to the social tornado that is my life and I am late for a soiree: the leaving party of an eccentric Jewish musician and professional geek who has wild hair and a penchant for vicious rants regarding the use of alt tags.

Posted by YandaMan at 7:27 PM

August 11, 2002

Living with Liv, but briefly

Yeehaw! I counted coup on another celebrity. Vicki and I had a drink with Liv Tyler this evening. It was our fourth anniversary and we celebrated by going for an outrageously expensive meal at The Ivy.

We drank gin and champagne and brandy and ate sashimi and steak tartar and Lobster and Chips and Eggs Benedict and Sticky Toffee Pudding and frozen berries. Yum! The food was good, perhaps even excellent, but paled in comparison to Axis which has been my other big night out in London. The service was almost perfect except for the guy that came around to kick us out of our table.

"Excuse me," he said. "We'd like to free up this table."

"Fine," I said, "we've actually been waiting for someone to bring the cheque."

I mean, what the fuck? Has the dude got no style. He could have almost certainly accomplished the same thing by asking us if we'd like the bill now. And they say North Americans lack subtlety. Chump!

Actually, even that little burble did nothing to diminish my enjoyment of the evening. I just noted it in a kind of academic way: things not to do if I ever become a waiter in a classy restaurant.

I believe there were several famous celebrity types in The Ivy that night but I didn't recognise any of them. The guy sitting next to us did talk loudly (well, loudly enough for us to overhear, anyway) about how his next project was supposed to be a film with Rupert Everett, so he must have been someone at least mildly successful in the movie biz.

It's got a nice ambiance inside as well. The windows are all opaque stained glass which is nice for those of us like myself, thrust into the public eye despite our shyness. And it has plenty of dark wood and cloth tablecloths and utensils made of metal instead of plastic. There is a pleasant buzz of conversation and I honestly can't remember if there was any music. Weird.

But back to the lovely Liv...

After being evicted from our table we sauntered towards the bus stop and happened to pass a swish looking bar. It had been such a lovely evening we decided to prolong it with a final drink and so went in. We sat at a table near the window, Vicki facing the window and myself facing in towards the bar. It was almost empty. There were just five others in a party leaning on the bar itself.

Being as it was our anniversary, we were being rather lovey-dovey and staring into each others eyes and having intense conversations and all that romantic stuff. After a while, Vicki went off to the loo and I stared idly at the group at the bar. There were two youngish blokes that looked relaxed and vaguely, scruffily fashionable talking to a middle-aged man in a rumpled suit who was acting very excited. There was a blonde woman sitting at the bar facing me and talking to a tall, thin, dark-haired woman.

I looked at the two dudes and wondered if they might be someone famous. They looked vaguely rockstar-in-civies-like. The blonde woman stood up and I realised that she was extremely pregnant and was wearing a cool horizontally striped red and white skirt that accented how huge she was. So I looked at her and thought, "she's pretty cool, too".

Then the dark-haired woman took a camera out of her bag and announced she had to take pictures of everyone. What went through my head was, "Oh, she's an American". Then, "Hey, she sounds just like Liv Tyler". She kind of pivoted around searching for a spot to take the picture from and I realised it was, in fact, Liv Tyler.

While we didn't actually converse, I feel we did become best mates by a kind of osmosis. After all there was really just Vicki and I and Liv and her buddies in the bar. The proximity created a bond which I doubt will ever fade.

I am certain just before she left she was on the verge of asking if I would mind taking a picture of her and her friends. I would have done so. It's only polite after all. And I may have been so bold as to ask her to take a photo of myself and the lovely Miss V. in return, pointing out that it was our fourth anniversary.

"How delightful," she might have said. "Royston and I are engaged ourselves, although we haven't quite decided when the wedding will be."

"Oh, sorry, this is my fiancee, Royston Langdon." she may have added indicating a young long-haired chap in jeans and a tweed coat.

"Nice to meet you," I may have said and shook his hand. "What do you for a living? How did you two meet?"

"Rock star. Lead vocals and bass. Spacehog," he might have said.

"Cool. This is my charming spouse, Vicki. She's just finishing her PhD in Gender Studies and Theatre Studies. My name is Chris. I'm actually an alien from the planet Bzorg where I used to run a small light-sabre factory. I'm now a full-time geek."

Liv would have probably introduced us to the other couple, the male half of which was probably also in Spacehog and the female was probably a circus acrobat on maternity leave, although she occasionally pops in to help out but only does the bit where she gets spun around by her hair high above the crowd. She's far too pregnant for anything else. The middle-aged man would introduce himself as the pregnant acrobat's uncle.

After taking our picture, Liv would suggest we pop up to her room so she could download the pictures and mail them to us. And we'd probably make cocktails with the blender she might take with her when she travels. And we'd play games, perhaps strip-spoons (which I have found memories of playing when a teenager). Oh how we might have laughed...

But actually all that happened was I just stared at her like a crazed lunatic until Vicki returned from the loo and they left soon afterwards, no doubt going to a late dinner without us at the Ivy.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:55 PM | Comments (2)