It appears that the judge known as Cherie Booth, aka Mrs Tony Blair, has some pretty dodgy ideas when it comes to sentencing religious people. To summarise, she gave a violent offender who happened to be a theist a suspended sentence because (as she said), “You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour”. Does this mean she would give an atheist a prison sentence in the same circumstances on the grounds that non-believers have no guiding principles that tell them that smashing people in the face for no good reason is not the right thing to do? Being lenient on religious people seems the first step on a slippery slope which will result in people being treated differently by the law just because they have different beliefs. That would be terrible.

Here in the UK we are suffering from an excess of interfering busy-bodies who have pet theories about how the world should be run. All for our own good, of course, we cannot be trusted to be in charge of our own lives. No, rather we should all behave as these unelected control-freaks think we should and be damned grateful that they are saving us from ourselves. Most of these unspeakable swine work for fake charities that are really funded by the government to lobby the government on the subject of their weird ideas and distorted world views in the hope that it will result in a change of policy in line with the meddlers’ latest whim. These people are always publishing reports or appearing in the mass media in the hope that if they keep banging on and on they will eventually be taken seriously and so justify all that money that has been thrown at them by the government.

I’ll give you some recent examples. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is the perfect example of a bunch of self-satisfied pen-pushers who will take any opportunity to get themselves in the press. Some of their lunacy was reported on the BBC News website today. After the Christmas day bomber, Mr Abdulmutallab, hid explosive materials on his body and tried to blow up an aircraft heading to the USA there has been the usual knee-jerk, ‘something must be done’ reaction from the government who have committed to installing body scanners at UK airports. “That doesn’t sound so bad?” you might well be thinking.

The EHRC realised they could get themselves in the press and show that they have some point to their petty, whining existence by criticising these scanners. Apparently the devices risk breaching an individual's right to privacy under the Human Rights Act. Does that sound convincing? It sounds like a load of tosh to me. They go on to suggest that body scanners could generate illegal images of children and images of celebrities that could be leaked online. The BBC News website helpfully provides a picture of the type generated by these scanners. I’ve reproduced it to the right of this paragraph. These are characterised by the EHRC as ‘naked’ images which are are likely to have a negative impact on privacy, especially in relation to certain groups such as disabled people, the elderly, children and the transgendered community.

It is clear from the body scanner picture that they do not generate pictures of people looking as if they are naked. They are a fuzzy blur, with no real fine details about the target’s body visible. You’d have to be pretty desperate to find the opaque images from these scanners in any way a breach of someone’s privacy, they are just not detailed enough to tell much about a person’s body.

Moreover, even if body scanners produced a more defined image of someone’s body under their clothes, it still would not mean that the scans would be child porn as the EHRC suggests. Nakedness does not equate with pornography and body scanners do not automatically upload the images they scan to Flickr.

Finally, why should body scanners, with their fuzzy, indistinct images, be a particular worry for disabled people, the elderly or the transgendered community? It is just totally vacuous to suggest such groups would have any more difficulty with being scanned than anyone else. These kind of statements, which try to bring victim status to particular groups by saying they would be unfairly treated, are just a feeble attempt by the pressure group involved to make the whatever they are raving about seem a more serious, iniquitous problem and so justify the idea that ‘something must be done’. There are legitimate reasons why body scanners might not be a great idea, for example security experts have claimed that body scanners would only have a 50% chance of spotting the bomb carried by Mr Abdulmutallab, but the extremely vague possibility that a body scan may reveal that someone in a dress might have the suggestion of a penis being in their pants is not one of them.

There are more of these fake charities spewing out countless reports about how only their pet theories can improve the world and everyone else just cannot be trusted with anything important. A few days ago I discovered an excellent blog devoted to debunking the ravings on Don Shenker, chief executive of the government-funded pseudo-charity Alcohol Concern. Quite why the government should be funding this nutcase organisation is beyond me, but then the Labour government under the odious Gordon Brown is only too happy to let his ‘big government’ and the unelected special interest groups nanny us all.

The desire of the government to interfere with our drinking habits has been much on my mind of late. The recent report from the Health Select Committee (HSC) into alcohol consumption was woven from half-truths, manipulated data and unfounded assertions. These people clearly want to dictate how much we can drink, where we can drink it and how much it will cost. Most people have a perfectly healthy relationship with alcohol, I know I do, and yet all of us are being demonised by these jumped up farts who think they know better than us even if they have to publish reports which are a tissue of mendacity and duplicity to show they know best. I dropped by a good beer blog earlier and the author of the site has written a number of articles which debunk most of the claims in the HSC report. He demonstrates that alcohol adverts do not encourage under-age drinking, that cutting overall consumption of alcohol does not necessarily result in a drop in alcohol misuse, that alcohol is getting more expensive rather than cheaper as the neo-prohibitionists claim and much more. All of these blog posts of his are well worth reading; if you know how the bastards are trying to mislead you it is easier to stand up for them.

The problem with all of these hideous gits clamouring for their own ideas to be adopted as government policy is that, even if their most extreme ideas are not implemented, the propagation of the view that there are problems and ‘something must be done’ will result in legislation creep. Bit by bit our freedom will be eroded until it will be impossible to do anything without the government’s express permission. The suggestion floated recently that adults should have ‘entitlement cards’ that have to be produced when buying alcohol and act as ration books to control the amount we purchase shows that this is the aim of some of these nutcases. They want to control us, and unless we stand up for ourselves and our rights the filthy swine will get their way.

The nutcase theist Pat Robertson blamed his particular god for the earthquake in Haiti; apparently his flavour of god was angry with the Haitians for rejecting Jesus. Obvious bollocks, of course. If he really wanted to be taken seriously he should have gone with the currently fashionable idea that we get punished with natural disasters because we are evil, consumerist, free-market swine who fail to treat the world with the delicate touch it needs. This is also manifest bollocks. Whenever there is a natural disaster, or even something as minor as the recent cold weather in the UK, the environmentalist nutcases all get terribly worked up about how they are warnings from nature that our shameful ways will lead to the end of civilisation at best and the total annihilation of the world at worst. They get a cheap thrill lecturing us that they know best whilst the rest of us cannot be trusted to live on the planet like responsible people (ie. living in yurts made from cow dung and only eating grass clippings. Sorry, organic grass clippings).

Some appalling examples of this hat-stand thinking* can be found in this excellent article on Spiked.

*A good example that is shows how misanthropic the environmental extremists can be are the Australian bush fires of 2009, which killed 173 people and destroyed 2,000 homes; they were started by arsonists and so are not really linked to any bogus environmental problems. However, these fires  were characterised by Jonathon Porritt, a green who has advised both the UK government and the royal family, as being linked to Australia’s pursuit of ‘unbridled affluence, California-style’. So Australians burned for their sins; how dare they to try to generate wealth! He went on to say that the problem with the Australian bushfires is that they clearly weren’t ‘bad enough’, because Aussies straight away went back to pursuing their ‘dreams of unbridled affluence’. Too many people spout petty, vindictive, sanctimonious drivel like this.

I’ve been vaguely following the stories about non-Muslims in Malaysia using the word ‘Allah’; here is the latest piece. This started when a Catholic newspaper there used the word Allah to refer to their Christian version of God. This has resulted in some of the Muslims majority in Malaysia getting a bit excited and throwing petrol bombs at Christian churches, schools and the like. The Muslims claim that Christians are using the word Allah to try and convert Muslims to Christianity; the logic behind that being so opaque and risible that it must be one of the crappest excuses for violence the world has ever seen.

The air over there must be thick with hypocrisy. Is it really alright to say that one group of people cannot use a particular word, whilst it is fine for an arbitrarily different group to be able to say? Religious people think there is something special about their brand of lunacy which allows them to say what they like about whatever they like. Of course, people who don’t belong to their nutter cults (be they atheists or other flavours of religion) are not allowed to comment on anything, certainly not violate the ‘theologically-correct’ religious-person’s right to say whatever the fuck they like.

Some weirdos have the strange idea that people have a right not to be offended, especially when it comes to religious beliefs (see this utterly appalling article for a weaselling defence of this). This is of course complete toss (as this extremely good article points out). There is nothing special about religious beliefs that means they must automatically be protected and respected; respect always has to be earned. If someone offends you then that is your problem, not theirs; it is you who chose to be offended by them for whatever personal reasons you have and your reasons will never be universally held. If you do not like a newspaper using a particular word do not buy the bloody newspaper, it is quite easy. Free speech is the safeguard that protects all of our other rights. The right to say only the ‘right’ things is a sad, shallow idea not worth defending as there is clearly no objective list of acceptable things we can say and the objectionable things we cannot say.

Of course, some things people say do have to be taken a bit more seriously. If the Malaysian newspaper published an article saying that all Muslims were evil molesters of little children and it is every Christian’s duty to kill as many of them as possible then this would be incitement to commit violence and you can legitimately think such things should not be given uncritical coverage. When it is incitement it is not a case of offending people, it is a case of people having their lives threatened. I don’t think people should be in fear of their lives because the hard of thinking disagree with them. Extremists demonstrating in the streets carrying signs saying “Behead people who insult our religion” (whatever religion it is) are inciting violence and they should be watched carefully in case they go on to commit it.

Freedom of speech must be absolute. Once people start picking and choosing what can and cannot be said this list of proscribed words and ideas will only ever grow as more and more partisan and un-representative organisations start petitioning governments and courts to protect them from offence in their much-vaunted victim-status. This does not mean you cannot protest and demonstrate against outrageous peoples’ behaviour, but not by violence or seeking to restrict their rights.

"Let the idiots and bullies speak openly and they will be revealed for what they are!"

---

*I am happy to admit it is not just the religious people who do this. A few months back Nick Griffin, the odious leader of the odious British National Party, was invited to appear in a serious political discussion program on television. I was scandalised by the number of people who said he should not appear on television and not be allowed to expound the racist views of his party. Of course he should, he and his voters have a particular world-view and, even if we disagree with it, they are allowed to talk about it. By all means demonstrate against these views and try to propagate more civilised ideas, but you cannot gag or infringe someone’s civil liberties just because you do not like their ideas.

There is a news story on the BBC News website about books that people have tried to get banned from libraries in the US. Of course, it is more than a little dodgy to dictate to people what they can and cannot read, but I was still vaguely amused that the book that received most requests to be banned was a true story about gay penguins in New York’s Central Park Zoo. You’ve got to be pretty petty and small-minded if you want to ban that. Philip Pullman’s excellent ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy also received lots of requests to be banned; this does make me worry when top children’s literature is viewed so negatively by religious nut-jobs simply because it points out they are talking tripe.

Apologies for not having many posts of late, and for this one having perilously little to do with nappies, but I’ve just read something that has enraged me so much I need to vent my incoherent bile.

When I was a scientist we used to refer to climatology as an ‘emerging science’ which was always followed by the rider “That is what we call ‘crap’ here at Oxford”. Further evidence is just in that it is not only crap, but duplicitous crap at that. This article on The Register reports that people engaged in this sort of rubbish-mongering select data to suit their hypotheses, which is only a very short step away from simply making up data. Reading the first page of that article should have any lover of the truth making many sharp intakes of breath and turning progressively more purple with fury.

This is really, seriously now, not how science should be done. Indeed, when people twist datasets like this you get the feeling that they are just trying to keep themselves in a job rather than actually trying to find out something new and interesting about the world. I am totally scandalised. I am even more scandalised that the peer review system failed; if people are hiding or selecting data it should not be allowed to be published.

I suppose I should not be too surprised, I am well aware that climatologists talk crap and expect us to swallow it. I remember one recent news report telling us that climate change will make weather patterns more unpredictable further into the future. You can see the flaw in that logic as easily as I can: if you try to predict things in the future of course the further forward you go the less accurate your prediction will be. It has nothing to do with climate change, it is a simple fact that errors get multiplied the further you try to stretch predictions.

Well done The Register for reporting this. Most climate change crap piss bollocks stories get reported with little or no criticism; we are just supposed to believe what these liars say. It is usually utter drivel.

When leaving the GP after collecting my monthly sack of drugs I went to MaccyD’s for a burger. I was utterly appalled by how some people there behaved.

Three of the people in the queue before me were gassing to their disgusting scum friends on mobile phones whilst placing their orders, which I thought was a bit off. This was nothing compared to a table full of proles who thought it just fine to sweep their rubbish off the table onto the floor. Do people really have so little idea how to behave? I realise MaccyD’s is not the ultimate in sophistication, but that doesn’t give you license to behave like a totally inconsiderate scumbag.

The motto of my first College in Oxford was ‘Manners maketh man’ and I think that is a fine attitude to have.

This story makes me want to point out, that actually having read it, the Koran is a fascist book.

It also makes me want to point out the incredible erosion of civil liberties that have happened in this country, largely under the Labour government. We used to be a freedom-loving country who valued things like free speech, now it seems we all have to cow-tow to the evil religious extremists and we are not allowed to point out they are bastards because it might offend their oh so valuable religious beliefs. I'm appalled.

You have to worry about our leaders. On one hand they say that people are smarter and better educated than ever before. On the other hand they say we are too stupid to use words that have been part of English for over a thousand years. The marvellous thing about the English language unlike, for example, French is that we can embrace words from other languages and make them our own.

The argument that people for who English is not a first language may fail to understand terms as simple as 'via' or 'vice versa' is clearly total drivel; people for who English is not a first language will fail to understand many words in English, no matter what the origin of the words may be. This is another pointless piece of drivel from the hard of thinking; sadly these cretins are our leaders. I worry about about my country when things like this happen.

We are told that the British Humanist Association has raised money to put signs on buses in London saying there is no god. This is a good thing. Religious nutters get a free ride on this kind of thing all the time.

It seems to me that fundamentalist Christians, jihadist Muslims and settlement-building Jews are causing more than their share of trouble in the world. World events are being driven by people with apocalyptic delusions, while here in Britain a paralysing liberal guilt allows religious bigots to use intimidation and violence to stamp out free speech. If you can't get laughs out of all that, you can't get them out of anything. - Pat Condell, Time Out

I'd much rather have Butter, Stew and Zoo than this teddy bear. I am sure he is being faithful to his beliefs, but sadly his beliefs are thoroughly evil. Religions are terrorist organisations; they use threats to coerce. They are also perfectly happy to re-write history to suit themselves. If any nutcase American theists  are reading this you might be interested in this song on YouTube which says a lot about the founding fathers of the USA. It is also quite funny.

When I last saw my psychotherapist he suggested I spend the time between our meetings thinking about judgement and forgiveness; there is a lot of judgement in my life and not much forgiveness. My method of thinking about these topics has been to read moral philosophy and see how it applies to me and my life. I can recommend two good, general books on the subject: Ethics (Fundamentals of Philosophy) by Piers Benn and Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics by Simon Blackburn.

Much to my surprise I have found these books remarkably uplifting. They describe a number of competing theories of what constitutes being good, and according to all of the compelling theories it appears very much like a I am a good person. Reading these books has really enlightened me, I don't feel quite so bad about myself. Judgement that I was tasked to think about has turned out to be a lot more positive about myself than I would normally think.

What about forgiveness? I have done some things that I feel terrible about and have never been able to let go of the guilt. Again, reading has come to the rescue. Game Theory suggests that for co-operation to evolve in selfish populations forgiveness, in terms of minimally punishing behaviour which damages individuals in the population and rewarding positive interactions, is necessary and is a stable strategy in evolutionary terms. It takes a logical leap to apply this to the things I've done, but I can see that it does; I have been punished enough and it is time to have a more positive view of myself.

I have to admit to feeling a bit weird about all of this. I've been judging myself negatively and not forgiving myself for my wrongs for a decade. Now some self-analysis has led to the feeling that I am not bad and not worthy of punishment; feeling good about myself is in my grasp. Wow, man.

I am sure my positive outlook has also been enhanced by my medication. Clozapine has worked wonders with my paranoid delusions and has had a great anti-depressant effect. Sleeping more is also a help.

I live in a walled-off development in Woolwich, South-East London. Inside the wall all is nice and peaceful, outside... well... To demonstrate how unremittingly down-market Woolwich is you only have to look at the recent shop closures on the main shopping street. First of all Burger KIng pulled out, obviously too sophisticated for the residents. Then today I noticed that he scum DVD rental chain Blockbuster has also proved too classy for Woolwich, as it has been replaced by a pound shop. If it weren't for the ferry service into central London and the delightful neighbours being in the same building I am not sure I'd like to stay here.

An excellent article on the Register details a comprehensive report into average IQ and the likeliness in believing in god. Apparently, the more stupid you are the more likely to believe in god. What next? The pope shits in the woods?

Well, I called the bin before heading off to check I could be seen today for my ECG and they said "No". What happens when someone comes in with a heart condition? "Oh we cannot do an ECG today, the person who does them is in a meeting. You'll have to come back tomorrow." Triple-A, chaps.

I cannot stand Gordon Brown, he is a control-freak loony. The tax system is now more complex than ever before thanks to his fart-arsing around. His latest scandalous action is to re-classify cannabis as a class-B drug. Now, since I have paranoid schizophrenia you might think I'd be in favour of this, as there is much shouted about the (to quote Gordon) 'lethal' new types of cannabis that can cause schizophrenia. However, I used to be a scientist, and a damned good one at that, and the evidence linking the two is mere correlation. There are stronger correlations between the onset of schizophrenia with drinking and smoking, and it is only nutters (in the worst sense) who wish these to be banned because of their effects on mental health. Gordon completely ignored the balanced and reasonable scientific advice that it should remain a class-C drug, because he cannot help but interfere with people's lives. Since three million people in the UK regularly smoke cannabis he is not going to help prison populations by giving these people a maximum of a five-year sentence just for possession.

If you want to read some more of the evidence that that bastard Gordon ignored there is an excellent article on The Register and even that member of the great and good scientific community Colin Blakemore has spoken out against his action in The Guardian.

I've just read the weekly National Secular Society email; they are a great organisation and I hope you click on the link and join up. I don't always read the email as it usually leaves me steaming with rage; it did this week.

The first thing that got on my tits was that three catholic ministers are planning to vote against government legislation because the head of the catholic church in England is against it. Why should an unelected, unrepresentative, anachronistic loon be able to de-rail government flagship legislation? Bugger all people attend the catholic church in the UK, and the church is usually viewed as a bunch of over-privileged time wasters. Their hypocrisy was recently confirmed when they recently said that excessive wealth should be a sin. Pretty rich coming from as organisation with so much money it would make Croesus weep. The undue influence that these opinionated nutters* have is quite appalling and I hope if those ministers do vote against the government they lose their jobs.

The second thing that really pissed me off was another example of undue influence. Apparently the ex-archbishop of Canterbury used to be able to see the Prime Minister or any minister of his choosing within twenty-four hours if he wished to raise an issue. Once again, with the laudably poor church attendance in this country the archbish only speaks for a vanishing minority and so getting to see ministers so easily is pernicious. I hope this access has not been continued with the current waffle-merchant and drivel-monger Rowan Williams, who is quite rightly seen by all as a gaffe-prone dunderhead who not only fails to engage his brain before opening his mouth but puts his foot in it once he can negotiate its way past his facial fuzz. These people are anachronisms, and the fact that they think they should be shaping policy in a democracy is testament to the evils that are their religions and the perversions of thinking that religion causes.

Of course, there was plenty more in there to raise my ire. The weekly Newsline email is a great source of information on how those corrupters of little children are trying to pervert the world to follow their twisted ideologies. If people want to be god botherers then that is fine, but they should not have a privileged position for influencing the lives of those of us who do not wish our minds to be polluted by their dodgy thinking. Cheers, cheers for secularism!

*Speaking as an opinionated nutter I would venture that there is nothing wrong with being one, but using unfair and unreasonable influence over the hard of thinking and the misguided** to get your way, especially when your way is against the good of society, is deeply wrong.

**Obviously, most religious people are misguided because they were taught to be religious when they were children and we tend to believe things we are told when we are children. It is our fault they are misguided for letting them be corrupted by the perversity in the first place and not having mechanisms in place to resurrect their thinking from the philosophical shit-hole it was dumped in when they were young. As far as people go who have grown up with the benefit of an enlightened and decent education only to convert to religions when they were adults go, well, they are clearly hard of thinking.

I spent the weekend in France, we went to two good restaurants and one bloody awful one. Here is me moping in the dreadful restaurant:

Overall it was a fun weekend. However, I have come back to find myself in the depths of insomnia. It is bloody awful. I am supposedly on the waiting list for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for insomnia. Who knows when that will happen. Moreover, there is a big chance they won't do it until I have completed a course of CBT for psychosis and that, of course, is even further away.

Whilst I can see that this story might not be providing the best view of builders, how in the name of all that is evil is it possible to offend people just by having a children's story that features pigs? To quote one of my least-favourite phrases, it is political correctness gone mad! Oh I feel all sullied after typing that...

I am around the neighbours', and I am racked with existential angst. I've just been reading Satre, and that is supposedly how we are supposed to to be as good extistentialists. But I am not a good existentialist, I think it is quite a drivelly set of ideas: I am a good positive utilitarian.

Not a negative utilitarian, you'll note, as minimising the amount of unhappiness in the world would be nuking everyone.

A positive utilitarian thinks (and Wittgenstein said the construction 'I think' is a tautology) that one is a good person if one increases the general happiness of society. Now, it makes me feel bad to say this, but lots of people appear to like me. Perhaps, by my own definition, I am good.

But why do I feel such unhappiness and angst? Who knows? Who dares to dream?

Dr Wadge of the Food Standards Agency has made the excellent point on his blog that so-called 'detox' diets and suppliments are a waste of time and money. They are obviously a pile of toss and anyone who buys them is misguided at the very least. I couldn't agree with his suggestion of spending the money you save not buying them on Neil Young albums, though, perhaps Bent or Lemon Jelly...

The new leader of Britain's third party has said he does not believe in god. Good for him, and very refreshing to hear a British politician not feeling obliged to say he does just to pander to the minority of religious nutters in this country. It is a shame he then when on to dilute his statement by saying he has respect for religious faith. Personally, religious faith is frankly laughable and anyone who thinks there is one of the thousands of gods that have been invented over the millennia running things only deserves scorn. Theism is such a childish idea. It is hard to understand how people, who lets face it are quite smart things, can be so deluded.

Someone has been placed on the sex offenders register and given three years probation after people burst in on him in his own bedroom whilst he was situmlating himself with a bicycle. The story is here. This is utterly terrible. What people get up to in the privacy of their own homes is up to them and if people burst in on them it is something they have to deal with and shut up about. If anyone should be prosecuted it is the cleaners. I am scandalised.

It is eleven days after I over-dosed, I am still not sleeping. Five days after I took the OD I saw one of the doctors at my local surgery. I think he is on day release from some home for unreliable doctors. That day he gave me a month's worth of highly toxic drugs to walk away with. Great.

I saw my psychiatrist today who agreed that I need medication to deal with my insomnia. We agreed fives doses each of Zopiclone and Lorazepam per month. After this goes via Dr Idiot Cretin GP to write the prescription I get ten and fourteen doses respectively. Obviously in some ways this is great, it'll deal with my insomnia for a few months. However, I am not to be trusted with drugs. If I sleep I won't try to kill myself, but if I don't...

I am back in Estonia after spending the weekend in Helsinki. People were commenting how good the weather was for the time of year whilst I found seven Celcius to be a tad on the chilly side.

I had a truly excellent bottle of wine in a Japanese restaurant that had perhaps the worst fish I have ever eaten. It was dreadful. If you are ever visiting Helsinki I can highly recommend Hotel Glo, but just avoid the sushi joint next-door. The cynic in me says avoid most of the restaurants, as I have rarely eaten well in Finland. What can you expect from a country where they love meat donuts?

I'll be here until Wednesday, then it is back to civilisation and my little cat.

I am in Tallinn at the moment. Most of the city that I have walked through looks like Communist-era concrete monstrosities, but the old town is reasonably pretty. I wouldn't come here if you are expecting decent food or drink; all of the beer I have had here has been foul and the food isn't much better. It is pretty cold, the warming power of my tweed jacket has been greatly appreciated.

I am off to Finland tonight for the weekend, then it'll be two more days in Estonia. I have to say I'll be pleased to get home, I miss my little cat.

London is completely brilliant and, in my experience, second only to New York City as a hilarious place for larks and japes. It does have a number of problems, though, one of which is the Underground.

It is not so much that the Tube is hot, over-crowded, stinking and vaguely unreliable that annoys me, rather that the bastard unions who staff it are a bunch of swine. They insist on striking for random reasons throughout the year, normally just before Christmas or when there is a patch of warm weather. There is another 72 hour strike starting on Monday.

When the Tube stops working the entire six million population of London is inconvenienced somehow. It can take hours to get home after work when the Tube is not running. Yet the Tube slackers insist on their regular strikes. Do they think they have popular support when they shag up everyone's travel for days on end? Do they think they are making any friends? I cannot help but associate their profession with the idea that they chose it because they are work-shy layabouts who are perfectly happy to severely inconvenience large numbers of people just so they get a few days off. Tube drivers are extremely well paid and have loads of perks with their jobs as well. No, they are not making any friends.

For good analysis of the Tube and the striking workers I suggest you visit Amateurtransplants.com and listen to their song 'London Underground'.

I've just had someone from the home treatment team around, no they haven't succeeded in dumping me yet, and he has made me very unhappy.

The chap was obviously trying to be helpful and suggest things I could do to stop the hallucinations being such a problem. People often do this. What they don't take account of is the fact that I've been suffering from this condition since 1998 and I know by now that not much does deal with the hallucinations and all these ideas that people float to try and be helpful are largely pointless. I've tried them, I've tried them hoping that this new technique will finally get me some relief only for my hopes to be dashed repeatedly.

I say not much deals with the hallucinations, but I manage to hold off their worst excesses very well most of the time. And this is another thing that annoys me. Medical professionals always seem to act as if I make no effort to deal with them and I just passively accept them and what they say. This is far from the truth. I really fight to deal with the hallucinations. My most of my conscious mind demands me to get into the corner of the room and scream so horrible are the things I see and hear but what there is left of me can fight off that urge. I fight to retain control. When I am with people I strongly feel the urge to shout at them that I know what they are thinking (it is never anything good) and ask why they want me to suffer and die. I am on the edge of florid, incoherent insanity and yet I fight, very hard, to stay on the right side of that edge.

The Oxleas House Home Treatment Team are a bunch of heartless bastards. They are supposed to provide care to people in mental health crises to keep them out of hospital. They have a consultant psychiatrist one can see to discuss medication and nurses they send out once a day to make sure you haven't killed yourself and drop off drugs.

They are always forgetting to drop drugs off, or bringing the wrong doses, but two events in the past week have really upset me. Firstly, on Wednesday of last week I rang them to make an appointment to see their doctor, I needed my anti-psychotic medication dose increased. I was told that I would be seen quicker by my community psychiatrist as theirs had left and so it would be best if they discharged me. The bastards were trying to dump me. My Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) contacted me to say he was very worried and why had I discharged myself from the Home Treatment Team. I said I hadn't, they had discharged me. Many irate phone calls later I was back being seen by the Home Treatment Team and seeing their new doctor the following afternoon. I had managed to crawl my way back into their fold.

Today I ring up and ask to make an appointment to see the doctor. I am told I'll be rang back and when this happens I am told the doctor wants to know why I want to see him because if it is about changing medication I should be seeing my community psychiatrist for that. Not only will it take over a week to get an appointment with my community psychiatrist it seems pretty pointless being seen by the HTT if the doctors are not going to do anything to help. The bastards were trying to dump me again, less than a week after the first attempt.

I've got a call in to try and contact the doctor and tell him to be less of a bastard ask him why he won't change my medication and if not what is the point in being with the HTT. I suppose I had also better start the arcane process of getting to see my community psychiatrist.

Because I am English and therefore omniscient about bad things happening. If a train breaks down, rest assured it'd be the English person who says, "I could have told you so."

The new anti-depressant is Mianserin, and guess how much the loony support service has delivered for me tonight? That is right, none. And none for tomorrow either.

Thanks to my remaining, and extremely dwindling, stocks of clonazepam, I finally got back to bed and got a couple of hours more sleep. I cannot rely on this for much longer, though, even if I had more I don't want to get addicted.

I am going to have to make an appointment with a psychiatrist as rapidly as I can manage, difficult as this will be as I still think they are trying to kill me. I have the mobile number of my psychiatric nurse, which he has strongly indicated is for emergencies only. I'll ring him at a decent hour of today and ask as soon as he gets back to work from his week's holiday tomorrow if he can arrange for me to see my psychiatrist. Once again, this will be hard. I must try not to end every sentence with the words 'you bastard'.

The recent drugs I've been prescribed by the psychiatric services have made me so sick I've lost over 14kg, stopped me from sleeping, made me think doctors are trying to kill me, made my hallucinations frighteningly worse and made me burn my arm to buggery. I've also been given a month's worth of reasonably toxic drugs eleven days after I took a serious overdose. So I do have some slight evidence that they have not been treating me ideally. In my mind this becomes evidence they want me dead, but that is something I am just going to have to deal with.

I saw the most useless of the GPs at my surgery today, what an interesting job he did. He asked a couple of times how I was coping ("Very badly", I said each time) and established that I had no follow up care after having left hospital. He then did something good and increased the dose of anti-depressants I am on. He didn't seem bothered enough to ask about the string of burns on my arm, but I realised his plan for dealing with 'problem patients' when he sent me, who had taken a serious overdose eleven days ago, on my way with a prescription for a month's worth of drugs. The Trimipramine (anti-depressant) and Trifluoperazine (anti-psychotic) are pretty toxic things. Perhaps he just doesn't want to have to fill out another prescription ever again.

It is my second day in the loony bin. Yesterday they did not give me the anti-depressants I have been prescribed because they could not find them. This was after a sixteen hour wait for a room. So several times today I have asked the nurses if they have found my drugs and each time the answer has been `no´. The bin is right next door to a large hospital with a large, fully-stocked pharmacy so one might have though getting some drugs would not be too difficult. Apparently it is. This has made me exceedingly unhappy and if I had a way of hurting or killing myself I would.

I would not recommend the Oxleas House Mental Health Service to my worst enemy.

On Friday I had another awful night`s sleep, I got out of bed at half one. I am afraid to report that this all got a bit too much for me and at two in the morning I swallowed a large overdose of sleeping tablets, anti-depresssants, anti-psychotics and tranquilisers. The next thing I remember is staggering to a taxi to go to hospital.

Of course, it being a Friday night by then accident and emergency was packed and it took hours to be seen. I was then referred to a psychiatrist which took another age. I agreed to be thrown in the loony bin on the condition that I could jump in a taxi and go home to get some clothes (escorted, of course).

I made it back to the hospital at six on Saturday morning, and have been waiting for a bed ever since. The most recent news is that I will get a bed around nine at night, if I am lucky. A fifteen hour wait does not sound lucky to me.

The bin is bloody awful, filled with unhappy people shouting at each other and watching television at ear-bleeding volume. I have managed to persuade them to let me hide in a little store room, but it is still miserable as sin and I am vastly unhappy.

It does not look like my medication will be reviewed until Monday, so I am sure you can imagine this makes me even happier.More news as it comes in.

PS. The Nokia N800 is great for blogging in the loony bin.

Not terribly much has been happening to me over the past week; only one anecdote...

I got off the tube near where I live and because I was loaded down with shopping I got a taxi to take me the last bit of the journey. As we went through South-East London we drove toward a group of 10-11 year old children who were waving at the taxi as if they wanted it to stop for them. As we passed there was an enormous crash and the passenger window next to turned into a spider's web of cracks with a big hole in the middle of it. The little bastards had thrown a rock at the taxi window and smashed it to smithereens. They disappeared where the taxi driver couldn't follow them so he drove back to the taxi rank whilst he tried to contact the police. I have to say I really felt for the taxi driver as the cost of replacing a window would be less than his insurance excess, so he'd have to stump up the money himself, and as it happened in the morning he lost a day's worth of fares.

Today's excitement is going to one of the local microbreweries. Their beer is excellent and they make really rather good pizzas.

Tomorrow I had an appointment with my doctor to talk about my appalling sleep problems that have been going on for over eight weeks now. I must admit to seriously looking forward to this appointment as I am feeling at the end of my tether. So, I am sure you can imagine my delight when I got a call this morning from the health centre saying the doctor would be away tomorrow and I cannot be seen until next Monday. Brilliant. I am really rather unhappy, I must say.

After a mostly dismal winter in Australia the England cricket team have won a series. Even more amazingly, it was a one day series and England are traditionally rubbish at one day cricket. Best of all, we beat the smug Australians on their home turf, their first home series defeat in fourteen years. Hooray! At the start of the series the Australian coach was complaining that the quality of opposition they were facing (England and New Zealand) was so poor it was messing up their training for the cricket world cup (which starts in three weeks). Quality of opposition so poor that they lost two-nil in the finals? Ho ho ho.

Yesterday I had a visit from the local loony support team; they were supposed to be dropping off some drugs. Sadly, I found them to be the biggest couple of moronic, rancid fools it has ever been my displeasure not to have avoided dealing with.

It started when I got a call on my mobile from them saying they were outside my building and didn't know how to get in. I said you just have to use the entry phone by the door and dial my flat number, one hundred, and I could let them in. The person on the phone then proceeded to type my flat number in on her mobile-phone rather than the entry phone. After doing this a couple of times whilst saying, "It's not working, it is not working", I managed to attract her attention back to me on the phone and told her that she had to call one hundred on the entry phone, not her mobile-phone. "Oh, the entry phone", she said with great surprise, followed by, "But there is no button for one hundred there, it only goes up to nine."

At this point I was rather exasperated and told them just to wait where they were and I would come and find them and let them in. I went outside my building and, needless to say, they were not there. I tried ringing their mobile-phone back to ask where they really were and it was engaged. I started walking around the general area whilst trying to get through to their mobile. Eventually I found them on a road well beyond mine looking at the entry phone on some gates with expressions of pure stupidity on their faces whilst they pressed random buttons. One of them was holding a mobile-phone which it turned out was currently leaving a long message on my answer-phone of them muttering inanities. I told them to only go as far as my building next time and not try to get into a completely random address as that wouldn't get the drugs to me. I didn't invite them into my flat as I thought the floor would probably confuse them, being deceptively flat as it is.

At least I got the drugs, but I wonder how less functional people deal with such inane fools when they need support. I was shocked (and highly annoyed) by their ineptitude.

There are new laws coming into force here that will prevent discrimination against people on the grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services. All very well and good, you might think. However, a twisted alliance of religious nutters is protesting against these perfectly reasonable laws today. They claim the change in law violates their human rights.

The example of this given on the news earlier was of a bed and breakfast owner who refused to rent a room to a gay couple because he is a Christian. So his position, and that of the people protesting today, is basically that it is OK to discriminate against people as long as one can claim a religious reason to do so. The protesters claim it is a human right to be an unreasonable bigot if some ancient book says it is fine to be an unreasonable bigot. This is obviously quite scandalous. Would these people be happy to allow people to deny services to black people if a religious reason was claimed for it?

I have to say that I find all religions to be a load of mumbo-jumbo that are hardly suitable guides for living in the modern world. Basing your opinions on a book like the bible, which says such great things as slavery being admirable, doesn't seem like a wonderful way of getting on in these far more enlightened times. Yet, for some unaccountable reason, religious belief is often given a privileged status. This disgusts me, which is why I am a member of the National Secular Society. Join today and fight against people ramming their contradictory and illogical nonsense down your throats!

My mother purchased a pair of trousers for me. The way she described them on the telephone made them sound bloody awful, but now I see them I have to admit I am rather taken with them:

Yes, they are lurid red cords with ducks embroidered on them. Ho ho ho.

I really like red cords; they are effectively wine-trade uniform here in London and I do like to associate myself with wine. They have got me into trouble in the past, though. I was once travelling on a train through a deeply horrible part of London to the airport to go and visit a friend in Paris when a group of scum took offence at my red cords and smashed me over the head with a bottle of incredibly filthy sparkling wine. Blood was everywhere and I now have a very big scar on the back of my head. At least the dry cleaners managed to get the blood out of my tweed jacket.

As I have mentioned in the past, I am schizophrenic. Until last July I saw a psychiatrist every couple of months and a community psychiatric nurse every two weeks in a health centre ten minutes walk away from my flat. For some unknown reason the mental health services in my area were re-organised in July.

The first thing about this I didn't like was that I'd have to take a train to get to the new health centre where I would seen a new psychiatrist and nurse when they were allocated to me. It was much easier to walk down the road to be seen.

The second irksome thing was that a new nurse was not allocated to me until November, four months after I had stopped being seen at the old place. The chap who was finally allocated to me is a nice enough fellow, but it would have been better if I'd have been assigned someone sooner.

The most worrying thing about the re-organisation was that I did not get an appointment to see my new psychiatrist until today, six months after I last saw the previous doctor. The person who arranged this appointment had allocated fifteen minutes for me to see him. This hardly seems long enough for a first meeting. The psychiatrist agreed and spent a lot of the fifteen minutes telling me I should complain to the health service managers about the slowness in getting an appointment and the insufficient length of it.

I really wanted to have a serious chat with him. Over the past few weeks my hallucinations have been a lot worse and the medication I am on doesn't seem to be helping. I coped over the Christmas break because my partner had time off work; the extra support was very useful. Now I am back to spending days alone in the flat I am feeling really quite agitated. Alas, there wasn't time for anything but the briefest of chats, and he had only just been given my medical notes so had not had time to read them. Bleeding marvellous.

It has now been left that he will try to find time for an hour-long appointment as soon as possible. I wish I knew when this will happen. The NHS is good because it is free, I don't have to pay for my drugs or appointments with people, but this means they are constantly strapped for cash and under-staffed. I really hope I can be seen soon as things are a bit fragile at casa Pinot.

I am back in pretty good form as far as eating and drinking go so I was pleased to be able to drink wine for the first time in a while last night. I didn't finish the bottle. This afternoon a friend popped around and we finished last night's bottle then popped another. It was incredibly dull and very disappointing. This made me unhappy and annoyed that I had purchased a poor bottle. Needless to say after a few glasses of wine my nappy was rather wet and I was squirming a bit. My friend finally left, leaving me still hacked off about the poor wine, and I could finally get a change. The simple application of a dry nappy really cheered me right up. I am a lot less bothered by the poor wine now I am comfortable in a fresh nappy.

My weekly email from the National Secular Society had a good quote in it from one of my favourite authors, Salman Rushdie:

In Darfur you’ve got a Muslim massacre of other Muslims. Why aren’t there demonstrations about that in the Muslim world? That seems to me to be a much bigger thing than the Pope saying a 15-century quote.

I have no time for religion, any religion; they use threats to coerce and that stinks of terrorism to me.

Today I've been watching the 'higher number' channels provided by Sky. It appears the higher the numbers get from the low hundreds the more appalling the channel is. The channel I was watching only seemed to have adverts for cheaper car insurance (how can they all be cheaper?) and predatory law firms who'll pursue your accident compensation claim. These adverts I hate. It is not that I have too much against people taking out such law suits, it is more that the adverts always seem to include a re-enactment of the injury. Some of these are quite realistic and they deeply un-nerve me. I'm not terribly squeamish, but I really don't want to see someone getting their hand crushed when they fall off a ladder. Oooooohhhh... it makes me feel all queer.

Whilst I am thinking of religion and getting slightly bristly, I've been extremely annoyed with the constant news stories about the pope apologising for quoting someone in a speech. This is yet more madness from the ever-growing lunatic fringe of Islam. Their message that you can only say what they approve of is an example of terrorism, they use threats to coerce. Free speech is an absolute in almost all instances, the safeguard of all other rights. The right to say only the right thing is not worth having, let alone fighting for.

The last blog entry was appalled by the Christian lunatic fringe in the video I linked to; this entry is about Islam. I am not really aiming for balance, I just hate all religions equally. So does Butter.

I am an atheist so have been slightly appalled that the government here is increasing the number of single faith schools around the country. Oddly, the government has just started a consultation exercise to try and find what can be done to ease divisions in society and yet the people writing the report have been forbidden to look at single faith schools. This seems odd because teaching children in single faith groups is hardly going to teach them to be more understanding of other ideologies.

So enthused with atheism am I that I am a member of the National Secular Society which has been campaigning to reduce religious privilege since the 1860s (if memory serves).

I doubt religious schools here have got this bad, but I was sickened to watch that video.

My psychotherapist suggested I read a book called Accepting Voices; I largely hated it.

The book is based around the idea that the orthodox psychiatric view of hearing voices does not help people deal with them; they say it inhibits rather than stimulates personal growth. This is all very well and good, but some of the ideas they wish to replace the standard view with are quite laughable.

The book is filled with personal accounts from people who hear voices. A large number of these people seem to think they have magic powers to read peoples minds, tell the future and other such drivel. The accounts are filled with mumbo jumbo-level explanations about the voices they hear, with people talking about how they have holes in their auras and how spirits follow them around. As a rationalist, this kind of crap really gets on my tits.

The accounts people give about their magic powers are all riddled with inconsistencies, one sentence says the voices always tell the truth (and tell the future to some people) yet a few sentences later they say the voices lie and try to mis-direct them. Of course, drivelly tales of magic powers are usually inconsistent, but this doesn't seem to have been pointed out to the people writing the personal accounts.

It may be that believing these bogus tales has helped some people deal with their voices, but should the psychotherapeutic community really be encouraging people to accept further delusions in the form of obviously false stories as to why they hear voices? Of course not. Thinking that one has magic powers is hardly likely to help on integrate with or be taken seriously by society. These people already have delusions in the form of voices, loading themselves up with further delusions about the cause of the voices is not going to make them seem any saner.

Some may argue that these horse shit stories about their voices are what they believe, so that makes it alright. Clearly this is rubbish; unfettered belief is not a valid model for explaining things. If I believe that all Scottish people are only one metre tall (I don't, by the way) this has no bearing on how tall Scottish people really are and I should be corrected. Personal growth is not about thinking you are right no matter what bogus things you think. If you want to believe things that are at odds with how modern society works you are more likely to be side-lined and not taken seriously.

The book has some more classical explanations for voices, and suggests non-laughable ways of coming to terms with them, but I feel its uncritical view of less realistic explanations really damages the book.

The latest thing that has been getting on my tits is an advert for Kodak Picture Kiosks. You can view it online at this site. I don't really mind the advert, but what is mind-destroyingly irritating is the way the small boy says "Thanks!" at the end of the advert. This advert seemed to be showing in every advertisement break during the cricket and it made my blood boil.

There is some new music on Sky's television guide; it terrifies me.

Obviously on a hot day like today I am only wearing a nappy, sitting in front of the fan and attempting to relax so as to minimise my body temperature. I'm pretty relaxed. I think, "Oh, I'll have a look what is on the other channels." I press the TV guide button and suddenly there is a blood-curdling, operatic, choral, organ-powered death hymn. When that evil terror blares out at me I am glad I wear nappies.

The graphics cards have been returned. Not new or repaired graphics cards, just the old ones sent back by return of post. They still don't work. The bastards.

I now have to contact the suppliers again and find out what in the name of arse they think they are doing. I am vividly incandescent with rage.

Today I am performing one of those tedious activities that we all have to endure from time to time, namely waiting in all day for a parcel to be delivered.

We do have a concierge who will accept deliveries, and courier companies often deliver straight to them rather than bothering to find out if anyone is home. The concierge doesn't bother to tell anyone when parcels have arrived, so it is a case of going to see them at five o'clock if I have heard nothing from the courier.

It is better to be in, just in case the courier can be bothered to deliver the parcel to the delivery address. Couriers cannot stick a card through the door if I am out as they cannot gain entry to the building without me being there to answer the entry-phone system.

I hope they come soon, I am expecting fun things. My 7800GT graphics cards went tits up and these are replacements. Soon I can return to the power of whizzy SLI graphics cards. Hooray!

This week's National Secular Society email had a great quote in it:

It seems that the majority of countries have become hypersensitive to Islam and willing to limit, at least in part, the freedom of the press to appease Islamic beliefs. And maybe these newspapers and governments are doing this out of fear. Maybe they’re doing it in an effort to stop rioting and death threats. But if that is why they are doing it, they are bowing to terrorism. The very definition of terrorism is to use fear for coercion. We cannot be afraid to criticize any government or any religion. We cannot be afraid of what we print in our newspapers. To do so would negate the liberties that we enjoy in this country and in others. But if those governments truly wish to build a stronger relationship with the Muslim community, or have a deeper understanding for Islam, let them do so, but not at the expense of freedom of the press.

- Alicia Wotring, The Liberty Champion

I could not agree more. It has always struck me that religion uses threats to coerce, be it through violent protest, death threats, or even threatening people with eternal damnation.

No entries for a few days as I have been in hospital; it was touch and go for a while. I've been busted out on the promise of being good and having people come to visit me at home every day. Since this is the NHS I'll be dealing with I expect people to turn up a minimum of four hours late for any appointment they make with me, and simply not bother turning up to the medication review on Thursday. Ah the National Health Service just about works, but it is a creaking monstrosity of inefficiency and drivelly management.

After a particularly irritating conversation with someone earlier I am reproducing an entry from a year ago. Hopefully venting this spleen will make me feel a bit better.

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Several times over the past few days I have found myself witnessing, and far too often getting drawn into, the conversation of which an early line is, "I do not wear nappies outside in case someone notices." I call this 'crap' and it gets me very irritated because:

1. Who goes around examining people's underwear terribly closely? Ignoring the fact that modern disposables are so discreet one would have to wear a spandex jumpsuit and walk around on one's hands for people to notice a nappy, how many streets have you walked down and heard strangers passing casual comments to each other on their underwear? Honestly.
2. The stunning arrogance of these people. Given the virtual impossibility of detecting a nappy under clothes some people seem to assume that they have some special place at the centre of the community/universe and so are under constant surveillance with all their activities posted in the newspaper and discussed by the populace at large. Should it be noticed by the cameras in the black vans that they are wearing underwear most commonly associated with a medical problem they will be openly ridiculed in the street leading to the collapse of society.

Perhaps they are worthy of ridicule, but because of their failure to engage their brains rather than because they like to wear nappies.

Then we reach the people who say thing along the lines of, "Well, I am happy just to be a baby in my own home. Of course, if anyone visits I hide all of my stuff and spend the evening sweating with terror in case I open the wrong cupboard or let something slip." This is certainly a mode of operation, but by adopting it one is doing a dis-service to several groups of people:

1. Themselves. By hiding all of their stuff the re-enforce the view that they are doing something wrong and shameful. If you are a normal person, with a job, friends, a collection of good jokes about bananas and so on, you do not really do yourself many favours by twisting yourself up with existential angst in case someone sees the teddy bear in your bed. Not good strategy for long-term mental well-being.
2. Their guests. It does not matter if it is your mother or the gas-man these are generally ordinary people, much as we are all generally ordinary people. Ordinary people are pretty much aware that other ordinary people do a variety of things and, whilst they may be initially surprised to discover that you are a bit more of a rich and interesting ordinary person than they initially thought, you are still and ordinary person with whom they can interact in ways they normally would. Simply demonstrating another facet to your ordinary life, if worthy of any value-judgement at all, is an act of enlightenment for others demonstrating a new way that ordinary people pass the time.
3. Other babies of enhanced magnitude. This pretty much follows on from the above. Since most large babies are just ordinary people, demonstrating that large babies are ordinary people is only going to help other babies realise that they are ordinary people too. If the only postmen one sees paint their faces purple and spray lemon juice in your eyes when delivering letters you are going to assume that postmen are a pretty weird bunch. Since most postmen just get on with their jobs like normal people (ie. in a half-arsed, feckless sort of way, perhaps this is just how people do jobs in Britain) one has the view that they are normal people.

This last point is demonstrated very clearly by the little boy next door's website. A few people have linked to his site with such comments as "Look at this person, he is a bit weird." I would concur, compared to most of the people that make such links he is a bit weird in that he has a successful relationship, lots of friends, can spell, has a sense of humour and earns huge amounts of money. His website demonstrates very clearly that nice, ordinary, successful people can show a variety of behaviours and there is nothing wrong with that. Of course, if these people met my friend in real life they would not dare say he was a bit weird to his face. This is an example of the internet lemma: Normal person + Anonymity + Audience = Rude, appalling, scumbag

The counter-arguments normally raised against such rationality take a variety of forms. Far too often one encounters people who cannot be bothered to read a few paragraphs and think about them. Many times I have been accused of demanding that all large babies run down their high-streets wearing only nappies and hitting people with their teddy bears. I most certainly do not demand such behaviour, I think that people should be left to get on with their lives as they see fit as long as they are not hurting anyone. I think getting hit with a teddy bear might well inconvenience someone, whereas the only inconvenience caused by me walking down the high-street in nappies under my baby clothes is if I do not change regularly and get rash. Certainly, when I have been working in jobs that require me to sound professional whilst taking blood samples from people I tend to wear a shirt and tie. Equally well, when my employment has had me shut in an office/lab with a limited bunch of other people then baby clothes seem an ideal way of dressing in order to assist with my relaxation and so perform my job frighteningly well.

The only very slightly more sophisticated version of this objection is that by wearing baby clothes one might be subject to verbal abuse, violence and arrest. Certainly, there will always be a microscopic proportion of people who feel it within their remit to shout incoherently at passers-by. We call these 'pitiable, angry, sad lunatics' and ignore them. I admit the amount of abuse I have received is so little that drawing a statistically valid conclusion is probably premature, but it does appear that I get more abuse walking through dodgy parts of London whilst in a spiffy suit than when wearing baby clothes. I suppose a large chap in a suit is more intimidating to the dregs of society than a large toddler. Much the same is true of violence, only it is vanishingly less likely to occur. Fear of arrest is quite odd, because I am not sure how wearing shortalls and a nursery-printed shirt breaks any laws. Perhaps in other countries, Iran possibly? Not here. If someone did set the rozzers on me claiming some mystic intelligence had told them I had child porn I'd welcome them into my home, make them tea, gladly assist them going through my computer, then bid them good day.

Then we come to the people who claim that wearing nappies is not a political issue for them. This does show a poor understanding of the words they use (see the title of this entry). However, much as it pains me to admit it, I am in many ways a New Labour toddler. I think that social responsibility is a good thing. If you cannot be bothered to stand up for those in your community, be they people in your neighbourhood watch group or other large babies, then you are letting the side down somewhat.

Finally, there are those people who do not want to feel like the normal, ordinary people they so clearly are; they like the guilt and get a cheap thrill from thinking they are shameful, bad and weird. The sad truth is that unless you are under a court order to wear nappies and baby clothes constantly you must be doing so because you want to and so because it is part of your personality; as it is the part of many ordinary people's personalities. If you want to feel guilty about doing a harmless activity that is a fundamental part of who you are you may as well feel embarrassed about buying food. True, I get a slight guilty pang when I buy double cream with the sole aim of pouring it on my breakfast cereal but I am well aware this is a silly feeling engendered by getting repeatedly smacked on the head with a bit of wood by the teachers at school when pouring too much evaporated milk on my dessert. They may have planted the seed of the idea that a tiny bit too much cream is bad, but I am well aware that it is a laughable idea. It certainly does not turn me on.

So, dear reader (Mrs. Trellis), should you ever feel doubt before heading down the boozer in a nappy, or when looking at the stack of nappy-boxes in the corner of your flat before your mother arrives, think for a moment. Realise that you are an enlightened, but above all normal person who has no reason to feel ashamed.

Today marks the 197^th anniversary of the birth of the great biologist Charles Darwin. As an ex-biologist myself I greatly appreciate the power of his idea. Natural selection is one of the best ideas ever to have been thought of, it is terribly cunning. Those who argue that complex life cannot have evolved 'by chance' miss the point of his idea. Chance is not the driving force in evolution, but selection. Evolution is driven by those organisims/genes that work best in their niches, the ones that don't work so well fail to survive to future generations. It is both the simplicity and power of this idea that makes it so good. That Mr. Darwin was a clever chap.

As I sit around playing with Butter and generally frittering time away I occasionally get a happy telephone call. One just came in, "I've got a wine delivery for you." Things such as half a case of wine being delivered make me very happy. I am really pleased that it arrived because for about two years this supplier, the Wine Society, messed up every order I placed with them. On one memorable occasion they sent me the wrong wine three times. Needless to say in a hot-blooded toddler like me this provoked many tantrums. However, I am now very pleased that they are delivering the ordered goods as promised.

Well, we all do, but I was suggesting something in a less physical-necessity sort of manner. I am sitting around at home, cuddling Butter and reading in a half-arsed manner, and I find myself incredibly bored. If this was the weekend I'd be cooking something baroque and planning what to drink later, but no such luck. So I need food and drink to keep me interested. Hardly a bad thing, but a real swine when there is no food in the house and all of my wine is too young to drink. Perhaps I'll chop the onions for dinner....

Bored, bored, bored. Until moments ago I was stunningly bored. The work of toddler doesn't get me out of the flat that much, day-care has limited calls on my time, so I usually just sit here writing thrilling prose all day. Today, alas, I've just got stunningly bored with it all and I want a bloody drink. As luck would have it, I've got one or two things to drink in the flat. At the moment it is Château de Pibarnon (Bandol) 1999 which is simply lovely. It is arguably a bit too heroic for a toddler, but if a toddler of my enhanced magnitude cannot manage the odd bit of heroism then what is the point in being large? After two smallish glasses I feel a song coming on... They call him Butter, Butter....

... What my cleaner thinks. The flat has Miffy posters on the walls, I have nursery-printed bedding and there are more than a few teddy bears spread about. She is here making the flat wonderfully tidy at the moment so I suppose I could ask her. Perhaps not, though. Obviously, as she has to clean I tidy up and do things like move heaps of baby clothes and plastic pants into cupboard draws so the flat is not too scandalous. Even the boxes of disposable nappies are relatively out of the way...

My kitchen is small and perfectly formed, hence the cooking is usually pretty good. There are loads of entries here about food because I really enjoy cooking. Truth be told, cooking is generally quite easy and you get to eat the results so it surely must be a good thing to be doing. Eating is one of those things you have to do, so you may as well extract as much pleasure as possible from it. People who claim to be bored by food, they eat to live rather than live to eat, are in many ways lacking an important source of pleasure in their lives, and they must be slightly pitiable because of that. The only problem is it is somewhat of a consuming passion; if you cook something bad, particularly after a string of successes, you feel bad. On the rare occasions I ruin food (occasionally steaks or scallops at the request of guests with poor taste) I feel I have wasted my time to produce something less than pleasurable. I am really happy to play kitchen, even if it means I have to hang out with the girls at day-care. Girls can often be quite nice so there is nothing wrong with this. They are especially nice if they are as enthusiastic at playing kitchen as I am.

I agree with both Gina Gershon ("I don't trust people who don't like to eat.") and George Bernard Shaw ("There is no sincerer love than the love of food.").

I have an appointment to sort out my medication-related anxiety; sadly with this being the wonderful NHS it is not for eight days. The NHS is generally pretty good, things get done (given time) so I cannot complain too much. Just in case, dear reader, you are worried that I am turning into even more of a booze-hound after my last comment about medicating the anxiety with alcohol allow me to say that you should not knock yeast as it is the only culture I know.

It is clear that either someone out there knows me (and my security bat), or they came along to a site they might find rather surprising. One of the many searches that has brought people here to the spume of drivel this month was for the words "Fluffy Bat". Pleasingly, I am second on Yahoo and third on Google for this most soothing of search terms. I just hope they realised that he is a real bat and not a blanket. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people top me in the search for "Butter" including a site called butterisbest; I couldn't agree more. The Wisconsin milk marketing board can be thanked for this statement of the obvious. I do worry in that a lot of their recipes they talk about Butter (proper noun) whereas all of their other ingredients are just nouns; I hope they are not suggesting cooking with Butter (the teddy bear). This could just be an example of American Headline Syndrome, though, the usage of initial capital letters Where They Do Not Belong.

My wonderful purveyor of quality pork products, Sillfield Farm, is again providing tonight's dinner: Sicilian-style sausages. In an attempt to pander to passing popularity these sausages are flavoured with Chardonnay wine. Ignoring the fact that Chardonnay is not a local grape in Sicily, it is pretty silly to suggest that any Chardonnay character beyond 'being a bit wine-y' is going to make it into the sausages once they've been cooked. It also irks me that Chardonnay is used in order to capture the vague popularity this grape has, when most Chardonnay (certainly at the quality level for putting into sausages) is not very interesting. How can I exorcise my spleen? By having a glass of Riesling, of course.

That is about as close as I can currently get my knees together due to the rather bulky nature of the cloth nappy I have been put in.

dasBlog and my server keep a track of where people come from in order to visit this spume of drivel; it appears that lots of livejournal users find People with AIDS plaza to be the funniest thing they have seen in a period of time. A worryingly large number of people are visiting the spume of drivel thanks to those people half-inching my picture. Not that I mind the picture being spread around in the slightest as I thought it was hilarious too. Mind you, I thought that whole trip was hilarious, the bits that I remember, anyway.

I do worry that if lots of people come here they might well be expecting something the spume of drivel cannot deliver, and they'll leave feeling let down that there was little here beyond highly articulate outbursts and references to soft toys. Not that anyone could possibly feel let down by Butter, I hope.

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On a related note, looking at the logs once again I note that Yahoo! thinks I am the fourth best source of information on toddler boy hairstyles. I am flattered that Yahoo! takes my style suggestions so seriously but I do wonder what the people doing those searches think when they arrive at the spume of drivel.

Sadly, Bulldog Broadband are not terribly beautiful; their website doesn't suggest they are anyway. One month after placing an order with them for a new line in my new flat they make an appointment for an engineer to come around yesterday morning. I sit around all day like a ham sandwich at a Jewish wedding waiting for the swine who doesn't turn up and doesn't even have the courtesy to ring and say he cannot be arsed to turn up. There was much holding of breath until something was done, and what was done was ringing Bulldog and having a highly articulate outburst. Can it really take over a month to get a new telephone line and an 8mb connection plumbed in in one of the richest cities in the world? Clearly it can.

Given my toddler-esque limited attention span I am somewhat weary of the cricket; it has all been too much. The old Oxford chap Peter Medawar said that "Scientists are boring people with interesting ideas whereas artists are interesting people with boring ideas. Of course, athletes are boring people with no ideas but fantastic physical control." They may be boring, but their degree of physical control can be damned thrilling. Shame Warne's bowling has been frighteningly good, and Brett Lee and Glenn McGrath have done damned well. The Australian captain has fielded like a demon and whilst his bowling choices have often lacked inspiration he deserves credit for leaping around like a frog on a hot-plate. Obviously, I hold the battling batting of 'Piggy' Flintoff and Andrew Strauss in high regard. Well, Mr Strauss has batted with such care he is more of an assassin than a battler, but it has been most exhausting to watch his thoughtful, interesting play.

Cricket is pleasingly compelling, but I am more pleased I have a bottle of wine in the fridge to entertain mine host when he gets back from work to thank him for internet use and just to have a little chuckle with a nice chap. It is a nice bottle of Australian Shiraz: nice things are nicer than nasty things.

If my time at Oxford taught me one thing it is that it is always useful to have a bottle of something decent to hand. If the biology course taught me one thing it is that knowledge of initial sources frequently gives one the greatest insight. Consequently, I am quite pleased by my latest book acquisition: the two volumes of that great French thinker Paul Henri Thiery's (aka Baron D'Holbach) work The System of Nature (in translation, obviously). This was the first openly atheist book published in the modern world (in 1770) and it is a treat to read.

Certainly it has the flowery precision of language that many of the tomes of that period posses, and so it is a bit harder for we modern types to read, but when someone clearly took such delight in shaping their thoughts into words it is worth spending a few hours pouring over. Sentences one and two are re-produced here for your delectation:

The source of man's unhappiness is his ignorance of nature. The pertinacity with which he clings to blind opinions imbibed in his infancy, which interweave themselves with his existence, the consequent prejudice that warps his mind, that prevents its expansion, that renders him the slave of fiction, appears to doom him to continual error.

So, well done that clever French chap with his cunning thoughts about the value of investigation, thinking and humanity, I'd buy him a drink if he was not dead.

With content such as this excellent piece I may well start reading a national daily newspaper again. With the recent events in London I am staggered that the political parties here are still pandering to any religion and setting up faith schools in order to perpetuate the indoctrination.

Understandably, I am quite perturbed that some scumbags have decided to organise a series of cowardly attacks in London this morning. Not attacks on a government, nor an army, but on people going to earn their day's wage. Not only an attack today, but clearly they've shafted the transport network for a long time. Erm.... Well done, chaps, you must feel really good about yourselves.

But, no scumbags beat Londoners! No one. Not the Nazis, not the IRA and certainly not these as-yet-unknown filth. As soon as transport is working and things have been cleaned up a bit I am off to Russell Square to a boozer I know just near the British Medical Association building. Currently that building is splattered with blood, presumably from the bomb that ruined a bus and probably some lives just outside it.

The first clause of this is good and praise-worthy; the English are/were far too interested in pragmatism to go for such drivel as spirituality. The last clause is clearly a feeble attempt to pander to the constant revolutionary spirit of youth that is happy to laugh at cricket before realising how great it is. Much as Churchill said, "Any man who is under thirty, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over thirty, and is not a conservative, has no brains.", any proper chap, be they a reactionary old git or an ageing toddler, sees the greatness in cricket.

Cricket can appeal to all forms of sport-lover. Traditional cricket is the series of five-day test matches. A game lasts for five days, with breaks for lunch and tea (of course) and should it rain for too long the game will be a draw. It rains quite a lot during the summer in England. This does not matter too much as the victor is not the winner of a single match, but team that wins the most games in the series of matches. This is my favourite kind of cricket because it is possible to fall asleep for a few hours whilst watching it and not really miss that much, but also spend five days glued to the television because there is so much happening one is scared of missing important bits. Both modes of operation can be used simultaneously by random members of the audience. More importantly, during an international tour one may have as many as twenty-five days within two months that can be exclusively focused on heavy drinking and eating snacks whilst legitimately claiming to be supporting one's country in the national game. If the snacks were soup Blowers would be proud, certainly if the booze was claret.

Some people felt this demanded too much thinking and so invented one-day cricket. This only lasts but a single day and the players get to wear lurid pyjamas; possibly to get the ladies watching, I am not sure. This can often be as exciting, if not liver-knackering in a long-term sense, as test cricket.

The cutting-edge refinement has been 20Twenty cricket, which lasts but three hours at the very most. Curmudgeonly people sneer that this is dull, but it can also provide the excitement of test cricket, albeit for a much shorter period of time. This is the current over-view of cricket styles.

In recent decades the Australians have played cricket with a degree of skill and quite staggering confidence that has often been stunning to watch. England has been, like in all the sports we invented, of the attitude that, "It is not the winning that counts, but the taking part. Well, not really the taking part, more the sense of futile despair." So, it has been with a notable degree of surprise and, dare I say it pleasure, that England have beaten Australia in our last three encounters. One of each of the three styles mentioned above.

Obviously I drawing any broader conclusions about things could well be foolish, but it does provide some pleasure for a knackered old toddler. The first of those three matches was the final match in the last Ashes series, in which the chap who is now our captain was the highest run-scorer and player of the series (but, yes we did lose the series). Then we had a surprising victory in a one-day match, a form of cricket at which England has always been hopeless. It was a convincing win, I recall. Then, last Monday in the first ever England/Australian 20Twenty match, we gave Australia an incredible thrashing. Obviously, it would be churlish of me to point out that the Australian coach immediately suggested he saw no future in international 20Twenty matches, and possibly even more churlish of me to mention that in today's one-day match against a county side (a good county, but hardly an international team) they were once again whipped.

The possibility exists that the up-coming Ashes series will be slightly more of a contest than most in recent times. I am pleased I am now a toddler old-enough to manage moments of attention whilst this will be happening. Clearly people who say that Australians have a tendency to be smug and self-satisfied are probably failing to give credit to their quite-apparent charms. I am sure my Australian associates are similarly looking forward to a bit more of an interesting series and, given that none of them have balanced personalities (balanced personality - chip on both shoulders), would be happy to see top-class cricket played even if it does mean their ex-Imperial overlords scraping a win in a match or two.

I know I am not the only ageing toddler to have an appreciation for cricket; Sir James Matthew Barrie pointed out that, "It has been said of the unseen army of the dead, on their everlasting march, that when they are passing a rural cricket ground, the Englishmen fall out of the ranks for a moment to lean over a gate and smile". Even if the author of Peter Pan was not toddler-esque then most of the Englishmen I have met are in so many ways. Most of the fun Englishmen, anyway, and a lot of dead ones.

Toddlers are well-known for their enjoyment of slimy, mushy sort of things, so it may be of little surprise that I really enjoyed my lunch today:

Three hundred grams of quite ripe Gorgonzola Dolce slapped a satisfied smile across my face, even though it required wiping the excess cheese from it in order to discern the smile^*. I'd have much preferred it on some decent bread rather than the pin board-esque rice cakes I am now obliged to eat. Standing in front of the supermarket's 'free from' shelf suggests they are so named either because they are 'free-from' flavour or because those who gleefully buy from them are 'free from' any form of likable character; and I am now tarred with the same brush as them.... Booohooooohoooooooooo....

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^*I do like cheese, it is one of those partially-spoiled foods that can provide so much pleasure. Sigmund Freud had a bit of a problem with cheese, we are told, some problem with the symbolism relating to his lactating mother in a rancid, solid form. Weirdo.

Earlier there was the joke. A joke, you'll note, about the importance of facts when it comes to making a judgement. So, having done really hard work and typed a joke using only the power of fingers I'll allow the BBC News website to relate a tale concerning how belief can influence people's judgements of what constitutes reasonable behaviour. The prosecutor pointed out how it was, "not unusual for the defendant to believe that [an eight year old girl] could shift her shape and visit people at night". Clearly these individuals were just corrupted in the "true" ndoki belief by their regular attendance at a Protestant church; otherwise, we are assured, "believers would never condone physically harming a child, even one they thought was possessed by an evil spirit".

Three geezers find themselves sitting together at the start of a joke whilst travelling on a train; they are a vicar, a monk and a biologist. In order to pass the time until the joke finishes with a woeful inevitability they start playing cards and quickly move on to playing for the pitifully small amounts of cash they posses. Within moments the Peelers, of the British Transport-variety, arrive, they are all whisked off and unceremoniously dumped in front of the local magistrate. The magistrate puts down his glass of Sherry and says to the vicar, "You are charged with gambling in a public, unlicensed place; how do you plead?"

The vicar looks up to the sky and whispers, "Just one white lie, Lord, just one", before replying, "Not guilty, sir."

"Case dismissed," bellows the beak. He then turns to the monk and says, "You are charged with gambling in a public, unlicensed place; how do you plead?"

The monk looks up to the sky and whispers, "Just one white lie, Lord, just one", before saying, "Not guilty, sir."

"Case dismissed," bellows the beak and turns to the biologist. "You are charged with gambling in a public, unlicensed place..."

The biologist interrupts, "Who with?"

So said Richard Feynman when being harassed by loonies; a theist scumbag had the cheek to try a similar line on me. I was subjected to a huge diatribe using some, if not many, of the moronic debating techniques used by Christians only to end with the suggestion that perhaps I should leave them too their poor, deluded lives and not harass them for being misguided in their harassment of others. I was more than happy to point this person in the direction of an excellent essay written by the author of two of the best English language books in recent decades, Salman Rushdie. The Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children are hilarious, intelligent and really fun; any lover of language and literature should devour them. He also wrote what is quite clearly the best children's book I have experienced, Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

So, without further ado let us mock some theists. We are told that a particular god favours a particular football team over another all thanks to the atypical behaviour of one member of its team and this is somehow newsworthy. Quite bonkers. I am quite prepared to understand that words are important, powerful and occasionally (hopefully) offensive but banning paper bags seems a poor method of stopping minute fractions of offensive words becoming physically covered in filth.

I do recognise that people are given to bending the truth if it means they can make money, but when a relationship of me paying quite a lot of money to someone has been established for a long time perhaps it is rude of them to stiff me for a few quid on false pretences. This is especially true when it means they might lose out on future custom.

There is a very good beef supplier in London's best food market who provides beef to various three-stars and their meat is invariably excellent. As it is such high-quality I do not mind paying slightly above the odds for it. Last weekend I went and asked if they had a rib or other good joint for roasting. "No rib or anything like that left, sadly", came the reply, "But I do have plenty of silverside left." In view of the way I had phrased my question I assumed this meant that silverside would be fine for roasting. So when I got home and looked in my books I was naturally quite peeved to discover that silverside is a tough lump suitable only for pot-roasting or stewing, never roasting. I tried slow roasting it with loads of basting juices and barded with fat but needless to say the beef was very tough indeed. The flavour was lovely, but leather-tough beef is no fun. I will give the beef woman a hard stare next time our paths cross.

This just leaves me time for tonight's cocktail recipe, mashed potato. For this you need:
800g peeled King Edward potatoes
250g good-quality unsalted butter
150ml double cream
Fresh ground pepper to taste.

Chop up the potatoes into small-ish pieces and boil vigorously for twenty minutes in a large pan filled with well salted water. Drain the potatoes and place back in the empty pan over the lowest heat possible. Mash the potatoes until reasonably broken-up. Add the butter in five stages, mashing vigorously between each addition of butter so that the butter is completely incorporated before adding the next batch. By the time all of the butter has been added the potatoes should be mashed enough to be lump-free. Pour in the cream and mash/stir this in with the masher. It will initially go a bit thin, but if you mash and stir for a minute or two it will thicken up again to result in a very pleasing mashed-potato consistency. Grind in black pepper to taste and serve.

Mashed potato is an essential ingredient in such sophisticated nursery-dishes as smoked eel with bacon and mash.

Soupy twist.

We all have things that we like very much. For example, I am a huge fan of Burgundy. It is important that we recognise our likes and dislikes and not be blinded into sloppy-thinking by them. Only last year I was presented a glass of wine with no idea what it was after much sniffing, swirling and swilling I confidently claimed, "Well, this is quite big, but has a pleasing degree of refinement. Since most Australian Chardonnay tastes like oak-ridden lighter-fluid I think this is probably a good bottle of French Chardonnay. Possibly Grand Cru Chablis from a producer who likes oak." Seconds later when I was told it was Sorrenberg Chardonnay I was delighted; not only because it was a lovely and well-priced bottle of wine but also because my hideous prejudices had been caught out.

Much the same is true with software. I am a reasonable fan of the works of Microsoft; Windows XP is an easy, powerful operating system and their recent programming languages are terribly pleasing if one can generate enthusiasm for that kind of thing. Yet, some people seem to have balanced personalities (ie. a chip on both shoulders) when it comes to using Microsoft software. They buy it, use it with rarely a significant problem (even though they may never download updates) yet despite this successful experience they whine like dysfunctional teenagers about them. They will berate Microsoft and yet praise other software companies producing niche-market applications even when they behave in completely the same way.

An example. I am a generally happy user of Firefox for some of my interweb browsing requirements, yet in the four or five months since I first installed it I have had to download four updates, the first two of which required me to completely uninstall the old version before installing the new one. Clearly, this is a tad irritating, but nothing terribly burdensome. Yet, Microsoft's monthly patches merit streams of incoherent abuse from the hard-of-thinking about how terrible it is that they cannot write perfect software that meets the needs of 90+% of all desktop users in the world the first time around. Hmmmm...

Not only are these updates for Firefox accepted by the critics of Microsoft, they are praised for quite the most bizarre reasons. An experienced programmer (who should know better) said to me the other day, "Well, with Firefox there are not as many problems as IE which is so easy to hack and at least with Firefox they do not wait until the problems have been found before they are fixed". I shall assume he meant something else apart from the hilariously howling logical error he trotted out (how can one fix a problem if one does not find it first?) and concern myself with his first comment. It is wrong. In the last six months of 2004 the well-known company Symantec found more security flaws in Firefox than in IE. Not only has it had more security flaws in recent times but also we are told by the youth with too much time on his hands who found one of the recent ones that, "The assumption that IE is easier to exploit is a common misconception. IE has become quite tough and it is very difficult to find venerabilities in it." Strangely, he used techniques that used to work with IE (but do not any more) to find the hole in Firefox.

You will note that I do not claim for a second that all Microsoft programs are utterly perfect or that the company is above indulging in the under-hand tactics that every other company feels they can get away with. Microsoft are one of many big companies so they try and make money by pleasing their customers and by stiffing their opposition as much as they can manage. If this seems a surprise to some people then perhaps they need to just check up on how companies other than Microsoft behave and what the average bear's toilet habits tend to be.

We all like many things but we have to recognise their flaws as well as their functionality. I love Riedel glasses far more than nasty Spiegelaus but I recognise that one can put the very best Spiegelaus in the dishwasher with little chance of them exploding (and they cost less to replace if they do) whereas Riedels have to be washed by hand (with a reasonable chance of them exploding even if you give them a hard stare). I am sure that in some ways Apple's new and whizzy version of the ancient Unix operating system is better than Windows, but it also has security flaws that need fixing and is not used by that many people so personal familiarity is lower and getting free support from your next-door neighbour is harder (for some people all software needs free support). Screaming incoherent abuse at people because OS X is better than Windows XP or Riedels are better than Spiegelaus is more likely to make one look unthinking and boorish rather than result in making friends and influencing people.

Woefully boring people who insist on parroting other people's humourless constructions such as "M$" or "Microshaft" may as well be parroting the Nicene Creed; even though it is contemptible at least it has a bit of historical background and has provided many people with a sanctimonious glow in the past.

Surely we have all experienced many telephone conversations, perhaps with a slightly older relative, that only require picking the receiver up from the table every fifteen to twenty seconds and making an encouraging but non-committal noise until you sense a moment that the conversation can be wrapped up and rapidly put out of your misery. Occasionally you have say a real word to prove that your mind has not melted under the strain; this is the province of the conversational yawn.

A conversational yawn is a word used to acknowledge you are to some degree attentive to the conversation, but your choice of conversational yawn can demonstrate a lot about your degree of interest and so is of great use to the Lifemanship-practitioner. My personal favourite has been the delightfully versatile word "Really". With subtle variations it can show genuine surprise or even shock ("Really!"), deep, interrogatory interest ("Really?") but my favourite is delivering it with varying degrees of deadpan flatness and so hopefully communicating that the person you are enduring speaking to is not even remotely as thrilling as they seem to think they are. A simple apathetic addition can work wonders, "Really. How interesting." This is particularly effective if your mark has said something that he is sure you would find note-worthy only to find you indicating it is quite the most turgid piece of information it is your displeasure not to have avoided being subjected to yet again. Hopefully he will be rattled enough for you to be 'one up'. Needless to say, sometimes Lifemanship is just too polite and downright rudeness is needed to allow you to escape from the groaning of the member of the undead standing in front of you. "Really. How frightfully interesting", followed by walking away solves most such problems.

Conversational yawns seemed to have changed during my somewhat long time as a toddler. I remember very clearly the almost ubiquitous use of the word "Amazing". Overstating things, possibly. Currently the yawn is "Cool". I recognise this is a yawn and generally shows that one is paying all but the vaguest of attention to someone's spluttering. I do find it lacks opportunities for being an outright put-down/slap-in the-face. If someone spends five minutes telling you that their gout is a bit better today and you reply, "Cool" it seems more like "Hmmm? What? Oh right, yes, well, that is really fine" rather than the "What you are saying is so far beneath my thresh-hold of interest that it buggers my vast and capable imagination, worm" which is expressed by "Really. How interesting".

Perhaps it is wrong to suggest ways of putting people down, but at the very least I have provided some potential comments for Mrs Trellis to add at the end of this entry.

The recent election here has provided little in the way of anecdote-worthy tales, but with today's high blood-pressure fest that is the National Secular Society's weekly news email I was pleased to see a snippet of information that made the smallest of smiles flicker across my rancid visage. May I present, Mrs Trellis, the number of votes cast in the constituency of Northampton South:

Conservative Party- 23818
Labour Party- 19399
Liberal Democrat Party - 8327
UK Independence Party - 1032
Veritas - 508
Save Our Schools - 437
Monster Raving Looney Party - 354
Independent - 346
Christian People's Alliance - 260

Of course, one needs to get 5% of the vote in a constituency not to lose the five hundred pound deposit needed to register as a prospective MP. Shame the Monster Raving Loonies lost their money despite doing so well.

By a freak co-incidence that constituency covers part of the area once covered by the constituency of Charles Bradlaugh, the MP who founded the NSS; perhaps this might explain the disproportionate amount of support in the local media received by the CPA before the election.

This is the advertising slogan of my old college; I haven't visited there in years...

However, that this idea may have been swimming around in my psyche at some point might have something to do with my love for the now-defunct genre of films the Ealing comedies. Made at Ealing Studios in the middle of the last century these are very gentle comedies of manners. Invariably the plot runs something like this: Basically good pub-landlord/thief/textile-chemist/cinema-doorman/assassin/honest, normal-type-person tries to achieve something with the best possible intentions but ends up in a frightful pickle and gets terribly flustered. The occasionally-good Cohen brothers recently made a passable facsimile of the Ealing comedy The Ladykillers.

Perhaps it will be of no surprise that my favourite of the Ealing comedies is a charming little number called The School for Scoundrels, which is all about making sure other people end up in a frightful pickle and get terribly flustered. This film is based upon the book Potter on Lifemanship, a little book that purports filled with notes on Lifemanship-skills research; skills that allow one to exploit subtle weaknesses in the behaviour or desire to stick to social rules that others display, and so allowing one's self to be one up on them. It is quite amusing, in a more-than-fifty-years-old sort of way. I recently got a first edition, first impression of it for the princely sum of three English pounds from this fine source of second hand books. They are well worth checking out for all sorts of things.

Of the many things that amused me (including passing your opponent in golf balls made from lead) the note by A. le Maitre on Homeric gamesmanship seemed like a fair observation of how and why certain groups of people have thought it reasonable to behave throughout history:
It is true that the Gamesman always sticks to the rules, but rules become unnecessary if the gods are on your side.

Sadly, many people still think this is justification for behaving terribly badly even though there have never been any gods to be on their side.

Many, many and perhaps a slight number of apologies. I get utterly bored, tired and generally pissed off with blog entries that are simply a link to another site; riding off the back of someone else's wit is perilously Wilde-esque. So here we go with two links to basically the same site, those lovely people at http://www.moderntoss.com/. The thing that caught my eye as being 'fair comment' was this. Should it be that you, Mrs Trellis, are of a lunatic Christian bent then please feel free to assume that I, and Mr Moderntoss as well, will burn in the fires of the the hell that you have just decided on a whim exist. Not if you are a member of the Church of England, of course. This is because matters of faith in the CofE are finally down to the Privy Council here in Blighty and, although the Archbishops of York and Canterbury complained at the time, an Act of Parliament finally decided that you do not have to believe in hell to be a member of this sect of backward, contemptible mad people. Eight sentences. No, no, I am not going to claim many bonds with Nietzsche, but that cartoon did amuse me (nine sentences).

As I mentioned eleven days ago, I have a really rather sore throat. It had started about a week before that so has been hanging around for quite a while now. It seemed reasonable to disturb my GP and check that I did not have tonsillitis or anything that required treatment beyond swilling anti-septic fluids with reasonable frequency. I finally got to see him on Friday. Sadly, he is a bit scared of me; he knows I have a doctorate in epidemiology which, coupled with me being considerably taller than him, he views as cause to be terrified when I burst into his surgery.

I asked him about my throat, he peered down there and said what must be the most moronic statement from a member of the medical profession to someone with reasonable insight into the nature of diseases: "Well, it is probably just a cold. Colds last a lot longer these days because they have evolved to be better than they were a few years ago." Perhaps he was just so scared he said the first load of drivel that popped into his mind in order to get me out, but perhaps he thinks that within a year or two rhinovirus will have evolved even more and so will wiping out huge swathes of the world's population because our immune systems, despite fighting these viruses for a very long time, can no-longer hold them back. "That is a very interesting story", was about as polite as I could manage after I'd gasped with incredulity.

So, there is the throbbing throat and also a late night out drinking cocktails yesterday. This morning I wanted to take things a bit easy and just play around in a soft, low-intensity sort of way.

Several times over the past few days I have found myself witnessing, and far too often getting drawn into, the conversation of which an early line is, "I do not wear nappies outside in case someone notices." I call this 'crap' and it gets me very irritated because:

1. Who goes around examining people's underwear terribly closely? Ignoring the fact that modern disposables are so discreet one would have to wear a spandex jumpsuit and walk around on one's hands for people to notice a nappy, how many streets have you walked down and heard strangers passing casual comments to each other on their underwear? Honestly.
2. The stunning arrogance of these people. Given the virtual impossibility of detecting a nappy under clothes some people seem to assume that they have some special place at the centre of the community/universe and so are under constant surveillance with all their activities posted in the newspaper and discussed by the populace at large. Should it be noticed by the cameras in the black vans that they are wearing underwear most commonly associated with a medical problem they will be openly ridiculed in the street leading to the collapse of society.

Perhaps they are worthy of ridicule, but because of their failure to engage their brains rather than because they like to wear nappies.

Then we reach the people who say thing along the lines of, "Well, I am happy just to be a baby in my own home. Of course, if anyone visits I hide all of my stuff and spend the evening sweating with terror in case I open the wrong cupboard or let something slip." This is certainly a mode of operation, but by adopting it one is doing a dis-service to several groups of people:

1. Themselves. By hiding all of their stuff the re-enforce the view that they are doing something wrong and shameful. If you are a normal person, with a job, friends, a collection of good jokes about bananas and so on, you do not really do yourself many favours by twisting yourself up with existential angst in case someone sees the teddy bear in your bed. Not good strategy for long-term mental well-being.
2. Their guests. It does not matter if it is your mother or the gas-man these are generally ordinary people, much as we are all generally ordinary people. Ordinary people are pretty much aware that other ordinary people do a variety of things and, whilst they may be initially surprised to discover that you are a bit more of a rich and interesting ordinary person than they initially thought, you are still and ordinary person with whom they can interact in ways they normally would. Simply demonstrating another facet to your ordinary life, if worthy of any value-judgement at all, is an act of enlightenment for others demonstrating a new way that ordinary people pass the time.
3. Other babies of enhanced magnitude. This pretty much follows on from the above. Since most large babies are just ordinary people, demonstrating that large babies are ordinary people is only going to help other babies realise that they are ordinary people too. If the only postmen one sees paint their faces purple and spray lemon juice in your eyes when delivering letters you are going to assume that postmen are a pretty weird bunch. Since most postmen just get on with their jobs like normal people (ie. in a half-arsed, feckless sort of way, perhaps this is just how people do jobs in Britain) one has the view that they are normal people.

This last point is demonstrated very clearly by the little boy next door's website. A few people have linked to his site with such comments as "Look at this person, he is a bit weird." I would concur, compared to most of the people that make such links he is a bit weird in that he has a successful relationship, lots of friends, can spell, has a sense of humour and earns huge amounts of money. His website demonstrates very clearly that nice, ordinary, successful people can show a variety of behaviours and there is nothing wrong with that. Of course, if these people met my friend in real life they would not dare say he was a bit weird to his face. This is an example of the internet lemma: Normal person + Anonymity + Audience = Rude, appalling, scumbag

The counter-arguments normally raised against such rationality take a variety of forms. Far too often one encounters people who cannot be bothered to read a few paragraphs and think about them. Many times I have been accused of demanding that all large babies run down their high-streets wearing only nappies and hitting people with their teddy bears. I most certainly do not demand such behaviour, I think that people should be left to get on with their lives as they see fit as long as they are not hurting anyone. I think getting hit with a teddy bear might well inconvenience someone, whereas the only inconvenience caused by me walking down the high-street in nappies under my baby clothes is if I do not change regularly and get rash. Certainly, when I have been working in jobs that require me to sound professional whilst taking blood samples from people I tend to wear a shirt and tie. Equally well, when my employment has had me shut in an office/lab with a limited bunch of other people then baby clothes seem an ideal way of dressing in order to assist with my relaxation and so perform my job frighteningly well.

The only very slightly more sophisticated version of this objection is that by wearing baby clothes one might be subject to verbal abuse, violence and arrest. Certainly, there will always be a microscopic proportion of people who feel it within their remit to shout incoherently at passers-by. We call these 'pitiable, angry, sad lunatics' and ignore them. I admit the amount of abuse I have received is so little that drawing a statistically valid conclusion is probably premature, but it does appear that I get more abuse walking through dodgy parts of London whilst in a spiffy suit than when wearing baby clothes. I suppose a large chap in a suit is more intimidating to the dregs of society than a large toddler. Much the same is true of violence, only it is vanishingly less likely to occur. Fear of arrest is quite odd, because I am not sure how wearing shortalls and a nursery-printed shirt breaks any laws. Perhaps in other countries, Iran possibly? Not here. If someone did set the rozzers on me claiming some mystic intelligence had told them I had child porn I'd welcome them into my home, make them tea, gladly assist them going through my computer, then bid them good day.

Then we come to the people who claim that wearing nappies is not a political issue for them. This does show a poor understanding of the words they use (see the title of this entry). However, much as it pains me to admit it, I am in many ways a New Labour toddler. I think that social responsibility is a good thing. If you cannot be bothered to stand up for those in your community, be they people in your neighbourhood watch group or other large babies, then you are letting the side down somewhat.

Finally, there are those people who do not want to feel like the normal, ordinary people they so clearly are; they like the guilt and get a cheap thrill from thinking they are shameful, bad and weird. The sad truth is that unless you are under a court order to wear nappies and baby clothes constantly you must be doing so because you want to and so because it is part of your personality; as it is the part of many ordinary people's personalities. If you want to feel guilty about doing a harmless activity that is a fundamental part of who you are you may as well feel embarrassed about buying food. True, I get a slight guilty pang when I buy double cream with the sole aim of pouring it on my breakfast cereal but I am well aware this is a silly feeling engendered by getting repeatedly smacked on the head with a bit of wood by the teachers at school when pouring too much evaporated milk on my dessert. They may have planted the seed of the idea that a tiny bit too much cream is bad, but I am well aware that it is a laughable idea. It certainly does not turn me on.

So, dear reader (Mrs. Trellis), should you ever feel doubt before heading down the boozer in a nappy, or when looking at the stack of nappy-boxes in the corner of your flat before your mother arrives, think for a moment. Realise that you are an enlightened, but above all normal person who has no reason to feel ashamed.

I do wonder if you, dear reader, have pondered upon the link between my moniker and the film 'Sideways'. I am afraid to say I was not enamoured with that film.

A frien... no... an associa... no... someone I know was terribly keen for me to watch it, suggesting the wine-buffoonery and Pinot-loving rants might in some way unsettle me. That night I sallied forth to the motion-picture house and sat through the film. The assessment emailed to my acquaintance upon my return read as follows:

It was really quite tiresome. If I wish to watch dysfunctional¹, middle-aged people² dealing with their lives with laughable ineptitude I have a mirror, which will allow me to see much more handsome people. More importantly, surely anyone who really enjoys Pinot would not be such a miserable, irritating swine? Perhaps I am wrong. That it was a piss-boring film is beyond doubt.

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¹Some people claim my jokes are terribly puerile, but I feel this is their problem rather than mine.

²Two is middle-aged for a toddler. So much is behind me now....

During the dark days of the 1970s the wonderful traditional drink of Britain, real ale, was at risk of shuffling off its mortal coil all due to rise in popularity of fizzy lager. This would have been a real shame, partly because having a bit of very good history die is often bad, but largely because the vast majority of lager tastes better coming up than it did going down. Well, at least it gains some flavour.

Thanks in no small part to the efforts of the Campaign for Real Ale it is now a lot easier to get a decent pint in the UK. I admit that, due to real ale being alive when you drink it (hence being served warm-ish and pretty flat), it can often be poorly kept and bad pints are all too frequently encountered. A decent pint has, as well as the slightly dirty flavour of cold tea, a refreshing bitterness that will forever remind me of sitting chatting on a summer's day in the country boozer of my youth and stopping talking and glowering (along with everyone else) should a stranger walk in. Real ale is a serious, complex, refreshing and lively drink, that can charm jaded palates for at least a few pints. So, what am I going out to drink tonight? Lager.

I feel I am not selling out to the rise of mass culture. The pub I am visiting the tap-pub for a local microbrewery who are skilled in the uncommon art of producing terribly good lager. As I suggested above, the lager generally consumed is pretty bland. I know such things are referred to by brewers as "chucking lager"; a lovely epithet I am sure you'll agree. The Meantime Brewery (and its competitor down the road) make lager that bursts with flavour and bitterness. They are drinks that catch my interest even though I feel more attuned to fine wine. Since I lost a bet recently I am obliged to buy my drinking chums a few pints; we shall leave feeling refreshed.

Needless to say, I am going to see the doctor tomorrow morning to discuss a couple of things. I imagine the diagnosis will be, "You are hung over, you laughable old soak."

As has been commented before, food makes me sick. I have vaguely thought for a while that I often feel terribly sick when eating bread and had always assumed it was something to do with the bulk of bread playing havoc with my hiatus hernia, but it appears I may be wrong. I mentioned this 'bread theory' to a frequent dining companion and he said, "It is not just bread, pasta also makes you squirt both ends every time you eat it." My heart sank.

It would be a terrible thing if I did have some intolerance for wheat or gluten for a couple of reasons:

1. Bread can be really, really lovely, and I would hate to avoid it most of the time.
2. This is the really bad one. I would feel awful about being associated with the ~90% of people who claim to have some kind of food intolerance, but in fact only have a sanity intolerance.*

This would pain me very much. Whenever one meets someone who claims to have an intolerance to some form of food it is generally safe to assume they are talking a steaming pile of horseshit. As I mentioned above, out of all people who claim some form of food intolerance, less than 10% actually have any form of medically recognisable food intolerance that causes any real symptoms. For an amusing discussion of this kind of drivel that people are wont to spew, do check out Jeffrey Steingarten's two books (here and here).

This is much the same as people who go around claiming they have 'flu. Generally, they do not. A chum in the disease department who was researching the influenza virus was once so annoyed with everyone going around claiming they had 'flu that he advertised for people who thought they had 'flu to come and have a blood test (expenses paid). Naturally, out of the hundred or so samples he tested, no one had 'flu and less than 10% had ever encountered a 'flu virus in any significant way during their entire lives. I must admit, as an ex-disease-studying sort of chap, to sharing his irritation. Not only because of the cheapening of the image of the serious disease that is 'flu, but also with over-the-counter drug companies who seem all too happy to suggest that their blends of paracetamol and decongestant is going to make someone who is suffering from 'flu feel well enough to to do six impossible things before breakfast. If someone in your employ really does have 'flu they will not be coming into work and if you expect them to you deserve to catch it.

Meanwhile, back to the plot: The idea of largely giving up bread is woefully depressing, so the thing to do is an experiment. All this week I have eaten only food that contains no gluten or any form of wheat product. How many times have I felt violently nauseous, been sick or squirted at the other end? None. The evidence suggests avoiding bread and pasta could well be the way forward. Bugger.

Naturally, the experiment is not over yet. After a period of time, a week might do, if I am still not redecorating the bathroom several times a day I shall make myself a great big sandwich with my favourite bread and wait for the result. That will be another piece of evidence, but since it would not be a blind experiment (I'll know I am eating bread so that may influence the result) I shall suggest to someone cooking me food that at some point they slip wheat-flour into it without telling me. If I find myself feeling violently ill then I shall weep as only a toddler can weep when denied sweets. Or worms.

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*As an aside, I mentioned this to my dear mother the other day. Even though she is a deeply lovely old bint with a doctorate in almost-science she is convinced she has every disease on the planet, be they known to unknown to modern medicine. Consequently, her list of 'food intolerances' is longer than my arm, and as I am a very big toddler my arms are quite long. So, when relating this anecdote the conversation went much like this, "There are two reasons I would be peeved by holding back on my bread consumption. Firstly, bread can be so very good <etc>. Secondly, I would hate to... ah... So, how are you today?" Much as it is reasonable to be aware that some people, no matter how much you like them, are irrational, raddled old loons, pointing it out to them in no uncertain terms is perhaps a tad unnecessary.

I admit it, I am sick, diseased and generally ridden with corruption. To put it another way, I've got a bit of a cold. Strangely, I do not mind terribly much as diseases are uniquely fascinating.

I must admit some previous dealings with diseases for when I was an academic disease transmission dynamics were my field. Much fun I had mapping diseases in populations and watching them spread. In my enthusiasm I managed to catch one of the diseases I was studying and ended up spending a month in bed in screaming agony.

Epidemiology tickled my fancy because of my deep interest in evolution. It is a deeply simple yet powerful idea that explains the mechanism behind the wonderful diversity of life we see on on Earth. Parasites and disease causing agents have are powerful selective pressures; living things have to keep changing in order to keep up with the parasites that change at a very rapid rate. Since my irritation with theists has always been almost palpable, it struck me that being in a field where I would be at the cutting-edge of evolutionary biology would suit me very much. Furthermore, humanity's on-going (and incredibly successful) battle against the countless pathogens in this world has been a triumph of sensible thinking as opposed to ancient, out-moded world-views.

Now, I am sure there are people out there who are intellectually-stunted and downright rude enough to suggest that I am ill, or indeed that most people are ill some of the time and terribly large numbers of people have died from illness, because some small-minded chap in the clouds is punishing me/us for my/our badness. I cannot see what I've done, or indeed most other people have done, that would deserve such nastiness and anyone that suggests we have is probably not a terribly savoury person.

So, I shall cough, splutter and drip my way through these next few days, marvelling at how quickly this Rhinovirus has evolved to exploit my immune system (again) and as I feel better I shall marvel at how my jerry-built, lashed-together and highly effective immune system eats those virions for breakfast. Until next time.

Everyone with an email account has had someone try and steal money from them, be it phishing or emails from the daughter of the ex-king of Matabeleland, yet someone has just tried something really rather blatant with me.

In my quest for a game in English for my lovely new PSP I trawled through Ebay and found what seemed a vaguely reasonable deal for a game with very fast delivery. "It shall be mine", I thought. I put in my bid, won the item and attempted to pay immediately using the power of PayPal. It informed me that the seller was unable to accept payments; odd, I thought, as this person claimed to prefer PayPal and expected payment within three days. I contacted her and she claimed some minor problem with PayPal that would be sorted out within three days.

Four days later I get an email saying her PayPal account would not be working for many weeks, would I care to pay her "cousin's" PayPal account that is registered in a different country? No, I would not. A look back at her profile showed that many people had experienced much the same over the past several weeks, but only got around to placing feedback in the last couple of days, weeks after their auctions had ended. I was a little surprised by the lack of civic-responsibility these delays demonstrated. I was even more surprised when I contacted these people and found out that no one had bothered tell Ebay that that this person was breaking the terms and conditions of trading on Ebay, if not being an outright crook.

With a little prompting, several factual emails describing this person's trading style and the many PayPal accounts she into which she tried to siphon money were sent. Now there is one more thief removed from Ebay, and my game has arrived from another source for less money. I recognise that there will always be people out there who will try and take advantage of the hard of thinking, but if slightly more cognitively-enhanced people notice this it would seem a touch rude not to stop them, especially when it takes fabulously little effort.

Children can often be terribly picky eaters. As I have pointed out I used to be such a picky child, but as I hope has become abundantly clear now that I am a big, clever toddler I'll eat pretty much anything. This is good as it enables a lot of pleasure to be experienced. Jean Antheleme Brillat-Savarin may have had wider interests in mind when he said, "The limits of pleasure are yet to be defined or reached", but ostensibly he was talking about food. He was clearly a top chap as he has had a cheese named after him; quite a rich, fatty cheese, come to think of it.

During my life I've eaten a variety of interesting and thought-provoking foods. Raw, often live, fish seems somewhat tame compared to the weirdness of Komodo dragon, dormouse, cat, blackbird, dog, sparrow, rat, squirrel, hedgehog, meat wine and (of course) coffee made from rat poo. Some of these had more merit than others, but they were all consumed in locations where these were traditional or local specialties. Some people might feel slightly odd about sticking a dog on the barbecue that your local guide was proud to have hit with his dilapidated 4x4 a few hours earlier (perhaps dog needs a decent hanging time, I just do not know), but it is quite an anecdote. Perhaps I have gone full-circle and come back to eating a rich and varied diet. When I was a slightly smaller toddler and had just learned to walk, I am told I used to cry to be let out into the garden so I could go and dig up worms with the aim of eating them whole, live and covered in grains of soil.

Still, I can demonstrate that I do have a healthy appetite these days:

The key with getting children to be less picky eaters is to give them a wide variety of (ideally) strongly flavoured foods as soon as possible. An oft-suggested dish is cabbage, but since this is merely strongly flavoured and has few redeeming characters then perhaps steak tartare with plenty of Tabasco in it might be a more profitable direction to explore. Not only would this provide one's child with healthy food and a healthy attitude to food, it would also scandalise any hard-of-thinking people who happened to witness said child tucking into such a great dish. There is no need to worry about very young children being scared by strong flavours, despite the current trend of assuming children require a bland, characterless life in order so that they never have any fun until their minds have accepted that being dull is the only way forward. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that toddlers of around eighteen-months old find the smell of faeces from their nappies to be as appealing, if not more so, than the smell of banana.

Of course, food is only part of the story, one also needs to develop a taste for all of the rich and varied drinks out there.

Although, this dining experience once again pointed out how awful it is to have a television on whilst dining or in a bar. Especially if there is cricket on.

What a rude toddler I am....

One of the questions I am frequently asked is, "Tell me, young man, do you wear nappies all of the time?" I admit, it is rarely asked that coherently. The usual formulation is of the pattern: "You/u wear/ware/where/were 27/7?" but sometimes it can reach the depths of a simple: "24/7?". I am a toddler with little grasp of novel language use, sometimes I find such things vexatious. To answer the question, no I do not wear nappies all of the time, sometimes when I want to feel like an even bigger toddler I wear training pants.

More broadly, it is a mistake to wear nappies for too long each day; there is much danger of developing a nasty rash. When I was working twenty-four hour days as an academic I would rarely get a chance for some 'air-time' and so developed rash that was so bad my nasties were bleeding. I imagine few twenty-one year olds go to the doctor to seek treatment for appallingly bad nappy rash; it was piquant experience to say the least.

The key is to have a couple of breaks from wearing nappies during the day. After a bath or shower is a good time, as is between changes just before bed. They do not have to be for too long (just in case) but a break and a clean up can prevent sharp, stabbing soreness and an unnecessary trip to the doctor.

I have to admit I rarely feel up the the very big toddler-rôle; I get all shy and embarrassed about people expecting me to be witty, urbane and slightly less childish than I usually am. Consequently, wearing the training pants can lead to hiding....

Warning: Incoherent rant born of irritation follows.

Of all the feeble, despicable and utterly hate-worthy excuses for ineptitude, the phrase "I didn't think" must rank as first class in the 'piss-poor' league. In some cases it might be understandable: "Darling, did you remember to pop home during your lunch hour to wax the cat's eyebrows and smear the freezer with hydrofluoric acid?" "Oh... erm... Strangely, I didn't think of doing either of those." This seems fine. In general terms, it is not.

I suppose this comes down to an earlier rant about idleness; I didn't think therefore I expect you to think for me. Indeed, it may be possibly a suggestion of contempt for another human being, "Oh yes, collect your anti-amoebics from the pharmacy as you have dysentery and cannot move beyond ninety centimetres of the toilet... I didn't think."

Obviously, anyone who is liable to have encountered this obscure and barely-visited spume of incoherence is more than a tad likely to know something about computers and so will be well aware that in a frightening number of cases this drip-like excuse is connected with people who refuse to apply their brains to using them. There most of us who have surely experienced something akin to the following dialogue: "I've got this new word processor thingie and I just don't know how to save this file. Why are computers so difficult?" In a voice of reasonableness and utter calm the reply comes, "Do you see that menu marked 'File'? Choose 'Save' in that." A surprisingly surprised reply follows, "Oooohhh... I didn't think of that. Computers are so difficult." The key is to calmly leave the room and get a distance beyond which sound will not be heard before screaming.

The reason why this is really so bad is that people are wonderful, intelligent beings who are capable of incredible acts of brilliance. To say that you did not think not only demeans yourself but the great mass of humanity. Certainly, we all need guidance and help, particularly when we have yet to forge our own way in the world, but generally we are smart cookies.

If someone comes up to anyone in the street wearing a suit and a lapel-badge with the word 'Bank' on it and asked for their bank details 'to confirm bank security' and these details were given out they would quite rightly be mocked mercilessly for their moronic, rancid stupidity. Yet people who behave similarly stupidly online seem to think they have done nothing wrong and, in view of their idiocy, deserve huge piles of cash in compensation from their banks.

Clearly, this is because a lot of people harbour irrational, Luddite views. The positive spin on this would be to suggest that computers are technological/scientific things and so everything they say is true, just like what a doctor says, so when a random email asks you for every private detail you know and some you have forgotten it must instantly be obeyed. Possibly this is true with a very small section of humanity. This section of humanity is the same section who wonder where all the time machines are because they must exist as otherwise how could Star Trek be made, or; possibly that if they agree to spend half their monthly income for three years to get a handkerchief with some drivel from a religious text they claim to 'believe in' but have never actually read they will receive ever-lasting happiness. We shall gloss over the fact that most of even these people are still staggeringly clever, it is just that they have been indoctrinated not to think by their parents, religious leaders, teachers or politicians and have not realised the hideous crime that has been committed against them, and move onto the final phase of this perhaps worrying rant.

In far too many ways, people are willing to deny the power of their minds and bodies and show an appalling degree of recalcitrance when it comes to anything which they have arbitrarily decided is beneath them/far beyond their realm of comprehension. Computers are a prime example. Certainly they are complex and powerful things, but not quite so complex as when one had to type obscure, two character commands into a console or when terminal-based Emacs was considered anything other than a model of horribleness; hilariously easier than those dark days. There is simply a refusal to engage mind. This could similarly apply to the joke, "How many men does it take to repair a vacuum-cleaner?", "How should we know? We don't use them." We have all been exposed to a basic education and so most things are within our grasp. I have repaired vacuum cleaners, I have also repaired a car engine when a professor of physics was whimpering to call a break-down service when my only experience of engine-fiddling was watching my old dad change the oil by way of entertainment on a Sunday afternoon.

Certainly, if in that situation we were not several hundred miles away from the nearest other person or, indeed, if there was a skilled mechanic walking by who offered to help I would instantly and without question bow to superior knowledge and ability. It is great to watch a skilled person at work. Yet, whilst not everyone's opinion/ability is equally valid/equal in all situations, generally we are all vastly more clever than anything else on the planet¹. Knowing this and using that power is fun. If you don't think, you are missing out on some good times.

By way of apology for the above rancid, repetitive rant I offer a joke:
Two parrots were sitting on a perch and one of them said, "Do you smell fish?"²

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¹I recall a lecture at the end of an animal behaviour course in which the famous ethologist David McFarland was getting quite excited, clearly working up to his big point of the term, "The one thing you must, really must remember when analysing any form of animal behaviour is that", and he flicked up a slide and read the text out loud, "Animals are stupid". I recall relating this anecdote to some poor chap who said, "Well, humans are animals too so aren't humans stupid?" Being a polite person I replied, "You'll recall I said this was in an ethology not psychology course?", rather than, "Perhaps you are."

²If this should leave you floundering do make sure you read down to the definition marked perch²  after clicking the link above.

Thanks to my loyal reader (Mrs Trellis of North Wales, no doubt, if you have nasty Realplayer then hear her level of comment-ability here) I have now been caught by search engines. They are watching us all it seems. A couple of people this month have found me by searching for "nuk medic pro" and this is fine by me. One dear and as yet unknown person found me by typing the following text into Google, "can bottle feeding cause smelly sloppy nappies". To my eternal and agonising embarrassment, my blog appears third given those search terms. Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in-for-me! The real shame of this (apart from my personal shame, obviously) is that I just have not tackled that question here. Nor do I intend to.

I do not wish to seem churlish that people choose to visit this, my personal fountain of incoherent gibberish. However, when one thinks about what one would like to achieve with one's life, the goals one has, can many people honestly say that they would like to be known as the third best source of information about whether bottle feeding can cause smelly, sloppy nappies?

My last day in Town for a couple of weeks, so I went to one of the most bonkers places in London in order to pick up my pitifully small pile of dollars: the City.

For those who do not know the City of London, or the Square Mile if you prefer, it is the financial district of London. The amount of money that has flowed through that area in the past several hundred years would make Croesus weep. This is not why I went there; I was there because it is a hilarious part of Town.

The plan of the area basically follows the street pattern from the middle-ages, so there are lots of narrow, twisty streets. Yet the buildings surrounding these streets reflect the enormous wealth that has been associated with the City, so there are large Gothic-Renaissance piles and huge concrete and glass behemoths towering on every side. It is quite a sight.

It only gets better at weekends and during evenings. Since there are only financial institutions and the shops that service their employees the entire area is dead after working hours. It is possible to walk for fifteen minutes on a weekend evening, in one of the richest parts of London, and not see a single person. It is very much like some post-apocalyptic vision.

There are also a terribly large number of bars, only open on weekdays, of course, but the real reason I love the city are the street names. An area that boasts such wonderful locations as 'Poultry' and 'Old Jewry' is surely worth investigating.

Yet, as luck would have it, due to the current weakness of the dollar keeping myself in childish clothes is hilariously cheaper than keeping me in my alternate attire idiom of baroque suits and shirts.

Foreverakid, my current favourite clothing supplier, is not only run by one of the most charming and most skillful seamstresses one can have the pleasure of doing business with, but also the clothes (at least for those of us in the UK) are a steal. For example, if I buy a pair of boring cords from Marks and Spencer I'll pay £32, I'll have to pay quite a lot more if I want some decent cords that fit reasonably well. Yet the trousers in the picture below cost £23. Not only are they made to measure, from a material of my choice but I look just as spiffy in them as in my most lurid red cords. Since they are made from flannel they are warm enough to wear when strolling about town on all but terribly cold days.

Similarly, Fak sell their most babyish shortalls for £28 and those most wonderful of items for sleeping, mooching about the house and watching boats going by on the river in (see below), footed sleepers, for £40. A decent set of pyjamas in the UK can cost an arm and a leg, they are invariably dull as dish-water and never have feet. I am currently trying a new source of footed sleepers that cost £30 each, and they are available in childish prints, but I shall report on that supplier once I have assessed the quality.

I recognise that these bargain prices are largely because of the relative weakness of the US dollar at the moment and also because clothes in the UK are very expensive, but we big and clever toddlers are perfectly capable of spotting bargains and snapping them up whilst they are available.

Clearly, there are some companies who are willing to rip people off in the most shameful way; DPF and HB Enterprises leap to mind, but this is not universally true. Shop around, ask for recommendations and you can do very well.

There is a limit to the number of baths one can usefully have in a day and my email is hardly going to read itself...

From today's postbag I learn the reason why babies are so confused these days. Much as I like the prints on them, it is a good job I no longer fit into Pampers. We are told that if one were taped around me, due to the evil influence of their morally-corrupt manufacturer, I would instantly develop an uncontrollable urge to do the chocolate cha-cha with such frightening frequency I'd never have the time to wear another nappy. Yes, I admit it is quite childish to mock the hard of thinking, but it is a lot of fun.

I am also asked if I know where one can obtain pushchairs (aka strollers) for babies of enhanced magnitude. Clearly, my co-respondent is unaware that I am a big, competent toddler and so have no need of pushchairs. Indeed, the only problem I have with self-locomotion is if some clumsy swine steps on my hand when I am leaving a bar. Still, I have the mystic power of using Google and as it is around three I have nothing better to do. Adult pushchairs can be obtained in the UK and the US. Given the quite staggering cost of these, if anyone out there purchases one I am sure you can afford to lend me an Ayrton or at least buy me a Britney.

The trek by train to and from South East London is normally a woeful experience. I have seen people smoking drugs on countless occasions, really quite intimate activities a few times and one memorable afternoon a chap dropped his trousers in the middle of the aisle and did a rather smelly turd. The problem is not only with one's travelling companions, but also with the scenery on offer. It is not immediately aesthetically pleasing for most of the journey. It is easy to dread the journey to and from central London.

Today when I was travelling home I felt remarkably chipper and was determined to have a good time. As the train pulled out the station I started looking out of the window, set my mind to 'appreciative' and gazed at the sights.

It did not take me long to revel in the marvellousness that is present even in a nasty area of London. The mix of building styles reflecting the long history of our wonderful city, all of those people doing all the interesting things they are no doubt up to, all those businesses engaged in a multitude of activities and so on. There is interest everywhere, if one can see it.

Sitting opposite me was a chap in builders overalls and a few minutes after I started looking out of the window so did he. About ten minutes passed before he turned to me and said, "London, it is bloody marvellous, isn't it?" He thought for a moment and continued, "If you didn't live here you would not believe it, but most of the bastards don't even notice. It is a shame." If I had a drink with me I'd have offered him one there and then.

When I trek out into my local high-street I am invariably harassed by people pushing unreadable religious tracts into my unwilling hands and screaming incoherent drivel in my face. My normal response is to point out that I am a member of the National Secular Society and so I would rather they kept their weird ideas to themselves.

In view of the ever-present menace of sloppy-thinking I am perfectly happy to give a bit of financial help a noble organisation such as the NSS, albeit a tiny bit of help on the grounds of my minuscule income. However, this does come with a cost. Having joined, I now receive their weekly media-watch newsletter by email. This reports all the latest shenanigans of those sanctimonious people of faith and so results in my Friday afternoons being times of explosive rage. To read such things such as how it is alright to break the law as long as it is connected with believing in arbitrary things makes me fume with anger.

So, should I ask the NSS to stop sending me their emails and spare my blood pressure? It seems to me that I should not. Whilst avoiding news and current affairs is a valid strategy with many historical precedents, I am afraid I have the perhaps unjustifiable view that the continued progress of humanity is helped not only by people being informed, but also by standing up against laughable ideas. Gillian Sathanandan of the Independent newspaper made the point very well:

We in Europe were once a stifled, theocratic, feudal, crusading society that not only burned books but people too, and it was blasphemy that set us free. The term "blasphemer" has been ennobled by the likes of Socrates, Galileo, Kazantzakis and Joyce. We should remember the great debt that society and democracy owe to heresy and blasphemy and implore our MPs to rid us at last from this long-outmoded blasphemy law.

In my travels through the various worlds of alternative lifestyles I am often surprised by the view people take of other lifestyles even slightly different from their own. Often one encounters people who are happy to defend wearing and weeing in nappies as a perfectly fine and justifiable activity. Yet should they encounter someone who also enjoys crapping in them then these people are clearly worthy of contempt and should immediately be banned from the IRC chatroom. Similarly, it can be that wearing nappies is fine as is weeing and crapping in them, but wearing childish clothing is a disgusting perversion.

I remember visiting a friend who had been happily telling me for years how he enjoyed pony riding and also having his bell end rubbed with a cheese-grater. The idea made my eyes water a touch but if it turned him on then jolly good. One time I mentioned that I usually wear nappies and baby clothes to which he responded, "Now that is weird." "Is it? Oh. Well, how are the sores on your knob doing?" seemed like a fair question to ask. One does not have to have a particularly alternative lifestyle to have to watch one's mode of thinking. The partition between my bedroom and the next-door neighbours allows all to be heard so it would be amusing if one day I get a comment about whimpering when my nappies are wet and I need a change. I think it would be valid to point out that I cannot help but piss myself laughing whenever I think of how inarticulate the neighbours are when having screaming arguments at five in the morning and especially when it crosses my mind how briefly the chap lasts on his regular forays up his good lady's council.

It seems that Chaucer made a good point in Troilus and Criseyde: Who that hath an hed of verre, Fro cast of stones war hym in the werre!

Diet Coke is the general toddler-fuel of choice, but I have recently been informed of the 40 things every drunkard should do before death. Before death, mind, something to light up those few remaining miserable seconds that tick away before one's brief experience of life is snuffed out. What a depressing idea, 'things to do before you die', clearly the kind of thing one thinks if one does not really enjoy life.

Back to the point. I suppose one is allowed regional variations, so for number 37 I feel the Withnail and I drinking game is a suitably local and lethal alternative and clearly number 40 is quite bizarre, so I substitute a trip to John Maynard Smith's office, Sarah-Jane Selwood's studio or Bonnes-Mares. Given these substitutions, I've done the lot with ease. What surprised me was how woefully banal so many of them were. Still, I suppose I can get on with snuffing it now.

Today, I met up with a friend from Oxford who know earns a crust as a teacher. Our aim was to go to Duke's for the best martinis in the world and try to remember what it felt like when we were doing this over a decade ago. Naturally, it was beyond our ability, but at least the martinis were good. Not only the martinis, but also the little ritual the charming bar-staff at Duke's have when mixing what is basically a large glass of gin.

I do get an awfully large amount of pleasure from rolling up in the quiet and comforting bar, apologising for not having been there in ages (oh yes, have not been there for ages), sitting down then savouring the moment briefly before saying one of the happiest phrases I know: "Two Tanqueray martinis, please."

Given the dilapidated state of my stomach a martini is a screamingly painful experience, hence not going there in an age, but since it is less fun than it should be I am not unhappy. As we were finishing, rainy old London looking ripe for our delectation, my associate had a call from one of his ex-students who had heard he was in Town and requested a meeting. He looked pained during the call, but grabbed his martini, swilled the rest down and agreed to go to a less nice bar to meet this young lady. I felt it was my duty not to abandon my friend when he had been let out of school for the day, so followed.

The ex-student of my friend was a lovely young woman, but was not at her best because she introduced us, with a thunderous expression, to her guest from beyond our shores whom she had been asked to entertain today. She clearly felt this was a terrible imposition. Her guest was full of questions, including one I felt I could give a complete answer to. Thanks to my recent purchase of Bill Bailey's latest DVD when she asked the question, "What is it like living in England?" I was prepared.

"Oh, well, it is alright. We have Nectar Points, which are pretty good. We have understatement, as well. Our prevailing winds are South-Westerly and 52% of our days are over-cast; so as a nation we are enthused with a melancholy humour. We appreciate eccentricity, binge-drinking and are prone to occasional acts of random violence."

I expected her to be pleased with this full and incisive analysis of 'what it is like living in England' but she looked distracted and the second-hand wit fell flat. Disappointing? Yes, so also pleasing.

The English rugby team continued its run of humiliation in the Six Nations today; so different from when, on the surprisingly happy event of my thirtieth birthday, we won the rugby world cup.

As has been commented upon many times, civilised countries cannot have good wars between themselves any more; we have to have little, ritualised wars in the form of sports events. Rugby is a particularly effective form of ritualised war as the rules are virtually unintelligible and it hilariously violent. The only helpful explanation of the rules I have ever been given was provided by Peter Palmer of the OSCE. He said, "Rugby is very easy; all you have to do is pick up the ball and run with it" and high-tailed it to the other side of the garden, ball in hand.

England has lost most of their ability in the Six Nations this year. The teams who look most likely to win are either Ireland or Wales. Wales! They might even get a grand slam! This is unheard of in the period of time that I have been aware that rugby is a great excuse for entertainment, so what can I say but, "Go Wales! You can do it. You must do it!"

They are a strange old lot, rugby players, often possessing highly-developed senses of humour. Toward the end of my first year at Oxford after prayers were said and the gavel banged one dinner time, the college first XV (who had strategically positioned themselves all around the hall) all leapt up onto the dining tables, dropped their trousers and shoved Mars bars where the sun doesn't shine. As they walked out of the door by where my then girlfriend and I were sitting she asked what seemed like a valid question, "Are they all gay?" The chap that was in earshot turned and shouted, "No! We are bloody not gay!" before rejoining the line of fifteen young men walking out of the door with no trousers on and chocolate bars poking out of their arses. When we retired to the bar we were taken aside and it was made abundantly clear that they were not gay, oh no, really not gay. They also explained it is easier to shove chocolate bars if they had been in the freezer first.

It has also been commented that rugby players are usually quite ugly. When there are great rugby players like Steve Thompson, Colin Charvis and Serge Betsen out there one wonders how this view could possibly gain credence.

I drank a rather nice bottle of Burgundy last night, a 2001 Morey Villages from Domaine Dujac. Young, I know, but lovely. Dujac frequently make deeply lovely wines, but their 2001s were amongst the very best in Burgundy. As I sniffed, slurped and swallowed with a satisfied smile slapped on my face I began to muse about how good good things can be.

Britain has historically been a great trading nation, and this has done wonders for our fine wine trade which is still one of the most dynamic in the world even now we are largely a comedy nation. We have invented a number of wine styles throughout history including Sherry, sparkling Champagne, Madeira, red (as opposed to rosé) Bordeaux and fortified Port. Yet, the British are notoriously shy and retiring, not people given to the visceral, sociable pleasures that wine provides.

The cunning solution of the British wine lover was to turn the pleasure of wine into an intellectual one. Rather than drinking fun wines, the fine wine market has until very recently been almost exclusively obsessed with red Bordeaux. Whilst Bordeaux can be be complex and interesting, it tends towards the hard, lean, austere, not-much-fun end of the wine spectrum. The best wines are undoubtedly great, but not always designed to put a big smile on one's face.

So, one might prefer to drink riper, fleshier, more fruity wines, such as those that come from Australia and the USA. These wines often provide a lot of visceral pleasure but frequently lack that extra dimension that I, as a British wine lover, seek: interest. There are some very complex, very interesting wines made in this style, really quite a remarkable number considering the very short period wines have been made in these areas, but sadly they tend to be too expensive for your humble narrator. Moreover, drinking more than a few glasses of them often leaves me completely paralytic.

The solution is clear: drink Burgundy! Burgundy is fleshy and fun, yet complex and interesting. It speaks about the area it comes from, it cheers me up and I can think about even more clearly after a couple of glasses because it is not booze-tastic. Simple village wines even from serious producers can be deeply affordable, if one buys carefully, yet will provide an awful lot of pleasure. People claim that Burgundy is difficult to understand; idleness seems a poor reason to miss out on some good experiences. I certainly do not mind applying myself to maximise the pleasure of myself and my guests.

As one of my favourite wine makers puts it, "Burgundy is best!"

London is a completely brilliant place, assuming one can afford it, can tolerate filth and can accept utterly woeful public transport. An associate asks me every time our paths cross if there is a Tube strike in London, no doubt working on the premise that repetition is the finest form of humour.

The strikes are hilariously irritating, but not as irritating as the fact that in a very large, wealthy capital city, the mass-transit system stops running at midnight. I wonder if this has something to do with an out-moded puritan work-ethic; we cannot be out at night as we have to get to work/church by nine the following morning.

Now we have a ray of light, albeit it quite a derisory one. There is talk of running the tube an whole hour later on Friday and Saturday nights. "Big deal", you might be thinking. Well, sadly it is not even that, as in order to do this London Underground and their idle employees claim that in order to run the trains an hour later at night, they'll have to start working an hour later in the morning. The arrogant contempt this displays to those who employ them is astounding.

So, I was highly amused to hear a jolly good song about the Tube courtesy of these good people. You can play the song, or even buy their CD, via their website. There is a Flash version of the song, but who knows how long this link will work for. Some people may find the lyrics offensive, but then millions of people a day find travelling on the tube to be deeply offensive....

One of the comments I received about my wonderful new debit card was a rather angst-filled missive suggesting that retailers might make some comment when I handed over my Butter-esque card. I can only imagine the comment they'd make would be, "Thank you, Dr Strange, that will do nicely." Why would they say anything else? I suppose it would be nice if they commented what a lovely teddy bear Butter is, but sales-assistants rarely take a polite interest in their customers.

Of course, I realise that my co-respondent was one of those people who have a strange attitude to shopping. Some people appear to think that when one pays for goods in a shop the shop keeper is in some way doing them a favour and so one should submit to their judgement and possible scorn. I realise I could be missing on some fundamental part of the service-provider/person-who-pays relationship, but it does seem that if one is paying for a particular good or service it is up to the person providing it to provide it efficiently, ideally politely, and nothing else.

I recall getting a glazier in to repair a window in one of my rooms whilst I was doing my doctorate. Obviously in my rôle as busy student, there were stacks of papers everywhere in quite novelty systems of order. The glazier commented, "Your room is a real mess." "Yes, that is right", was the only reply that seemed appropriate. "You should tidy up", he felt the need to add. "You should remember that I am paying you to fix my window; making comments on how I organise my paperwork seems tangential to that", was the only reply that seemed appropriate. He did a very good job and was keenly priced.

If I buy meat in a supermarket I could not care less if the person manning the cash-register is a vegetarian. If they made any comment that went beyond politely selling me the meat I would probably be so surprised by their audacity that all I could do is point at them and laugh. The same is clearly true when it comes to buying nappies as an adult. What people who sell me things think about me beyond that fact that I am paying a fraction of their wages and they are paid to make sure I have a smooth buying-experience is really of no interest to me and the idea that they should announce their wider views of me to myself or anyone else is simply laughable.

Of course, as anyone who has worked in a shop is well aware, as long as customers are polite and trouble-free they are also forgettable and rarely rise above the 'procedure to be followed'-level in one's consciousness. So, go and buy your nappies, no one cares and no one notices. If you are embarrassed about this you may as well be embarrassed about buying food.

I have sucked my thumb for more-or-less my entire life and, quite clearly, I am very happy with that. About a decade ago it struck me that it might be more convenient if I used a dummy, as typing one-handed is less efficient as well as sounding slightly suggestive.

I soon realised that convenience was not the idea behind sucking my thumb. Being a right-handed chap, the result of sticking my right thumb in my mouth is that two of my most powerful methods of influencing the world around me are removed; my adult competence was hampered. This has a pleasingly childish feel.

Sadly, rich fantasy lives cannot be indulged totally. Several years ago my career became more related to sitting at home in front of the computer. It would be all too easy to sit here all day with my thumb in my mouth and no creativity flowing from my finger-tips. So I've got a dummy....

The trick is not to get one provided by a fetish-items supplier, these are just not designed for normal use. Nuk, that well-know supplier of goods for smaller babies makes a couple of dummies suitable for adults. These are known as "Nuk Medic Pro". It is possible to get them on Ebay, but the cheapest thing is to order them from the country of manufacture, from a site such as this. Strangely, when I have pointed people to this site they say, "I don't speak German", and give up. Odd, I find, as we have such things as babelfish these days and a dummy can soothe even quite awkward babies and so is worth experiencing a tiny bit of confusion and expending the merest hint of energy to obtain.

It may take one a week or so to get used to a dummy, but they work a treat. When one wakes in the middle of night after a scary dream, knowing you've got a dummy in your mouth, a teddy bear in your arms and you are protected in case of accidents, the bad dreams seem less worrying.

Unfortunately, we also have to communicate with other people otherwise I would be spelling every word as: Nictitate. I always thought that word sounded pleasingly dirty, but that is beside the point.

If you decide that the word 'you' only has one letter or that 'sk8r' is a word that is completely fine. However, you must realise that you are sacrificing intelligiblility for whatever it is you gain by writing in such a manner. As has been established below, I am an old fart and so when my English teacher often clipped my ear he reminded me that correct spelling and grammar show that you respect your audience enough to make an effort. Once again, people are perfectly entitled to the opinion that writing on an email to another intelligent human being is not worth making even the slightest bit of effort. When it comes to my own writing, I could not agree less.

I do wonder what people gain by writing incoherently. Just the other day I was chatting to a chap who kept writing the letters 'n' and 'e' with a space between them. I had no idea what two words he was abbreviating until it struck me that he was using the same number of key-presses as he would have used if he'd have spelt 'any' correctly, he just increased his chance of being unintelligible. As a confused sort of chap, such things as that and the ellipsis tease are just too much for me and I think I should frequent the world of online communication with a greater degree of selectivity. Hopefully I'll reduce my confusion level and maybe the blood pressure will not fluctuate quite so worryingly.

My computer, that is, but I still feel it would be acceptable to hold hands and dance around the lilac toadstool of love....

New, ultra-whizzy memory appears to have done the trick; I have spent the day stressing all of the components and it does seem very stable. The number of binary-logic operations I've done today truly boggles the mind.

Doing all of these calculations has once again demonstrated the incredible power of modern computers and therefore the utter brilliance of humanity. If people can create devices that can churn numbers so well and still make them cheaply enough for me to afford, perhaps humanity is not going down the toilet quite yet. It may be that large sections of humanity resist the idea that they have any intellectual capacity at all and view the word 'clever' as an insult, but without a shadow of a doubt we are a bunch of smart cookies! Revelling in it seems perfectly fine to me.

As an earlier post has reported, I have high blood pressure. I also have a fabulously knackered stomach; eating food generally makes me feel, if not be, violently ill. The pancake eating frenzy of an hour ago is still making my head spin with nausea. The obvious view I could take is that my years of fast living have caught up with me, and so I am now old, spent and generally past-it. My father once said, "If you are over fifty and wake up to find nothing hurting, you must be dead." Could this be true at thirty, as well?

Obviously not. My father is clearly a miserable sod who is too willing to view everything in terms of his own decrepitude. Not that he has had enough fun to be truly decrepit, but that is another rant... At this precise moment in time, I am vaguely hoping there is a bigger picture to see about the functioning of one's body and mind. It may not last, but I may as well enjoy feeling positive.

I had the questionable pleasure of spending some time in the company of a young child recently. For much of this time, the child was spewing fluids from various orifices and generally complaining loudly about its incompatibility with existence in a normal environment. Whilst food may often make me blow bits and I do get distracted if not soothed by suitably fine booze, it did strike me that I was really far less incompatible with existence than this fresh young thing.

Now, I would not begin to suggest that I could beat the average eighteen year old in any test of physical ability, beyond alcohol tolerance, but some abilities do become more finely tuned. I hope that when the average teenager looks at me their mind is filled with disgust at what a rancid old fart they perceive. I hope they do because my mind has a big, smug grin slapped across it for I have had many more, hilariously better experiences than them and when more come along, I am capable of enjoying them in more experienced, analytical, visceral and (let us be honest) utterly filthy ways than their imaginations are equipped to deal with.

Younger readers please feel free to mock me for my crapulence, but at least I've had enough experiences to make me crapulent. I just wish I had more energy to go and get Butter...

No entries here for a few days on the grounds of my computer going tits up. It turns out that the memory I had purchased was just not up to scratch; much random crashing eventually resulted in trashing my operating system. Needless to say, this was vastly annoying. All of this down to buying something on the grounds of it being 'cheap and functional'.

I feel terrible that I have been sucked into this laughable way of thinking. I have often stated that 'cheap' does not necessarily equate with 'good'. I remember visiting an associate and he suggested we go out for dinner as he knew a place worth going to. "Is it good?" seemed like a reasonable question to ask. "Oh yes," he replied, "It is all you can eat for nine dollars." I had to respond, "I didn't ask if it was cheap, I asked if it was good." He said, "Well, the food is not very good, but I do not like paying for food." I do not feel the need to return there.

There is no reason why good things have to be expensive, but mindlessly choosing the cheapest thing is a false economy at best and worthy of contempt at worst. As Kingsley Amis said, nice things are nicer than nasty things; I am willing to pay a few extra pence for a product of real quality. Especially if it means my computer works reliably and result keeps me free from explosive rage...