Kindergarten Bob...

It all came about when my former work colleague Val's son, Calvin, became a Junior Gunner. Poor Calvin, blighted as his life is by a Tottenham supporting Pa and Man U, worshipping Ma, was in the bitter sweet position of having easy access to match tickets, but no one prepared to take him to see his beloved Arsenal. Step in 'Uncle' Bob.

I offered to go with Calvin, in loco parentis. Well, for a start, the chaperone tickets in the family enclosure are about a tenner cheaper than I usually pay and it had been a rather lonely - if ultimately transcendental - experience going to the Bergkamp Testimonial game alone (see Bobcast 1) So far, so good. But as with most things, there's often a catch.

I'm about to order the tickets for last night's Dinamo Zagreb game online at work when Val hands me a wadge of Junior Gunner membership cards. Do I mind if a couple of his mates tag along? So, in a trice, novice child minder Bob has become novice playground attendant Bob. OK, there are only three of them, but when you're as goood with kids as the Arsenal backline is at defending set pieces*, this spells triple trouble. Still, I figure it might be quite interesting (and gives me something to blog!) and what - short of one of the kids dying in a freak left-unattended-for 90-minutes-by-an-otherwise-distracted-football-fanatic-with-no-pastoral-ability-style incident - can possibly go wrong?

I head to Val's straight form work, rehearsing my uneasy exchanges with Spurs fancier Jm:

Bob: "I hope you don't mind me leading your son astray like this...."

Jim: "(...)"

Bob: No, I mean by taking him up the Arse..."

and wonder if it will be possible for me to say anything at all that doesn't mark me out as his worst nightmare - an Arsenal paedophile..

I arrive to be met by Jim, Val and my charges for the night. Jim's great - down to earth, engaging and indulgent of my well-meant jibes about the 1961 era Tottenham replica shirt Calvin tells me his Dad has just bought. "Last time they won anything, wasn't it?? etc... The boys are great. Calvin (Pootergeek, aged 8), Zaahib (an Asian Pete Doherty, aged 7) and Arjan (an Asian Tiger Woods with even more impeccable manners, aged 9). I'm immediately impressed by their burgeoning football anorak-ness - they rate Rosicky, say if we can't beat Villa, what hope is there? And generally sound like Arsenal fans 5 times their age. In short, they sound uncannily like me.

The getting there is all a bit of a rush. Although they are very well behaved, I see enough examples of errant journeying off alone and irrational sprints to nowhere in prticular from the lads just on the train to Vauxhall to realise that I'm going to have to be pretty switched on tonight.

Running late after a prolonged amble through the Arsenal World of Sport shop (Zaahib buys a brand new nike Arsenal ball - £18.00 - Arjan buys last year's for £3...) that does nothing for my increasing PMT**, we fall in behind a group of Zagreb supporters. They are wearing t-shirts saying things like "we are the bad boys in blue". There are only half a dozen of them but they are making quite a racket, bullishly "giving it all that" as they sing their guttaral slavic songs and do their "We Will, We Will Rock You" hand claps and saluting. I've never seen a flicker of testosterone-fuelled aggro all the times I've come up here, but you can't help but see it all through younger eyes when you are taking kids along. I see in Arj's face the slightly uneasy wonderment at it all that I remember feeling when I first joined this coarse, adult throng at around the same age.

We're in the children's enclosure which is a whole length of the ground away (quite a walk, believe me) from where I sat for the Bergkamp game. So, the six of us trot alongside the Close Encounters of the Third Kind spaceship that is the Emirates Stadium at night. Finally reaching turnstile R, we dig out our deck of membership cards and bid farewell to the apostate Val and Jim (you can only enter the ground with your oyster-style membership card now and the new system is taking a while to bed in, I think). It takes a few goes for all of us, but finally I headcount three young gooners and relax a little now we are in the confines of the stadium.

Walking to our block, little Zaahib (he seems about a foot tall to my 6 plus) reaches up a hand and grabs mine as we move through the crowds coming towards us. It's done so instinctively and trustingly that I feel a little pang at the absence of things like that in my life. This must be a bit like what it feels like to be a parent, and it seems to come naturally - the all-else-obliterating concern, the multiple threat sensing eyes in the back of the head and so on. It's almost as if one has been switched into some innate "parent" mode in which the normal compliment of limbs and sensors has been quadrupled. And is still not sufficient.

I'm annoyed because there don't seem to be any programme vendors (there were millions inside the ground for the Bergkamp game) and I'd promised the boys I'd treat them to one each. But any disappointment they or I may have evaporates as we take our seats and drink in the grandeur of the stadium's arc and the glowing, shimmering floodlit green stage laid out before us. I glance over at Arjan, his face transported into a dumb, all-my-dreams-have-just-come-true grin, and recall the same look on Dad's face when we took our seats at the old Wembley for an Arsenal Champions League game a few years back. That same feeling too that I had then - a closeness shared that couldn't have been achieved any other way.

I note with calm approval the way all three of my Junior Gunners pick up the rhythm and flow of the various chants. Hearing them as they tag behind the 58,000 taunting the by now shirtless Zagreb mentalists with "you're not singing anymore" when we equalise, is akin to watching fluffy ducklings frantically paddling behind their mother. By the end of the game they are all three Jerry Springer Show-style downward pointing like seasoned campaigners. Arjan's face, like mine, visibly entralled by each peice of van Persie magic, or the sight of Thierry Henry jogging over to our corner as he warms up to come on, clapping his hands above his head and kicking against his butt cheeks with his heels as he runs in a supremely insouciant demonstration of just how supple and agile he is*** It cheers my heart to see his face lit up like that - "youth undiminished" and all that...

I feel very privileged to have spent an evening with these vivacious, polite and charming youngsters. I'd half expected a nightmare, but in the end, I think I was the one who had been given a treat. They were a mirror on a younger me, I suppose, and gave me an insight into my own past - one that soothed the heart. There must be many moments like that when you have kids of your own, I suppose...****




*really not very good at all.

** Pre-Match Tension

*** Spinny - you *well* would, believe me...

**** I'm in no hurry to find out mind, ladies - so don't be *too* concerned....


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Delete Blog Option...

As we celebrate a welcome new addition to the firmament of blog, it may seem a strange time to be contemplating the virtual extiction alluded to in the title of this post. But I'm sure many of us have felt the strange frisson, akin to swaying over a precipice, that comes when you tentatively hover the cursor over the 'Delete blog' button in the knowledge that you are one synapse strain away from consigning "yourself" into its, in my case, rich Prussian blue oblivion.

I mention this because I had a - to use an awful term, but one that seems appropriate in this context - 'meat space' email from 'the late' Brian Damage. Without going into too much detail, I finished reading it feeling relived that poor Brian had only taken his blog into his own hands. It is easier than going one step further after all, it would seem. Suicide, even the virtual one that Brian committed a while back, can be viewed, depending on where you stand on the sanctity of life bit, as (among other things) perhaps brave or maybe foolhardy (or possibly both??) From my own experience of how much is put into these blogs when you really get into them (and how much they can take out of you and those around you) I know enough of Bri's predicament to realise that his "extinction" was not taken lightly and, however much I might selfishly feel that he has been foolhardy in destroying that wonderful Watts Tower of the imagination he lovingly assembled for us, I have nothing but respect for his decision to 'end it all' and only admiration for anyone who so evidently loved blogging yet still had the cojones to take that one, last decisive click. (Although, with those cojones, just wearing tights is worthy of respect...)

Thoughts turn inevitably to my friend Alison. I worked with Ali for the best part of 10 years and during that time she was one of the few beacons of sanity and uproarious hilarity and joy in a job that both of us clearly found wasted our talents. We would laugh ourselves speechless and shared a love of music and the arts that bound us, over time, into very good friends in and outside the workplace. Around the same time that I started my part time degree course, Alison embarked on a similar course with the OU and there followed a blossoming of her latent academic brilliance that had previously lain dormant within Ali that was quite remarkable to behold. We both got a lot out of our studies and both did about as well as you could do in terms of results, but comparing what I knew of her incredible workload and stringent marking criteria in comparison to my chavvy third rate would-be uni award, it rather felt to me that she had gained her first through climbing a mountain rather than gallumphing over a hillock.

Enthused by her academic success, Ali began to look at the options of furthering her studies. Or writing for herself. In short, she had the bug. I don't know if the contrast between her new found joy at the life of the mind and the drudgery of our job had something to do with this, but around this time Ali started to become more moody than usual. Always highly strung (and, believe me, she would have been the *first* to chime in here with the obligatory "and so I should be" gag) she was signed off work for a lengthy period with, it transpired, depression. As I wasn't aware of any prior history of depression (just a tendency to OCD and wild mood swings that she gave the impression of being caused solely by her monstrous, St. John's wort tempered PMT) I assumed that she had just had enough of the job and was using the time off to sort out an escape. Besides, my abiding memory is of someone tucked up in a ball of laughter.

It seemed I was right. Alison handed in her notice a few months later. She and her partner Julie were moving back to Ali's native Cambridgeshire. Julie would commute in and Alison would write - possibly get a job at a local animal rescue centre she'd fallen in love with. All seemed well. I spoke to Alison a couple of times on the phone and we still exchanged Christmas cards. Then my own personal life went through the aggers and torters described elsewhere on these pages and we just seemed to lose touch. I kept meaning to call but...you know how hard it seems sometimes do the simplest things.

About six months ago we got a call at work. Ailson was dead. The initial stories were confused - she'd just collapsed in the kitchen ... had not been herself for a while. As the truth came out, it became clear that the previous illness had not been a one-off or a ruse. She had persistently struggled with her depression until there seemed in her poor, fragile, frightened mind just one option left: the delete life one.

Amis says something in Einstein's Monsters with regard to the idea of nuclear extinction along the lines of with each day that passes we've accrued more to lose - the stakes get higher as the aggregation of human knowledge and wisdom in each of us that we stand to throw away increases. This is the idiocy of the suicide of civilization. But does it work like that for us as individuals? In many ways, yes, it does. But I think there's a difference.

If we're here for anything as noble-sounding as a purpose, then surely that purpose is to explore and understand our unique consciousness (and its limits) and as far as we can to *understand* ourselves and our predicament as humans, floating in our currently benign quarter of the universe. If that *is* the case, then surely that understanding has to encompass the possibility that - having concluded where we're all going, utimately - there's something liberating and fearless in deciding to hurry along that inevitability. I really don't know. It's easy to believe that just because everything will ultimately be lost, our own absence will count for nothing. But at the risk of sounding too Frank Capra cornball about it, we *do* leave a lot behind. Even when we hit that key, there are those footfalls echoing in the hall of the memories of those who had to stay behind. Brian, back to camera, that wonderful mane of hair waterfalling down his back. Alison singing 'Ten Green Bottles' in German before collapsing, convulsed with the laughter of lightness.

I miss you both.


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Points Of View...

Well, after appearing to upset The Spinster yesterday, I think I'll take a back seat today. (I can't afford to lose any more readers, can I??) And I evidently know nothing about blogs *or* blogging. So instead of the usual guff, I'll just invite *you* all to tell *me* why you blog and why you enjoy it. (Well, the comments are always the best bits, aren't they? So we might as well make a virtue of it...)

And while you're at it, we might as well go the whole Barry Took hog and use this opportunity to allow all of you to tell me what you do or don't like about what *I* do. Come on, be as honest as you like - I'm not saying I'll change tack but if you - as A. Radiographer said he did - prefer the early, funny ones, then let's have it out in the open....I can take it on the chin - I won't flounce off in a steaming ab dab or anything...


.....Mwwweeeeeeeerrrrrrrrr!!!!!

************UPDATE!!!!!***********


Bobcast 12 is now up in which I lose it completely. Well, someone pinched me sausages.....



.....(......I bought them from Fyne Fayre...


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Why Do We *Care* About Spinny???...

I couldn't give you the definitive answer, but I'll try...

It's an odd post from The Spinster, fresh back from her weekend at the Green Man Festival. On the surface, it's no more and no less than you'd expect from The Finest Writer Currently Working in Blog (© Bob Swipe, 2006) - the latest, much-heralded installment of the Spinster's Festivals of Britain odyssey turning out to be all rain and no parade. She didn't lose her bag in Newport Pagnell, it would seem - she forgot to pack it in the first place. You could be forgiven for thinking that the First Mistress of the Aimless Personal Narrative had possibly lost her touch - where are the cadaverous young would-be buckeroonies for her to swoon over from afar, as safe as we all are in the knowledge that whatever mutual desire there might be generated in the three or four paragraphs she will need to recount the not-very-much-at-all-happening, but-one-day-it-might story of her life, it will all come to nought in the end. As, indeed, this installment does - a sleepless and "very weird right now" Spinster seemingly as perplexed as the rest of us as to why she bothered to post it up in the first place. I mean, we can *all* **do** nothing much is happening right now...

But this is The Spinster so, naturally, different rules apply. Because, if previous posts are anything to go by, this is but a teaser, a Best-like feint, a pretence at falling over, before the slender legged pride of Ulster would nimbly sidestep the Ron 'Chopper' Harris-like lunge and go on to bend a beaut into the top right hand corner. We *know* that tomorrow's (or even tonight's) post will shed more light on what *really* went on, there among the damp fields of (wherever it was). But until then, we're left with a rather enigmatic scrawl - a knowingly inscrutable, intentionally impenetrable "can you see what it is yet" style close up of the work-in-progress that only the artist herself truly can know the playing out of.

This is the beauty of the brilliant blog. It's like literature. Only it has something that *bona fide* literature can never have. We have the same insatiable desire to know *what happened next* that we would expect from quality fiction and it will, we know, be gratified - tomorrow, the day after, in a month or so....whenever....

But there's also the suspicion that there *really is*, out there somewhere, possibly even in Bristol, a young curly-haired Ulsterwoman, with a mind seared by the regrets of the drunkenly done - someone for whom the reality of what we perceive as quasi-fiction is in all actuality pressing in like a hot coal on bare flesh.

*That's* why we care about Spinny.

So don't let anyone tell you shouldn't.


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Crap Things Bob Used to Do In The Days When You Had To Make Your Own Entertainment...

...an occasional series.

#1: The Crap 1972 Olympics Board Game...

This was designed and built after the young Bob was impressed by the exploits of the Russian Sprinter Valeri Borzov (especially remarkable as he had such an obviously girly name) and followed in the wake of the infamous White Singlet With Blue and Red Hoops Daubed on it in Crayon that would invariably accompany such fleeting enthusiasms. It was constructed from cardboard in the customary extended oval of the modern running track, with the sprint section exended one of the long straights so as to be level with the apex of the curve, in the familiar fashion. The track was then painstakingly divided into 1 cm. cubes all the way round (obviously there was a degree of stagger involved in the bends which would give the races an element of deceptiveness much as in the real life equivalent, until it "unwound" in the straights.

It was a marvellous sight to behold and took a major investment of time and patience on the part of the young Robert. (although it still took less time to complete than the new Wembley Stadium, obviously) Then came the athletes themselves - tricky. There was Borzov, of course. And the rest were all Americans. So who would fly the flag for Blighty? I settled on Welsh 110 metre hurdler Lynn Davies, as this was before the days of Alan Wells and Amercan boycotts etc. These "athletes" were represented by 1 cm. cubes reflecting the flags of the nations the runners came from. The more eagle-eyed and laterally thinking among you will presumably have already guessed the basics of the boardgame already, but just to be on the safe side, I'll elaborate.

The idea was to throw a dice for each athlete, moving from lane 1 up through to 8 and obviously, the runner who threw the highest scores the quickest would reach the tape first and "win" the race. The plan was to go through the whole roster of Olympic Track & Field events, but eager to test out the the workings of my painstakingly constructed diversion, I began with the sprint. A good job I did. When several hours later, plucky "Lynn Davies" staggered over the line, in (what was, to be fair) a new European record time with regard to this fledgling board at any rate, any enthusiasm I might have had for recreating the entire festival of athleticism had completely evaporated. It just took so bloody long to go through the rigmarole of edging each square forward. Then a gust of wind would blow a Cuban hopeful off the inside lane and you'd have to start all over again.

Children: don't let anyone tell you that the old days were better, before we had computers and mobile phones. It was rubbish.

Next week: Bob & the Cornflake Box and Sellotape John Lennon NHS glasses...


******UPDATE********

Speaking of making your own entertainment...(for want of a better word...) Bobcast 11 is now up. I'll put 12 up tomorrow as I'm "going up the Arse" on Wednesday (fnar fnar...)

Also, please check out Billy's excellent cast here - apologies for the delay in plugging it, but the last couple of posts were a bit heavy. Apologies for that too.


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The Pleasure & The Pain....

Walk up to Waitrose. On a whim, I pop into the British Heart Foundation shop at the junction - they have some really nice hardbacks there (that's where I picked up the still unfinished De Lillo - there's a great post. The best book you've never finished.....) Browsing through the - miraculously - orderly paperbacks, I go through the favourites alphabetical ritual....Amis, Barnes, Coe, De Lillo [long jump] Joyce, Larkin, O. Henry (well, you never know....)....what's this? Pelecanos?? Hard Revolution. Hardback. First Edition. £2.50 stamped twice on the price tag by an over-enthusiastic BHF volunteer. Excellent. I only have a fiver and a tenner on me, so in order to expedite an efficient transaction that maximises the contribution of the tax-deductable volunteer's (wo)manpower, I really need to spend a little more in order not to waste the angel-with-invisible-wings' time counting out loose change that could be going into the pay packet of some mouse-butchering researcher who will(presumably) ultimately conclude (as I have) that a sudden, fatal heart attack-induced demise is perhaps the best we can hope for when it comes to the old meeting-the-maker stakes.

Somehow, when scanning the (also alphabetised) ranks of hardbacks, I'd missed the spine that reads Martin Amis - Time's Arrow. Also a first edition - identical, in fact, to the pristine library copy I read all those years ago....£2.00..."I've only rung in the £2.50 once...." quips the kindly, teutonic matriarch with extensive colouration on her arms, like a spasmodically applied fek tan. We laugh, and I leave the BFH filled with a tremendous sense of the boundless benificence of life, the universe and everything.

Leaving Waitrose, having realised that in visiting the BHF shop I've neglected to procure sufficient funds for the day's food shop (necessitating the return to the shelves of a six pack of vine tomatoes and a carton of cup mushrooms - Christ, how *hatefully* middle class that sounds...) I bump into poor Lily. Lily & Tom were respectively Landlady and Landlord of The Gun, my father's beloved old boozer, for about twenty years. Tom passed on two or three weeks ago (cancer - a mercifully swift final downturn after having lived with it kept in check for a decade or so...) and what with the move and everything, neither of us had been able to get in touch with Lily and at least send the sort of statutory sympathy card that was abundant from Tom, Lily - and pretty much all of their sometime cliental over the years - when Dad died. I get a sudden and powerful sense of what an incredibly selfish tosser I am, but I resist the initial urge to flee the situation and instead find that my maternally inherited being-quite-good-with-people-when-I-want-to-be skills are kicking in and, following on from my I'm-lost-at-sea-please-rescue-me strength wave, I am soon hugging her, pecking her on the cheek and sincerely expressing my sympathy. Poor Tom. I bumped into him not long before he went and he said, with a gazing-like-a-caught-fish, oh-so-brave honesty that made (and makes) me shudder, "it's in the bones. Won't be long now."

Poor Lily. She looks as if someone has taken a straw to her and sucked the best part out of her, leaving a skin with hardly anything worth containing. How *do* we carry on?

But somehow we do.

Time's Arrow.



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Outside The Whale...

On a hunch, I re-read the first part of Orwell's essay Inside the Whale. The hunch is good. He *so* would have blogged. In fact, at times it's like reading one of the better ones. (Well, I had to get a plug in somehwere...)

On Cyril Connolly and all the other shallowly 'socialist' ex-public school lot:

'Cultured' middle-class life has reached a depth of softness at which a public school education - five years in a lukewarm bath of snobbery - can actually be looked upon as an eventful period...It is the same pattern all the time; public-school, university, a few trips abroad, then London. Hunger, hardship, solitude, exile, war, prison, persecution, manual labour - hardly even words.

*Hardly even words*!

Or the Paris of the twenties:

The populace had grown so used to gruff-voiced lesbians in corduroy breeches and young men in Grecian or medieval costume could walk the streets without attracting a glance...

Or does this sound familiar?:

And you have this feeling because somebody has chosen to drop the Geneva language of the ordinary novel and drag the real politik of the inner mind into the open.

Or on Joyce:

The truly remarkable thing about Ulysses, for instance, is the commonplaceness of its material. Of course there is much more in Ulysses than this, because Joyce is a kind of poet and also an elephantine pedant, but his real achievement has been to get the familiar on to paper.

*Elephantine pedant*! But get the "kind of" as well. My point in quoting these is to emphasise the directness - almost conversational, at times - of the prose. I could quote at much greater length if time allowed, but it's first thing in the morning and I'm sure a quick skim over the first 7 or 8 pages of the essay by your good selves will reveal all the other observations I was going to highlight but which, through the gnawing of my hungover head, have evaporated into the ether.

I was hoping that a re-reading of Orwell would justify my inversion of his famous aphorism, coined in defence of Henry Miller's acceptance, to use Orwell's term, of what was for him "the modern age". For Orwell, this meant accepting "Hitler, Stalin, bombs, aeroplanes, tinned food, machine guns, putsches, purges, slogans, Bedaux belts, gas masks, submarines, spies, provovateurs, press censorship, secret prisons, aspirins, Hollywood films, and political murders". Substitute Bush, Blair and Bin Laden for Hitler and Stalin and bingo! - Plus ca change. Apart from the secret prisons, obviously. Guantanamo has, after all, been a fairly well documented "secret".

And I think it does. Justify the inversion, that is. Everywhere he is obsessed with the idea of the "ordinary man", whose day to days struggles - the hunger, hardship, solitude, and so on - inform their humanity and contrast so vividly with the concerns of the privileged literary elite. I think that on matters of popular culture, Orwell often seems very prescient and I think that this largely fearless and often embracing attitude of Orwell's toward the mundanities of ordinary (if not working class) life, gave him an "in" that others of his era lacked.

There's been an ongoing debate in the 'sphere and the Me-Jah Proper about the healthiness or otherwise of the blogging fraternity. I think you could argue the case that the best of us that I've come across - Mollster, The Spinster and others - are Henry Millers to the massed ranks of McEwans and Dejevskys and everyone with a vested interest in perpetuating the myth that *they* know better than the 2 million people who protested the Iraqi war and why we should just (b)log off and listen to what *proper* journos have to say. My personal view is that there is a great, seething sea of humanity out there, many members of which are taking the opportunity that technology is allowing them to discover and express their thoughts and feelings and, if you can get your head outside the overpowering drill noise of the organised Me-Jah, there is a real wealth of beauty, wisdom and kindness out there that you just won't find in the "legitimate" forums. After all, we're all Henry Millers - humans trying to (re)gain or retain our happiness and that sense of delight at being alive, regardless of the "affaires grandes" raging around us - trying to stay cosy in the belly of the whale. Only the McEwans, Dejevskys and Straight-Poor-Tarrs and The MeJah Proper represent another whale. Only theirs is one we can step out of at any time.

Well, imagine being inside *that*...




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Bobcast10

Is now up.

You know the drill...

Have a great weekend folks,

xxx

Bobster.

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Opportunity Knocks...

It was all quite surreal, really - as you can probably imagine. The phone rings in the middle of last night's re-run of Extras - right at the point where Ricky's doing his brilliant Oliver Hardy impression while Stephen Merchant does that wonderfully observed tosser-clicking-the-mouse-like-an-abstracted-retard bit. It's Yentob. "Oh, hi Al. How's things? Great. Yeah, good thanks....listen, I'm a bit....a pitch? [Pause, to check out the lovely Ashley Jensen's legs. She looks lovely as a Third Reich fraulein, doesn't she?] ......OK, Al - shoot, but can you make it.... Mm hmm. Yes, I was wondering when someone would realise that I'd make the perfect foil for Kaplinsky. A game show, huh? All in the title.....yes, so what's the title. Yes, I am sat down. No, I promise, I won't...look, can we er....You *are* joking, Al...Kaplinsky, Ker-plunksky!!?? What the...yes, yeah, I can fill in the gaps Al...Kaplinsky in a little black number, tottering about on her heels, coo-ing at them and I come behind the good looking ones and try to jab them with a ker-plunk stick...Set in Moscow? Why the....Oh, course - the *Russian* thing....Yes, American market...can't leave anything to chance.....Well, yes, the nudity would certainly make it a more interesting proposition but...listen, Al, can I just ask, *was* that you in the silver BMW in St. Ives in June? Oh, right. It is a real beard though, I take...ah ha. Yes, I think that's wise, Al. Listen, can we crack on because... yes, I see. And what time's it airing? Is that *before* the Z-List Charity Goat-Slaying? Yes, it should make us look good....it would make *anything* look good, assuming there's anyone left watching who hasn't got their head halfway down the toilet bowl, Al...What do I *think*? Well, Al....can I be *honest* with you?? I do have somewhat of a reputation to maintain - you know, feisty, callipered, underworld eminence grise of blog and all that...but Kaplinsky specifically asked for me, you say? How's that marriage of hers working out, do you happen to....well, yes, that would certainly help the ratings Al, but I can't run too fast with this thing on and he does look quite useful....well, if you're going to put me on the spot, Al, I'd have to say we're looking more favourably disposed to the nyet option...Why? Well, I've made some great friends on the blog. Plenty of enemies too, but - no, don't cry Al, it's nothing personal...Al.....do you know how *undignified* that last offer sounded....Besides, I have a thing about whipped cream ever since the UHT incident with Nastasia Kinski...Just because it's *cheaper*...doesn't mean....OK, Al - yes, I am listening...Look, Al - I'm gonna have to pass on the ker-plunksky-Kaplinsky thing. How can I put this? I just couldn't bear to give this up. I mean, there's no one to answer to, for a start. Sure, the pay is lousy - and the hours are long and it's *bound* to put strains on your personal relationship when you spend *that* long on a PC looking at Goth Girls splattered in fek blood...I mean, researching each day's provocative new post... Listen, I'm gonna hang up Al - no, I won't shift on this. In fact, lemme tell *you* something La-di-da Gunner Alan Yentob - you can *stuff* yer stupid nudey celebrity novelty 70s boardgame-based game show format up yer feckin' arse and fry it. I'm stayin' *right here* in the unmediated world of blog and pillocks to Natashia Blinkin' Kaplinsky...."


And then I woke up.

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Elvis Night...

After yesterday's fun and games in the comments box, time for what Bettster would call "a bit old school diary-style blogging". I'll be OK as long as I don't sign for any flowers, I'm told...

Well, it's probably the greatest example of a talent wasted, isn't it? The youthful tyro slowly degenerating into a bloated, drug and booze addled wreck, the musical brilliance of those early years thrown away and in their place the painful stumbling wastrel, a shadow of his former greatness rambling incoherently through the supper club novelty act his once brilliant ouevre has been reduced to. But why dwell on My Failed Musial Career when there's an Elvis Nite [sic] at the PoW to blog about?

It started promisingly enough. I get a call from H. asking if it's still going ahead as he's heard that they have cancelled it because there's an England friendly on (two words to strike fear into the hearts of any true football supporter there - England and friendly..) But a quick dash round to the Prisoner of War (you thought Elvis was tacky? Wait til you hear about the Tenko theme evenings...) and a word to the wise from landlord Mike (who as will soon become clear is hereafter referred to as "Mad Mike") establishes that Elvis has eminently *not* left the building and we have permission to rock (with even the outside chance of a little roll) c. 20.30 hours. "Is A. Radiographer coming?" "Mad Mike" (Eddie Large with a black crew cut) asks as I'm leaving. I knew it was a roughhouse, but I didn't think it was going to be *that* bad. Should he bring his scanner then, I ask...

So, 8.30 comes and H. and I arrive to be confronted by a virtually empty boozer - two lads watching McLaren's men trouncing the hapless Champions of Europe, a blowsy mutton-dressed-as-lamb type in touchingly period stilettos propping up the bar (I hope he doesn't wear them on his post round....[boom boom]) and a sprinkling of just-popped-out-for-a-quiet-pint-before-the-racket-starts types. Encouraging. We chat through the rest of the second half and then I set my gee-tar and little fender champ amp up (did I not mention that I'd brought my gee-tar and amp with me...?) and sit beside Mad Michael's customised digital wheels of steel-type disco set up. I'm just tuning up (this, as anyone who has followed My Failed Musical Career will know) can take hours...days, even...) when I am introduced and the audience is told that I will be playing along with Mad Mike's medley of Elvis tunes.... Great gig - drunkenly playing along to Scotty Moore*

I last about ten minutes - botching the incredibly tortuous guitar solo on "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down & Cry Over You" that Mike has kindly chosen to open with. After a few minutes plonking away tunelessly, I sit back down with H. and Wor Geoff and Wor Graham and listen to the splendidly chosen selection of Elvis toons Mike has sequenced. I am surprised to know that I can remember all the words to almost every song he plays - even (hangs head in shame) execrable stuff like "G.I. Blues". [If you think *that's* obsessive - read on...)

Then A. Radiographer turns up, svelte and humblingly slender looking, suitably attired in his trademark Jailhouse Rock outfit. He's even gone to the trouble of chalking "Number 47" above his lapel and spends the rest of the evening drifting around disconsolately in vain pursuit of Ann Off-duty Nurse wearing the Number three to whom he can say "I sure would be delighted with your company..." We reminisce about the old days in The Urinals (catchphrase: "It's that Twickenham Sound!!!" No, it *still* doesn't work, does it?) Until the beer kicks in and I leap back "onstage" and start vamping the "Mystery Train" riff (it sounds *exactly* like Scotty Moore playing the "Mystery Train" riff when he's pissed out of his knackers, btw) "Mad Mike" joins in and we get through a couple of the Sun Sessions numbers sounding almost barely competent. Then things deteriorate as I foolishly attempt the riff and solo from "Too Much" without the safety net of having someone who knows what they're doing playing behind me while I mime to it. As the last few punters who don't know me have almost filtered out into the aural safety of the night, Mike does his party piece - miming to an a capella version of the song "Let Me", a completely disposable piece of country ho-down piffle from the film Love Me Tender - the idea being that he will lip-synch so effectively that his audience will actually be duped into thinking Mike really *is* Elvis. I know. But the truly mad part is that, if you think about it, to achieve this level of verisimilitude (the effect is quite frighteningly realistic...), he presumably has to practice. A lot. With a *mirror*.

But that's not why he's called "Mad Mike". No, that's because I have a pretty strong feeling that he does not listen to music by *any* artist other than Elvis Presley. When we are left alone together (yes, it does actually sound scary when put like that, I can see that now...) Mike proceeds to show me the contents of the steel container that houses (I'm assuming this is merely a small part) of his stupendous Elvis CD collection. (There is also a vinyl collection and, I'm guessing a tape one too, but these - mercifully - are in Ireland.) He has *everything* - even bizarre self-made CDs of the movie soundtracks (yes, that's right *The Movie Soundtracks*) that he's dubbed off the original movie soundtracks and put on CD. He has an alternate takes version of the L.P. "Girls, Girls, Girls" (that's right - there is a different version of "Song of the Shrimp" out there, Elv. completists...and Mike *has* it). To cut a long story short, I don't get home until 1.30 a.m.

"If you want to be single, it can easily be arranged", S. says coldly from beneath the duvet.

Well, do I?




*The greatest guitar player who has ever lived...


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Absolutely The *Last* Word On Girl With A One Track Mind...

OK, I know we're all getting bored with this but as I'm starting to come up near the top of the search lists on shit like this one on Technorati [new addition] and this one on Ice Rocket.com (must be because we've bust through the 40,000 hits glass ceiling, I suppose) [and frankly, we need the traffic - recently installed corporate marketing and PR guru ed.] I felt it incumbent upon me to blab on about it a bit more. Well, there's nothing else to do here until the removals guys pick me, chair, table and PC up and physically haul me to Uxbridge...

Right. There's already been some (alarmingly) sensible debate about the whole Abby Wotsit business here in our comments patch. I'd just add that speaking as someone just outside The Spinster's catchment area (32-40, for the information of all you young bucks out there) and whose life experience encompasses the loss of both parents, one in sudden and the other in horrifically prolonged fashion, I find the whole thing about someone having money shovelled at them by publishers for stuff they are ashamed to tell their folks about a bit weird, to be honest. About the only pleasant thing about being left (as it were) to stand on one's own two feet is the - to use an Amis word - adamantine quality one acquires. In a very tangible way, there is suddenly no one there to pick you up on things or ask you to moderate your language etc. In short - you are stranded with being *you* and not someone else's son/daughter. I think it would be dishonest to say that once you get over the obvious grief and trauma of the loss(es) there's not also a sense that in some cliched circle-of-life way, one has in a funny way been necessarily liberated - freed to become oneself, without the sort of p & q minding that Abby Wotsit seems to be going through. So that's where I 'm coming from on this.

So this - I think - begs a couple of questions of GWAOTM. Firstly - if this is stuff that she really doesn't want her parents to see, shouldn't the decision to keep it under wraps have been made a little earlier in the process - namely, before the agents and publishers decended on her cyber diary with the intention of thrusting it under the noses of as many people as possible? You know - if you decide to dive into a tankful of sharks for a fish, you kind of run the risk of being bitten by sharks...

Secondly, doesn't it get a bit repetitive (and aren't there any vaguely feminist people left out there to get hot under the collar about) the fact that if you're a female blogger, they only way you'll get on is by (and I'm speaking figuratively here, obviously) dropping them? I think Abby Wotsit can be excused her callowness - she's a young lass whose life so far probably hasn't given her any conception of the horrors that time will ultimately unfold before her - and rightly so (youth being wasted on the young is a load of tommyrot. It's precisely the innocence of it all that one can't get back and misses). Good on her for getting a 'screw' out of all the other sort of screwing. But isn't that same callowness (or rather the preying on it) a bit worrying in publishers? You know - we have this whole end of days scenario playing out and they want us to be reading about GWAOTM's carnal carnival. Nothing wrong with that - but why isn't there the same interest in - and I choose a name at random here - The Spinster, for instance?

She writes beautifully, is witty, insightful and I think even if it's all a persona and she's really bathing in bacardi with Chipperfields models every evening, she's The Real Deal. I think she offers an insight into the realities of femininity that I for one have found riveting, instructive and consistently amusing. But it's an *awkward* femininity for the publishers, isn't it? Because the reality is harder to *market*... So instead of getting The Spinster's Morrissey, we get GWAOTM's Gwen Steffani. (Who, incidentally, I *would*)

So, let's draw a line under it. I was going to blab on about the use of personas in blogging - which I obviously wrote the book on, so I would be hypocritical not to allow GWAOTM a veil of her own. But, at the end of the day, in the unlikely event of the Me-Jah unceremoniously removing the mask of Bob to reveal dull and boring old Johnny, then - so what? What's to be ashamed of? And if - ultimately - you can't stand by it. Don't post it. Besides, it's much more fun on here, being unmediated in blogspace - isn't it? Just tell the publishers where to go.

There endeth the lesson.


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Walking Back To Happiness - The View From The Other Side...

So that fat slob who looks like Mickey Rourke in Barfly ten binge drunk years on is Robert Swipe, is he? I thought he worked in the sewage farm. Certainly smells like he does. We passed yesterday. Pervy bugger, commenting on my appearance like that. Sheryl Crow, indeed! I'll dress down tomorrow - probably go for the red wrap around top, jeans and tote. Well, it's a better bet than yesterday's black sweater and just-above-the-knee-skirt number with clumpy brown just-below-the-knee brown boots. Why *does* he wear women's clothes to work, I wonder?

Gina McKee, indeed!

Still, you *would*, wouldn't you.



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Bobcast 9...

....is now up. Not quite as good as Listen with Rock Mother 2. But what do you want?? Blood?????

(Well, fek blood, actually...)


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That Girl With A One Track Mind "Bully Wank" Search Exclusive We Promised You...

For some reason, this came up on my site meter.

To save your wrists, this is the bit that made me splutter cocoa all over the laptop:


Last 20 Searchengine Queries Unique Visitors

15 Aug, Tue, 15:42:48 Google: girlwithaonetrackmind
15 Aug, Tue, 15:42:56 Google: a girl with a one track mind
15 Aug, Tue, 15:43:20 Google: girlwithaonetrackmind
15 Aug, Tue, 15:43:54 Google: girl with a one track mind
15 Aug, Tue, 15:44:00 Google: GIRLWITHAONETRACKmind
15 Aug, Tue, 15:45:16 Yahoo: girl with one track mind
15 Aug, Tue, 15:45:54 Google: girlwithaonetrackmind
15 Aug, Tue, 15:45:56 Google: weblog abby lee
15 Aug, Tue, 15:47:08 Google: my vulva
15 Aug, Tue, 15:47:09 Google: +"girl with a one-track mind"
15 Aug, Tue, 15:48:13 Google: girlwithaonetrackmind
15 Aug, Tue, 15:48:22 Google: girl with a one track mind
15 Aug, Tue, 15:50:24 Google: Girl with a one-track mind
15 Aug, Tue, 15:51:38 Google: abby lee +blog
15 Aug, Tue, 15:51:47 Google: girlwithaonetrackmind
15 Aug, Tue, 15:51:59 Google: slow fuck
15 Aug, Tue, 15:52:00 Google: "girl with a one track mind"
15 Aug, Tue, 15:52:10 Google: bully wank
15 Aug, Tue, 15:52:14 Google: sex terms and dp
15 Aug, Tue, 15:52:32 Google: arse sex

Nice to see that literary blogs are *finally* getting the exposure they deserve, isn't it?

btw: any one know what "arse sex" is....


.....Spinny????


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40,000 Swipe Fans Can't Be Wrong...

(.....well, I'll probably be dead by the time it reaches 50,000,000.)

I've had this ready for three weeks now, watching every day as it hovered on 39,999, just waiting to be able to nab the poor...sorry lucky bastard who's won our specially engraved "Congratulations! You Are Our 40,000th Visitor" Robert Swipe Memorial miniaturised Calliper and 'Buie Respirator facsimile. There was also an Emily Bell voodoo doll I was planning to throw in but the charred remains of it are of too great a sentimental value for me to hand it over to just anyone*

So, Congratulations 66.161.225.# of Cincinnati, Ohio. Hope you enjoyed your 0 seconds and one page view. I'm surprised you lasted that long. And have great fun with your specially engraved "Congratulations! You Are Our 40,000th Visitor" Robert Swipe Memorial Miniaturised Calliper and 'Buie Respirator Facsimile - it's tippex from the same bottle I used to daub "I [heart symbol] Spinny" on the real one. Enjoy it**.


Domain Name ovf.com ? (Commercial)
IP Address 66.161.225.# (Fuse Internet Access)
ISP Fuse Internet Access
Location Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
State : Ohio
City : Cincinnati
Lat/Long : 39.1097, -84.5046 (Map)

Language English (United States)
en-us
Operating System Microsoft Win2000
Browser Internet Explorer 6.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; T312461)
Javascript version 1.3
Monitor Resolution : 800 x 600
Color Depth : 16 bits

Time of Visit Aug 15 2006 9:22:35 am
Last Page View Aug 15 2006 9:22:35 am
Visit Length 0 seconds
Page Views 1
Referring URL http://images.google...&prev=/images%3Fq%3D
Visit Entry Page http://rswipe.blogsp..._rswipe_archive.html
Visit Exit Page http://rswipe.blogsp..._rswipe_archive.html
Out Click
Time Zone UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time Aug 15 2006 9:22:35 am
Visit Number 40,000


Anyroad, Bobcast style slinky link here.

It's Elvis night at the PoW tomorrow. That's (al)right, we'll be jiving away in our Blue Suede Shoes at the Prisoner of War (I know - weird name for a pub, but the Tenko theme nights are absolutely top draw...) So Don't step on them or you'll be looking for Trouble. I Forgot to Remember to Forget to post this up...(enough with the Elvis song titles already - you want to wait another 5 years for your next 40,000 hits??) There might even be an appearance by Singing Bob during the King's Karaoke section.....


"Yooooo-Wayner-nuthin'-budder-how-dorg.....crikin-aw-thatie....

The King is Dead - Long Live the King!!

*Besides, it's been up my arse.

** You undeserving bastard.



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Walking Back To Happiness...

Walked to work listening to Ro-Mo again. The second cast this time. (Yes, I know it's boring, but if you want excitement and shagging, feck off to GWAOTM...or Stephen Berlin Johnson...) She's a natural. I saw J. Geils Band supporting the Stones at Wembley. And Black Uhuru. 'Shine i- girl'. Went with The Boy With The Hole in the Heart and two of his Raasay mates, one of whom kept lighting his farts on the train from Willesdon Junction. The busiest place he'd ever been was Skye (pop. - I dunno? 2,000 max??) There he was in the middle of 80,000 people all straining to see Mick 'n' Keef. I bumped into a guy called Zack from Richmond College who always wore a black leather jacket and had one of those crooked James Bond smiles. Wonder what he's doing now? I missed who was singing with Willie Dixon as I crossed the Chertsey Road and the traffic obliterated poor old Ro-Mo's dulcet tones. I couldn't rewind it because it's all on one track. I'll have to listen to it again now.....Nice of The Mo of Ro to stir it up with The Spinster and The Heathster (PHWOAR!!). It would be 'Dirty Love' an' all, what with my...condition.

Didn't pass the Laura Veirs/Alannis Morrisette woman today. I saw her yesterday, in a nice black sweater and just-above-the-knee-skirt number with clumpy brown just-below-the-knee brown boots. No idea what she was wearing. She now looks like Gina McKee as painted by Modigliani trying to look all soft and floaty like Sheryl Crow on that cover of hers where she looks all summery and is playing a Gibson JS200 acoustic guitar. Only without the guitar, obviously. She might have had a tote bag...I find myself wondering if she's a blogger and, if so, would she recognise herself if she ever read this? Probably not. Can anyone see themselves as others do? I've only got three days on this route and then we'll probably never pass one another again. Hope I see her before then. Just for old times sake, like.

Walking through the sewage works, I see the same female blackbird with the broken wing, still hopping about, darting through a gap in the wire fence resembling one of those swing-wing military aircraft. Perhaps the Universe is kind after all. Or is it just prolonging the agony?

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40,000 Swipe Fans Can't Be Wrong...

.....well, I'll probably be dead by the time I reach 50,000.



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Bob's 115th Rant...

Christ this is boring, isn't it? Is it as bad for you lot out there as it is for me? I don't know why I do it you know - I'm sure you've often asked the self-same question and I honestly couldn't tell you. Beats me how any one bothers to read it at all - not that *that* many of you do. Not that I'm complaining or anything. Well, I *am*, actually but that's not what this is about. I just wonder sometimes why we do it? Boredom, mainly, I suppose. Or ego. That awful, competitive thing of not wanting to be left out of anything. I don't bloody know! And some hard to pin down aching in the chest that only disappears when you're immersed in something that requires full on concentration (in my case, typing is in itself a majorly absorbing and astounding technical accomplishment. Especially when I'm on the sauce. As I increasingly am, it seems. I hope you realise the effort that goes into all this and the things (usually the c-word) that have been yelled at fumbling fingers/keyboards/that bloody stupid little mousepad thing on the laptop that I always forget to click when I've moved back up the text so I end up posting a link in the middle of a c***ing sentence...) It's not a desire for fame either - not really. Not fame in an Abbie Titmuss coin-it-while-you-can, drop 'em and run off with the loot to hide behind your armour of post-modern, clever-clever, the-joke-was-all-on-you-ness. No, it's not even about money anymore, is it? Not since we sold the vomily home and got security of sorts that way. Be nice to get paid for what I do all day rather than taking money for supposedly doing something I'm not doing because I'm doing this. But I can *live* without getting my wedge from this. I can *afford* to do it for fun. So, there *shouldn't* really be any justification for me to be hacked off with it really, should there? But there is. I am hacked off with it. I feel frustrated that it isn't more widely liked, if I'm honest. There *is* a desire for - I don't know - not fame, but certainly recognition or something. I suppose there is that, if I'm truthful. There's a sense of being unfulfilled, certainly. The need to know that you've made your mark in some slightly interesting way - more interesting than starting a war or doing some shite voice over because it pays more than doing a really stimulating play like all those actor wankers do. I suppose it's a matter of trying to use the fact that there are other people (I can hear you sniggering as I type this next bit - I'm gagging myself, if truth be told...) who appear to be interested in reading whatever tosh you might have to say to start a conversation, or a debate or just have a bit of a hootenanny with it - if that makes sense. And I suppose one hopes to be appreciated for being (dare I say) slightly generous of spirit in that one is doing (and enjoying doing) this for its own sake and not to pay the bills or because one has any particular agenda to push or there's some media career or money-making scheme or other one is trying to further. I mean, I know I plug the Bobcasts and spend hours soliciting scantily-clad goth girls spattered in fek blood to visit the blog and so on, but it really is only in the hope that they'll like what's up here - I'm not trying to scam anyone. You know and the Grauni-cunting-ad gets all high and mighty about me "spamming" them and they're trying to make out they're some great moral institution when they've stood shoulder to shoulder with Blair - the biggest fucking cunt we've *ever* had as PM - and I'm the one who should be ashamed of myself. Shove it up yer bollocks! Better half the wanky bullshit I've posted up on here than that sanctimonious bunch of middle class tossers. The only positive thought is how the legions of little Jeremys and Jemimas they've spawned will rail against their hypocritical parents when they find they're standing on a six by four bit of tarmac with the Atlantic Ocean washing around their ankles and all they could do was compare bijou second homes in Brittany and ask Roland Rivron 20 poxy questions. Cunts.

I don't know, it's just really fucked me off today for some reason.


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At Last - Some Good News!!...

Sorry about all the posts today - the medication hasn't kicked in yet. Plus, in a few days time I won't be able to do this as much as I have been, [sighs of relief the world over] so make the most of 'em...


It's not often you see some truly heartwarming news, is it?

You can just imagine the guy in charge of his crew...

"*That's* for 'Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?'....*That's* for 'Karma Chameleon'...

Shame they're not flogging him....



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The Capstons Monkeys...

Now *there's* a name for a band!!

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For Once - Something Worthwhile On The Grauniad Ulnitimed...

I think The Spinster and The Mollster should both have a look here.

You should both be published by now instead of dreck like GWAOTM...

Let me know how you get on...


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Proper Blog (Slight Return)...

There's a removals lorry outside the Library and it has one of those fork-lift type things on the back that make it easier to load. Everytime this fork-lift type thing goes up or down it makes a noise like Eno's synth at the beginning of Ladytron.

What bliss!

(And Eno would love the idea of it.)


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Proper Blog...

Bit of a cunty Sunday, really. Started off OK - nice veggie brunch sitting at Our Nice New Table. Then I walked up to Waitrose with the sublime Listen With Rock Mother on the iPod. Passing Sanders' Funeral Directors by Twickenham Green I just happened to glance at the advert for their services in the window and noticed that the guy eyeing up the quite-saucy-in-a-Jenny-Agutter-as-she-is-now-sort-of-way Undertaker was the dead spit of Richard Lewis - Larry's stand up comedian mate in Curb Your Enthusiasm. Visions of Larry hopping around at someone's cremation yelling "You cunt" after some improbable confluence of unlikely events. S. can do the voice to a tee. Our poor bloody neighbours. Being a man of means, I was able to reject the 29 p reduced single cream (I mean it was reduced in price - they hadn't done something awfully clever with it by simmering it...) in favour of one in date and things looked pretty well set.

Then the cunty bit began. Eyeing the Observer Music Mag (you see, I am a good liberal with a small l really after last week's dalliance with the Murdoch machine) I was delighted to see Keith Richards on the cover. But then, disaster. Stood next to him? Russell Cunting Brand. I'm sorry, I like a joke with the best of them, but what is *that* all about. He's somehow wangled himself a gig interviewing The Walking Laboratory and he doesn't even *like* music. He'd rather have been meeting Peter Cook, apparently*. I mean - what's going on? Is he Jo Brand's son, or something? He's certainly got the hair...

So that was cunty. And then I spent the rest of the afternoon setting up my hi-fi gear in the spare bedroom/office when I'd hoped to do another podcast. That was OK too, I suppose - it needed to be done - and I managed to get online eventually and leave firm rebuttals to all the prurient gossips on The Spinster's blog trying to fix us up together**. But then I kicked over my virtually full glass of Beck's and ruined the carpet - cleaning it up (in between bouts of shouting *CUNT*, *SHITTY CUNTING FUCKER* etc. Our poor bloody neighbours...) while S. sat at her Nice New Table getting increasingly irate. I ate my cold lasagne while she sat there with an empty plate, glowering. Then I fell asleep during Father Ted. Silly Cunt.

So, all in all, a nice conventional Middle Class Sunday really...

*You'll have to dig him up first, Russ.

**I told them I loved her - but that our love could never be. Well, what with my cockrot and her hairy hands....

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Bobcast8...

...is now up. Featuring music by and about people called Johnny and Fuzzy Brown. That's right - Fuzzy Brown...


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Listen With Rock Mother...

Yep, you thought the Bobcasts were good? (Come on, humour me here...) Wait 'til you hear the legendary Mother of Rock's new podcasts!! We were granted a sneak preview yesterday and we must say we were really knocked out (...it is actually the best way to listen to them - completely unconscious... The 'buie breezers helped, of course...) But seriously, the ......how can we put it....melange of classy rock 'n' roll, knitting patterns, (possibly bomb laden?) low flying aircraft and the humourous interludes (yes, those really are Rock Mother's own children being tortured in the background!) conspire to make an aural feast of bona fide radiophonic (...come on Bob, how much is she paying you here? Financial ed.)

So, as the demure lady herself would no doubt say - "come on you shitters!". Get in there and Listen with Rock Mother.....at least you know you won't have to put up with me singing.....(or will you????? He added enigmatically in a misguided attempt to sabotage Ro-Mo's cast even more than he had already by plugging it in the first place...)

For those about to R-Mo....


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The Great Dejevsky, Brooker, Alibhai-Brown, Street-Porter Blogging Debate - Bob Weighs In...

Well, it's not all getting pissed while virtually schmoozing a bunch of people you've never met and making inappropriate remarks to (the it has to be said, rather PHWOAR!!) Heather (...yes, yes, I know - she's far too young and intelligent for me. I'm just trying to perpetuate another running gag as it seems The Spinster has finally run out of patience with me...it's only a harmless bit of fun [says Bob as he sharpens an exquisitely evil looking surgical implement and laughs maniacally into his collection of fek-blood-splattered Goth girl pornography...]) Apologies again Heather - it was just the booze talking. I don't really want my children to look like you. Well, not my sons, anyroad...

But, seriously. There has been a lot of discussion on a variety of blogs recently about comments made by several journalists (and Janet Streeeeet-Pour-tar) concerning the blogging community. Others have posted on this very well too, but as I have to make up for my actions last night, I'm focussing on (The it has to be said, rather PHWOAR!!) Heather, who has summarised them rather eloquently here. I won't bore you with a paraphrase when with one click you can be reading the Heathster's impeccable prose. Suffice to say, I'm in complete agreement with everyone who's contended these 'official' commentators' assertions that we are banal, inarticulate and that rather than democratising the culture, our blogs are reducing the level of debate to the level of the playground.

And if any of you them happen to be reading, all I can add is this:

Charlie Brooker, Mary Dejevsky, Janet Street Porter and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown - just do one, will you? With knobs on. So there. Nerr!


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Last Night's Blog Crawl...

Well, it started here, then went here, then by way of here ended up in a drunken heap here.

Very self-indulgent if you weren't there, I know - and I apologise for that, but just to commemorate a very fun evening, I wanted to post the links up. Well, it's something to read just before you ditch the laptop you were planning to take on board as hand luggage ahead of your heavily delayed flight...

p.s. If you're reading this Heather - I'm sorry. I was unspeakably drunk...


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Bobcast7 Is Now Up...

No singing this time, you'll be relieved to hear...



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Molly's Quiz Night...

Well, as if blogging and podcasting to the poor huddled masses were not enough, tonight Bob takes his first tentative steps into the world of Light Entertainment (the new Tommy Steele or wot, eh???) Gorgeously scrumptious Penelope Wilton lookalikey The Mollster



has invited Your Humble Scribe to take part in the first of her 'Live' quizzes and being the desperate, fame-obsessed, grubby little attention seeker that I am, how could I refuse? Well, quite simply by saying 'no can do Molls', as I did. But she's a persuasive wee hussy is The Mollster (especially when she's got you in a half-nelson and has started greasing up the marigolds...) and so after a protracted haggle over the fee (in the end, she said I could give her the thirty pounds in installments over the next few weeks, which seems reasonable...) we agreed to all 'meet up' at her place where she will hopefully be presenting a little you-tube intro piece (I'm probably asking too much for her to be scantily clad and smeared in fek blood, I suppose...??) before the serious intellectual jousting begins. I say intellectual, but with Ro-Mo,



Geoff



and Betty



and self taking part, I can see the whole thing lapsing into a frenzy of 'buie breezer based acrimony and name calling before too long. (I know, why she had to ask those two to get involved, I'll never know...It's bad enough at home without being privy to other people's domestics...)

To conclude, I'm sure you'll all join me in demanding of the Bettster, where on earth we can hear her All-Wimmin, Feminist Art Terrorist Collective, The Low Breasts, as alluded to in Saturday's post on her excellent blog thing. I've done extensive web-based research and found nothing, nyet, nada. Mind you, I suppose there's always Ask Jeeves....

So come on The Bettster - let's have a link and I'm sure we can rustle up a big Swipe Show buzz for you (this boy's a fool etc. etc.

Kick off is at 8pm - go on, it's bound to be more exciting than the Liverpool game....


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The L.P. in L.P. Hartley...

....Stands for Leslie Poles.

Amazing what you can discover "working" in a library, isn't it?

Leslie Poles....


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I Meme Mine...

...best done when you've just uncorked the third bottle of housewarming present ,Merlot/Shiraz, I always find....

Have you had sex in the past 24 hours?
Just to clarify: does "self-love" count??
Are you gay?
Yes. Bordering on the downright jolly, if you must know...
Do you have hairy legs?
Only when I go a couple of days without shaving. Well, anyone who can take a 10 denier every day deserves a bloody medal..
Do you like monkeys?
Only when they're not being experimented on....
How many fillings do you have?
Well, the veggie thing is obviously a limiting factor. Including the spinach and ricotta, I'd have to say about 38 or so...
Would you rather swim in the ocean or a lake?
Ocean every time. Unless it's Veronica we're talking about, in which case things get a bit complicated - she is dead, isn't she???
Have you ever licked one of those square batteries?
Uh-huh.
Have you ever read the Bible?
Yes. I found it rather stretched one's credulity at times. Great plot though, isn't it?
Did you ever go to Sunday School?
Yes. They made us read comics with Cliff Richard cartoon strips in and even my zealously religious mother banned me from ever going again. See, Cliff never lost the rebel thing after all - he's trying to bring the system down from within. You wait - the pics of Blair licking the contents of Sir C's colostemy bag will come out and we'll finally get the Tory government we deserve.....
Do you wear a lot of black?
Only around my eyes. You won't be laughing when the Shakespeare's Sister revival reaches middle England. You Johnny-come-layelys you...
Did you ever bring a weapon to school?
Not really. The Trident system had a lot going for it - huge destructive power and collosal propaganda value - but it was, to be frank, a bit of a nuisance to store in a tuck box behind the bike sheds at Orleans Park School for Dangerously Fecund Young Ladies...
Have you ever hugged a tree?
Ho ho ho - you're not catching me out like that young fellow me lad!!
Do you know what a sphincter actually is?
Of course. It's a woman who's given up all hope of getting hitched. I'm in love with one as a matter of fact. Never met her, but I've got a hunch she can make tattie bread to die for and can't pronounce her vowels properly.....dang it! These were fresh on this morning.....Oh, sphincter...!??
Describe your hair?
Bald.
Are you a wildbeast?
Yes. Especially when trees are concerned.......shit, shit shit shit - you bastard, you wangled it out of me in the end!!!!!
Do you like to have fun?
Most certainly - in an ironic, Iggy Pop, "all aboard for funtime" sort of way....
Do you like drama?
Yes, I suppose so - in a "the BBC's had a lot of Shakespeare on recently, but you can't beat this for drama" Sid Waddell commentating on the darts sort of way.
Have you ever taken a bong hit?
Listen - some of the stuff that went down in 'nam - they don't call me No-Arms Bob for nothing you know. And the cockrot probably stems from that tour of duty too. In fact, my bong was about the only thing the damn gooks didn't hit....
Do you like mayonnaise?
Yes - as I'm repeatedly telling S. "salad cream is soooooo common!!!"
Are you afraid to die?
Nope. Afraid of others dying, but as Tom Waits asks - who puts flowers on a flowers grave?
Do you like playing in leaves?
Yes - so long as they're A4...
Have you ever peed your pants as an adult?
Not as often as I've shat them.
Have you ever thrown up on somebody as an adult?
Not unless I've had my tongue down their throat at the time. And the last time that happened was probably before I was an adult....
Are you an adult?
Only in a spiritual sense...
Ever won a spelling bee?
No, the one I won was useless. Kept typing their when it meant they're and so on. Huge sigh of relief all round when the cunt finally buzzed off, if you must know....
Do you ever eat because you’re depressed?
No, I get depressed because I eat. I also get depressed because I drink. And sleep. And watch Celebrity Love Island. And because Cheslea are going to win the league in perpetuity. Christ - what's with the probing questions? I was quite perky until I started all this bollocks...
Are you a television addict?
Erm....yes - that's why I'm filling this stupid bastard meme out when I could be watching Eastenders Revealed......
Do you think OJ was guilty?
No. He was an actor.
Do you enjoy spending time with your mother?
My late Mother? Yes, we commune occasionally. The weird thing is, they don't actually go all that far - you start realising how little of what you thought was you is actually an autonomous being. yOU ARE, FOR BETTER OR WORSE, IN LARGE PART AN AMALGAM OF YOUR PARENTS AFTER ALL (Sorry - that's not meant to be shouty - I've just uncorked bottle #4....
Have you ever had sex in a hot tub?
Nope.
On a swing?
Nope In several graveyards, but never on a swing.
Do you like Elvis?
Does the Pope shit in the woods??
Do you enjoy watching animals “do it” on the Discovery channel?
If I knew what "it" was, I could answer...
Ever been hit on at a zoo?
Yes. By a tree.
Have you ever had sex with a total stranger?
Yes. In Prague. Which is odd - because I've never been to Prague....
Do you enjoy the calming effects of turkeys?
(...) [Brian Damge fans' in-joke there...]
Does your mom think someone is hot?
I refer the Right Hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave some moments ago...
Are you a sugar freak? (...)
Ever been arrested?
Yes. It was a fair cop, mind. I was bang to rights. But society's to blame...
Ever commit a crime and get away with it?
Just the odd one against humanity. But if Tony's not going to be called to account for his, i don't see why I should....
Do you like orange juice?
They went down hill after they left Postcard Records, I felt...
What sign are you?
o' the times, of course. We could call him Nate..(if it's a boy...)
Ever do the party boy dance in front of the elderly?
Christ - were these questions compiled by a total retard??Where do you wish you were right now?
Not answering these poxy questions for a kick off..
Did you enjoy this? I refer the Right Hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave some moments ago...


Thanks to The Billster for making me waste a whole evening on this when I could have been watching Eastenders Revealed......


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Bobcast6...

.....is up now...(if you know what's good for you, don't listen through to the bitter end...)


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Is There Something Apple Aren't Telling Us??...

I think there is. Walking towards the Curry's roundabout near the Rugby Ground, I 'm listening to 'Just Like You', track 2 on the third Roxy Music album and wondering if I'll cross paths with the cute, floaty skirted secretary who looks like Sheryl Crow only with straight, mousey hair and who always looks away from me when I glance at her through my sunglasses. So, I'm waiting at the zebra crossing and I see the floaty skirted, straight haired Sheryl Crow lookalikey standing at the opposite side of the dual carriageway (only she's in jeans and looks more like a student or a protest singer than a secretary in 'civvies' - Alanis Morrisette going for the Laura Viers-without-the-glasses look, perhaps?) and as 'Just Like You' comes to an end, I think it's a pity that the iPod is on shuffle, as it would be great to hear 'Amazona' now (the track that follows 'Just Like You' on the Stranded LP, as night follows day). Anyway, I start crossing the road and walk towards the floaty-skirted secretary who looks like a straight haired Sheryl Crow, glance across at her through my sunglasses just before we pass and she, of course, looks away, and then Phil Manzanera's flangified mangling of the riff from 'Torn and Frayed' starts up, Johnny Gustafson's bass kicks in and Paul Thompson's drums beat down before Ferry starts warbling, "Amazona is a place where there is no doubt - no more fall out" and I ask again, is there something Apple aren't telling us??

Bobcast 4 is up now, btw.


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The Quite-Well-Known-But-Not-Exactly-What-You'd-Call-Famous-Hall-of-Fame...

In The Mollster's absence, bored and listless without her inspirational presence, I thought I'd follow up Tim's line of questioning regarding NME journalist Betty Page. So, I wrote to Rock'sbackpages, thinking that they might know:


Dear Rock's back pages,

A friend and I were reminiscing and remembered a journalist who used to write for the NME (and Melody Faces too, I believe) who went by the monicker 'Betty Page'. Tim (the other one I just mentioned) has a hunch that it was a pseudonym for Nick Kent or one of the other male journos, but my money's on Barbara Ellen or Sally Margaret Joy-True (nee Sally Margaret Joy) or one of the other female rock writers. Or was there REALLY another Betty Page? Hopefully you can shed some light on the matter??

Incidentally, I knew Sally Margaret Joy in the days when she was a musician, playing bass guitar with hitmakers Furniture ("You must be out of your brilliant mind")

She still owes me five pounds.

Cheers,

Bob (& Tim)

I'll let you know if/when they get back to me, but in the meantime it got me thinking that, apart from Todd Blogney's Incredibly Famous Younger Brother, I don't know all that many famous people [thank God if TBIFYB is anything to go by. Last heard of, he was dressed as a gamekeeper being called a c*** by My Friend Who's About to Become Incredibly Famous (When His New Book Comes Out) Yes, that's right: a gamekeeper!?] But I do know (or once knew) a lot of people who have achieved a fair degree of renown/notoriety/success-within-their-own-field without exactly being what you'd call really famous. So I thought I'd start an occasional hall of fame for the Quite-Well-Known, But Not Exactly What You'd Call Famous.

This week:

Sally Still [AKA Sally Margaret Joy(-True)] [picture to follow...only I couldn't get blogger to download it, so go here - she's 4th in from the left...]

Biography:

Bass player with Furniture c. 1982-1991.

Journalist with Melody Faces (199?-????)

Currently writing (?) and being married to former Melody Faces journalist/editor Everett True.

There was an MP3 of Brilliant Mind, their 1986 hit, posted up here, but sadly it now has a line drawn through it...There's this link, but I'm not sure if it plays the song as I can't hear stuff at work...or you could buy it here...

Or if you're really desperate....hunt down a copy of Now! That's What I Call Music, Vol. 7.....

Sally's link with Bob:

Co-members Self Analysis Club at Richmond-Upon-Thames-College, c.1981. Occasional drinking partners, c.1981-199?. Bob an occasional listener to/reader of Sally's work.

Well done Sal - and if you read this, I hope everything's good with you and that you're happy and enjoying life. Also, if you could see your way to getting that fiver back to me sometime....

++++++++++++STOP PRESS++++++++++++++++

Brilliant mind is on iTunes etc....

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Visit #37,000...

The Robert Swipe Show
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Muchas gracias!

(And thanks for sticking around!!)


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Afro Wars....

Not content with *stealing* my *bird* and trying to kid every one that the C86 episode was something to smile about, "La-di-da Gunner Timster" is now trying to tell me he knows more about afros than I do....

He'll be telling me Jimmy Scott's a bloke next...

And just who is this Jimmy Castor bird anyroad?? (Don't fancy yours much Tim...)


Over to you, the jury.....


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Finger(less) Bob...

Well, it's my thumb actually. The tip of the right one scythed off by a stiletto of UPVC window frame as I attempted to dislodge some of the six year accumultation of grime with a windolene wet wipe. "Well, if you will leave things like that unattended for six years...", S. cooed sympathetically as a I attempted to staunch the geyser of blood tinted alcohol spurting from my damaged digit in trademark Warner Brothers cartoon style. Still, at least it wasn't the "that's Jesus punishing you, that is..." (Jesus pronounced without the 's' at the end, as if in a hymn that Aled Jones is about to sing... - one of her Dad's gags) I can usually expect when some painful bodily misfortune is visited upon me - be it cockrot, stubbed toe, whooping cough or whatever. But maybe it is? (Jesu punishing me, that is.)

After all, don't I myself let out a little grin full of karmic smugness as I notice the sign in the window of the Oxfam shop in Twickenham that says "closed due to massive internal flood damage". You had it coming, you bastards, I internalise, looking heavenward and winking. In fact, I'm still chuckling as I picture the copters and food lorries in deepest sub-Saharan Africa powering up, heavily sun-screened Tanzanians donning their 70s style sunglasses and striking up their Lucky Strikes as the convoy of aid relief for the poor, innocent victims - those blameless charity shop volunteers of West London - whirrs into action. (£7-bloody-99 for an unplayably scratched Drifters LP? As our mate Ange would say in a Brum voice heavy with indignation, "They're robbers, that lot....")

So, there you have it - hot on from yesterday's Rapture Ready post, the stark truth of it. Forget Instant Karma - this is an Old Testament deity we're dealing with here. One step out of line and you'll be unable to hold a pen, box up your record deck (four bloody hours it took - four bloody hours!!) without it getting caked in your own finger sauce - and I haven't even tried to pull one off with this poxy plaster on - I've got enough problems down there without ripping through a penile artery with a razor sharp edge of elastoplast...) And what's more, you won't be able to wipe your arse for a week (well, you will but only by using the left hand - better be careful or you'll have the other once whipped off by the bloody Muslims if you're not careful...)

So, the moral is simple - whatever you do, don't remove Betty from your links...Jesu's punishment awaits those poor fools who do - and it bloody hurts!


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