Too Much To Declare

agenda for the day

2009-11-11T08:45:39+01:00

Today I will re-invent the wheel.

Again.

Some of my friends...

2009-11-11T01:24:56+01:00

... think I am an orthopedic surgeon. "I make a point," I tell them if the subject comes up, "never to operate on anyone I know."

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Love, Like

2009-11-10T22:20:07+01:00

Is it possible to love someone, but not like them very much at all?

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Solving the Gordon Brown Problem

2009-11-10T19:50:41+01:00

Gordon Brown has many dreadful things since he became Prime Minister - and, less we forget, before, when he was Tony Blair Chabcellor of the Exchequer.

But writing a partly illegible letter and mispelling a dead soldier's name, though embarassing and hurtful to mother of the soldier is hardly up there with his other crimes amd misdemeanors. Staying in Afghanistan, for example. Letting the nationalised bankers go on earning obscene bonuses. Over the years helping destroy the last vestiges of the Labour party's committment to socialism.

Which hasn't stopped the Sun going hysterically ballistic about the letter to the soldier's mum, and the consequent phone conversation, which they arranged to have secretly recorded. He's an emotionally clumsy, shy guy. Compared to his other faults, that's not so terrible.

Gordon has every reason to be angry with the Sun. In fact, IMHO. he should kill the editor, without further ado.

He would have to resign, of course. But at last he would have done something honourable. And whoever took over might actually win the subsequent election.

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novel lack

2009-11-10T00:31:46+01:00

For only the seond time this year, I find I have no unread novel to read. How can I fall asleep? How can I guide my dreams, my life awake with no characters to live through, no invented world to inhabit?

It might be quite liberating.

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CHURLISH to ignore

2009-11-09T23:26:27+01:00

While you have been looking the other way (judging by the abysmal pageview figures, lol) I have launched, on my second blog, a new Private Investigator eries , starring Peter Churlish, with 5 episodes so far, startting with this one. http://start-rainbow.blog.co.uk/2009/11/07/churlish-7324250/

It's all quite sketchy at the moment.

Add to the story, tell me what you think.

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Berlin, Madrid

2009-11-09T20:54:24+01:00

Twenty years ago I was in a hotel lobby, watching in awe as the wall come down, on television. Watching history. It was about a year later that some fool called it the end of history.

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Is it something in the water?

2009-11-09T18:55:40+01:00

Several of my favourite bloggers are not blogging much at the moment. If at all.

What's (not) going on?

Maybe I shall join them in their absence.

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Press Complaints Commission

2009-11-09T09:32:44+01:00

PCC: Are you guilty?
Journalist: No.
PCC: Are you guilty?
Editor: No.

So there you have it. We find both parties innocent. Long live the Free Press! Long live Self-Regulation!

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flat spin

2009-11-09T01:48:40+01:00

Maybe if I write it down here it will go away.

As soon as I put the light out to sleep, I fell into a blind, short breath, panic - fear of dying (specifically drowning), claustopobia, abandonment, that warning voice that comes in the night etc.

Of course, now, with the light and laptop on again, the panic has receded, although it appears to be lurking, waiting for darkness again.

Experience tells me that, perhaps aided by some heavy dreaming, I will feel better in the morning. No, more than better, as if I have fought a battle and won.

But that brings no comfort for me now, in the wee small hours.

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Trivial Announcement

2009-11-08T23:34:56+01:00

I am not having my head shaved.

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That was then

2009-11-08T20:35:23+01:00

As so often, my Sunday depression evaporates into the evening air. What was that all about?

Want to rush to finish the novel I'm reading, though. I will be murdering the main character if he doesn't die by the last page.

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Sunday Depression

2009-11-08T16:52:34+01:00

That full-on Reproach that beats me up from the inside. Beats too fast by the heart.

Not false consciouness - but False Conscience, deep guilt for non existent crimes.

Daddy's little enforcer, confusing his hurt feelings with sins to his half-remembered, half invented God.

God the Dad, dead too long ago to question. Too alive. Vengefully alive.

Fear

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Home is where...

2009-11-07T23:22:50+01:00

It struck me this evening, coming up the hill in the rain from a meal in my friendly French cafe, a present to myself after a long day at my mother's... it struck that, after more than 20 months living here, Brighton at last and quite suddenly feels like home.

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are we alone?

2009-11-07T00:05:01+01:00

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The joy of a woman's passive smoke

2009-11-06T18:29:55+01:00

I have never smoked a straight cigarette in my life. (And I gave up smoking anything more interesting eighteen months ago.)

As I've made clear on this blog, sometimes quite pompously, I hate strangers smoking anywhere near my face . In thoery, I'm an anti-smoking militant.

Yet, if a woman friend is smoking it's an entirely different matter. Then, cigarette smoke feels full of promise and lacks all tar.

I don't think I have ever gone out with a woman who didn't smoke. Smoke getting in my eyes has been part of the deal. And even if a venereal relationship is totally off the agenda, inapproriate even, it still feels illicit and erotic to have a bit of smoke wafting up my nasal paasages and into my lungs.

Yes, I'm am really screwed up.

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A Fly for Europe?

2009-11-06T10:45:42+01:00

Following the demise of Tony Blair's chances of becoming President of Europe (the job is not so glamorous or powerful that the title may sound), it looks as if they may job may go to Herman von Rompuy.

Who? Let me quote a Haiku he wrote on his website:

A lost fly
Flies wanderingly in a plane
Thus she is flying twice.

Double Air Miles, presumably.

Of course the poem may have lost something in translation from Flemish. And when did Tony Blair last write a haiku?

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They have started drilling again

2009-11-06T09:46:06+01:00

~~one of my back teeth~~ in the basement next to my bedroom

(I live on a hill)

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A Nightmare.

2009-11-06T09:32:12+01:00

I had a nightmare.

Don't want to want to tell you about it.

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Different shades of Blues

2009-11-06T00:59:55+01:00

I have been feeling so much fear these last few nights - once in the form of financial panic, another time the fear of letting go of the familiar, another time terror of death (a nightmare of drowning). Then in the mornings I have felt really positive, like a mdeieval knight having won a fight with demons.

It may have something to to do with the homeopathic medicine I am taking. Or my therapy.

This evening I am still afraid - of failure, death, letting go - but also I feel as if I'm about to reach and touch some rage - not pyrotechnic like the fireworks outside, or childish temper losing - but something different that I have never hithrto experienced... A sort of adultness... er...

I'm probably talking nonsense.

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Dog on Bus

2009-11-05T20:45:26+01:00

Bus stops. Dog ambles on and down the aisle. A determined amble. Pad, pad, pad, pad. "It doesn't belong to anybody!" someone exclaims. It looks quite dignified. Smooth skinned non-barking mongrel, medium sized.

"It's not mine," says a woman running after it. She holds an improvised lead. The dog does not seem willing to be captured. She offers it some of the contents of what looks like a vegetarian sandwich. "There's nothing like bribery," I comment, suppressing the thought that it the temptation for the dog if the sandwich had been laced with meat. "It's not my sandwich, It belongs to a colleague!" But it does the trick, and soon the woman is tugging back down the aisle.

God knows what the penalties are for an accompanied dog travelling without a ticket, but the driver has throughout remained passive and uninvolved. As she exits, I try to lead a round of applause for the woman who has seduced a dog she doesn't own with a sandwich that isn't hers and removed it from a bus she doesn't want to travel on - but no one else joins in.

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Missing

2009-11-05T07:42:17+01:00

I miss you.

Your presence can be enfuriating, too, but I can engage with that.

Besides, your absence isn't fun.

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Words can never hurt you

2009-11-04T23:51:33+01:00

Scoundrel. I love the sound of the word. I would have liked to have been a scoundrel at least once in my life, but I think the concept is a but too Terry-Thomas for me.

In my thirties, I thought of putting an advertisement in the Times personal column: Bounder seeks Heiress, but never got round to writing the cheque. Pity, really.

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A tall neck story

2009-11-04T22:32:57+01:00

Anyway there were these two ostriches, A and B.

Of course I could give them cuddly names, but that would be a wee bit anthropomorphic, don't you think? And, as far as I know, nobody has an ostrich as a pet.

Ostrich A buried his head deep, deep deep into the sand of the Saharan desert, not too far from Marakesh - and suddenly found he was breathing hot air from Australia, somewhere between Alice Springs and Broken Hill.

Now you might ask how Ostrich A knew that was where his beak had emerged, but I am afraid that information is confidential.

"Bugger this for a lark!" said Ostrich A, pulling back from his brief Australian experience. "That was surreal!"

"It's CGI mate," said Ostrich B. "They can do anything nowadays with CGI."

"Well, this is all is a bit extreme. The Sahara isn't even opposite the Australian Outback on the globe."

"Doesn't matter. Computers can change all that. If they wanted to, they could get rid of all the other ostriches in the world, and turn us two into avatars."

"Avatars? Could we fly? I've always thought it odd we couldn't fly."

"No. Nothing romantic, A. We'll be converted into digital dots or something like that. It will help solve global warming, apparently. Let's face it," summed up Ostrich B. "We are doomed."

"It may never happen," said Ostrich A, burying his neck into the sand even deeper than before.

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So, Goodbye "Featured Blog" page

2009-11-04T21:09:36+01:00

Or not? Will we be told?

Can't say I wil be sorry - the algorithm chosing them seemed to be so perverse. It niether tracked the blogs more the most visitors (check any internet analytics site and the list of most popular BCUK blogs is entirely different) nor managed to eliminate all blogs-for-profit. In order to make it difficult to manipulate it came up with eccentric winners and losers (Hmph, I write as someone featured only this morning after a long absence) It was no more than a bit of enfuriating fun - but fun that a lot of us enjoyed while often pretending not to.

So why was it withdrawn without notice? Or is its absence a mistake which wil be rectified tomorrow?

It is such a pity that both in this and TagGate BCUK admin feel there is no need to consult its users first. All the informaility and friendly approach suddenly feels a little hollow.

If you feel any of this matters and write a post onthe subject, tag it "TagGate" so all the protest shows up together.

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Tags that are lost forever

2009-11-04T17:30:37+01:00

Hello alecweston,

in order to use your tags to improve the searchability of your blog posts, it has been necessary to make a few changes to the tag system.

(Blah, blah - most BCUK bloggers amy have read this bit already)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following are your tags were deleted:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The tags were deleted because of the following errors:

- Die Mindestanzahl von Zeichen für ein Tag wurde nicht eingehalten. Ein Tag muss mindestens aus 2 zusammenhängenden Buchstaben oder Zahlen bestehen (a-z, A-Z, 0-9).
- Das Tag enthält zu viele Wörter. Ein Tag darf nur aus maximal 5 Wörtern bestehen. Bitte trenne Deine Tags mit Kommas und nicht mit Leerzeichen.

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It's not fair!

2009-11-04T12:01:51+01:00

But if everything in the world were fair, we would all be living just above the poverty line.

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Tell me something I don't know

2009-11-04T00:06:00+01:00

please

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the key to a succesful blog

2009-11-03T21:12:45+01:00

What do you think the key is?

A new young blogger has asked for my advice. How would I know? Considering the overall high quality of Too Much to Declare (sarky, negative comments will be deleted >" class="middle" border="0"> ) I am appalled how few people worldwide read it. But anyway stats are not everything. What matters most is... blah, blah.

What does matter most?

Most of the reply I sent will remain confidential between me and my new friend, Jwjwoodhouse, except that I advised him to keep most of his posts quite short.

What else would you advise, oh wise readers?

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All's for the best, in the best...

2009-11-03T17:55:12+01:00

of all possible worlds.

Well, not quite, but after assembling all the necessary info about gas meter numbers, empty flats in building etc (and locking myself out in the process, price of locksmith £45 cash) 20 minutes on the phone E-ON (who have actually got a "cross-meter department"), including a conversation with a sympathetic, intelligent woman called "Maz" (it sounded like 'mad' the first time she said it), who gave me her direct line number, the problem seems well on the way to be sorted out. She assured me my gas would not be cut off again.

Anyway, the important thing for my fans is - I will not write about gas meters ever again - until the next crisis.

Hey, I am not a trivial person. It's civilisation that does it to me.

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