Quit with the quitting already

How are our panel members doing as they try to quit smoking before the ban comes in? asks the BBC.


And I ask: is there anything, anything, in this universe less interesting than people describing at length their heroic efforts to give up tobacco?

Sporadic

is a good word, isn't it? And it's what posting might be for a little while, since real work is currently hitting me right where it hurts: in my blogging time.

But if you can, make sure you watch Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain programme. It's brilliant.

Bunch of Deacons

Could Snack the dog, Professor Foodsmart and the Great Grub Club Gang be the answers to helping cut childhood obesity?

The World Cancer Research Fund hopes that by using the health conscious characters on its new website it can encourage better eating and a more active lifestyle among its target audience of four to seven-year-olds.

Competitions, puzzles and stories aim to encourage children to learn more about food.

The answer to the question posed in the opening sentence above is No. This is because children are not idiots and can spot something which is thinly disguised as fun but which is actually educational and worthy a Cornish mile off.

Children are, however, nasty little bastards. Roald Dahl, the Beano and South Park understood this. Well-intentioned people with Great Causes rarely do. Their good intentions tend to backfire. Anyone who remembers what happened with Joey Deacon will undertand the nadir of this phenomenon.

Science versus anti-humans

According to this extraordinary report, Chinese farming families are beating the one-child rule by using fertility drugs to conceive twins.

Prostalgia and Fergietime

Yesterday at about 1.10pm the Barnstaple Western Bypass bridge opened, and a couple of hours later I drove triumphantly across it, whooping as I went (I was probably about the thousandth car over, but rest assured, in a few years the story will be that I was the first and nearly ran over the Mayor as he cut the ribbon).

We have discussed before the effect of elation that a really good bridge can bring, and although the Barnstaple effort can’t claim to be in the very highest bridging echelons, its opening is significant for North Devon, because it has been discussed, bemoaned, protested against, complained about, complained about for being absent and generally been the subject of local jaw-jaw for as long as anyone can remember.

And there I was at last, swooping majestically over the Estuary. And as I crossed I felt an extraordinary and profound emotion, for which I cannot think of an appropriate word so I will have to coin one. It was a mixture of optimism, of pride in man’s engineering and organisational ingenuity, of a sentimental longing to see what he’ll achieve next, a certain realisation that he is neither Doomed nor Hellbound in a Handcart after all, and a belief that if I was offered the immortality-giving pill, I would take it without hesitation because I don’t want to miss whatever comes next. A kind of nostalgia for the future, if you will. I felt for an instant as Oroborous must feel nearly all the time.

Let’s call it prostalgia. Even if it does sound like an unmentionable disease.

…

And then, of course, AC Milan beat Liverpool in the Champions League Final, with the Reds being shamefully denied their share of the Fergietime that would certainly have seen them snatch a last-gasp equaliser, and it was back down to earth with a bump.

Cornish Independence

This week is Cornwall week in our corner of the blogosphere, with Bryan Appleyard purchasing models of Enola Gay in Mevagissey, and Monix blaming piskies for her navigational incompetence.

The idea of Cornish independence is always good for a laugh, but when you go there you realise it really is another country. The countryside blends into Devon but somehow you still know you’re there. Some quality of the light, perhaps. Certainly the place names, which mostly begin with ‘Tre’. Also the archaic rural poverty, the juxtaposition of great empty fields and Atlantic vistas with claustrophobic, single-file fishing village tourist traps. No city, its own ice cream, Wimpy restaurants, manky branches of Somerfield, deadly seagulls, the yokellest locals.

Cornwall has a better claim to independence on cultural grounds than Scotland. As does Liverpool, in fact.

Whatever happened to Terry and Julie?

The Kinks are to re-release Waterloo Sunset to mark the single's 40th anniversary.

Some songs are so ingrained into the national consciousness that they no longer really belong to the original artists, but to the country. Possibly to the Queen, in fact.

An original performance with excellent sound quality can be enjoyed here.

Wot, no conkers?

American boys who swot up on The Dangerous Book for Boys, a runaway British bestseller, will learn nothing about such staples of British childhood as conkers and cricket.

The book has been extensively rewritten for the American market to replace conkers with “stickball” and the laws of cricket with the equally incomprehensible Navajo Code Talkers’ Dictionary.

A lesson on the etymology of “cor blimey” has been dropped, and a trick involving hiding a £1 coin behind your ear now uses an American quarter.

A section listing the kings and queens of England and Scotland has been replaced with the “most valuable players” in baseball.

....

The book, which has reached No 3 on the Wall Street Journal’s nonfiction bestseller list, appears to be driven partly by American fascination with British schoolboys created by the Harry Potter books.

“I feel like Harry Potter has become part of our lexicon,” Mr Benjamin said. “I would hesitate to say that American boys want to grow up to be British kids, but it’s part of their fantasy.”

Well naturally it is, poor things.

Definition of the day

Pray v.

To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

From The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Pierce

Messi v Maradona

Earlier I complained about football cliche - which doesn't so much pepper commentators' speech as entirely drench every single part of it.

So anyway, Barcelona's Argentinian wonderboy Messi recently scored a goal almost identical to Maradona's legal one against England at the 86 World Cup, and while looking for it on YouTube I came across this.

Now that's how you do football commentary!

Euro-septic

The Eurovision Song Contest voting system needs to be changed because it is "harmful to the relationship between the peoples of Europe", an MP has said.

Countries voted for their neighbours rather than the best songs, Liberal Democrat MP Richard Younger-Ross said.

And the BBC should insist on voting changes or withdraw from the contest all together, he added.

Serbia won Saturday's contest, while the UK was second from bottom, only receiving votes from Ireland and Malta.

Mr Younger-Ross said the present structure was a "joke", adding that votes were based "largely on narrow nationalistic grounds".

Even a bloody singing contest goes to hell. Other than hopeless, blind optimism and a complete inability to process evidence, why does anyone think a European Union can ever work?

Scooch gone

Scooch finished second last in the Eurovision Song Contest and, thanks only to our friends in Ireland and plucky little Malta, narrowly managed to avoid the infamous nil points.

Naturally Scooch were terrible, but no more so than any of the other entries. In fact, they were among the least appalling of a truly appalling lot. There has always been political voting in Eurovision (Sweden and Norway always swap 12s), but it is now clear that the competition has a completely new agenda.

The music is literally irrelevant – instead, it is a chance for troubled Eastern European states to give each other little friendship tokens. Fourteen of the top sixteen places were Eastern European. I suppose that when Bosnia and Serbia are voting for each other, it is churlish to complain about artistic integrity.

The old Western European states are spare parts at Eurovision now – out of place and awkward, like uncles at a disco.

One minor point of satisfaction – for the first time ever, the French contestants sang in English, a remarkable admission of cultural defeat that has gone almost unnoticed.

Quackery

Some quacking about indoctrination and religion at the Daily Duck.

Go Scooch

There aren’t too many cultural thingamajigs that Britain does better than anybody else these days. The Americans write meatier novels, the Spanish make more ridiculous modern buildings, the French more pretentious food and the Germans have the classical music business sewn up.

But there are a few, such as costume dramas, stand-up comedy and, especially, pop music.

And so we come to the Eurovision Song Contest, that bizarre, bloated, camp cultural dinosaur that just refuses to die, despite our best efforts to kill it every year by offering as our entry not one of the myriad super-talented young musicians that pack bills in our smoky city venues every night of the week, but rather a steaming turd – this time in the crapulent shape of a bimbo/poofta quartet dressed as airhostesses.

There are perfectly valid reasons for this. It shows a healthy and commendable contempt for the continent, and we’d lose whoever we sent, since the voting is shamelessly rigged as nervous New Europe countries vote for each other, and Old Europe hates us for being in the Iraq war.

Fortunately, no Gallic sneer could ever be as offensive as selecting Scooch to represent us while hundreds of premier league quality Brit guitar bands clog up the European charts with storming pop music.

To pick one at random, The Fratellis song Chelsea Dagger alone, for example (below), has at least three catchy tunes each of which will be far more glorious than whichever particular Euroturd eventually triumphs tonight. Still, it's all fun.

Outside Wells Cathedral

This poem has been temporarily removed for secret reasons

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Links: Wells Cathedral bells and the Cathedral Green.

More poetry

Back with another one of those block-rockin' beats

I return, and have many a thing to say about the jocks, the Scottish Parliament building and such like, and even a rhyme which has been in gestation for some few weeks.

But time is my enemy at present, so for now I give you some showboating. Enjoy!