España

MAINLY CANCELED DUE TO BLUSTERY CONDITIONS

Hello, or should I say Hola? No I should probably say Hello as I am now no longer in Spain. On reflection I mainly spoke 'Over-accentuated English with a Latino twang' rather than any actual Spanish when I was in the land of the Raging Bull anyway, so there's no point littering this post with my Del Boy-esque grasp of a foreign tongue.

Besides, the football hooligans and holiday reps have worked hard on establishing the English reputation abroad as a race of ignorant, uncultured apes who are wholly unwilling to embrace foreign language or custom, so who am I to ruin all of their hard work with a few scattered token por favors.

Anyway, I could write about the FIB (Benicassim Festival) to which myself and a merry band of friends went, but like my Blur entry, I don't want this to turn into some ten-a-penny music critique telling everybody what they already know; Oasis fans are mainly on parole, White Lies do not have enough songs to perform a 90 minute set and Paul Weller is scared of the wind.

Fairplay to the Modfather though, it was frightfully gusty on the Friday night, which saw the festival organisers break out into a cold sweat - ironically something the peasant camping collective would have paid good money for as the scorching rays of sunlight breathed fire into their tents at 8am without fail.

Realising there was not enough Euros in the kitty to pay the life insurance claims if the hurricane caused a scaffolding pole to skewer Kings of Leon, they wisely pulled the plug and sent the camping massiv back to their tents without any headliners. Only when they got to where they left their tents, they weren't there. So they had to sleep in a sports hall. I even felt a pang of pity as I was whisked off by 4x4 to our nearby apartment. That's a lie, I was an unbearable smug tosser.

I conclude with a short summary of things I learned, or had confirmed, by my trip to Spain. Read, digest and enjoy.

• The more amusing the menu translation, the less delicious the meal. For example, there were few delights to behold in 'Delights of Pig'. Essentially a plate of barely-cooked pig throat and ear morsels.
  

• The Spanish severely lack entrepreneurial nous. Hundreds of people in our apartment village needed ferrying 5 minutes up the coast (and would have paid good Euro for the privilege) yet we were left to squeeze into an illegal taxi run by an overweight, but lovely, homosexual man called Timo. He made the repeat trip so many times his KIA actually broke by the end of the festival. True story. Official taxis, where were you?

• Spain is windy. I know I made light of the gusts which put the stoppers on Friday night's line up, but it was awfully strong wind and it is a miracle no one was hurt. A miracle, and a shame in the case of Oasis.

• There's a dirty street urchin in Barcelona with Paula's handbag. Filthy thieving bastard.
  

• I won't be going back to Benicassim next year. Sorry Spaniards, I know you'll miss me.
  

The Britpop uniform

Pierre ventures cautiously into fashion blogging:

Well aren't I a sporadic little toerag. Firing off two blogs in 24 hours last week like some kind of badly wired mortar, and then not coming back for a good week. What a prick.

Since we last spoke (I like to feel this is direct conversation between me and you, no one else reads it) I went to Hyde Park. Oh and Blur were there too.

Yes I, like many, got to see the Britpop scallys rifle through their timelessly excellent back-catalogue in front of a sun-baked, half-cut cast of thousands. It was emotional and brilliant, but if you've picked up any form of newspaper over the last few days you will have already read a review so I won't attempt to bore you with my oh-so-hazy version of events.

We defy gravity on a daily basis flying tonnes of metal through the air, technology can tell us what is happening so far away that it happened so long ago our brains can't comprehend it, we've developed devices which scare hoodlum youths away from cornershops by probably permanently deafening them, but for some reason when a few thousand people congregate in a field no one's mobile phone works. Orange took delight in telling me I had no network coverage. In an open space in the middle of London. What an endorsement for their claims to have some scandalously high percentage of the UK's landmass blanketed in their signal. 99% of the UK reception coverage, unless you're in an open space in the capital of the country. Then you'll have to go back to waving in the direction you hope your friend is in.

It's ok though, cause when I did get through I managed to tell my friend I was wearing cut-off Levis and a black Fred Perry polo shirt. Turns out a few other people were too. He found me an hour later. Through no help from those descriptions.

Oh and I punched a guy in the mouth.

Hot hot heat

Frig me it's warm. Baking hot. I like it though.

It mainly floods in the summer where I hail from (rural Worcestershire, not somewhere with an actual monsoon season) so it's nice to have a bit of warmth. We all know it's not going to be a six week long heatwave, so let's please try and embrace it with a bit of Britishness. Hop on a train to your nearest seaside resort, buy an above-the-rate-of-inflation ice cream and paddle up to your shins in the unbearably cold and definitely polluted sea.

It's too hot to blog. Meanwhile until the mercury stops rising, here's a short exhange I had with a lady in Specsavers for you to mull over.

Lady: (slumps into the chair next to me, not an action I encouraged in any way) I like summer, but this is too hot. It wasn't even this hot in Turkey. It was a different kind of heat. I walked to the end of my road and nearly turned back it was so hot, but my son needs his contact lenses.

Me: Yes, oh right. Yes.

(ten second pause while she pants and mops her sweaty brow)

Lady: I don't understand how Michael Jackson died when there was a doctor with him. How could that happen?

Me: Yeah......(realising this was not a rhetorical question I continued...) I don't know. It's bad. (no pun intended)

Lady: I saw him at the O2 when he announced the concerts. I wasn't going to go, but I did. I caught it on the camcorder. I've still got it on there now - the last time he was seen alive in the UK. I asked my daughter how to work it so I can watch it back.

Me: Oh. Cool.

Lady: And I exchanged my ticket to his gig a few months ago, really glad I did now. Do you know most people with tickets won't even get their money back? That's terrible.

Me: Yes awful.

Specsavers employee: Your lenses are here now madam.

Lady: Oh thank you (turns to me) Lovely to meet you. Bye.

Me: Bye

Not sure if that snippet offers a profound insight into modern society's relationship with celebrity, the weather or indeed anything. It might just prove that overweight people from South East London don't like the heat, seeing anyone lose their money, or celebrities dying when there are doctors nearby. I don't know. Take from it what you will.

Laters.

Karma killer

I've never known where I stand on Karma. It's a deliciously appealing balanced theory of one act complementing or corresponding in some way to another, and as humans we do desperately strive to rebel against and ignore the fear that everything might simply just happen for no reason at all. A world without reason scares us, and so it should. Because rules and reasons make everyone a lot less jittery.

So I'll buy into it, temporarily at least, and relay how I think Karma has punished me recently.

YING: Wednesday evening last week I used a cheat code found on the internet to help me complete Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on my DS. (Yes, I am definitely too old for computer games, before you ask)

YANG: BAM. 24 hours later Michael Jackson is dead.

Turns out, God didn't like me being a computer game cheat. So he killed Michael Jackson to punish me. Shizlak.

Most people would say that's not how Karma works, and that the two acts must complement each other's severity, and that me cheating on a game wouldn't result in Michael Jackson dying. Maybe Cher, or Billy Zane or someone, but not Jacko.

But then that's just humans making up even more irrational rules about something which they already made up. You can't just go around making up rules and then making up some terms and conditions which govern said rules. You're not Gordon Brown you know? (If, by chance, you are Gordon Brown then this jibe obviously doesn't apply. Sorry Gordon.)

Anyway if I'm going to buy into this Karma craze, I want dramatic results.

I don't want 'I forgot to thank the postman so my bus was three minutes late'.

I want 'I didn't offer everyone in the room a cup of tea so Carol Vorderman exploded live on Countdown'.

Or 'I ignored my Mother's phone call so democracy collapsed in Canada, masses rioted and it was renamed The People's Maple Leaf Republic under the rule of King Bryan Adams'.

I couldn't hack it with depleted body armour and shitty pistols, so I cheated myself a flamethrower to scorch any little pixelated Triads who got in my way on the final mission. Thus, the King of Pop left for a better place (for you and for me and the entire human race....cheap joke). That's what happened.

MJ: Killed by Karma....


Sorry pop fans.

Just one question: Am I going to die?

I've been ill. Not exactly at Death's door, perhaps more like at the end of the cul-de-sac where Death lives. Death Close. But regardless of my proximity to Death and/or his door, I spent the vast majority of two days sleeping off the effects of my stomach and head trying to outdo each other with the amount of pain and discomfort they could cause me.

So while wallowing in my state of illness/self-pity, my mind turned to Swine Flu which is now, officially, a global pandemic. It's strange that the overall feeling towards this GLOBAL PANDEMIC is one of mild confusion and indifference. Although at the same time it's hardly surprising when the media through which we are meant to recieve level-headed informal news on important issues such as this, has become so caught up in sensationalism over the past decade we now no longer know what to believe.

Well, take your pick:

The BBC, that British bastion of independent journalism, seems to be flitting all over the place. One minute we have Paxman wheeled out to grill some World Health Organisation official about what exactly is being done to prevent the spread; wanting to know insane levels of detail like how many vaccines have been produced to the nearest dozen at that precise second in time, which automatically gets me all worked up. If Paxman is worried, should I be worried?

Meanwhile the boffs in the BBC Online News department, seemingly affected by being holed up in the basement of BBC HQ, have gone all morbid and graphic producing some kind of interactive DEATH GRAPH showing where all the people have died from the virus, when they died and how old they were when they died. Pie charts, world maps and pull-down boxes, all full of DEATH STATS and things like that, just to keep everyone at ease. Cheers.

Big, cuddly Fern Britton and ever-tanned Philip Schofield on GMTV managed to interview a virologist 'on the sofa' in terms so dumbed-down the families featured on Jeremy Kyle would have felt patronised, had they been watching and not sleeping with their brothers' wives while selling crack to kids etc. All I managed to get out of that exchange was to wipe tables if people sneeze on them. I should hope people do that anyway to be honest.

The papers have managed to report on the story with a finely balanced angle of ambiguity and scare-mongering, with the Daily Mail reporting how fine public elementary schools have had to be shut down because of those dirty Mexicans, leaving swathes of posh kids missing literally hours of education and having to put up with horrific sniffles. And The Sun just has just resorted to telling us which celebrities are stupid enough to ring them and explain their fears of being struck down by the virus, in the absence of having that many British deaths to actually report on.

Even the World Heath Organisation itself hasn't helped matters particulary with it's overdramatic 'phase' system for measuring severity. Everyone can read off a sheet which explains what each 'phase' means, but it essentially just instills images of 28 Days Later in people's minds when they hear words like 'PHASE 6 PANDEMIC'.

What phase are we in now? And what phase do we need to get to before I start shooting pigs and stop talking to people, even down telephone wires, for fear of transmitting this disease. This disease which, and the clue is in the name, is in effect a bad case of flu.

I just don't know what to think. I'll stick with the masses and just continue making jokes about it until we're all quarantined and shipped onto offshore floating prisons to create a new sub-race of infected beings.

Strike a light

In times where everyone's job is about as secure as the buckling foundations of the Celebrity Fit Club mansion, it is at least mildly heartening to see people take on a bit of 'Blitz spirit' and unite against the common enemy, which in this case is 'being poor'. Slightly less terrifying than the gun-blazing Luftwaffe swooping through the night indiscriminately bombing the hell out of houses as the term suggests. But still, no one wants to be poor do they?

Unfortunately for people like me who have tentatively bought into this gotta-laugh-or-we'll-cry mentality, just when we're all trying to make the most of a pretty dour situation the Union which seem to own the brains of all London Underground drivers has decided to piss on everyone's parade.

Our faithful leader, Boris Johnson, went tête-à-tête with some socialist trout called Bob Crow (General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers) on Radio 4, and for once in his political career came out on top. Mr Crow, you have been beaten by a man who can barely ride a bicycle and has perpetuated an unfathomably successful career out of bumbling aimlessly and endeeringly from one political blunder to the next. How does that feel Crow? Yeah? You should feel silly.

So they're pretty much going to bring London to a stand-still for two days - who do they think they are? Two inches of snow? The cheek.

But these people must have good reason, afterall they won't get paid for being on strike. There must be solid moral grounding behind a ploy which will cause the vast majority of working Londoners a whole heap of extra hassle. I'm assuming there has been some heinous injustice at work here, perhaps London Underground has got Karl Lagerfeld to design the new uniforms. That would make me strike.

Oh hang on. Turns out they're doing it because they're unhappy about the company not backing down on having to make compulsory redundancies in this unprecedented period of global recession, which has seen countless people already lose their jobs. And the other reason, which they're now claiming isn't a factor, was because they didn't fancy the above inflation pay rise packet.

Sort it out yeah?

Oh and if you're not from London and reading this, I apologise. To you this is just another thing for us insular, whinging southern nancies to moan about instead of having real problems like the outdoor lavvy breaking, or running out of bread to mop up your dripping with.

Man at work

I bought a thick-bristled durable rake. I bought heavy duty gardening gloves. I put on an old t-shirt, one which I didn't mind christening 'the gardening t-shirt' should it get torn beyond repair, dug out some old pumps from the wardrobe and set about being a man.

The congealed cocktail of moss, grit and gunk living a life of filthy luxury on our concrete patch (alternatively known as a 'patio' if you're an estate agent rather than a normal human with eyes) did not know what had hit it. It was the horticultural equivalent of Pearl Harbour. Moss was visably shaken as it was swept away by the almighty combo of broom and hose, forced to seek refuge down the drain near the decking. This was no flash-in-the-pan battle, no firing across bows; it was a war of attrition, but you can't simply give up when armed with a thick-bristled durable rake and heavy duty gardening gloves. It would be a crime against masculinity. Geoff Capes would rock up to your gaff, give you two dead arms and neuter you as punishment.

Sweat, testosterone, mud and grime was whipped up in a fury of frenzied brooming and scrubbing (sporadically punctuated with lapses of activity as I re-attached the broom head - cheers hardware store) until the concrete area was left spotless. The last fleck of moss only had to be glared at and it sacrificially threw itself from the wall into the bucket, rather than face the might of my broom.

And why this flurry of activity, all of a Sunday morning? Well how apt it is that this most masculine of tasks was to facilitate another of the male's most proud rituals - the BBQ. The area is now clear for what next week will be another manfest, only this time involving meat, crisps and beer. I can almost smell the testosterone.

If it doesn't rain.