Brennig Jones (and friends)

On Sunday evening we travelled just short of 1,000 miles from Tuscany to Gatwick in a fraction over 90 minutes.

Our travel time, by car, from Gatwick to our home in Oxfordshire, a mere 90 miles away, took just over three hours.

Amazing.

We would have caught the train except some decades ago that nice Dr Beeching decided that the place where we live didn’t need a train service.

So that’s OK then.

It is widely reported this afternoon that the Rt Honourable Jack Straw, MP for Blackburn, Lancs, has given his view that written attacks in the mainstream media and political blogs, on the Attorney General are motivated by sexism.

Yes indeed.

According to the Rt Hon Straw, the attacks on the Attorney General are nothing to do with allegations that she has lied to Parliament and to the public and also to the Borders Agency.

Instead these attacks (and any other general expressions of dissatisfaction) are the fruit of sexism – because the Attorney General is a female.

Wow.

I wasn’t aware that anyone had said ‘that lying woman’, which would be sexist. Instead critics have simply said ‘the Attorney General has lied’.

Is this sexism?

Or has the Rt Hon Straw finally lost his grip on reality?

Source

Breakfast in bed and GMTV, welcome back to Blighty.

Several times this morning I almost coughed my cereal all over the duvet cover as Caroline Flint (Lab), MP for Don Valley abandoned all vestiges of common sense to defend the current Prime Minister (G. Brown).

The news that public support for her party has fallen to 27% (look at it this way Caroline, 73% of the National vote won’t be going to Labour), has obviously not quite penetrated the Labour Party HQ – or if it has, the political powers that be think that a morning dose of Caroline Flint will magically swing us all around so we’re back on board.

I have news for you folks.

Caroline Flint could single-handedly win the election – but only for the opposition.

Caroline comes across as dreadfully shallow, she fails to address – in any depth whatsoever – the question she’s been asked – and while she’s busy failing in this respect, she presents as a strident, gaspy-for-breath respondent who just didn’t get the enquiry.

And her personal presentation style you know is just you know well it’s not really you know… good enough. You know.

Caroline’s unfortunate oratory style merely underlines that not only is she not very bright, she’s also not very suited to answering questions in the broadcast media.

This is the best that Labour are putting out?

They really don’t want to turn that 27% popularity figure in to a larger number, do they?

Behind the political scenes, have they already given up and gone home?

Tuscany is Very Hot.

The food is very good (though, being a vegetarian, the meat minefield has to be negotiated very carefully).

The locals seem very nice and smile sweetly at my attempts to speak Italian, especially when I’m grappling for a phrase or a meaning and slip in to Spanish. That’s the big trap for me.

I *know* Italian – I studied Latin in school and conversational Italian in later years, but my second default foreign language (after English, obv) is Spanish.

The frustration I feel at not being fluent (or as fluent as I really should be) is almost immeasurable.

Anyway, I’ve just popped in because we’re in a certain town made famous in a certain series of books about a certain type of mythical creature which allegedly thrives on blood and doesn’t do too well during the daylight hours.

Though this latter detail seems to have been taken and stretched wafer-thin, to the point of not actually existing any longer, by certain modern authors.

As you can tell, I’m avoiding all google-traps very carefully because one or other or even both of us might want to write about this charming little town, high on a hill in Tuscany.

Yes, it’s a hill. I’ve lived in Spain’s Sierra Nevada mountains baby. I know a mountain when I see one. And this… is a hill.

In other news…

The Prospective New Horse has passed his veterinary examination. Now I’m starting to get excited!

We’re in the departure lounge at South Terminal, it’s such a familiar place that I have my favourite seat at Costa.

I am sad, it’s official.

If Valerie Russell doesn’t get a move on her luggage will be offloaded and she’ll miss her flight.

There’s a guy over there who LOVES the sound of his own voice; everyone within 5 nautical miles can hear him. He’s not a passenger, he’s a plasterer working on refitting a shop in here.

He sounds like a caricature of a Sarf Lundun wideboy – just think of how Harry Enfield might translate his Loadsamoney creation to a middle-aged, crop-haired shouty-while-talking loudmouth and you’ve got the general idea.

In the security queue in front of us was a late 20s guy who got hauled out because he had a tin/container in his clear plastic bag that was obviously hugely over the 125ml limit.

Think: large tin of toffee and you’ve got the general idea. And in the tin was…

Hair gel.

Because a chap with short hair (not much longer than military length) needs a vat of hair gel – on the flight.

I said to Soph ‘Good job he’d packed his KY’.

It is possible that I said that a little too loudly and Soph may have hit me.

Oh-oh, Valerie Russell’s boat has metaphorically sailed, they’ve just announced that her luggage has been removed from the flight.

Perhaps she’s in the toilet having a massive poo, poor girl.

Soph’s disappeared. I looked up from cleaning out my wallet (I don’t know how I got diverted in to that one either!) and she’d vanished.

Perhaps she’s gone for a poo too. Or maybe she’s gone to find Valerie Russell.

In other news…

The Prospective New Horse is being vetted tomorrow morning.

I’m trying to stay calm and not get too excited about him, if the vet says ‘no’ then it’s not going to happen.

The prospect of having an extra mouth to feed has woken me up, I’ve started putting feelers out to see who might be interested in paying me to do something.

Initial response: fair, but I need to convert interest in to a piece of work. I’m trying to stay focussed on a commuting circle with ‘home’ in the middle which might limit my choices.

There is a guy sitting behind me whose mullet is so regal the length of hair down the back of his neck is actually fashioned in to a scale model of the train of Princess Diana’s wedding dress, whilst the hair on top of his head resembles a field of corn stubble, the hair on the sides of his head is shaved right to the scalp.

It’s an amazing effect, the stylist/sculpturist  responsible for creating this piece of art noveau should get an award – for services to the comedy industry.

I can’t help wondering what nationality the mullet-wearer is; if he were a Brit he’d have the Mick taken out of him so much that even the thickest of skins would have died of shame by now.

He obviously belongs to a nationality that doesn’t know the meaning of the words ‘shame’ or ‘embarrassment’ when coupled up with the concept of hairstyle or personal grooming.

I don’t wish to foster any nationalistic stereotypes here, but I’m leaning towards German. Or maybe Australian?

Today:

• Rewrite the last two chapters of novel #2 because the ending I am unhappy with has its roots in the penultimate section
• Travel to Stoke to look at a horse
• Meet Hayley at the yard at 5pm so she can see how Vin’s dressage and jumping saddles feel
• Record this weekend’s podcast (won’t be released until the weekend, though)

Tomorrow:

• Mid-morning: Optician check-up
• Evening: Start a run of CuBase evening classes in Oxford

Day after:

• Fly to Italy

Sunday:

• Fly home

It is a given to anyone with half a brain that American author Dan Brown cannot write.

Even the most basic rules of English literature evade him.

But when snide, sneering, supercilious articles like this appear in the mainstream media (Daily Telegraph in this instance), all I feel is an enormous sense of pity for the pathetically small-minded people who wrote and contributed to the piece.

This article is nothing but a cheap form of bullying and as such it should not be supported or promoted in the mainstream media.

And let’s be clear for a moment on what I am saying; I am not saying that the pathetics who wrote this drivel are bullying Dan Brown.

What I am saying is that some basic, some fundamental facts appear to have completely sailed by the ‘superior intellects’ who masterminded this nasty piece of tabloid bullying.

And here’s just one of those overlooked facts: Dan Brown, for his many faults as a writer, is a best selling author.

So this scumbag article, if we are being wholly truthful, is nothing more than a covert attempt to deride and belittle the people who have bought Dan Brown’s work.

I am not saying lay off Dan Brown.

There are clever ways (and this certainly isn’t one) of highlighting Dan Brown’s lack of ability to stay afloat in the deep end of the literary pool.

What I am saying is that the folk with the over-inflated senses of intellectual superiority, who are behind this nasty piece of journalism, need to lay off the people who buy/read/enjoy his work.

This ‘I’m better than Dan Brown’s readers’ snobbery is sure to leave a very bitter taste in the mouth of any human being with an ounce of compassion and more than a grain of common sense.

All that this nasty piece in the Daily Telegraph underlines is the point that it is possible for some human beings to be intelligent, yet lack the other two qualities that valuable members of society should have.

And the thing that really makes me laugh? The article appeared in the ‘Culture’ section of the Daily Telegraph.

Honestly, is there anything cultured about such snobbery and intellectual elitism?

No, I thought not.

10.15

We really should get dressed.

Instead we are watching Friday evening’s Daren Darren Deren Derren Brown show, the one where he mass-hypnotised his TV audience in to a state of being unable to move away from the television.

We might be doomed.

For a Sunday there’s a lot going on.

We’re due to pick up K from Charlbury at 12-ish, drop her off at the yard so she can ride Vin; while she’s riding Soph and I will nip off somewhere for a light lunch. We’ll pick her up about 2-ish and take her back to Charlbury.

This evening we’re picking up another friend, going in to Oxford for an oriental meal of some sort and then we’re going to the Oxford 02 to see Talk in Code; the pretty amazingly excellent inLight and Fiery Furnaces.

There might be a trip to Countrywide Stores to shop for a new grooming box, Vin’s has suffered a terminal problem and needs to be ditched.

Also on the list, but I can’t see how it could happen today because the geography of the store is all wrong for our plans, is a trip to Maplin Electronics to get a large rigid case, a goose-neck Mic stand and maybe a pair of Audio cables to keep as spares.

So yeah, for a Sunday there’s a lot going on.

I think we really should get dressed first though.

The laptop, you’ll no doubt be pleased to hear, not only survived yesterday’s open heart surgery, it’s out of bed, doing press-ups and power-lifting the hospital bed.

It’s 04.47, I’m downstairs on the couch with a mug of tea and a laptop capable of running NASA’s next re-entry programme for the space shuttle.

The question ‘Why?’ hovers in my mind. Why am I awake, not anything laptop related.

Also: Why did I not bring my book with me when I tottered downstairs? I don’t want to do nerdy things (and right now even touching the laptop is classed, in my head at least, as a nerdy thing), I’d much rather be reading a proper book.

But I can’t go and fetch it because I might disturb Soph. Arse.

Not disturb Soph’s arse. That would be a fearsome event to be avoided at all times.

The laptop repair (which I really should refer to as ‘the software repair’) was,thankfully, effected before the podcast was recorded last night, but as a result of spending 14 hours unscrewing someone’s shoddy work, the podcast was, ahem, a tad under-prepared.

Massively under-prepared.

Soz.

Conversation items this week include the correct pronunciation of ‘Illinois’ because everyone says it incorrectly, some Frenchisms which include Bof, Merde and Zut; spanking Intel with a cricket bat; Bren putting on Soph’s bra; someone at Soph’s work having trouble putting on Soph’s bra; the film ’500 Days of Summer’ (stupid title); weird noses; Grosse Pointe Blank; Minnie Driver; William Shatner (being an actress) being referred to as Shatters; a gratuitous reference to The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and Monty Python’s Flying Circus; Soph going to the cinema only to watch the trailers;  Buzz Lightyear and Toy Story; Roald Dahl (and how he got his name); having bits waxed and wondering if Anne Robinson has hers waxed (eew!); Bren wants to do the waxing job; Bren’s new game-show concept using his inside knowledge of the Equestrian world: Gay or Not Gay; Bodger and Badger being transformed in to a sitcom called Boris and Badger, featuring the current mayor of London; a visit to the dentist… And three distinctive but very excellent pieces of music that are too good for your mainstream radio station to play.

Is it any wonder that over 100,000 people now subscribe to it? Well, yes, it obviously is a massive wonder.

Anyway.

It’s time for another cup of tea. And maybe some toast.