Campings unhappy campers

Hello all you lucky lums?

Well, if your reading this we've survived another week in a world that has a thousand and one ways to see us off.

Its especially noteworthy as this is the week that was meant to bring the rapturous end of the world for all us sinners and unbelievers, or those that hadn't yet made a contribution to Harold Campings Viagra kitty. Now, I'm not really up to speed with the whole message he was peddling, but apparently Jesus was being born again, all the true believers, only a couple of hundred thousand it seems, would be risen to heaven and the rest of us would perish in horrible ways.

Two hundred thousand is a bit mean, I don't know how they arrived at that figure.

Logistics I expect, maybe the security team at the pearly gates imposed that figure because they were worried about queue times and unnecessary crushing, or is heaven nearly full? That would be a worry when you think that the history of the world is marked by the number of evil nasty bastards that have marched across it. Generally people are a bit more good now, and I expect qualify on those goodness grounds for an all park pass to the hereafter.

The other thing that bothered me, that's not to say only one other thing, but just another thing, was this reborn Christ. Presumably hes coming back to earth as a baby, not a fully grown, lanky haired bearded joiner, that would just be weird, and painful for his mother. So, if he is coming back, using the tried and trusted method of immaculate conception and being born in a golden, starry aura we won't know its him, and also presumably, he wont be able to speak, he wont be able to tell us anything, never mind anything profound. He could be born a baby of course , with a fully developed vocabulary and some witty anecdotes, I think that would be just as weird though he'd be a shoe in on Americas Got Talent.

The first thing he should do though is raise and shake his little baby fist at all those Middle America preaching shysters, there just competition for him, sucking up all those contributions from superstitious country folk who would have been happy dancing around a straw man not so long ago. It still seems a a lot to expect a baby to do in his first few months on earth.

What struck me most of all though was the shock and incredulity felt by Harolds heavenly bound followers when nothing of note actually happened. No ravenous earthquakes, no plagues or meteor strikes. Some of them sounded pretty disappointed that we were all not now going to die slow painful deaths and descend to Hell, where it would seem there is much more room and access is better organise. That annoyed me a bit. It reeks of desperate need to have your lifes beliefs confirmed, looking forward to the hour they can say " so long suckers" all those hours praying and thousands spent really have gotten us a seat on the lifeboat. That would suggest self doubt and a deep seated lack of faith, no wonder they weren't chosen for the country club in the clouds.

Still, they shouldn't lose hope because Harold Camping apparently didn't carry over his one or whatever and made a mistake with the dates and we are now scheduled instead to die very quick horrible deaths in October. Third time lucky Harold.

One day life on earth will come to an end, Prof Cox told me that and I'd rather believe him, and I expect right up to the end someone will be spouting this apocalyptic message and gratefully receiving pointless donations but at least somebody someday can say I told you so. I hope he's not near me in the queue.

While we're on the subject of Life on Earth, somebody published a list of new species discovered recently, yep, there still discovering things and I'm glad there discovering them but somebody has to answer for them. I mean, there is something called a Pancake Batfish that looks like joke vomit with half finished eyes, a jumping cockroach, brilliant, they'll be riding bikes soon, yet another big horrible spider,a Bark Spider, presumably because it lives on trees and not because it sounds like a St Bernard and a new kind of leech called a Tyrant Leech King, which is a pretty impressive name tag to pin on your suit if your a leech at the annual leeching conference , but guess what, it lives up peoples noses. Now, WTF, that's not doing anyone any good is it.

Terrorist groups the world over will have noted this week that the Presidents Beast of a car can't go over bumps. Dastardly plans will already probably be hatched to take advantage of this design oversight. Luring the presidential motorcade to the upper levels of a shopping centre car park, or perhaps to a car boot sale on an old semi-cleared demolition site. Sounds like the plot for my next movie screenplay provisionally titled, Bump and Grind, bear with me, I'll just do a quick google search to make sure no-one else has made a movie called Bump and Grind....

Nooooooo! OMG, how is that even humanly possible, thats like a two litre bottle of coke and those are what I imagine a dead heat in a zeppelin race would look like.

Lang may yer lum reek.

The mass Gonk extinction of 79

Good evening Lums,

Who can remember Gonks? Those lovable fairground giveaways from the 70s, a golden age when you could get your picture taken with a terrified monkey, take home a goldfish in a polythene bag and purchase toy cigarettes that glowed at the end when you sucked on them.

A Gonk, if you need reminding , and apologies for jumping straight into the biology of one, was a toilet roll, wrapped in a dubious day-glo furry material that was undoubtedly harmful to 99% of organisms and had a half life of a million or so years. They had comedy paper eyes stuck on the front, normally their only facial feature. These were usually the first to go, giving the unfortunate creature the look of a crow pecked corpse that had wronged the King of the Gonks and swung from his castle gates, Castle Gonk, probably. They had oversize cardboard feet and sometimes a little tuft of hair, which was packed with carcinogenic qualities and the No1 reason for the rise in child asthma. After the eyes, a middle aged Gonk, say one about 20 minutes old, would begin to suffer gonk pattern baldness. An unwrapping of its hairy pelt because its securing dab of glue had dried up and lost its bite.

I don't know where they originated from, they didn't have a TV show like the Wombles or Banana Splits, they had just always been there, visiting once a year with the fairground gypsies. Then they disappeared, like the Mayans, no trace, no mass Gonk graves or Gonk memorabilia turning up on Antiques roadshow. Their place eventually was taken behind the cocunut shys by inflatable hammers and big annoying balloons on an elastic band.

Even finding a picture was difficult, the specimens displayed above are with the Gonkkenheim museum, I had to get special permission just to think about this rubbish, not from the museum, from my mental health therapist.

Sometimes , in Spain or somewhere I would see what I thought was an evolutionary offshoot of the gonk, a bendy, mouldable blob, with those familiar friendly eyes. These creatures were usually full of flour, I know that because my daughter tried to bring one back into the UK but it burst, actually , exploded is more accurate, all over a number of humourless passengers on the plane. At least, I think it was flour, that's what the Colombian fella that sold us it at the airport said.

The Furby I think is some kind of a relation, part machine, a bionic gonk I guess, but unable to jump over buildings and run at 60 miles an hour, it could flap its little stubs about and wobble energetically on its feet. It was meant to have the gift of speech and be able to learn language as we spoke to them over time, like a sinister mechanical parrot, learning all our secrets, hearing all, knowing all. In reality I've since discovered they left the gonk mechanical anthropomorphous engineering facility with only about 100 words programmed into their little gonk brains. So, you could chat away to it like a lonely widow, read it everything from Boswell to Billy Connollys Gullibles Travels and after 25 years it would still only be able to squack" Furby wuv" " Furby Worried" and "Please Stop".

Those frightening little troll dolls from the 90s are sometimes referred to as Gonks, which is plainly ridiculous, they are a much closer relation to Smurfs.

Lang may yer Lum Reek

King Zog and Begbie in one sitting

Reports of No1 lums death are greatly exaggerated, there are embers yet.

Yes, the lack of a decent Internet service had forced me temporarily into exile from the connected world, to North Korea probably, or maybe Hoxhas Albania. Albania had a King you know, King Zog which sounds like he belongs in Flash Gordon and probably everyday when he opened his palace window, wished he did.

Speaking of our mighty God anointed superiors, our own privileged little caste had a chance to dust themselves down and step into the blinding, unforgiven light of the 21st Century for Bill and Kates wedding. A posh do, I hope the father of the bride wasn't paying for it. I expect he offered to make a contribution, "you've done so much already your majesty, at least let me organise the cars". That would be great, an old white Merc ex taxi for the bridesmaids and his pals new Mondeo with ribbons on it for the bride and groom, just because its new and has a valid MOT. The press were of course in a frenzy, the headline writers so busy they probably talked in headlines when they got home. POTATOES SLIGHTLY UNDERCOOKED, SHOCK!

I read one, i think the evening before the wedding that said " Kate waves for fans". Not to fans, or at fans but for fans, like the monumental effort of her raising her noodle arm and shaking it about for 2 seconds was something all the congregated saddos will forever be eternally grateful for, probably giving them the greatest 2 seconds of their life and making spending all their months pension money getting to London and the nights sleeping in a subway in London with the junkies and meth head prossies worth while.

The press were at it again a little later with the news of Osama Bin Ladens, from now on known as OBL, just because I don't have enough acronyms in my life, overdue demise. The general reporting media must have been slobbering like Pavlovs Dogs with a feast such as this on the table, but they were impatient for facts, they wanted to be the paper detailing how the op went down. So, they would just make it up and hope some of it was close enough. One report I read had OBL spraying his twin AK47s from the hip like Rambo, shouting "death to infidels" and laughing insanely as the bullet casings fell in slow motion and special forces abseiled in the window like ninjas, barrel rolling across the floor and dispatching the fiend with 50 bullets, one for each state in the federal republic.

In reality he was probably cowering behind something, his arms out stretched and fingers splayed as if trying to hide behind them, I expect totally shitting himself. Maybe he was half under his bed, not trying to hide, but to get rid of his porn collection before the Americans got it, how embarrassing is that. I wonder what Taliban porn looks like anyway, I guess all the women will be wearing veils and scarfs, I bet the readers wives section looks a bit samey.

What else have I missed while stranded on the Island of los connectos. That's right, didn't Scotland take a Salmond leap forward to independence, yes, I believe it did. I'll admit, it causes some anxiety, like the kind you get when leaving a job you've done for a long time, not really sure how it will go, but it could just be the best thing you ever do and you'd spend the remainder of a lifetime regretting it if you didn't. I mean, what if we had been independent when the banks went tits up, given that they were Scottish banks primarily, I don't think that would have been a good thing. We would have been like Iceland, reputation in tatters and selling our arse in Europe like a Chinese hooker just out of a container in Hamburg. It will go to the people in a couple of years, if the SNP keep governing responsibly, win the confidence and faith of the older folk, they already have the younger ones I think, then who knows. Its a rare chance, you don't know when or how the next opportunity will arise, maybe its time.

I've been on a few trains lately, and I have a new least favourite people type that shoots straight to the top of the list for immediate dealing with when I become King of the World. They are the strangers that sit opposite you then proceed to talk and blether like the best of friends about alternative travel routes and likely times they will get home, what made it worse was they were so ill matched, a cob webby old spinster lady I imagined to be a retired teacher and a younger guy with a comedy beard and annoying affected accent that was trying to be Bearsden but sounded more Bathgate. He even came back from the saloon car with a bottle of wine and two plastic cups, I mean wheres mine, you've known me for as long as her, but she gets the wine, bastard. I would have quite happily fire hosed them with Blackberry Jam then shoved them into a big bucket of bees

I had to travel from Glasgow to Newcastle on Virgin trains, the train I got was the Glasgow to Penzance. It was due to leave Central Station at 10.30 am, do you know what time it was scheduled to arrive in Cornwall? 11.5 hours later, that's a long journey, you could fly to Bangkok in that time, I made a note to self not to fall asleep and miss my stop.

Earlier in the month I went to watch a little of the London marathon. I arrived at the 23 mile mark just as the first of the speedy little stick thin Africans sped by, he didn't even look like he had a sweat on, I think he went on to break the world record, and I witnessed about 4 seconds of it. Then eventually the sweaty multitudes came rolling by, like the flotsam on that tsunami wave in Japan. I noticed a few guys with blood down there tops, obviously from bleeding chaffing nipples, then horror of horrors, I saw a guy with blood soaked shorts which evidently was coming from his red raw nob, chaffing in his shorts, so that was that, just as I was feeling inspired, the will to do anything like it was sucked violently out of me again, hopefully forever.

Am I the only one that cant understand a single word Dizee Rascal sings about, I've tried, really concentrated, watched his lips and everything. There is no Smash Hits any longer so cant go and buy that and read the lyrics. Everyone else seems to get him, or are they just pretending?

There is nothing more entertaining than arriving at a cold, wet and windy Glasgow airport for your commuter flight to London and encountering the returning holidaymakers just landed from Tenerife or wherever. The first thing they do of course is rush outside for a fag, where they brace themselves against the wind, their shoulders so hunched up, the head looking like its trying to retract to the warmer climes of the central core, it must be a shock after two weeks in Calete de Fuste. Of course, you can see that scene outside any office or city centre pub of a miserable spring evening, what sets this off as visual poetry is the clothes. The coral white trousers, the azure blue vest tops, sandals and sunglasses perched on the bronzed dome. Each item carefully chosen before the holiday had begun to show off their expected Arabic hue on their return. The Scots in general, still like to get dressed up for a flight. Tell you what though, if the plane did nosedive at 60 degrees into Endrick Muir they would have a right job identifying the body parts, all those tracksuits, the crash investigators would think it was the Fuertaventura athletics team.

As I write this on the flight south, Robert Carlyle is sitting in the seat in front of me, I’ve always liked him, but he’s a film star, and as such, he gets the full celebrity treatment from me, which is to totally ignore him,. I’m fearful of feeding his ego and making him think he’s something special, I’m sure he appreciates it, so, no looking, no double takes, certainly no nods, or heaven forbid , words, just a well practised adoption of a policy of polite nonacknowledgement, if he speaks to me, I will of course be civil. I expect we may have a bit of a coming together when we go for our bags in the overhead, I shall say, “on ye go pal" or something. But no starry eyes.

Lang may yer lum reek.

I can offer a conclusion to the Robert Carlyle episode. We did indeed have to converse, as I let him out his seat. I went for " There you go mate" and he said "Thanks", kind of in a whispery, didn't want to be over heard way. Some crass fellow passenger started talking, probably completely inanely to him as we walked through the terminal at City airport before I lost sight of him, he's only little. Then he popped out at the smoking area for a quick fag before getting his cab. There was no eye contact as I stuck firmly to policy, I'm sure if he had looked my way he would have recognised me from an almost identical situation about 3 years ago and he would have said " don't I know you?". Anyway, off we went on our separate ways, me pleased that I hadn't inflated the egos of any actors between Glasgow and London and I proudly shared my non-experience with my flatmate when I got in. I got a bit of a row and felt just a tad guilty as she pointed to the complete box set of Hamish MacBeth she had just not two weeks ago bought and went on to proclaim herself Hamish MacBeths biggest fan. I should maybe amend policy to exclude Robert Carlyle in future, I'm due to share a plane with him in 2014, I'll make sure I have a pen.

Brighton Rocks, Zippy and Frocks

Howdy-do Reeking Lums of Planet Earth,

Because the toffs in government are making intercity travel in the UK only something that can be enjoyed by Viscounts and Papal emissaries delivering bulls, I had to have another weekend away from the little lums in the North and remain down here in East London.

I have on occasion managed to get a return flight from Stansted, 36 miles North of London to 36 miles south of Glasgow for as little as £36, but usually somewhere between £50 and £60. But now Its hard to get anything under a ton.

The tax on a flight now is greater then the flight itself.

Now, you could perhaps swallow that if you were treated more like a passenger and less like an 88Kg sack of bovine marrow, so its back to letting the train take the strain. Still over a hundred quid but needs must.

I did get a little taste of the beating, more of a faint tap really, industrial heart of the nation this week, with a little business trip to Manchester. Eee, lad, it really is grim up North. Well, it was the day I was there, grey, cold, raining and to top it all, Manchester, with nothing of any note to look at and where everybody looks pissed off. Where I was visiting was right next door to the giant new Media City complex that the BBC is relocating too from Sheperds Bush in London. The luvvies at the Beeb are revolting apparently, the top earners are just refusing to go, like Dimbleby, now his production staff have to fly to London 3 times a week for meetings with the old dear. Can you blame him though, really?

Anyway, couldn't be bothered hanging around London kicking me heels so thought I'd take a trip to the sea-side and chose Brighton as my lovely day out destination of choice. Brighton as it turns up has quite a cool trendy vibe, must be all those gays I guess, they know how to dress something up.

I spent ages browsing around the vintage shops, which is gay speak for second hand clothes shops, in Manchester they would be called Sue Ryder or Barnardos, in Brighton its Red Mutha and Vintage Owl. I ended up in a place called Snoopers Paradise. Its just the Paradise, I just see Poopers Paradise when I see that written down, what is that, some kind of dyslexia?

Anyway, this place was big, and crammed full of at least one of everything ever made. I think the proprietor bought the first 25,000 available things on e-bay then crammed them in this shop, even a stuffed Zippy from Rainbow, in a dressing gown.

He made me laugh so I gathered him up, paid my tenner and as easy as that, like Madonna adopting an African, he was part of the family and joined me on the rest of my day in Brighton. Later that evening I was even made an offer for him, doubling my outlay, but I couldn't sell him after all our laughs so he came home and now sits in my room, with a blonde wig on and some US dollars stuffed in his belt, a bit like a Julia Roberts drag act between shows.

A lot of hen nights in Brighton, soon to be wedded young ladies, out enjoying a last night out as a singleton. Normally dressed with all her pals as complete tarts, which is agreeable to the casual observer, such as I ,but quite funny when you see the pie faced mother and her hag toothed pals trailing along behind, pretending to enjoy themselves in hot noisy pubs, where there Malibu and Cokes cost £6.50 and there are no seats to sit on to ease the swelling of their ankles and their squealing tortured feet, coerced into impossible shoes that they havent had on for 15 years. There faces getting redder and puffier with each pub trotted too and all the attention the younger, impossible them are getting from the blokes, though maybe not in Brighton right enough.

Lang May Yer Lum Reek.

The US of Crazy, Drooper and a Didgeridoo

Howdy Smokestacks,

This week, the lum has been in the US of A.

I love America, and Americans funny enough, well the ones that don't appear on the news anyway. American news is the dumbest most inane sensational bunkum, to use an old Jimmy Sandison word. What about this run of headlines I noticed blaring out from the hysterically screaming red ticker one morning.

Japans nuclear melt down disaster, Downed US plane in Libya, Linda Carter digs new Wonder Woman costume, Donald Trump on Qaddafi.

How many political celebrities and veteran world affair commentators have been gone through before you arrive at Donald Trump and who's up next? Banana Splits Drooper, live from Camp David and Steve Austin really likes new prosthetic limbs, "there such good value".

I was staying in Burlington, just North West of Boston. Burlington is a fairly typical US town I think, made up of roads for cars, places to park your car and big warehouse type shops with names like Casual Men XL and Big Bobs Golf Bonanza.

My hotel was the bargain bucket Candlewood Suites. Suites, in the accommodation evolutionary chain, is one step up from trailer. It is the kind of place you will have seen featured in Cheaters, or starring in a grisly murder scene investigation in CSI.

Full of travelling salesman, jobbing tradesman and evicted families. The rooms to be honest were clean and a fair size but were furnished about 25 years ago. It could have been one of those museum exhibits, step back in time in the 80s motel ride. It had a VHS player for a start, and an 18in wide screen microwave plus you don't get the use of a sharps bin often when staying overnight at the Premier Inn. The air-conditioning unit sounded like some mad experiment, deep down in the Dyson labs, where 15 bagless vacums have been strapped together to try and create a dimension splitting cyclone. Still, Americas great.

I had one night in Boston before flying home and landed in a genuine hotel where the rooms had bathrooms with doors and no cooking facilities so the lobbies didn't smell of Quesadillas.

It was right opposite Massachusetts General Hospital. Nice place with a good location in the old part of town but given most people staying there had gravelly ill relatives in the wards across the road, its not exactly party central.

Before my flight home I had time for a wander around down town Boston, I had been before so knew my way around a little but still ended up in Chinatown. Now, when you say Chinatown in San Fran, New York or even London you think colourful restaurants, hanging lanterns and dragon statues, there is not much of that in Boston Chinatown, its mostly homeless Vietnamese scratching a living from fag ends and scraggy looking shops selling all kinds of crap. And a load of crazies.

Nobody does crazies like the States. One guy I passed was just bent over, legs straight, bent right over at the waist staring intently at the floor as if he was waiting for some tiny concrete coloured bug to move so he could squash it before it ran off with all his secrets, or another old guy just randomly stopping in the street and shouting at the top of his voice how it didn't matter and we'll all be OK just as long as we said sorry.

On the flight out of London I got upgraded to Business Class with BA, which was sweet, but without sounding ungrateful, I really could have been doing with it on the night flight back. Instead I was away up the back with a family of overweight middle Americans wedged in the seats behind me which made me feel bad about reclining my seat. The little lady in front of me however had no such qualms and whipped her seat back as far as it would go as soon as we had taken off. This meant I was effectively pinned to my seat but did have the benefit of giving the little 6 inch movie screen a big cinematic wide-screen effect because of the fact it was only about 4 inches from the end of my nose. I was glad to get off that plane, only slightly jealous of the business class passengers who all looked like people you might see standing in a hotel car park at 3 in the morning after the fire alarm has went off. Hair all over the place, baggy eyes and no make up on, quite a sight for my sore bloodshot sleep deprived eyes.

I Saw a busker with a didgeridoo the other day at Stratford station, it struck me as being the single most stupid, inconvenient and joyless choice of busking instrument. It doesn’t make music, it amplifies the raspberry's you blow down it, rearranging them only slightly to give the slightest hint of a rhythm, it was about 10 feet long and looked a heavy thing too, in fact, there was another shifty looking dirty bloke hanging around him, theres no chance he was there to appreciate the bombination, I reckon he was there to help him carry it home. Which means the instrument half as appealing as even a wobble board or the bagpipes to an Englishman has to make double the money to make it worthwhile. Revisit your business plan you didgerydope.

In London you see lots of people that look like they might come from Japan, and these last few weeks with all the trouble at home I've felt incredibly sorry for them. What happened and the images they shared with us were almost unbelievable but what it confirmed for me is, we really are just ants on the surface of this rock, absolutely at the mercy of nature and the physics of universe we are spinning through. No God, no anything else, no aliens, well, there probably is but they will undoubtedly be so far away we will never hear from them, or them from us, and nothing but the planet, mother nature, and the land, sea and sky. Its simple really, I don't know why anyone needs more than that.

Lang may yer lum reek.

Bad phone day

Good evening Lums, actually, when does evening become morning its 20minutes after midnight, it seems too early to say good morning, good night sounds like I'm retiring to bed with my candle and Willie Winkie cap?

I have seriously fallen out of love with my HTC Desire Android mobile phone.

Its taken almost exactly a year. It hasn't been a sudden fracture, its been building. I've grown increasingly unhappy with its behaviour and its fickle attitude. It has shown me a side of it I couldn't have imagined during the months long honeymoon period even when it was leaving my stranded at midnight with no way home, but now I'm exasperated, lets list.

Unavailable data feeds, it is always claiming Facebook is unplugged or something, I mean , come on?

Unreliable memory card, which is a pain if you see something you want to take a picture of, but the memory card has went AWOL, even though I know its right where it should be, its just lazy. The Virgin Network is feeble, how is it I see loads of folk happily phoning, texting and tweetering on the tube with their bloody i-hypes but as soon as I walk under the bough of a tree or into a shadow I lose any signal, pathetic. About a week ago it gave up synching with my Gmail account, meaning I cant see my busy social diary, I've missed so many champagne receptions and Gok Wan parties as a result, no , not really, but I could have. I thought if I just deleted my account and loaded it again, that would sort that, its a favoured technique of the IT professional, but it wont let me without returning the phone to just out the box status. I cant access Twitter, actually I cant remember my password but this phone should have anticipated that and Friend Stream has stopped streaming, seriously compromising my 24/7 connectivity with the brotherhood of man.

Bloody Steve Jobs and his glittery shiny things, I'm beginning to covet them.

I was at a seminar today, an invite came winging my way because of the job I'm doing, you know, the big sports day in a couple of years. Why don't they have an Olympic egg and spoon race anyway, a three-legged egg and spoon race, over 400 metres, that would be good wouldn't it? I had an idea after watching The Biggest Loser for The Obesity Games, where only morbidly fat folk would compete in all the Olympic sports. The Americans would love that, hoovering up all the medals, we could make them chocolate ones to get them to try harder.

It was full of boffins and as one speaker described a couple of delegates, information security rock stars. They didn't look like rock stars.

There really is nothing funnier than technical geeky boffins being funny, well, when I say that, I probably mean unfunnier, forget the probably, I definitely do mean unfunny, sorry, that should be UNFUNNY!!

I heard the same in-joke 3 times in 3 separate presentations, strap yourself in, here it comes...Les Rogge, the famous (??? I'd never heard of him) Gentleman Bank Robber when arrested was asked why he had resorted to robbing banks (cue, 2 second pause to set up the punch-line) he replied (another, shorter pause) "Because that's where the money was". A polite "ahem" as somebody cleared their throat, it might have been me and a very gentle sonic wave of appreciation that presented itself as a kind of collective sigh. And that was the first time we heard it.

But, I tell you what, these guys love their stuff, the technical kernel sized granularity of networks and computering. For someone like me, that wonders why electricity doesn't leak all over the floor when I unplug something, its a bit confusing. In fact, I think I may have audio-dyslexia. I can see their lips moving, and it sounds like English, but all I hear is BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.

I did hear one fella though, and this is class, maybe he had a bet on with his pals to say it or something, but when highlighting an oversight of the organisers in some minor trifling matter, he called it a , this is brilliant, a cognitive discombobulation. Another highlight was a guy from Interpol or somewhere making a point by splitting a great big bag of rice with a Stanley knife, spilling slippy slidey basmati rice all over the stage, those crazhy Dutschhh.

Lang May Yer Lum Reek.

A King and The Flowers

Lums o the world, lets be serious for a moment.

I watched When We Were Kings this weekend. If you haven't seen it, let me give you a bit of background.

Its a documentary filmed around the George Foreman-Muhammad Ali world heavyweight boxing fight in Zaire in 1974, the famous Rumble in the Jungle. It has testament from the key players, the journalists, the trainers, fly on the wall access to the promoters, Foreman and of course the incomparable Muhammad Ali. Its an insight into the world of the day, the fashion and music, its amazing what good nick Kinshasa looks like its in and how clean and healthy everybody looks there, its only 8 years after independence right enough, Mobutu would take another 20 odd years to strip the country back to the stone-age.

But this is all about Ali. He was the first sportsman, maybe even the first personality I remember being aware of as a child and to see and hear him in this, in all his blustering glory is a joy. He is simply an unbelievable man, a sky scraping monument to self-belief, defiance, courage and beautiful talent. When he moves you cant help but watch him, he skips and shuffles like a ballet dancer, when he speaks, you listen and cant help but smile.

He either pours out heavenly rhyming bravado or the most incisive social comment. He talks of racial equality, social justice and "getting it on, because we don't get along" . He was the sharpest tack in the box, when one reporter, talking of the power of Foreman in his sparring matches said to Ali " I saw Foreman just yesterday..." and before he could finish, Ali says, "Ain't he ugly" reducing the entourage and gathered reporters to laughter. You cant not love the man, for his humour, his style, the bravery not only to climb in the ring with the most brutal fighters ever, but to stand faithfully and unwaveringly for his beliefs against the government and the orthodox white society of the deep south. He told everyone that he was the greatest and he was, and still is.

This week marked the 15th anniversary of the Dunblane Primary School shootings.

That was my school, my son went there and my nieces and nephews, some of them were in class 15 years ago. Every year I mark it in some personal way that means something to me and allows me to feel a little connected with all those that were affected that day. Its not something I think about doing, or even feel obliged to , its just on the days leading up to it you feel compelled to do something. So, on Sunday I woke at 8am and felt compelled to go and look for a snowdrop and take a picture.

The snowdrop was the little spring flower that came to symbolise the disaster and the appeal that it inspired. Snowdrops, I didn't think would be easy to find in East London so I kitted myself out like I was going on some endless quest to the furthest corners of the earth and struck off for Greenwich Park. It turns out snowdrops are not easy to locate even in a Royal Park, it took me about 3 hours to find a little clump, sheltering under a tree and trying to look coy among the infant crocuses. But the job was done for another year, I thought a bit, reflected and had a good walk in the fresh morning air, moistened with the finest of drizzle.

I had a knot in my stomach for weeks after that day, I would discretely well up for months and can honestly say that a day did not go past for many years when at least one thought, however fleeting would flash, or dally across my mind. And I didn't lose anyone, only a little history, memories of primary school somehow erased by the horror that occurred long after I had ran through the halls and playgrounds. I had only lost a piece of past, not my future as some parents had. Everyone at the school gates that morning probably felt relief when they learned it was not their child's class, I did, but it was the briefest of emotions, perhaps only lasting a second before being immediately drowned by the wails of anguish and unbridled grief of the families that were suffering, then all I felt was sick with sorrow. It was, and remains the worst day of my life, and as I said, it barely touched me. I hope I don't offend anyone writing about this, I know my old school class mates will have emotions around this week, some very acute because of personal loss, but those snowdrops come back every year and when they do, I think of us.

Lang may yer lum reek.