Obitchuary

Blanche died. Coronation Street will never be the same again without her dry waspishness (or do I mean waspish dryness?). Although it was the actress who died, not the character. The character is another matter. I seem to remember that when the guy who played Stan Ogden died suddenly back in the 80's, they kept the character alive, ill in bed upstairs. If I'm not misremembering, you could hear him banging on the ceiling like a poltergeist. It was creepy.

So quick and clean seems best for Blanche. Quick, anyway. We were discussing the issue at work and Lorraine said she could be hit by a bus. And then, I elaborated, her body could be flung through the window of the Kabin, into the arms of Norris. Imagine his face! Then the bus could run Rosie over, or something.

Some might think that this scenario is disrespectful to the actress. But they wouldn't use the actual corpse. And anyway, it's what she would have wanted.

strange pursuit

I was left alone in the admin department on Friday. I had been told that if certain leaflets did not arrive at a certain place by a certain time, then I would have to 'chase the supplier', a phrase which brought to mind an alarming vision of high-speed pursuit set to Benny Hill music. However, in the event, I only had to ring someone called Ian. It was almost disappointing.

An office has been set up just down the corridor for use by 'At Risk' staff, those who are on the verge of being made redundant. I have every sympathy with them; but I still couldn't help but wonder what would happen if I burst in there brandishing a chainsaw. Would they scream? Or would they be resigned, telling themselves that, after all, they knew they were at risk...

There was a visit to the annual switching on of the Brentwood lights, an event which, despite being undeniably present at it, we somehow contrived to miss. We just looked up at some point to discover that the lights were already on. I later discovered that they had been turned on at the oddly unobtrusive time of 4:45 by the current mayor 'Tony Sleep'. Gloria Hunniford is clearly a hard act to follow; and perhaps they didn't want to risk over-exciting a crowd already hyped up to the max by glowing reindeer antlers and alarmingly distorted music from the tannoy system.

We left just as the procession (of youths and charging riot police) was beginning. The youths chasing the police, oddly enough.

pissing with confidence

The second part of the Matandamanda pre-wedding experience got underway on Saturday at the Victoria Arms. This was 'pub golf'. I set out with the determination not to compete, and stuck to my guns. After all, what could I possibly achieve? A free curry...to be thrown up immediately afterwards? What was the point? When the time came to have a piss in a pub designated a 'water hazard', it was I who led the charge - as I thought, only to find that Rhys had got there fractionally before me. The floodgates, it seemed, were open.

We ate in Subway - those of us who turned up our noses at Macdonald's, anyway. It was a good idea in one respect (the food) and a bad one in another (the amount of choices that need to be made about the food.) What do you mean, I have to specify the kind of bread I want? Can't you see I'm drunk?

The answer, I fear, was yes: they could.

It was rumoured that Alex won, but by then it was very hard to tell.

A headline in the Brentwood Gazette: 'Parishioners Fight Randy Woodpeckers'. I'd love to tell you more but I feared that actually reading the article would disappoint me.

it's another world

'Peas headline underage gig', said the BBC News website's Entertainment page. Clearly, these underage audiences are not very demanding.

And then the next day: 'Chipmunk suffers "exhaustion".' Popular culture used to make sense. On Jonny Trunk's Resonance show on Saturday, he played Pinky and Perky's version of White Horses. Pigs singing about horses - it's practically a definition of wholesome family entertainment. Pinky and Perky never suffered from 'exhaustion'. And they spoke really fast.

And they weren't on drugs, despite the rumours.

Now it's wall-to-wall brutality. 'He smashed my face to a bloody pulp!', said a headline in an issue of Chat I was perusing one lunchtime. The exclamation mark gave the announcement an incongruous air of pleasant surprise, as if this might be on a par with being given tickets to Take That. Better, even.

And then there's 'Jedward', about whom everyone, from the Prime Minister to my Mum, is obliged to have an opinion. To me the big question is not whether they can sing or dance, but whether they are even human. Not that it really matters of course. It isn't hard to see them presenting their own kid's TV show, playing two camp aliens in a space station, beaming guest stars up and probing them (in one sense or another). I don't even feel like I've invented that, just transcribed it from the future. Who says I'm out of touch?

slow news week

A few days ago I saw an Essex police van parked opposite the war memorial at the end of Middleton Hall Lane. A streetlight was arranged in front of it in such a way that the first two letters of 'Essex' were obscured; just as I noticed this, the vehicle started rocking. I think someone was getting out. Nevertheless, it was highly amusing, more amusing than I can possibly convey in mere words.

The real question is: what were the police doing opposite the war memorial? Only this week has the national news unveiled the answer: they were waiting for someone to piss on it.

The unfortunate (or evil) drunken student caught on CCTV doing this very thing (albeit in Sheffield) is now some kind of national anti-celebrity - or, if you prefer, celebrity. His iconoclastic piss was all over Jeremy Vine, who asked listeners to suggest an appropriate penance for the student. Judging by the response (visits to Auschwitz, working in veteran's care homes, etc.) this process of atonement could easily last the rest of his life. Although, if some listeners had their way, that wouldn't be very long. Hanging, public stoning - they're still out there, Jimmy Young's old audience. But, as one pointed out, if this guy isn't severely punished, that will constitute 'a green light for people to pee anywhere'.

Can you imagine such a light? It's the kind of thing I try to do, as my mind wanders in the office. I had this whole back story worked up about Cheryl Cole's recent single Fight For This Love, or whatever it's called. We have the radio on quite low in the office, and I kept hearing the song's refrain as: 'We're going to fly, fly, fly, fly back to the spot.' This makes perfect sense if the song is about Cheryl being in a plane crash in the South American jungle, and being forced, in order to survive, to eat the corpse of her boyfriend - all except the head, she can't quite bring herself to do that and, anyway, she gets rescued. Then, a year later, she returns to the spot with the boyfriend's head to perform some kind of ceremony to give her closure, but something goes wrong, the plane crashes again and -

Yeah, well you get the idea. It would have been Cheryl Cole's Heart of Darkness!

Apparently though, it was all in my mind. Although I can't help but think that she missed a trick there.

audience participation

I was at the London Film Festival again, treading the red carpet. The red carpet was not for me, of course, or even for the film I was seeing. No doubt they'd have preferred to roll it up before I could even get on it. But in the hectic atmosphere of the LFF there just wasn't time - so I got to preen myself in front of a couple of bewildered tourists, who possibly mistook me for the assistant focus puller on An Education.

I was going to see Bruno Dumont's Hadewijch. Dumont's films have a certain fascination for me. He is unafraid of sounding pretentious (his first film was called La Vie de Jesus and his second L'Humanite - and he isn't even French!*) and refreshingly reluctant to explain anything. Most of his work seems to deal with a private interior world having to deal with 'reality', though it is increasingly hard to tell where the interior world ends and the outside one begins (if indeed it ever does begin). The showing of the film, in which Dumont's interior world is exposed to the gross gaze of the cinema goer, is in a sense a continuation of the drama - especially if, as here, there's a Q and A.

So I got to see Dumont himself explaining - not without humour - how God assisted him in the making of the film and enduring the questions of people who dared to ask what was 'really happening' in certain scenes. I mean, how vulgar! There was a lot of Gallic shrugging in the responses and one question was branded 'idiotique'. It was a great performance.

As for the film, I can't defend it or explain it but I was thoroughly engrossed. Hadewijch starts with a nun being expelled from a convent, but as Variety has pointed out, it is not The Sound of Music. If Bruno Dumont made The Sound of Music, Julie Andrews would be gang-raped in slow-motion by Nazis. And there would be no music.

No doubt it is fair to say that cinema audiences just aren't up to the rigorous task of watching films these days. In the Q and A for Eyes Wide Open, a man asked the director whether the film was based on fact. On hearing that it was based on a combination of research and imagination the man dismissed the film entirely, claiming: 'It isn't art if it's not true.' It was as though he had never heard of fiction.

Wonder what he makes of the Harry Potter movies?

*He is really. That was a joke.

Johnny Man Bag

So the dreaded day of Mat's stag do arrived. The prospect of war games in the rain was not appealing. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was suffering from pre-traumatic stress syndrome. Meanwhile, everyone else was amusing themselves with the thought of me 'going Rambo' and disappearing into the Abridge woods, never to return.

In fact, 'laser tag' turned out to be fun if treated more in the vein of a Sunday stroll in the countryside. Obviously there was an element of hiding behind things while clutching my weapon. But my Sunday strolls tend to involve that anyway.

I was even able to kill a few people. Which came as a pleasant surprise.

Props included tanks, a crashed Cessna, fairy wings, and a tutu. These last were sported by the stag, of course. And it didn't necessarily demean him - I read that in the (apparently 'stunning') new film Johnny Mad Dog the ferocious African boy soldiers who are the subject of the film wear wigs, wedding dresses and, yes, fairy wings. Although a group of young kids we passed, not having the benefit of this cultural reference, laughed at him and called him 'gay'.('And you're homophobic!', retorted one of our number.)

Despite the accessories, Mat's team (and mine) won very conclusively, although the spoils of war (free promotional mugs and weak orange squash) went to victor and defeated alike.

All in all, I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed this. Perhaps I'll take up real war now.

After this we went into London to be made drunk. Rhys had prepared a Mr & Mrs style quiz for Mat. I remember Mr & Mrs when it was presented by Derek Batey and made by Border TV (coincidentally owned by Derek Batey). 'How does he like his bacon?', he used to say. I don't remember him talking about the contestant's flaccid penises, so this was obviously an innovation of Rhys. In any case it served its purpose, which was to force Mat to drink some shots, including one which came in a fancy bottle but which smelled like Toilet Duck. Soon, Mat was very pissed, and resembled some kind of effete zombie.

We ended up in the curry house in Brick Lane which features paintings of such well-loved figures of Indian mythology as Princess Diana, and Mat was presented with a whole chicken which Rhys had vomited on specially (Mat was apparently so drunk that he thought this yellow stuff was some form of omelette!)

As if in horror, the clocks went back.