what I did on my holiday

I had a week off. How did I spend it? Watching Celebrity Masterchef. Or it felt like that. This show is so formulaic that it seems somehow eternal: a constant loop into which new celebrities are inserted at half-hourly intervals. The same phrases crop up again and again with slight variations. 'Can so-and-so's experience of playing thingy in Brookside help him create a really fine mushroom and mango Stroganoff?' Everyone talks about being 'out of their comfort zone' as though that were a good thing. Clearly they have a different definition of 'comfort zone' to my one. I like being in my comfort zone; I feel comfortable there. Surely if you want to be out of your comfort zone, that just means your comfort zone is expanding.

Speaking of comforts, I also saw Famous, Rich and Homeless in which celebrities were given a taste of life on the streets of London. Although had I seen Les Battersby and Lord Blandford on the streets for real I would hardly have been surprised. Not that the latter spent much time on the streets since he soon found himself a hotel to kip in. I wasn't clear how our Lord got the money for his hotel stay. Was it through begging? In which case, wasn't that something of an achievement? Hadn't he, in fact, won?

As it was, he stormed off, outraged at the poor quality of the room service.

Despite or because of this, the programme was quite effective in its way, and when I went to London the day after watching it, I expected the homeless to be raking it in. I was even considering parting with some spare change myself. Strangely though, I never saw any homeless. Maybe they didn't want people to think they were selling out. Or maybe they made so much money during the first rush hour, they all went home early.

Perhaps you can tell from that last sentence that I haven't had my diversity awareness training yet.

taboo

I learned two things this week: how to laminate, and the fact that Tori Amos' Cornflake Girl is about female circumcision. I'd always suspected that it wasn't really about cornflakes. I learned this from a discussion on Resonance FM, in which somebody was talking about having heard the six-minute album version played on Heart. Which does seem odd, now that I know what it's about. Then again, there's something about those kind of stations that drown even the most shocking tracks in blandness. So that if they started playing early Einsturzende Neubaten on Smooth, I probably wouldn't notice.

As for lamination, there is really nothing to it. Place the document centrally in the 'pouch', wait for the blue light to come on, and feed it in. Call me the Laminator.

Except that's the name of the machine that does it. Hm, maybe I've got this mixed-up in my mind, maybe Cornflake Girl is actually about lamination. So what was I doing in the office then?

Oh my God.

At lunchtime I glimpsed a folded over copy of the Sun in the coffee lounge, bearing the partially-obscured headline: KID PORN. Which, for a moment I took to be the name of some new star of the music scene. If it isn't, it probably should be.

The System Works

Dave was off work all week with illness (not Swine Flu, he was assured by NHS Direct). Whenever I got home he was complaining of not having found a new job on the internet. Maybe he should have tried looking on job sites. I found numerous jobs for him just looking in the back pages of the Yellow Advertiser. He claimed that 'Beautiful Scandinavian Massage' was not his forte, but in these politically correct days, he must surely be in with a chance.

Especially if the Liberals get in, which they did in Brentwood North thanks to me and six other people. Dave and I went to vote, and as usual it all seemed rather quaint and no more likely to exert influence on anything than a bloodless magical ritual. And then I discovered from Ross that the Liberals (for whom I had voted) had usurped a previously safe Conservative seat by a mere seven votes. A difference had been made. Ross had been running around all day with a blue rosette, 'knocking people up' on behalf of the Conservatives, an affiliation announced earlier in the year when leaflets were left on our doorstep in Harrods carrier bags for him to distribute. I won't hold it against him, but I will point out that he missed a trick by not distracting me from voting with, say, a carefully-placed bottle of whiskey. Expenses would have covered it, I'm sure.

The European elections were going on at the same time, of course, with a ridiculously lengthy form including parties called things like 'Animals Count' or 'The Really Real Honest-to-God Socialist Party starring Arthur Scargill' (I thought he was dead, but maybe I'm thinking of Bernard Manning). My parents voted for some kind of upmarket BNP presided over by a man with a horribly smug half-smile. Their policies seemed to be a grab bag of popular prejudices. For example, they vowed that no lottery money would be awarded to 'politically-correct' causes. What did this mean? That it would only be given to politically-incorrect ones? A grant to the Little Warley chapter of the KKK?

Nerves of Steel

We went round to see Mat, Amanda and The Baby. He was hiccupping and wailing; Sam, on the other hand was fine. No not really! Mat was taking all the trauma in his stride. He didn't take any photos during the Caesarian but when Amanda was being reassembled afterwards he was on hand to tell the surgeons which bit went where. Or maybe not that, but he did glimpse one of her organs ('I think it was her stomach.') He likened the scene to a low budget horror film - unconvincing. Neither is he entirely convinced by Sam, who he persists in describing as 'animatronic'.

Despite which he is determined only to expose him to high culture: Mozart, highbrow documentaries and grisly Asian horror films. He was urged to look away from Eastenders, and the poor deprived (I'm not going to say 'abused'...yet) child will never get to see Britain's Got Talent. He really will be missing out. Most of these talent shows aren't worth watching after the total loonies are weeded out. In this case quite a few - ahem - 'eccentrics' make it through to the semi-finals (a 73-year old man threatening to give new meaning to the word 'breakdancing'). At which point their often thin acts are overwhelmed by the excessive staging: one poor Asian violinist had to compete with flares going off all around her. It was like she was being napalmed.

However, I did get to the point on Friday of thinking about turning to another channel. At which point 10-year old Hollie Steel broke down in the middle of Edelweiss. I couldn't look away after that. She grabbed Dec (or Ant) - judging from his horrified expression, possibly by the balls - and begged to be allowed to sing again. And when she was granted her wish, and got through, she was asked how she felt and said, in a eerily frenzied voice: 'I don't want it to stop!' Blimey! If she's like this now, what will she be like when the booze and drugs have taken their toll? At thirteen, say.

Not that she will be able to match the trajectory of Susan Boyle, who despite fulfilling the important criteria of having a good voice and being ugly as sin, did not make it, and is already in the Priory! That's entertainment.