Caligari's Dinner

The ever-replicating TV virus that is Masterchef has undergone another mutation, I notice. Masterchef - The Professionals is the result. One half of the regular presenting duo has vanished, having presumably failed to make it through to the last round of Masterchef - The Presenters. He is more than made up for by Michel Roux Jr., and his extraordinary repertoire of grimaces and mad stares, none of them remotely relevant to the subject in hand. He resembles nothing more than a mad scientist in a movie, specifically John Carradine in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask.

Another memorable grotesque, who has clearly also eaten his share of the tortes, is the shambling, wheezing David Thomas, the only remaining original member of Pere Ubu. They are from Ohio, and the 70's. I went to see them last Friday at the ICA, naively anticipating a straightforward gig, in which they'd play 'the hits'. Instead, they were doing their version of a nineteenth-century Absurdist play. I should have known.

No really, I should have. I saw them do it last year. I just thought they might have got over it by now. But this story of the rise and fall of a dictator is their Evita, and they aren't going to let it go. On this occasion the female lead was played by some cardboard boxes. A man with a chicken's head adopted various poses. There was canned applause, in case the audience didn't oblige. 'Any questions?', hissed David Thomas, drily.

In a certain (greenish) light, DT bears a distinct resemblance to Saddam Hussein, which added something. And there was no doubt that the thing had been tightened up since that first performance (wherein, I seem to remember, half the audience fled during the interval). It was even occasionally possible to work out what was going on.

Afterwards I saw a Chinese man in a high-visibility vest bearing the legend 'Indian Cuisine', as though that explained anything.

'we've been backed into a corner, in my eyes'*

Every morning on my way to work I pass a sign saying Strictly No Parking. With the return of the hysterically popular Strictly Come Dancing to our screens, I this week conceived of a very low-budget alternative in which z-list celebrities stand at the back of a shop warding off opportunistic parkers. There are people who would pay to watch Brian from Big Brother shouting at a man in a white van. It's social realism. That's what I'm telling BBC3 anyway.

At the same time, I do have a real job - for the time being. This week the new director who supervised the restructure announced her resignation. It's like watching Godzilla walk off into the sea after trampling a major city. Kind of moving, actually.

But no - it was not an act of wanton destruction. It was an act of wanton construction. The remaining posts are about to be filled, and then the gleaming new structure will finally be up and functioning. Only to be demolished by Mothra.

At the weekend Dave and I went to Ross and Christine's housewarming. The corridors in the block they live in have a definite air of The Shining about them, but on the plus side they have a balcony, commanding a majestic view of Somerfield's loading bay (and, to be fair, many other things). From it we witnessed a car draw up next to a bin, disgorging a couple who removed some cardboard boxes, then drove off. That's what we call a great night out in Brentwood. (Possibly another TV series here..?)

*Phrase used by a postman on a mountain in Wales, ringing in to Jeremy Vine about the postal strike.

'the dual Pratt & Whitney engines hummed evenly'*

Chapter One: Moving

We moved. Of course it was traumatic. In my mind, my allotted room had come to assume reasonable, if not quite luxurious, proportions. The problem with this was, as ever, reality. When I actually saw the room the Monday before we moved in I was horrified. I could almost certainly get all my stuff in here, but what about me?

After a sleepless night I had a vision. Dave would take the lounge as his room, I would have the larger bedroom, and the smaller bedroom would be a 'TV room' or 'den'. After all, it isn't as though we have a social life. He dismissed this solution as 'crazy' (in truth I did, sheepishly, present it to him as such) but after my third suicide attempt he (as he put it) 'caved in' (to my demand that he have an absolutely massive bedroom).

So there he languishes in various catalogue poses in his bedroom-cum-lounge ('cum lounge' for short), while I have the space to wallow in my own filth. The 'lounge' (or 'den' or 'games room' or 'shit room nobody wanted') is occupied, though only by sofas, which fill it entirely. Oh, well. The TV doesn't work anyway.

(Actually it does now. For a while we had a non-digital signal, and were forced to stare at a pointillist picture of Eastenders. Then Dave channelled it through his laptop and it looked like the characters were having their faces rearranged by invisible plastic surgeons as we watched - or does Daniella Westbrook really look like that? Now, through the miracle of miles of cable, we can at last watch Ghosthunting With The Happy Mondays in all its glory.**)



Chapter Two: The Dump

One side-effect of this move is that I have made my first visit (first three visits, in truth) to the dump. The dump! All human life is there, but not for very long. It is staffed by helpful minions so well-versed in the arcane business of recycling that one of them even knew to toss a box of glasses into 'non-recyclables' rather than the glass bin. Presumably he had recognised a particular kind of tough, specialist glass with his professional eye. Either that, or he just didn't give a shit.

But they were all very cheery, except for this sour older one who brusquely informed me that even bio-degradable bags weren't allowed in with the garden waste ('Says so on the sign.') The sign spoke only of 'bags', but there didn't seem much point in protesting. No doubt, when Mary Portas finally gets round to making every visit to the recycling centre a 'fabulous experience', he will be eliminated. He was a 'non-recyclable' if ever I saw one.



Chapter Three: Back To Nature

After the move was over, I had time to enjoy the time off I had in my usual way. I saw the film Afterschool (18). At the counter in front of me at the Odeon Panton Street was an American girl trying to get her 14-year old brother in. No dice. After I got my ticket, I felt like going up to him and waving it in front of his face: 'I got a ticket cos I'm an adult. Ner ner ner ner ner!' I didn't. Later, in the same cinema, I saw Antichrist, Lars Von Trier's feast of Gothic psychodrama and genital mutilation. 'The following trailers are suitable for this feature' said the screen beforehand. There followed a trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Well I knew Harry was a bit more grown up now but 'suitable' seems to be stretching it.

I also saw Magazine (the band) at the Royal Festival Hall. It's the only rock gig I've been to where I ate an ice cream in the interval - well, they are post-punk, I suppose. Esme (who always pops up at these things) said that the Roundhouse never sold so much tea as they did at the X-Ray Spex gig there a while ago. Her brother was at the RFH too in an 'I am angry I am ill and I'm as ugly as sin' T-shirt. I'd looked at them on display and thought that that was just asking for trouble, but then - I'm old.

The band were fantastic. It felt a bit odd sitting down, but in the second half everybody stood up - not, it must be said, in an act of spontaneous rebellion, but because (lead singer) Howard Devoto expressly gave us permission to do so.

Next day, at work, Jeremy Vine was reminiscing about the gig on Radio 2 and playing The Light Pours Out of Me. I was part of the Zeitgeist!

I didn't really take advantage of it.



Chapter Four: Real Life

Back to the grind. Returning to work after a bit of a break and from an unfamiliar angle you feel all discombobulated, like you've forgotten your trousers. When you put your passcode in, you feel like a voice is going to start screaming: 'Intruder! Intruder!'

None of these things happened. Apart from forgetting my trousers, but it was warm.

We were told to look out for messages from our employer on our payslips. So I did, and here is what I saw: 'We need your blood.' It occurred to me that, coming from any other employer than the National Blood Service (Waterstones, for example), this would have been rather alarming. Though perhaps not exactly surprising.

At one point I found myself dragging two enormous flattened cardboard boxes up from Reception to the office. 'Is this your new house?', asked the other Martin. In fact they were for the two Billy Blood Drop costumes that were lolling in the 'goldfish bowl' - as that particular storeroom is known, due to its being well-supplied with windows. Billy Blood Drop, in case you don't know, is the Blood Service mascot. The costumes were suffering from wear and tear and needed to be shipped off to the manufacturers for their 'spa treatment', as it is known (really). Fished from the goldfish bowl, the Billy Blood Drops proved to be quite unwieldy, and during the struggle to manoueuvre them into the boxes, several members of staff considered themselves to have been 'assaulted' by the lovable character. HR have been informed.



*A line from the new Dan Brahn.


**Ghosthunting With The Happy Mondays? It isn't as much fun as it sounds - well, how could it be? The scariest thing in it is Shaun Ryder. Seeing him in 'night vision' mode, I couldn't help but think: 'God, Nosferatu has let himself go.' Only Bez remains aloof from it all, having no doubt seen far stranger things than ghosts. But all their dicking about gets you down after a while - whatever happened to the notion of 'reliable witnesses'? As for Yvette Fielding, whereas she used to screech girlishly and run around, now she's billed as 'the mistress of the macabre' and just seems a bit tetchy.