Goats - Cute, Yet Satanic!

I had some time off. Time to see a film about goats. Time to buy toothpaste, and a pie. Time to walk the length of Bethnal Green Road in search of a shop that sold 'vintage and collectible paperbacks'. Or it did, a few months ago. Now, curiously, it contained no books. It was never exactly cluttered, even with the books, so it was now very hard to see what it was selling. Although you could have a cup of coffee while you searched for it.

In this it was strangely at odds with the rest of Bethnal Green Road, which was tumbling over itself trying to sell you things. News And Booze, a shop said, telling it like it was; and there was a stall offering 'cooked bones'. Mmm, cooked bones! I expected to see big shaven-headed hardmen walking along, gnawing them.

I saw Jo Brand grimacing in front of the ticket counter at the BFI, clearly thinking twice about something - going to see a film about goats, maybe.

I also saw the film Win Win, which was not about goats. It was very likeable, but it made much of a faulty boiler at the start, with a character played by Jeffrey Tambor fretting over whether it would 'blow'. Now as everyone knows, if you introduce a faulty boiler at the beginning of a film, you need to have it explode at some point. Either that, or it needs to be repaired in a heartwarming montage sequence set to some mellow alt. country tune - I'm sure there is one about boilers. However in this case the boiler gradually disappeared from the film, along with - curiously enough - Jeffrey Tambor. Disappointing. But maybe they will appear in a spin-off together. A buddy movie. They could solve crimes. Crimes committed by goats. I have already seen the script. In my mind. There is a lot of interest in it. In my mind.

The Terrors of Tooting

On Thursday I went to work from Ingrave across the fields. Last week, after the rain, the cracks in the earth had softened into gummy mouths and the clayey soil had clung to my shoes, undermining my progress. This week it was bone dry again. The crops had turned golden, from last week's green. I have to suppose that this is normal. Even if they turned blue I'd have to accept it, I suppose.

Walking out across this space makes me feel like I'm exploring the African savannah. Were an ostrich to appear, trotting across the field towards me, I would hardly be surprised. This is, in fact, a distinct possibility, since there is an ostrich farm not far away. I have no idea what I would do in this eventuality. Probably fall back on my Customer Service training. Greet it 'politely and positively' and endeavour to manage its expectations.

Friday, I walked out into the morning and it was warm already, not the slightest chill in the air. 'I pronounce it the loveliest day of the year!', I bellowed at the office. 'We should all have it off!' It immediately clouded over. Luckily, the office was empty anyway. Only four people turned up at all. So we couldn't really spare anyone to go to the 'Absence and Sickness' teleconference on the third floor.

Someone was in the Accounts spreadsheet, which was 'locked by the Administrator'. None of us were in it, so it was a bit of a mystery. 'It's like a thriller', I said, perhaps a little hysterically. 'Who is the Administrator?' The conclusion was that it must be one of our superiors in the Centre at Tooting. We amused ourselves by picturing him being chased around by unearthly white globes, as in The Prisoner. For all we know, it really is like that in Tooting.

Marley And Me

Not quite sure how I ended up watching this film, about a Labrador who moves in with a young couple and gradually destroys their lives. Or enriches their lives. Or something. The most powerful association I have with Marley And Me is an anecdote from Bobs about her young nephew who, on being asked if he found the film too upsetting, crowed: 'I'm playing with my penis!'

They should put that on the cover of the DVD.

Maybe I'm watching in order to find out what the upsetting thing in the film is. It turns out, not too surprisingly, that it's the death of the dog. Oh, wow. A dog gets old and dies. It took the running time (more or less) of Bela Tarr's Damnation to tell us this?

You would have thought that, since Marley's alleged 'charm' seems to rest mainly on his capacity for acts of extreme domestic vandalism, they'd be glad to see the back of him. But it seems that his ability to eat an answering machine whole makes him the canine equivalent of Einstein. If this couple bring up their kids with the same attention to detail they give to the dog, they'll be selling their bodies on the streets for crack by age ten, and who will be laughing at their giddy antics? Apart from me, that is.

Live Long And Prosper

In Eastenders Steve John Shepherd was accusing David Essex his Dad of murdering his mother 'with your neglect and your wandering eye'. How do you murder someone with a wandering eye? Maybe she tripped over it on the stairs. Maybe it had wandered that far.

I met Paul and Richard in The Swan. Our drink-exacerbated conversation brought all sorts of strange facts to light, for example that Kirk Douglas could climb up his own chin and that the next President of the USA will be Batman. Perhaps we should write a documentary instead of the situation comedy we are meant to be working on.

They still don't have jobs. They have things in the pipeline. I still have a job, for the moment. There, Transplant Week is upon us again, demanding that leaflets and banner stands and other things have to be in place at various destinations RIGHT NOW. It really doesn't help the situation that the theme of Transplant Week this year is 'What are you waiting for?'

Luckily it is quite easy on the system to get proof of delivery, although even this may be confusing. A delivery 'signed for by Vulcan using Saturn' had us wondering briefly if one consignment of leaflets had been shot off into space. Not at all, but there was some question over what this Vulcan had done with them. Whatever it was, I'm sure it was logical.

PS: So it turned out to be, in a sense: he'd put them in the bin.