rude tunes

Work has been quite uneventful, though Lorraine brought in an enormous Golden Delicious, which she displayed. It was indeed quite large.

Most of the excitement is taking place on the radio. A couple of weeks ago, Radio 2 had their day-long celebration known as '2Day'. Normal schedules were mixed up so as to showcase the station's output, and thus you got Elizabethan madrigals in the daytime, Ken Bruce on the moon (as I remember), and even a live rendition of Grandma's Feather Bed. Perhaps it is now hard to see why this song, which commemorates the thrilling antics of some children and some farm animals on the bed in question, was a staple of Ed Stewart's Junior Choice, back in the 70's. But in those days no-one thought twice about lines like: 'We didn't get much sleep but we had a lot of fun/On Grandma's feather bed.' We were all so innocent then. I think.

The week after that it was back to normal, with the woman standing in for Jeremy Vine asking Bill Maynard exactly how many toilet seats he had broken over the course of his life. Can the economic situation really be that dire when a daytime talk show is devoting its precious time to discussing the 'issue' of toilet seat breakages with the former Selwyn Froggitt? I think not. A toilet seat manufacturer was on hand to offer more technical feedback, blaming a 'twisting motion' on the part of the toilet-goer for the problem.

And then last week was dominated by Eurovision, with high hopes for 'the Hump'. Well, we know what came of that. Whoever was responsible for fielding him had failed to reckon that the overall vibe of the contest would be best described as 'clubby' – even the much-fancied (by bookmakers) 'Russian grannies' did an up-tempo disco number, albeit one that also involved them baking bread in an onstage oven. It was generally agreed that their music was of less interest than their 'back story' which was that they were trying to raise money to rebuild their church which, we were told, had been 'knocked down by Stalin' (presumably in the days when he used to rampage like Godzilla over the Russian countryside, demolishing tall buildings.)

They didn't win and will probably be sent to a gulag, or whatever they call them now. Belarus didn't win either - didn't even make the final, despite using the phrase 'we are the winners' in their entry. I like their thinking – unfortunately, their accent was such that it sounded more like 'we are the wieners'. Also failing – inexplicably - to make the final were Austria, who fielded a band called (really) 'Trackshittaz' singing what came across as 'Fuck Me In Der Poo-Poo', although it turns out to be Austrian (it says here) for 'shake your bum' – 'Shake your bum, as you are what I want', they are apparently saying. Furthermore, they maintain elsewhere in the song that 'your bum has an opinion.' Mine thinks they should have won.

Arsehole Debacle

At work, we were dealing with the question of whether to send out giant 'organ donor card' props to members of the public. I said not, because they might use them 'inappropriately'. I was envisaging a burlesque act - which, to be fair, might not be so inappropriate after all. Indeed, it has all the makings of a great campaign. But will the office listen? I doubt it.

After all, my contribution was not required in the scandal looming over the Welsh language version of the 'Arterial Puncture' leaflet. You see, it turns out that the Welsh word for 'puncture' is also the Welsh word for 'arsehole'. Raising the possibility that Welsh blood donors nursing bruised arms will, on being handed this explanatory leaflet, discover that insult has been added to injury.

In order to offset this, the office was asked for alternative words for 'puncture'. However, my suggestion ('prick') was rapidly discounted. I can't imagine why.

The most frightening thing about this is that our diligent proofreading avails us naught when the text is in Welsh. We may well be blithely handing out Welsh leaflets called 'Give Us Your Pissing Blood' or 'Thank You For Joining The Organ Donor Register, Shithead.' Perhaps the Welsh even like that kind of thing. I've lived there - it wouldn't surprise me.

junk

So I was watching a programme about that new reality TV demon, the Hoarder – The Hoarder Next Door, it's called (Watch out! There could be one in your street!)

'The rat dropping has sent Tricia into a deep decline', says award-winning actress Olivia Colman on the voiceover (forget Tyrannosaur, this is her best work). Poor Tricia! There are worse things in store for her, as the ultimate horror is then turned up amidst her accumulation of Stuff – a dead rat! 'Do you hear them moving around sometimes?', asks the professional housecleaner who has just picked it up. What, dead rats? Tricia seems a little unstable, I grant you, but surely she isn't that far gone.

The trajectory is a simple one: she starts off with a fabulous mess and ends up – triumphantly - with a dull room in which, admittedly, you could now live, if you still felt like it. But it's all rather dispiriting, as if Tricia (a former Corrie actress, we are told) has just lost the most interesting thing about her. She could at least have kept the dead rat as a coaster (it was surprisingly flat). As it is she might as well sell the place, on another C4 programme, and start hoarding again somewhere else.

This is followed by an ad for an edition of Secret Millionaire 'with a twist'. Is the twist that someone wanders around a deprived area pretending to be a secret millionaire, and then reveals at the end that he or she hasn't got any money whatsoever – and as a matter of fact needs to borrow some, quite badly please, and why are you all crying?

We live in hope.

Book Vs. Life

During my lunchtimes at work I can generally be found sitting in the chair by the window in the coffee lounge downstairs, reading a book. And not always the same book.

Last week, for example, it was Christopher Priest's The Islanders. But this gazetteer of imaginary islands isn't like a real book at all. More like a book a character in a novel might pick up. You can't go to these islands, yet you somehow feel that they exist, in the way that places revisited in dreams seem to exist. Travel is a thing of the mind.

Somewhere beyond the page, a maintenance man was talking to another maintenance man about a woman, a 'fucking tea lady', who sat 'like this'.

There followed a scraping of chair legs against the floor as (presumably) this woman's (possibly quite bizarre) stance was demonstrated.

The first thing the guy said to her was: 'Where's George?', and she came back straight away with: 'What do you want?' Thus, as he put it, they 'got off to a bad start'.

Then she complained because 'someone put their hand on the door'. Would you believe it? Some people. I tuned out again. Back in the book, the man who purportedly writes the introduction is revealed in the following pages (which he claims to have read) to have died some time previously.

Go figure.

Light Entertainment

Someone I know has been in TOWIE! So it must be real. Well, sort-of. There are clearly some issues around moving from this dimension into their world which have resulted in a catastrophic melting of Shaun's features. Either that or the camera was too busy focussing on Marco in the foreground. Whatever. The irony is that this honour has not been accorded to one of our own but to someone from Manchester. Then again, Essex is less a place than a state of the soul.

The most gripping thing on it at the moment is possibly Gemma, who has just broken up with her slightly odd-looking boyfriend. The other day he was sketching her (with hilarious results!) and she likened herself, rolled up as she was in some kind of pink wrap, to 'a pig in a blanket'. It was such a well-chosen phrase that I began to suspect that they'd hired an actual writer. Later, Gemma was found to be sending saucy texts to someone called Ricky - 'something about a badger', we were told - which made her boyfriend so insecure that he told her he was 'scared of the shoes I'm wearing'. She didn't even care but then after he'd stormed off she complained of feeling like 'a dog that's broke its leg'.

So yes, I think there may well be a scriptwriter. It's Harry Hill.