Fight

Because I’m not a member of the Working Class, I don’t do prole things such as attend football matches or go to rowdy, down-market nightclubs. Consequently my opportunities for getting into a decent fight are rather limited. This seems most unfair. Where is it written that it's perfectly acceptable for me to punch a pre-match Arsenal fan or head-but a Plaistow resident in an East End dive, but I mustn't do similar at, say, Wimbledon or Le Gavroche?

What we must do is change attitudes here. Part of the problem at up-market events such as tennis matches is, I feel, that there are no clear demarcation lines drawn between the various fans. So, for example, it could be that an Andy Murray supporter actually does want to give an Andy Roddick supporter a good kicking, and vice-versa, but neither can easily identify who's who in order to do so.

To rectify matters here, individual tennis players should be made to wear special, unique colours. Likewise their supporters. And, as at football matches, rival supporters should be kept in different parts of the ground, facing one another. In this way true enmity could develop. Cliff Richards could be brought on, too. But instead of singing "Congratulations", or similar garbage, he should be encouraged to direct a barrage of "You're going home in a fucking wooden box!" at Murray’s supporters opposite. Maybe Katherine Jenkins could be booked to respond in kind with "Shit on Roddick, shit on Roddick today!" for the opposition.

As a result, after the match, the cucumber sandwich tents and the strawberries and cream tents would become scenes of unparalleled savagery, as rival supporters glassed one another with Champagne flutes and rammed strawberry pummets into each other’s faces. Police would have to be brought in with water canons to disperse the mobs. The whole thing would become so much more exciting.

There's opportunity for violent rivalry at up-market restaurants, as well. Everyone knows that vegetarians are unnatural degenerates, but no-one does anything about it. But if, say, Le Gavroche were to pen off a Vegetarians Only area, the morally-sound carnivores would then know their enemy. So, come the end of the evening, post coffee and Cognac, you'd be able to set upon the vegetarians, or wait for them to finish and beat them up outside.

Or better still, different restaurants could have gangs affiliated to them. Then the Le Gavroche Stanley Knife Gang could arrange to have fights with L'Escargot Cut Throat Razor Firm. Better yet, both could forget their differences for the evening, team up, and go and kick the shit out of everyone eating at Quo Vadis.

In this way, my life would become a tad more colourful.

Heat

I do not like excessive heat, such at today's. It displeases me. Out of context, anyway. In context, however, it's fine. When I was at the Victoria Falls, for example, the temperature was much as it is here, now, in Bumble's Green. But that's what you expect in that part of the world. Just as you expect crocodiles, too, and so don't grumble overly if one emerges from a river and eats your children. Whereas, if a crocodile were to emerge from the River Lee and and started eating people's children, I'm sure everyone would start bitching about it. Context again. So what I'm saying, basically, is that, just as man-eating crocodiles are fine for Rhodesia, but not for here, temperatures in the 90s should confine themselves to Rhodesia, as well.

Given the extremes I'm currently experiencing, therefore, I'm having to sit in the garden, dressed only in shorts. Fortunately, I am possessed of the sort of body that can be displayed without embarrassment. Still, I don't like the idea of giving the women of the area a “free show”, as it were. But what can be done?

I suppose someone could invent the counterpart of one of those Calor gas-powered patio heaters that pubs use outside in winter. Except it would have a refrigeration mechanism inside, instead, and therefore be a patio cooler, effective over a radius of about six feet. Then again, the disadvantage of having one of these is that it might encourage smokers to come into my garden and congregate underneath in a huddled mass, exhaling their pollutants, getting pissed on cheap lager, and shagging themselves silly. Or worse, it might encourage immigrant crocodiles to emerge from the River Lee in order to more efficiently cool themselves. (Or, if they were male and female, they might shag themselves silly as well.)

I'm sure the crocodiles would eat all the lager lout smokers but, still, they're not something I'd want in my garden. Slugs and snails are fucking bad enough. At least they can be dealt with by pouring salt on them. A crocodile probably wouldn't react in the same way, though. Which is why, when you see one of those Tarzan films where he's fighting with a crocodile in a river, he always uses a knife to kill it, and never bothers trying a bag of Saxa.

My Teeth (2)

I spent much of this morning counting my pearly-white teeth. It appears that I have 29 of them, with no significant gaps. The left hand side of my mouth has more teeth than the right hand side, however. Hitherto, I had tended to chew using this right hand set but, on reflection, have decided that this is obviously a very inefficient use of my mouth. I therefore now intend to start chewing primarily on the left hand side, as the greater of number of teeth will obviously make eating a lot faster and more satisfying.

In my opinion, food packaging should be labelled with an indication of how long the contents will take to eat for any given number of teeth. This would work in a similar way to microwave cooking instructions. For instance, just as a 750 Watt oven might be described as taking three minutes to cook a particular dish and a 650 Watt oven four minutes, so 15 teeth (assuming you eat using just one side of your mouth) might take, in total, two minutes to chew the food as opposed to two and a half if you only have 12.

Indeed, further to this, I feel we should redefine the concept of “fast” food. Rather than being a description of the speed of its cooking, it should refer, instead, to the speed of eating. Some sort of legal upper limit should be imposed, too, for safety reasons, constantly monitored by kitchen and restaurant-mounted closed circuit television cameras and GATSOs. This is because, if you ate too fast while consuming something slippery or irregularly shaped, you could slide off it and accidentally chew off the arm of someone sitting next to you. Accordingly, if people exceeded these speed limits, Food Police should be empowered to hand out on-the-spot penalties. Those miscreants who accrued more than 12 penalty points during any given period would be banned from eating for a period not exceeding 6 months. Persistent offendors should be banned from having teeth altogether.

In this way, eating would once again become a refined, civilized activity.

Tourette's Syndrome

One of the more disturbing aspects of Tourette's Syndrome, at least as far as onlookers are concerned, is that, for no apparent reason and out of nowhere, the sufferer can come out with a string of obscenities and swearwords, aimed at no-one in particular. So, for example, he'll be sitting next to you on the train or bus and then, all of a sudden, will loudly shout "Fuck! Cunt! Shit", and so forth. Naturally enough, this can be most off-putting for many people. I am able, however, to offer a simple, low-cost solution:

Everyone who suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome should have a mobile phone permanently affixed to his or her ear when out in public. Then, people will simply assume that all their obscenities are directed at the person on the other end of the line and therefore think no more of it. Indeed, they might even join in.

That said, what happens when a Tourette’s suffer actually is talking to a total cunt over the phone? Does he suddenly moderate his language and change his “fucks” and “wankers” into “fiddle-de-dees” and “twits”? And, for that matter, what of those of us of normal mental balance who just happen to be having a telephone conversation with a complete arsehole and are therefore compelled to use the requisite swear words? Witnessing this, some people might jump to the wrong conclusion and assume we’re suffering from Tourette's. (This is especially a risk if you have one of those poofy hands-free mobiles which are concealed in the pocket.) What to do?

I'd say that, if, like me, you routinely have to talk to lots of total cunts and wankers, you should cut your losses. In other words, before every telephone call, you should sit on park bench or a seat in a railway station, down a can of Tennent's Super or similar, and shout, "I'm going to fuck you sister, you cunt bastard!" at everyone who passes by. Then, your subsequent expletive-filled telephone conversation will go unremarked. Indeed, some people may even feel sorry for you and, if you've got a polystyrene cup and a dog to hand, donate a couple of quid, which would help defray the cost of both the call and the line rental.

Operations

Until the late 15th Century, barbers and surgeons were the same profession. So whether you wanted an appendectomy or just a shave, the one establishment handled both. Dropping in for a haircut must therefore have been a fairly unnerving experience, because you'd be sitting, waiting in the barber's shop alongside, not just people with bad hairdoes, but lepers, amputees, and the bubo-afflicted, too. Accordingly, "Anything for the weekend, sir?" could well have been a dose of the plague.

Then again, I'm sure that, in those days, customers were fairly blasé about the whole thing, regarding something like major brain surgery and organ transplants as being on a par with a short back and sides or a perm. A typical scenario must therefore have been as follows:

Barber-surgeon: Hello again. What can I do for you today?
Customer: It's the leg. Slightly gangrenous.
Barber-surgeon: OK. Shall I trim it a bit for you at the bottom?
Customer: Yes, just up to the knee should do.
Barber-surgeon: Level with your other stump?
Customer: Please.
Barber-surgeon: No problem. Do you want it square cut or tapered?
Customer: I'm easy. Whatever you think looks best.
((FX: Saw, saw, saw))
Barber-surgeon: Bastard weather again, eh? Won’t do the turnip harvest much good.
((FX: Saw, saw, saw))
Customer: Fucking gypsies cursing the crops, they say.
((FX: Saw, saw, saw))
Barber-surgeon: Cunts. OK, how does that look?
Customer: Yes, that's good. I like it. Can you just cauterize that artery up there?
Barber-Surgeon: There you go. Anything for the weekend, sir?
Customer: Yes, a pack of three leeches, please. I’m feeling lucky.

Of course, if the split between barbers and surgeons hadn't occurred, Harley Street would now be full of Toni & Guy and Vidal Sassoon franchises, all manned by scalpel-wielding homosexuals sporting blonde bouffants and mincing around in tight, black trousers. And if you didn’t have BUPA cover, you’d probably be on a three-year waiting list for root treatment and hair extensions. So all in all, it’s a good thing that it did happen. (Unless, of course, you’re one of those who actually relishes the risk of being buggered while under general anaesthetic.)

Delivery

You may recall a scene in the film, "The Godfather", where the clothes of Luca Brasi, one of the Corleones' top hitmen, are delivered to the family home wrapped around a fish. The meaning of this, it's explained, is symbolic: "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes." He's dead, in other words, his body presumably dumped in the sea or in a river.

This Mafia-specific courier service - a sort of DHL with knobs on - while obviously quite efficient, is, however, not really commercially viable. This is because, while you of course do need to execute hitmen every now and then and inform people of the fact, it's not something that happens so regularly that, for example, Hallmark could turn a profit by producing a dedicated card to celebrate the occasion, or Parcel Force offer a special “fish and frock coat” 24/7 delivery service. Besides, even if they did, they’d still be left with the serious logistical problem of, on each occasion, having to source a whole, fresh fish to stick into the deceased’s clothing. If, thanks to time constraints (half day closing at the fishmonger, for instance), crap fishermen, or whatever, they couldn’t readily get hold of the genuine article, I shouldn’t imagine a kipper or a packet of cod in parsley sauce would be regarded as an acceptable substitute.

With this in mind, I suppose it’s also fortunate that the Mafia doesn’t have a Newfoundland or Spitsbergen branch. If they did, and they were contractually obliged to dump dead hitmen in the sea over there, too, then, given the marine demographics, the resultant message would perforce be more along the lines of “Luca Brasi sleeps with the sperm whales.” Wrapping any sort of cetecean in a standard-sized man’s suit could be something of a challenge. As indeed could delivering the combination to its intended recipient without drawing lots of unwanted attention to yourself.

Then again, we're talking here about people who can routinely hack a horse's head off, transport it unnoticed to someone's luxury mansion, then, in total darkness, locate the owner's room out of the dozens, if not hundreds of other rooms in the house, and finally slip it under his bedclothes without waking him. So perhaps it’s doable after all.

I reckon you'd still need a fucking big duvet before you could slip in a whole whale unnoticed, though.

Dirty

Whenever you finish your meal in a restaurant, the staff generally take the used plates and cutlery away and then wash them. This is because, even in places like the Aberdeen Angus Steak House or Café Uno, where you’d imagine that the clientele are too dumb to give a toss one way or the other, people actually do get pissed off it you try to serve them food on plates that have still got eggy bits and steak detritus on them from the last service. It’s not enough to tell them that the previous diners have licked the plates clean, either. Most people who go to restaurants demand that they’ve been sterilized, too, before they’ll eat off them.

All well and good. But why isn’t this same concern for proper hygiene applied to clothes shops, as well? I refer specifically to the mirrors in their changing rooms, of course.

I, personally, object to the idea of looking into a “used” mirror that’s possibly reflected the images of several dozen other people that same day, particularly if a lot of them were fat, ugly cunts. For me to look into such a mirror would be exactly the same as eating a magnificent gourmet meal off an unwashed plate that had previously had chicken nuggets and chips on it. It’s totally unacceptable as there's danger of cross-contamination. Consequently, when I do go into a clothes shop, I always insist that a member of staff spray the mirror with Windolene, or similar, beforehand. And, if it’s at all practical, I ask that the mirror be sterilized, as well.

I suppose one possible down-side here is if the shop owns one of those magic mirrors you're always hearing about that can tell you whether or not you’re the fairest of them all. If you spray and sterilize one of those, I’d imagine that, each time you do, it resets to its factory defaults and loses the memory of anyone else who might have looked into it. Consequently, because it no longer has any other point of reference, it now risks giving you a highly inaccurate assessment of exactly how good looking you are in relation to everyone else. Which means that if, for example, you’re a wicked, ageing stepmother with a cute, adopted teenage daughter, it will tell you that, notwithstanding your flabby arse and crow's feet, you’re nevertheless more attractive than her.

So, whereas, out of sheer pique, you’d normally send a wood-cutter out to kill the little bitch, now, because of the disinformation, you don’t. As a result, she eventually ends up living with a bunch of dubious dwarfs in some shack in the middle of a forest. If the Sunday tabloids pick up this, that’s your reputation as a responsible parent totally fucked.

Think Tank

I see from today’s Daily Telegraph that architect, Mark Hacket, is setting up a think tank in Belfast. About time, too. What with all these Gay Pride marches and flabby-arsed powerlifters running all over the place, Belfast fucking needs it. Then again, I suppose many other cities could benefit from their own think tanks, as well.

How often, for example, when asked difficult questions or posed near insuperable problems, do people simply shrug their shoulders, say, “I’ll have a think”, and then just go away and do nothing? Most of the time, I’d say. This is because while they might indeed like to have a think, they usually can’t actually obtain one. Not a fresh one, anyway. This is where a dedicated, heated and oxygenated think tank comes in (with a deep-sea diver and model sunken galleon for the deluxe versions).

So next time anyone says “I’ll have a think”, he can then be directed to wherever the appropriate tank for his think is kept and there make his choice from the free-swimming selection. So, for instance, if Stephen Hawking is asked “What, exactly, is the `God Particle’?”, he can request that the exact, corresponding think be fished out of the tank for him by its proprietor, just like with a lobster in a Chinese restaurant. Thus will the mystery of the universe finally be solved.

I suppose where this system breaks down (aside from the pump getting blocked with floating think turds) is with the so-called “political think tank.” I can’t imagine, say, a BNP think and a Christian Democrat think swimming happily together in the same tank. It would be a bit like putting a goldfish in with a piranha. An Anarchist think might even do serious damage to the tank. But at least watching the ensuing "life or death" struggles would be entertaining.

Rather like today’s, in fact, in the Labour Party.

Buskers

Street “musicians” really piss me off. I encountered several this morning. Basically, they’re beggars with musical instruments. All they want is money. But instead of being honest about it and saying “Can you spare us a couple of pence for mug of tea, guv?”, they maintain this pretence of offering so-called entertainment, as if a syncopated beg were more likely to elicit my sympathy and coin than the conventional variety. Why the fuck should it?

If I were trying to negotiate a loan, for example, would it help my case if I gave the bank manager a sudden rendition from “Oklahoma”? If I wanted to buy a washing machine from John Lewis on extended credit, would I get a better rate if I sang “Ave Maria” while I filled in my bank details?

It's not even as if these people were any good. If they were, they wouldn't be singing on the street; they'd be doing it professionally and getting paid for it. They're therefore imposing their mediocrity upon me, unbidden. It's the equivalent of pissing in my direction or farting at me.

Furthermore, their dress sense is usually non-existent. I saw some specimen “performing” in Tottenham Court Road Tube Station. If he'd tried to donate his clothes to Oxfam or Sue Ryder they would have been thrown out as a health hazard. Furthermore, his “singing” was more akin to the cries of someone being castrated.

In fact, that's the one thing that would have induced me to donate money. If his testicles were being torn off on the Underground, I might have put a few coppers in the tin for the entertainment value derived from the spectacle.

The Working Class should be neutered.