Big Blogger 2005

Big Blogger 2005: The Official Soundtrack.

2005-08-18T19:06:00.000+01:00

Here's the tracklisting for the triple mix CD that will shortly be winging its way to Vitriolica, as part of her prize for winning Big Blogger 2005. Click on each song title to find out why it was selected for inclusion...

See you in 2006, darlings!

DISC 1.

1. All That Jazz - Chicago Soundtrack
2. Gloria - Laura Branigan
3. Jilted John - Jilted John
4. U Can't Touch This - MC Hammer
5. Losing My Religion - REM
6. Theme From The Goodies - The Goodies
7. The Tra La La Song - Banana Splits
8. Pink Panther Theme - Henry Mancini
9. Billie Jean - Michael Jackson
10. Pusherman - Curtis Mayfield
11. Ride On Time - Black Box
12. If I Had A Hammer - Trini Lopez
13. Surfin' Bird - The Trashmen
14. Cloudbusting - Kate Bush
15. Keep On Running - Spencer Davis Group
16. Mr. Writer - The Stereophonics

DISC 2.

1. Don't Close The Post Office - JonnyB & MC Mr Mitt
2. Axel F - Crazy Frog
3. Dragostea Din Tei (Numa Numa) - O-Zone
4. I Predict A Riot - Kaiser Chiefs
5. The Thong Song - Sisqo
6. Take Me To The Mardi Gras - Paul Simon
7. Insania - Peter Andre
8. Bohemian Rhapsody - G4
9. Scheherazade (Rimsky-Korsakov) - 101 Strings
10. This Is It - Melba Moore
11. Black Or White - Michael Jackson
12. Give Peace A Chance - John Lennon
13. Theme From Shaft - Isaac Hayes
14. 500 Miles - The Proclaimers
15. Primavera - Amalia Rodrigues
16. Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight) - Abba

DISC 3.

1. There's No Business Like Show Business - Ethel Merman
2. It's A Sin - Pet Shop Boys
3. Gecko - The Creatures
4. Seven Nation Army - White Stripes
5. Seven Seas Of Rhye - Queen
6. Seven Seconds - Youssou N'Dour & Neneh Cherry
7. Seven Days Too Long - Chuck Wood
8. Seven Deadly Finns - Brian Eno
9. The Magnificent Seven - The Clash
10. 007 - Desmond Dekker
11. Bless Your Beautiful Hide - Howard Keel (from Seven Brides For Seven Brothers)
12. Do-Re-Mi - Sound Of Music Soundtrack
13. The Puppy Song - David Cassidy
14. Loser - Beck
15. The Winner Takes It All - Abba
16. Big Brother UK TV Theme - Element 4

The End. Finito.

2005-08-05T14:27:00.000+01:00

Well there we have it my little fluffy Big Blogger viewers. The end of Big Blogger 2005. No it is - honestly. Who said 'thank God?'

It's been a Long and Winding road, it's been a Helter Skelter, it's been Back to the USSR and it's been a Yellow Submarine. There really have been many ups and downs, and I'm not talking about Girls mattress. There have been many peaks and many troughs and lots of tears shed and hugs given - from the very first week when Peter threw one toy too many, landing on Big Bloggers head to the last week when Mike was under investigation in a music for votes scandal.

We've seen the walkouts, we've seen eviction controversy, we've seen the very start of the wibble phenomenon, heck we've even seen pools full of pimms, inventions and extinct birds. How did we all pack it in?

I know, I know. Please don't cry, but good things always come to an end. Didn't your disciplinarian primary school teacher beat that into you after you'd won the egg and spoon race aged 6? No? Just me then. Again.

For all those worried about how they will manage to live their lives fully without their daily Big Blogger fix, Little Blogger and I have set up a premium rate phone line for all you refresh clickers out there desperate for more.

Big Blogger must really patronise and commend all blogmates for the quality of all their posts. 348 of them to be precise, it's kept Big Blogger and his harem entertained on the quiet nights in. And what nights they were. There really has been some outstanding contributions. The last week especially has seen some top quality responses to Little Bloggers, frankly, evil task.

Big Blogger also must thank Little Blogger for stepping into the breach over the past few weeks.

But enough about me, lets talk about me.

What are we waiting for?

The results. Well the worst kept secret in blogland is just about to be revealed.

All 4 remaining blogmates passed this weeks task with flying colours. All 4 of them wrote 7 posts in 7 days and they all managed to keep off each others territory - 28 different posts about the number 7. So no extra points for anyone effectively as all the bonus points were cancelled out.

So in 4th place with 5% of the popular vote is the sassy NML.

In 3rd place with 17% of the popular vote is (the other) Alan. Now to be renamed as THE Alan.

In 2nd place is Dial-up Mike with 22% of the popular vote.

And the inaugural winner of Big Blogger 2005 is everyones favourite expat drawing machine, ladies and gentlebeings I give you Vitriolica.

*fights to be heard through the rapturous applause*

And that's Big Blogger 2005. Big Blogger will be in touch with all blogmates to give them the address of which to send their prizes. If they would all like to make their way to the diary room to be grilled and seasoned by the Littlest Blogger.

And that's it from me.

Remember the date: 5th August 2005 - it's the date you'll remember for wishing that you were somewhere else

Stay safe. Don't have nightmares. And don't forget to tune in next year for Big Blogger 2006.

Lots of hugs

Biggity Blogger.

Go home. There's nothing more to see.

#7: seven things to bear in mind when casting your vote, if you haven't already done so.

2005-08-05T12:32:00.000+01:00

1. I have written all of this week's "seven" posts whilst on holiday, on an ancient laptop which takes ages to boot up, with a dodgy screen which keeps flickering on and off, and using a rather erratic 38.6k bps dial-up connection which frequently stuffs up for no reason, sometimes forcing a complete re-boot. As a result, and because there is only so much torture that one can reasonably put oneself through, I have been forced to abandon my own blog , which hasn't been updated for nearly a week. I feel that this demonstrates my ~~desperate urge to win~~ selfless commitment to the project.

2. The last time that I came first in anything was in 1974, when I won the school Scripture prize; and so, thirty-one years later, it would be wonderful to savour the sweet scent of victory just one more time.. You have it in your power to grant me that simple wish. Is that too much to ask for?

3. Vitriolica has been streets ahead in the poll all week. As the current runner-up, this makes me the Plucky Underdog - and we all know how important it is to support the Plucky Underdog, right?

4. In the last week or so, Vitriolica's blog has been bigged up by both the BBC and the Guardian. Naturally, I am thrilled for her. But consider this: hasn't she now had her time in the sun? Does she really need yet another accolade? And isn't it time to make way for fresh blood?

5. Yesterday, my own blog (Troubled Diva) was granted its first ever mention in the print version of one of our national daily newspapers, as part of a two-page spread ("Citizens of the internet") in The Independent, and in the illustrious company of other famous online diarists such as Boris Johnson, Barbra Streisand, Moby, Jamie Oliver, Salam Pax, Belle De Jour, Gillian Anderson and Rosie O'Donnell. However, the two paragraph quote that was lifted from the blog was not actually written by me at all, but by... guess who? Yes, that Vitriolica woman! Again! All of which left me with an authorial credit of "Anonymous Woman". HELLO! MY NAME IS MIKE, AND I AM A FULLY BE-PENISED AND BE-TESTICLED GEEZER! There is one way, and one way only, of writing this great wrong, and I think you know what I'm talking about.

6. Didn't I make you laugh, with my laconic, self-deprecatory wit and easy facility with the well-placed bon mot? Didn't I make you cry, with my heart-rendingly honest "confessional" pieces? Didn't I let you into my heart, as we shared our hopes and fears? Wasn't it good? Wasn't it fine? Isn't it madness that you can't be mine? Was I not fragrant?

7. What, am I to be allowed just one more point? But which shall it be? That I completed all my tasks on time? That I played fair with the voting, not casting multiple votes and not pimping for them on my own blog? Or should I perhaps remind you of those helpful "Davina-Mike" summaries, which explained the wibble of the first few weeks? Or how about my principled (if doomed) rooftop protest, which added gaiety to the nation in those early weeks? But, no. My last point shall be this: I may not be able to draw pretty pictures, but I do wear the most sublime hats.

Have I said too much? There's nothing more I can think of to say to you. But all you have to do is look at me to know...

...that every word is true.

Ciao, kittens. It's been real.

Blogger

2005-08-05T12:01:00.000+01:00

Well this is it then. Big Blogger draws to a close.

Fifteen of us entered the house just two months ago, and now we have been whittled down to four, and by this afternoon we will have been whittled down again to ~~Vit~~ one.

But there is one more post to go. My seventh and final post on the subject of the number seven. What topic will I choose. Well, for me this one was a no-brainer.

You see, of the four folks left in the house, I am the babby, in blog-terms at least. Mike has been at this game since Jesus was a boy, and Vit and NML have both been thrusting their thoughts and opinions on the world for over a year now. But I’m just a simple newcomer, pleased to have been able to hold my own in such august company.

Because my blog has been running now for just…..

….wait for it, wait for it….

Seven Months!

(Actually six and a half, but we’re going to say seven for the purposes of this post and if you don’t like it, well tough titty and yah boo sucks to you!)

And seeing as everyone else has been busy making lists, in a final act of shameless self-promotion I give you…

My Seven Months of Blogging

Month 1 - My book was published on 7th February. A signed copy of it will shortly be winging it’s way to ~~Vit~~ the winner of this competition, where it will undoubtedly sit gathering dust on the shelf until ~~she~~ they decide to hawk it on ebay. I ranted for the first time (but nowhere near the last) about British public transport, wrote an obituary for one of my all-time heroes Arthur Miller, and celebrated, as a former hunt saboteur, the introduction of the fox hunting ban into Britain.

Month 2 – I began tracing my family history and introduced everyone to my friend and fellow mountaineer Grania Willis who was about to set out on an attempt to climb Mount Everest. I wrote another obit for another hero, this time Dave Allen, and was hoping things didn’t really go in threes like my mum always said they did. I went climbing in the highlands and posted some photos of me on snow covered mountains. I ranted about public transport again. Then I posted some nice photos of Edinburgh and for some reason that seems to have been the turning point which started to bring me some regular readers.

Month 3 – Began rather well with me being invited to speak at a conference in Baltimore next year, and asked if I would agree to be interviewed on camera for a documentary feature while I was there. I introduced everybody to my family through the medium of casting the movie of my life. I posted my obligatory list of things you probably didn’t know about me, and got all excited because Zoe left a comment on one of my posts! The pope died and I decided it was all my fault. I went to the dentist. My mum came to visit and tell me all the things that are wrong with the way I live my life. I decided to go on a diet.

Month 4 – This began with my threatening to have colonic irrigation and telling an exciting story about climbing mountains and runny poo. A few days later began what would become the bane of my blogging existence. I wrote a post about Paula Radcliffe pooing on the London Marathon. I still get at least five visitors a day googling on that search string. This Monday Graham Norton mentioned the incident on his program and within ten minutes I had received 20 hits from people searching on it. Will they ever just give it a rest??? I ranted about public transport. Again. There was a little matter of a general election. A bizarre Hungarian female came to stay for a few days and didn’t leave for a month, and I met a whole bunch of bloggers in a pub in Edinburgh, among them two of my fellow Big Bloggers.

Month 5 – I met another fellow blogger, this one all the way from France! My friends Sam and Ann-Marie come to stay while cycling from Lands End to John O’Groats, precipitating the departure of the bizarre Hungarian. Grania Willis reached the summit of Everest (as the aforementioned Sam had done one year earlier). I ranted about public transport. No surprise there then. I discovered that one of my photos had been published in a Chinese newspaper. Then I ranted about public transport again.

And the big news of the month, as a last minute replacement, I entered the Big Blogger house!

Month 6 – I began a series of reports on the G8 protests in Edinburgh. As a consequence, I got detained under a section 60 order and became an enemy of the state. The post in question was quoted on the Channel 4 news website. More rampant egomania ensued. My G8 posts came to a crashing halt when bombs started exploding in London. I took my daughter to a rock festival and began to realise what an old fart I am.

Month 7 – I sit quietly and await the result of Big Blogger. May the best ~~Vit~~ blogger win!

sete variedades de treta

2005-08-05T11:56:00.000+01:00

This final week of Big Blogger... what a whirlwind! Golly. I'm exhausted. And I'm supposed to be translating something REALLY boring this week. So it was a welcome distraction. And I'd better do it today. Cos this girl doesn't like REAL work. She likes writing twaddle and peddling it to the blogosphere. I think we could safely call it "wibble".

So let me take this as an opportunity to give you "The Guided Tour To Vit 'n' Madge Stylee Wibble"

Type 1. The Half Truth Approach. The Seven Chicken Women. Wibble based on real stones somewhere in the world, I dunno where, maybe in Portugal, maybe in Outer Mongolia. However the bit about the Portuguese being desperately socially aspirational and their taste for chicken was entirely true.

2. The Desperate Internet Search for something to do with Seven and Portugal Approach. Seven Groans. Thankfully yielded true, though legendary, if that's possible (true AND legendary?), results. Even the "photograph" was genuine.

3. Iconoclastic Rant against Great Literary Hero in Contemporary History After Very Helpful Email From Parents Suggesting Some "Seven" Topics Approach. Seven Years, Seven Days. Well, how they remember these little tiny quotes from bloomin' Jane Austen books is a mystery to me, but I am very grateful for the mystery.

4. The Cheese Approach. Seven Brides, Seven Brothers. Find something really cheesey and take the piss out of it. Easy.

5. Overdose on Coffee and Small Children and Stress And Invent Something Extremely Silly Approach. Seven Symbols. Well, all I can say is, turn around so you've got your back to the screen, bend over and look through your legs. Read what it says. :)

6. The O-Crap I can't think of a Thing, Draw A Silly Picture and Make Up Some Old Twonk as You Write It Based on the Picture. Seven Flames. So, I have a Bulgarian cleaning lady. And she went on holiday yesterday. That much was true.

7. The Hopeless Nice Person Underneath the Awful Liar Approach. Seven Varieties of Crap. I just can't tell complete fibs for long (we all remember the Quarsan suing Zoë debacle don't we?.... half an hour of emails of solidarity to Zoë and I couldn't take it any more and came clean. Still, it was bloody funny...but I'm still making it up to Keith)... so I have to come clean so that no-one is in any doubt that the Seven Chicken Women of Migalha (Migalha means Crumb) do not in any way exist and that the runes in Marwood are just a good excuse for me to put rude words on the screen upside down.

sete chamas

2005-08-04T23:48:00.000+01:00

I was talking to my Bulgarian cleaning lady this morning, before she abandoned us for a whole month to go home to Bulgaria, and I was explaining to her what this Big Blogger thing was all about. Our conversations are all held in Portuguese, so an awful lot of what I say gets lost and an awful lot of what she says gets lost, but we stumble through our two mornings a week and I haven't yet accidentally instructed her to burn the house down (I'm really REALLY bad at telling people what to do in any language).

Anyway, I tried to explain that I had to write a post ("Vot iss a post?") about the number seven ("VY? I'm nott seeink ze point of zizz Big Poster Blogger Seven zink"... okay I'm paraphrasing... well, do YOU understand Portulgarian?) and she got rather irritated that I was trying to tell her about this while she was melting all the elastic in all the household knickers with the iron (I have told her a dozen times not to iron the knickers, because it's mad and she agrees, and says, "Zose bluddy portugese, zey are SO mad and wanna iron everyzink, because zey zink zey knows everyzink and, you knows, zey don't, zey mad and rheally shnobbs" but still she irons the knickers) and as I got the message that she was irritated I started to leave ze room... when she suddenly plonked the iron down on my knickers (on the IRONING board, not ME) grabbed my arm and said "SEFEN!"

"SEFEN!" (take that para break like one of those ad breaks you get on US tv shows, but where we don't put ads in, so it fades out on a minor cliffhanger, only to fade straight back in again on the same cliffhanger, thereby duplicating the cliffhanger... ... ... or is that just me?). "I got a story for yous, iz very old bulgarian story and is very cute... you lizzen."

(I'm going to paraphrase this in straightforward English, portulgarian is too tiring)

"There were once two elephants and they ran away from some gypsies who were taking them to sell to a circus.

"It was winter and the elephants were very cold and hungry and didn't know where they were going to get their next meal... for as you know, elephants need a lot of food every day or they die real quick!

"After three days, they had eaten only snow from the forest floor and were getting very weak.

"They were desperately cold and though they had blankets, they only covered small parts of their backs. They saw a clearing in the forest which was big enough for them both to sit it... don't forget, they are elephants, they are big blokes.... and sat down. They felt that they were going to die there from the cold, so they said their goodbyes to each other and both lay down. As they lay down, the SEVEN (see.. I told you it was about a seven, didn't I, honestly you inglish, so impatient) trees that surrounded the clearing broke at the same time, collapsing and making a hut over their heads. The trees were fruit trees and as they fell, seven different fruits fell down, enough to give them their strength back. And as they broke, the splinters from the trees started a great fire, enough to keep them warm till the morning.

"But the elephants wanted to cook the fruit, so they chucked it all straight on the fire. The fruit put the fire out. The elephants died of the cold.

"They say that the moral of this story is that you must never count on an elephant to make the right decision."

I politely smiled, said thank you and went off to do something else.

# 7 - Loser

2005-08-04T21:50:00.000+01:00

I've been tapping my fingers wondering what the hell I should write about for my last post. This seven mallarky and the rules that surrounded has meant that rather than risk doubling up on a subject, I've pumped out lists with gusto. Figuring I might as well stay true to form, and confident that it doesn't mean jack anyway, my last list will be in honour of losing, which is what 3 people will do in this game, and what 1 person moi, can for the final, call herself 'Loser'. (I'm singing Becks 'Loser' to myself as type this!)

Fortunately I've had more experiences of winning than I have of losing, but I'm a firm believer that in order to appreciate what you have and what you've won, you must experience losses. How do you know what it feels like to win, if you've never truly lost?

Fortunately, I have several experiences of losing:

1. I was in the final 20 for a girl band that actually never made it (female version of a famous boy one). It wasn't because I couldn't sing (on the contrary I must add) but because they'd already picked the winners anyway. Before it had started. I kid you not - I was one of the people that they approached to audition weeks before hand but I refused with my naive and honorable self and said that I would audition with the rest of them at the proper time. My poor little 16 year old heart was gutted. My ma was delighted as she didn't want me doing a duff 'career'!

2. I was runner up for an art competition on the long defunct Childrens Channel. I was delighted when my name came on the screen across England and Ireland, but I'm still bloody livid at the fact that my prize (I think it was about 25 videos) has never arrived. Where is my prize you f*ckers? Hee hee...

3. I came second in a decent sized karaoke competition back home in Dublin (not liking this runner up theme) belting out my favourite Killing Me Softly by The Fugees. It killed me softly to watch the £500 get handed over.....

4. I have lost at countless games of strip poker....

5. I came runner up to my brother in another art contest. I was a gracious loser and didn't wack him about the head with the Girls World.

6. I came second in the 100m sprint at the Community Games (like Dublins little Olympics) when I was about 12. And 13. I took up social smoking at 14 and funny enough, I lost my interest in sprinting around about then.

7. And of course I couldn't forget Big Blogger. Fortunately I don't take these things to heart! I have told my knight in shining armour and one of my bezzy blogmates Alan, and also Mike (sweetie) that I've been half tempted to pack it in as it can feel like peeing against the wind (never tried it myself). Actually that's not what I said to them at all! It has been quite good fun and I met some really lovely people in here and had a lovely flirtation with Little Blogger. You can't ask for more really. Well actually, you could, like winning, but the best person has won/is winning and it has been a delight to look at her illustrations and be entertained by her.

Seven Things To Say Goodbye To

2005-08-04T21:28:00.000+01:00

I've been told that I need to either remove or completely cut a number of things out of my diet today by my doctor in an attempt to aid my immune system. Naturally, I can find seven of these things. How handy.......

#1 Chocolate - Are they mad? I nearly wept when she said it. It's not that I eat it all the time, after all, I'm only lickle, but seriously, has my doctor lost her marbles? The thought of not eating a Mars/Galaxy/Twirl/Terry's Chocolate Orange...I'm swooning. Oh f*ck - How am I going to wrestle the big boxes of Quality Street and Roses off my brothers at Christmas time?

#2 Dairy Products - Fortunately I had already cut down my dairy intake but what about my refound love for a lovely cup of medium milky tea? She asked me what I had for breakfast this morning. 'Well I forgot my banana...so I got scrambled eggs on granary toast...' Yeah, that's got to go too. Something about hormones and all sorts of weird things in dairy

#3 Meat - Well, actually I'm only allowed to have it once a week. Now all I can think about is tucking into a big juicy steak every day.....

#4 Fizzy drinks - I don't drink them that much but I did become a coke fiend when I went to Sharm el Sheik a few weeks ago. Despite being at a 5 star place, the mineral water tasted as if someone had drunk it, swished it around in their mouth...and spat it back in the tank. I became addicted to coke and loved the feeling of the cola, coursing through my veins.

#5 Alcohol - I have completely cut down my alcohol intake after being on steroids for a year, so keeping it down won't be hard.

#6 Junk Food - Fortunately I'm not a junk food fiend but I have had the occasional sneaky McD's (desperation I swear) and Nando's (does that count?) However this does include biccies and crisps. Sweet baby Jesus and the orphans - what the hell am I supposed to live on?

#7 Sex - Well I haven't been getting that on the regular for ages so why change the habit of the year. Just joking......I could probably do with some more of it to 'boost' my immune system. I do have to avoid cooked oils, processed food, and most of the things I like on top of the other things I've mentioned though.

I popped into the shop when I left the doctors, and when I got on the bus I polished off a small bag of Maltesers. It was just to make me feel better!

#6: seven reasons why i don't want a dog (in the face of enormous pressure from my partner)

2005-08-04T20:40:00.000+01:00

My partner seems to be labouring under the delusion that any dog he buys will be as bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, perfectly formed and lovably sweet-natured as either a) a Crufts finalist or b) an Andrex puppy. To my mind, such over-inflated expectations rather resemble those of the lardy-looking ordinary bloke who assumes that his next girlfriend will look like a supermodel.

(Not that I am for one minute suggesting that my beloved is either a) lardy-looking or b) an ordinary bloke. But the comparison stands.)

Indeed, this whole romanticised notion of dog ownership strikes me as bordering on the delusional. Here are just seven of my many (so far doomed) attempts to prick his bubble. If you can think of any more good ones, then please let me know; it will all be grist to my mill.

1. As someone who values his personal space, and who is not much given to over-demonstrative displays of emotion (at least not since he stopped chucking empathetic catalysts down his neck on Saturday nights), the last thing I need when I walk through the door is some great hairy lump jumping up and slobbering all over me, with all that disturbingly limitless love and affection. I prefer such emotions to be subtly, tacitly, economically conveyed. Also, I prefer it when love is earnt, rather than arbitrarily assigned to whoever you happen to be sharing a roof with.

2. I like things to be clean and tidy. Call me prissy, but piss and shit are not my friends. Call me shallow and materialistic, but I derive a genuine sense of spiritual well-being from possessing furniture which has not been chewed up at the edges, and which doesn't carry the faint whiff of miscellaneous canine secretions. I also have no wish to put our contemporary ceramics collection into permanent storage; and all things being equal, I'd quite like to be able to carry on wearing black. (And let's not even start to think about the piss-stains on the lawn.)

3. I value a certain spontaneity in life; or at least the sense of freedom which springs from knowing that spontaneous acts are always possible. I therefore do not want to have to worry about getting home to put the dog food out, or having to trek off to the kennels before jumping on the train. This boy's style is not for cramping.

4. I don't do early mornings at the best of times. Still less would I be prepared to do early morning "walkies". In the pissing rain. With a "poop scoop" and a plastic bag. In fact, I would be hard pressed to think of a more perfect definition of human misery and degradation.

5. They do have this awkward habit of getting ill and then dying on you: a tragic, pitiful, agonisingly drawn out ordeal which will leave you grieving for months. So why sign yourself up for such misery in the first place? It's like a contract for heartache, and I'm just not buying into it.

6. I have a basic difficulty in forming a meaningful connection with any living creature who cannot communicate in coherent sentences. "Ooh, she knows what you're thinking." Bollocks she does. What if I'm mentally running through the UK chart positions of the Pet Shop Boys, in chronological order? I have the same issue with children under the age of seven. Once I can hold rational conversations with them, then we get along fine. But until then, spare me your sentimentality.

7. The deal-breaker, and the only argument which sticks: we both work in offices during the daytime, where dogs are not allowed. Tell me: what kind of cruel, selfish, heartless bastard would leave a dog all on its ownsome, all day long? Not I! In this respect, I speak as a true animal lover.

The trouble is: he's playing a long game. Whittling down my resistance over not months, but years. Subtly moving the debate on, from jokey repartee (the very idea!) to smiling yet intransigent persistence. In my heart of hearts, I feel my days are numbered. Seven years from now, expect to see me covered in hairs, smelling of shit, and smiling the daft, soppy smile of the convert. "Don't be scared, it means she likes you!"

What an alluring prospect. I can scarcely contain myself. But then, in this brave new world of devil-may-care slovenliness, I won't really need to.

Seven

2005-08-04T15:47:00.000+01:00

What now?

I’ve done the Magnificent Seven, the Secret Seven, the seven Von Trapp chidren, the Seven Wonders of the World and seven notes in a scale. I know what I’m doing tomorrow. So just today then. One more seven. What can it be.

I’ve got it, how about…. just Seven.

I mean, think about it. It’s a pretty impressive number. It pops up all the time, all over the place.

Take a dice for instance. Any two opposing sides of a dice will always add up to seven. Look up in the night sky at the most instantly recognisable constellation, the plough (or great bear), how many stars do you see? That’s right, seven. You’ve got the Seven Sisters of Greek mythology, seven days in a week, the Seven Deadly Sins, sailing the Seven Seas.

Rome was built on seven hills. Actually so was Edinburgh. And Sheffield. But Sheffield never ruled an empire which stretched across the known world.

The world is made up of seven continents. The whole world. You can’t get a much bigger seven than the whole world, can you? And when you come to the end of the world, the Book of Revelations is full of sevens. The seven seals. “And when He opened the seventh seal there was silence in heaven… and I saw seven angels who stand before God and to them were given seven trumpets.” Sevens. Everywhere!

Frank Black recognised the religious significance of seven. “If man is five,” he sang, “and the Devil is six, then God is seven. This monkey’s gone to heaven.” Okay, that’s just complete and utter wibble, but it’s wibble with the number seven in it!

And what about James Bond. Double Oh Seven! If you were writing a book about the world’s greatest super-spy, you’d want him to be number double oh one, wouldn’t you. But not Ian Fleming. Oh no. Seven was the only number good enough for his guy. Although, that said, James Bond would be a pretty crap secret agent in real life. I mean, being able to go into any bar in the world and have the barman say “ah, Mr Bond, vodka martini, shaken not stirred,” is hardly a quality desirable in the world of covert espionage.

Blake’s Seven, Seven of Nine, the Seven Little Foys, the Seven Samurai, Seven-Up, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the list is endless.

So I think we can all agree that seven is a really terrific number. It only remains for me to say, Three Cheers for Seven!!!

The Joys Of Being a Naughty Kid

2005-08-03T20:18:00.000+01:00

I've found that the number 7 yields lists and so I've picked out seven acts that defined my willful, naughty ways as a child.

1. When I was 7, I called my brother a 'c*nt' at the dinner table because he kept teasing me. I have no idea where I heard the word, but I would hazard a guess at the playground because my parents don't say that word and I had no elder siblings to pick up it up from. 'NML!' my mum exclaimed. 'That is terrible thing to say! Apologise right now!' I felt really confused. 'But mum, it's not like I have said anything bad!'. 'NML, what does that word mean?'. 'A black clown.' My parents nearly wet themselves laughing...and then I got sent to bed without my pudding.

2. There was a huge hill around the corner from my house and one day my brother and I took his new BMX to the top of the hill. 'I dare you to ride to the bottom' I said with my hands on my hips like the little madam that I was. When my brother was too scared, I hopped on the bike and rode to the bottom to show him how easy it was. Still looking a bit shaky, he got on the bike and cycled to the bottom and promptly crashed into a lamppost and smashed his front teeth in.

3. The bro and I used to get big hardback story books and slide down the stairs on them. It was a brilliant game and then we got our very young cousin to do it and he sprained his arm, and we got slaps on the bottoms from my grandma!

4. We lived in Zambia for a couple of years and a few years after leaving there, we managed to convince our youngest brother, then 4, that he had been adopted from an African tribe and that his family had requested for him to be sent back to Africa. He got really upset and ran away, or so he thought, but he was only hiding at the bottom of the road. We got grounded for that one!

5. A few christmas's ago, my mum got pissed and was going on about the sofa that she had brought when we were little and she was a single parent. She loved it and was very proud...and nearly had heart failure when we drunkenly told her that we used to turn the sofa over on it's back during our games of make believe.

6. I lost my temper with my brother and walloped him on the head with my Girls World (see pic). When my back was turned he used my mums nail varnish remover on her face and took her eyes off!

7. I was playing kiss chase with the boys at a country club party in Zambia (I was 8) and ran through a gate, ignoring the sign and ended up in a swamp from which I had to be rescued. My punishment: to learn to swim. I always thought that was a silly punishment because you can't swim in swamps!

All By Myself

2005-08-03T19:56:00.000+01:00

I've lived by myself for just over two years after spending the formative years with parents, various flatmates and even a couple of boyfriends. There is a great deal of comfort to be gained from having someone in your home with you and there are unique experiences for me as a result of living on my own.

1. If I'm in bed and hear strange sounds, despite the fact that there's a double lock on the door and I live in a relatively secure building, I freeze under the covers in fear of some mystery bloke who will come in and butcher me after he's got the 28" TV out of the flat.

2. I swallowed something the wrong way (food that is!) once whilst I was on my own in the flat. I was choking for what seemed like an eternity but was probably only a few seconds and there were a few of those seconds where I automatically expected someone to miraculously appear and give me a (gentle but firm) thump on the back. I realised I was going to have to help myself and when I finally got over my choling fit, I thought : Jaysus, what the f*ck would happen to me if I keeled over in this flat?

3. I cry with laughter at TV programmes, films and blogs, whilst lying on the couch on my own. There is a somber moment at the end of the choked tears when I realise that I'm laughing on my own. Then I spoon the icecream or stuff the Haribo Starmix/Galaxy Bar in my mouth and keep laughing.

4. I live in fear of coming back to a smouldering building because I forget to turn the iron off sometimes and there's noone to phone up and say 'Be a love and turn the iron off for me'.

5. I have a bad habit of not closing the blinds properly or forgetting that the curtains are open. I was doing the washing up yesterday morning in my underwear and looked at the window at the people waiting for the 98 bus and thought 'Hmmm, must go and get dressed.....'

6. Nobody wastes as much food as a one person home. No matter what I freeze, I always end up throwing out stuff every week and it galls me.

7. I often go to the bathroom with the door open and have almost forgotten to close it when I have had people around. Oh the shame!

#5: seven stonkers and seven honkers.

2005-08-03T16:38:00.000+01:00

THE STONKERS.

1. Seven Nation Army - White Stripes.

Featuring that seven-note riff: the one which launched Jack and Meg White into mainstream success, and the one for which they will always be remembered.

2. Seven Seas Of Rhye - Queen.

Unrepentantly baroque to the absolute max, this was Queen's first hit - and, for my money, still their best. It was all downhill from here, you know. (I sense I might have lost the Belgian vote at this juncture.)

3. Seven Seconds - Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry, and nobody had better mention Dido or else there'll be big trouble.

I like that bit near the beginning where it sounds as if Youssou N'Dour is singing "Don't f**k me up" - although he's doubtless trying to tell us something extremely Wise and Important and Universally Significant about the nature of our existence. Actually, come to think of it, I have absolutely no idea what this song is supposed to be about - but hey, it sounds suitably anthemic and meaningful, and that's all that matters, right?

4. Seven Days Too Long - Chuck Wood.

"Seven days is too long without you, baby - come on back to me." A plea which is so compellingly, passionately, fervently delivered that - just this once - I am prepared to overlook the grammatical error. Dexys Midnight Runners also recorded it, but Chuck's "Northern Soul" original is the only one you need.

5. Seven Deadly Finns - Brian Eno.

"The first is a freak with a masochistic streak
And the second is a kitten up a tree.
The third is a flirt with a bottle print skirt
And the fourth is pretending to be me."

"The fifth wears a mac and never turns his back
And the sixth never shows his eye-eye-eyes.
But the seventh deadly Finn is so tall and slim
He should have never been with those guys..."

Also contains yodelling. Which is always to be encouraged, I feel.

6. The Magnificent Seven - The Clash.

Located at the precise co-ordinates where punk met funk, white met black, uptown met downtown, art met street, Kingston met Manhattan via Ladbroke Grove, and revolt bled into style. "Brrrbubbllbrrbll! Cheese boiger!"

7. 007 - Desmond Dekker.

I was so glad that the ska revival came along just at the time that I started dancing in public, as there is no move that is easier to learn than the herky-jerky 2-Tone skank. (At halls of residence discos, even the people who didn't normally dance could muster up a shy little bop to this sort of thing.) I saw Desmond Dekker & The Aces live once, sandwiched between Madness and the Go-Go's. Absolutely no memory of whether they were any good or not. But this was.

THE HONKERS.

1. Seven Little Girls Sitting In The Back Seat - Bombalurina featuring Timmy Mallett.

We all remember their immortal rendition of "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini", but everyone always forgets Bombalurina's other hit. Can't imagine why.

2. 7 - Prince and the New Power Generation.

It was around this point (in 1992) that Prince suddenly stopped being a universally acclaimed genius, and turned almost overnight into a tedious, self-indulgent irrelevance with a bloody stupid symbol instead of a name. (And if I had a pound for every dud album thereafter that purported to be a "major return to form", then I'd have, ooh, about twenty quid by now.)

3. Big Seven - Judge Dread.

With lyrics that were judged too naughty for Radio One, Judge Dread chalked up a whole run of unutterably puerile "comedy ska" hits in the 1970s, which presumably sold on their "scandalous" word-of-mouth reputation alone. Sadly, they were about as funny as the "Confessions" films were erotic. A strange decade, the 1970s.

4. Seven Tears - Goombay Dance Band.

A major hit-making force in Germany, if only a mercifully brief annoyance in the UK, no amount of distracting fire-eating stunts on Top Of The Pops could compensate for the total and utter rankness of the track itself. What were you all thinking, Great British Record Buying Public? A strange decade, the 1980s.

5. 7 Days - Craig David.

From Craig David's Livejournal:

Sunday July 31.
Chilled.
Mood: chilled.

Saturday July 30.
Made love.
Mood: still horny!

Friday July 29.
Made love.
Mood: very, very horny.

Thursday July 28.
Made love.
Mood: very horny.

Wednesday July 27.
Made love.
Mood: horny.

Tuesday July 26.
Took her for a drink.
Mood: mildly inebriated.

Monday July 25.
Met this girl.
Mood: proper bo!

Painful to admit it, but I actually liked this one at the time. Sometimes, perspective can be a bitch.

6. Sailing On The Seven Seas - OMD.

They had stopped being interestingly arty a long, long time before this one creaked out of the starting gates. Forgotten it already, have you? There's a reason for that.

7. Seven And The Ragged Tiger - Duran Duran.

Oh, take those rose-tinted glasses off this instant! Duran Duran were always a bit crap, and you know it. "Union Of The Snake" my arse!

sete símbolos

2005-08-03T13:57:00.000+01:00

I grew up in Devon (not Sunny Devon, North Devon), the most beautiful county in the world and when I'm rich enough (hahahahahahahahahahaha) I'm going back there to live for six months of the year.

Anyway, for most of my time there we lived in a valley which was overlooked by a small parish church. My parents still live there. Behind the church, right at the back of the graveyard (a graveyard I used to have to walk past in the dark with a sadistic little sister who thought it funny to say *boo*) is a tiny ruin. No-one is sure of its origins. It seems to be a viking relic, though it is believed that the vikings never quite made it as far as North Devon, especially our little out of the way village. The ruin really only consists of a few stones on top of some foundation stones, but it is discernibly a small house or hut for worship purposes and there are a few carved rune-like inscriptions worn to nothing over the one and a half thousand or so years that the stones have been there.

A couple of years ago, the vicar was pulling down some overgrown bramble bushes along the edge of the graveyard when his foot fell through a hole in the ground. He discovered a tiny vault underneath the ruined hut, which ran from the hut and along the hedge and a bit into our hilly garden. It was immaculate as it seemed to have been completely sealed for all those years, not even any spiders webs or dust. It is really just a tunnel, with a beautifully simple but clever vaulted ceiling, only high enough for a small child to stand in. It has since been sealed up again, to preserve it, with hundreds of visitors expected to visit it in the years to come, but there is a piece of reinforced glass over one portion of the vault, where its only piece of decoration is sited, an inscription of seven characters, of which no-one knows the meaning. They are reminiscent of both viking and celtic cultures and are finely carved into the Devon granite.

The vicar has written to several Scandinavian, Celtic and British historical societies with a photo of the inscription to see if they know what it might mean, but he is still waiting to hear back from any of them.

The Marwood Vault Runes

Sharps and Flats

2005-08-03T09:38:00.000+01:00

Me me me me me me me me!!!

Sorry, no I haven’t become even more of a self-obsessed egomaniac than I already was. I’m doing my vocal warm ups. Excuse me.

Me me me me me me me me!!!

Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do!!!

Why are there seven notes in a scale? I mean, who decided?

There’s no specific reason for it. There could be as many as you want. I mean, effectively there are twelve, if you include the sharps and the flats. And those are bloody confusing when you are learning to read music. You see a note on one of the five lines, forget the key signature at the beginning of the line, play it standard rather than as a sharp and end up with one of those horrible duff notes that means you have to stop playing and start from scratch. Why can’t there just be twelve notes, each with their own place on the stave, and then there would be no confusion.

And why the hell are there five lines on the stave anyway? Seven notes, five lines. What bloody genius thought that one up???

Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do

And why does the alphabet have to be in that particular order. Have you ever thought about that. Millions of children every year learn how to say their ABC. Would the world fall apart if they learned it ACB instead? Wouldn’t it make sense to change it now to something which would help us remember their positions on a keyboard? After all, hardly anyone ever picks up a pen and writes these days anyway.

Or maybe we could put all the most commonly used letters at the start and the least common ones at the end. I mean X and Z are there already, but they’ve got Y in between which is quite handy, so why don’t we move Q up there instead? Kids tend to learn the letters starting from the beginning, so if we did it that way, they’d know all the really useful ones first and would be much quicker to figure out how to put them to use.

There are some of these things that make sense. We work our numbers in a decimal system because we have ten fingers. (Well actually eight and two thumbs but let’s not get pedantic here.) But at some point, someone just decided that there would be 26 letters in the alphabet, and that this would be the order they would go in. There’s no actual logic to it, it’s totally arbitrary.

But really, it’s those seven notes in a scale that bug me the most. Seven notes. Plus five sharps and flats, because A sharp and B flat are actually the same note but there are rules about when you call it one and when you call it the other, and about whether you actually mark it as a flat or use a key signature at the beginning of the stave, and it just seems like whoever decided how music would be annotated decided that they would make it as bloody confusing as humanly possible just to make themselves seem really really clever because they could understand it all and no other bugger could.

What note do you get if you drop a piano on a parade ground.

A Flat Major! Boom Boom!

sete noivas, sete irmãos

2005-08-03T08:49:00.000+01:00

Those were the days. The nineteen fifties.

When men were men (unless they were gay and feared prosecution and persecution) and girls were girls (unless they happened to get pregnant out of wedlock and got sent to "homes" to have their babies, be treated like dirt then have the babies taken from them) and the whole world knew where it was (either in fear of being invaded by the Americans or the Commies).

When "open-mouthed" kissing wasn't allowed to be shown in films (and I spent my entire childhood thinking that that strange dry but overly passionate kissing they did was an acceptable part of sex) and it was still good to be seen as wholesome in the public eye (otherwise McCarthy would come and get you).

When women had 13" waists (and squished innards) and men still dressed like men, even when they were dressed as pirates... with manly chests (did you ever see those flabby things they called manly in those days?) and shirts tucked into tight trousers was still cool (and the big man bottoms that went with them).

And when political correctness (other than of the anti-pinko sort) hadn't even been dreamt of and it was acceptable to make a film where the nice wholesome characters, (farmboys, ruddy, with ginger hair... was that REALLY desirable, even in the fifties?) decided to get themselves some women by copying the Romans' rape of the Sabine women (that could only be a Tarantino or Scorcese flick these days).

Ah. the fifties. Ah, Howard Keel and his big bottom and pencil moustache (though no-one could top Errol Flynn or David Niven for the pencil moustache). Ah, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

#4: twenty questions. (an interactive post)

2005-08-02T17:18:00.000+01:00

Who or what am I?

Hint: The answer has seven letters.

Please deposit your questions in the comments box.

Each commenter may ask a maximum of three questions.

1. Are you living? (Megan)

It's a moot existential point. Some would say yes; others would say no. But I'm reluctantly going to have to say... no. (Heh, that's got 'em foxed...)

2. Are you a blogger? (Lost)

Yes. (Uh-oh...)

3. Have you been blown up recently only to be resurrected a few days later? (Vitriolica)

(Oh CRAP. My partner still hadn't guessed the answer after twenty questions, having got himself tied up in the most almighty existential/metaphysical muddle. I thought this was going to be TOUGH...)

The answer is yes, of course.

4. oooo I know I know.... Quickos! Do I get a prize? (Lost)

Is the RIGHT answer.

(Ah well, there you go. Look, it worked in rehearsal!)

#3: Where are they now? We catch up with seven of the former Big Blogger housemates.

2005-08-02T16:26:00.000+01:00

For Grocerjack, Big Blogger was an ordeal that he is trying to forget. "It was awful!" he says. "All the noise, the constant activity, the blatant showing-off... I knew by Day Three that I had made a terrible mistake. Now, all I ask is to be left alone, away from the public eye, so that I can resume a normal life." But life has not always been easy for the reclusive shopkeeper. "I keep getting stopped in the street, by people who recognise me from the show. They all seem to want something from me - like I'm public property. Why can't they just leave me be? I'm even thinking of leaving the country for a few weeks, until the fuss dies down. So you can put that camera down right now, do you hear? Now, out of my shop!"

"Not lying. "Evict me!" Who can forget that immortal moment when Peter stood up to the might of Big Blogger, sacrificing his place in the house as he did so? Certainly not the thousands of people who voted it their favourite moment ever, in Channel 4's recent Top 100 Reality Blogging Moments Of All Time. ("It was, like, he's not! And then he did! Mental!" - Vernon Kay.) And for Peter, the phone has hardly stopped ringing since, as the media offers have come pouring in. "Such a giddy whirl," he smiles. "You couldn't make it up!" At the time of writing, rumours that Peter will be replacing Natasha Kaplinksy on BBC1's breakfast show could neither be confirmed nor denied.

It's the "must-have" gadget that has been flying off the shelves this summer: Clair's revolutionary (and totally organic) cat/toast cocktail shaker has taken the country by storm, with reports of scuffles breaking out at department stores as desperate punters squabble over the rapidly dwindling stock. A shrewd businesswoman, who looks set to become blogging's first ever millionaire, Clair now admits that her sole reason for entering the Big Blogger house was to promote her invention. "Winning was never my intention", she explains. "Getting the product to market while the recognition factor was still high, in order to maximise the return on my initial outlay, was always paramount."

Another former housemate who has successfully capitalised on his experience is the ever-controversial Dr Rob, whose self-help manual Wibble And Win! is now into its third print run in as many weeks. With his groundbreaking "Wibbling Workshop" support groups springing up in every major city, demand for the Doctor has been high - despite the growing groundswell of opposition to the movement. ("A duplicitous charlatan" - Germaine Greer. "Total crap!" - Julie Burchill.) When approached for a "soundbite" quote to accompany this piece, Dr Rob insisted that all of his remarks should be printed in full; regrettably, for reasons of space, we have been forced to excise his contribution.

For the past few weeks, it has been impossible to open a newspaper or periodical without encountering yet another opinion piece by Vicus Scurra, slamming the whole "reality blogging" phenomenon. ("Erudition shunned: why a learned gentleman had no place amidst the caterwauling vulgarity of the Big Blogger house." - Daily Telegraph. "This witless bedlam must cease!" - The Spectator. "I have seen Armageddon, and it has a comments box." - The Catholic Herald.) Speculation as to the income generated by these pieces has been rife, but reports have been emerging that Scurra will be seeking fees "in the region of five figures" on the after-dinner lecture circuit.

Despite the success enjoyed by so many of the housemates, Lady Luck has not smiled upon all of them. The case of The Girl has been particularly distressing, with the abrupt cancellation of various lucrative "glamour" modelling contracts (including the front covers of FHM, Maxim, Nuts and Zoo) in the wake of some shocking revelations from members of her family. ("STILL A VIRGIN! BB'S SAUCY GIRL RAPPED BY OWN MUM." - The Mirror. "A DEVOUT CHURCHGOER WHO IS SAVING HERSELF FOR HER WEDDING NIGHT" - Daily Mail. "KILLJOY GIRL KEEPS TITS UNDER WRAPS!" - The Star.)

But perhaps the saddest story of all belongs to Zoe, the former Golden Girl of European blogging, who has been so badly traumatised by her shock eviction from the house that she has started a desperate "Vigil For Justice" outside the offices of the production company, sleeping rough at night and living off donations from sympathetic readers of her weblog. "I know where you all LIVE!", she snarls, before taking another hefty glug from her third bottle of Piat D'Or. "And I'm coming to get you, each and every one... yer BASHTARDS!"

And what fate awaits ~~Vitriolica~~ this year's eventual winner, whoever it might be? Riches or ruination? Immortality or ignominy? Easy Street or Desolation Row? Crowning glory or poisoned chalice? Time alone will tell.

The Hills Are Alive

2005-08-02T08:27:00.000+01:00

There’s a time and a place for Political Correctness.

Ant was lovely. One of those bubbly, over-enthusiastic girls who were politically correct long before political correctness ever existed. One of those girls who liked to jolly everyone along and make sure everything was fair and everyone got a chance even if they not very good at whatever it was they were doing at the time.

She was short, with big curly brown hair and a little bald husband, and she was always cheery and happy and had an improbably posh accent and as with most such people a fearsome temper that you really didn’t want to provoke.

I first met Ant when she was assistant director on a play I was in. She was from Cheltenham, as so many improbably posh people are, a former inmate of Cheltenham Ladies College. Now she was a pillar of the local community, despite being only in her late twenties, and had her finger in all sorts of pies. The Lion’s Club, the Rotary, the Women’s Institute, whatever was on the social calendar you could bet that Ant would be involved, jollying everyone along, making sure everyone got a chance to shine.

Every year she directed the musical for the local am-dram group in the little Cotswold village where she and hubby now lived. And in this particular year in the late 1980’s, that meant The Sound of Music.

Now this was probably around the same time that I met my wife to be and so a little before I decided to give up the acting game and settle down and become a “responsible adult”, a plan which didn’t really work out for me as you might be aware. So I was still struggling along, earning a crust as a computer operator and picking up the odd acting job here and there, and when Ant phoned me up two weeks before her show was due to go on and told me she had just lost her stage manager, I was in a period of “resting” as they call it so was happy enough to jump into the breach.

The Director and the Stage Manager are probably the two most important people in any theatrical production. The actors, well to paraphrase Noel Coward, all they have to do is say the lines and try not to trip over the furniture. The Director is in charge, and is responsible for the look and feel of any production. But their job ends the moment the house goes down and the curtain goes up, and then the Stage Manager is the boss and everything that happens from that moment on is his responsibility.

So it’s important for a good Stage Manager to know the play inside out and back to front. Not just the script, but the particular production. Because Directors, and I speak as one myself, well, we sometimes do bizarre and unusual things. We have odd ideas, you see, and sometimes they can be brilliant, and sometimes they can be just downright stupid. And it is important that when something happens on the stage that doesn’t look like it belongs in the production, that the Stage Manager should know that it was actually a disaster that he has to deal with and not the Director’s brilliant coup de grace that they believed would make their production an unforgettable triumph. And Ant was the type of director who was likely to have more brilliant coup de grace ideas than most.

Therefore the very next evening I was on my way to attend a rehearsal, and of course to meet the cast. I met the woman playing the lead role of Maria, the postulant nun who comes to the Von Trapp residence to look after the seven children and ends up falling for the head of the household. And I met the man playing Baron Von Trapp, the gruff and grumpy Naval officer widower whose heart she melts. And then I met the seven children.

The seven children who together with their stepmother and their blue-blooded, Aryan, blonde-haired and blue-eyed aristocratic father would have to escape from the clutches of the Nazi’s by a rugged crossing of the Alps through high and barely accessible mountain passes.

One of them was black.

One of them was in a wheelchair.

There’s a time and a place for Political Correctness.

7 Habits of Highly Effective NML

2005-08-01T20:10:00.000+01:00

1. SLEEP - The perfect number of hours sleep is 8 but it often hovers at around 7 due to late night shows such as Nip/Tuck, Shameless and Sex and The City. Anything less than 7 and I feel like shite but anything more than 12 and I get a whopper of a headache.

2. SEX (REGULAR NOT SPORADIC) - I am convinced that if I was getting a regular seeing-to that I would be mellower, quieter at work, hence less demanding, and more productive, or at least less of a strain on my poor bosses brain!

3. TIDYING - I have a one bed flat and yet somehow over the course of my working week the place gets covered in discarded shoes and clean laundry. I'm looking at the floor in my sitting room and I can see 8 pairs of shoes and a pair of slippers, 3 handbags, 2 cardigans and a jacket hanging off the back of my dining chair. My weekends zip by in hours of tidying and the time gets sucked up. When my flat is tidy, my head is tidy. Must try harder.

4. BLOGGING - This is surprisingly therapeutic and the only time in my life where I have managed to keep a 'diary' consistently. Blogging keeps me out of trouble (ish) as before I go and act like a complete diva to a bloke, I get the input of lots of people wanting to give their 2 cents. I can sound off ideas and thoughts and it's like having lots of counselors... well wannabe ones.

5. THONGS - For anyone who has worn a thong then you'll know that there hard to forget with the strategically placed thong in the bum cheeks. No fear of me falling asleep at work then! Try wearing one that's too tight...ouch!

6. READING - I love to read and hate reading newspapers on the Tube as you don't get a good dose of a book into you. Reading clears my head and takes me away from whatever is going on around me. It gets my brain whirring and it also winds me down from a hard days work, even when it's a gory thriller. When I'm reading, I don't hear anything around me. I think that books will be my tool of distraction when I'm in my next big relationship....

7. SPEAKING - I don't think I am in any danger of ever going crackers because I don't really hold anything in. I don't have some form of turrets and shout out stuff constantly 'FMB!'; 'Why do men always think they're right?';'Why did I wear those bloody shoes that hurt like f*ck again?' but I don't hold everything in and drive myself crackers. I do vent (I often feel sorry for my poor boss...and the future husband) and despite what I may have led people to think, I can actually articulate how I feel in a calm and reasonable manner. Really!

7 Men to Date... & Let Go Of

2005-08-01T20:09:00.000+01:00

I believe that there are 7 types of men that every woman should go out with before she meets the 'one' that she stays with.

1. Mr Unavailable - He may be there in the physical sense but his head, emotions and heart are parked somewhere down the road, or in another woman's place. No matter how much she begs, no matter how much she pleads, it's just not going to happen. The more distant he is, the more that she fancies him. She'll probably end up near obsessed with the guy but eventually sees sense and move onto pastures new.

2. Mr Pampers - He's so much younger, her friends make constant wisecracks about her going out with a child or at least a guy that seems to have the maturity level of one. He's probably quite attentive but houses, babies and marriage are much further down the agenda and he's not overtly concerned with balancing his chequebook or staying within his overdraft limit. She(should) eventually tire of playing the mummy role and move on to someone who's been nappy trained.........

3. Mr Mum - No, not the type of guy that wants to play mummy, but the type of guy that hasn't let go of mummy. His mum is number one in his life and you play a lowly 1000 in his life. She will try hard to fit into his mothers ideal of the woman he should be with (it doesn't exist but she doesn't realise that) and will eventually tire of his mum patronising her and him not having enough spine to let go of the apron strings.

4. Mr Wallet - He wines, dines you hopefully, if she's into it, sixty-nine's her. Her wallet will very rarely open up and she'll be living it up like there's no tomorrow. He refuses to let her pay for a thing, but he probably doesn't let her have much say in anything else either. Him paying for things means that when he f*cks up, she's not supposed to question it. She'll suddenly start craving a man who's a little less flash with the cash.....

5. Mr Breadline - This one shares some of Mr Pampers characteristics but he can be the same age or older than her, but be living for his 'craft' and it's probably her that picks up the tab. Mr Breadline doesn't always do this and can prove to be a great partner, but it's the ones that take the piss on her time that eventually lead to the demise of their relationship.

6. Mr Sugar Daddy - Maybe he's a father figure or maybe she thinks that being with Mr Sugar Daddy signifies the type of man that seems more than mature and secure enough to entertain her. He keeps her happy for a while but the lack of shared experiences and the feeling that he's treating her like his daughter starts to wear thin.

7. Mr Bastard - He couldn't give two hoots about her and refuses to tell say where he's going, who he's with and often, who's he's having a piece of behind her back. These guys pick up women like there's no tomorrow and often hold onto them too due to the 'bad boy factor'. In this game though, he is one of seven she should try out before getting to the good stuff.

#2: seven deadly sins of blogging.

2005-08-01T17:38:00.000+01:00

Disclaimer: the author has, at one time or another, committed most of these sins himself, and will doubtless do so again. However, we can at least strive for betterment.

1. The dashing of raised expectations. "Wow, I'm really excited: I'm off to see the Snotty Throttlers tonight! Hope it's a good gig!" Darling, we are all positively thrilled for you. Now, would you mind coming back and telling us what the gig was actually like? Or has your fickle little brain already leapt onto the next forthcoming engagement in your enviously packed social diary?

2. Laboriously detailed blow-by-blow transcripts of unsatisfactory telephone conversations with service suppliers. However irksome it must have been to have been stuck on hold for fifteen minutes before being palmed off with another feeble excuse from a call centre dweeb, this does not give you carte blanche to turn into some sort of fearless investigative consumer journalist. ("Today on Mikey's Idiosyncratic Witterings, we EXPOSE the CANCER at the heart of British banking! When will Barclays/HSBC/NatWest SIT UP AND LISTEN?")

3. And, on a similar note: "Last night, I spent TWENTY MINUTES deleting spam comments! When will these SCUM learn? Something must be DONE!" Or in other words: I have suffered for this blog; now it's your turn.

4. Wryly addressing one's audience as "Dear Reader" does NOT confer you with an attractively arch, playfully ironic authorial tone. Now straighten those eyebrows immediately.

5. Those bloody CSS-based table layouts which send sidebars crashing down to the bottom of the page, if you're not browsing at maximum screen size: sort it out, why cantcha? HTML <table> tags might be fearfully passé - but they also have the advantage of actually, you know, working.

6. Similarly, designing blog layouts that look like crap in Internet Explorer, then haughtily abdicating all responsibility on the grounds that the reader should have been using a "proper" browser like Firefox. Listen up, tough-talking crusader against the arrogant might of "Micro$oft" (oh, my aching sides!) - not all of your readers are afforded the choice.

7. Falsely assuming that, just because you've been blogging for two years or more, this gives you some sort of "elder statesman" authority to make superior-sounding pronouncements upon acceptable standards of blogging. Who died and made you queen, Miss Thing?

8. Blogging about blogging, because you can't be arsed to come up with any original content. (See also #7 above.)

9. Not being capable of editing blog postings properly, instead letting them drift on and on, way past their original brief, because once you've started you just can't bear to hit that Publish Post button.

sete anos, sete dias

2005-08-01T17:13:00.000+01:00

"It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others."

Jane Austen "Sense and Sensibility"

Is it just me?

Or do you ever get the urge to go back in time, and kick her in the arse?

Seven times.

I mean. All those little pearls of wisdom. Hundreds of them. Thousands and thousands of words, being all clever about the upper class English human condition in the early nineteenth century. All in that unbearable prissy "oh, I'm so clever, I could faint from all my cleverness with an attack of the vapours on the chaise longue... ai!" And then she goes and gets Colin Firth and turns him into a sex god. How the hell did she do that? It just irritates me. To the bone.

Or maybe it was all just bullshit. Maybe she just made it up as she went along and it just turned out sounding like she knew what she was talking about... (ooh, vit readers, that DOES sounds familiar, doesn't it?)... never thought of that, did you?

Secret

2005-08-01T16:55:00.000+01:00

I was a precocious child.

By the age of two, I’d already pretty much mastered the ABC. And was well on the way to D.

By three years old I knew that this was Janet and that was John. I knew that Janet looked at the dog. And that John looked at the dog. And that the dog looked at Janet. And John. And as for Peter and Jane, I had them licked. Down pat. No more of such childish nonsense for me, I was moving on to the classics. 123 with Ant and Bee.

At the age of four, like so many children who grew up in England, I discovered Enid Blyton. I don’t have the same fond memories of her books that most have, my Blyton period was relatively short. Just a few short years, and then at the age of about six or seven I was introduced by my new best friend Graham to the delights of Biggles, and from that moment all thoughts of wizzo adventures and lashings and lashings of ginger beer were banished from my thoughts.

I don’t think I ever really related to Enid Blyton very well. The England depicted in her books was very different from the one I lived in. Her characters were all upper middle-class, their fathers had important jobs which would take them away to far off places, and the children would go away on camping holidays with a surprising lack of adult supervision, or would be invited to stay at a big country house with a rich uncle. And while there they would get involved in an adventure, be captured by smugglers or pirates and escape to warn the friendly local bobby who would be ever so grateful to them for being so clever. These things never seemed to happen on our council estate.

That’s probably why I was never a big fan of the Famous Five, and why I much preferred their less popular counterparts, the Secret Seven.

The Secret Seven were still impossibly middle-class, but somehow they seemed a bit more normal. They went to school, for one thing. Okay, private boys and girls only schools, but at least they didn’t seem to be on this perpetual holiday. And they had a purpose. They didn’t just stumble across adventures, they went looking for them. They were a secret detective society you see, with secret meetings, and a secret badge, and passwords and codes and everything.

Peter was the leader. He was really bossy and got annoyed when anyone forgot one of the rules. He formed the club with his sister Janet, although she wasn’t second in command because she was just a girl. No, Jack was second in command, even though he kept losing his badge which made Peter very very cross. And then there was Colin, who always seemed to be the one to see something suspicious for them to investigate. And George, who never seemed to do much, as far as I recall, but at least he was one of the club. There were the girls as well of course, Janet, Barbara and Pam, but they were girls and as such, in an Enid Blyton story, they were mainly there to get in the way and be protected by the boys and occasionally think up a scheme for Peter to organise. Oh and there was Scamper the dog. There was always a dog in an Enid Blyton book.

I wanted to be like Peter. I wanted to have my own secret detective club. But when you are four years old and the only people who play with you are your older brothers and the local neighbourhood kids, there really aren’t that many people who want you to make badges for them and boss them around. And there were a surprising lack of adventures you could get yourself into in our part of the world.

But just up behind our house was an overgrown grass area we kids knew as The Wasteland. When I was about eight or nine they levelled it off and built blocks of flats there, but before that, when I was allowed to play, it was the place I always headed for. And in among the overgrown grass and the weeds I had my own imaginary Secret Seven society, and we had the best secret badges and secret passwords and codes ever, and we had the best adventures and solved the most thrilling mysteries.

The only thing missing was the lashings and lashings of ginger beer.

#1: the seven ages of Mike.

2005-08-01T14:54:00.000+01:00

1969: 7 years old.

Obsessed with comics: Sparky, Whizzer & Chips, TV Comic, Beano, Dandy, Cor!, Beezer, Topper. Capable of holding elementary conversations in Finnish, and relatively sophisticated conversations in French. Much time spent with an ever-expanding cast of imaginary friends, many of them middle-aged women: Mrs. Hayfries (pleasant and sensible; husband a bit of a drip, with his cardigan and pipe and all), Mrs. Albertine (sent to prison for hitting a policeman on the head with a rock cake, chucked from her kitchen window), and Mrs. Checkerbocker (who came over from Poland after the war, don't you know). Bit of a crush on Cliff Richard. Favourite TV programmes: Basil Brush ("That's all we've got time for this week, Basil." "But you CAN'T leave him like THAT!"), Crackerjack (CRACKERJACK!), Blue Peter (Val, John & Pete, natch), Wacky Races (yay for the Arkansas Chugabug), Scooby-Doo (bit of a crush on Freddy).

1976: 14 years old.

Obsessive, horribly debilitating crush on a boy in the year below, whom I had to admire from afar because getting too close made me too self-conscious to cope. (Looking back, I think he probably knew, and found it quite sweet, and handled me really rather considerately.) Equally obsessive fascination with punk rock, as also observed from afar via the weekly music press (NME, Sounds, Melody Maker, Record Mirror, National Rockstar). Concentration slipping at school, as the combination of puberty and the long hot summer of 1976 sent my hormones racing. Hideously bad acne; hideously poor personal hygiene and dress sense. Traumatised by my father's rapid courtship and re-marriage, bringing a flamboyant stepmother and three boisterous new step-siblings into my quiet, ordered, fiercely private world. Much time spent in floods of tears: of loneliness, self-pity, bewilderment, inadequacy, frustration, humiliation and despair.

1983: 21 years old.

First boyfriend, chosen simply because I was desperate to have one, and he was the first to ask. All previously cherished romantic idealism flies straight out of the window, as I struggle to cope with his own obsessive nature and overblown, unnervingly intense devotion. As a result, I discover that I have it in me to be something of a cold, hard bastard. Hair died blonde, in a vague attempt to look like Kirk Brandon, and slathered in gloopy fistfuls of Boots "Country Born" hair gel (turquoise and sticky, leaving my hair with the look and texture of dried straw). Wednesday nights at the Asylum, dancing to Blue Monday, Buffalo Gals, Let's Go To Bed. Saturday nights at Part Two, attempting to pull without the aid of my over-sized Trevor Horn glasses (or "cruise shields"), and making some wildly optimistic misjudgements in the process. Move to Berlin in the late summer, ending up in an idealistically communal flatshare with a cheery, easy-going bunch of hippy-ish schoolmistresses, ten years my senior.

1990: 28 years old.

The Social Lynchpin years kick off in earnest, as our pool of friends expands at an almost exponential rate, and our Edwardian terraced semi becomes everyone's favourite weekend hangout and late night bar. Recently promoted at work, to a position of considerable technical responsibility; but the new role is a poor fit for my skills, and I'm finding it a struggle. My partner of five years' standing is spending at least one week in three overseas, as his new job takes him all round the world; our drinks cabinet is bulging from all the duty-frees. The flourishing social life keeps me going in his absence, but adds to his stress when he's back in the country, and craving some personal space between trips. (Some Sunday afternoons, we gaze around the sitting room and wonder how all these people even got here.) Sick of all the Proclaimers jokes, I replace the cruise shields with contact lenses, get a sharp new haircut, and see my stock rise accordingly, becoming quite the belle of Nero's in my Keith Haring T-shirt and white jeans. Apparently, I am a swan. Let's just say that I am not slow to grasp the opportunities which this affords.

1997: 35 years old.

After seven wasted years in a job which I refused to admit that I hated and was no good at, I have shifted sideways; despite the perceived drop in status, I am vastly happier, with a renewed sense of purpose. Two years of intense, full-on clubbing mayhem reach their zenith in the summer; having taken things to their logical conclusion (and several points beyond it), I slowly start to turn the corner. But it's small steps, and it will be quite a while before I give up entirely on those mad Sunday mornings at Trade. With the swanky labels swapped for Ben Shermans, 501s, biker boots, and that petrol blue Schott bomber jacket, I am every inch the card-carrying urban faggot; each issue of Gay Times is studiously ingested from cover to cover, as my sense of gay identity strengthens and deepens - but also, in a wider context, obscures and reduces. I've got big gay blinkers on, and I don't much care.

2004: 42 years old.

Two changes of employer later, I'm travelling extensively in Europe, and understanding for the first time just why my partner found it so stressful, all those years ago. Having mercilessly pruned our social life in the city (barring those decadent, bohemian midweek nights at the Dorothy Parker round table in the local tranny bar), priorities are now firmly directed towards our weekend lives in the country, where a whole new identity is establishing itself. It's no longer the "weekend cottage" bolt hole; it's now a real home, within a real community. A holiday in Peru turns into an endurance test, as a whole sequence of health problems besiege me throughout, and for several weeks thereafter. As the physical problems subside, so mental ones take their place, as I enter my first sustained period of depression since the mid-life crisis of 1999. By the end of the year, I have stabilised; a week of unparalleled, blissful luxury in a magnificently appointed spa resort signals my full recovery.

2011: 49 years old.

Freed from the necessity to earn a regular income, my life has developed and enriched itself in ways which I could never have forseen in the dark, lost, chemically addled years of my thirties. In early middle age (hell, I'm not f**king fifty yet), I have reconnected with those talents which childhood had signalled, and adolescence had buried. Success (as measured on my own terms and nobody else's) is no longer a freaky, unsettling headf**k; I have learnt both to accommodate it, and to build on it. It feels like waking up from a long sleep. Best of all, I have finally shaken off the low-level fatigue which had held me back for years; energies flow easily through me now, both mental and physical. The final vestiges of Neurotic Boy Outsiderism have also fallen away, leaving me able to sup at the table of the great and good without losing my core sense of self. Freed from distracting desires which could never be adequately fulfilled, I pass through life with confidence and purpose, the multiple identities of my past consolidated into a unified whole. The thirty-four inch trousers remain, however, a considerable source of regret.

Sickness is As Sickness Does

2005-07-31T22:19:00.000+01:00

This last task had me a little thrown as I was wondering what the hell I could write about. It's good to write about things that are important to you or going on in your life, so I decided that my first 7 post would be about the biggest headache in my life. I am 'battling' with an illness or what I should actually be referring to as a disease, sarcoidosis. I finished a year long course of steroids just as I started Big Blogger, and since then after a brief period of feeling ok-ish, I am becoming unwell again. So this post is about 7 things about sarcoidosis and me.

1. Walking - the steroids meant that I could bade adios to most of these pains but after a few weeks being steroid free, I started to find that when I get out of bed in the morning, I find it quite difficult to walk for a bit. I have the same difficulty after being in the same position for a period of time.

2. The Lump - I found a lump in my neck on my 28th birthday (28th July) which explains the horrid pain that I have had in my neck for the past couple of weeks. I have since found a lump just below my knee.

3. Arms - I couldn't swim or use the gym after my first couple of days on holiday in Egypt due to excruciating pain in my arms. It suddenly disappeared but has returned again meaning that I wince pretty much every time I move them.

4. Fingers - When I wake up in the morning, my fingers hurt when I move them from my joints being inflamed. Since my neck and arms have got worse, I now have jabbing pains in my fingers.

5. Fatigue - I have felt quite energetic and it's suddenly plummeted. Now there doesn't seem to enough hours in the day for me. The feeling of tiredness is behind my eyes and a general listlessness which has swept over me for the past few days. I had the option to take long term sick due to all of the problems, but I went to work because I think staying off work would have made me feel worse.

6. Weight - During the worst of my illness, pre steroids, my weight plummeted to just over 6.5 stone. I had always been quite small but apparently I just looked very bony. Then I went on the steroids and it shot up to almost 8.5 stone. All of sudden I was super body conscious and I still am, but to a lesser extent as my weight has settled down quite a lot.

7. Eyes - My immune system was attacking my eyes which is how I found out that I was unwell in the first place. If it wasn't for the fact that I kicked up blue murder, my doctors would have kept telling me I had a 'mild eye infection'. I am scared of going blind or having reduced eye sight since this. My eyes are ok now although for some reason I can't read road signs very well at the moment.

sete ais

2005-07-31T15:50:00.000+01:00

I was born in nineteen seventy, which means that seven years later, in nineteen seventy seven, I was seven. And in that year of nineteen seventy seven, I came to Portugal for the first time.

We stayed with some friends who were living here at the time, and they took us on a grand tour of middle Portugal as is customary for expats when we/they get visited from afar. Take them to see “the sights”.

One of the biggest tourist “sights” is the Palácio de Pena, a hideous creation of a twisted mind in Sintra which looks like something Hasbro would create for Barbie in pure unadulterated plastic… a sight well worth seeing.

I can’t find the photo anywhere, so I’ve drawn it from memory, only certain of the bowl haircut that I had at the time and the stripey peppermint dress from clothkits (remember clothkits? Now, THERE’S a thing that should be resurrected). That’s me. At seven. With the Palácio de Pena in the background.

Down the hill from Pena, is another palace, this one much more tasteful. I’ve been lucky enough to have been to a wedding there and it is just gorgeous yum-yum inside. This palace (and the area it is in) is called Seteais.

No-one knows where the name Seteais (pron. Setty-Eyshe) came from, but there’s a legend that a Moorish Princess was held prisoner there, and she died, but just before she died, she let out seven deep and heartfelt cries, known in Portuguese as “ais”.

What the bloody hell did she do that for?

And why would you suddenly name a village or palace after someone's death throes?

Honestly. These things just get made up to fit the bloomin’ answer, don’t they?

Wonder

2005-07-31T09:44:00.000+01:00

Les Gale was a local institution. He’d been headmaster of the C of E Junior School since Jesus was a boy. Everybody loved him and everybody made fun of him. We kids thought his head was shaped like a map of Australia turned on its side. He even had Tasmania hanging off the back.

Les was a good headmaster, and he was determined that his school would be one of the best around. He would run all sorts of events to raise money and managed to get us some of the best facilities in the district, including our own swimming pool. He also organised the cruise every year.

This was back in the seventies, and P&O used to run educational cruises on two ships, the Uganda and the Nevasa. You may remember the Uganda was later used as a hospital ship during the Falklands war. These two ships, which had otherwise reached the end of their useful lives, were converted for carrying groups of schoolchildren during the late sixties. They could carry about 900 at a time on two week cruises which, for many kids of my generation, was our first opportunity to go abroad.

My parents were, well, dirt poor wouldn’t be to strong a word for it. But they were determined that us three boys were going to have the same opportunities in life as everyone else. So as each of our turns came up, they scrimped and saved the money and sent us on the cruise. My eldest brother went on the Uganda to Corruna, Lisbon and Tangiers. My middle brother went on the Nevasa around the Scandinavian countries. But both of those cruises started in Southampton. When it came to my turn it was different.

We were going on the Uganda, travelling around the Mediterranean. We were meeting the ship in Naples. And that meant flying. Which meant more money. I remember to this day. £88 it cost. Sounds daft now, but remember this was 1974, £88 was a heck of a lot of money for a car mechanic and a school dinner lady to stump up. But they managed it, and at the end of February that year, I was on the plane.

It became known as the "falling down buildings" cruise. That’s what we called it. We were making four stops. First in Naples we were going to see Pompeii. Then to Athens, where we would see the Parthenon. Over to the island of Santorini, more ruins. Finally to Izmir in turkey, and the ruins of Ephasus. A fantastic trip for a ten year-old, but really by the end of it we were overloaded on falling down buildings.

Ephasus was going to be the highlight of the trip. They kept telling us this. At Ephasus we were going to see the Temple of Artemis, and that was one of the "Seven Wonders of the World".

We were all quite excited by this. We weren’t totally sure what a "Wonder of the World" was, or why there were seven of them, but the very fact of the word "Wonder" in the title made it clear that it was going to be something a bit special. You didn’t call things "Wonders" for no reason. It would have been different if they’d said it was one of the "Seven Ho-Hum’s of the World", but they didn’t, they said it was a "Wonder".

So first we went round Pompeii. It was pretty cool. I remember entering through that big amphitheatre where Pink Floyd played their concert in that film. I’d love to go back today because, having minored in Greek & Roman Civilization at uni, I would probably appreciate it more. I would understand the layout, and the purpose of the various areas of the town. But as a ten year-old I remember mainly being impressed when they showed us one building and told us it was an ice-cream factory. Pre-historic Ice-Cream, wow! But still, it was nothing compared to a "Seven Wonder of the World".

Athens was cool. We docked at Pireaus, and were taken in a bus into the city where they dropped us off at the foot of the Acropolis, and we walked up through the Propylaea, (not that I knew what it was called back then), and saw the Parthenon. It was big. And I seem to remember a big open space in front of it where a group of us boys tried to have a game of football with a rock. And I was impressed by the half naked ladies holding up the portico on the Erechtheion (again, know the name now, didn’t then!). All very impressive. But still, no "Seven Wonder of the World".

Santorini is a big exploded volcano which has left a ring of islands where the rim once was. The boat dropped anchor in the middle and we were ferried in smaller boats to the harbour. Then there was this huge set of steps you had to go up. Most people did it on mules which you could hire. But not for us kids. Les Gale’s wife had a mule. The rest of us walked. By the time we reached the top we were knackered and didn’t pay much attention to more rocks and fallen down buildings. We were looking forward to our "Seven Wonder of the World" too much.

And so to Ephasus. We ran the gamut of souvenir sellers to get inside. Then we were led round on a guided tour. We would see many great houses and temples we were told. Yeah yeah, what about the "Seven Wonder of the World". And we would see the house that Mary lived in after Jesus died. Hmm, quite impressive, but we wanted our "Seven Wonder of the World." And then we would see the Temple of Artemis. And just as we had been promised, the tour guide told us, this was one of the "Seven Wonders of the World." Yay!

So we saw the great houses and temples. They were fine. Big buildings, a bit grey, mostly falling down. And we saw Mary’s house. It was pretty small. But I guess she was a woman on her own, she didn't need much.

But then came the big moment. Just along this path, we were going to the Temple of Artemis. A "Seven Wonder of the World". The excitement was palpable.

I remember it clearly to this day. We walked along a dirt path, above an incline. At the bottom was this big field. Scattered around the field was a lot of broken rock. In the middle was one white pillar, maybe ten feet high. "It was destroyed during a battle around one thousand seven hundred years ago" we were told.

I never trusted an adult again.

sete galinhas

2005-07-30T10:50:00.000+01:00

Not very far away from where I live, in a region called the Alentejo, is a set of standing stones, known as the Sete Galinha-Mulheres de Migalha (the seven chicken women of Migalha) that for many years were hidden in undergrowth at the edge of a large corn field, until about a hundred and fifty years ago, when they were discovered by a shepherd out looking for a lost sheep.

They are known as the chicken women as they are huddled together in a group as if they are gossiping and some of them have small stones next to them, like eggs, believed to represent children. There are only three eggs left now, as the others have been stolen and there is an official reward offered by the President's office for anyone who finds any of the eggs, as the stones have become an official "tesouro nacional" (national treasure).

There are many standing stones in Portgual, a well known treasure trove for paleolithic archaeology, but these are held in extra high regard by everyone, even worshipped by some "chicken" pagans as they are laughingly called here, as everyone knows (anyone who's ever eaten at Nando's) that the Portuguese love their chicken.

It is widely believed that the national taste for chicken was in part shaped by the chicken women stones, because of a fashion in the 1860s of pilgrimage by upper class ladies to the stones, shortly after their discovery. Previously chicken was regarded as mere peasant food, but the ever socially aspirant Portuguese saw the nobs taking an interest in the chicken stones and started to eat more chicken and chicken related products.

The seven stones are now seen everywhere on egg boxes and chicken packaging and there is even a "Parque da Galinha" theme park and historical centre being built on the other side of the field at the moment (though it is taking a while....they're still waiting for planning permision, in what has become a national scandal with headlines like "let the chickens run free!" and "the eggs are for planting" which don't mean much in English, but you have to remember that the Portuguese have an awful lot more proverbs than we could eve come up with), and there is talk of placing replicas of the chicken stones near several rural towns as talismens for good crops.

And that was your lesson in Portuguse history for today.

Magnificent

2005-07-30T07:21:00.000+01:00

Brad Dexter

As a guy in his early twenties that was the most important name to know. Absolutely vital.

It was all to do with the pub you see. Back in those heady days before marriage and mortgages, back when we still lived with our mums and had our food cooked for us and our clothes washed for us. Life was much less complicated back then. Problem free and hassle free. As long as you could remember the name Brad Dexter.

You’d roll home from work, get out of your suit, shower, shove on a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt. Your mum would have a nice dinner cooked for you. Mince and tatties. Or maybe a pie. Not chips. Chips once a week. That was generally a rule with mums. But a nice dinner nonetheless.

Then down to the pub. The Kings Head in the High Street. Inside. Order a pint of Whitbread PA. Have a game of darts. A good old chinwag with Dave the landlord. Nice bloke. Welsh. Used to play rugby for Neath before injury ended his career.

Meet your mates. The regulars. Whichever ones were in tonight. Have a good old natter.

Only…. these were the same ones you were nattering with last night. And the night before. And there’s only so much you can natter about with the same people. Sooner or later you run out of natter.

Never mind. Play some drinking games instead. Spoof. Or the clapping game. You know the one, where you have to take it in turns to think of something under a particular topic heading without breaking the rhythm.

Or riddles. A man lives on the fourteenth floor. Every morning he gets in the lift, goes down to the ground floor, and goes to work. Every evening he comes home, gets in the lift, goes up to the seventh floor, then gets out and walks up the remaining seven flights of stairs. Why?

Because he’s a short person, and he can’t reach higher than button seven. Except back then we'd have said dwarf or midget, but that's not PC any more, is it?

Or trick questions. Name three England captains who have played football for Scunthorpe.

Ray Clemence, Kevin Keegan and Ian Botham. I never said they had to have captained England at football.

And one thing was for sure. At some point during the night, somebody was going to ask one particular question. The question you knew was going to come up. The question that always came up.

Name all seven of the Magnificent Seven.

Yul Brynner
Steve McQueen
Charles Bronson
Robert Vaughn
James Coburn

Those are the easy ones. Stop and think for a moment…

Horst Buchholz

And…

One more…

The pièce de résistance…

The one nobody could ever remember the name of…

Brad Dexter.

Task 13: 7 Posts In 7 Days

2005-07-29T12:41:00.000+01:00

BRAVO!! BRAVISSIMO!!! GOOD SHOW!

You all did wonderfully well on that last task, so it seems that we truly have wittled it down to the cream of the crop (no offence to all the evicted housemates, but hey, you lost). It is therefore time to proceed ever onwards into the final week, starting now with the next fiendishly terrifying task.

Yes, it's Task 13. Unlucky for some, perhaps.

This is the final task. After this there is nothing.

But don't go breathing a sigh of relief, for this is the most demanding task yet. For a start, it lasts for a week! Yeah! A whole week!

Here is the general synopsis:

7

Big Blogger and Little Blogger want you all to come up with seven different posts, one for each remaining day of the competition (Saturday thru Friday), based around the number seven.

Each post can relate to meanings, definitions, truths, untruths, stories... anything!
But they must all boil down to the number seven. Get the idea?

The thing you must remember about these posts, is that for each one you submit, you will earn an extra 5 votes in the final vote count. So that means that you can each earn an extra 35 votes. Problem is, if any of you write posts that are based around the same theme, ie. the seven deadly sins, each blogmate who wrote about that same subject will forfeit their 5 points. Therefore, you all have to be as imaginative as possible in order to get maximum points.

If you don't want to do all the posts you don't have to, but for each one you fail to do I will deduct 5 points from your final vote total.

But because I'm nice(ish), and I realise that some people do have other things to do at the weekends especially, I will allow you to post multiple posts on one day. For example, if you can't post on Saturday and Sunday because you are busy, you can post three on the Monday and you won't lose out.

The deadline is midday next Friday. At that time the poll - at the top of the sidebar - will be removed, all the votes will be counted, calculated, and verified, the extra votes tally from the final task will be added up, and by the late afternoon we will be able to announce the winner of Big Blogger 2005 to the watching world.

How exciting!

I'll even see if I can coax Big Blogger out of the toilet so he can host the awards ceremony.

Until we meet again... LB

Cockroaches & Big Knickers - Task 12

2005-07-29T11:56:00.000+01:00

Amazing. I have just woken up from my day off, the day after my 28th birthday and the first thing I thought was 'F*******ck! I've got to do my BB post!'

If I had to pick stuff that I really fear, I would have to say cockroaches and enormous knickers.

I lived in Zambia for 2 years from when I was 8 and for the first month I could barely sleep a wink for all of the lizards running across the ceiling, snakes in the garden, creepy crawlies everywhere and those stupid, horrid cockroaches. Cockroaches were an occasional visitor and one day I came across one, panicked, killed it and then was left with the job of picking it up. I got some tissue and picked it up gingerly and it was one of the most disgusting things that I have ever felt. I could feel its hard-ish skin through the tissue but it also felt bloated and just plain creepy. My whole body got the heeby jeebies and even now, as I think about it, I feel like chucking up!

So you can imagine my horror when I was in Sharm el Sheik airport almost 2 weeks ago getting ready to go home. My friend and I were busting and ventured into the toilets. Now I must point out that when you walk around the airport, it looks like your average airport - well lit, lots of shops, lots of places to eat, airy and clean. The toilets were horrid - low lighting from the broken lights, grey, smelled like the depths of hell and a woman sitting on the counter handing out 2 squares of tissue! My brain was saying 'Run like the wind' and my bladder was saying 'Hurry the f*ck up, I'm full!'

So I went into the cubicle and tried to find somewhere to put my bags that wouldn't cause me to leave with a load of germs on me. Just as I undid the button and zip on my combats and pulled them down my legs, I saw the little bastard. The cockroach wasn't quite as big as the one from Zambia but that didn't stop my whole body from shaking and feeling a terrible urge to throw up. As it scurried between our two cubicles, I screamed like I was being butchered by Jack the Ripper. I couldn't decide whether to throw up in the toilet (changed my mind when I saw how utterly disgusting it was), run or just go for the wee.

The cockroach came back in again and I snatched up my bags and dashed past the toilet attendant who was trying to kill another roach, and into the hallway. My friend came running out seconds later with her trousers barely pulled up and we proceeded to howl with laughter and rub the toilet atmosphere off us.

How will I cure myself of my phobia of cockroaches? I think I need to go for Cock-Therapy. I would have to do a re-enaction of the events that caused the fear and push past it. ie I could kill a cockroach and pick it up with tissue and be completely unfazed, or sit on the toilet with cockroaches running all over the gaff. Thinking about it, I feel like I'm going to throw up so lets move on.

I have a huge fear of huge knickers. I don't mean French knickers, little boxers, pretty ones (you don't wear them out but either wear them in bed in or use them for seduction), or seamless knickers. I am referring to those en-or-mous granny pants that leave whopping VPLs (visible panty lines- see image) that can be seen from Mars, immediately make your bits and pieces look like a no-go zone, and can easily be used as a makeshift parachute. I think it's why I'm not a fan of Marks & Spencer (I do love their giant choc chip cookies, lemon juice and tights) - they have over a third of the lingerie market and I hold them personally responsible for the trauma of seeing the VPLs left by their customers.

My solution to stop women buying these pants - put cockroaches in them. That should put a stop to it! I can see the headlines now 'M&S big knicker departments flooded with cockroaches. Thongs being worn by the young and old'. Hee hee!

task 12: irrational fears, and how to overcome them.

2005-07-29T11:32:00.000+01:00

Pick an irrational fear, you say? What, just the one? Blimey, toughest task yet!

For I speak as one who sometimes feels as if their entire existence is predicated upon irrational fears, of many and various hues. Honestly, you don't know the half of it.

All my greatest fears centre around attempting any form of forward motion which doesn't involve me placing my feet directly on the ground. Swimming, cycling, driving, skating, ski-ing: these all terrify me. (OK, I've never actually tried ski-ing. But I can hazard a reasonable guess.) Hell, even chuffing pogo sticks scare me. In fact, the only exceptions I can think of are donkeys, tricycles and space hoppers. None of which get you very far in today's fast-moving modern world.

However, I don't intend to talk about any of these fears today. Firstly, I have already covered similar ground elsewhere. Secondly, I am demob-happy at the prospect of a fortnight's holiday (starting in less than two hours' time), and am thus in no mood for cathartic purging. (Besides, we did enough of that two tasks ago.)

And thirdly: I'm not convinced that these fears are truly irrational. Because to me, they make perfect sense. I have a terrible sense of balance, lousy bodily co-ordination, a shockingly weak grasp of speed and distance, the concentration span of a sorry where I am again, oh is this Big Blogger, sorry, miles away. So, you see, I baulk at any activity where there is not just a significant possibility, but a very real probability, that I will hurt myself. Or physically wound myself. Or die.

Or at the very least, look like a total arse and get laughed at, or shouted at, or even worse, patronised. ("Come on Mike! You're doing really well!")

So let us instead turn to a fear which is truly irrational. It's my fear of not being completely up-to-date with developments in contemporary popular music, at all times.

I mean, come on, I'm forty-three. So why is it vital that I know what the forthcoming Girls Aloud single sounds like? Or that I can Form A Position on Hard-Fi, Malcolm Middleton and Clor? Or slag off James Blunt, Jack Johnson and KT Tunstall from an informed viewpoint? Or at least bluff my way through the elementary foothills of grime, crunk, micro-house, reggaeton and Rio baile funk? It's not exactly dignified, is it?

Yeah yeah, I know: John Peel was still doing at at 60. But he had a job to perform, and hence a solid rationale for maintaining his passion. I'm just playing catch-up for catch-up's sake. And besides, who am I trying to impress with all this surfeit of knowledge, most of which I am obliged to keep to myself for fear of boring my friends to tears? (Sometimes, I even catch myself pretending to hesitate before answering a music-related question, just so that I don't look too geeky.)

Further evidence for the prosecution: earlier in the week, I spent the entirety of a two-hour train journey flicking through a specially created playlist on my iPod, containing every track issued on Word magazine's free cover-mounted CDs since last Autumn. Despite the fact that these are probably the dullest series of CDs ever marketed, being almost nothing but a wall-to-wall beige slop of "adult contemporary" timidity and cripplingly limited ambition, I still couldn't risk the possibility that, buried somewhere amongst them, there might be a decent track by a new act which I might otherwise have missed.

And there was, as well. But was it really worth two hours of tedium to excavate a couple of nuggets of goodness, when I could instead have been listening to music which I actually liked? And will these newly excavated nuggets actually enrich my life in any meaningful way at all? Will they heck as like.

So. Apparently, I am also required to devise some sort of cure for this fear.

There can be only one.

Cold turkey.

Because I've got enough to see me out, you see. Even listening to every track on my iPod, twenty-four hours a day, would take about a month - and the iPod is only the tip of the iceberg. So, perhaps it would be wise not to acquire any new stuff until I was word-perfect on all the old stuff. Which in itself would be a lifetime's work.

Nah, who am I trying to kid? I mean, come on, the new Goldfrapp and the new Super Furry Animals are out on the 22nd, and I still haven't heard all the artists on this year's Mercury Music Prize shortlist, and...

By our irrational fears do we define ourselves. And I'm clinging tightly onto mine.

The Horror! The Horror!

2005-07-28T19:12:00.000+01:00

They sneak up on you.

Horrible. Horrible.

You'll just be sitting there, and then out of the corner of your eye you suddenly become aware of a black shape. And there it is. Just sitting there, with it's horrible squishy body. And you know that just as you are looking at it, it is looking back at you, and wicked malevolent thoughts are running through it's putrid brain. It hates you. It enjoys the fear it instils in you. It sits there waiting to catch you off your guard, and then it will pounce. It is evil incarnate and if it could it would kill you and every one of your family.

What? Spider? No, of course not. I like spiders. Spiders are cute.

No, we're talking something horrendous here.

We're talking about....

Slugs

My blood has literally run cold just from loading up that photo. I've had to scroll it off the top of the screen just to continue typing. And even so I'm sitting here a bag of nerves knowing it's up there, just out of sight. And it's only a photo!!!!

Hate them! Hate them!

I can't even walk past one. If there is a slug on the pavement, I have to step into the road. And if the traffic is heavy, well tough. Being crushed under the wheels of an oncoming articulated lorry is far prefereable than getting within striking distance of one of those evil little bastards.

And it's worse for me than most of my fellow slug-o-phobics. I'm a mountaineer, and British and Irish mountains are covered with millions of the buggers. In the Kerry mountains they're even a protected species. Protected? Who would want to protect the little shits???

Now, as you may be aware, I am a long-haired radical environmentalist pinko lefty vegetarian tree-hugging hippy with new age spiritualist leanings and as such I believe, like the Buddhists, that all life has worth and that we have no right to kill any of the creatures of the earth because they are all on the same spiritual path to enlightenment as ourselves.

But I make an exception in the case of slugs.

Kill them. Stomp them. Squish them. Crush them. Put them all in a big barrel and pass 50,000 volts of electricity through them.

Actually I now feel a bit queasy at the thought of a barrel full of slugs. Urgh!

I don't know why I have this bizarre phobia. I don't remember a traumatic incident involving a slug. I think, however, it stems back to someone once telling me that slugs laid their eggs inside their own bodies and that the baby slugs then ate their way out of their mothers when they were ready for the outside world. This turns out not to be true, by the way, but for years and years I believed it and was horrified because this involved:

a. Matricide
b. Cannibalism
c. Very poor taste. After all, it involves eating a slug, and that's fucking disgusting frankly, even for a slug.

So how do I cure myself of this phobia. Well, there are Banana Slugs, which apparently when you lick them taste of banana. And another slug I don't remember the name of which people lick because the slime contains a powerful halucinogenic. Maybe the cure is for me to lick a slug.

No.

Sorry.

I don't care if it will give me multiple orgasms. There's no way on this earth I am ever licking one of those revolting devil-spawn creatures! I am just going to have to remain uncured.

thinrubberinflatablegeckoidophobia - task 12

2005-07-28T11:19:00.000+01:00

Here's the thing. My biggest fears are flying and heights. But, if you ask me they're rational. IT'S NOT NATURAL FOR A CREATURE TO BE UP HIGH IN THE AIR IF IT HASN'T GOT WINGS... I'm not going to tell you all the things that go through my mind as I step onto an aeroplane. It's not pretty. And the extreme and strange urge to fling myself over the sides of high towers as the paradoxical side effect of my vertigo is, I believe, fairly common, so I don't need to explain that one either.

So, my two greatest irrational fears are balloons... and geckos.

I used to be quite calm about all things creepy crawlie. Still am most of the time. Until I met WILD GECKOS! In my gas cupboard in the garden (where we store our gas bottles). Where they live. And shit. And use their creepy suckery feet to stick to the ceiling. And they don't let you know they're there. Until you feel their staring little eyes burning into the back of your head. And they think evil gecko thoughts about you. And they look like miniature prehistoric crocodiles. And have I told you about their suckery feet? And that one fell on my mother in law's shoulder once? And because it had those suckers on its feet, IT STUCK TO HER? I feel I need say no more.

And the other, (which I am suffering from badly today, because it is my daughter's sixth birthday and she is insisting on filling the house with the damn things even though we're not really having a party) is balloons.
You blow them up, you shred your lungs doing it, then they pop!
It is quite uncalled for. Bloody things.

And the anticipation of the pop is worse than the pop... in fact it's anticipation of the pop that I'm phobic about. So the anticipation of the anticipation is what brings me out in a sweat.

So, I have an idea. To rid myself of BOTH problems. At the same time.

I may need a little help on this though. It may take a while:

I know some clever dick is going to say... "aaaahhhh! but what about when the balloon bursts in the upper atmosphere due to low pressure and the geckos come crashing back to earth on your head"

Well, I'll face that when it comes.

Task 12: Afraid

2005-07-27T19:53:00.000+01:00

Me again.

I'm going to keep this brief, because I, erm, have a train to catch. (Yeah, that fooled them...)

This next task is based around the irrational fear of Stuff.
Or to be more exact, your irrational fear of Stuff.

We want to know what thing or things you fear the most. Do you have any idea why you fear these things (surely if you did they would cease to be irrational, but there you go)? Describe how the thing or things make you feel, and please tell us of an incident when you have suffered because of, or triumphed over your fear. The choice is yours.

Also, as a bit of a departure, please see if you can come up with a realistic/preposterous cure for your, or another fear. Come up with a contraption, device, or even a new kind of therapy (please, no wannabe Paul McKenna's). Once again, the choice is yours.

Make sure your entries are in by Friday lunchtime at the latest.

And be sure to check back on Friday afternoon for the next task. It's going to be a bastard, so be prepared.

Little Blogger over and out.

PS. Anyone fancy a round on my cocktail trolley?

In Which I am Dressed for travelling

2005-07-27T16:29:00.000+01:00

Well really.... I know when I'm not wanted and a lady never outstays her welcome.

Send the luggage on won't you?

i'm not going anywhere

2005-07-27T13:42:00.000+01:00

until the bastards who voted me out come forward.

come on, you little cowards.

Eviction Time Again!

2005-07-27T10:31:00.000+01:00

Hello again all you saucy little jubblies! It's Little Blogger's least favourite time of the week again. That time where I have to give out the bad news that two of our wonderful and creative housebuddies are soon to be permanently ejected from this website-cum-house thing, never to return, massive bribes notwithstanding.

It's all very sad.

Especially so when you consider what an emotionally open week we've had. We've learnt about everyone's most shameful moments as well as the moment in their lives they're most proud of. And they've tapped into, in some cases previously undiscovered reserves of imagination and creativity, to produce some quite wonderful short children's stories. What a pleasant bunch of bloggers you all are!

But I'm afraid that's where the love-in ends, because the general public have spoken.

I was considering putting another massive twist in here, just to spice things up again, but at this stage I think that the audience should be the ones who decide what goes down, so that's the way it's going to be.

So.

That means that the evictees this week are....

In alphabetical order....

MISS MISH

And...

ZOE

I'm not going to pretend that I'm not shocked, because I am. But sometimes you just have to take the rough with the smooth, watch the way the cookie crumbles, let sleeping dogs lie, and remember that a rolling stone gathers no moss.

Especially that last one. Very important.

So for the last time, could you two lovely ladies please make your way to the Diary Room to give your leaving speeches. You will be missed..

And for the rest of you, it's time to get down to business again. I'm just buffing up my biro so I can put the finishing touches to today's task, and I shall be presenting it to you at some point in the next eight hours. Stay tuned.

Also, because this is the final week (prize-giving presentation will be held on Friday the 5th of August, when the voting lines close) there will be an extra special task coming your way later on today too. It'll be something meaty for you all to get stuck into, rest assured. And seeing as this is the most important stage of the whole thing, I expect you all to take it very very seriously indeed. Neglect your own blogs if need be. Yes, it's that important.

Okay, thankyou all for paying attention. You can go back to bed now.

The one, the only, LB xx

Hello Everybody

2005-07-26T22:18:00.000+01:00

I've had a really exciting adventure. I've been to the Wicker Man festival where I saw my favourite band, the Alabama 3 an joined in the World Flounder Tramping Championship!

Here's some photos of my Great Scotland Adventure!

Bob's Dog thinks he's human.

2005-07-26T10:09:00.000+01:00

Bob’s dog did stuff that humans do and forgot to do dog things.

He actually liked to do the ironing. He didn’t like sleeping in the doghouse.

He loved watching tennis on the telly. He hated chasing cars.

He liked baking cakes. He didn’t understand why other dogs sniffed his bottom.

Bob’s mum thought Bob’s dog was great. So did his dad. So did his baby sister. It meant they didn't have to do much.

But Bob thought his dog was SO embarrassing. He wanted his dog to be normal.
It was his dog that took him to school. His dog that did the shopping. His dog that went to the pictures with him. His dog even took him to the dentist.

Everyone would stare and laugh and snigger. It was awful.

One day a postcard came. It was from GRANNY. Bob’s Granny was a very strict lady. She liked to see everything as it should be and nothing SILLY! She thought that everything should be spick and span. She thought it should be the right shape, the right colour, make the right noise, do the right job, smell as it should.

The postcard said she was coming to stay.

TONIGHT! (the postcard had got stuck in the post).

But Bob’s house was how THEY liked it. With brightly coloured walls and doors everywhere (that dog had painted), interesting sculptures in the middle of the rooms (that dog had sculpted), and wonderful but strange foody smells coming from the kitchen (where dog was inventing things put in his new cookbook “Bob’s Dog Eats!”)… not the kind of house a stuffy, sniffy, grumpy grandmother likes.

Bob’s mum got into a tizz. Bob’s dad was worse. His baby sister just sat there, but that was just because she hadn’t read the postcard. Bob just thought of how horrid it would be when Granny got there and didn’t like how everything was and made everyone angry and cry by telling them that everything they did was rubbish and wrong.

Bob’s dog went to the kitchen and made everyone a cup of calming camomile tea. He told them to go out for the rest of the day and enjoy themselves and he’d sort everything out.

Bob’s mum calmed down a bit, knowing that Bob’s dog would sort everything out. Bob’s dad was still a bit shaky, but he was very scared of Granny whatever the circumstances. They all left for the cinema to go and see a horror movie, to prepare them for Granny’s visit.

Dog locked himself in and busied himself for the rest of the day. Sorting everything out.

A few hours later, just as Bob and his family were coming home from the cinema, Granny’s taxi drew up outside the house.

Granny just glared at them. She stomped up to the front door and waited for Bob’s mum to let her in… but they hadn’t taken the keys because dog was at home. SO he knocked. Granny glared some more.

Bob and his mum and dad thought that Bob’s dog was going to sort everything out, repaint the walls, take away the sculptures and make some unstinky food while they were out. And would be DOGLIKE. They were wrong.

Dog opened the door. Wearing an apron.

Granny glared.

Dog asked her to come in.

Granny glared and held her nose. She didn’t like dogs for a start. Nor did she like the smell of garlic and stinky cheese quiche (a speciality of dog’s that he had spent the afternoon making, Bob’s favourite).

Dog offered to take Granny’s bags.
Granny held her nose and squeezed her eyes shut as she saw the colour of the walls was not wall coloured. She tried to cover her ears too because she could hear loud samba music coming from the kitchen.

“Well, YOU lot don’t change, DO you?” she screeched at Bob’s mum and Dad. “You are a disgrace, I can’t even get through the front door without being horrified by you all. And that DOG? HE’S JUST A DOG! I can see you need me to come and live here to straighten you all out!”

At which, dog took Granny’s bags, threw Granny over his shoulder and walked her back to the taxi that was still waiting to be paid. He took out a huge load of money from his apron pocket, gave it to the taxi driver and pointed west.

He walked back to the house, pointed to a large family sized dog house in the garden that he had built in the afternoon, while the quiche was cooking, and shut the front door.

Inside the dog house there was a note.

"If your Granny doesn’t like it here and makes you feel bad, then she shouldn’t come.

But YOU lot need to help me with the housework once in a while.
I’ll let you in in the morning.

Goodnight."

Apart from the fact that he had to sleep in the doghouse for the night, Bob decided not to be embarrassed about his dog any more.

Molly The Show Off

2005-07-25T23:31:00.000+01:00

Jaysus, I'm not into this kiddy story mallarky. God help me when I have to make up stuff for my own kids!
*************************************************************
Once upon a time in a land not so far away, London to be exact, lived a little girl called Molly. Molly is a dinky little girl with her hair in braids, her girly dresses and skirts, and an already big collection of shoes. Molly is 5 years old and a bit of a show off.

**********************************************************
Mummy takes Molly to the doctors surgery.
‘Promise me that you’ll be a good girl and read quietly’
‘Of course I will mum’
Molly sits down on the chair and flicks through a womans magazine. She looks around the room and notices that there is a bit of a crowd.
‘Would you like me to read to you all?’
‘Oh yes!’ says the kind old lady sitting across from her.
‘Molly! What did I say to you?’ Mummy looks very cross and a bit embarrassed.
‘Hush mummy. This lady wants me to read to her.’

**********************************************************
Mummy takes Molly to the shops. Mummy needs to buy an outfit and a pair of shoes for the party she’s attending.
‘Molly, can you try and sit here quietly whilst I try on this dress? I’ll just be right here in front of you in the changing room. Promise me.’
‘Of course I will mum’
The shop is playing Michael Jackson.
Mummy comes out of the changing room. Molly is moonwalking and high kicking for a crowd of shoppers. Mummy grabs Mollys hand.
‘Get off me mummy. These people have come to watch me dance.’

**********************************************************
Mummy takes Molly to Alton Towers. Molly eats candy floss and drinks lots of pop. Mummy lets Molly have a hamburger as a treat. Molly, mummy and their friends go on lots of rides.
The day whizzes by and before they know it, it’s time to go home.
‘Don’t want to go.’ Molly stamps her foot in a temper.
‘Haven’t you had a good day here? Come on, don’t ruin it.’
Molly has a temper tantrum and a crowd gathers to watch her make a holy show of mummy.
Molly is grounded for a month.
Molly sulks so much, mummy can’t bear the sight of her after a couple of days and lets her go out to play.

**********************************************************
Molly is out playing with the boys from her street. She feels very grown up in her pedal pushers, cool t-shirt and trainers that light up with every step. Molly plays skipping and hop scotch with the girls but the boys won’t play. They are jumping off walls and challenging each other to do bigger and better. Molly leaves the girls to do the skipping and hop scotch.
‘I want to play with you’ Molly says to the boys.
They laugh because they think she wants them to do dance routines or something. Molly realises the boys are not paying attention.
Molly points to the big wall at the house that is rumoured to be owned by a witch.
‘I bet I can jump from one wall to the next!’ Molly challenges the boys.
The boys stare at the wall and look scared.
‘Go on then’ says one of the boys.
Molly clambers up onto the wall and struts up and down for a moment whilst she gets her balance on the wall. Feeling comfortable Molly runs along the wall and takes a big leap.
Everything goes black. Molly hears lots of screaming and crying. Molly is hearing herself. Molly touches her head and feels an enormous lump and blood seems to be everywhere. Molly feels a shadow over her and looks up to see her mummy.
‘Have you been showing off again?’ Mummy scoops up Molly and hugs her.
Molly has to have lots of stitches and has a stay in the hospital overnight. She sings with some of the other girls on her ward and shows them how to moonwalk.
When Molly finally goes home, Mummy sits her down.
‘Molly, do you understand why this happened to you?’
‘Is it because the wall moved away from me?’
‘No Molly. Tell me why this happened.’
‘Is it because I was showing off? You keep telling me not to show off’
‘Look what happens when you try to get peoples attention. You need to be yourself. If you keep doing this, you’ll be a mass of broken bones and people won’t actually get to know the lovely little girl within.’
Mummy and Molly hug.
‘Promise me that you’ll stop this showing off.’
‘Of course I will mummy.’ And she did stop.

Image source: http://shop.childrensministry.co.uk/images/picmain/CHMPP104.jpg

Monster

2005-07-25T18:45:00.000+01:00

Jamie looked at the monster. The monster looked at Jamie.

He pulled his bedclothes up around his neck. The monster didn’t move. He knew it wouldn’t. Monsters never moved as long as you were looking at them. That was the thing. If he took his eyes off the monster, then you never knew what would happen. But as long as he kept looking straight at it, it wouldn’t dare move. To move would be to reveal itself as a monster, rather than just a pile of clothes on a chair in front of the window.

He knew these things. His mummy had shown him, a long time ago, when the monster had come before. She’d come into the room and explained to him how the monster was just a pile of clothes. She’d explained it all to him slowly and carefully, while they had sat in the dark. She’d explained how this bit was a shirt, and that bit was a jumper, and the bit over there was a rolled up pair of socks. And the eyes were just gaps where the light from the curtains showed through. And then she had turned the light on and he’d seen that it was all exactly as she had said, and then he’d been able to go to sleep.

And the monster had never come back again. Until tonight.

So Jamie knew that the monster was just a pile of clothes, but what he really, really wanted, was for mummy to come and explain it to him again. For her to tell him that this bit was a shirt, and that bit was a jumper, and the bit over there was a rolled up pair of socks. And then for her to turn the light on so that he could see that that was how it was.

But he knew as well that he couldn’t ask her to do that. Because mummy was upset. Because daddy had gone away.

It was a week now since daddy had gone away. Since the car accident had made him go away. And now mummy cried all the time.

They had sat him down and explained it all to him. Mummy, and Uncle Neil, and Auntie Jane. They had told him how daddy had had to go away because of the car accident. How he wouldn’t be able to see daddy again. But that daddy would be able to see him. How daddy would watch over him always, and love him always. They promised him about that part. And grown-ups take promises seriously, so he knew it was the truth.

He’d cried as well, for a while. He didn't like the part about not seeing daddy again. That was what had made him sad.

Mummy and Uncle Neil and Auntie Jane had tried to stop him crying. They’d played with him, and told him jokes, and tried to show him what fun they were all going to have. But the thing with fun, normally you just have it. Normally you don’t have to try.

And now, every night when she put him to bed, mummy smiled at him, and told him a story, and told him she loved him, and tried to show him how happy things were. But as soon as she left the room he could hear her start to cry again. So he wasn’t going to call her to make the monster go away, because he knew that would make her cry some more, and he thought that maybe she had cried enough already. So he would have to make the monster go away all by himself.

So he looked at the monster. And the monster looked at him.

And he started to tell himself what all the parts of the monster were. This bit was a shirt, he could see that. And that bit was a jumper, and the bit over there was a rolled up pair of socks. And the eyes were just…. the eyes were…. the eyes…. winked.

The monster winked.

The monster winked. And the monster couldn’t have winked because it wasn’t a monster it was just a pile of clothes, and this bit was a shirt and that bit was a jumper and the bit over there was a rolled up pair of socks and it was a pile of clothes and not a monster at all and so it couldn’t have winked because piles of clothes don’t wink they just sit there being piles of clothes and not being monsters and not winking at all except this one because this one had winked because this one wasn’t a pile of clothes because this one was a monster!

"Hello Jamie," the monster said.

Except it didn’t sound like a monster. It didn’t have the kind of voice you would expect a monster to have. Monsters should have deep voices and sound all gruff and growly, and this monster didn’t have that kind of voice at all. This monster sounded nice. It had a friendly voice, a warm voice. It almost sounded like…..

A breeze blew through the open window and pushed the curtain aside, and just for a moment the light shone on the monster and Jamie could see it clearly.

"Your mummy told you I would always be looking over you, didn’t she? She told you I would always love you."

Then the breeze died, and the curtain flapped shut again, and the monster went back to being a monster. With this bit being a shirt, and that bit being a jumper, and the bit over there being a rolled up pair of socks. And Jamie’s looked at the monster, and the monster looked at Jamie, and his eyes began to droop.

"Goodnight dad, I love you," he said. And fell asleep.

Task 11: a tale for the little ones.

2005-07-24T22:58:00.000+01:00

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, fifteen people went to live in a big house. They hailed from all across the land: from north and south, east and west. Some of them even came from far off places, like Belgium and Portugal. Some were young, and some were old. Some were quiet, and some were noisy. Some were serious, and some were silly. But all were here for one reason: to play a big game, in front of thousands and thousands of people.

The house was owned by a great big giant, and a lively little pixie. The giant’s name was Big Blogger. He wore big boots which went CLUMP, CLUMP, and he spoke VERY LOUDLY, in a deep voice which echoed all around the house. No one ever saw Big Blogger, but they could always hear his boots going CLUMP, CLUMP, and they knew that he was always watching them.

The pixie’s name was Little Blogger. He was a funny little fellow in a green cape, with green stockings, and a pointy green hat with a bell on the end. Little Blogger was always smiling and dancing. At first, everyone thought he was their friend. But he could also be very strict, and make up all sorts of rules on the spot, and so people soon learnt to be careful with him.

The oldest person in the house was called Peter. He had silver hair and a long white beard, and was very wise. Because he was so old, he had to stay in bed for most of the day. He could be a bit grumpy sometimes, but everyone who knew him said that he had a heart of gold. Peter had a lot of favourite sayings, like “I shouldn’t be sitting here talking to you like this”, and “You couldn’t make it up”.

But Peter didn’t stay long in the house. And here’s the reason why.

One of the rules of the game was called Doing The Tasks. This meant that every time Big Blogger or Little Blogger asked the housemates to do something, they all had to obey.

The first task was easy. Everyone had to say hello to the others, and tell them a little bit about themselves. Everyone enjoyed this task.

The second task was more difficult, and also rather naughty. Everyone had to write a letter to the Queen, saying they had seen something called a Dodo in the garden.

“But there’s no such thing as a Dodo!” the housemates cried.

“WE KNOW”, said Big Blogger, in his deep, booming voice. “BUT YOU’VE GOT TO PRETEND YOU’VE SEEN A DODO ANYWAY.”

The housemates all looked nervously at each other. Wasn’t that fibbing? Wouldn’t the Queen be cross? But as they were all a little scared of Big Blogger, they all got out their notepads and pens, and started scribbling their letters.

All except for one person.

Heaving a big sigh, Peter climbed out of bed, with a dark look on his face. Standing in the middle of the bedroom, he spoke to the invisible giant.

“Big Blogger, I know you can hear me! All the other housemates may be scared of you, but I am old and wise, and I am scared of nobody. Now, listen to me. Fibbing is wrong! And you can’t make me do it! So I’m not going to write your silly letter!”

“HOW DARE YOU DISOBEY ME?” bellowed Big Blogger – so loudly that the walls shook, and the teacups rattled, and all the housemates screamed in terror.

Except for Peter, who just stood there and shook his fist.

“VERY WELL. YOU GIVE ME NO CHOICE. PETER, YOU MUST LEAVE THE HOUSE... NOW!”

With these words, there was a loud bang, and an enormous puff of smoke. When the smoke cleared, Peter had vanished.

“LET THAT BE A LESSON TO ALL OF YOU!”, roared Big Blogger. “NOW GET BACK TO YOUR LETTERS!”

One of the other housemates, a shy fellow called Grocerjack, was so scared that he never spoke again. Instead, he just hid in a corner with his thumb in his mouth, shivering and shaking.

Another rule of the game was called The Public Vote. Every week, all the thousands and thousands of people who were watching the housemates in the outside world had to choose two people to leave the house.

At the end of the first week, the people were asked to vote. They chose someone called Dr Rob, and someone called Mr Hair.

Dr Rob was the chattiest of all the housemates. Morning, noon and night, you would always find Dr Rob talking. If nobody was around, then he would talk to himself instead. The other housemates called this “wibbling”.

Some people loved listening to Dr Rob. “He’s so funny!” they said. “We love Dr Rob and his wibbling!”

But other people got very cross. “Why does Dr Rob have to talk all the time?” they muttered. “We can’t understand what he’s saying, and he’s giving us a headache. Goodness, we do wish Dr Rob would shut up!”

And so Dr Rob lost the public vote, because all the cross people with headaches ganged up against him.

Nobody quite knows why they voted for Mr Hair, but some say it was because they thought “Mr Hair” was a silly name, as Mr Hair actually had very, very short hair.

Dr Rob and Mr Hair packed their bags, and were just saying goodbye to the housemates, when Little Blogger skipped into the house, whistling a cheery tune.

“Stop!” cried Little Blogger. “Haven’t you noticed? Grocerjack has already left the house. Big Blogger and I kicked him out for not saying anything.”

The housemates looked at each other, and shrugged. Who was Grocerjack? None of them had ever spoken to him, and so everyone had forgotten all about him.

“Now, who is the most popular person in the house?”

Everyone turned and looked at a handsome young man in a beautiful hat, called Mike.

“We like Mike!” the housemates said. “He’s clever and handsome, and he cheers you up when you’re feeling sad, and he always washes all the pots and pans after lunch, and puts them away neatly.”

“Mike, come here. As the most popular person in the house, you must save one of the housemates from eviction. Who is it to be? Dr Rob or Mr Hair?”

Mike frowned. Not wanting to choose between his two friends, he shut his eyes and thought.

Dr Rob is certainly very noisy, he thought. But maybe he will learn his lesson now, and stop talking all the time. So I shall give him a chance to mend his wibbling ways. Besides, “Mr Hair” really is a very silly name.

“I choose Dr Rob!” declared Mike.

“No!” gasped all Mr Hair’s friends in the outside world, and all the cross people with headaches.

“Yes!” squealed Dr Rob. “I am saved! People must have found me boring, so that’s why they voted for me. In that case, I’m must stop being so quiet next week. Yes, I really do think it’s time I opened my mouth!”

As Dr Rob wandered off into the garden, chattering excitedly to himself, Mike wondered if he had made the right decision after all.

A few days later, a housemate called Gordon slipped out of the house very quietly in the middle of the night, walking on tiptoes so as not to wake anyone.

A few later, a learned gentleman called Vicus Scurra also left the house. “I am a learned gentleman!” he wailed. “But every time I try to talk about learned things, they all giggle and jump in the pool! I cannot live with such stupid people any longer!”

With two people already gone, the next Public Vote was cancelled. “Boo!” said the viewers. “We keep voting, but that noisy Dr Rob is still giving us a headache!”

In the meantime, a crafty housemate called Clair had disappeared into the garden shed, where she stayed for a whole week.

“What is she doing in there?” the housemates wondered.

When Clair came out of the shed, she had a proud expression on her face. “I’ve invented something!” she said. “It’s a new kind of cocktail shaker! But now I’m very tired from all the inventing, and I must lie down.”

Clair was so tired that she slept for two whole days, and missed the next task. So Big Blogger ordered her to leave. On the same day, Dr Rob was finally voted out by the public.

“I don’t understand!” he sobbed. “Was it something I said?”

Next week, two more housemates were voted out: a ruddy-cheeked scallywag called JonnyB, and a pretty girl in a bikini called The Girl. All the Daddys watching the game were sorry to see The Girl go, while all the Mummys gave each other secret little smiles.

That left just six housemates. Clever, handsome, popular Mike, in his beautful hat. An elegant lady (with a bit of a cough) called Miss Mish, who wore the finest gowns, spun from the purest silk. A funny lady from Belgium called Zoe, who sometimes got a bit tipsy, and wore a glittering tiara. A famous artist from Portugal called Vitriolica, who could draw brilliant cartoons if you asked her nicely. A man with a beard called Alan, (with his puppet circus, “Team Wiggle”) – and his oldest friend in the.whole wide world, a mysterious lady called NML.

Who would be next to go? Who would stay to the final week of the game? Who would win?

But that, my children, is quite another story.

In Which I Tell a Story.

2005-07-24T18:30:00.000+01:00

There was once a Very Fine and Beautiful Lady – a Princess actually - who lived in a Castle in the middle of a town. Some people said she was a witch (or that’s what she thought they said) but that was just because they were jealous of her nice castle and her wardrobe fit for a Princess. True, she did have a mean old cat called Big Ron for company and she was married to a toad but she wasn’t really a witch.

One day, while walking in the shopping mall, she spied a shop that she was sure wasn’t there the day before. It looked very inviting and the window had just one pair of shoes on a red cushion. And honestly what a pair of shoes! They were beautiful and glittery, with high delicate heels and looked as if they were handmade by a special team of elves. The odd thing about them was they seemed to be whispering to her. She couldn’t quite hear what they saying so she grasped the handle of the shop and went inside.

With the ‘ting’ of the shop bell, the shopkeeper arrived so suddenly and quickly that the Princess knew he must be magical. Or at the very least, fabulous.

‘Hello Madam’ he said ‘Can I help you?’

He waved a hand around the shop and the Princess suddenly saw that the shelves were filled with all kinds of shoes in different colours and styles and heights. Some were for walking in the Forest, (whatever that is, thought the Princess), some were for dancing in, some were for cold weather or wet weather and some were just so pretty that you could just wear them all the time.
But none were as nice as the pair in the window. As she drew near to them, she realised they WERE whispering to her!

“Buy us” they said. “Take us home with you and we will adore you for ever”
Just like that, the Princess fell in love with them in the twinkling of an eye. She turned to the shopkeeper.

“ Hello, my good man. Please wrap these shoes up and send them to my castle this afternoon. I wish to wear them for tea and a meeting of the Round Table this evening”

The shopkeeper sighed.

“I’m very sorry Madam” he said. “But those shoes are not for sale. They are for Display Purposes Only"

At this, the Princess began to cry. (She normally got what she wanted if she cried.)
“I must have them! They are calling my name!” And at this, the shoes began to whisper to her again.
“Oh, please, please PLEASE take us home! Don’t let us be doomed to stay here day after day waiting for someone to love!”

The Princess stopped crying and looked prettily up at the shopkeeper, letting just one tear roll down her cheek. “Can’t you let me have them? I would pay well for such a beautiful pair of shoes….”

The shopkeeper sighed again.
“Madam, these are beautiful and magical shoes hand made by the Elves of Manolo Blahnik”
“They have the power to make everyone fall in love with them, will go with any outfit and never pinch, or bruise or hurt”

Then he named a price that made the Princess gasp and stretch her eyes in horror. But she was still determined to have them.

“I will return tomorrow” she said. “Kindly have the shoes ready for me”
And off back to her castle she went.

All that night, the Princess tossed and turned. She couldn’t sleep for wanting those shoes. She could still hear them whispering to her and had to find a way to have them. She thought and thought and thought until, just before dawn, she had an idea.

The next morning, over breakfast with the Toad, she asked him for the money to buy the shoes.
He lowered his paper and stared at her over the top of it.
“How much?” he croaked in horror. “Are you completely mad woman?”
“No-one is going to give you that much money for a simple pair of shoes. And if they do, they’re barking mad too”

The Princess was downcast but did not let it show. “Very well” she said “You obviously don’t love me”
“Of course I love you” said the Toad “I just don’t see why shoes have to come into it”
The Princess smiled an icy smile and turned to go
“I shall get the money for the shoes some how” she insisted.
“Harrumph” said the Toad and went back to his paper..

That afternoon, walking in the mall, The Princess went straight to the shoe shop.
“I have come for the shoes” she announced grandly “Here is the money for them”
“ NOW GIVE THEM TO ME!”

The shopkeeper smiled, handed over the shoes with a bow and the Princess hurried home with them.
She was lying on the sofa admiring them on her feet and hearing the purrs of delight coming from the shoes (“oh we love you, thank you for taking us home, we will never let you down”) when the Toad came home.
“I see you bought them” he said grumpily “Where did you get the money?”
“From our joint account” she replied simply.

The Toad went bright red, jumped up and down, and ran around the room until smoke began to come out of his ears. He got angrier and angrier and crosser and crosser and called the poor Princess so many rude names that she had to hide her ears.
In the end, he stamped his foot and ranted and raved so much that he exploded.
And the Princess got to look at her shoes in peace.

And the moral of the story?
Fuck love. You don’t need it if you’ve got a truly great pair of shoes.

Task 11: Imagination

2005-07-22T13:01:00.000+01:00

Hi there chaps and chapettes!

Firstly I'd like to say congratulations on everyone completing the last task successfully, and for you all making me cry like a big fat baby. I'm an emotional wreck due to all the talk of boarding schools, punch-ups, tantrums, and love.

Actually it's just love. It always gets me right there.

Little Blogger needs to be loved.

(I'm welling up again..)

Where was I?

Oh yes, the new task. Righty ho then. The new task is a complete diversion from the last one, and it will involve you all using your imagination to the fullest. Big Blogger and myself want you all to do your best J K Rowling impressions and come up with a very very short children's story, complete with illustrations (cos kids just love pictures don't they?) and anything else you fancy. It doesn't have to be about f***ing wizards and annoying little British children, it can be about whatever you want, but it does have to be somewhere between 500 and 1500 words long. Anything longer than 1500 and it's too much like hard work. Anything shorter than 500 and it'll be too much like reading a bus ticket.

So as the heading suggests, please let your imagination run wild.

And hand it in for marking by Tuesday lunchtime, not Monday lunchtime as originally intended. I'm trying to be less draconian, can you tell?

Your friendly neighbourhood trolley dolly, LB.
xx

Task 10: Shame and Pride. (Part 2: the Shame bit.)

2005-07-22T10:50:00.000+01:00

My sister's "passion tester" had been brought back from the States as a present. It consisted of two interlinked glass compartments, the bottom of which contained a red liquid. (Would this be mercury? Chemistry was never my strong point.) If you held the bottom compartment in the palm of your hand, your body heat would warm the liquid, causing it to bubble up into the upper chamber, where it would continue to splutter and gurgle in a most pleasing manner.

Both of us found this device novel, fascinating, a little bit exotic (after all, it had come all the way from America), and endlessly entertaining. We would play with it over and over again, in that sweetly obsessive way that children sometimes have. Of course, neither of us quite understood what "passion" meant, and how exactly the passion tester was supposed to be testing it. We asked our parents for a definition, but - necessarily - only got the vaguest of replies. Still, whatever it was, we seemed to have plenty of it.

(In retrospect, I can't help but think that this was a slightly inappropriate gift for a six year-old girl, to say nothing of the dodgy health and safety aspects. But those were very different times.)

One afternoon, sitting in the living room on my own, I picked up the passion tester for yet another go. Perhaps I had just come in from outside. Perhaps my hands were a little colder than usual. Perhaps I was particularly impatient to see the bubbles. On the other hand, I always was a clumsy, accident-prone little boy. But for whatever reason, I ended up squeezing the passion tester so hard that the delicate glass shattered in my hand.

Staring at the remnants of my sister's treasured gift, I panicked. I didn't want to bear the responsibility for this. I didn't want to make her cry. But most of all, I didn't want to get into trouble.

With nothing on my mind but self-preservation, and with a lack of foresight which I now find bewildering, I grabbed the pieces of the passion tester and stuffed them behind some boxes in the corner of the morning room. Out of sight, out of mind.

I can't quite remember how my mother found out. I do know that it was only a few hours later, while my sister was upstairs in the bath. Did she look behind the boxes and find it? No, I very much doubt that. Or did she ask me where the passion tester was, and see through my fearful, feeble little lie, and ask me again and again, until I cracked and told her where I had hidden it? My memory is firmly veering towards the latter. What I do remember are the tears, which were instant and copious.

But what I remember most of all, through the filmy haze of my sobbing, was my mother's genuinely appalled, genuinely outraged reaction. As someone with a very certain and clear-cut view of moral right and wrong, she was incensed that I should have tried to deceive her and lie to her. The actual breaking of the passion tester appeared to be quite immaterial.

As a younger child, I had occasionally been smacked before - but as an eight year-old, not for a couple of years at least. Now, with the dustpan and brush in her hands and a furious, cold-eyed expression on her face, my mother explained that she was about to punish me again. She went into some detail about why she was going to do this. And then she bent me over, and walloped me on the backside with the brush with the dark green wooden handle. Not so that it hurt, not even for a split second, but as a symbolic, ritualistic act, with a pre-defined intent: to teach me a lesson that I would never forget.

I had been reduced to a cringing, whimpering, snivelling wretch, utterly consumed by humiliation and shame. And yet, even in the midst of this, something of profound significance was registering itself.

Still, the ordeal was not yet quite over. My mother now demanded that I go straight upstairs to the bathroom, to confess what I had done to my sister, and to offer my apologies.

To my surprise, my sister didn't burst into tears, or get angry, or indeed show any signs of upset at all. Instead, she accepted my apology with a calm graciousness that I hadn't expected.

Previously, I had thought that breaking the passion tester was the great crime, crying out to heaven for vengeance. But it wasn't. It was the covering up, the denying of responsibility for my actions - and most of all, the lying.

I'd like to say that I have never told a single lie since. That's not strictly true, of course: some lies are inevitable - and even desirable, when the feelings of others are at stake. And I had to tell a couple of lies a few years later, concerning my sexual orientation, for the purposes of self-preservation. But essentially, I ceased to regard lying as a viable option from that day forth. My shame was cathartic, and transformative. It had a purpose. I learnt from it.

Confessions of an ashamed blogger

2005-07-22T07:32:00.000+01:00

Off-hand, I think there are three things that I'm most ashamed about but the thing that has contributed to the other two and any others that I can't think of at this time of the morning lies in the back of my head, non-stop.

I'm ashamed of my parents.

I understand that it's so easy to point fingers at another person and say that had it not been for them I wouldn't have done this, or that, or even that, but for a lot of things that I have or haven't done in my life stems back to my childhood and upbringing.

Although my parents never hit me they showered my brothers and I with material love, sent us away at an age under ten to boarding school - me to an all girls' school and my brothers all went to the same school, dividing the family almost purposefully. I always felt like the outsider visiting friends when holidays came around, my parents bullied me for better marks at school, bullied me into further education, criticised the way I brought up my children, sent threatening letters to me whilst my second marriage was falling apart and testified against me in court during the divorce.

Whilst I am very proud of my parents' own achievements, I am ashamed that we are even related.

And that's all, really, because I've cut all ties with them and am getting on with life. This is only the fourth year that I've not seen them, but it has really helped. I was stupid not to have done this years ago.

My bad, my shame.

this is the only post... (task 10, by the way)

2005-07-21T22:16:00.000+01:00

...you ain't gonna get any pictures in.

too difficult to illustrate I s'pose.

There isn't one moment I'm ashamed of ... just twenty or so years. Due to all the time and promise I wasted. I was a bloody clever kid. And I blew it. For twenty years I did sod all. Homework was done in the car on the way to school. Projects done the night before. Fell into most things. Got by. Didn't even have the excuse of liking to drink and do drugs all the time... I did them, but I didn't get overly taken over by them. I did art school and did fuck all, didn't pay attention. Assumed I'd be a huge success when I left. Wasn't. Did other stuff. Stopped drawing. Stopped being funny. Too much effort really. Even got pregnant by accident. Basically, I did nothing in the twenty odd years from being a little kid to being a mother (at 29). ... apart from let it happen. What a damned waste. I worked hard when it was shoved in my face... but didn't go home at the end of the day and write/illustrate the great american (obviously NOT the great american, but you get what I'm at) novel... when bus drivers and mothers of seventeen under-fives were getting on, going home after a hard day's work and writing bestsellers, running companies. And then there's me. Got told I had a very high IQ at five years old... never tried hard again. Expected to be discovered (doing what, I have no idea) and made a star/bestseller/top mathematician. Pathetic. Felt like a failure because I hadn't been a huge success at 21 like I thought I was going to.

Thankfully, dropping myself in Portugal has rather saved me from myself and I have found the joy of working hard.... for I am rather stuck in the middle of nowhere with very few friends and without working/painting/drawing/writing/blogging I think I would go seriously over the side of a cliff, as being a housebound wifey mothery type thing doesn't float my boat... not one little bit... sinks it in fact... to the bottom of a very deep lake.

There are TWO things, though, that I am inordinately proud of... my two little girls.

I made them. And although I almost throttled them half an hour ago they are truly amazing and I truly love them.

And I made them.

Did I say that it was ME that made them? that raises them? feeds them? bathes them? cleans their stinky bums? and still they are completely adorable little poppets. (and I made them).

That is all.

And if anyone complains about my grammar... they can go and suck on a lynne truss.

Putting Me First

2005-07-21T21:26:00.000+01:00

Thinking of a proud moment was surprisingly difficult. It's not because I have impromptu flash moments, moonwalk or swear at strange men all of the time but because of all of my proud moments, how do you select one? What's proud to me may mean jack shit to anyone else.

I have lots of proud moments and I'm delighted to announce that there is more to me than being a flasher, moonwalking and being rude.

I can admit it here because I don't give 2 shits, but I've been quite shit at choosing boyfriends. I was embarrassed to admit on holiday last week that there isn't one long term boyfriend that I feel even remotely fond about. There isn't one who was the best, just one that was the best of a bad bunch.

I was engaged just over two years ago for almost two years. I went through the mill with this guy and despite my efforts, things went tits up whilst I was in my final year at university. I hit rock bottom and went through the motions of life. I was grinning and smiling but it hurt like f*ck. All I kept wondering is how the hell I ended up like this and surely I could do better. I was in serious danger of throwing away almost 3 years of hard work on my degree because I was so distracted, but I had to pull it together.

It takes two to tango but he behaved so despicably, that he left me with no choice. Others would have stayed to try to work things out but I did some forward thinking and read the writing on the wall. It said: Get the f*ck out now before you lose yourself and everything that you ever thought you could ever be.

Where there had been an ambitious, vivacious, full of the joys of life girl there was a shadow of my former self. He creepy creeped his way back into the flat in the early hours of June 1st 2003 after being gone almost 18 hours 'playing cricket'. He was rude and obnoxious and instead of arguing I stared at him because he was unrecognisable to me and smirked at how pathetic he suddenly appeared in his boxers tripping over his trousers in the dark.

He left later that morning and when he was 20 minutes down the road, I dialled his number.

EX: Yeah. (He sounded so cocky that I must admit to enjoying this conversation)
NML: Hi. When you get back tonight I won't be here.
EX: Oh yeah. Out with the girls are you?
NML: No, I mean that I will be gone. I'm moving out. I've had enough.
EX: What? Don't be silly.
NML: Silly? Silly would be to stay with you and think that this would get any better.

I moved out and despite a shitload of tears I never regretted it. I lived in my aunts spare room for a month. I got a 2:1 for my degree, found a place to live and a decent job and never looked back.

I hated the loss of plans, the loss of routine, the loss of all that seemed to make me feel secure, but I hated the loss of myself more, and I got it back when I walked away from him. I'm so bloody proud of this because my life could be so bloody different, you really have no idea. I believed in myself more than I believed in the idea of forever no matter what.

Forgive Me Father For I Have Sinned

2005-07-21T21:07:00.000+01:00

There are a few stories I could tell here but I'll make this a Famous Five/Mallory Towers moment and stick to a story from childhood that I can blame on being immature.

I was brought up in Dublin where I went to a rather posh all girls private Catholic convent school where not only was I the only Protestant in the school, but also the only black person. This meant that I was rather conspicuous and that there was very little that I could get away with. Have you ever tried to run from the scene of a crime as the only black in the village?

I'm embarrassed to admit that once I realised that I was limited in how much trouble I could be involved in, I decided to turn it to its advantage. Play on the fear, play on the neurosis. I know, I l know, I was terrible. I played on the fact that I was the only black person in my school, so every time I was accused of something, it already appeared to be a spot of racial profiling. Despite wanting to be like every other kid in the school (relatively anonymous by their very colour), I did however fear the wrath of my mother who would whup my arse if I misbehaved at school. I couldn't bunk off from classes because if I had been in school I would be spotted by everyone. So I did a heist on the convent pantry instead.

Whatever ideas you have about nuns, the ones at my convent had a shitload of gear. Massive boxes of chocolate, oodles of bottles of Sprite, lots of biccies and cheeses, and Holy communion wine. Prowling around the edges of the convent, we discovered that the nuns kept the key in a very open place for us to see. The key was like a crack dealer to a crack fiend, calling us, and eventually we 'cracked' and tried the keys out on the doors. When we opened the pantry and discovered a shitload of sugar food, for my seventeen year old self I was in heaven.

For weeks we took Twirl bars, Flakes, Dairy Milk and Sprite and swigged out of the communion wine. I felt brave after a few weeks and decided that the next heist should be one of the unwrapped Christmas presents on the top shelf. It was a whopper of a box of Quality Street choccies which I emptied and then rewrapped and put back on the shelf.

I don't know what made the nuns open that particular pressie that day, but next thing you know there were rumours of a locker inspection for sweets from the pantry. I nearly shat my pants at the thought that my ma was gonna kick my arse. However, I decided to keep the sweets in my locker.

All of the lockers were patrolled but I decided to be my vocal self to one of the teachers before they got to my locker. 'Don't be looking at me like that. I hate the way when something goes missing in this place that you immediately think that I took it'. They didn't even open my locker!

Fortunately it served as a whopper of a lesson for me and the pantry 'heists' stopped and I never stole a thing again!

Confessions of a Confused Blogger.

2005-07-21T21:01:00.000+01:00

Yes, I'm confused, really. What have I done that I'm really ashamed of ? Loads, and then, not really. What moment in my life have I done something to be most proud of ? Not a lot.

Big Brother wants us to state "the moment in your life you are most proud of."

Well, up to the age of fourteen it was managing to win the 'Writing Cup' as I had the best handwriting but that really is pathetic. At the age of sixteen I managed to get 'de-flowered', if that counts, but having been brought up in a strict boarding school away from anybody that I knew, it was difficult to get up to much.

So, let's fast-forward from the Writing Cup Trophy by about fifteen years, when I fell pregnant not only to one child, but two, as it was 'buy one, get one free' week. I followed every single pre-natal class, followed my gynaecologist's orders to the point of punctuation, and, at 38 weeks' of pregnancy, I was due to be induced.

Armed heavily with nightdresses, baby clothes and a toothbrush, I went into hospital ready for the epidural to get it over and done with, only to be told gently by my gynaecologist, just as the contractions started, that I couldn't have an epidural. Labour was dire, but my physiotherapist/midwife had taught me all the breathing techniques to make labour and the actual birth as painless as possible.

I followed her words and despite the pain, I managed to somehow overcome a lot of the pain. I demanded a bath to ease things and this helped the whole process of 'opening up' (sorry Mike) incredibly. I was in the birthing room and after three pushes, the first baby popped out.
"Is it a Coralie or a Jérome ?" (the names that we had chosen for the first-born).
"It's a Coralie!" replied the father who had her wrapped up and placed on my chest.
"Come on Zoe," said my gynaecologist ten minutes later, "there's another one to come out too, you know."
I'd completely forgotten, but she was out in no time and I was soon bundling them closely to my chest, hot, sweating and very, very happy.
"That was a model-birth, Zoe," said my gynaecologist as he was 'doing things down below' while I was absorbed in my own little world with my own little bundles of joy.

They are now two beautiful girls who I still love dearly, even after sixteen years.

Tomorrow: shame.

In Which I Bare My Soul

2005-07-21T17:51:00.000+01:00

There are so many things of which I’m vaguely proud . There are so many things of which I’m (a little) ashamed. But which is the correct one to enthral you with?
Should I be proud of my embonpoint? My collection of signed photographs and books? Or my ability (and in which I gave a master class last night) to walk, run, dance and work in heels for over thirty years?
And as for shame… well there’s that outfit I wore to a wedding in the early 90’s, there’s those awful curly perms and over-teased hair of the 80’s and my addiction to Star Trek at an early age.
But none of them seem quite meaty enough for you all, dear readers. You all seem to be living off our shame and triumphs like media vampires, eager for the next heady and weighty rush to course through your bloodstream. We are dancing to your tune now and we must, must MUST! entertain and feed you.

Time draws on, I’ve made my choice of two interconnected things. The yin and yang of guilt and pride. See what you think. Not my usual amusing, witty and gently entertaining piece of whimsy but something truthful and visceral.

I’m most proud of……my marriage and my Husband. Odd thing to say really – I mean no one is really ashamed of their marriage or spouse are they? (Unless you’re Debbie McGee perhaps). But I’m glad I married a man of intelligence, of talent and of fun. Who loves books and culture and theatre and loves my love of culture and the same things and with whom I’ve never really argued in all our years of marriage. There has been the odd snap about crumbs on the sofa or towels in the bath and loo seats and ‘your mother’ but no times in which we’ve gone to bed angry and said words to hurt and sulked and frankly, caused more pain to ourselves in trying to wound each other. He’s the person whom I would rather spend most of my time talking to about concepts and worlds and experiments and philosophies and who always follows my (occasionally slightly convoluted) logic and often knows what I’m about to say when I make an amazing leap to a startling conclusion. We catch each other’s eyes at parties and know what the other is thinking. He cooks and irons and plays the guitar and has an annoying habit of being able to snore in any position and is, upon occasion, completely and utterly stupid.

He’s also the person who sat by my side holding my hand tightly during my first awful miscarriage when everything happened so fast and I was given emergency treatment there and then in a treatment room without anaesthetic. He then went home and washed the sofa covers, removing the all too brief evidence of our family and cried as he did so. I’m proud of him – and us – together, no matter what.

But the downside of this was our courtship. I’m not proud of it.

You see I was living with and engaged to someone else. We had been together for 10 years and the relationship was a dead man walking. He was remote and hidebound, slightly juvenile and tortuously confused and a hypocrite in some ways. He was good-looking and utterly faithful but selfish. I was withdrawn, old before my time, overweight, lethargic and trapped. But situations change and I blossomed. I came out of a chrysalis and grew up and away from the fiancé. But I lied to him, I left him alone, I cheated and I thought nothing of his happiness. I was unfaithful. I did not have the courage to leave him and start out on my own which would have saved face and spared him the ultimate betrayal.
We lived in the same town although I moved a few miles away and he never really spoke to me again. He stiffly gave congratulations on our marriage to my parents – who were and remained, very fond of him and whom he loved.
He then contracted cancer and died within 18 months. An awful death, reduced to five stone of skin and bone and with tumours rife through his body. No cathartic deathbed conciliation for me and I didn’t deserve them anyway. I cheated on his trust and took advantage of his stoical nature. So my happiness - the thing I’m proud of - came at the expense of someone else. And that’s what I’m most ashamed of.

Task 10: Pride and Shame.

2005-07-21T17:30:00.000+01:00

Ooh, tough one. When I look back upon my life, it's always with a sense of shame, as Neil Tennant put it. Hence a certain difficulty in recalling any moments of true, unalloyed pride. Career achievements? Hardly. Sporting achievements? Don't make me laugh. The thrill of holding a new-born baby in my arms? I think you might have me confused with someone else.

No; my proudest moments have all been fairly small ones. Collecting "top of the class" prizes at school speech days. Singing the lead role in a Benjamin Britten children's opera (albeit half a tone flat throughout, as the recording proved to my horror - but then I was only an understudy who got lucky). One particularly fantastic night of DJ-ing, on the Thursday before Christmas in 1988, when the cool and trendy city centre nightclub was packed, and everybody danced all night, and I felt like a proper club DJ, rather than a midweek dilettante. Successfully fielding a difficult call on our local Gay Switchboard, and feeling like I had genuinely helped someone in need. Loads of incidents related to my blog, which has given me my first ever taste of anything approaching what I would consider to be true success (something of a head-f**k for someone who has hitherto led a life of comfortable under-achievement). Receiving a glowing review in Time Out for the official website which I created for the Gay Pride festival in 1997. Eight years later, having my first ever piece of paid journalism appear in the same magazine, as the lead article in the music section. The day that my partner's money came through for the sale of his company, and we checked the balance of his current account on the cash machine in the middle of town, and laughed and laughed and laughed, and went for lunch, and booked a posh holiday, and had the offer accepted on our weekend cottage, and all within the space of a couple of hours. Being surrounded by friends and family at the all-day party for our 10th anniversary. Making it to the 20th anniversary, earlier this year.

Ah, STOP. That's the one. April 20th, 2005. Making it to our 20th anniversary as a couple. Now, that's an achievement in which I take immense pride.

I've just realised something else, as well. Those proud moments: there have been more of them in the last few years than at any time since childhood. Meaning that whatever was lost in adolescence, and pissed away in young adulthood, is now returning in early middle age. That's a wonderful realisation, and I'm only making it now, as I type.

And there's something else. Some of those moments haven't actually been all that small, have they?

Well, I'll be blowed.

So I'm going to have to get back to you on that whole Shame business. Because right now, with last night's hangover starting to kick in big-style, and with the memory of yesterday's mostly justified bollocking from the client still fresh in my mind, I actually feel rather good about myself for once.

Best not to check how the voting's going, then. I haven't dared to take a look yet. Is it very bad? No, don't answer that.

Always comes before a fall!

2005-07-21T13:14:00.000+01:00

Do you know what it’s like, growing up in a family with two elder brothers? Especially a Scottish family. Because that makes me the babby. Even now I’m the babby. Last year when I first came up to Scotland I stayed with my aunt in Buckhaven for a few weeks, and she took me along to St Monans, where her and my dad grew up. We met some people they knew from back then. “This is Bobby’s wee babby,” she told them. I’m 41 years old and six feet tall. “Bobby’s wee babby.”

I’ve put up with it my whole life. And it’s not easy. Especially when you are all boys.

I suspect it would be the same with all girls. It’s the fact that you are all the same sex. It would be different with older sisters, because girls develop, well, differently. You know? But with two older brothers, you have to watch as things happen, their bodies develop, their shape changes, hair starts growing where hair never grew before, their voices deepen, their… you know… thingies… stop looking vaguely like a tiny maggot and start looking like…. well… man-bits.

And yours doesn’t.

And you are never allowed to forget it.

Yes, your brothers can go to the funfair on their own. But not you. You’re too young. You’re the babby.

Yes, your brothers can go to the disco at the memorial hall. But not you. You’re too young. You’re the babby.

Yes, your brothers can stay up late to watch The Sweeney. But not you. You’re too young. You’re the babby.

And then.

And then.

I don’t remember what started the argument. I only remember the rebuke. Stinging. She knew how to hit you where it hurt, my mother did.

“Don’t you talk to me like that, little boy!” she said.

Little Boy! Little Boy! I retreated to my bedroom. Hurt. Ashamed. Little Boy! I was 12. Things were happening. How dare she. She doesn’t know. How could she know?

I marched back out of the bedroom. Determined. I’d show her.

“There! You see! Now don’t ever call me a little boy again!”

There I stood. My trousers round my ankles. And there they were. My pride and joy. The thing which made me a little boy, a babby, no more.

My two pubic hairs.

(and now, if you don’t mind, I will not be showing my face again for a while. a couple of years ought to do it.)

A Sense of Pride

2005-07-21T11:36:00.000+01:00

I wouldn’t have called him a friend. More a “friend of a friend” really. But I knew him to talk to, vaguely, and that was really all that mattered.

You see, we were in the bar of this pub in the middle of Minchinhampton Common, just above Stroud in the heart of the Cotswold hills. It was my best mate’s 18th birthday, well the weekend before actually but you know how it is, and we had arranged a surprise party for him in the function room at the back. I’d agreed to get here early, together with Dareth and Maureen, a couple of girls from our college class, to set everything up. It was down to another mate, Paul, to get him up here.

So I was in the bar waiting for the girls to arrive. And of course, I didn’t know anyone here. The type of people who used a pub like this weren’t really my people. The horsey set. White, middle-class, upstanding, church-going. Young Farmers types. All wax jackets and welly boots.

And he was there for the party as well. I can’t really remember why he had turned up early but it was something to do with meeting his girlfriend. Anyway, the two of us were there, and we vaguely knew each other, and we didn’t know anyone else. So we were talking. It was better than standing on your own with a pint looking like a spare prick at a wedding.

We talked about the usual stuff a guy in his late teens talked about. Cars, music, football. That Toyah’s a bit rough but you would anyway. (Hey, it was 1982, gimme a break!)

And then…..

“Oh F***ing Hell!” he exclaimed, indicating towards the door. “Who let the f***ing jungle out early tonight?”

Did I mention that Dareth and Maureen were black?

“What the f*** did you do that for?” he squealed, floundering on his arse on the floor trying to staunch the flow of blood from his nose.

The only time in my adult life I ever punched someone. And it connected beautifully.

(shame to come later - it's a doozy!)

WELL

2005-07-20T21:00:00.000+01:00

To be well and prepared for la Fête Nationale de la Belgique tomorrow, I spent over two hours in the hairdressers' yesterday and will be exfoliating my rather stressed backside tonight using Deep Heat. The fragrance will charm the socks off the Belgians to whom I am going to introduce none other than the Twat, who, despite having lived in this country for almost four years has never watched the Belgian Trooping of the Colour, so as to speak.

There will be no horses, just a really boring Army Parade and a couple of airplanes. The 21 July is well known for the drache Nationale ('National downpour' ..?) which normally happens during the parade which is then followed by sunshine and plenty of fun in the park opposite the Palace.

And yet I am called upon to perform my task chez Big Blogger who obviously has absolutely no idea of how the Belgians function. If a Thursday is a holiday, then so is the Friday, when I'm off girlie-shopping with one of my offspring who may well buy me my departing outfit for next week as that is where I think I am heading. Fear not, Tatiana has great dress-sense and my departure will probably be made in some costume aimed at a sixteen year-old.

But I'll put up a fight, boys, oh yes. Always fear the Brussel Sprout.

If you dont mind

2005-07-20T17:59:00.000+01:00

The cleaners have been in to complain. And you don't want mad Doris on your case.

They want to clean the hatstand. So you can you all claim your hats to enable them to do this. Big Blogger thinks that Girl and JonnyB left their hats in all the rush last night. Wonder where they were off to so quickly.

Mad Doris says thanks.

An idea

2005-07-20T17:48:00.000+01:00

So guys, should I fill the pool with this?

A new day, a new task.

2005-07-20T12:46:00.000+01:00

Afternoon everyone.

Little Blogger hopes that you're all feeling okay after yesterdays shenanigans. I have noticed that the pool is missing about three foot of 'water', so I'll top it up with soluble aspirin-flavoured juice as requested.

As a warning of things to come, I ought to let all remaining bloggees aware that the tasks are going to come a little bit thicker and faster from now on. There'll be a task every two days or so (not including weekends) until the end of the competition, so you'll have plenty of hearty material to get your teeth into.

Which leads nicely on to today's task.

Or, for those who care, Task 10 (ooh, double figures!).

Otherwise known as 'Confessions of a ....... Blogger' (insert adjective as applicable).

Little Blogger (and Big Blogger, wherever he is) would like you all to fess up, in as much detail as is humanly possible, about a) the moment in your life you are most proud of, and b) the moment you are most ashamed of. You can use whatever form of description you want, and you can include pictures, photos and sound clips. Basically, do whatever you want to.

The deadline for this task is midday Friday. The next task will go up Friday afternoon and will be due in on Monday afternoon next week.

Told you it was getting serious.

And remember, anyone who doesn't do their tasks risks automatic eviction.

So good luck, and have fun! And if you have any special dietary requests please let me know about it in the Diary Room. Who wants to watch a film tonight?

Poll will be up in 5 minutes..

Eviction time. The end. Promise.

2005-07-19T20:43:00.000+01:00

That's that then.

Zoe has spoken.

JonnyB. Girl. Please make your way, whenever you fancy it, to the Diary Room to say your goodbyes.

Oh, and please shut the blogflap behind you when you leave.

Eviction Time. Definitely. Perhaps.

2005-07-19T17:37:00.000+01:00

So Alan has made his choice here.

Therefore both he and the rather delicious NML are now exempt from facing the torture of a public eviction both this week and next week, the lucky buggers.

So one is left with the task of evicting the two unluckiest blogmates; those the public have chosen to discard like an overused scrunched up hanky in the litterbin of life.

Those two are none other than the irrepressible JonnyB, and that filthy-minded vixen, The Girl.

However...

The fun does not end just yet. Oh no.

Zoe, that queen of Belgian blogging who loves getting her arse out at every possible opportunity, has amazingly been crowned the most popular housemate this week. It must be something to do with her vegetable fetish. Therefore, Big Blogger has decreed that if she so wishes, Zoe can choose to save one of these people from eviction and evict someone else instead. What fun eh?

Unfortunately the selection is somewhat reduced, seeing as NML and Alan have immunity. So Zoe can either leave things as they are, or save someone and evict either Mike, Miss Mish or Vit instead.

Oh! What a toughie. What will she do???
Zoe. What will you do??

Please let us know as soon as possible. Then I can finally evict some people.

Yours, LB

PS. There will be a new task tomorrow, and the next poll will go up tomorrow too.

Eviction Time. Sort of.

2005-07-19T12:56:00.000+01:00

Well hello my little lovelies.

I'd like to start by saying well done on generating over 400 (on Haloscan and Blogger) comments on THAT post over the last four days. I've never seen that number of comments and probably never will again, so thankyou. I can die happy now.

And it's probably a good time to let you know that none of you are getting evicted because of the mini-task. I was pulling your leg. Having you on. Honking the monkey. Choking the chicken. No, wait, that's something else entirely.

What that task has achieved is invincibility for two lucky individuals!
The first person is....

ALAN!

Because I was so impressed by the level of effort he employed in amusing the hell out of me, and hopefully everyone else with a funny bone in their body, and typing out absolutely shitloads of comments to try to achieve immunity. Bravo! Well done! Little Blogger salutes you!

Now, the second person is...

Whoever Alan wants to be safe with him!

Would Alan please report to Little Blogger's office (or The Diary Room) to let me know who you'd like to be safe with you.

The pair of you cannot be evicted by the public either this week or next week whatever happens, so I'd advise you to think very carefully about this.

Next up, there has been a poll at the side of the site all this week, and the totals have been counted and verified, and... unfortunately you're going to have to wait until Alan gets back to me with his decision before I start ejecting people from the premises.

And Zoe, because you're safe (come on, it's no great shock really) I've refilled the pool with margherita rather than Pimms, just for a change.

Don't go getting too trolleyed please.

It's burgers and sausages on the barbecue tonight!

Back in a bit..

LB

Task 9: Fancy Dress.

2005-07-18T16:18:00.000+01:00

(Before I undertake this task, I would just like to point out that in New York City, it is still only 11:19 am. So let's have no bickering over midday deadlines, shall we?)

Historically, I have always baulked at the concept of fancy dress, on the grounds that I have a natural aversion to making myself look ridiculous. (Intentionally, that is. "Accidentally" is quite another matter.)

Invited to a "come as a film title" party in 1985, hosted by an old University friend from whom I was rapidly growing apart (particularly after she became an immigration officer, and started rather pointedly asking all my non-Caucasian friends where they were FROM, as well as regularly declaring that all Africans were liars), I took the path of least resistance. Turning up at the party wearing a star-shaped badge made out of silver foil, and carrying an onion, I explained that I had come as Paris, Texas.

Noticing the baffled looks (let's just say that the citizens of Wembley aren't always what you might call an "arthouse" crowd), I then seized a upturned plastic bucket from the kitchen, sat on it, and declared that I was Pale Rider.

Still no reaction. Hmm, tough gig. Lowest common denominator time, then. In desperation, I inverted the bucket, parked my arse inside it, and shrieked "Look! I'm A Private Function!"

As the collective prissy-minded disgust of suburban North London's off-duty civil service rained down about me, I swore never to attempt fancy dress again.

Until the karaoke party in 1991, that is. Having spent all afternoon trawling the charity shops, four of us (two boys, two girls) squeezed ourselves into various bits of 1970s tat, and turned up as Abba. With a detailed dance routine to Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight) already worked out, we fancied that we would be the hit of the night.

Until we entered the flat, and realised that 90% of the rest of the party (which was also 90% gay male) had interpreted the "fancy dress" theme as "wear as little as possible, and flash as much toned and tanned flesh as possible". Predictable, once I'd thought about it. With all and sundry affecting not to notice us, as they cooed and schmoozed over each other's lycra shorts and teeny-tiny cut-off denims, we slunk into the farthest corner, wishing we had something to change back into.

In a full length black and silver lurex gown (which scratched like buggery), a crimson crocheted skull cap, a shoulder length auburn wig and baby-blue eyeshadow, I had hoped that my transformation into "Frida" would reveal me as a stunning-looking drag queen, with style, chutzpah and pizzazz. Unfortunately, I merely resembled a sad old slapper with a bigger nose than usual (how did that happen?), shit hair, and all the grace and deportment of a docker in fishnets.

Since then, I have never dressed up again. Not once. Until now.

So, okay. If I must... I should like to come as Miss Mish. Big wide-brimmed hat, exquisitely embroidered gown, fab bag, fuck-off stillies - and, of course, that cigarette holder. Darlings, I might have made a godawful drag queen in 1991, but I shall make a GORGEOUS one in 2005.

As Miss Mish, there can be only one choice of music: There's No Business Like Show Business, from the Ethel Merman Disco Album. Her theme tune, her calling card, her mating call.

Never heard it? Well, now's your chance...

Please don't hit me!

2005-07-18T13:28:00.000+01:00

I'm only small.

I've posted this in the comments over in The Diary Room already, as a response to Alan's well-expressed gripes:

I didn't say you needed to whore yourself on your own blogs, and was really rather looking forward to how many other ingenious ways of getting people to love you people could find.

Plus, please bear in mind that there may possibly in all probability be any number of possible outcomes of this task, as Big and Little Blogger do have the capacity to make the rules up as they go along.

If this has put anyone's back up, I wholeheartedly apologise. It was intended merely to get the blood flowing a bit more than usual.

Yours lovingly,

LB

So you see, this mini-task thing is all about using your initiative.
Any more complaints, then either Diary Room it, or email me.

Bon appetit.

Task 9 Fancy Dress

2005-07-18T08:36:00.000+01:00

For this task I will be attending the party as Pam Grier, and I've chosen her because she was the symbol of the strong black woman in movies, in the seventies. I hate fancy dress parties generally and have rarely been arsed to do a costume, but if I was to dress up it would be seventies style. Pam Grier had big hair, was sassy with bags of attitude and could kick some serious ass whilst looking hot to trot.

I shall be wearing my hair big and wild, and a sexy green jumpsuit with a cut-out in the front, with a whip instead of a plastic gun (not keen on guns myself). The music will be seventies classics including the theme tune from Shaft and anything by the Bee Gees.

Hullo again everybody!!!

2005-07-18T08:21:00.000+01:00

As you will have noticed, I had to disappear again, leaving my place by the toaster and disappearing through the hole in the fence, which is exactly Clair-shaped, like in cartoons.

So I am a bit late for the party and playing catch-up. But don’t worry, as I will be the life and soul. Dancing around, pouring everybody drinks and playing little funny practical jokes, like Mrs Thatcher at Ted Heath’s funeral.

I have brought some music with me. It is the Best Of the Proclaimers.

When I tell people that The Proclaimers are one of my favourite bands, they think I am joking. But thinking The Proclaimers are a novelty band is one of the classic indicators of somebody who doesn’t know anything about music (like ‘Leonard Cohen is depressing’ and ‘Ringo was crap’). Anyway, I will challenge you – if you don’t fall in love with at least one track on this album that you’ve never heard before in your life then I will personally come round and wash your car. With Mr. Mitt. (Terms and conditions apply).

Oh dear. I have had too much to drink already and am getting aggressive.

My last stint at a fancy dress party was quite successful, so I think I will repeat the costume. I went as Rod Hull and Emu. Actually the LTLP was Emu, I glued some feathers to her head and it was quite effective. People do not realise these days how easy fancy dress is. Google Images will find a picture of everybody in the world ever, then all you need to do is to blow it up a bit, attach some elastic and cut out eyeholes.

It is much more realistic than most of the things you get in so-called ‘fancy dress’ shops and in fact I am sure I got mistaken for the real Rod Hull a few times, which was very amusing!!!

Task 9: fancy dress party...

2005-07-18T07:26:00.000+01:00

and in my case.... THEME NIGHT too!

I'll be coming as a composite of "Portugalness": A Fadista wearing a bata with a large Galo de Barcelos brooch to be overly proud of.

I'm going to come and sing/wail some fado into each and every house member's ear until they like it, or say that they understand why the Portuguese love it so. (LB, I'll be requiring a couple of fado musicians, a guitarrist and another guitarrist, they probably have proper names, but hey, queen of bullshit here don't know 'em).

Then I'll take advantage of the fact I'm wearing my Bata (housecoat) to tidy up a bit, and clean that kitchen... have you SEEN the state of it? Honestly, you English (and you can tell me you're British until you're blue in the face.... to me you're ENGLISH!).

After the place is PROPERLY clean and I've done all your laundry and ironed it including all the tea towels and all your knickers and tights then I may rejoin the party to regale you with hilarious stories of revolutions from the past... and the future (if I have anything to do with it).

All this I will do with a Portuguese accent, and occasionally I shall slip into Portuguese as if by accident so that everyone can hear that Portuguese is NOT Spanish, but is in fact a highly superior language!

And by the end of the evening you will have forgotten that I'm British through and through and will think of me as an exotic little thing, albeit with a faint smell of grilled sardines and chouriço.

Shhh....

2005-07-17T20:35:00.000+01:00

*Quietly as a mouse, Clair creeps up to the fence enclosing the big blogger shack and peers through a gap at the housemates in the garden. She waits until they're all deeply engrossed in conversation, then starts pelting them with water balloons. In the immediate confusion she runs off...dodging the barbed wire and guards with machine guns as she goes.*

In Which I FINALLY find A Costume

2005-07-17T18:18:00.000+01:00

This fancy dress task has me at a loss for once. I don’t like fancy dress parties. Why can’t I come as myself?
My last foray into this horrendous party world was about 8 years ago, before The Husband and I were married. An acquaintance of mine was celebrating his 30th birthday, and being of a rather limited imagination he decided that his party would have the theme of ‘Dusk til Dawn’ He had been rather blown away by the Clooney/Tarantino film of the same name and decided that his party would last the requisite number of hours and also - rather ambitously if you ask me – would have women wandering around in bikinis with snakes hanging off them (in November? Was he mad?)
So I decided to go as the George Clooney character. Black suit with waistcoat (no shirt), hair slicked back and down, borrowed a large gun and got my friend – Bear – to paint the tattoos over my arm, chest and neck. Hailing a cab I went off at six pm (‘Dusk’) and entered the fray. It was quite boring really, a lot of youngsters dressed as Vampires or the undead wandering around looking ridiculous. No interesting people or stimulating conversations. So after a few hours (and some very inferior wine), I made my excuses and left.
Now it may have been the wine, but I got this ridiculous thought that it would be fun to call in upon The Husband (actually the Boyfriend of four months standing at that time) and barge in with a gun. So I get the cabby to drop me off by his house only it took a bit of difficulty remembering where it was as I’d only been there a couple of times before. But I knew the street and recognised it when we arrived. And I could see the lights were on and there were people – his housemates – in the living room.
So I rang the doorbell and when someone answered, stuck my gun in his forehead and yelled something like: ‘OK MOTHERFUCKER, I AM COMING IN AND YOU’RE NOT GOING TO STOP ME! BE COOL, BE VERY COOL.’
We marched into the hallway and I looked around. Worryingly, it didn’t look familiar.
Still holding my gun against his forehead I asked (politely) if The Boyfriend….. er… actually lived there.
My hostage could only manage a slightly worried ‘No’
So I backed out, still holding the gun at him, apologising profusely and left. The house I wanted was next door.
And so we had three students who never opened the door after dark again……

So this time I’d better go as something non-frightening. Something amusing and which could not possibly, under any circumstances be regarded as a threat.
So after donning my 1980 silver disco trousers, silver batwing top and spraying a swimming cap silver I shall attend as…………The Spirit of Ecstasy!

What?
Oh, it’s the model atop the Rolls-Royce bonnet.
I’ll give Mike a piggyback into the party so he can arrive in style…….

Music by The Cars please.

Task 9: Groucho

2005-07-17T12:01:00.000+01:00

My fancy dress character would be Groucho Marx.

I’ve always wanted to go to a party and upon meeting someone who thinks they know me, say,

“I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception”.

Not having any natural comedic talent of my own, makes it hard to make an impression on people, so at times like these, being able to get others laughing is important. Obviously I would work my wisecracks into the conversation carefully. Saying,

“He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot”

to the host’s wife probably wouldn’t get me any brownie points.

Likewise, when introduced to someone who works in the Royal Air Force, it might not be such a good idea to be jigging around to the 1930’s Dixieland Jazz record I brought with, and then comment,

“Military justice is to justice what military music is to music”,

or even,

“Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms”.

No amount of alcohol ingestion will excuse such comments, though seeing the response I would get from saying it, might be worth the risk of being talked to harshly by the hosts.

At a party one must ensure that one’s point of view is always expressed clearly, since there will always be someone whose views diametrically oppose your own. Being able to state with authority,

“A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five”,

Will always prove that I had the intellectual high ground; who wants to delve into an argument about an issue when you can end the conversation there and then?

Still, when faced with an argumentative party-goer, dissipating the situation with humour works well. Saying,

“You’ve got the brain of a four-year old boy and I’ll bet he was glad to get rid of it”

leaves the other person speechless, which lets face it, is the best result for someone who thinks they know it all.

But if this doesn’t work, and one finds one has to back up one’s position on things, then there is always the last resort of stating,

“These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others”,

before walking away, head held high.

Dressed as Groucho Marx would enable me to say all these things, and make a good impression on everyone at the party: I wouldn’t be forgotten in a hurry.

Though I imagine that when leaving the party, it probably wouldn’t be such a good idea to tell the hosts,

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it”,

if I want to ever be invited out again.

no, this isn't my fancy dress costume...

2005-07-17T11:02:00.000+01:00

... this is just how I feel,

like a greasy Harvey Keitel type of pimp, having been pimping my own arse/ass all night.

what's in a dress ?

2005-07-16T19:41:00.000+01:00

Well, I thought about this fancy-dress party quite a lot, actually. I lost several hours sleep over it and decided that I, the Queen of Hearts, should go none other than the late Princess of Wales, Diana. Her personality fits me to a T. Kind, generous, loving and caring, a bit dim - but then, look at her ex-husband who is no trophy either - and a fantastic shagaholic.

Obviously, I shall be dressed in a Versace body-hugging dress, a tiara which, unlike my own (sadly), has real gems in it, and the must-have clutch bag in which you can barely fit in your lipstick for a re-touch - but we women of such high calibre know how to take care of such things.

My hairdresser and make-up artists will be on hand in the Ladie's and just to add a je ne sais-quoi, I shall be wearing heels, probably opened toed and with a strap around the ankle, as I am not quite as tall as the late Princess of Wales.

The music played will be all 80s music and probably dipping further into the 70s. The final song will, of course, be God Save The Queen.

In which I choose Another Fancy Dress outfit

2005-07-16T15:21:00.000+01:00

I shall go as Marie Antoinette.

Lots of embellished satin, crystal studded shoes, a towering wig, make-up, an gorgeous young man on my arm and....

What?

Oh. Too Elton John evidently.

I'll have another think.

In which I choose a fancy dress outfit

2005-07-16T13:19:00.000+01:00

I have thought long and hard about this.
I shall go as Dorothy Parker!
I shall be wearing a marvellous hat, with a lovely bobbed hair do, carry a fag holder, make witty and interesting comments and drink gin and...
Hang on.
I think I need to have a re-think.

Fine!

2005-07-16T12:53:00.000+01:00

Well.

Apparently we're boring.

Little Blogger has never been called boring before.

So sorry Big B, but I'm not consulting with you about this, I'm going ahead and doing it.

Just because I can.

Little Blogger wants all of the blogmates to get as many people as possible - friends, strangers, relatives, fellow blogees - to leave comments on THIS POST, and this post alone, attesting to how great their chosen blogmate is.

Something as simple as "I love Mike, he's great innit." That kind of thing.

Little Blogger will then count up all the comments on Tuesday evening, and whoever has the least comments dedicated to them will be automatically evicted, along with whoever gets the highest number of votes from the public in the main poll. If they are the same person then I'll have a think about which second-placer to evict. In any case, someone is definitely going as a result of this.

Or maybe they won't.

Or maybe they will.

Or any other number of conspiracy theories.

That's it.

So get pimping people!

On your marks... get set.... GO!!!!!

An Inspired Choice

2005-07-16T10:44:00.000+01:00

A costume for a fancy dress party? That one worried me. It seemed my well of inspiration had run dry. And knowing that time was running out, last evening I lay awake, wondering what I could possibly come up with. I decided to go out for a little walk, see if something might occur to me out in the real world.

As I walked through town, something seemed to be wrong. It was midnight, and yet there were shops open. And not just all-night convenience stores, these were shops that would not normally be open at this time of night. Bookshops. And they seemed to have crowds around them, queuing to enter. This was very odd. I wandered over to find out what was going on, overheard some snatches of conversation, the words "publishing sensation of the year". Somebody called Rowing or Rowland or something. A name.

"That's IT!" I thought to myself. I instantly rushed back to the house.

Into the diary room I dashed, determined to get on with things before anyone else came up with the same idea.

"Hello Big Blogger," I said. "Could you provide me with a uniform, you know, one of those burgundy ones with the round hats, like they wear in hotels when they are carrying your cases. Oh, and a sack truck and maybe some suitcases, just to finish off the effect."

"Certainly, Alan" he said. And this morning when I was called into the diary room, there it was, all laid out for me.

Meanwhile I had crept back into the boys bedroom. Jonny and Mike were snoring away merrily. Perfect. I crept over to Mike's footlocker and surreptitiously removed two pairs of his baggiest Y-fronts, a crisp white pair and a lovely navy pair I had spotted a few days earlier.

This morning I approached Miss Mish.

"You seem very knowledgable on all things domestic?" I said.

"Oh absolutely, darling, there is nothing I don't know about domestics."

"So if I needed to cut two items of clothing in half, and then sew the halves of the opposing items together, how would I go about that?"

"Well," she said after some consideration, "first I would pull the little string, and that would cause the bell to ring in the servant's quarters...."

I went to see Zoe instead. She seemed more the Earth-Mother type, and she soon put me right.

So now I stand in front of the mirror. The uniform is on, my face is already suitably hirsute, the two-coloured underwear is pulled on over the top, the sack-truck and cases at my side, I am the perfect representation of this weekend's sensational best-selling novel.

Hairy Porter and the Half Blue Pants!!!!!!

That is right, isn't it?

Oh, and music, something by Wizzard, I suppose!

The Big Sums House

2005-07-15T06:33:00.000+01:00

Isn't this really exciting. I went to a place called Cambridge Universe where lots of really clever people go to get even cleverer. They do lots of ginormously difficult sums and important scientific things too.

Then they go on the river and play in flat boats and wear funny hats. It's easy to find the really clever ones because they are allowed to wear Batman cloaks. It's a bit like the last day of school where you could bringing a game with you.

They showed me some of the sums, but it made me feel dizzy.

Quickos loves learning.

oh, it's too hot to sleep...

2005-07-15T00:58:00.000+01:00

So, I've been wandering round the house and garden... with my mag light (I was a security guard in a previous life).

er, mish, is THIS it?

I captured Zoe REFILLING the pimms pool, having so famously emptied it:

and... oh... my... god...

and on that note, I think I should retire for the evening.

note to self: don't look in cupboads to investigate sounds that resemble "puppet humping"... they may well be actual puppets humping.

In Which I Go In search Of A Mystery.

2005-07-14T20:47:00.000+01:00

I know we're all a little shell shocked by last Thursday but there really is NO need to hide under the duvet with your fingers in your ears. Honestly! We're all PERFECTLY safe in here and I think that you can take the colander off your head now Alan..... Or was that to stop the Alien voices in your head? (I really can't keep up with the slow melt down of people in here...)

Vit is scribbling away with her last Will and Testament instead of pictures for once and Mike.... well, let's just say we should hide all the sharp things as he has a look in his eye I don't like. But I wouldn't worry about the frying pan. Being one of those Gentleman Who Are Good With Colours But Can't Do Sport, he'll only take a swing and miss.

There are more important things to worry about. I am STILL missing opne of my marigolds and it is a tad difficult to do the washing up with only one hand. JonnyB has helpfully offered me one of his socks for the other hand but as it's straight out of his dirty washing pile I'm going to have to decline (Honestly. What do they get up to in Norfolk?)
So come along everyone! Spit spot! Let's get you searching for it. And get Zoe out of the pool before we have no deep end left......

for blig bogger

2005-07-14T16:05:00.000+01:00

hellllllllo, mmmyyyyyy name is zoe and i'm reallyyy hot today soo i went swomming in th e pilll but as i get thirsty i drunkk som of _it and hic i needd some please moore ppimms cozz mish miss kee^s teling me toay out oàf her pol butis mine an then ahe and mick put cocomnber in it sso it's like swiming in sooooop.

vat is always drawing picsures of me but i donnt like that coz hic i'm fot. lmn and the booy are fiting again coz mlm thinnks alan loves her and the boy says hge lovers her hic. jony is talking abouyt rabbit stewand hiis love and devotion to plants. hic i thinkj he wants another splif hic but pleasss, bog bligger refil the ppoooool coz im thirsty hic.

I'm not sure...

2005-07-14T14:44:00.000+01:00

But I think I've been hearing strange noises behind me.

But, whenever I go to look, there's nothing there.

a virtual two minutes of silence for London

2005-07-14T12:01:00.000+01:00

The Big Blogger house in repose.

2005-07-13T17:04:00.000+01:00

As his sixth week in the Big Blogger house draws to a close, Mike takes a good look around the premises. With the initial rush of excitement long since faded away, the blogmates have now settled into established, familiar routines.

Normally such a vocal presence, Zoe has been strangely muted of late, spending most of her waking hours languishing in the Pimms-filled swimming pool, and leaving it only to whisk up the odd cocktail or two in the special shaker that Clair was kind enough to leave behind. Frankly, it has proved difficult to get her onto any subject other than vegetables, with which she seems to have become unhealthily obsessed. Maybe the re-appearance of her beloved Quickos will finally drag her out of this sorry state of maudlin, mumbling, booze-addled torpor.

We haven't seen much of NML lately. Has she "done a Clair" and locked herself in the shed, or has she escaped through the blogflap for even hotter, even sunnier climes? Either way, Mike finds himself sorely missing their late night dancing and karaoke sessions.

As for JonnyB, he seems to have taken up permanent position by the toaster. Indeed, woe betide anyone who tries to usurp his position as Toast Maker In Chief, as he is liable to get quite prickly. Especially if the toast comes out too orange. For some not entirely unconnected reason, he has also hidden all the marmalade and apricot jam. Frankly, we're getting rather concerned. Also, he will keep spinning us whimsical little vignettes concerning his alleged encounters with orange-skinned minor celebrities. Can he really be so well connected?

Alan has formed his own little clique within the house - "Team Wiggle" - which consists of him and a bunch of frankly rather tatty looking glove puppets. They spend most of their time hogging the sofas in the living area, and glaring at anyone who comes within spitting distance. Except for Quickos, whom they have welcomed back with open arms. Are Team Wiggle trying to "recruit" the little fella? Mike is sure that this won't wash. (Much like Quickos himself, for that matter. K did remark upon the smudges.)

Miss Mish has rather gone to ground since the weather took a turn for the tropical, preferring to spend her time buried beneath her largest parasol, book and gin in hand, wreathed in plumes of smoke from her Karelia Slims (or Sobranie Pinks, as the mood takes her). Worried that she might be suffering from Shoe Retail withdrawal symptoms, we have made repeated entreaties to Big Blogger to set up a makeshift Shoe Boutique in the Diary Room - but alas, to no avail.

With so many subdued housemates mooching about the place, not even The Girl's repeated and strenuous efforts to "sex things up" can lift their spirits. Yes, Naked Jacuzzi night was certainly lots of fun (not to say educational, in Mike's case at least). Yes, all those games of Pin The Tassle On The G-Spot certainly had pulses racing for a few nights, back in the early days. But frankly: when you've seen one "intimate piercing", you've basically seen them all. The rest is mere positioning. And so, sadly, it looks as if The Girl's determination to have the first ever Actual Real Life Sex in the Big Blogger house is destined to come to nought.

Finally, crouching over her sketch book in the corner, we have the bookies' favourite, Vitriolica. Once again, our resident artist (and sole remaining wibbler) looks to be comfortably ahead in the voting. Niceness personified, that's our Vit. Besides which, the Portuguese have rather a good track record in this sort of thing. But, lo! And hist! Is it mere "projection", or does Mike espy the first hints of complacency crossing Vitriolica's serene visage? Such smugness could be fatal, Mike thinks to himself. For, when all is said and done, there is but one central truth in here: that nothing in the Big Blogger house is ever certain.

Comforting himself with this thought, Mike smiles softly to himself and reaches once again for his iPod and headphones. Just three weeks to go now, and the most coveted honour in the UK blogosphere could be yet his for the taking. All he has to do is watch and wait...

Task 9 - All dressed up...

2005-07-13T14:24:00.000+01:00

Big Blogger understands that the viewers and blogmates alike are missing Dr Rob and his accompanying wibble. It was always going to happen though wasn't it? You voted for it, so you got it.

Big Blogger always had the Big Blogger viewers down as being more intellectual than their Big Brother counterparts who always voted the more interesting and wibble-esque contributors out - but it seems Big Blogger was ill advised.

Anyhoo. You will have noted the poll at the side. The 2 blogmates with the most votes will sit side by side on the Big Blogger ejector seat on Monday afternoon and wave goodbye to the house.

In the meantime here is Task 9:

As a reward for getting your tasks in yesterday, Big Blogger will throw you a fancy dress party. Your task is to decide who you will go as, why and which music you would like to be played at the party.

Please decide by midday Monday. The food will be ruined otherwise.

er....

2005-07-13T14:20:00.000+01:00

"does that mean I can

come out of that disgusting

sock drawer in bedroom

number 2?"

A Message from Spike

2005-07-12T23:21:00.000+01:00

WELCOME BACK QUICKOS!!!!!!

Alan has allowed me to take a moment to welcome my friend Quickos back to the house. I've so missed having someone to play with, but I'd like to thank all Alan's housemates for looking after me so well while he's been gone. Do you know, they've been so nice because they knew how much I was missing my friend that they saved all the best food for me. They've been making do with all that horrible caviar and salmon rubbish and left all the crunchiest beetles and all the juiciest, tastiest spiders just for me!!!!! Thanks everyone!

Task 8: Forgive and Forget

2005-07-12T20:59:00.000+01:00

The Forgive and Forget Party (otherwise known as the Double Fister) represents all those who in their early morning stupor swear allegiance to never ever repeating the events of the night before.

Members of the party have to have fulfilled the following in order to join:

Ingested so much alcohol that they think they really are the most intelligent/witty/original person that ever existed on the Planet Earth, and cannot stop telling people how wonderful they are and how they really are their ‘best friend in the whole world’.
Be so inebriated that upon spotting the bloke in the corner of the bar, whom they described to their mates as ‘fucking rough looking’ earlier, now in fact believe that he looks ‘immensely shaggable’ and that they’re ‘gonna go talk to him’.
Drunk so much intoxicating liquid that before they can talk to the bloke, they are having to go to the loo for a pee. And that as soon as they re-enter the bar, they have to return to the toilet once more to get rid of that bit that they weren’t able to squeeze out just moments before.
Be under the influence so much, that they do not notice the sheets of toilet paper hanging off the bottom of their shoes as they exit the loo and walk over to where the immensely shaggable bloke is.
Swallowed so much liquor, that they can still taste it in their mouths as they snog that immensely shaggable bloke. And still be able to taste it, later on, when they puke it up on the pavement outside the bar.
Be so drunk that when they are later, having sex with that immensely shaggable guy, they are not sure whether or not he has got it in, such is the numbness they feel, but still tell the guy, ‘ooh that feels great, don’t stop’ as they ride him.
Have so much alcohol in their system that at some point in bed, they cannot remember their own name, let alone the immensely shaggable guys’ name, and resort to calling him ‘babe’ and ‘honey’ or even ‘God’ as a way of communicating.
Feel so much pain in their bodies the following morning, that they can barely move. It’s only when they see the fucking rough looking bloke snoring in bed next to them that they suddenly feel the urge to move – very quickly and as far away as possible.
Spend the large part of the day feeling like they are very ill, wishing they had never ended up at that bloke’s place and vowing that no matter what, they will never do this again. Ever.

All eligible people are free to join this party at any time: there are many bars offering this opportunity right now. Just remember, if you don’t drink enough to regret all your actions over at least a 12 hour period, it isn’t enough: only being slightly embarrassed by what you’ve done doesn’t count, (though we’re willing to take on members on a referral basis too).

Vote to Forgive and Forget – it’s the Future.

Quickos And Special K

2005-07-12T18:52:00.000+01:00

Wow! I've had a really exciting adventure since I left Big Blogger. I went to stay with Mike's special friend, K who was missing him. I said I would call him Special K!

We had a lot of adventures and as a special treat they took me to the Piincess Di Memorial Garden. Even though they didn't have any newts they had lots of exciting flowers. I went and sniffed them all untill my nose got tired!

It was designed by someone really famous and it is really great. I also met Robin Hood and a place called Cambridge where they have a ginormous school for people who do really big sums.

Now I've come back to see all my friends going 'wibble, wibble'.

Quickos loves gardens!

Task..Oh f*ck I don't remember the Number

2005-07-12T18:21:00.000+01:00

I am in Egypt and typing at lightening speed.

My party is Can't We All Just Be Friends
My party seeks to abolish all of the mind games and bullshit and make life distinctly unpolitical. Everybody will like everyone and like MJ said 'It Don't Matter if You're Black or White'.

Our manifesto is to listen to one another, share, be loving and sort out everything diplomatically. Ah f*ck iy - my brain is befuddled from too much sun and I haven't the energy to conceive much more as my internet time is running out. If I get disqualified, Big Blogger and Little Blogger will get a slap with my thong and you can kiss my black ass, proverbially that is!

Sorry, but clock ticking...bye

In Which I hurry people along

2005-07-12T16:48:00.000+01:00

Now look, you lot, I'm confiscating the corkscrew, putting the pool off-grounds, hiding the cards and the poker school chips and INSISTING you all do your homework.

Oh and Vit? The cymbals darling please.....

vote for zoe, it's the right thing to do

2005-07-12T16:39:00.000+01:00

My Party, 'Give Peas a Chance' is a Party whereby we start to learn to love those vegetables that are so wrongly pushed to the side of our plates which is why our main GPAC Party Leader will be none other than the Brussel-sprout. A good choice indeed as it hails from the centre of Europe and nothing can get to the centre of the Brussel-sprout as it has many outer skins.

The Cauliflower will be the Party cheerleader dressed only in a cheese sauce, whilst the Peas will remain the National Party Anthem. We aim not to over-cook our vegetables but learn how to cook them al dente, or better still, steam them. The Asparagus will lead the Party's way of thinking as a bit of phallic-graffitti here and there never hurt anybody and can perk you up better than a cup of coffee first thing in the morning.

The Potato will be at the centre of the Party, providing a solid leg to stand on and a soft, mashed shoulder to cry on. The Tomato, although not always considered a vegetable but rather a fruit will be there to flash their eyelashes at the opposition whilst the Leek will be ready to show a leg or two at any given moment. And in times of trouble the Pumpkin will always be ready to be flung from our trebuchet in any direction worthy of it.

All we are saying, is Give Peas a Chance.

Task 8: The Mean Mike Party.

2005-07-12T16:17:00.000+01:00

"Heal the world, make it a better place, for you and for me and the entire human race..."

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Spare me the tree-hugging hippy shit, please. Now, let's get real, shall we? Because the true primary task of every successful politician is, of course, mercilessly slagging off the opposition. And this is a task from which I do not intend to flinch.

So let's see who we're up against. The Don't Kill People Party? Yes, all very nice. I'm sure. But since when have single-issue gesture politics but bread on the table? Eh? EH? Oh, do stop hissing like that. The Mean Mike Party is the party of straight talking, and straight actin...

Moving swiftly on. Over here, in the fetching brown rosettes with the red diagonal lines, we have the No More Bull Shit Party, with their promise to banish "flannel, lies, spin and sound bites" from politics. To which I say: you might as well banish competitiveness from sport, the profit motive from business, and roast turkeys from Christmas Day. What's that at the back? No madam, you may call it cynicism; I call it realism.

Let us turn now to the fluffy inanities of the Party Party, whose woefully muddle-headed thinking is swiftly exposed by its frankly terrifying conflation of "fun and games" with "clowns and bouncy castles". Let's face it: if you are of voting age, and clowns and bouncy castles are still your idea of fun, then perhaps you and the Party Party deserve each other. Now run along and play, and let the grown-ups get along with the job of running the country.

Finally, we have a potentially lethal personality cult, whimsically masquerading as the JonnyB Party. Now, just because someone has a certain facility for weaving gently amusing vignettes of rural East Anglian life, does it follow that they should be entrusted with one of the great offices of state? Two words: Gyles and Brandreth. Evidence enough that light entertainment and politics make distinctly queasy bedfellows. Besides, there's nothing wrong with the colour orange.

All of which leaves you with just one clear alternative: the Mean Mike Party. Vote for us. Not because we're going to insult your intelligence by dangling pie-in-the-sky idealism in front of you - but because, like all the truly great politicians who have come before us, we are simply driven by a healthily crazed lust for power, glory, posterity, and a rather smart address in Central London.

Task shyers..

2005-07-12T12:15:00.000+01:00

Dear blogmates.

Big Blogger has noticed that there's quite a bit of sunbathing and pimms quaffing going off and not enough task producing.

May Big Blogger take this opportunity to remind blogmates that the deadline for the completion of this weeks task is midnight tonight.

Will there be a mass task dodging eviction?

Vote Jonny.

2005-07-12T12:13:00.000+01:00

JONNYB – For a better Britain.

We propose:

Major governmental organisations to be moved out of Central London, thus creating jobs elsewhere, easing the overheated South East housing market, helping London’s transport crisis and generally being fairer. They will come here, to Norfolk. (Just not in my village as it is quite picturesque and we don’t want extra traffic).

Dogs to be genetically modified so they don’t need to shit in public places.

People who moan about the BBC and its license fee and that it doesn’t exactly always get things right and represent their own point of view to be repatriated to America. Or, worse, Spain. The telly’s really shite over there.

People who are outraged enough to break the law because they don’t like speed cameras, foxhunting being banned, American businessmen buying businesses that are quoted on the stock exchange and also happen to be football clubs, etc, will have their first-born murdered by me and their house torched. Then they will understand that perhaps it’s not a good idea for people to pick and choose what laws they’d like to obey, unless it’s a really, really serious matter.

The colour orange. What’s the point of it, then? Eh? It will be phased out.

Publicans will be forced to serve proper sauce out of proper bottles. The nation is sick and tired of getting a nice pub lunch to find that they’ve been given 0.000002 mg of bad tomato ketchup in a sachet. This is a manifesto commitment and we will use the parliament act if the Lords object.

That is all.

I trust I have your vote?

Talking of parties...

2005-07-12T12:10:00.000+01:00

The Big Blogger house used to be like this:

Now it's a bit like this:

Maybe we should get Quickos and his pals back. Hopefully it'll be a bit like this:

Regarding the election task, it's been a bit of a difficult week, granted, so I'll have a chat with the big BB and see if we can cut you slackers a bit of, err, slack. Maybe postpone the deadline until Wednesday night, that kind of thing. BB will get back to you I hope.

And the poll will go up later. You're all up for eviction so I'd like to see everyone on their best blogging behaviour thankyou very much.

Right, it's back to bed for me. I'll be back at midnight with cocktail sausages and a couple of jugs of Cillit Bang. Those of you who want to can join me in a service of rememberance for Dr Rob.

LB

Party

2005-07-11T00:58:00.000+01:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to announce the formation of a new party.

It isn't a political party. In fact, it's an un-political party. Everybody is invited to be in this party. Liberals, Conservatives, Socialists, all will find something here to enjoy. People from all nations, from all ethnic groups, from all faiths, all are welcome.

Our manifesto is fun and games, jelly and ice-cream, clowns and bouncy castles, and talk, chat, natter, conversation, call it what you will there will be lots of it. We'll all talk to each other, and much more importantly we'll all listen to each other so that by the time the party is over, everyone who was there will have a much better understanding of what makes each other tick and will stop hating each other. After all, how can you hate somebody you've partied with.

So get behind our illustrious leader (Eddie Izzard), and vote for the Party Party. You know it makes sense. It better had, because nothing else seems to work.

N.M.B.S.P. - Task EIGHT, clause four. subsection xxii.a

2005-07-08T23:34:00.000+01:00

The N.M.B.S.P.

The No More Bull Shit Party needs YOU!

Our motto is "shut the crap up, you politician type, let the real people in the pink dungarees speak up first!... tosser" which we are having embroidered on all our scatter cushions.

Once elected, we will ban bullshit, flannel, lies, spin, sound bites, codswallop, and twaddle from all areas of government and the civil service.

We will deliver the truth on all occasions unless it will hurt criminal investigations or people's feelings.

We are, in short, the party of NICENESS! and not niceness in a cucumber-sandwich-conservative-party-WI sort of way, but niceness in a "be reasonable to each other and each other will be reasonable back" sort of way.

Obviously, we couldn't hope quite yet for a majority government, though we would consider a coalition with the DKPP (see below à la Mish).

Our party leader is the Vicar of Dibley.... (what do you mean she's not real?)

Latest Task

2005-07-07T19:14:00.000+01:00

I’m sorry, but I can’t work up the enthusiasm for this task.

The Husband and I both had meetings in London today and planned to meet up for a romantic dinner before heading home. He went on the 6.30am and I went on the 8.30. He got to Kings Cross at around 8.40. I was already on the train and, effectively, incommunicado. The office rang me and told me what was going on and what was expected – one of the pros and cons of working for the Government. I spent a relatively hassle free five hours being shuttled around between London, Luton and Leicester before getting back to Nottingham at 1pm. Worryingly, there was no news of my husband. Finally, at 3pm I get news that he’s safe and was now attempting to get back home.
I can’t help but think of the 'what ifs' - What if he had been on the tube a few, brief moments later. What if he'd been going through Kings Cross or had been on or near the bus.

And I am obviously thinking that my joy at finding him unscathed, whole and - above all - merely frightened, means another’s grief.

So for what it’s worth, here’s my task.

It’s called the Don’t Kill People Party.
The manifesto is simple. Don’t kill people. Don’t blow them up, don’t rip apart lives and families and a way of life just because YOU think we should all do it YOUR way. It’s the equivalent of playground bullying, violence solves nothing and escalates into brutal rhetoric, which fires other stupid, bigoted people into a round of tit-for-tat retaliation.
The Leader will be….I don’t know… Gandhi? Bertrand Russell? Or maybe just someone’s mother.

Task 8 - election

2005-07-07T10:36:00.000+01:00

Ok young dudes, it's task time again.

Only a couple of weeks left of this wibblefest and almost half way through the blogmates - only 8 left, but what a lovely 8 don't you think? 8 people in a room talking bollocks? Big Blogger is racking his brains as that seems so familiar. BB8 has a ring to it.

Looking at the blogmates bingo on the side bar it only seems that NML is preventing a line across the bottom, we almost have the 4 cormers, whereas the middle row is definitely the place to hang out. And Girl is luckier than, well, err, Dr Rob (sniff) has been the last 2 weeks.

Anyway, on to the task.

Big Blogger, and his littler version would like each of the blogmates to come up with their own political party. Provide the viewers with a name, a comprehensive manifesto and suggest a leader or spokesperson for your party.

You have until the end of Tuesday to complete this task.