PLEASE ADVISE

Can anybody please tell me how and why, in the female toilets at my work, I often find droplets of urine on the toilet seat? I have not tried it, but I would imagine it is not something that can be done accidentally and therefore it is either done on purpose or done as part of some bizarre urinal practice which precludes sitting down on the seat. Please advise.

Also, if anybody could tell me what business it is of the woman who sits outside of my office - who is not a colleague and whose name I do not know - where I go on and what I do on the odd occasion I leave the office, I would be very grateful.

DANIEL CRAIG: BOND REBOOTED

Last week, to get myself in the mood for the new Bond film, I watched one of my favourite Bond’s – The Living Daylights. It is now, as all Bond films are destined to become, very dated. Miss Moneypenny, a young woman dressed in clichéd secretary clothes of frilly blouse, hair bun and glasses, gets her bottom patted by Bond and what does she do? She sighs. And let’s not even go into the romanticism of the “Afghan resistance”. Those dreamy shots of the Mujahideen riding their horses against the backdrop of an orange sun-set. Yep, the world has moved on, has it not.

But all the way through I was plagued by thoughts that Daniel Craig could not be Bond. Watching the tall and lithe Dalton, impressive in his dinner jacket, switching easily between lover and killer, I was thinking a small, squat, muscley blonde guy just cannot play this part.

And I was right. But only because Bond had been rebooted.

Forget everything you know. Bond has never been married. He’s never driven an invisible car. He’s never attempted re-entry in a space capsule, and he would only know who Blowfeld was if you showed him his wikipedia entry.

We are back to the start, and we are back with the Bond of the books. And Casino Royale is thoroughly enjoyable in its utter unpleasantness. Daniel Craig thrashes his way through the film like a hammer-headed shark, his muscular aggresiveness making Brosnan’s Bond seem like a pretty boy with fondness for paintballing. There are no lissom ladies doing gymnastics through the title sequence; just lots of retro comic male figures being killed as a Daniel Craig’s Bond stalks through a land of playing cards. There’s no cheering Bond tunes as Bond does something clever. And the witty one-liners, of which there are very few, resonate with the darkness of the film rather than lighten it.

This Bond feels pain and fear. He messes up. People get one over on him. His inability to control his anger leads to thuggish, murderous behaviour. The central drive of the Bond character, the loyalty towards Queen and Country, is exposed for what it really is. Nothing noble. Just a dangerous pathological mindset that is incapable of reason or regret.

Having experienced the film, it is now obvious why Craig was picked for the part. First of all his acting range goes well beyond Brosnan’s and secondly Craig does not pose. Brosnan posed. You can’t have a posing Bond in a film that examines such things as torture and the ugliness of murder. Well, you can, but it would be rubbish. Craig’s stunning, if not classic, good looks are enough to attract the ladies without the blandness that can come with attractiveness. Instead his facial features are fascinating and the mood of the character plays across them beautifully. And those sharp violet eyes are a special effect all of their own.

This is a monster of a film and Craig was more than a match for it. His doomed affair with the Bond Girl, Vesper, is heartbreaking. His poker dual with the truly sinister Arch Villain, Le Chiffre is nerve-racking. His action scenes are as exhausting as they are thrillingly implausible. This is a Bond who smiles after he has just seen a terrorist accidentally blow himself up instead of a passenger jet. I like it.

Bond is dead.

Long live Bond.

“do I look like I care if it’s shaken or stirred?”

Avocados are not a health hazard

I am accident prone. My fingertip clumsiness has led to all sorts of cuts, bruises and breakages over the decades. But unlike Lawrence Booth, I have at least now mastered the art of cutting up an avocado without accidentally slicing an artery.

This is how to do it. Hold the fruit (for it is a fruit) down firmly on a cutting board between fingers and thumb. Then take a knife and slice down until the large central seed is encountered. Next, calmly slice all the way around the seed, keeping the fruit on the chopping board and your fingers and thumb safely out of the way, until the fruit can be pulled apart in two pieces. Finally, take an appropriately sized spoon, scoop the stone out of which ever half it clung to, then scoop out the inside of the avocado.

Avocados are lovely baked, smothered in cream, and accompanied by steamed asparagus.

(next week: how best to change a duvet)

John Harris: Idiot

M&S would like to wish us all a very druggy Christmas, according to Mr Harris.

It seemed unlikely, but I went with it and read his article anyway. Seems that Mr Harris bases his astounding assertion on the fact that the latest ad for M&S has Shirley Bassey singing a "heartfelt tribute to a night out on ecstasy".

Well that would be something, would it not? Dame Bassey belting out a song that bigs up drugs on behalf of a very British middle-class chainstore.

But of course, it's not quite the truth is it. What Dame Shirley actually sings, I'm sure you'll be aware, is a version of Pink's song, Get The Party Started. Now I admit that I am not very up on either the drugs scene or on the music scene, but any references to drugs in this song fly so under the radar that they'll be spotted by no one other than people with special druggy sensor equipment. Which I don't possess.

Admittedly, I very often don't get hidden meanings in the lyrics of songs unless someone very clever like Mr Harris points them out to me. I went for years totally innocent to the supposed hidden meaning of "I'm down on my knees, I wanna to take you there" in Madonna's song Like A Prayer.

But vague references and hidden meanings in songs are meant to be just that - vague and hidden.

And actually you know, I don't actually take kindly to smart arses pointing them out and spoiling my innocent view of the world. It is also an untruth to say that just because a song has a vague reference to something which in a dim light might be seen as a reference to drugs or oral sex, then that is the song's full meaning.

To say that Get The Part Started is heartfelt tribute to drugs and that M&S chose this song to encourage the public to have a druggy Christmas is not funny and not, actually, very clever either. Those members of the public who got the drug reference are already drug savvy and have therefore probably already made up their minds as to whether or not they are going to partake in drugs this Christmas. The rest of us will stick to our snowballs and chocolate covered nuts.

I also feel that I have to point out that the ice palace in the advert is not "a pronounced echo of the palatial igloo to which the late Christopher Reeve used to flee at times of superhero crisis", but a clear reference to the ice palace in the last Bond film Die Another Day.

And they paid him good money for this. Tut.

100% English

Channel 4


Take eight people - all of whom are convinced they are 100% English. Then submit a sample of their DNA to a series of state-of-the-art tests... Lord Tebbit, Garry Bushell and Carol Thatcher are among the participants who have agreed to place their genetic make-up under the microscope.


Oh what a delightful bunch! Lord Tebbit, Garry Bushell and Carol Thatcher. Is that your fantasy dinner party or what?

Anyway, a pointless and yet strangely amusing hour watching small minded bigots on Channel 4 being told that their gene pool spread beyond the channel. But the results from their genetic tests didn't seem to really tell them very much.

I mean what does it actually mean to be told, for instance, that your genes are 46% Middle Eastern? For a hit that big, does it mean that a recent generation was from the Middle East? Or does it mean that lots of separate branches of your family tree came from the Middle East? Or does it mean that of all the genes swimming around in your particular gene pool you just happened to get a lot of the Middle Eastern ones? I'm none the wiser.

But then I'm not sure that the programme's point was to enlighten or educate; I think its point was just to play sport with bigots. Because there is something amusing about seeing a woman who wants the English to be listed as an ethnic race to be told that actually she is genetically a Romany Gypsy. Though perhaps it's a pity the Scots and Welsh weren't invited to play the game because there is a particular brand of romantacised Celtic heritage that could do with a big slap of reality in just the same manner.

But we musn't take it too seriously after all. Desiring a genetic link to the country you love is natural and I'd say harmless. It's only the idea that those genetics make you superior that is niether.

For my part I'm 76% West Bromwich and 23% Northampton. The 1% has not been identified and is assumed alien.

lest we forget

Fuck Poppies!

So says Richard Gott in comment is free:

Good for Jon Snow! He has, as it were, put his head above the parapet and got shot at. But he has done so in a good cause. It's a brilliant notion to describe the recent poppy-wearing fashion as "poppy fascism", for by invoking the memory of the war dead, the poppy-wearers (and their advocates in high places) have put themselves beyond criticism. Yet in their zeal they have gone too far.

[Yeah! Fucking zealots! Shoving their poppies in your face when you pop to Asda, running after you in the street with threats of violence if you don't put 20p in their tin, harassing you in your homes at night shouting 'I fought a war for you' down your letterbox. Why has it taken so long for someone to speak out against these aggressive octogenarians?]

Part of the problem with poppy-wearing is its excess. It is, to use another evocative military expression from an earlier time, rather over the top. Poppy-wearing now seems to start in October, about the same time as the first Christmas decorations, and has become required dress for establishment figures - as though the poppy was itself a military medal.

[Yeah! Why should I go to all the trouble of putting a quid in a tin and pinning a plastic replica flower to my coat AND KEEPING IT THERE FOR A WHOLE MONTH? How much bother is that? And why should our "establishment" be forced into thinking they should wear a symbol of gratitude to anyone? What do these "figures" owe anyone?]

Excess is also the mark of the recent organisation of memorial celebrations on November 11, in addition to those on Remembrance Sunday (the closest Sunday to November 11, the day of the armistice in 1918). Time was when people trooped off on a November Sunday to local war memorials, constructed all over the country in the 1920s to remember the conscripted soldiers killed in the first world war.

[Yeah! Not only do we mark the armistice, we also have A WHOLE DAY dedicated to the memory of the fallen. Excess is exactly the right word.]

That was right and proper, for people had been sent off like forced labourers to their deaths. The mood of the mourners was sombre and pacifistic.

[Yeah! I don't think mourners in the 1920's gave a hoot-ta-toot about remembering the sacrifices of those who gave their lives. It was all pacifism this and pacifism that.]

People loved the memorials, just as they had taken the Cenotaph in Whitehall to their hearts. The Cenotaph was originally designed by Lutyens as a temporary wooden structure. The military opposed its permanent site in the middle of the highway, since it obstructed their parades. But, like today's London Eye, the people liked what they saw and demanded successfully that it should remain.

[Yeah! War memorials! Gotta love 'em! So darn attractive! Though not as useful as a big wheel with plastic pods you can ride in, has to be said.]

After 1945, the popular mood was less backward-looking. There was no demand for new memorials in every village, and only simple (and smaller) lists of names were added to the existing structures.

[Bummer!]

Over the years, the outdoor Sunday services in November became a quaint, almost antiquarian ceremony, though always evocative and moving across the generations. We recalled that long, specific 30-year war, fought with conscripts, that lasted from 1914 to 1945 with barely a break in between, and vowed that it would not happen again.

[Yeah! Now that whole "recall" thing has gone out the window.]

Today's over-hyped remembrance, and the enforced wearing of poppies, has degenerated into a celebration, not of peace, but of recent state wars in which the great mass of the people played no part. I associate the phenomenon with Blairism, the waving of the Union Jack on Tony Blair's first day in Downing Street in 1997, and the revival of imperial wars from Iraq and Afghanistan to Sierra Leone.

[Yeah! Now Remembrance Day is just one great big socking war love-in; some kind of giant imperialfest. No one remembers those who fought so that we might live anymore. That's all by-the-by-now. It's nothing but one long party celebrating "recent state wars" with everyone staggering around drunk, waving the Union Jack and singing about how great today's wars are. That Blair has a lot to answer for.]

Of course, the wearing of poppies helps raise money for the British Legion. Yet it should be easy enough to give money for that cause without advertising the fact with an ostentatious poppy display.

[Yeah! That red poppy on my woollen winter coat is just such an embarrassment. And why should the British Legion and the living veterans, who after all survived the war let's remember, get a head start over all the other charities available in the country? What did they do that's so special?]

And how is it that a grateful nation is still unable to come up with sufficient cash to provide adequately for the returning survivors and their families? Poppies should be worn, if at all, not with pride, but with shame.

[Yeah! We aren't doing enough for the people who are at the truly shitty end of our wars, so we should stop doing what we do do.

Fuck, yeah!

And i'm so grateful to them I think that being asked to wear a small emblem on my coat once a year is excessive!

Yeah! Yeah! Fucking Yeah!]

Another holding post

Another post to let you know that this is still a live blog, despite the eerie lack of posts. It's not as if there isn't plenty to write about; the tyrant who is now a dead-man-walking; the President who is a lame duck; the Normblog poll which just proves that even a public made up of bloggers get things wrong. West Side Story? Oh so very wrong.

But I discover that blogging isn't only a matter of news stories meeting inspiration. I have found three further requirements:

ONE not to have building works going on in the house

TWO not to have access to the computer obstructed by dining chairs

and

THREE not to have a painful neck that feels like it has a cold sharp blade pushed neatly alongside the spinal column

However, I remain an active blog reader (during the day, at work, only on my breaks, honest) and so no slacking from the rest of you. You may not be able to see me, but I am watching you.

Announcement (updated)

My home internet service is, for reasons unknown, not working.

Not only is this interrupting my ability to blog, but I cannot check my e-mails, so sorry if you have e-mailed me and I've not responded.

Knowing BT as I do, I'm not hopeful the situation will be rectified anytime soon, so unfortunately it is a case of see ya when I see ya! Sob!

Update:

Apparently the whole of BT Yahoo was down yesterday, so it may not have been a localised problem I have to do battle with BT over. Stay tuned for more developments on this exciting issue.

Update Two:

My home internet now works, apart from the odd ‘cannot find server’ crap, but my house was thrown into disarray this last week by the kitchen fitters of Dudley and needed my urgent attention. Blogging to resume soon. Do not desert me!