Naked Blog

CHEESE SANDWICH

I kick over a whole mug of coffee!!!

Yes, that's right.

Most of you would reach for some sort of rag and mop it up. Curse and swear. Rightly so.

But not here. No. Not in my house.

In my house the coffee soaks so very much more than carpet it stands on.

---

The new Nokia phone manuals, to name just two things. Recent.

But that's not all.

Deeper and deeper I delve into the new brown wetness... digging up coffee-soaked matters and wrapping them in tissue. Warm, brown, disgusting but important.

Thirty five years of coffee-soaked stuff - there on the floor by my sofa and bed. You couldn't make it up.

Yesterday I came out of the closet to the walking group.

I really shouldn't kick over coffee again.

And they say that blogging is finished.

END OF (BLOG) DAYS

Blogging is so very over, don't you think?

Everybody's doing it.

Even in the Daily Mail.

You can't read a newspaper writer who isn't blogging about him/her self.

So they're all at it.

What have you started, oh Julie and Jon?

But over now. Our work is done. Taken up and amplified - my soul doth magnify the Lord.

Sacred Music with Simon Russel Beale. Don't miss it. Even Kylie fans.

Out of the closet, remarkably, and even more than one of those. Who cares about mountains when there are people to relate to. Relate. Oh that's enough. Want to talk to you, for real, on a movie... look at Bette... what she became...

MISTER DE MILLE

So many things happened today I needed to make a video for you.

Needed.

But I couldn't.

Hadn't a clue.

Got the flowers, camera and light switch organised, yapped for a minute, but the sound was a disaster. And not a clue what to do even if I had got it made - or how to put it on YouTube.

(YouTube. The very essence of adolescence.)

Despite doing several in the past. As some might recall.

You'll be old yourself some day. I even bought a MovieMaker book. Back then. When it was still exciting.

Fucking hate it.

Getting old.

Hate it.

Wanted to make a movie for ages. Ages.

SIT THAT COM!

Easter blogging interrupted!

There I was sitting and planning a nice post about the meaning of life and the universe - possibly taking a glance at the Passion and Resurrection - wondering in awe why there is exactly one Commandment for each finger on your hands - all of those and more, when my eye fell on this morning's TV schedule.

Oh yes.:)

Frasier, DOUBLE Will and Grace, DOUBLE Friencs, and Simpsons.

Two hours and forty minutes of laughter-inducing plop! Then work, as the bingo never stops when there's dosh to be made..

Have a lovely holiday. Don't overlook BBC 4 Sacred Music at 8. P x

HAIR TODAY

Keen viewers of my organ will (or possibly won't) have noticed that of late we've never been snapped sans chapeau. That's right. A hat on every headshot.

And there's good reason for this. The reason being a pronounced and very visible absence of hair.

Al O'Pecia, my shiny new friend. A polished performance. Shaved to the wood.

And I've hated every minute of it. Hated. Too old for the gangster look. More like an ageing pimp, if you ask me.

But not for much longer (fingers crossed). Now things have picked up again, follically speaking. Hair is spouting out as if from one of those pot dolls with a key in its back. White hair mostly, but with speckles of natural colour. Brown colour, that is.

So I'm very happy. Watch this space. Mebbe even treat you to a new video, if I can remember how to do it.

PEANUT ALLERGY

Not quite so happy about the old stones and pounds though. On Monday I purchased a large pot of Peanut Butter from Lidl, and since then I've put on three and a half pounds. Ah well. Maybe it's good for hair. And skinny is so over these days.

Equinox very soon. Enjoy. Scotland tends to ignore Easter as being too Papeish. Christmas too, until fairly recently. Bizarre? You tell me.

ROOM WITH A VIEW

Back in North Berwick, drinking and thinking. Nice homes!

SATANIC MILLS?

Marriage is a strange thing, don't you think? Is it about love, or about property?

It would be easy, so easy to dismiss the former (briefly) Mrs McCartney as a traditional gold-digger. After all, her settlement works out at just pennies less than 700 pounds an hour married to him, and this I'm told is about ten times the price of a Lady of the Leith night.

Now call me an old fool if you will - but I can't help wondering if she did love him, a little bit, at the beginning.

Last Sunday I was in the Ochils, ending at a small town called Dollar. Of Miss Mills there was no sign.

ONE DAY AT A TIME

Tackling my out of control Su Doku habit.

This is the third day clean.

Even the sight of a pencil can set off those cravings.

"Just one more! This one might be a good one!"

And some times it is. Many hours get passed in this way - looking for the next big hit.

But you are more rewarding. Loads.

I can't imagine Su Doku masters are much fun at parties.

SAGA-TECH

An occasional series featuring today's technology for yesterday's people.

The new Nokia (which I'm sure by now you're sick of hearing about) comes with Spiderman 3 pre-installed. This I successfully ignored until two days ago, when I thought I'd give it a whirl. Not so much for the movie, which I predicted (accurately) would be tosh, but to try out the TV lead which they give you (blue, white, yellow), to play your phone through your telly. (Savour those last six words for a while.)

Oh, and talking of movies, try to catch Crash (the Paul Haggis one) as it does the rounds this week. Pushes all the right buttons "OH MY GOD - THE KID'S GONNA GET IT!", and deservedly won multiple Oscars. Including one for the once so tasty Matt Dillon. It's about ethnicity and identity. No Nobel Prize for literature, but worth a couple of hours of your life.

So there I was, watching Spiderman 3 on my widescreen telly with a mobile phone hanging off it, and marvelling at the way things are these days. And I got to thinking... mebbe I could "download" (aka steal) some more movies. From the internet. For money, or even for nothing. Oh my god I'll never go to heaven.

So I need your help, both moral and practical. Where do I begin?

CAST THAT POD!

So I'm sitting in the Ship Inn in North Berwick, where I've come for the good of my health. Literally. Hoping the sea air might shift the mucus detritus still in my head.

Yesterday at work was pretty nightmarish, trying to hear the shouts, half deaf.

Thanks for your welcoming comments yesterday and today, which are now replied to.

Woops! Nearly forgot. Today I discovered Podcasts. BBC science programmes, posh chuci that I am. They download in moments, straight on to the Nokia, and it even creates a folder automatically. Brave new world. P x



BBC Podcasts Guardian Podcasts Where else is good for podcasts?

ANDANTE CON MOTO

Well hi. Been a while. Ain't that the truth. So how ya doing?

I think I've got a life.

Think.

Never had one before, so it's hard to tell.

Yet you feel it could just disappear in a puff of fate's magic wand. In an instant. Be back to the whingeing neurotic you're familiar with here.

Please Mister Postman

I hear a letter plop through the door. That could be it. Fate in a brown paper envelope. Go directly to jail. Pay the entire City's Council Tax. In fourteen days. Your tests were wrong. You've got Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Too many rocky mountains. Take this tablet, with liquid.

Loser.

Then you'll have something to blog about again.

Hmmm.

Let me check the mail.

Love Letters In The Sand

Three letters, all white. Oh, and talking of white, I watched Channel Four's "White" season last night. (Full of cold, you see. Keeps you healthy. Off the booze. Still fully conscious at nine pm. Everyone should have cold all the time.)

It was "The Poles Are Coming". A not very useful programme, seeing as we know that already. The Polish government is very homophobic you know. Far more than the Catholic Church demands. They're even trying to overturn the EU Constitution on gay rights. So I hope they die of one hundred forced penetrations. The government, not the people, of course.

It was very amusing seeing people called Patel complaining about immigration. Ironic. Even the show's presenter could have passed for the National Guard. Taking the piss.

It's not immigrants who are fucking Britain; it's the workshy. Me I'd round them all up, dump them on a Scottish Island, and airlift a few turnips there once a fortnight. Turnips. No expensive pizzas. No Carlsberg Special. No Embassy Regal. And especially no methadone. They'd be begging to work after a month. Begging. Gits.

I'm Gonna Sit Right Down

I open the letters. The first is from the walking group - a refund for a recent "night out" I backed out of. This group is terrifyingly social. Me, I don't "do" social life, as you know. Talking to people is work, hard work. Me, I just want to walk a few hills. Apropos of which, Sunday's leadership seemed to go just fine. I led a group of eighteen for a day. Getting only slightly lost, just for a few minutes, but the lunch break in a quarry wasn't met with uniform approval. Hard Rock Cafe. But it was very windy on the grouse moors, and that was something of a shelter.

Second letter from Vodafone. Still getting the hang of this mobile phone contract fandango. Met a guy in the Village who's only paying half what I am, for the same top of the range phone. I've got sick of mobile internet already, though. The internet is boring. Full of ads. Not like Naked Blog. And of course I never phone anyone. Far too shy. Get a minor anxiety attack even texting.

Even sitting here is making me neurotic again. Relapsing into old ways. Must be something about this computer, this room. Odd. I've got a life. Yes. At least I think I have. Never had one before. (Did I say that already?)

Third one from the bank. Three letters. All money. No love. For that I depend on you.

Da Capo al Fine

So many pieces I've written in my head. So many titles, witty and urbane, discarded. Days of excitement and joy I wanted to share with you. Except that would eat into the time for more excitement and more joy. It's the blog-life balance. It must be there. I'm not throwing you away, ever.

And so, hi ho, off we go. Full of cold. Can't hear. It'll be a lousy day behind the mike. But someone's got to do it.

Got a lift home from Sunday's hillwalking coach with a GP. In her BMW. I could have been a GP quite easily you know. Shame. (I avoided the "doctors make you worse" lecture, out of politeness.) But they do. Tara.