A Little Bit Of Wisdom In Every Box...

I get a thing for the cinema.

2015-07-28T21:22:00.006+01:00

I have only gone and bought myself one of those cards where you pay some money to go to the cinema as many times as you like each month. It’s like one of those Chinese buffets, only you don’t throw up in the gutter out of the car before you drive off home. I’ve heard that can happen to people.

Anyway. As small encourage for me to use the thing, and to write on here a bit more, I shall write about the films I have gone to. There won’t be anything useful there, so I apologise weakly in advance. Just recently I have gone to see Inside Out and Ant-Man.

The problem I have with Ant-Man is that he hyphenates his name and capitalises the man bit. This seems a trifle unnecessary and looks pretty stupid, but I suppose he’s only copying Spider-Man, and that kid reckons he’s amazing. The film was OK. Michael Douglas is starting to look really old. Which in Hollywood terms makes him certifiably ancient. I just searched his dad, because I wasn’t sure if he was dead yet. Kirk Douglas is now 98 and looks like he’s been left near a radiator.

Inside Out was also quite good. I could only get a rubbish seat though because the cinema said they were really full, but when I got in there it wasn’t really that full, but I had to sit in that seat and I had one of those people next to me who fights with you the entire film for the arm rest even though they’ve got the one on the other side. Whose arms are so tired that they need BOTH arm rests? I ask you. (I don’t really, the answers would invariably be quite dull.)

This week I look forward to going to see Mission Impossible 12.

In which I become a knackered old car.

2015-06-07T08:36:00.001+01:00

I have had another birthday. Slowly (my brain isn’t what it used to be) I am coming to terms with the fact that whatever my head says, I am no longer 19. I just can’t keep up with the kids, I’m not a bright young thing anymore. In fact, I’ve begun to enter into that grotesque period of managed decline known as middle age.

If I put it in car terms, I’m no longer a brand new runabout that you can rag around and book in for the occasional service and oil change. I’m slowly turning into a classic that needs to be washed every time you take it on a three-mile drive once a month, the seats oiled and bits changed with reckless abandon to stop it from falling apart.

Actually, it’s worse than that – having not yet reached certifiable classic status, I’m the car it’s cheaper and easier to scrap than continue paying the excessive fuel bills. Yikes.

I briefly visit the seaside.

2015-05-20T18:30:00.000+01:00

There are few things as depressing in Britain as off-season seaside resorts. I visited Worthing recently to try and sate my craving for a waterside view and a scalpful of salt. What a dump. The weather had cleared up since the morning’s grim soaking of rain, but the wind remained plenty brisk enough to put a spring in your step and catch small dogs unawares. Old women were waving their Schnauzers round like little kites.

While the sun beamed down on glistening waves and eager pebbles along the shore, there rose hulking brutalist monstrosities along the shore, stamped with shapes considered jaunty back in the late whenever. A round arcade with orthodontic bars over the windows jutted over the beach, its chained gates barring any budding funsters from the amusements within.

I sat alone in a seafront restaurant, recently decked out in Ikea’s finest but shaded by a pall of greasy air that belched forth from the busy deep-fat-fryer like smoke out of Blake’s satanic mills. My sausage and chips seemed ill at ease on the white china – paper and fingers is always the way to go here, but appearances must be kept up. I ordered a glass of coke, its limp yellow straw a depressive attempt at levity.

I finished my food and walked back to the car, no one in sight save distant joggers fleeing slowly for busier climes.

The devastating anti-climax.

2015-05-18T09:30:00.000+01:00

Well, wasn't that a turn-up for the books. A turn-out, rather, since we're talking about the election. I had to spend four days in a darkened room with a cool damp cloth on my forehead to calm down from the shock. Which was weird, since the cloth dried out after three hours and the curtains don't get a very good seal round the windows.

I do enjoy a good confounding though. I'd thought all along that the Conservatives would squeak a teensy majority, what with the electorate being filled with terror at the sight of Ed Miliband standing at the altar ahead of them, but everyone kept laughing at me when I said it, so I stopped.

Never did I think that it would be such a bloody result, either. Heads continue to roll round and about Parliament Square, like tumbleweed in the background of a spaghetti western. Even now it'll be a few weeks before the leadership cockroaches really poke their heads above ground after the election's nuclear blast.

Even stranger still, the nuclear explosion has left not devastation, but rather restored the landscape to what it looked like before. Sure, we've got a couple of extra parties in the mix, but that will come out in the wash of a few electoral cycles. Where we thought that the UK had been turned into a consensus country doomed to neverending coalitions, we've headed right back to where we were before.

That's the arrogance of the present – we all like to think we're special, the pinnacle of all the greatness of humanity summed up in a culmination of magnificence, but the French have it right: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Some recent correspondence.

2015-05-15T09:15:00.000+01:00

Hello McDonald's,

This is arguably my favourite time of the year. I risk heart disease to take advantage of the Monopoly promotion (and I never win anything more than a sugar donut, mind. Does anyone even actually buy those?), and yet in the last five days I have been to two restaurants in different areas of south London that have run out of the packaging.

I know it's a stupid thing to make a big deal of, but it's fundamentally dishonest to slather up promotional materials all over the place not expecting to cater for the demand. Claiming it's too popular is ridiculous, don't do that. If you advertised it as a limited run, fine. If you apologised in store instead of sneaking the tray across the counter and hoping people wouldn't notice, fine. But you haven't done any of those things. Copy+paste Twitter responses are a bit iffy, too. Don't do that either. As my mum always used to say - if you can't promote anything nicely, don't promote anything at all.

I do love you McDonald's, really I do, but it's a fickle industry and I could always develop a taste for Burger King. Actually no I couldn't. KFC then.

Sam

<<>>

Dear Sam,

I am sorry to hear that you are disappointed with the lack of promotional packaging available in our stores towards the end of the Monopoly promotion.

However, as it states in our terms and conditions on the website, the promotion is only available "whilst stocks of Promotion-packaging at participating McDonald's restaurants last, customers can obtain an on-pack game piece Promotion-label ("Game Piece") on the purchase of qualifying products."

However, I can confirm that your comments will be passed over to our head office, and I hope that this does not deter you from visiting our restaurants in the future.

Thank you for contacting McDonald’s Golden Chances Monopoly

The neverending election comes to an end. Maybe.

2015-05-07T13:45:00.000+01:00

The neverending election has finally come to an end. Apart from the counting and the upset and the weeks of indecision. Apart from all that.

I went to vote nice and early this morning – I wasn’t planning to, but I woke up so excited I had to get ready and skip round to my local polling station, wishing fellow excited voters good morning as I did so. Actually I think they thought I was a bit mental. But General Election Day is better than Christmas as far as I’m concerned. Nothing better than getting to play your part in the vast machinations of state going back many hundreds of years.

It does worry me that other people don’t take the process seriously. Hopefully the uncertainty around today’s election will boost turnout, but how has civilisation come to the point that people cherish more their right to pick a Strictly Winner than their local MP?

Of course, all this talk about politics being more engaging is how we end up with politicians doing ridiculous things they aren’t good at on camera, like playing football or eating. BBC News 24 becomes an extended pilot version of Made in Westminster-meets-Britain’s Got Spokesmen. Ed Miliband, superman that he is, managed to shake off the four-ton bacon roll-shaped stone from around his neck, only to turn it into a crap garden feature with miserable political platitudes chiseled on it in obnoxious capitals.

One the one hand it’s awful that this poll-driven masochism grinds on and on, but then again if someone can’t even manage a sandwich without messing it up, how can they be expected to run the country? It’ll all be moot soon enough. By this time tomorrow there will be gangs roaming the country beating up those who didn’t cherish their democratic right and left us in a terrible mess.

I can’t stand all this talk of massaging out the vote, persuading people to get down to the ballot box. Perhaps the public should grow a pair and do something it doesn’t enjoy – and once every five years for goodness’ sake. I don’t like eating lots of vegetables, but if I want to grow up and become a big strong boy I really have to.

In which we're all doomed and it's a constitutional crisis.

2015-05-06T10:30:00.000+01:00

There’s this fundamental misunderstanding – not at all helped by sneaky politicians who have one-and-a-half eyes on the PR of it all – that we’re a direct democracy, that whatever the people vote in baldly numerical terms should be reflected in the formation of our parliament. (As a brief aside, national polls are almost useless in trying to work out parliamentary seats - if votes came out 35% Conservative and 34% Labour in every seat you’d have 650 Conservative MPs - it just doesn’t work like that.) It’s terribly annoying to have to sit through false conjecture and swivel-eyed talk of a constitutional crisis looming over the next couple of days.

 Anyone can form a government, whether they’ve got most seats or most votes or whatever is completely irrelevant. Legitimacy of a government comes firstly from convincing the Queen that you have the confidence of parliament, then going back to the palace of Westminster and showing that you do. Nothing more, nothing less. Much of the current discussion is cheeky horseplay by the Tories, who are trying to undermine the chances of Ed Miliband sneaking past them on a grand (or maybe not so grand) coalition of parties united in eager desire to see the Conservatives turfed out.

Perhaps its the fault of Tony Blair and his chums, for turning the government of the country so awfully presidential - this election more than any other in recent times has been about personalities and people rather than policies and ideas. The vote has become about Cameron versus Miliband, or whatever tribal tendencies we all might like to indulge, as opposed to 650 local communities finding someone from among their number who will carry their voices to Westminster. We’ve had this great presidential battle set up to be fought in a parliamentary environment unsuited to that kind of warfare. That isn’t, however, a crisis – it’s ignoring the constitution.

There have been issues in recent times where I’ve wanted to write to my local MP but held back because I know that what I will get will be a party political broadcast, not a member engaging with the views of their constituents. You very often get correspondence being circulated to the whips’ offices these days, and the party line sent back to be toed. If this is where we’ve come to, no wonder people feel disenchanted with politics. I love party politics, and whatever the speaker often yells, I love the rambunctious theatrics, but perhaps politicians need to be a bit more circumspect over the coming weeks about where they’ve come from.

Today was the future once.

2015-05-01T09:30:00.000+01:00

I was huddled into an armchair yesterday evening, watching Question Time via an internet connection on my phone, the speaker muted down to a whisper so as not to wake the children I was babysitting. Amidst the bluster and propaganda (and that was just the audience), I suddenly realised how cool the world had become, while I was blogging, and reading books and checking out the latest polling data following the latest thing.

I’ve got to be honest, I completely detest the notion of turning into one of those insufferable people who ages badly, finding everything upsettingly nostalgic and bleating endlessly on about the good times that are just out of grasp. I don’t want to end up like Rose on the back of the Keldysh, threatening to throw an old iPad overboard.

I mean, I remember getting a little portable telly for Christmas back in the late-90s – it had terrible signal and needed a bag full of AA batteries that ran out in around eight minutes, which meant you had to plug it in with an adapter, so what was the point in having a portable television? It doesn’t feel that long ago, and I didn’t even have a mobile phone back then, just a BT Chargecard in my inside pocket.

To have imagined then that I would be walking round with the entire sum of human knowledge in my trousers and be able to watch live television on top of all that…well, maybe I would have lived my life differently, I don’t know. I wish someone had told me what the future would become, that’s all – it really sneaks up on you.

People who ignore awareness campaigns.

2015-04-29T10:00:00.000+01:00

There has been this odd slop of articles in the last week or so complaining about the fact that motorists don't know that the rules about rental cars will be changing in June. These journalists seemingly unaware of the irony of these stories clearly being part of a PR initiative to make people aware of said changes. No no – experts predict CHAOS at the changes that nobody knows are happening in six weeks. Except there are six weeks and everyone who reads the article will know about the changes. Gah.

I read another story on the Guardian composed almost exclusively of outrage and skeletal facts that criticised the government for not telling people about drivers not needing tax discs anymore or the change in the rules where you have to buy your own tax when you buy a new car. The examples in the article were almost all complete idiots: one bloke admitted that the DVLA had sent him a letter - he just hadn’t bothered reading it.

I’m sure the government would save loads of money if it didn’t actually bother telling people about rule changes – in fact that would likely solve our economic problems in one fell swoop, but the real fact is that actually millions do get spent on patronising information campaigns, only ‘I didn’t take any notice of the many billboard posters and helpful posters in public spaces’ doesn’t play well in the papers. Back to square one, common sense.

My inconveniently oversized parcel does not get delivered.

2015-04-28T10:30:00.000+01:00

I have been waiting for a parcel to get delivered by Royal Mail. As opposed to waiting for another parcel to get dispatched by Amazon, which happened last week. It spent two days in ‘despatching now!’ hell, neither coming nor going. It was a source of great stress. I should sue.

What is confusing about Royal Mail – and obviously it’s beyond me why such a catastrophically nonsensical company is struggling to make any money – is that when they find themselves trying to present me with a parcel when I’m not actually in, they open up their convenient local depot (it’s miles away, there’s hardly any parking) at a time when I’m not actually available.

Seriously – why are mail delivery times and ‘Sorry we missed you!’ (I don’t believe that for a second) collection points aimed almost exclusively at unemployed people who don’t have any money to order anything and would invariably be in the house when the postman comes because the pubs don’t open until much later*. The only thing worse than inconvenience is strange fake convenience masquerading as something really useful. Here’s how the conversation goes in my head: ‘Oh great, the Royal Mail, you open up a vastly distant industrial unit for 20 minutes on a Thursday morning? WHERE’S MY STUFF?’

*extremely lazy stereotype klaxon

In which I am glad to have my phone back.

2015-04-27T20:10:00.001+01:00

Isn't technology amazing? It really gave me pause for thought when I didn't have a phone-we rely so much on his little handheld devices. In fact, this technology is so amazing and I am currently dictating this entire blog post to my London phone. Militants a little phone it's a little phone you stupid thing what are you doing no I am currently dictating this entire blog post to you my little phone yikes. Our bollocks to it.

Where it's apparently possible to be too good-looking.

2015-04-21T11:30:00.000+01:00

It must be hard to be beautiful. Rippling man-crumpets Kit Harington and Douglas Booth have both been in the press rather recently complaining about how people don’t take them seriously because they’re too handsome. My immediate inclination, when I hear these violins warming up, is to help them out of their desperation by taking to their excellently proportioned visages with a fold-up chair.

I’m not denying that these fine specimens of human beings feel like they’re being disadvantaged in life, but then I’m also fairly convinced that the disadvantages of being too gorgeous rather outweigh the repulsive qualities of looking like a morbidly obese manatee that’s been ravaged by a lawn strimmer. I mean, there are setbacks we have to overcome in life (‘nuts, I’ve run out of coffee/cut my finger/am distractingly good looking and no one takes me seriously as an actor’), and there are setbacks. Y’know?

Perhaps it’s a humanitarian gesture on the part of Kit and Doug, picked up from the advice column of Really Really Good Looking People magazine. It’s really very kind and considerate of them to wear their outrageous genetic luck like a noose, as if it’s intended to make those of us less fortunate a bit happier about our hideous lots in life. Dreamy eyes, inflatable lips and a stomach you could play a tune on are really a disability, so obviously it’s unfair of me to make fun of them in any way.

I spend a week without a mobile phone.

2015-04-18T11:41:00.001+01:00

My phone is broken. Totally banjaxed, if I may be permitted a brief use of technical parlance. It crashed like Richard Hammond on a straight piece of road and I had to send it away to be repaired/replaced/controlledly exploded. This sudden mobilectomy has left me with a gaping hole in my life, I'm missing a comforting presence. It’s like someone has chewed through my umbilical cord to the world with their rancid teeth.

It is, on the other hand, a blessed relief, to be unencumbered by the stresses and strains of modern life. It turns out that my neverending anguish to remain constantly connected over recent years has been almost entirely in vain. The fact is, no one calls me, I barely get any text messages and I may as well check my emails once a week. I am as unimportant as anyone could be.

My only concern is that the people of Twitter have been less able to follow my hilarious insights than usual. I say only – I could end up trapped in a hellish wilderness, stalked by a madman or vengeful animal and not be able to contact anyone for help. Then again, if it was a film, I wouldn’t have any signal anyway.

I glide blithely on through life, unaware of the attempts by the modern world to reach out its invisible talons and claw at me. The waves just crash on past, ready to pull some other unsuspecting Harold into their grasp. Thank goodness my replacement phone arrives soon though – I can’t check the weather, call my mum or tune my guitar at the moment. Nightmare.

I really love Hillary Clinton.

2015-04-17T10:00:00.000+01:00

I really love Hillary Clinton. If I had any combination of the time, money or inclination required I would be legging it over to America just to follow her round for the next two years. I would make my own placards and get dragged away by the secret service at various venues around the country. I would make friends with folksy people who work in diners and get shot at least twice.

Hillary is like Superman, only she wears her pantsuit on the outside of her trousers and Superman never doesn’t have his own email server. Her pillowy face conceals a steely underside, a grit and determination to squash everyone who gets in her way, and a willingness to grab plenty of cash off those lining the route.

Hey – I’m not criticising. Needs must. A girl needs a cool billion or two to run for president these days. What’s the difference between a pitbull and a hockey mom? Well, the pitbull is probably going to get elected. And you’ve got to feel for the Wasps if Hillary does make it – the first black guy and the first woman...the old white guys will have been frozen out of the oval office for a cool 16 years. Someone needs to stand up for their rights.

And who would be surprised if that argument got trotted out by the Republicans at some point in the next two years? Hillary’s a polemic, she makes people go crazy, one way or the other. She’s uber-Marmite, she’s the Terminator, only with set hair and pearls. I really hope she gets elected president, just for the fun of it. Sort it out, America.

In which we're at the mercy of the people who don't care.

2015-04-16T09:30:00.000+01:00

Can you tell anything from what’s on the nation’s mind? Or can you even tell what's on the nation's mind? I guess Google searches and suchlike are more a snapshot of what we know we don’t know, rather than the things we know we know and the things we don’t know we haven’t got a clue about. Or is that last one a double negative? I don’t know. Trying to keep up with the news is a difficult process, you’ve really got to have your concentration switched on, otherwise it becomes a swilling mess of Madonna kissing Ed Miliband shortly before he was run over by an angry voter in the Paris-Roubaix race.

Likewise the difficulty of political polling. I find you shouldn’t really trust people who are certain about what they have strong opinions on, and you don’t really want to trust people who can’t make up their minds at all. You see these awful folks vox popped on the street by the television news and they haven’t got a clue who the prime minister is. How do these people live in the world? At the very least they’re running the risk of unnecessary emergency neurological treatment when they bump their head and can’t tell you what day of the week it is.

I despair sometimes, I really do. The fate of the nation is not in the hands of those proactive souls who seek information out and keep on top of what’s going on in the world (Twitter trends and Google top searches aside, that’s getting a bit weird), but rather we’re all at the mercy of barely functional cyborgs who’ll be playing a game of pin the X on the donkey come polling day. Still, keeps everything fun I suppose.

Some manifestos get launched.

2015-04-15T09:00:00.000+01:00

It’s strange that a manifesto attracts so much attention, in many ways. I mean, how often are so few people held to such high standards by something that so few people have actually looked at? If political parties had that much faith in their holy scriptures perhaps they’d be shoving a copy of that through every door in the country rather than pictures of ugly middle-aged people in bad suits crouching next to potholes.

It’s strange too that alongside the publishing of a document setting out aims and objectives we get this parallel universe of media launches. What politicians hope for is a sort of drip-filter coffee approach to building up a rapport with the electorate (although the murky brown liquid we get at the end is rather different. What we actually get is a load of disconnected policy ideas chucked into the public domain via a series of controlled explosions.

Not all political parties are created equal, either – where the Tories have David Cameron and Theresa May performing an energetic floor routine complete with confetti cannons and a phalanx of sinister media stormtroopers, on the other side of the political spectrum you get Natalie Bennett launching the Green party manifesto in front of a couple of £40 roller banners from a place in Brockley.

When it comes to the top parties, there are no surprises in store in the manifestos because they’ve spent so much money on focus groups and private polling that all they’re really doing is telling a narrow band of people they’d really like to vote for them what they already believe.

The election continues.

I do some babysitting.

2015-04-14T11:00:00.000+01:00

Where does the term babysitting even come from? I rather think if you're perched awkwardly on someone's sofa with the wellbeing of their children your primary responsibility for the next several hours, sitting on the little blighters is the last thing you should be doing. Best case scenario you'll wake them up, and that's fairly disastrous.

But you know, time never goes more slowly than when you're in someone else’s house babysitting. In a whisper-quiet abode, the mere act of turning over the page in your book is so raucous as to set your pulse racing like a thousand kettle drums. A racing pulse loud enough to wake children three streets away. I find myself bolt upright in the living room, staring at the wall and trying to blink as quietly as possible.

It’s not until the parents arrive home – flinging open the front door and smashing several panes of glass, standing aside to allow some space for the mariachi band to squeeze by – that you think that maybe these kids don’t actually sleep that lightly. Indeed, sometimes the quiet can freak them out. Perhaps it’s advisable to wander round the house smashing saucepans with wooden spoons to convince the wee cherubs their loved ones are still in residence.

I made the mistake of joshing around an eight-year-old when I was looking him the other week. He’d crept gingerly downstairs, peering around behind things as he slowly came into the room. ‘Where is my mummy and daddy?’ ‘I don’t know – they left here an hour ago with a pair of suitcases saying “tell him we love him”…’ Bad move, I realised, as I got halfway through the sentence. The eight-year-old took a moment to digest this new piece of information, before alighting sensibly on ‘joke’ and indulging me with a light patter of laughter.

I’d broken one of my two cardinal rules: don’t ever mention their parents, and never talk about monsters. Especially the ones under the bed. Sweet dreams, kids.

In which I miss Tony Blair the teensiest bit.

2015-04-07T13:30:00.000+01:00

So Tony Blair has finally popped up again, like the world’s slowest Whack-a-Mole. I miss him being around frontline British politics, purely because the man’s a good box office draw. A superstar amongst a field consisting of weasels and stoats. As he struts about the world stage the closest contemporary figure we have is Gordon Brown occasionally lolloping about behind him, but as we know from the Scottish referendum, when the old GB shows up you’re really in for dinner and a dance.

Tony remains as divisive as ever - that vibrant tan (#nofilters) could either be seen as bathing its onlookers in a suffuse glow, or perhaps the toxic side-effects of wallowing about so much muck. Ed Miliband never had any time for the PM back when he was one of Brown’s rabble-rousers in the bad old days, but him and his advisors really have picked up the old fellow with a 300-mile bargepole and dumped him as far away as they could for his wee election speech up near Durham.

It’s a terribly ungrateful way to treat the man who rescued Labour from electoral oblivion, but that’s showbiz innit. Vicious. Like the Christmas decorations, Tony Blair will be carefully wrapped up in tissue paper and shoved back into the attic until the next time round. I can’t imagine Ed Miliband’s post-political career will be any more auspicious though. I wonder how long we’ll have to wait to find out...

I watch the political debate.

2015-04-02T23:22:00.001+01:00

By and large the actual process of a general election is quite dull, but these days we’ve got the exciting focus of televised debates to provide popcorn-munching nights in for those political geeks with nothing better to do.

The whole thing played out like a really terrible version of Blind Date, with dinner with the country as the prize. Maybe this is a new idea for an age of coalition politics – Cilla Black gets David Cameron and Nick Clegg on to the sofa to show some highlights of the last five years and find out how they got on. I don’t think she’ll need to buy a new hat.

There was another little hint of a nostalgic 1990s television programme that I picked up - the neon lights on the front of the podiums and the subtle wardrobe cues reminded me of the Power Rangers. The thought of Nick Clegg in a yellow spandex suit is of course retch-worthy.

You never quite know whether anyone’s mind will actually be changed by this sort of thing – I follow as many people on Twitter with completely different ideas of who did best that it quickly becomes clear that people tend to reinforce their own opinions when judging political debates. The only real winners we’ll see on 7 May…

April Fools' Day really gets on my nerves you know.

2015-04-01T12:00:00.000+01:00

I had a look through some of my old blog posts today. Specifically any I might have made on this particular day in history. 'Gosh', I thought to myself. 'April Fools' Day gets so much on my nerves that I must blog about it every year and what's the point in repeating myself?' It turns out that I've never blogged about April Fools' Day in the last six years, despite the fact that it gets so much on my nerves.

Clearly denying the occasion the oxygen of publicity has not worked - even the merest whiff that my humble weblog [that's what we called them in the olden days, kids] might provide. On this day of inanity, this jour de stupidité, I simply pose a small question to the world. Why?

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

You get the idea.

I basically assume that everyone's an idiot all the time, so this is a Shibboleth too far. Perhaps the whole thing is a side-symptom of the execrable 'I'm mad me' culture I blogged about the other week, a need to publicly proclaim a sense of humour that automatically demonstrates your lack as you partake. The only good one I've ever heard was back in 2007 or so when Radio 5 ran news reports suggesting that the Germans were going to leave the Euro and join the pound, but only because they managed to get a peer to give them a phone quote on the issue. 'Ooh, it's just a bit of fun,' you might protest. But then they've said the same thing about Morris dancing and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I'm not convinced.

In the midst of an election, with the world as it is, these are serious times that require serious people giving their serious attention to matters of life and death. It's a serious business. Are you seriously telling me that all these people who have come up with ridiculous sneery lies and half-truths couldn't have put their heads together instead and come up with half a step in the right direction of solving the world's ills? Have your fun on 1 April, but for goodness' sake let's at least get climate change sorted in the morning.

A crash happens just in front of me.

2015-03-31T18:55:00.001+01:00

I was just driving along, minding my own business. Obviously, minding your own business when you’re driving is a slightly different affair to simply minding your own business. You have to have a larger field of focus.

In this case, my eye was resting on the scooter rider a few seconds in front, just making their way across the crossroads I was planning to turn left at, as a car came from the right at speed and hit them square in the side. I watched as the scooter wrenched violently to the left, the rider thrown up in the air but maintaining momentum as they sailed end over end to the other side of the junction.

The sound just about registered, but it didn’t seem to accommodate the violence of what had just happened. I stopped the car in the middle of the lane, taking in the scene, those few seconds of calm after the storm. Nobody seemed to be stirring as I ran across the road to the rider, one impatient driver trying to get round me in their car and travel undisturbed onwards.

I could see the rider in spasm, lying prone on their side in the gutter. They had fallen neatly into the recovery position, facing the kerb. I knelt down and took the woman’s hand, tried to keep her focus. People appeared around us, all dialing for an ambulance that would take an age to arrive. I was as powerless to help this woman as she was to change what her life had suddenly just become, but I spoke to her, reassured her despite the perversity of it all.

I’ve not been able to find out anything more since then, I’m left simply with the thought that if the grand total of my existence thus far was shifted five seconds earlier, it would have been me being gingerly manoeuvred on to a backboard and slid into an ambulance.

The theatrics of everyday life.

2015-03-27T11:30:00.000+00:00

I love the odd bit of subtle theatrics in life. That smooth swoosh of an automatic door, the volume that goes up to 11 on the BBC iPlayer, the little hiss of approval when you open a bottle of Coke. Sheesh – the way your car turns on, the way we cross the road or switch on our phones. Or even that ridiculous bit at the cinema between the adverts and the film where the curtains move out another foot either side and suddenly everything turns inexplicably wider.

It’s funny how everything has to become a moment suffused with significance. It’s partly the luxurification of bog-standard everything that’s been shoved down our throats by advertisers – these people who have turned washing your bits into self-indulgent me-time, with your bergamot-scented relaxing revitalizing citrus scrub daily cleansing ultra-relaxing shower and bath crème. Washing-up liquid with haute cuisine aromas, like strawberries and cream or wild garlic. There’s a sodding designer dustbin in the kitchen that opens with the self-conscious twang of I-probably-paid-too-much-money-for-this.

It’s also partly a keen awareness of our own mortality. Who wants to do something in a boring way when you’re going to die soon? Far better to make everything an exciting experience, no? I’m sure I could have 30 seconds of life back for something worthwhile if they’d just open that stupid curtain the whole way before the film, though.

Getting into the election mood.

2015-03-26T10:00:00.000+00:00

I’m trying to get myself into the general election mood (not that I need the help, I’m already like the six-year-old kid at the beginning of that Eurodisney advert from ages ago – ‘I can’t sleep, I’m too excited’) by reading some political books.

I’ve started with Anthony Seldon’s book on Tony Blair’s post-9/11 political career (‘more war war, less jaw jaw’) – Blair Unbound. At the rate I’m going, we’ll be on our second election of the year before I’ve finished it, but I need to get a move on because I’ve cued up Andrew Rawnsley’s The End of the Party (here’s hoping), John Major’s autobiography (unfeasibly long) and Hillary Clinton’s recent book, It Takes a Village to Run a Presidential Campaign. No, sorry – ‘Hard Choices’.

I’ve got two volumes of Simon Hoggart’s Guardian sketches to read if I make miraculous progress, but I doubt I’ll get round to them. I’ve flicked through both books, and I really do adore the art of political sketch-writing. Dream job. I can however confirm that I won't be putting myself forward for a third full volume, mainly because he didn't write one.

Anyway, can’t stop. I’ve got a book to read, and the PM’s got a country to invade. I wonder how that turns out?

Lunatic on board.

2015-03-25T11:30:00.000+00:00

I’m not one for forced joviality or inane banter, I’ve got to say. I often find that if you’ve got to say something about yourself, you probably aren’t that. ‘I love people, I love love’, said Justin Bieber recently, proving my point. You can well imagine then, that I threw up all over the inside of my windscreen as I passed a car the other day with a ‘lunatic family on board’ sticker.

I really can’t emphasise enough how much I detest this inclination to let everyone know how wacky and wild you are. People invariably actually mean they lack social skills, or that they drink excessively – I’m crazy me, I did karaoke last weekend. Or perhaps I vomited on my line manager at the work Christmas party.

But a lunatic family? That’s something to be concerned about. I’m not entirely sure whether a sticker like that is supposed to be warning approaching drivers of erratic behaviour, maybe an inclination to ram overtaking cars sideways into the central reservation. It could be a notice to prepare yourself for a bit of odd behaviour from those on board – maybe as you pass they will all be naked and licking yoghurt off the windows, or drawing nifty little pictures out of their their own faeces.

More likely, though, that they’ll be dull-eyed wazzocks crammed tightly into a smoking Toyota Previa that’s seen far better days. People whose idea of lunacy is sneaking a bag of sweets into the cinema, or putting a few sachets of sugar in their pockets at a motorway service station. That said, with cutbacks the way they are, there’s every chance I spotted a local authority’s pilot test for a private-backed mobile mental health unit. Crazy.

How do you solve a problem like Clarkson?

2015-03-25T07:30:00.000+00:00

There should be a new reality TV show popping up soon. I’d be disappointed if someone, somewhere hadn’t pitched it by the end of the day. How Do You Solve a Problem Like Clarkson? How do you disentangle the bits that the telly executives would like from the bits they don’t like? What makes Jeremy Clarkson a compelling watch is that he’s the kind of guy who punches someone for bringing him a selection of cold cuts.

He’d be terrible company. I imagine him, stinking of cigarettes and whatever brand of spirits that helps him get to sleep at night. He has an opinion on everything, knows everything, and would want to bully you into submission until you agreed with him. He’s that predator who sniffs out your weakness and pounces on it. As much as a progressively arthritic exercisophobe can pounce, anyway. He’d be the worst person to go on a roadtrip with.

All of which makes him amazing to watch on camera. He’s charismatic, funny (funnier 10 years ago) and totally belligerent. He has a stupid opinion on everything. He’s like that Tom Hanks film Big, only the kid didn’t go back to his own body, he got himself a belly and started writing stuff about cars.