Amusing note on choosing one's snatch.

Amusing note on losing one’s thatch.

Now that's what I call nostalgic

Following on from a discussion in a Leeds cab (where the cabbie answered our debate as to which Now album they're on - Now 54), I found this bit of 80s nostalgia. Had nearly forgotten about Karel Fialka's "Hey Matthew", Rory Bremner's cricketing pisstake of "ner-ner-ner-ner-nineteen", Steve 'Silk' Hurley, and the fantastic "Camouflage" by Stan Ridgeway... "Whoa-oa Cam-ou-flage. Thinga are never quite the way they seem. Who-oa Cam-ou-flage. This was an awfully big marine"

Amusing one on the BBC breakfast news this morning. Spike Lee was being interviewed about his new film. He was wearing a white Knicks tracksuit. After the presenters had discussed the film, the female presenter (Natasha Kinski or summat) said something like “so, what about your clothes”? Lee replies “I’m a big basketball fan, this is a Knicks suit — the Knicks are my team”. The presenter replies “oh!, do you play?!”. Tee hee.

Pendulum

Note to self: don’t be such a big baby. I think the come–down from all the excitement probably gave me a bit of a mood swing and I was just feeling bleak about it all.

Self indulgence, really, when people in Iraq have only recently ceased having cruise missiles and bombs dropped on them in the centre of their capital city. I’m alive, healthy, employed. Time to face up to personal responsibilities again — I’m the one who chose to ride a bike, which is known to be dangerous, I’m the one who drove into this guy’s car. Life goes on, and that will include insurers trying to weasel out of paying, the RAC trying to get whatever money they can and my boss expecting me to get on with my work.

If you can't stand the heat...

I must admit, now that the dust has settled a bit, I am feeling pretty depressed about this whole thing. I’m pretty shaken up after a seriously scary brush with death. My bike is smashed up, my body hurts, my gear’s all trashed and I have no feeling for when or whether it’s going to be sorted out, or how seriously I’m going to be left out of pocket as a result. This morning, three “you need to do this, you need to do that” conversations with different senior people, all of whom have decided that they require urgent work from me, seem more like victimisation than “just part of the job”. I am finding it hard to care too much about this urgency. Fighting the desire to walk out and go back to bed.

Well, at least someone gets their money back out of my little mishap on Sunday. The RAC are claiming against me for the cost of trucking the pieces of my bike back to my flat. My liability will be covered by my valid, fully comprehensive, £1,015 per year insurance. Meanwhile, the bike still sits in pieces in my garage and I have heard nothing about the possibility of getting it fixed. I am advised that my expensive, “fully comprehensive” insurance will definitely NOT cover getting any of my damaged kit replaced or getting a replacement hire bike in the meantime, but assume that it must cover fixing the bike eventually, otherwise it is unclear to me exactly what the point of having it would be. My reaction to learning that the RAC will be seen right by my insurers is similar to my reaction when the driver of the other vehicle in the incident advised me that he was alright, as I sat with blood running down my leg, shaking with shock as the adrenaline drained away and my brain caught up with what had happened — I couldn’t be more pleased for them.

Road traffic incident

You ever feel lucky to be alive? At about seven last night I was going across the crossroads on the bike at the Angel, heading west towards Pentonville Road from City Road. A guy was going the other way in a car from St John Street to Islington High Street and I didn't have time to stop and went straight into the side of him. The bike is totally smashed up at the front end and had to go home in an RAC truck. I suffered pretty minor injuries considering — I hit the brakes and had wiped off most of the speed before I went into him. Although as I came off the bike and my head smashed into his car door, I must say my thoughts were along similar lines to the friend of the Great Roberto — i.e “that’s it, fuck, I’m dead”. Police were called, breathalyser tests taken, statements given. Neither of us were arrested at the scene. Had to go down to the police station today to produce my documents, so I’m now in the process and I’ll have to wait and see what happens, but whatever happens, I can’t help thinking that this could have been nastier. Very nasty, in fact.

Why don’t you send him home? His bags are packed, he’s got his airplane tickets — bring him to the airport… send him home.

I’ve increasingly noticed that “suduv” is the new “er”. Ostensibly well educated people seem to be using it in this country in the way that bone–head Californians use “like”. “We need to, suduv, see whether we can, suduv, develop our thinking on the issues arising out of, suduv, this type of, suduv, thing”. I think I first heard it from Aussies and Kiwis, but like a lot of Antipodeanisms, it has now entered general parlance.

It’s funny when the punch–lines from jokes enter the popular vocabulary and then people start getting them wrong. At lunch today I overheard a bloke talking about a visit he had recently paid to his ex, during which he had some fun in a manner perhaps more appropriate to an earlier stage in the relationship: — “Yeah, I’m like a panda; I come, shoot and go”. I started chuckling so hard I had to make like a tree and get the hell out of there.