lockdown in Rothbury
A tragic story is unfolding in the North of England with a gunman on the run after killing one person and seriously injuring two more (his ex-girlfriend and a traffic policeman) following his release from prison last Friday.
Obviously, the police are doing everything to apprehend Raoul Moat safely without any further loss of life. However, as Moat claims he has 'lost everything' and is determined to 'wage war on the police', it's not clear this episode will reach a peaceful conclusion.
On Tuesday, the town of Rothbury was locked down; a two mile exclsuion zone was put in place, schools were closed and residents were told to stay indoors as Northumbria police thought they were closing in on the armed and dangerous suspect.
However, two days later, Moat is still on the loose so the town of Rothbury has now been reopened with a very visible police presence on the streets.
I'm not sure how I would have felt popping to the corner shop for a newspaper and a pint of milk, to find policemen stood at every corner given Moat's declaration to 'keep killing police until I am dead'. Far from being reassuring, this police presence would probably scare me even more.
'Norma, love - you couldn't just pop out and get some milk, could you ? Thanks.'
Deutschland - eine Entschuldigung
The British media may have given the impression in recent weeks that we considered the German national tootball team to be a rather workmanlike, efficient, collection of young talent coupled with experienced internationals but lacking in imagination and devoid of much creative talent.
Some less respected elements of the British media may have given the impression that England's recent, comprehensive 4-1 defeat by Germany was somehow a freak result that was purely the result of a refereeing error that denied England an equaliser.
However, after Germany's dismantling of Argentina and yet another comprehensive 4-0 thrashing of Diego Maradona's team packed full of world class striking talent, we are pleased to correct our previous error and apologise for any offence caused.
We now acknowledge that Germany are the best footballing nation in the World, rivalling the wonderful Brazil size of 1970.
We would like to issue a heartfelf apology to Bastian Schweinsteiger for all those silly jokes we made about the translation of his name ('Pig Porker').
We would like to retract fully the 'Typical Germans' comment made by a certain Sir Alex Ferguson of Stretford, near Manchester after Bayern Munich had eliminated Manchester United from the Champions League.
We would also like to offer a fulsome 100% apology to Miroslav Klose who has now equalled the number of goals scored in World Cup tournaments by Gerd Muller. We withdraw fully the thinly veiled, insane accusation that Emile Heskey would somehow produce more goals during this tournament.
We also would like to clarify the endless piss taking about the oh so stylish blue polo neck shirts sported by the German manager, Joachim Loew. The blue polo neck sweater is a stylish fashion statement and reflects the smart, modern but casual manner of the way Germany plays the beautiful game. Contrast this with Fabio Capello's featureless, dour, stiff grey suit.
Die deutsche Fußballnationalmannschaft - World Cup semi-finalists yet again. We salute you !
But we still hate Michael Ballack.
bang the (ear) drum
[ Working title: Torture on a shoestring ]
A couple of weeks ago on a normal, routine Tuesday morning, I did what I do every morning; showered, prepared for work and cleaned my ears out with a cotton wool bud. As I went to leave the bathroom, I swung my arms up and around to put my dressing gown back on for the short trip down the upstairs landing.
[ This requirement to be modestly covered up follows an unfortunate incident in April 2009 when my teenage daughter had a sleepover with three friends staying over. Apparently, one poor girl can not even look at a Chippolata sausage ever again. Needless to say, I conducted my own defence and was acquitted. Again. ]
Anyway, as I simulataneously hoisted both arms up to don my long, flowing, white, silk robe adorned with 'MUFC - Champions 2008' on the back, I felt pain. A lot of pain. Searing pain that made me feel quite dizzy. I paused for breath and suddenly realised I had inadvertently rammed a cotton wool bud, deep and hard, into my right ear.
It was so painful, I didn't even shout, exclaim or swear. Instinctively, I reached for my right ear and gingerly extracted the cotton wool bud. I felt more pain. I clasped my hand over my ear and half expected my palm to be dripping in blood. Thankfully, there was no blood - just numbing pain.
I gingerly made my way back to my bedroom and sat down as I felt quite faint. After a few minutes, the pain subsided slightly to a constant, painful throb and I was able to get up and get dressed.
I am constantly amazed at the human body's resilience and powers of natural healing so I just waited for the ear to heal. The next few days were quite interesting; the feeling was similar to what I would expect after standing adjacent to a 30 foot Marshall amp stack for the full 3 days of Glastonbury with slight loss of hearing, ringing, dull pain and various popping noises similar to the sensation you get when descending in a aircraft.
Eventually, Norma asked why I was popping Nurofen all day every day so I had to own up. As expected, she took great delight in my agony as she'd always claimed ears were self-regulating organs and simply do not need to be cleaned daily with a blunt instrument which causes more harm than good. She showed me great sympathy by saying: 'Well, I bet it was absolutely nothing like child birth.'
I pondered on this for a while and concluded she was right - I had merely rammed a very small, narrow foreign object into the human body via a small orifice with great force whereas childbirth consists of ejecting a natural body out of the human body via a, err, slightly larger orifice with moderate force. However, I decided it might be prudent to maintain a dignifed silence (in case she slapped me on the ear) and the very thought ot childbirth and bodily fluids made me feel slightly queasy again.
Days passed but the pain and odd sensations didn't so I went to see my Doctor primarily as I had some concerns about flying in a plane with a perforated eardrum.
Inevitably, the consulation with my GP was livened up by me pretending not to hear when she opened up with 'Now, Mr. Brightside, how can I help you today ?' and I responded with 'Sorry - what did you say ?', 'Pardon' and 'Can you speak up a little ? I have a slight problem with my right ear.'
As I sheepishly confessed to my idiotic, self-inflicted act of stupidity, the Doctor listened attentively and nodded knowlingly - 'Don't worry Mr. Brightside. I've seen people who've inserted all sorts of things into all sorts of, err, irregular, places.'
Fair play to the lady GP. She immediately grabbed her menacing ear probe with the triangular metal end and integrated torchlight and responded with 'OK then, let's have a good look in 'ere' and the odd 'Ooh - what have we 'ere ?'.
She gently inserted her probe (soft porn SEO keyword search alert) and promptly reported the ear was too inflamed to see whether the ear drum was intact or perforated. She reassured me (sort of) by saying the cabin pressure in a plane wouldn't be an issue if the eardrum was perforated as the air would simply 'whistle straight through the hole'.
She then asked me if I had any other specific worries or questions and I replied 'Not really - it's mainly the prospect of flying. Oh and I did want to ask you about the leaking brain fluid...' 'Brain fluid ?', she interjected in a serious tone. 'Yes - when I wake up my pillow has all this yellow/brown-ish liquid where my head's been resting and my wife, who is a qualified nurse, told me it was just my 'brain fluid' leaking out.'
'Well - with respect, I think your wife might be mistaken or having a little joke. I'm pretty sure this is just residual fluid from the inflamed area as the body recovers but I'll prescribe you some antibiotics which will help clear up the infection.'The ear is now almost completely healed. I have thrown away the bumper pack of 240 ear buds although my right earbud now keeps falling out on when I listen to music on the train.
The memory of the 'ear drum' incident is now receding but I'm pretty sure intelligence agencies and the military could use this technique to produce a cheaper and much more efficient form of torture. Waterboarding is well publicised and effective but can get very messy and is very wasteful of a precious natural resource.
Imagine, in the next James Bond film, the baddie enters the interrogation cell armed - not with a large belt or a car battery and two electrical diodes - but simply brandishing a single cotton wool bud.
turbulence ahead
I am about to embark on migrating this blog from WordPress to Django-Mingus because I simply can’t stand the WordPress ‘Compose Post’ interface (if you can call it that).
This exciting move comes less than two weeks after I spotaneously decided to ditch Habari after the lack of a functional ‘Auto-Save’ plugin caused me to lose 17 minutes work.
You may say ‘I’m reading this in my preferred RSS reader so please don’t bother me with such minutiae’.
However, when I migrated from Habari to WordPress a month ago, I flooded you both with my most recent posts duplicated so this is just prior warning that similar oddness may well occur as I endeavour to hook up the new blog feed to FeedBurner.
This may or may not signal a period of blog hopping and I’d like to say this will may trigger a series of interesting posts about which blogging platforms I considered and discarded and top tips on planning and executing an efficient blog migration.
the one where I raped a man
Accidentally.
For the last two weeks, I have been savouring the joys of commuting into the City on South West Trains and the London underground network.
Like most large, densely populated cities, Transport for London has introduced a Smart Card system, known as Oyster, which allows ticketless travel on trains, tubes and buses.
Most modern cities in the developed world have similar smart card technology resulting in a faster, more efficient transport system with cheaper fares for passengers and reduced staffing costs at railway stations.
Not London.
Last Tuesday, I disembarked at Bank underground station following a hot, sweaty, uncomfortable 5 minute journey from Waterloo surrounded by smart, professional merchant bankers wearing trainers and suits. As usual, everyone strode out purposefully to get off the train first, to reach the ticket barrier first, to climb the stairs first, to reach the blissful cool fresh air first and finally, after a interminable 6 minute loss of communication, get a decent mobile phone signal so they can immediately call the office to show how incredibly important they are: 'Will be there in 5. Passenger jumped onto live rail outside Hinchley Wood'.
I ambled slowly along (marvelling yet again at Bryan Devendorf's drumming prowess) behind a gentleman who was rapidly approaching ticket barrier No. 3. I withdrew my Zones 1-5 One Day Travel Card and politely waited for the chap to 'swipe through' (as we Cockney trainspotters call it) and proceed towards the escalators.
Only he didn't proceed because the failure rate on the Oyster card system is high. Astonishingly high. The gentleman in front of me tried to advance by waving his jacket pocket towards the card reader but, inevitably, his Oyster card wasn't recognised and nothing happened.
I was listening to The National and wasn't paying full attention so I didn't immediately notice his quandary until he gave a little yelp. In fact, he may have given two yelps. One as he rammed into a very hard and very stationary, unyielding ticket barrier. And another yelp as I rammed into him from behind with great force.
Once we'd disentangled ourselves, he started to complain that I'd physically assaulted him. I told him he shouldn't buy an Oyster card if he couldn't use the bloody thing. One of the three staff manning the ticket barriers - most countries eliminated all ticket barrier staff whereas London had to triple staff manning the station exits - separated us and a 'revenue protection officer' then rubbed salt in the wound by charging him full fare plus a £10 penalty. I looked disdainfully at his suit and then I looked down even more disdainfully at his trainers.
I duly appeared in court yesterday charged with 'Gross indecency in a public place' but, inspired by 'Judge Judy', I conducted my own legal defence, launching a magnificent counter claim of 'Inappropriate use of trainers coupled with a pinstripe suit'.
Thankfully, the judge saw sense and acquitted me after a forensic scientist gave expert testimony that the rectal injuries sustained by the gentleman may have been caused by the insertion of a tightly rolled up copy of 'The Metro' and not sexual assault.