Tuesday, 15 February 2022

A misplaced Allen key would be the last straw

Everyone thinks they’ve found ‘the one’ until assembling a Billy bookcase leaves you hating each other. Here’s why even fiction’s most infatuated lovers would split up over flatpack furniture.

Harry and Sally
The bickering between Harry and Sally was charming when it was about movies or pie. But that’s low stakes stuff. Make it an attempt to decode an IKEA manual, with him irritably telling her she’s doing it wrong, and it’s When Sally Told Harry To Fuck Off And Got Back With Her Old Boyfriend.

Romeo and Juliet
Melodramatic hotheads are not cut out for assembling flatpack furniture. While many of us feel like committing suicide when bickering over the difference between the tiny and even tinier screws, these two might actually do it.

Lois Lane and Superman
Superman does have the advantage being able to fly away when Lois discovers the cupboard doors have been put on inside out. Or maybe reverse time to before anyone thought the nation would be gagging to assemble a ‘modular storage system’ themselves.

Heathcliff and Cathy
The flatpack pieces wouldn’t even be out of the box before Heathcliff and Cathy were running around on the moors and threatening to die from consumption. And getting a delivery to rural Yorkshire would cost a fortune, Amazon Prime membership or not. In a volatile relationship like theirs, a misplaced Allen key would be the last straw.

Jack and Rose
These two impractical idiots shouldn’t be let near flatpacks when they couldn’t even work out that the door wasn’t big enough for both of them. Their shelves wouldn’t be level and Rose would be constantly bringing it up for the next 84 years. So really it’s lucky for Jack that he froze to death.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Monday, 14 February 2022

While you were away...

We're back, dear reader, after a much-needed week in the sunshine (and it was indeed very sunny and warm on the Costa del Sol, thank heavens), to be greeted by miserable, pissing-down rain here in London. Sigh. At least I have a second week off to recover sulk...


Our apartment balcony [click to embiggen]

So what did we miss while we were away? The main news is [stifles chuckle] it snowed in the UK! Other news: that Fascist Putin's still waggling his willy at the Ukraine; HM The Queen celebrated 70 years on the throne and the Platinum Jubilee celebrations commenced; the 2022 Winter Olympics continued as usual (met mainly with apathy); Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick [an unfortunate name for a lesbian] finally resigned after a barrage of scandals in the force; some very clever people in Oxford apparently did something interesting with a nuclear reactor; and somewhere "oop North" a pig wandered into a workman's club and had to be lured out with cheese and onion crisps.

We missed three centenaries - Patrick Macnee, Denis Norden and Hattie Jacques! - as well as the 90th birthday celebrations of the film music maestro Mr John Williams, whose long career encompasses everything from Peter Gunn to Goodbye Mr Chips to The Eiger Sanction to Harry Potter and beyond. His list of movie scores is gob-smacking, including The Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno, Jaws, the Star Wars saga, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, E.T., Home Alone, the Indiana Jones films, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Jurassic Park, War Horse (and much more besides) - and this beautiful number:

Also while we were away it was Sheryl Crow's 60th, and what would have been the 70th of the lovely Simon MacCorkindale - and, sadly, the UK bade a fond farewell to television boffin Bamber Gascoigne, presenter of University Challenge for 35 years.

Returning to our holiday however (we wish!) - did we bring any new musical discoveries back with us? No. As creatures of habit, we tend these days to gravitate towards a few bars we know and in which we have made friends - and just about all of them happen to be Dutch, rather than Spanish. However, sticking to the traditions of Tacky Music Monday, here's someone who definitely was - our Patron Saint of Histrionics Señorita Rocío Jurado!

With a plethora of safety gays and girls who look like drag queens [I'm sure I spotted a youthful Dame Hilda Bracket in there somewhere], bizarre costume changes, piss-poor miming and a duettist who looks like Ron Burgundy sans moustache - this is just perfect!

Is it good to be back?

NO!!!!!!

Have a good week, peeps.

Saturday, 5 February 2022

¡Vamos!


click to embiggen

By the time you see this, dear reader, we should be in the air heading for a well-earned week in the sunshine and fleshpots of the Costa Del Sol!

As is traditional, here's our send-off song...

Vamos a la playa, oh oh oh oh! Indeed.

See you in about a week from now!

Friday, 4 February 2022

Jack-off!

Hoo-fucking-Rah! Just one more day to go and then we fly (again at some ungodly hour of the morning) to our beloved Andalusia, for the first time in two years...

All the onerous paperwork is finally sorted - at least for the journey out; the bureaucracy for our return will need to be done towards the end of our stay, at some grotty Spanish internet café I imagine - and the Madam's done the "TARDIS trick" of getting everything we need for a week away into the new maximum-size-for-EasyJet-if-you-don't-want-to-pay-£25-to-put-things-in-an-overhead-locker cabin bags, so it's just a case of getting ourselves in gear and suitably rested before the taxi arrives in the middle of the night!

Of course, I haven't forgotten that a traditional weekend send-off awaits, dear reader - so let's wallow in something suitable, from Spain, by way of a celebration.

I have posted this one, before, of course, and on that occasion I said:

"This clip has everything - bad hair, beards and sideburns, satin shirts and medallions, flared trousers in infeasibly awful pastel tones, freaked-out dancers dressed in nylon salad-vegetable-coloured outfits. It's perfect...

Gracias Disco ¡Ya es viernes! (Thank Disco It's Friday!)

Have a good weekend (and week), folks!

Thursday, 3 February 2022

Love and luxury


I think I remember this one, framed, for sale in Woolworths, circa 1972.

As the countdown continues towards our desperately-needed departure this Saturday for a week in Spain, and as it is my last day in work (office or at home) until 21st February...

...there only one song that really hits the mood - and it's one of our all-time favourite videos, ever! [And yes, I know I have posted it many, many times before - so what?!}

Amor y lujo
Cuerpos de gloria
Grandes historias
Queremos más, queremos más!

...which tranlsates as:

Love and luxury
Bodies of glory
Great stories
We want more, we want more!

Don't we just?!

Wednesday, 2 February 2022

Haute cuisine

A woman has scoured her recipe books for a dish that requires a splash of red wine just so she has an excuse to drink the rest of the bottle.

Lauren Hewitt found a spaghetti bolognese that needed 50ml of red wine, knowing that it would allow her to neck the other 700ml and get pissed on a week night.

Hewitt said: “An authentic spaghetti bolognese requires red wine to intensify the flavour, so it was vital that I spent 10 minutes in Tesco picking out a bottle I really like.

“Yes, I substituted the rest of the complicated ingredients for a jar of Dolmio and a tub of cheap mince, but that’s why the wine is necessary. To elevate it. Nigella would do the same.

“And it’s nice to have a glass while I’m cooking, and then two glasses while I’m eating, and then polish the bottle off in front of the telly after. Otherwise it would just go to waste, despite the fact it’s a screw top and would actually keep for several days.

“Anyway it could be worse. I nearly decided to make penne alla vodka.”

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Hic!

Tuesday, 1 February 2022

Kung Hei Fat Choy!

Grrrr! It's the Chinese (Lunar) New Year - and "The Year of the Tiger" begins.

I'm sorry. I couldn't resist...

All night long, you've been looking at me
Well, you know you're the dance hall cutie that you longed to be
Oh well now, you've been laying it down
You've got your hip swinging out of bounds
And I like the way you do what you're doin' to me

Alright, that's right, that's right, that's right
That's right I really love your tiger light
That's neat, that's neat, that's neat, that's neat
I really love your tiger feet, I really love your tiger feet
Your tiger feet
Your tiger feet
Your tiger feet
Well, alright!

Well, flash your warning lights just as long as you like
I know you're aching to be making me tonight
I've got a feeling in my knees
It's a feeling only you can please
There ain't no way I'm gonna let you outta my sight

Alright, that's right, that's right, that's right
That's right I really love your tiger light
That's neat, that's neat, that's neat, that's neat
I really love your tiger feet, I really love your tiger feet
Your tiger feet
Your tiger feet
Your tiger feet
Well, alright!

I'm knackered, now.