Gustav, liebling

I have become rooted to this website, indicating the current hurricanes affecting Cuba. We're off there in two weeks for the honeymoon, laughing, as always, in the face of natural disasters. We've already chortled as a giant fireball hit Peru shortly after we left, then guffawed at the floods of last summer. Hurricanes - pah - especially with such lovely names as Gustav and Fay.

I'll have the steak, mother's having dementia

Thanks to Mr Windass for giving me the biggest laugh of the day, this New York Times article about Margaret Thatcher's dementia which means she can no longer distinguish between the wars and heartache she created in the 80s (although distinguishing between proud northern cities was never her strong pint - she tended to view them all the same). It was this line that really floored me though ...

Carol Thatcher, 55, said that it was during a lunch at a London hotel in 2000 when she realized her mother was mentally slipping. They began discussing the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s when, to Carol Thatcher’s dismay, it became clear her mother was confusing that crisis with the Falklands war of the 1980s.

Typical, eh, discussing those Bosnians while waiting for your greek and feta potato skins to arrive, eh? 'This steak's tough, but how are those poor Argentinians doing, I wonder?'

Congratulations, Mr Hayes, happy birthday ... wait, oh dear

From today's Grimsby Telegraph. The injustice is not necessarily that they got it wrong, but the knowledge that no-one on the GTs subs desk knows their funk and soul. That'd never happen in my day etc etc.

A note to communications officers everywhere ... make sure you know what your city looks like

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/7560392.stm

Take A Chance On Me? Not likely

So the US presidential hopefuls have revealed their top 10 songs of all time. Barack, unsurprisngly, goes for yer classic choices - bit of Marvin and Nina, some Kanye West, classic Sinatra. McCain, on the other hand, likes Abba so much he's picked two - Voulez Vous and Take A Chance On Me. Somehow the idea of this pro-war vet parading round the Oval office to disco and Merle Haggard in between speeches is just too scary to contemplate, even for middle America?

Fish and blips

Some feat

My mum has rediscovered her love of festivals in recent years. Doesn't matter where - she's there with her campervan, beanie and box of wine. Cornbury. Rutland. Wallingford. All the greats. Last weekend, she was at Cropredy. My auntie, bless her, knows nothing of such things as festivals. She thought my mum was at Chiropody. Or the colostomy festival. Which given the age and hoary old folkie nature of such things, might well prove to be accurate.
Isaac Hayes tribute: I imagined I was singing Shaft as I did lengths at the local swimming pool. Shaft was surprisingly effective when doing a poor version of the front crawl.
Bands seen at Chiropody: Little Feat, Canned Feat, Veruca Salt, Korn etc

Good morning Baltimore...

I wouldn't normally recommend watching cracker trash musical remakes featuring John Travolta in a dress. But as Dee delighted her way through Hairspray last night, I delighted in the fact that the 60s wholesome Baltimore terraces where fat girls dance in sequins would soon enough be populated by the likes of the Wire's Avon Barksdale, Omar Little and Prop Joe. It added a certain amount of depth to John Traversty's raunchy dancing with Chris Walken, knowing that caps would almost certainly have been busted in all of their ass's once the Barksdale boys moved in.

Fantastic marrahs

Plucked from the allotment just yesterday.