nevermind the ladder

footer teams should be divided into vertebrates (sydney, geelong) and invertebrates (freo, port, richmond &c.).

if chrissy whosis

wins chintzy gold logie, will she be the ultimate "biggest loser" winner?

brisbane getting over cyclone yowee

but adelaide still struggling with self-sealing envelopes.

wish dennis cometti

would refer to steele sidebottom as "iron cheeks".

our dopey prime minister

forced to dodge some dirty cottagers before giving monologue at sydney institute.

can't imagine

a more un-english thing than "action for happiness"

can the sydney slits

go all the way in the netball this year?

is mark allen

the ted mcginley of 1116 sen?

nato attack on libya

all well & good, but shouldn't they deal with the enemy in oldham and luton first?

the english contempt for food

can be summed up in two words: brown sauce.

in adelaide

they're raving about the commodore 64 computer which was introduced to them last week, to general astonishment and wonder.

people come in all shapes & sizes

but mostly, it seems, fat.

evening on endor

roasting ewoks over an open fire.

in the future

the world will be controlled by julius the monkey.

woody allen's 2 superb questions

why are we here? and why is it so terrible?

bing!

i'd buy insurance from this man.

saving grace

for every daft and depressing thing the beeb does—employing the gross and grosser chris moyles and graham norton, overpaying its 'talent', fawning to the euroweenies in brussels—it also does the odd marvelous thing, like restoring kenneth clark's "civilization" series in high definition. well done, you fellows.

avuncular advice

i told my nephew if he wants to blend in he should get as fat as he can as fast as he can. nothing else will do.

one and a half cheers

the pre-publicity for sebastian faulks' new book and bbc2 series "faulks on fiction" has been in the manner of german troops massing on the russian border in 1941 prior to operation barbarossa: steady and clamorous.

faulks kicked off hostilities with three portraits in the "telegraph" on jeeves, fagin, and becky sharp. good choices, what?

the jeeves piece was perfect; concise and exact, the tone just right. score: a hit.

the attempt to essay becky sharp was awkwardly done. faulks insisted on calling her a hero, in the masculine sense, which isn't quite the thing. sharp is tricky, though. too tricky for her creator, thackeray, at any rate. faulks' mistake is to see sharp as an admirable character, like tom jones. she isn't. she's selfish, immoral and opportunistic. though she's certainly the best thing in the novel by a long way. score: a technical draw.

unfortunately things come unstuck with fagin, whom faulks also wants to excuse from moral censure. it won't do. fagin is the worst of villains. a corrupter of youth who deploys an ingratiatingly mannered politeness to ensnare oliver into a life of depravity. there's a good reason dante's design of hell accords a worse fate for frauds, conspirators and corruptors than thieves or murderers. score: a miss.

let's hope the series makes it way to oz. (we had to wait almost 2 years for the "extras" christmas special, and we're still waiting for "fantabulosa").

to do-ishness

the great ocean road half marathon plus 1·9km (23km) in may. pricey though. still, the great thing about this event is the scenery (weather permitting; the dying weeks of autumn can be a bit iffy) and the enjoyment of inconveniencing the locals for whom the road is closed to traffic for half the day. it's like the london congestion tax only the innocent aren't made to suffer. but, good weather or bad, it beats sloughing through bradford or barnsley.

selected for the first eleven

a new biography of palmerston has just been lowered onto the shelves. a good thing that. palmerston is one of my favourite english prime ministers; along with salisbury, pitt the younger, and dizzy. in any cricketing list of the best english prime ministers palmerston is among the first fellows picked; being serious, straightforward, a capable administrator and, most importantly, zealous in the national interest, never permitting the crown to be bullied by third world upstarts. his only drawbacks being that he never declared war on france or scotland (england's eternal enemies).

a list of the best ministers inevitably suggests, ipso facto, the worst. they are: brown (scotch and spendthrift), gladstone (a preaching windbag who badly let the side down in the sudan), chamberlain (weakness abroad is seldom applauded by the english) and, of course, heath (for dragging england into the european union). that last one is a real doozy.

can't remember

the last time i had a kugelhopf.

australia day afterglow

the highlight of the glutinous australia day celebrations was an address from barry humphries—in the person of dr sir colin leslie patterson, cultural attaché to the court of st. james.

here patterson recounts an incident while flying over the country:

"the pom next to me asked me if i could hear a distant thumping. 'what's that rhythmic pounding?' he enquired. i was as mystified as he was. 'could it be a kangaroo is down there?' said the stupid bastard. 'no, mate,' i said. 'it's 22 million australians patting themselves on the back!'"

wonderful stuff.

book of the year

"new yorker" readers, if they're honest, will tell you the bek toon is the first thing they look for in the magazine. in the world of toons there is no one better. it's all in the dialogue.

gleesome

sometimes one's whole day, can be irradiated, made glad, by something as simple as a headline. such was the case when i opened my copy of the "literary review" and found examined the book "the death of french culture". happy thought! hopefully this title connotes a reported fact and not just journalistic prophecy.

any mention of france automatically puts me in mind of england's most bespoke and conspicuous francophile, julian barnes: someone who wears his country's incurable un-frenchness with a permanently pained expression. now barnes is a splendid fellow. a superb essayist and a tolerable novelist. but his francophilia is, put politely, a rum thing. almost indecent.

an excessive fondness for french culture is always discreditable. especially in an englishman.

toby jugs

are vile vile vile.

sylvia plath waited for her black rook

i'm waiting for the kookaburra of invention to laugh outside my window.

have now gone 20 years burger free

excepting one junior burger incident in 1998. feels good.

the "times" asks à propos g20 meeting

wot about rotherham? well, it's obvious. rotherham's finished. let them eat twizzlers.

one of life's simple joys

is to leave a ringing 'phone unanswered.

how depressing

80% of coffee sold in oz is instant. crumbs. that's not coffee, that's toilet duck.

a fellow in the "observer"

says it's time to bury cool britainia. a simple burial won't do it. exorcism required.

nevermind

arms reductions talks. it's time for an international treating banning teen movies.

moved to twitter

username is "ourzippy".

morning rush hour, lower thames street

looks like a bank holiday crowd coming back from brighton.

the pink revolution

malibu stacey impersonator, paris hilton, has buzzed into town with the intention of lifting australia’s spirits by trying on dresses in our high street boutiques. lucky us. the media is doing its bit too, obsequiously following her every move. it’s nice to see deference isn’t dead.

looking back, it seems 20th century philosophy was mostly concerned with the problem of meaning in a disenchanted (i.e. godless) world. to sartre and his gauloises-stained chums the answer was ‘commitment’; usually commitment to an obnoxious political ideology of some kind. any kind. it didn’t matter which. so long as it promised to smash liberal democracy.* above all, it was freedom they despised.

this is where paris hilton’s “pink revolution” comes in. her response to the crisis of life’s meaninglessness is to pull out her bloomingdale’s card and cry “charge it!”. hence melbourne and sydney are just two more stops on her mission to spread the redemptive message of “self-realization through shopping”. she's a postmodern aimee semple mcpherson. sal-vay-shun!

the new year’s looking up already.

*remnants of it still survive today. witness those forlorn little gatherings in berlin and london cheering on hamas against israel, or else bemoaning the introduction of democracy in iraq.

everyone hails it as progress

celebrating the blair/brown era of "classless britain" is this new calendar of "british style".

that'll do nicely.

most amusing christmas gift received so far

one small, 8 months past use-by-date, block of german milk chocolate (with gross raisin filling), with original price tag ($3) attached. wasn't intended as a 'joke' gift either. pure hilarity nonetheless.

top that, napa valley.

bold or brazen?

it could be the most daring programming decision of all time. one of the commercial tv networks has lifted the kooky soap "the bold and the beautiful" from its regular bored-housewife, mid-afternoon slot and parked it in prime time, monday through friday. one naturally fears for the job security of the person who made that decision.

that's a lot of soap suds for melbourne audiences to chew through.

there was an awful moment the other night when the fellow playing the forrester patriach was almost called upon to act (that's him in the obligatory coma). it was a scary moment. would he or wouldn't he? thankfully, at the last minute minute he reverted to type and resisted the impulse. still, it was an unsettling experience. he was seconds away from actually acting. then who knows what might have happened?

brand new baritone

the only advantage of getting a bug (in december, for crissakes) is that i can talk like barry white if i want to. oh, yeah.

cracking film, gromit

typically film and tv 'product' arrives in oz long after it has screened in the northern hemisphere. no one seems to know why. but owing to a rupture in space-time continuum, or a disturbance in the force, or some such, the latest wallace & gromit featurette "a matter of loaf and death" has premiered here in advance of its english broadcast. and it's swell. the sets are superb. it also features a terrific villainess, piella bakewell, who is built on the sturdy lines of 1950s english womanhood. the hairstyle looks to have been lifted from the prim proprietor of the railway teashop in "brief encounter". and just look at that tremendous pair of cankles! grand, eh lad?

bring back mr stokes

terrestrial tv is a wasteland at the moment. actually, it's been that way for some time. ever since the viewer was caught in a gruesome 'reality' pincers move between "survivor" and "big brother". programming hasn't been the same since. i'm inclined to give up on the medium altogether, except for these last 3 vestiges of entertainment:

"the simpsons" (more new episodes please)

"foyles war" (an tea-soaked elegy to bygone english stiff-upper-lipedness and emotional restraint)

"the great houses of britain" (a swell architectural history of england up until pevsner, le corbusier and mies van der rohe cast their evil, darth vaderish influence over the cities).

lovely manchester

the native genius of the english people

a small item appeared in the "times" today (here) describing the horrified impressions of luisa de carvajal on arriving in london in 1605, one year after the composition of the seedy "measure for measure". naturally she was appalled by what she saw—especially the noise, filth, and bad food. but the fun really starts with the "have your say" comments. instead of taking offense "times" readers generally responded in a characteristically english fashion:

"it's dirty and lawless. the food's terrible. glad to see that nothing's changed." (jessica, london)

"yes, yes, but what was london like in 1605?" (slade wallis, retford)

i remember a slow moment during the guardian's over-by-over commentary of the 2003 world cup when the description of play was momentarily abandoned for a discussion of the ugliest conurbation in england. there were dozens of nominations. i think it was reading wot won it. but, crucially, only the english would take pleasure in this kind of amused self-mortification. it's a handy attitude to have. especially if you live in hull.

quite by accident, you understand

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

making spells

as we know the proper place to learn the language is on the fridge door, pushing magnetic letters around, just like the infant shakespeare did. it's also where the nephew, zoom, currently two-and-a-half, will soon be deploying letters to form important sentence structures like "nanna smells" and "cabbage is gross".

to kick things off i cleaned out the local "toys r us" of their magnetised alphabets and introduced zoom to these three, high-scrabble-scoring, word concepts. "haruspicy": the divination of future events through the examination of animal entrails. "quadroon": persons of one quarter negro blood. and "dropsy": a disease often mentioned in eighteenth century literature, though sadly now called œdema (where's the fun in that?)

unfortunately the manufacturers are stingy with the vowels so "homunculus" will have to wait. otherwise, avuncular responsibilities discharged.

overheard outside a commercial depilatorium

mother to daughter: "you wait here while mummy gets her minge done".

rather enjoyed

those extracts from dirk bogarde's published letters which were lodged in the "sunday telegraph". here he is, doing the rounds, promoting one of his books:

"did the 'tour'… birmingham, oxford, all the university towns. fun and moving. harrods, on the other hand, was as funny as a baby's funeral… millions of ugly people and a rude woman who said, in a very loud voice, 'my god! look what he's come to. selling himself in public!'"

that voice, that censorious voice, is the real, true voice of england. recognise it anywhere.

also amusing are some of the other reproving comments lobbed his way while out in public:

"left france, have you?"
"thinner than i imagined"
"pity, but after 50, you know"

and the most splendid of the lot: "he's buying tinned tomatoes". which magically combines disapprobation, noseyness, class distinction, and the mundane. brilliant, brilliant stuff.

some terribly brilliant advice given by a career woman in an english broadsheet

"my advice to career women is to get into the habit of rubbing really expensive body cream in after a bath."

and that, i expect, will solve everything.

economic indicators

nevermind the consumer price index, inflation, cash rate, new jobs advertised, or the price-per-barrel of crude oil. it's time for a new econometric measure. an instant guide to economic boom or bust is the s.p.i.: spam frequency index. the current influx of lottery-themed unsolicited emails floating around is a sure sign of economic gloominess ahead.

fool's gold

what a wheeze. best selling authoress, katie price, has casually disclosed she doesn't actually bother to write her hugely popular entertainments. instead she farms the actual writing aspect out to a thankless factotum or amanuensis. quite enterprising, that. price "merely thinks up the plot - leaving the complex task of conjuring up the golden prose to an assistant," is how one "daily mail" journalist tremulously put it. gold indeed. i wonder if any of her hundreds of thousands of readers feels a little swindled?

goodbye to "east angular" and all that

after 8 cruel, neuron-busting years it looks like those zeros at channel 10 are finally pulling the plug on "big brother". i think hosanahs are in order. though i can't forget the collateral damage. in particular, how "bb" shattered the illusion that people are basically decent and moderately intelligent. on the evidence of those in "bb" captivity they're not. not by a long way. its only contribution to the culture is adding the phrase "turkey slap" to the lexicon. not much to show for 8 years work, is it? anyway, now that the queen bee of reality tv is gone, maybe all the others will likewise disappear. roll on that happy day.

bloomin' marvelous

a tremendous pair of queen victoria's knickers, with a truly majestic circumference of 50 inches, are being flogged by the english auction house, hanson's. this garment belongs in the british museum. it's an ornament to the nation. and in churchill's words "makes you proud to be british".

england is in a dreadful way these days. the titanic proportions of these bloomers (made for a woman not quite 5 feet tall) will put a smile back on english faces. and restore some much needed national pride.

so much for price parity

one of the unexplained quirks of oz is the jumbo price differential for consumer goodies relative to the rest of the civilised world. what something costs in america usually costs two or three times as much here (irrespective of exchange rates). no one seems to know why this should appertain. so when telephone companies promised "comparable" pricing for the apple iphone 3g, i didn't hold my breath. this gizmo is $200 in america and, presto-changeo, $700 here. it must be magic. or a suitable matter for a parliamentary inquiry, i think. still, it's good to see the epidemic of apple iphone fever. no one, i notice, is queuing at 6:30 in the morning for a beige "windows" phone.

snacktacular

over the other side of melbourne, at queenscliff, the latest tourist phenom involves hand-feeding the giant stingrays (2 metres across) which glide into the shallows under the pier. what fun.

going caravaning

taste buds are in mutinous revolt against the host organism. i've gone off coffee. all espressoed out. desperate measures required. reverting to tea in the interim. russian caravan tea, to be precise.

a boost

as a consequence of the sclerotic world economy 600+ starbucks outlets in america are closing. hooray. hopefully the dozen or so in oz will be next.

mcfood

in an ill-considered attempt to defibrillate flagging sales, mcdonalds in oz has released a "mcafrica" burger. hmm. now africa has certain things in abundance: corruption, famine, war, disease, poverty, ignorance and aids. but food? not so much. now if it were a true mcafrica burger, reflecting the diet of the continent, it would be comprised mostly of africans.

brilliant

this lovely poster has been designed by the local authorities in england to publicise the necessary work they do. like spew removal. nothing like puffing up one's image, i suppose. perhaps this isn't quite the endorsement they were looking for? though re-addressed, as it were, this poster would do excellent service as a "welcome to liverpool" emblem.

though not intended as a piece of social commentary, this image is a nice summation of contemporary britain: a place awash with illegal immigrants, terrorists, binging, crime, yobs, and a general unseemliness not seen since hogarth's day.

the councilors have unwittingly caught the "very pith and marrow" (to steal from hamlet's phrasebook) of "cool britannia". it's been an astonishing cultural reversal.

the sweet science

it's a wonder of modern confectionery. or chemistry. i'm talking about sour gummi worms, or "squirms" as they're called here. how can something that is almost wholly comprised of sugar still taste sour? it's a miracle. a suspension of the normal laws of nature. and is more amazing in its own way than the feeding of the 5,000.