Modern Life: Conversations with my Window Cleaner

'Where are you off to,anywhere nice ?'
'The Isle of Wight,'
'Oh lovely,used to go there as a kid'
'Never been there myself,my mum lives there though,'
'Oh it's very nice, and I'll tell you something, you don't get any black people there.'

Now I don't know my window cleaner very well, and after the above conversation,less so than I thought. I'm still getting used to the idea that I even have a window cleaner, but well the windows were dirty and he was in the road and the wife said, 'the windows are very dirty.' So that was that.
I've always thought he was a nice chap, he'd sometimes stop for a cup of tea and ask if I followed the football, which I didn't and occasionally he'd leave his ladders around the back because he didn't have a car.
So I'm a bit surprised to discover I've got a racist window cleaner.
Is he a racist ? Or was he making some sort of joke about black and white, a play on words with the Isle of Wight ?
Maybe he thinks I'm a racist ?
Do I look like one ?
Is that racist ?
What about me has said that's ok ? Why does he think I might choose my holiday destination on the basis of skin colour ? Maybe he's peered through the window whilst cleaning it and seen my copy of Bridget Hitler's Diary and thinks it won't be an issue.
What's more worrying is I'm starting to sound like David Mitchell, Mark from Peep Show. The thing is I just don't know him well enough to ask what he meant, we're not exactly drinking buddies, which after another revelation, it turns out, is just as well:
'I'll get my car back in a month,'
'Oh, what happened?'
'Got banned didn't I. Drink driving. They test you though,now,have to be clean for a month. They test your hair. I'm doing it now. Tough going.'
Is it wise for him to be near all that window cleaner, I mean,the temptation.

I scuttle back indoors. The wife returns and I tell her, she's shocked.
'You didn't tell him we were going on holiday did you ?'
I shrug. I'm resigned to it now. Yesterday he just cleaned my windows every month. Now I fully expect to return to find our house broken into whilst someone runs a BNP rally/AA meeting in the front room. Better hide my copy of Mein Kampf though, it is signed.

Let them dig flower beds

You may or may not have heard, but there's been quite a bit of 'rioting.'
There's a lot of tough talk about, and if someone had put a brick through my window when my daughter was asleep upstairs I'd want them strung up. And I'd be right.
But 24 hr courts ? Really ? I didn't see that happening when MPs were fiddling expenses with public money.
Anyway here's a little story about arson:

'Yeah... I, erm, I was at a party and I drifted into a greenhouse with a friend, saw it was full of cacti and lit a match to find our way, as there were no lights on. The flame accidentally touched one of the cacti, which glowed rather beautifully.'

Was it an accident, then? He looks at me. Only at first, it seems. 'We did that to a fair number of the cacti. Not really knowing what we'd done.'

The greenhouse belonged to a professor of botany whose life's work had been to gather and nurture exotic specimens from all over the world. 'He'd been to the jungles of Brazil and stuff to find these cacti.'

The boys weren't arrested, because they ran away. 'We didn't know what we were doing. We were teenagers, we'd drunk too much - frankly, we did behave appallingly, irresponsibly, criminally. Next morning, one of the organisers of the exchange rang me up and said, "We know you did this." I came clean.'

The boys were taken off to see the professor, who was livid, but he was somehow persuaded not to press charges. 'Instead they created a kind of community punishment for us. Me and the other bloke ended up having to dig communal flower beds in the baking sun. Then I spent the summer with my mum, going round one specialised garden centre after another, trying to replace some of the cacti. Of course they were tiny, and his were all large.'

One of the boys, who was 16 at the time, had this to say about the recent riots:

"the priority, right now, is to punish the criminals, to get them in court and to get them behind bars."

Not digging flower beds and going shopping with your mum ?
Just in case anyone was unaware, the man responsible,why Nick Clegg the Deputy Prime Minister of course.

Of course the Prime Minister is far too sensible to get caught, he ran away early when the Bullingdon Club embarked on a spot of criminal damage.

I wait with faint hope that the government will stop trying to make political capital out of the rioting. And what happened to the business with Rupert Murdoch, everyone seems to have forgotten.

Some Bards Are Gooder Than Others: The Further Adventures of Tirian & Jewel

This month's 'They're not as poetic as they think' prize goes to another classic attempt at simile by regular winners, Tirian and Jewel: "It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun."
"I know," said Jewel. "Or as if you drank water and it were dry water. This is the end of all things. Let us go and give ourselves up."

Tirian: 'Or as if,as if you ate a bag of monster munch and they were air flavoured,'

Jewel: 'Fuck's sake Tirian stop looking at my exercise book and stealing all my simile ideas. And get some human friends you girl-haired munder'

Tirian: 'Well what is dry water anyway. Just because you found that copy of Ted Hughes 'The Iron Man', doesn't make you the Poet Laureate of Narnia.'

Jewel: 'Only virgins can approach unicorns Tirian. Fact.'

Tirian: 'I have massively had sex. With loads of dryads. At a time. And talking animals.'

Jewel: No you haven't or you couldn't come near me, and globbing off to that portrait of Susan Pevensie doesn't count'

Tirian: Let's not fight,I hate it when we argue.' [They nuzzle. Jewel becomes excited]'Hey King Lune's got a poetry jam on in Archenland this evening,let's do it.'

Roonwit: "So how was that poetry night thing you guys went to at Anvard?"

Jewel: "Oh we didn't go. It was spitting and we didn't fancy getting soaked on the way there."

Roonwit: "Oh...crap."

Jewel: "Nah, it's ok...well, no. I was actually real...ly, really disappointed... really disappointed. It was like eating a delicious cheeseburger and then discovering that there was no cheese in it. Or burger. Tirian said it was like inviting a hundred guests to your birthday party and then finding they were murderer guests. Or like doing the ironing and then finding - "

Roonwit: *looks at moon* Wo, is that the time? I've got this thing..it's like...now and..."
(sound of hooves)

(2 posts in 1 day. Though really this was Ben 'The War' Warwick's idea, which I sadly ruined by trying to introduce sex into Narnia. It's all Susan's fault, or Joy Gresham's or something. Anyway it's from The Last Battle, the one they will never ever film ever. Never.
Though the only way to really do this justice is have Michael Hordern read the part of Roonwit, Tony Slattery as Jewel and whoever you can get as Tirian, maybe Nick Hancock - he's in nothing a lot nowadays. Or whoever played Eustace in the BBC Narnia).

Let Gayfellow Take You To The Cleaners

'There is only one reason why we are showing you this . . . (dramatic pause the size of which would make Harold Pinter hang his head in awe) so that you are armed with knowledge, because knowledge is power' ('power' should almost certainly be in capitals but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Sorry)
Wise words from LA cop and silver fox, John Barrell.
Somewhat undermined by the clip of two teenage girls speeding and then crashing into a family car, what pearls does John have for us:
'Wowee man, they must be going 100 miles an hour.'
Thanks John we can all take something from that.
Maybe the knowledge that cars go fast.

So Australian Masterchef.
I loved Professional Masterchef - a special blend of an interested world class chef, Michel Roux Junior, whose ego didn't need re-assuring by getting needlessly fraught over nothing every 15 seconds (Gordon Ramsay take note) and offered genuinely useful advice, and a fat bald clown who used to sell vegetables and may have eaten a pie in a pub once. You, like me , will be doubtless thrilled to know Greg the Greengrocer is opening a restaurant serving 'good honest food' whatever that is. Personally I like my food dishonest: a sly lasagne, dishonest tarts (you knew that was coming).
Anyway, Australian Masterchef. Why bother ? I thought. How wrong I was. 30 seconds in and not a kitchen in sight. Instead there's a man in tears, telling another man how much he misses his wife. Eventually it transpires that the weepy man is a contestant and he's quitting the show because he can't stand being apart from his wife. It's not clear but it's implied she's given some sort of ultimatum - the host isn't taking it lying down though - they start showing clips of the interview process and there's the wife saying she'll be fine with him doing the show.
10 minutes in and there's still no cooking.

All this and Cesar Romero as the Joker on ITV4. Only equalled (never bettered) by Frank Gorshin as the Riddler, who's stuttering assaults on grammar and word order seemed like a precursor to Yoda except in green spandex and a lavendar mask.
Must dash the Joker's up to something with an inflatable sultan and The Gayfellow Cleaning Company.
Armed only with knowledge I run to the Batpole


The Clown Prince of Cooking

Romero's Ghost