Virtual Downing Street

You can take a virtual tour of the Prime Minister's official residence, 10 Downing Street on a new government site. Mind you when I was a very young boy you could actually go right up to the famous door and have your photo taken with the copper on duty there (please, no age jokes today about how that was when Gladstone was in office, thank you) - today you can't even enter the street and protesters are arrested in the adjacent streets for simply reading out the list of war dead in Iraq without having permission from the Metropolitan plod (since when did the fuzz get to say yay or nay to what a citizen can say in a public space?). So this virtual tour is probably the closest most of us will get to Ten Downing Street these days, unless we have paid a million to a political party to get a peerage (allegedly). I wonder if the tour shows the office where Blair stockpiles the lies he feeds to the British people over Iraq? Or is that now so large he has to keep it in a government warehouse down by the dockside?

three nine



How the hell can I be thirty nine today? How can I be starting my last year as a thirty something? When did I go from Bright Young Thing to Grumpy Old Geezer? Where did the last ten years go? Seems not so long ago I was turning thirty and thinking, eh? How did I get to be thirty one day? Then I thought, hold on, I spent half my twenties at college and there was a lot of, shall we say, 'diversions' along the way, so forgetting some of it was understandable (didn't stop me getting a good degree, mind you, talent will out! Even if half sozzled). But that doesn't explain why I can't quite recollect all of my thirties going past. I have to re-read old blog entries on the Woolamaloo Gazette to remind myself of what I was up to half the time.

I can't be sliding towards a middle aged man,
Because I know secretly I am Peter Pan.
Years go past and my body gets older
But not inside my head,
Friends and family and books
And laughter and delight
Still keep my soul well fed.

Oh well, thanks to a secret combination of Boots moisturiser, virgin's blood, fine malt whisky and the creamy Celtic complexion I got from my mum I can probably pass for 38 :-). Funny, my dad is set to retire on his birthday at the end of February and he was saying how odd it felt because in his head he didn't feel older or like a man who should be retiring; it is one of those things you notice as you get older, you don't feel older inside. Well, I don't at any rate. I know some people do, or else they let society dictate to them to 'act their age' and you can see the result not in the lines on their face but the tiredness in their eyes. I don't. I'm as happy to run through a pile of fallen autumn leaves and kick them in the air as I was when I was ten, I still get excited and roll around laughing at Tom and Jerry cartoons (oftimes with my dad) just as I always did (usually with my dad again, neither of us outgrew that and why should we?), I still grab a stick and draw on the sand when walking on the beach, I still love being taken for an ice cream by my mum and dad. What's wrong with any of that? If you think that is immature then you are probably right but you're also a sad, old, shriveled soul; you need anti-aging cream for your spirit.

That's how you don't get really old, dear chums - bollocks to all those hideously expensive 'anti-wrinkle' creams rich old women buy and face lifts (I know, easy for me to say, you think, since I have lovely Celtic skin and am pretty much perfect already) the real place you get old is inside, but only if you let yourself. You can't do much about the outside because Nature always has her way in the end, but the inner part, that's up to you (harken to me, folks, now I am an Old Man I am Officially Wise! Yeah, you're right, maybe not...). Now if you will excuse me I am off to finish my champagne and dance around the house with the cats to a new Nouvelle Vague CD I was given by Mel. Have a good New Year's everyone and keep on bloggin' in the free world, see you on the other side.

Dame Evelyn

Hurray, one of my favourite musicians, Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie has been made a Dame in the New Year's Honours list. Evelyn not only carved out a place in the male-dominated arena of percussion, she created the pretty much unheard of role of solo percussionist, performing around the world to huge acclaim, both with some of the leading orchestras and on her own as well as with many artists, from Sting to Bjork, using everything from drums and cymbals to marimbas (one of the most beautiful sounding instruments) and folk instruments she encounters on her travels. All of which would be damned impressive for a wee lass from Aberdeen, but Evelyn is also deaf; her hearing started to go when she was very young, but didn't stop her making music, both playing and composing. I remember seeing her interviewed on Parkinson years back and she corrected his pronunciation of her name (he pronounced it 'eeeve-lin'); he asked how the hell she knew he mis-pronounced it since she is deaf. You're English, she replied with a smile, they always get it wrong! I've seen her live several times and she is a veritable wee dynamo on the stage, playing barefoot to feel the vibrations of the instruments. Well done, Evelyn - gaun yerself! Alas, no OBE or Knighthood for me in this year's List - oh well...

Let's play Hangman



Hang down your head, Saddam
hang down your head and cry,
hang down your head Saddam,
Poor tyrant, you're wearing a harsh necktie.

I met them on the mountain,
There I killed them all en masse,
Met those Kurds on the mountain
And killed them all with my gas...

This time tomorrow,
Reckon where I'll be,
I'll be one dead Iraqi,
Hanging from the leafless tree.

Hang down your head, Saddam
hang down your head and cry,
hang down your head Saddam,
They'll chop you up and put you in a pie.

(sung to the tune of the old folk classic, Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley)

Irish Mary's winter wonderland

Irish Mary is one of my favourites on Fotolog, often posting some gorgeous images - her recent uploads have comprised of some quite gorgeous winter scenes (like the one below) which you just have to go and have a look at.

Incompetent Parcelforce

Exactly a week to the day since I phoned them Parcelforce have actually replied to me about my missing package, the one their incompetent/lazy (or both) delivery person abandoned outside my home and which subsequently vanished. The one I phoned about on Thursday and they were supposed to phone me back about on Friday after speaking to the driver but never bothered to do. I called repeatedly on Friday but couldn't get through so emailed them instead and finally got a reply today, which did offer apologies but unfortunately had bugger all information in it except to say it would be forwarded on to the depot manager for 'training purposes'. I'd think if you have to train delivery drivers not to abandon their packages outside then your company needs more than just some training. The email didn't say a single thing about why it happened, what action they would take concerning the delivery numpty or what options are open to me (am I just supposed to shrug my shoulders and forget about it?). Neither did it tell me who sent the package to me or what the contents were described as on the shipping invoice, which is pretty much the least the incompetent eejits could do - after all, someone has sent me something in time for Christmas and is probably wondering why I haven't been in touch to say thank you.

So if you are sending any packages folks, it looks like it might be best to avoid using the Royal Mail's Parcelforce service - no wonder the Royal Mail struggles to make a profit even with such a commanding position in the UK when it offers such dire service from incompetent delivery staff and customer care staff take a week to reply to complaints they promised to reply to a day later and then fail to to offer any actual information when they do reply (at least they did say sorry, I suppose, but that's all - come on, folks, you are on a customer care team you should know the complainee will want some information for goodness sake). What a pathetic way to run a company - screw up someone's delivery (the sole reason for your company being to deliver packages) then not do much of anything by way of following up their complaint by actually offering information or advice.

Famous stiffs

Quite sad to hear about James Brown dying on Christmas Day (I had to explain to my dad who James Brown actually was - he's a great dad, but he's not the hippest on popular music). It came just a short time after Joseph Barbera, the remaining half of the groundbreaking and incredibly influential Hanna-Barbera animation studio and probably one of the last of the original crew to work on the classic (and Oscar winning) MGM Tom and Jerry cartoons, passed away (I posted an article on him over on the FPI blog). As we all know famous people usually die off in threes, which means another famous personage is probably knocking on heaven's door. I was wondering who it was likely to be then I realised that it was probably Saddam - can you believe they turned down the poor man's appeal? What a travesty of justice, poor wee Saddam, don't you feel sorry for him? Er, no.. And yes, perhaps I should count poor old Gerry Ford as the famous third to die back to back with the others, but I just can't bring myself to put him in a group with James Brown and Joseph Barbera.