Nancy's Bottom Drawer.

Fridge salad drawers may contain on average more than 750 times the level of bacteria considered to be “clean”, according to new research. Tests carried out for Microban Europe, Cannock, Staffordshire, showed that the salad drawers of 30 home fridges had an average of 7,850 bacteria colony forming units per square centimetre. Some fridges from which swabs were taken had as many as 129,000 cfu/cm2. This compares to standard recommendations for “clean” food as no more than 10 cfu/cm2.

             Well our salad drawer, before I cleaned it recently probably had enough cfu/cm2’s to pay off the Greek debt crisis if they’d been convertible into Euros. It was like a fresh veg compost heap with pristine carrots and a cauliflower on top of a soup of merged unrecognisables. So it’s nice to know I should pay more frequent attention to our bottom drawer. I should rise to the challenge of bending down more often; plan it in as part of my exercise routine. Maybe then we’ll suffer from the green pimples and purple scabs of e.coli less often. This raises an important point that’s eluding me at the moment. Something to do with Strictly. Ah yes Nancy Dell,Olio. Is she suffering from faulty translation software, terminal cognitive vacuity or salmonella? I mean if she cleaned out her salad drawer might she make more sense in English? When asked what she did, a question about as taxing as asking your name, she said, “I network and do deals.” It would sound impressive if it weren’t for the fact she would have trouble ordering a pizza. So might it be that the actual Greek debt crisis and ensuing world economic implosion is due to all the deal-doing networkers having bacteria filled salad drawers? Forget Quantitative Easing people, clean your fridge!

Oligarchy Speeking.

6.15pm. Radio 1- banal music, Radio 4Extra- banal comedy. I turn to Radio 4 and get the Minister for Obfuscation on PM. I can tell he’s saying words but I have no sense that he’s engaging his brain which is resulting in- banal talk. I feel by degrees I’m being put to sleep by the media equivalent of weed. Just sit back and with what’s left of your few functioning brain cells you giggle, knowing you’ve long since given up caring what happens and couldn’t get out of your chair to do anything even if you wanted to, which you don’t. I can’t for the life of me understand why they haven’t legalised marijuana, it would speed up their process of making us all domesticated dumbos no end. Democracy, which we’re so bloody proud of is sinking slowly into oligarchy when the utterances of our representatives become, “gabbly doo pi dada fa blabby.” Yes sweetheart, daddy will soon be home to see you. Inside the cabinet it might be, “Brilliant idea David, yes that’s an excellent social initiative to make the poor die earlier, I’ll go on the radio and tell the public.” “Wap di doodha thing an all pram da positive-ositive-ositive 4 everyone. Nondi nondi wibbler, faks nondi potent.” “But there’s a million people starving and jobless!” “Nondi nondi nondi. Dieting goot 4 ti lazz nefget fats. Gabbly doo pi dada fa blabby?” Yes dear, daddy will soon be home to see her Majesty’s Government Minister for Education.

I’m beginning to want Hitler back; at least he did rousing speechs and built lots of motorways. He’d not be afraid to incinerate the poor and use them for central heating, and get the young pedal-powering power stations. He’d get unemployment down, and the size of the population.

Greekonomics.

So as we skim majestically between the islands of the golden blue Aegean Sea on our luxury yacht with Joanna Lumley, sipping raki and teeth-tearing meat from a spit-roast lamb, which by the way is also a Welsh custom apparently, I begin to understand the reasons for Greek government debt. Trying to extract income tax over 1,300 islands hundreds of miles away in all directions from a bazuki playing gyros seller will always be an impossible task; it’s not going to happen. The only people the government can reliably tax are its own employees and seeing as the government pays 100% of their salary and can only reclaim say 40% tax back the books are never going to add up. The Greek government will always be in deficit until they manage to build a roof over the Mediterranean and people have to pay for skylight. Even then they’re going to have to chip-and-pin every Greek wallet and make the basic rate 120%. And while I think about it the next time we go on a Thomas Cook holiday I’m going to forget flippers and snorkels and fill the case with camera gear, I’m sure I could pass as Ms Lumley by candlelight. Documentary filming tourism is definitely the way to go. No, taxing Germany, France and the UK is feasible but taxing a tourism economy, especially a Mediterranean one is not. Taxation needs simple geography and a cold climate to work. That’s economics.

Baby scientists.

Right, studies are proving that babies function like research scientists. They ‘re endlessly postulating and testing theories of how the world works, far more than the typical adult. We have evolved as we are because we have the longest childhood in which we’re left free and secure to prolong this process. At some point there’s a narrowing of focus where we’ve learnt enough, or believe we have, to then use this learning to pursue our grownup choices. We stop being the research department and become sales and marketing. But what determines that point? What promotes our cognitive methodology to switch from primarily learning to primarily forming judgments? Being a toy inventor I’ve never really reached it but over the years I’ve noticed significant changes in the toy industry. There’s been a consistent trickle down the age range. What was suitable for ten year olds is now seven or eight etc. Where the industry used to extend to say fourteen it now barely reaches nine. And its philosophy of maximum effect from minimum endeavour has reduced the learning and effort content. Balsa wood building kits have been replaced by handheld games. It reflect the common feeling that ‘kids are growing up earlier these days.’ Though often said with parental pride I think shame would be a better reaction. Maybe for the first time in the long history of our evolution we’re actually shortening the gestating childhood of our young and sending them out into adulthood poorly equipped to cope with it. When their investigation turns to opinion a process of ossification occurs and if that happens below ten years old it makes secondary education a waste of time. Try saying, “kids have stopped learning earlier these days” and see how that makes you feel.

Cold Calling Collateral.

So I get a phone call from a chirpy East Asian voice. She tells me my computer is downloading malicious software and will run slow and shortly explode. OK this is a sales pitch or some sort of scam. I let her run on and tell her I rarely use it to see how she’ll plough on regardless. “So are you at your computer right now?” I decide that’s enough, we’re getting into deep water and I say I’m not interested. Then she says she wrote a poem this morning about how she misses home and would I like to hear it. Pardon? I say OK and she reads it. It’s short, snappy and covers the basis of mom and dad and meals round their table etc. She explains she’s a long way from home for the job and asks  “Did you like it?” I say yes and I hoped she could go and visit them soon. She says thank you, wishes me well and says goodbye.

I am left revolving. What just happened? Am I too cynical, am I falling behind on current scam techniques, is there some cultural difference at play? Then again if I worked in a call centre I’d stray from the script. In fact during a holiday job filling in endless order dockets I used them to practice extreme lettering styles, which is typographically the same. I was reprimanded.

And now Mothermouse has received an alumni magazine from the University of Westminster complete with her own membership number. She didn’t know the University of Westminster even existed let alone be an ex student. What’s going on? We can only hope cold calling is finally succumbing to the insanity inherent in its concept.

Dear Readers.

Dear Readers,

                        Have you been enjoying my blog? It’s grown to over 100,000 words, around 300 entries and read in umpteen countries with US and UK neck and neck lately. It’s had over 4,000 views but I want more; fame, fortune, a book advance and film rights, I want to hold readings at X Factor judges houses and a date with Miss Congeniality. To this end readers I will personally kiss your children if you Facebook your favourite entry; just copy the URL and paste it into ‘What’s on your mind.’ If you’re depressed by 24 hour rolling news and bored with hearing about the alcohol induced good time your young friends had last night and want to show the older ones your urbane, complex but humorous nature here’s the perfect opportunity. By utilising the wonderful mechanisms of the internet and a Ponzy scheme we, well I will reap huge benefits that I will spend wisely on your behalf. And if I ever get to give Sandra Bullock a good time you’ll have the warm glow of knowing that you made it possible. And now over to our sponsors, Ethnic Plinky Things Inc. Doitdoitdoitdoit, doitnow.

Ethnic Plinker Thing.

Today I’m exfoliating my room; detoxing would be another suitable word. I’m not just Botoxing the rubbish into smooth piles to make it look fresh and useful I’m waxing off the dead sloth, giving my under-desk nooks a brazilian. But this involves serious questions. Will I ever read old notebooks with sketches of plumbing diagrams, four-year-old lists of required pipe fittings and reams of why I feel shit today? Will I really ever need ‘University Mathematics’ by Blakey circa 1964 and two Beta tapes of home movies when I’ve nothing to play them on? No, my shelves are full of CDs I’ll never play and books I’ll never read and more than likely haven’t read in the first place. I’ve a wardrobe half full of cloths I’ll never wear and an old sideboard sized TV I never watch. Then there’s the really tricky bits and pieces. A sitar I’ve been meaning to mend for several years, an ethnic plinker thing, an alarm clock that would work perfectly if it had a new battery and a life sized stuffed dog that used to be a roving reporter for this very blog. It’s not that if I threw all this stuff out I’d have twice as much space it’s that it’s like dead skin accumulating imperceptibly adding its own historical psychological aroma to my life, much like everything in our house collects a layer of cat hair. It’s not even that I’m attached to the stuff it’s my post war psyche not coming to terms with our disposable culture. For me if you’ve got something you’ve got it for life, until you or it dies, whichever is the former. So anyone want an ethnic plinker thing? It still plinks.

A Special Place.

While visiting Cornwall we walked to a spot suggested by our friends, I forget the name. Across some fields, down a slope, through a gate and onto a small landing overlooking a cove. From the broad high tide water wooded slopes shaped it into the distance. A single moored boat rocked imperceptibly, just enough for the mainsail cable to periodically slap against the mast. The early evening air was still and warm. That’s it; that was it, all of it, and from it I was sucked dry of all naming, quelled by quietness, rendered mute of thinking. We sat and drank from this well of being, of comatose contentment. Though built to receive small cargoes of granite its nature is as a lover’s spot where generations of heartfelt gasps and their limp dreamy aftermath have marinated the grass and overhangs. To be placed amongst these pungent timeless herbs unexpectedly, in fact disappointedly for I was expecting some high cliff overlook, was a delight. It delighted my soul. It confiscated my mind and all its thoughts of personhood as I smelt and moved within the one being of it all. I will remember it as time moves me inexorably towards it.

Fiction Friction.

Four novels short listed for the Mann Booker Prize, four authors, four pundits. Nov1 a ten-year-old Ghanaian boy written by a middle aged Englishman; Nov2 a period novel again narrated by a boy written by a woman. What happened to “write about what you know?” The read extracts indicated our current paucity for inhabiting other worlds made up for by some arrogance of that ability. I cringed. It’s as if authors caught up in the suspended animation of the writing process forget that they’re breathing and eating and periodically going for a shit. Yes they write words that extend to some hundreds of pages but they seem to be regressing to the monkeys and typewriter condition where given enough authors they will write the nonsense of their fully detached state; coherent yet inarticulate, devoid of the rooted experience that binds us, that connects our universal consciousnesses. Could it be that our 21^st century human evolution is content with every man being a cognitive island where we all have an equal right to inflict our private imaginings on the world and call it literature? But these are up for a prize, chosen for these merits. Maybe if you’re a serious author and not a faymouth golfer already on his second autobiography one needs to write a flight of flagrant fancy to turn the heads of the nodders that they might join you in your “mmm”ing circumstance. Aren’t we lucky James Joyce wasn’t moved to write about a transvestite Pilipino coming to terms with life after failed surgery?  

Britney Rules.

We are very proud of our Britney. She often follows Mothermouse to the shops and sensibly stops short of main roads preferring to investigate gardens till she returns. This last Thursday she followed us towards a cafe for lunch but waited in the shade of a four-by-four. In the evening we decided to go for a drink and Britney was waiting at the front door. I think because all her three humans were going out together there was a necessity to keep tabs on us after all the comings and goings of summer holidays. The ten minute walk didn't include any main roads and she was with us all the way to the pub. We went in and she went in and tarted herself round the bar. We were ever so proud. I mean dogs are ten a penny but having a free range cat, because that's the only way a cat will operate, in tow must be a first. And the people in the pub also seemed to recognise the honour that had been bestowed on them. We enjoyed the late summer weather outside as she investigated the grounds and then followed us home.