I saw a fox in someone's garden yesterday and I didn't even break stride

But then this little girl walked past me and I said look it's a fox, and she got all excited, so then I did as well. We looked at it for ages. It was hiding itself, badly, behind some hydrangeas. A Fox In The Hydrangeas sounds like the name of Evelyn Waugh's first book, that he was all embarrassed about later on.

We went to the old Tate yesterday and saw that Coral Reef installation

It is actually quite amazing. It is just exactly like being stuck at some kind of hideous border post at the Mozambique border for hours and hours and nothing goes anywhere and everything looks horrible and sad and you can just hear all these doors opening and closing and feet, but you can't see any people, and everything is a PITS, and you are so pleased to get out. The only way to get out feels like you did it by extremely lucky accident. Simon said, "He can't just troll poor people for a bajillion different rooms in a row" but he didn't mean it. We both thought it was excellent.

oh but the main difference

Is that they have got all the contestants to speak in the present tense when they are doing their little post-Challenge interviews. To make it seem more immediate and things, I think. It sounds ALL WRONG though. Like you know they are talking about it waaaaaaaaaaay after it's happened, because they aren't all sweaty and frightened anymore, but still they are saying: "He's already cut the pig's head off, and I look down at my station, and all I have is some fennel tops, and I am terrified. I am freaking out."
Like that.

Here's the main judge. That's just a normal picture from the Australian Masterchef website. He looks like he is counting the seconds til you get eaten by the snakes wriggling around the cage he has trapped you in.

Simon sent me a text saying didn't I think David Miliband looked like McNulty from The Wire?

And I said YES.

Australian Masterchef is an ENTIRELY different beast to just normal old Masterchef

It's much more jazzy and flash and they make more of a big deal about how high the Stakes are and that. Also there are about a million people in it, and you see them all the time.
Here are some of the differences I have noted:

1. Australian Masterchef has not two judges but THREE.
2. I don't love any of the judges as much as I love John Torode.
3. However, I must concede that the producers of Australian Masterchef have done a fucking excellent job in finding judges who are just as bewildering and sort of Off in a fundamental way as the English ones, if not more so.
4. It would be so easy to do a drawing of the main judge on Australian Masterchef. He is one of those people were even if you did a Hyper Realist portait of him, it would look like a caricature. He just has that face. He looks like the baddie in an olden-times Disney Movie, or else the baddie in a James Bond movie aimed at children.
4. In Australian Masterchef, they don't mind showing the contestants just constantly sweating right into the food they are making, and then they further don't mind showing the judges eating that same sweaty food.
5. Everyone in Australian Masterchef is much more friends.
6. I have only watched two episodes so far, so that's all.

This eye thing is No Joke

I'm really enjoying it. Every article about Ed Miliband published in the last few days is guaranteed to contain two things.
1. A worried aside about his huge bonkers staring eyes.*
2. Some sort of biblical reference to brothers**

Also, they will call him Red Ed at least once, either in inverted commas or not. Which is obviously LUDICROUS, and I don't think the guardian is helping by having a photo of him on the front page where he is just totally all red, on a red background, like he is in some kind of darkroom. Maybe it's so you can't see his demented eyes.



* My best was a thing where they said he is better than Gordon Brown because he has not one mad eye, but two.

** The cartoon in the guardian this morning was Ed on a horse jumping backwards out a grave and the caption said "Yes We Cain". This is Pushing It, I think.

a thing I have noticed about English chaps

Is that they feel this moral obligation to chat you up. Like they think of it as being polite, so that you won't feel lonely or something.

People have to stop whingeing about Hipsters at once

It's so BORING. it's so WEIRD and VENOMOUS and DATED. that blog called lookatthisfuckinghipster is NOT FUNNY.

This guy Pete has a thing on his facebook saying "I can't work out which Miliband has the creepier eyes"

It's Ed. The answer is so obviously Ed. You can see some terrible recently-hired advisor has told him to open them REAL WIDE. As a symbol of his Vision For The Future. It's a huge mistake.

Oh, perfect. Oh, typical.

On Tuesday, the Guardian had all these recipes for students. The new term is starting in a few days, so there has been loads of stuff in the papers about How To Survive Student Life and Oh What You're All So Fucked Your Student Loan Is Going To Destroy Your Life, and things about how to eat and that, and how binge drinking is the cancer that is killing Britain* and everything.
All of which is very boring and what you would expect. The only good thing that has come out of this are the nice recipes in the Guardian, you would think. Well, you would be wrong, pal. Here are some of the best letters in the paper this morning about it.

They start off very irritating but sort of all right, really:

"The cardinal rule for student recipes must surely be that the meals are cheap to make."

"The article makes bizarre assumptions about students' budgets."

OH BUT LOOK AT THIS ONE:

"What class of student would arise to a breakfast of salmon bagels, followed by sprout and apple slaw with lemon dressing for luncheon? Perhaps the author had recently read Brideshead Revisited."

OH CHRIST SHUT UP SHUT UP JUST BE QUIET, "PAUL" FROM SUFFOLK.

Okay and now here is the best one ever. This one has everything. The terrible and smug and overblown sarcasm, especially. Look, look:

"Your Student Cookbook caused me alarm as I realised the inadequacy ofthe box of groceries given to my son as we packed him off to university last week. For sure, he would be fine for broad beans, extra virgin olive oill and puy lentils but I simply couldn't remember about the provision of thyme sprigs, goat's cheese, or galangal paste. I tried several times to phone him during the day to alert him about this, but was unable to get a response until about 3pm. Like many of his Guardian-reading friends, the poor boy had become exhausted in his attempt to source ingredients. You have a lot to answer for."

you see. you see. It's my real worst. Stop being so proud of what a smug drip you are, Roger.

*See also: Broken Britain

"I had this virus last year in Halls and it was pretty bad"

"I couldn't even leave my room I was just pooing and sicking the whole time."

That's Jack, talking about this time that he got this bug. Some people just say things better than other people.

Last night I sat and half listened to Jack call his pal in order to read out hundreds of knock knock jokes to him

Some of them were terrible. Actually most of them were. The only one I can immediately remember goes:
"Knock knock"
"Who's there?"
"Formosa"
"Formosa who?"
"Formosa the holiday I was skiing in Switzerland."
This is a terrible joke. I don't even know what a Formosa is.*

After he read out all the knock knock jokes, he started on those ones where they go "What do you call a man who lives in the ground?" and the answer is Warren or something. I can't remember any of the ones Jack read out. That's not because some of them weren't funny, it's just because I am very very very bad at remembering any jokes of any description. It's easier to remember these ones, where they follow a very distinct pattern, but still I find it just about impossible. There is something very appealing about following a formula though. Lately I have been playing this game a lot where I imagine myself in a press conference, standing up and asking a lot of very aggressively phrased questions. And the questions always follow the exact same formula.This one:
"I'm sorry, but are you some kind of (x)?"
Like if you were at a press conference given by a python, you would stand up and say "I'm sorry, but are you some kind of non-venomous boa?"
It's funny! It is! I don't know why!
"I'm sorry, but are you some kind of land mammal?"
"I'm sorry, but are you some kind of tree surgeon?"
"I'm sorry, but are you some kind of part-time zookeeper?"
"I'm sorry, but are you some kind of old wizard?"
It makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. The other day, me and Mae were in the kitchen at Mahdis's, and I found these sort of dried soya bean snack things. They are Mae's best and they are
delicious. We were doing lots of exclaiming about how nice they are, and Mae said, "I don’t want to give these to Dan. He’ll just go 'are you a bird?'"

And then I said: “I’m sorry, but are you some kind of bird?”

And then she said: “Let me just stop you right there and ask you if you are a bird”

And then I said: “Let me just stop you right there and ask the question that’s been on the tip of everybody’s tongue: are you some kind of bird?”

And then I got the bus to Stoke Newington and laughed about it the whole way. On that same bus trip, I heard this nice middle aged lady call her slightly useless looking teenage son a chief. He said he was getting off the bus earlier than she thought was a good idea, and she said "Why would you do that, you chief?" She gave him a really hard time about it, and all her friends laughed at him, and he climbed off the bus in a huge sulk. His mum sat back all complacently and said "He'll be waiting for me at the right stop when I get off." I bet he was, too.
Obviously, if he was holding a press conference, it would only have been a matter of minutes before someone stood up and asked him straight to his face if he was some kind of chief.

* Now I do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan**

** The joke is now even more extra terrible. Answering "Taiwan" when someone asks you who is there doesn't make any sense.

Simon took this from the top of a hill near Norma and Spec's

An interesting and ominous thing is that every single English person I have shown this picture to has said "Oh Jesus, look how sunny it is." It's like they are looking at pictures of a once happy couple that recently went through a terrible divorce. All, "You've got absolutely no idea what's headed your way, pal." It makes me frightened for winter.

One of my best things about Mae and Dan as a couple is their ability to remember huge chunks of that movie called Sexy Beast off by heart

Especially that bit where Gal goes, "I'm going to have to turn this opportunity down," and Don goes, "No, you're going to have to turn this opportunity YES."

Poll time

Poll on my still invisible radio show time.
So just about every week in the Observer there is some ratty letter from "Mark" or something in Northumberland or somewhere, that basically says:
"So Nigella Lawson wants us to rustle up a dinner made out of cream and quail's eggs and caviar and pieces of actual gold, does she? It's All Right For Some I Suppose. I shall remember that the next time I have the Hunt Ball over to my house for a "kitchen supper", shall I?"
Every week they have one of these. Every week. The levels of "withering" sarcasm tend to vary, but basically it's the same letter every time.

Now.
Do you think:
a) Fair enough. You shouldn't get too Marie Antoinettish with recipes and things.
OR
b) SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP. If that recipe gets on your tits, then do not make it, and also STOP WRITING INTO THE PAPER AT ONCE.

* Too many inverted commas. But I can't think of the right way to emphasize that the main feeling you get from these letters is that the writers are just THRILLED with their Coruscating Shower Of Wit. They are thoroughly pleased with their apparent ability to just whip the wind right out of anyone's sails.

A picture my mum sent me

"Ice breaking exercises" always felt like a thing that was made up in the nineties. I mean that it feels like there was a time before it became an accepted part of almost all social interactions that someone would feel awkward and spastic and shy. It does actually feel like Social Awkwardness as a problem and then as an excuse for all kinds of bizarre behaviour was invented in the nineties. The other night I was talking to this guy at Jessie's birthday party about the books most sold in second hand South African bookshops*, and he said "and this is all based on your own informal research is it. This was not a poll taken under the auspices of any sort of official anything am I right."**** And I said yes you are right.
Similarly, my Social Awkwardness Was Invented In The Nineties theory has never really been backed up by science or anything like that, and has been based mostly on my own Informal Research, which in this case has been gathered entirely from my thoughts. It would be hard even to do a poll about this on my invisible radio show about this, because all you could say is -
"Yes or no: social awkwardness was invented in the early nineties, coinciding with the rise of grunge?"

AND ANYWAY. This picture has proved me wrong. This picture of a nice ice breaking exercise where everyone sits on each other's laps and then doesn't feel shy anymore was taken in 1984. So. The idea of ice breaking exercises as a necessity dates back to the year I was born, at least. "Back to the drawing board."





*1. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
2. I CAN'T REMEMBER**
3. The Go Between


** I was drunk. For the first time in months. I forgot how fun it was. Also my body's many cries for cigarettes*** never got any louder than a sort of thin wail, possibly coming from another room.

*** http://www.amazon.co.uk/Your-Bodys-Many-Cries-Water/dp/095309216X (apparently the author says that water can cure AIDS.)

**** Paraphrased. A lot of this is a blur. I was quite drunk.

I want everyone to like that librarians album called present passed as much as me

CONFIRMED

http://gawker.com/5137643/michael-chabons-wife-had-way-more-inaugural-fun-than-you/gallery/

One of my parents (I don't know which one because they rarely identify themselves in they emails) showed me this. You see she is terrible. So smug with such little legs moving so fast!