Countdown to the royal divorce - part 9

I am in the middle of writing my report on the Winter Olympics for the “Mogadishu Mercury” by the blue telephone ringing. It is Camilla. I settle down to listen to what I suspect will be several hours of her moaning about not being in the limelight.
“It’s not as if we haven’t all got diaries, duckie”, she commences, “but who wants to know about your holiday in Hong Kong ten years ago? Everyone goes to pigging Japan” (I couldn’t be bothered to tell her) “these days, after all. He’s just so careless, leaving things about all over the place, and trusts the staff, even those on work experience from the local comprehensive. God knows how many times I have to hide his confidential papers from prying eyes – only last Tuesday I had to stash his copy of ‘Sponge Fetish Quarterly’ under the mattress when the chambermaid was nosing around.”
“Is there any chance of reading your diaries in the tabloids in the coming months, you old ratbag?” I enquire.
“It would be a damn site more interesting if they were”, she retorts, “I have just written 4 paragraphs on the tattoo that Sophie Wessex has on her arse, and I skipped the less savoury details, such as what Cliff Richard was doing with his fist.”

I don’t bother to talk to Charles, it never helps either of us much.

I was just snuggling up with a cup of cocoa and the Morning Star, when William is the next telephonic interrupter. “Hey ho, Bill, how’s it hanging?” He is preoccupied. “This diary thing, yeah, you just have to write down what you have done each day, yeah?”
“Yes, Billy boy, but don’t use the same diary that your secretary uses to write down what you are going to be doing, get a new one”. Pause while future head of state tries to accommodate the concept of more than one book.
“OK, I see, and then do I get to sell it to the newspapers?”
“Yes, Bill, but you will only get lots of money for it if you exaggerate, and concentrate on writing about sex. With women rather than with yourself, if you want my advice.”
I expect to see the fruits of my counsel reach the Mail on Sunday in about eight weeks. Perhaps a little longer if he fails to master the art of using the pointed end of the pencil.

Clarification

According to the BBC:

“Three UK ex-servicemen have been given compensation after they were given LSD without their consent in the 1950s.
The men volunteered to be "guinea pigs"”.

I would just like to assure my readers (AMToNW) that if, as a result of ingesting hallucinogens, you perceive yourself transmogrifying into a rodent, then you are in possession of some ‘bad acid’. Fortunately, these symptoms are rare, (although my friend Dave was once attacked by the Incredible Hulk on a dark day in 1971).

If you choose the time and environment carefully, an LSD trip is a deeply meaningful experience which will expand your consciousness and turn you into a fine upstanding member of society. It may, however, have some unpleasant long term effects, such as being so deluded as to think that what you write is amusing and of interest to others.

Handy Hints

Amongst the usual tripe in my outlook express inbox is a missive from those wacky dudes at "Friends Reunited". Obviously aware of how few of my former schoolfriends have replied to my begging emails, they suggest ways to encourage people to contact me. "Update your profile - add a photograph" they counsel.
Yes, that will work.

And don't call me Vera

My new friend Richard, in adding a comment to a thread below, led me to find this charming little site.

Nothing whatsoever to do with Val.

These are indeed strange times. Each day I reflect on the title of this journal and realise just how apposite it is.

On Sunday evening, Independent Television continued their series which they have called “Agatha Christie’s Marple” – as opposed to Stephen King’s Marple, or Wayne Rooney’s Marple. And not a Miss any longer, you will note. This follows the trend which I had supposed to be entirely American up to this point of advertising Romeo and Juliet as “William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet”. This avoids disappointment, you understand, to those expecting to see the latest work of Mr Schwarzenegger. Anyway, back at Marple, someone chose to cast Ken Russell as an English country vicar. I have no complaints about this; again, I am just drawing it to the attention of my readers (Vicus Scurra’s AMToNW).

Today, over at the BBC news site, I was greeted by the headline “Murray thrashes Fish”. I was more than a little disappointed to learn that this was not a euphemism relating to post mortem onanistic activities by a former Trade Union leader. That would have been mildly interesting, provided that we were spared the details. Alas, it referred to a tennis match (why are these things ever considered newsworthy?) and the Fish in question is a gentleman bearing the name “Mardy Fish”. Where I come from, mardy means miserable or moody, in a whiny sort of way. A highly appropriate name for a tennis player, then.

Also a warm welcome to the many visitors from Sheryl’s site, who have found their way here by means of her mystery link. I can only apologise for the sense of disappointment you might be feeling. (Don’t be mardy). I can only think she was displaying her superiority by directing her friends to this hotbed of the dire and ordinary.

... out for the lads

I can not let the opportunity pass to point out that last night’s “South Bank Show”, finished with the words “Tits, tits, tits, tits, tits”. (I am not sure how many tits there were, I usually find that two suffice, and get a little bewildered beyond that).

For the benefit of those living beyond the reach of UK Independent Television, and indeed also for the general riffraff that congregate round here, I should inform you that the “South Bank Show” is one of the leading, or perhaps only, arts program on mainstream television.

I find myself lacking in any opinion either way on this news item, but that has never prevented my writing before.

TCM again

Regular readers (AMToNW) will be grateful to know that although I have not been publishing details of my research, I have been keeping a close watch on those people who enjoy the description ‘scientist’, and making sure that their machinations to mislead us continue to be as ridiculous and bizarre as ever.

I will briefly cover three items that are currently being paraded as the fruits of methodical research, but are actually little more the babblings of the deranged.

• In the Telegraph, some bright spark has been investigating why we have two nostrils instead of one. Pause for loyal reader to wrap their mind round that one. They have come to the bizarre conclusion that it is in order to produce a stereo effect, and therefore help us to trace the source of a smell, by doing some trigonometrical calculation. Bollocks. Had God, in His Infinite wisdom, wanted to imbue us with stereophonic ability (and bear in mind that most of us could only afford Dansette record players when we were growing up), he would have put an extra organ to detect smell on the end of our fingers. It would make the calculation far more straightforward, and would have helped us in the days before the power of the Intel chip. No, the real reason is as follows. Presuming that the combined size of the nostrils is about right (some of us are more prominently proboscisularly endowed than others), then to give us only one nostril would have meant that we would have been subject to invasion by unwanted visitors. Small colonies of chaffinches would be able to nest nasally. In order to prevent this, nose hair would have to be the consistency of barbed wire. So, sod off, Mr Scientist. God knew what he was doing.
• At livescience.com, they have been researching the properties of semen. They have chosen to measure it in terms of teaspoonfuls, a typical ejaculation being half a teaspoonful. Now, I recognise that is valid to present these data (if there is such a need) in terms of concepts that can be assimilated by the human brain. Even during the excesses of adolescence, to measure semen in terms of bathtubs full would be unhelpful. But why, in the name of buggery, the teaspoon? I can only counsel my readers to avoid taking repast at the home of a member of the scientific community, particularly if cutlery is involved.
• As I compose this little essay, the BBC is doing one of its Horizon programmes, in which various eccentrics are allowed airtime to propound their delusions. The proposal at the heart of this little entertainment is that 96% of the universe is missing. Yes indeed. Another pause called for, I suggest. And take as long as you like. The obvious question is, where are we going to put 96% when some fucker finds it? My house is already overflowing with stuff that I don’t need. The wailing and moaning of Mrs S can be heard as far afield as Shropshire when she goes off on one of her “When are you going to get rid of that pile of …… that you never use?” episodes. I know. I know that it is the nature of men to hoard things. I am too old and seasoned to alter my behaviour, even though I know that if I were to lose on of my CDs of Carl Stamitz clarinet concertos, I might never notice, even should I live to be 98. But even I could not cope with having 25 times as many books, DVDs, CDs, software packages, socks, remote control devices and whatevers as are already in my possession. So I say that if 96% of the universe is missing, GOOD! it means we don’t have to fucking clean it. I have been concentrating mainly on this composition, and have only picked up fragments of the utterances of the Horizoneers, but they have been soothsaying about “dark matter” (fuck off), “about to discover something that didn’t make sense” (I fucking told you), “the universe is speeding up” (fuck off), “this didn’t fit with the current physics” (I fucking told you). I am not a cruel man, but I do wonder whether we would have all been better off had it been the tree that had fallen on old Isaac, not just the apple.