Talk To Rex

Thanks to Graham Pond for pointing this out.

Ruined my week.

The phone rings.

Me: Hello, this is BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

Caller: Is Robbie Williams ill?

Me: Erm…well, quite possibly.

Caller: I hope he gets better soon.

Me: Mmm, yes, me too.

Caller: Do tell him to get well soon.

Me: Yes, yes, I’ll pass that on to him.

Caller: It’s Helen.

Me: Okay, thanks Helen.

Caller: Saint Helen.

Me: Really?

Caller: God bless you.

Saint Helen hangs up, leaving me bemused and blessed.

…a youthful, scruffy plumber takes one look at your bathroom and says “I wouldn’t live here, mate.”

What is worse than reaching the end of the day and realising that you’ve wasted it all watching The West Wing, is reaching the end of the day and realising that you might as well have spent it watching The West Wing because all you’ve produced in the hours you’ve worked is a load of uninspired shite.

Imagine reaching the end of your life and realising the same.

Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shit out through wholesome
American guts.

Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin’ lawmen,
feelin’ their notches.

For decent church-goin’ women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.

Thanks for “Kill a Queer for
Christ” stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where
nobody’s allowed to mind the
own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the
memories – all right let’s see
your arms!

You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.

William S. Burroughs

We have recently been sent a Cambridge City Centre Evacuation Map. The suggestion is that, being a historic and iconic city, Cambridge is an obvious target for any terrorists wanting to build up to an attack on a bigger, better protected city. Like Brentwood.

The terrorists might also be tempted to take out the University in the hope of depriving the country of a whole generation of future politicians, lawyers, bankers and well-spoken comedians, thus throwing the country into chaos. It’s a pity, then, that the City Council’s evacuation plan seems designed to help everybody except the above escape.

Under the heading “How will I know that an evacuation is required?” we are informed that the message will be circulated in the following ways:

Local radio stations will be informed of the evacuation and used to broadcast messages.

Requests to evacuate will be broadcast using public address systems in shopping centres.

Roadside message boards will display information about the evacuation.

Which means that the people rescued will be, respectively, the mad old people who phone in to Radio Cambridgeshire, the chavs who use the Grafton shopping centre, and the twats who try to knock me off my bike every day.

I, on the other hand, will remain blissfully ignorant of the evacuation and will no doubt be bombed or gassed according to the method in which the terrorists have decided to take out those members of the public who aren’t mad, chavs or thoroughly repulsive in every way.

It doesn’t exactly bode well for the future of the country…

I’m halfway through an excruciating pile of undergraduate essays on the topic of neoclassicism. Housemate Chris Law just dropped by and commented on them.

“Are these the essays you’ve got to mark?” he asked. “That’s a big pile”.

“Yes,” I said irritably, “and if I was marking that comment I would cross it out and write in red ink ‘don’t state the obvious, get to the point’.”

“Yes,” argued Chris, trying to be clever, “but you’ve missed a key point in the question I asked, which was that in the pile on your desk there’s more than just essays, there’s composition that you’re doing and two copies of Carols For Choirs, so your answer was wrong because those aren’t all essays you have to write.”

“Not at all,” I countered, “I was questioning the parameters of your question, which is an entirely valid way of attacking it since it was vague and ambiguous and therefore best answered by pointing out its weaknesses. The failure to specify what you were actually talking about lies in the question and not my answer, and in any case these are not essays I have to write they’re essays I have to mark.”

“Yes, but…but…” Chris attempted, then gave up, saying “I can’t win arguments with you James, you know more words than me,” and left the room.

…when a simple “yes” would have sufficed.

I just changed the batteries in my sonic screwdriver.

The really tricky bit was getting the little screw out to open it up. Which struck me as ironic.

Remembrance Sunday always presents a difficult balance to strike, particularly in a church context. Because as the war veterans troop into the pews bedecked in medals, there’s a danger that underneath the sombre veneer a hint of pageantry and celebration begins to creep in – and to me there’s little to celebrate in two wars which ravaged the world across (cumulatively) a decade and claimed an unbelievable 99 million lives along the way. So as a choir director I’m always careful not to use music that could be in any way misinterpreted as celebrating the glory of war (Onward Christian Soldiers, or some of the more bombastic post-WW2 anthems by Vaughan Williams and the like). I’m far more inclined to use the ever-topical O God of Earth and Altar, and anthems like Peter Aston’s So They Gave Their Bodies, a fitting tribute to those who died for the sake of our present – the people who we rightly remember on this day.

Except it’s not that simple. Because the war veterans don’t come to church wearing their medals just to remember the dead – the fact that they’re standing there is symbolic of their triumph, as are the British flags flying on every flagpole in the country. We won. And nor should we begrudge our veterans the respect due to them for that.

It’s just that, to me at any rate, that victory is more than tempered – soured, in fact – by the fact that the war happened at all. I’ve no doubt those who saw their friends killed in it feel exactly the same way. Moreover, it was a war which – I know, in hindsight, but also with foresight – could have been avoided altogether. If Germany hadn’t been forced into a crippling recession in the aftermath of the first world war. If Hitler’s foreign policy hadn’t been essentially ignored for much of the 1930s, except for some tutting from behind desks in Whitehall. The reason that it remains essential to remember the world wars is to avoid anything like them happening again – so to remember the mistakes that we undeniably made in failing to respond adequately to what was happening in countries other than our own (something our leaders might have called to mind as Israel walked across Lebanon, whilst they tutted from behind their desks in Whitehall).

If we’re celebrating any triumph, then, it’s the fact that in 1945, in spite of the carnage, the loss of life and the horror of war, Britain could say that it helped solve a problem that was at least partly of its own making. It was a victory in clearing up our own mess – and persevering until our mistakes had properly been undone.

That’s something else which Mr Blair might like to bear in mind before he prematurely pulls our troops out of Iraq.

…I dreamt that I was put on trial for tax fraud and video piracy.

I don’t remember anything about the trial, but I recall that the urinals were carpeted.