My arse is like a puffer fish ..........

The Andrex Revenge

Having recently taken the piss out of the Andrex Clean Routine advert, I did notice that the cute kid no longer refers to his arse being as clean as a squid but is in fact now clean as a puffer fish ..... could this mean that the Andrex marketting dept do in fact read this bog .... ach erm blog ..... and now changed the advert, just to make my post redundant ?

But having woken up doubled up in pain the other morning [only a few days after my post], I am utterly convinced they do read this blog .... because I think they made a vodoo doll of me, and sought their revenge ......... I have had food poisoning in the past, but whilst I couldn't be sure it was the previous days mussels, one thing is for certain it was not long before I was heading due south .....

And that is how it remained for most of the morning ...... in the afternoon, being the very brave chap that I am, I went back to work, and with the restaurant only across the road thought it best to mention it to them ..... not as a complaint, but simply as a just in case anyone else...... They were very good about it, but did ask if I had seen my doctor......

So back at work, I thought I can't really waste my doctors time, so instead I tried 111 NHS for the first time. Then should the restaurant ask me later, at least I had done something.

Well the lad on the end of the 111 was very polite and helpful, and ran through his script very well ..... I was concerned when he asked me if the whites of my eyes were no longer white .... had he asked me about my skiddies then maybe .... but a trip to the mirror soon confirmed that my fatal dose of food poisoning [or was it more pins in the doll] was not going to kill me, but he did say I should visit my doctor within 24 hours.

So off I trotted to my doctors [literally] and after going through all the recent events, was given the appropriate advice for the next 24 hours .... but was then handed a receptacle and told that if things did not improve in the next 24 hours to provide a sample ......

When I got out and looked at the plastic jar and I thought ......

How the hell am I going to shit in that thing ? ...... you've heard the phrase ... 

through the eye of a needle .... 

but Andrex revenge is not like that .... Andrex revenge is  .... 

my arse is like a puffer fish !!

No way I thought ...... if I try and shit in that jar, I am going to get covered in the stuff ..... then when I took the lid off I noticed what appeared like a small spade at the end .....

Nooooooo way .... I am not digging the stuff out ...... so back at work and the first hint of a rumble and it was ...... matron ! matron ! ..... get me the Imodium ! ......

And so to Andrex, if you are reading this [and I know you are] please take out the pins, put away the doll and I apologise utmost for my piss taking ...... I have grown to love your product so much in these last few days .....  

my arse feels as clean as a 7 year old boys .....

But should I get caught short again

I may find myself having to go

over the wall .....

To drown out the noises coming from the Khazi ....
can I suggest you turn this up full volume
and I mean fuuuuuull volume
for a song 35 years old... still shittingly brilliant ..

[Bonus SoD: as I am not a fan of the band called Voodo Dolls how about this instead]

Fuck it ......

...... let's have a 

jingly jangly Wednesday 

just how fucking brilliant is this band ? ..

without doubt to be added to my

must see live bands ....

Finally dad dancing is uber cool...

It just doesn't add up .......

 ........ who cares

let's have a 

jingly jangly Tuesday

Ladies put away your Rabbits...... because tonight we have a .........

....... bunnyman .....

Whilst it is Easter weekend when the rabbits come out to play, last week it was a bunnyman who played for us......

I first heard Echo & the Bunnymen on the John Peel show in 1981 and thought my word, I love this song ...... it was in fact Over the Wall on their Crocodiles EP. The next day after listening to the John Peel show I went out and brought the EP on vinyl and that was it, I became a life long fan.

A few years back after moving to Suffolk, I was walking away from the Ipswich Town football stadium having watched a match and found myself walking along side John Peel [he was living in Stowmarket by this time]..... at the time I hesitated ...... I wished I had thanked John Peel for introducing me to such great music and bands. I would say that apart from my elder brother, John Peel was the other person who has influenced such music that I like....... I hesitated too much, I never did thank John Peel ..... I regret that .....

But over the years I have seen Echo & the Bunnymen variously but last week it was Ian McCulloch doing a solo acoustic set ...... Colchester Arts Centre, a re-assigned Church being the perfect venue.

Trying to choose a single track from the Bunnymen as a SoD 

is like trying to choose your favourite chocolate bar

but today I choose this one

Baby maybe someday
Maybe one day
We'll say hi

For people of a certain age like me .... I am sure that ....

..... you will be saddened to hear of the end of Barry Hines ..... of course we all die, but one of the most wonderous things about Barry Hines living was ...... Kes .... as I sit here working on, and  listening to radio four and they just announced that Barry Hines died yesterday. Admittedly the book Kestrel for a Nave is slightly changed in the Movie Kes, but that in my opinion does not denigrate the movie.

I remember reading A Single Man and also watching the Movie, somewhat different to each other but I enjoyed both in equal measure.

But any millennium kid watching the movie Kes would think ..... what the fook .... surely life was never like that in my parents/grandparents day ..... but that's what I love about the movie ... it's gritty tone and honesty of life in Britain up t'north in the late 1960's..... oh by the lord who did not have a PE teacher like Brian Glover [now left this life too]. Brian Glover in real life was a school teacher and Kes was his first movie and after the movie he went back to teaching, before finally becoming a full time actor ..... and an amazing actor too.

When we walk into shop these days we are overwhelmed by choice.... but should you find yourself watching Kes, and I hope they put it on the telly as a tribute to Barry Hines, then look at the scene where the key character Billy goes into the shop to pick up the papers for his paper round. Look at the stark shop shelves where the wares and chattels are heavily spaced out to give the illusion [and failing] of being plenty of choice. I remember shops like that as a kid.... they wouldn't survive 5 minutes in today's world.

How about some Hawkwind 

in the memory of Barry Hines

Bit late for St Patrick's day ... but who needs an excuse for Luke Kelly

..... watching telly at the weekend, I heard the snippet of a song but unsure what it was .... no time to whip out my phone and shazam it ..... so after a bit of work, up came the song and sure enough Luke Kelly was one of the people to cover this song ...... plenty other's have tried .... but there can be no doubt ..... Luke Kelly was your man ....

I never am in to Nationalist Day's so who cares St Patrick's day has come and gone .... they'll be another one next year ..... but every day is Luke Kelly day ......

He left this world far too soon, denied a longer life by a brain tumour but in some way's his music has made him immortal ..... one of my favourite films is In Bruges, a fucking fairy tale of a movie, and within the movie ...... one of my most favourite music in movie scenes ..... Brendan Gleeson deciding to do a selfless act to the back drop of Raglan Road ..... sung by non other than Luke Kelly....

Raglan Road started out life as a poem written by Patrick Kavangh, recalling his love for Hilde Moriarty ..... the speaker recalls a love affair that he had with a young woman while walking on a quiet street. Although the speaker knew that he would risk being hurt if he initiated a relationship, he did so anyway.

Haven't we all been there, at least once in our lives ?

So today for my SoD I choose Luke Kelly

This was the song from the weekend

I saw a great quote about Luke Kelly ..
he could drink Vinegar and spit out wine ....

Here is a fine vintage .....

and finally the homage to Salford ....

Luke I know you're not reading this ....
but hey this is my blog
who give's a shit

Luke ..... genius mate .... fucking genius ...

Clean as a squid ..... my arse .... what a load of .....

...... shite

Adverts can be very marmite ..... unless the advert is about Marmite of course..... but some adverts are just far too contrived .... I realise that's sort of the point of an advert ... but really .... It's the Andrex advert that get's up my nose at the moment ....

It starts out with .... we asked a number of people to try the Andrex® Clean Routine  .......

Now my routine is very easy .....

1. remove lower garments to remove any impediment to the required act
2. sit arse on toilet seat
3. evacuate
4. wipe arse
5. wash hands
6. re-position lower garments

• [but note, the time frame between process' 2, 3 & 4 can vary depending upon whether you take your iPhone in the bog with you or not]

But anyway what the fucking hell is the Andrex® Clean Routine ....  I wondered .... so I googled it ......

Can you believe that someone at ...... or on behalf of Andrex has managed to write a 20 page dossier on how to go for a shit ...... don't believe me ? well you too can read the Andrex® Clean Routine here:

How to wipe your arse in one very long lesson 

So returning to their telly advert, they decided that 2 sure fire ways to get us to buy their product is by using cute kids and a cute puppy ......

And there we have it, the embarrassed teacher when asked how clean her bottom [teachers don't swear] is and she is unable to tell us, instead hiding her face in faux shame ..... does this mean she doesn't bother to check how clean her ars.....ach erm bottom is, after visiting the rest room ..... but then comes the pièce de résistance ..... wheel in the kids .....

We start out with the cute girls and then come the cute boys, with one ultimately declaring that his arse is clean as a squid.... we are meant to believe this is all spontaneous and not scripted at all ...... of course it isn't spontaneous and instead it is merely the words of an adult transplanted into the body of a child to speak .....

If they really really wanted us to believe that it was a truely random and spontaneous answer from squid child ..... I suspect that the real response of a boy that age would go like this ......

Teacher: So Jamie, after you have been to the toilet for number two's, how clean do you think your bottom is once you have wiped it ?

Jamie: ..... looks at teacher ..... then places hand down back of his trousers ..... removes hand .... puts it to his nose and then presses it towards the teacher and asks ..... does that smell like shit to you miss ?

I rest my case ...... further at the end of the advert we are shown the cute little labrador dog .... having all fawned at squid child we are then left to go aaaaww at the loverly little puppy ......

When I was a kid, we had a labrador dog and one of my chores was to walk him each morning before I went to school..... the one thing you can be sure about a labrador is..... he needs his morning constitution ...... and having completed his oblutions one thing he never did  ..... was to wipe his arse with Andrex ..... There is no doubt that a labrador's arse after his daily work out was never as clean as a squid .... in fact the only thing it was clean as was  .... well ......  a labradors arse I suppose ..... so why oh why ...... do they insist on using a creature that does not / cannot wipe it's arse [unless it drags it along the floor as some are seen to do, but that is for an entirely different reason] to promote shit paper ? In my experience dog's arses are probably the least clean.... especially with all that fur ....

I rest my case once more .....

Now if Andrex .... or those who make the adverts on their behalf were to turn it completely on it's head ..... literally and follow Haribo .... by putting the words of children in to the mouths of adults ........ they might be onto some thing .....

If there is one advert on the telly to make me smile very loudly ........
then it is surely the haribo adverts ....

it's a big big saaaaaandwich .....

Then there's the daily commute  .....

the rwings make me feel like a prwincess

cracks me up everytime....

And finally ......

like fwire and a little bit of electrwicity ....

and talking of electrwicity
how about this great tune from the 80's

There are some very clever adverts on the telly .... the Andrex one is not one of them ....

[POSTSCRIPT]

On reflection I should really have chosen this track as the SoD for this post

You have [1] new message ......

...... oh the joy of seeing that pop-up ...... when waiting for a note that makes your heart dance .....

 ...... or worse still more bloody work email nonsense from someone who can't wait for the reply to the email they sent you only 1 or so hour ago ......

But Ray Tomlinson has passed away, the man who is widely credited as the father of email as we have come to love hate it .....

Lifted from the BBC report of his passing:

I am frequently asked why I chose the at sign, but the at sign just makes sense.
The purpose of the at sign (in English) was to indicate a unit price (for example, 10 items @ $1.95). I used the at sign to indicate that the user was "at" some other host rather than being local.
The first message was sent between two machines that were literally side by side. The only physical connection they had (aside from the floor they sat on) was through the Arpanet.
I sent a number of test messages to myself from one machine to the other. The test messages were entirely forgettable and I have, therefore, forgotten them.

Life before email seems almost unimaginable but funny enough this appeared in my inbox today .....

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930's,40's, 50's, and 60's 

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank Sherry while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos...

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, bread and dripping, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds , KFC, Subway or Nandos.

Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on a Sunday, somehow we didn't starve to death!

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers and Bubble Gum.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter,milk from the cow,and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......  WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O..K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY , no video/dvd films, or colour TV, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no
Lawsuits from these accidents.

Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time....

We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays,

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet because we didn't need to keep up with the Jones's!

Not everyone made the rugby/football/cricket/netball team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on MERIT

Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and throw the blackboard rubber at us if they thought we weren't concentrating .

We can string sentences together and spell and have proper conversations because of a good, solid three R's education.

Our parents would tell us to ask a stranger to help us cross the road.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL !

That's my kind of life ......

 so for today's SoD as he's flavour of the month

here's Tom Speight .... again ....

Times when ... you have [1] new message 

made my heart dance .....

I had planned to declare today as ......

 Turin Brakes day ....... for sure they were very very entertaining and I must admit that their first album, the optimist is a particular favourite ....

So last night there I was, me and a couple of hundred others and Turin Brakes in a re-assigned church in Colchester and boy the pews were rockin ..... albeit the pews had been removed and non of us were sitting down .....

But as great as Turin Brakes were, what came as a complete surprise was the support act ..... generally support acts fall into 2 categories ..... shite and ok ..... but last night a third category was created ..... namely  .... fuck me this lad is good ...... Tom Speight ..... no I'd never heard of him either ....... I have now ....... he was supported on stage with Eliza Shaddad and another Tom but can't remember his name ....

Tom Speight has a touch of Ben Howard about him but for sure he is his own man ..... but his set was a real treat and then half way ..... well ...... it sort of goes like this ..... when Paul Daniels used to declare on telly .... iiiiiit's majic ...... you knew it wasn't magic really, it was just a trick .....

But half way during the set , Tom Speight and gang stepped down from the stage and stood in the middle of the audience to do an acoustic number .... So there we all stood in this church ..... worshiping wonderful music .....

Take my word for it ...... magical .... pure magic ......

So rather than today being Turin brakes day .....

this is Tom Speight Day .......

A couple of wonderful tracks 

from his set last night

[Sort of emphasizes my last post .... music, in the right location, at the right time is not just fab.... it's fabbo ]

Plat du Jour .......

.... as I was driving along aimlessly the other day, a fantastic track by Interpol* came on my iPod. Rather than head phones, but instead the confines of the car, music takes on a whole different perspective..... your own personal sound booth ......

Then it got me thinking ..... quite often, it's not always just the song, but where you are listening that adds to the wow factor ...... I mean quite often, music played in lifts and supermarkets, and you don't even give it a second listen ..... what a waste of all that effort to make the music, to waste it in the ether ......

Then it got me thinking some more...... about parallels with food ..... In simple terms we need food, we'd probably die if we didn't eat food .... it really is a means to an end ..... but it is amazing when you see folks on the TV, damn near orgasmic over food ..... foodie's I think they are often referred as.

I like food, as I say without it I would probably die, so most meals for me are merely the antidote for death, medicine for life you might say ..... but if I stopped listening to music would I die  ? probably not .... but when I listen to a song in the right place at the right time, I know I am alive...... damn near orgasmic

What I can't define.....  is why I like a particular song ...... I was chatting to a complete stranger last Saturday night, and in order to find a theme for common topic of discussion I asked him who his favourite band/singer was .... he looked at me blankly .... and then without an hint of self awareness said I don't have one ...... The conversation didn't really last much longer .....

If some one asked me what my favourite food/meal was, then in a heart beat ...... pies ..... I love pies ! .... but the thing is pies stop me from dying..... and they do taste nice ........ they taste loverly ...

In truth one of the best meals I have ever had in the whole wide world was not a pie but came by through an act of happenstance ...... and maybe that's the same thing with music.... if you deliberately try to seek out a brilliant song, you will never find it .... the mood has to be right, the place has to be right, the ambiance has to be right ..... you can't make that happen .... it happens by chance .....

Me and my best mate were on our way back from Monza Italy on the road trip of a life time. We had driven to Italy through France, and Switzerland in the first Ferrari I owned, and then we had 3 fantastic days at the Grand Prix .... life surely couldn't get much better .... or could it ?

Driving back home, through France we were feeling peckish .... so in the classic point the finger at the map and where ever it points is where we stop for some lunch moment..... sure enough the finger pointed at Bar Le Duc ....... quite frankly not much more than a small market town in the heart of France.

We pulled into town, and seeing a number of Pizza places, decided we had had our fill of wonderful Italian food, and so we found what a appeared to be a bijou restaurant. As we entered, inbetween us both and our broken French we asked for .... Vous Havie une menu sivo plat ..... The owner pointed to the board outside ..... There was only one item on the menu .... Plat Du Jour .....

So we paid our €uro 10 each and sat at our allotted table ...... mein gott ..... or should that be sacre bleu ..... We were served a plate of local vegetables and what appeared as peasant stew .... but in my life I have never tasted anything so wonderful before or since... not even in the pie category ....

All washed down by a glass of local wine. Then for afters, yes we got pudding too, was a platter of the most delicious looking French ..... [I so want to say tarts, without giving the wrong impression .... this was a family restaurant] ..... anyway French tarts ......

If you asked me the name of the meal, I would have no idea, it was merely Plat Du Jour ..... but despite it being some 8 or so years ago, I can still visualise the table we sat at, the chalkboard out the front of the building, the tarts staring back at us, and for sure that was the most wonderful meal I have ever eaten in my life ...... who knows had it been served at my local Tesco in store Cafe perhaps I would not be writing this .... but then again would a song played in my local Tesco ever be one of my songs of the day ? probably not ......

So as an experiment I want to recreate that Plat Du Jour to the style of music ..... 

[just don't be in Tesco if you are reading this]

For the main course we have ......

You'll need some wine to wash it down ....
I have never tried Lilac wine .... but this ....
this is nectar ..

and finally for dessert a fine complement to the main course .....

Bon appetite .....

{* Interpol Postscript - The track was Leif Erikson}