Joyfeed

But the intercom just mumbled something short, and the door buzzed. He lurched for it, but as he pushed it, the buzzing stopped, and it wouldn’t move. He pulled, he pushed. Reluctantly he gave the intercom another, apologetic push, and just as he did so, the door buzzed again. He threw himself against it and it clicked and opened, and he staggered into a dark grey lobby. The door swung slowly shut behind him. The only way out of the lobby was a concrete staircase leading to the first floor.

At the top he peered through the glass in the door to what was clearly the main office and reception area. He could see desks and computers and people milling and tapping. He was about to knock on the door when a body appeared at the glass, there was a click, and the door opened.

“Can you wait in here?” she said, directing him into a kitchen and dining area. He sat down. “Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?”

What now? Yes, he would love a cup of tea. Tea was good for people suffering from shock, which he supposed was similar to feeling acutely stressed, which is what he was now. But tea made by strangers, tea made by strangers in public kitchen facilities, possibly with unusual milk, which is to say UHT, unusual tea made by unusual people in unusual kitchens was rarely nice tea, tea that would sooth the drinker, relieving stress and enhancing performance. Plus he never received the correct amount of sugar despite the simple clarity of his instructions (imagine a level teaspoon of sugar, well just a little bit less than that, so you can see some of the spoon all the way around), and chose instead to make commentary (I don’t know why you bother with that amount, surely you can’t taste it, that’s just silly), failing to realise that it was of course precisely the smallness of the amount of sugar that made accuracy more important: a few grains either way in a builder’s four-teaspooned atrocity being neither here nor there, but at the low end of the sweetness spectrum, undue deference to the finely honed instructions, a failure to appreciate the curvature of the micro-heap, for example, could lead to catastrophic, irreversable oversweetening, or, worse, a bland beverage, equivalent to that which, yes, had no sugar at all, placing its drinker in the socially awkward situation of having to choose between downing the pleasureless liquid without comment, or risk offending the host by making a surruptitious move on the sugarbowl, to add a visibly countable number of extra grains, rendering the drink drinkable in the true sense of the word.

“No. Thankyou. Yes. A coffee, please. Thanks. No sugar, and a little bit of milk.” Coffee was a bitter drink, was his opinion, no point in denying the obvious and trying to alter it with sugar, and so, surely, a safer bet under the circumstances.

She moved to the filter machine, which appeared reassuringly full and steaming. Nothing quite as bad as cold stale coffee. Let’s not start on that.

Winston Churchill is at a party and a woman comes up to him and says: “Mr Churchill, how marvellous to meet you. I am a huge fan.”

And Churchill, a little the worse for wear, looks at her for a few seconds and then says “Fuck off you ugly cow”.

A couple of days later Churchill is having lunch with a friend.

Churchill: I say [friend’s name], I made a bit of a hash of myself at that party at the weekend. Some old trout waddled over to me and started mouthing something ghastly, and I told her to “Fuck off you ugly cow.” I confess I had been drinking.
Friend: I say Winston, that’s rather rum. What did she do?
C: Ran off sobbing.
F: Oh dear oh dear. That doesn’t present you in the best light.
C: No, quite. Future generations will not be falling over themselves to vote me the Greatest Briton if I get a name for going about making women cry by telling them to fuck off you ugly cow.
F: To say nothing of the Nobel jury.
C: Oh Christ, this is a disaster. We’ve got to sort this out. Hang on hang on, here’s a thought,… What about something like “Never in the field of human ugliness have I seen anyone as ugly as you, you ugly cow.” Has a certain rhetorical feel to it, more statesmanlike, wouldn’t you say?
F: True, it’s an improvement, but… still, I think it needs something else. You’d been drinking you say?
C: Excessively.
F: Maybe you could use that. How about “My dear, you appear to be extremely ugly, but, then again, I am completely pissed.”
C: I like it, makes me sound manly. The people like a man who likes a drink. That’s something I’ve always had going for me. So, so, wait, let’s see, something like “So ugly are you and so drunk am I that it would be better that I should vomit on your face and…something blah blah…” Going for the rude charm vote. Treat them mean, and all that.
F: I think we’re veering away again. But the drunk line is good. Maybe if we introduced a dialogue element. Something Socratic, appeal to the intellectuals, the sort that like to regurgitate witty put-downs at dinner parties.
C: Right, of course, good, so I say, yes this is it I say “God you’re ugly” and she says “Who are you calling ugly you pissed old bastard” and I say “You, you ugly cow. Now fuck off, I’m going to bed.”
F: Winston, you are a genius.

History is, of course, written by the winners. Or, in Churchill’s case, people who write huge volumes of history.

The other day I went to my front door to see if the man had pushed anything through it (I don’t know what the time was exactly, but, as I’ve said before, it doesn’t matter) and sure enough he had. Most of the items were from people I don’t know either asking me to give them money or offering to give me money, but one of the items was different. It was slightly thicker and slightly heavier than the others, and it felt a bit like a present. Of course I opened it immediately and I was almost right, because it was a Free Gift.

It was a new sort of shaving razor for men by a famous razor company whose name I will not mention as that would be advertising but the razor is called “Fusion”. Somehow the boffins in the research and development laboratories have managed to “fuse” onto the head of the razor not one, not two, not three, not four, but five tiny little blades facing one way, and - this I think is the part they were particularly smug about when they thought of it - just one facing the other way.

What’s the point of the one facing the other way? One word: precision. Gentlemen, we know how frustrating it can be to, for example, produce a neat sideburn, and with the current arms race for packing more and more blades onto the main cutting face of the razor, precision has long since gone out of the window. But by exploiting the three dimensional properties of the razor - namely the reverse side - we return to a level of accuracy unknown since the days of the uniblade.

The handle of the razor is also of interest. It is a “fusion” of slightly grippy rubbery bits and a shiny silver substance that has a metallic heft, but still carries about it a plastic quality, perhaps hinting at its disposable ancestry. But the manufacturers of this gentlemen’s face smoothing tool do not want me to dispose of the handle, they want me to keep it, because they have included a 007 ejector button, one nonchalent nudge of which sends the sixblade head leaping into oblivion, leaving a little stalk on which I can attach a new gleaming set of tightly packed micro-blades.

I was intrigued by the sheer perversion of the multiblade, and decided to give it a “test drive”.

The main advantage of the techno-razor seemed to be that the head does not clog up with whisker sludge, but can be cleaned with a simple swish in shallow water, without the need to bang it against the sink. I found this quite reassuring. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating (as nobody seems in the least bit capable of saying these days) and in this regard I can report that “it cuts the hair, and not the face”. It is thus “fit for purpose” - in itself a phrase appropriately as nauseating and unacceptable as the manufacturer’s own advertising slogan.

You may have noticed that many houses in this country have placed in their front doors small rectangular holes with various sorts of more or less moveable covers. They remind me a little of cat-flaps, though they are generally far too small for a cat to squeeze through, and somewhat the wrong shape being wide enough for a cat, but not tall enough, I would think, even for a baby cat, and in any case they are usually too high up for a cat small enough to climb through to jump. Grown-up cats can jump, definitely, I’ve seen them, but a baby cat couldn’t jump that high, I’m sure. But this lack of accessibility to cats is, far from being a design flaw, actually very clever, as the purpose of these apertures is not to admit cats, but rather to allow a man to visit my house almost every day and push a variety of paper-based items through my door and onto the mat, where I can collect them later at my convenience. The beauty of this hole-in-the-door system is that it works even if I can’t come to the door, for example if I am on the toilet, or even not in the house at all, for example if I am at the shops. The man can leave these items for me without anyone having to open the door.

Keen observers may by now have realised that this website is often little more than a vehicle through which I can exercise my right to show off and be silly. Sometimes, however, I can use it to talk about occasions when others have taken time out from their busy lives to show off and be silly. Last night was one of those occasions.

The event was called Pilot and it was at the Custard Factory and it was organised by The B-Theatre. It consisted of six short pieces by both established and not so established companies, and I liked it very much. At various points in the evening I tried to establish a consensus that the best word to sum up the performances was “spunky”, though this consistently failed to generate any conversational traction, either as an appropriate word to sum up the performances, or as a funny thing to say. It was just me being silly and showing off again, it seems.

The performances, I thought, were never less than “quite good” or “interesting”, and one or two were even “actually really very nice”, which is no mean feat in an evening which is explicitly justifying itself as a sharing event for works in progress. So, here goes:

This is for Tim Henman Search Party

They came all the way from Exeter to show us “Pete” (not me, a different “Pete” - I know it’s confusing) trying to do the hula hoop for ten seconds. Of course the theatrical frame is all important here and it was done extremely well. Some Forced Entertainment style text, but when done properly there’s no harm in that. Actually really very nice. I want to see more of their stuff.

Cargo The Plasticine Men

This is a collaboration between the compere/organiser Simon Day (not the famous one, another one) and the brothers Gunter aka Spanner, and it was adeptly performed energetic physical theatre with humour. It worked well as a - what - 15 minute? - sketch, but would require some clever pacing and structuring for it to succeed as a full length piece.

Teg Jake Oldershaw

So it says, although the full credits according to the programme are “adapted by Lee Beagley, directed by Jake Oldershaw and Jo Carr and performed by Ffion Williams”. Again a short sketch of something that might get enlarged. Jake is a friend of mine, and I’ve never seen any of his work that wasn’t pretty much on the money, with a good ear for what performance ought to be all about. This was no different, with witty use of back projection and some good proper acting from Ms Williams.

In my Father’s house Kindle Theatre

There were mixed opinions about this one, but I found it quite amusing. I would describe it as “spunky”. Four women dressed in old fashioned posh clothes are advertising some event they are holding at a church hall or something. One of them starts explaining how to make a pudding, one is playing the accordian, another is drinking quite heavily. They all do a big hokey-cokey twice. If this was a trailer for their full length piece, then I’m not sure what to make of it. As a one-off performance curiosity I thought it was quite nice.

Don’t Make Me Say This Talking Birds

Directed by my dear dear friend Nick Walker and performed by Jim Low and a female performer drafted in so close to the wire that she didn’t even make it into the programme [but you can find out her name by reading the comments]. I have no idea what was going on here, but I think the people who made it were one step ahead at least, and it was great. Typical Walker/Birds blend of humour and off-beat something or other.

Please Forgive Me Augusto Corrieri

Ten people who may or may not have ever met before learn simple movements by watching an instructional video on You Tube, then get together for a couple of hours the day before to make sure they are all on the right continent. This was interesting, and at times it was very nice - in particular the chorus line finale Bryan Adams number - and at times exactly what you might expect from ten people doing warm up exercises. Again, as a short sketch, great. It is apparently episode two of Continuous Project, a series of meta dance/performance pieces conceived and choreographed by Augusto Corrieri. OK, keep it up fella.

The evening was also neatly compered by (the still non-famous) Simon Day, and Manos Puestas provided the splendid musical interludes. There was plenty of time during the two short intervals and afterwards to mingle and feed back.

Applause!

In Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the “Two Minutes Hate” is a short film, shown to all Party members in Oceania, in which the Party’s enemies, and in particular the figure of Emmanuel Goldstein, are depicted as odious villains, for the purposes of generating a short sustained burst of extreme hate from the loyal citizens. Meanwhile, in The Apprentice, we are presented with the outrageous machinations of a group of hateful cartoon fuckwits, the only human response to which can be to jeer, laugh, shout abuse and generally work ourselves up into a frenzy of mocking indignation.

Viewed through Orwell’s prism, The Apprentice emerges as a device by which the authorities can channel our contempt and disgust for the failures and excesses of our consumer/capitalist society against a carefuly selected set of borderline fictional characters, allowing us to feel that it is in fact these fatuous goons who are the problem, rather than those who wield the power in the real system. And as with Orwell’s fictionalised version, this cathartic hate must be absorbed, and the energy redirected into a positive love of the current order.

The Hate rose to a climax. The voice of Goldstein had become an actual sheep’s bleat, and for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep. … But in the same moment, drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody, the hostile figure melted into the face of Big Brother, … full of power and mysterious calm, and so vast that it almost filled up the screen.

When popping out to the cash point today, I decided to start playing the Consecutive Number Plate Spotting game as defined on the website of the comedian and celebrity Richard Herring. I managed to get to 05 on the way from the bank to my front door.

It would be possible at this stage to propose a variation on this game called Consecutive Comedian and/or Celebrity Spotting (CCCS). In this game you would have to spot comedians and/or celebrities consecutively. Potential rules for deciding consecutivity might include:

• degree of celebrity and/or comedy
• length of service in the “public eye”
• natural age
• physical mass
• wealth
• an esoteric formula based on all of the above including a mystery constant

On 22 March 2007 I spotted the comedian and celebrity Richard Herring on a sofa at the Radio Five Live studio. Shortly after spotting Richard Herring I spotted the actor and celebrity John Simm, and then the broadcaster and celebrity Simon Mayo. Work that out.

I was reading that Cleopatra used to like taking a bath in “ass milk”.

I thought, how strange and exotic the ancients are to us. I don’t think I can even begin to imagine what sort of a substance “ass milk” might be, but if it’s anything like the stuff that comes out of MY arse, then you certainly wouldn’t want to be taking a bath in it.

So yet again the government or whatever have changed the time. They change the time twice a year to save daylight. They think we are stupid. Changing the time doesn’t save daylight: daylight is in the gift of the arc of the horizon, and we cannot increase or decrease it, no matter how many times we correct our watches, no matter how hard we try.

They treat us like budgerigars.

They know that by changing the time they are throwing a large dark blanket over our cage to make us go to bed, and then whipping it off in the morning to make us wake up.

They know that we are unable to make these decisions for ourselves and that it is easier to look at a clock than to look out of the window.

They know that society is complex but the individuals that make up that society are simple, and that we need them to tell us when to leave the house, when to join the queue, when to pause as the arrow hovers over the button before finally, yes, clicking Shut Down.

They know these things: they have our number.

Some facts about the birds

• The birds do not have appointments.
• The birds do not use public transport.
• The birds do not have to make sure the report is on my desk by 9 a.m.
• The birds do not live in a cage.
• The birds sit outside my window at the dawn of each new day and scream their heads off like this: “Look at me, look at me, look at me”.

It’s me.