Ttlly gr8 txts

Two text messages I've very much enjoyed in the last 24 hours.

1. From housemate Jamie, yesterday evening:
"Dude - your pic on p.45 of this week's NME"

2. From India Chris, this morning:
"Sitting at home with a cold feeling sorry for myself until I realised that I can now do a great Dwayne Bensey impression. I now don't want to get better."


An amazing factoid about text messages

Express yourself

The World's Greatest Newspaper (The Daily Express, natch) has an awesome front page today: "NOW CAMILLA HIDES POPPY | She IS wearing one, but you can't see it under Muslim scarf".

But why? Well, the splash nicely plays upon both the readership's anti-Islamic feeling and their World War 1 nostalgia, and rolls it all up into a Royal family 'story' which none of the other papers think is worth covering. Most cunningly of all, because it's critical of Camilla, it's also an implied Diana story.

And look at that headline wording: what do they mean by 'now'? Ostensibly it's the fact that the Duchess forgot to wear a poppy earlier in the week. But it also means: first she had the gall to marry the future King of England while Diana's corpse was warm, now this.


Front page here

Wimbo pics

Some more Wimborne weekend pictures, from the gloomy to the uplifting to the dour.

Cheer up, gloomy angels!

Hello plant, hello sky, hello butterfly!

Wimborne Minster, glowering

Separated at birth

One's a grumpy bastard, one's a grumpy bastard, and the other you probably haven't heard of. Uncanny.

More slightly dubious lookalikes

The whole tooth

This weekend, I went back to Wimborne, my home town, and spent £161 at the dentist. I feel like Martin Amis. But without the literary talent, misguided penchant for 9/11 reimaginings, or letter from Julian Barnes telling me to fuck off. Anyway, my teef have now been scaled to the max, and my first-ever filling hangs snugly in the top-back-right corner of my mouth, like a stumpy stalagtite in a dripping and echoey cave.

The rest of my weekend was sandwiched between the two dentist appointments like a ketchup-splattered slice of smoked enamel. On Saturday, I went to look round stately home Kingston Lacy, which was the family seat of the Bankes family from the 17th century. It's got quite a history - Pitt the Younger and the Duke of Wellington both stayed there at some point - and it was pimped by Sir Charles Barry, who also 'did' the Houses of Parliament. The house is filled with cool bric-a-brac, including the keys to Corfe Castle, and rather unexpectedly, paintings by Van Dyck, (Jan) Brueghel the Younger, and a nice pair of Titians (okay, I'm lying, there was only one, but they should buy in another just so people can use the 'nice Titians' gag with impunity).


After that, popped over to Badbury Rings, our local iron age hill fort. Communed with the spirits of the past, took a photo of a sheep. That place rocks.

In case you're worried all this history talk is signalling that the Electric Goose is getting high-brow and worthy, here's Kate Winslet in yesterday's Sunday Times:

"With All the King's Men, in which there was a little bit of nudity, I thought, 'Well, that's it; my nudity days are over... Then I read the script of Little Children and thought, 'This is really good, but there's lots of nudity in it.' I knew the film wouldn't work if those scenes weren't there though.'"

Now answer me this: are there any films in which La Winslet doesn't get naked?

Goethe on cabbage

"It is good that my heart can feel the simple and innocent pleasure a man knows when the cabbage he eats at table is one he grew himself; the pleasure he takes not only in eating the cabbage but in remembering all those good days, the fine morning he planted it, the mellow evenings he watered it and the delight he felt in its daily growth."

The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe

Pretentious?

What I've been up to: yesterday I ate some M&S Madagascar Vanilla Lakemead Yoghurt, then I went to the Velazquez exhibition at the National Gallery.

I WIN.

Lessons learned from... The History Boys

Everyone gets into Oxbridge.


Other lessons I've learnt from films

Pundit

At last! The BBC have finally officially recognised me for my services to punnery.


More puns

Smoking / sprinting

My smoking habit vacillates rapidly between controlled abstinence and wild excess. I'm like a top sprinter who never does any exercise: most of the time I don't 'train' (smoke) at all, but I'm always conscious there's a 'race' (big night out / awkward social occasion) looming, in which I'll suddenly find myself warming up (fishing a cigarette lighter out of the drawer), putting my special running shoes on (going to the shop to buy ten Marlboro Lights) and competing on a world stage (smoking a lot of cigarettes in a short space of time). Of course, before the big races that I compete in actually take place, I occasionally think of doing some practice (having the odd fag) and the thought does excite me a little. But it's usually only the presence of other long-time fellow athletes (friends who I've always shared a cigarette break with) who make me want to get back in shape (give myself lung cancer).