22 years since Jim Henson died........ missed still.

A contribution from fellow long suffering communter Dirk is long overdue; heres the first of a number that are backed up: 

There are an infinite number of ways to get my goat these days, and two of my most excitable ones were so peeved by what I witnessed today that they broke free of the leash and leapt the fence separating the two station car-parks.  

To the bald man with the Musto back-pack who parked his white Volvo behind me this morning at the station…shame on you.  It was the flash of gobby whiteness in my peripheral vision that first caught my attention and I was quietly fuming at this in my wing-mirror when I witnessed him hold open the door, have a quick check around to see if anybody was looking and then reach inside and pull out an empty can of coke, some crisp packets and random packaging.  All this he chucked out onto the tarmac before kicking the whole lot under his car.  I have no doubt that this is a regular occurrence, this is how people like him clean their cars and since I already had reason to hate him I decided to prove that I’d clocked his behaviour by giving a hoot on my horn.  

His furtiveness betrayed the fact that he did at least realise that what he was doing was antisocial so It was hardly a confrontation and several leagues short of making a citizen’s arrest but I did at least provoke a staring contest which I subsequently won,  for as he rounded the back of the car still scowling at me he clipped his knee quite sharply on the bumper.  As Louis L’Amour was wont to say, “Victory is won not in miles but in inches”.   

He gave me that inch and I took a mile.      

Last night I was throwing together another eclectic playlist for the delectation of future guests at Crumble Towers when I chanced upon a track I haven’t heard for a very long time, Different Drum, (oddly enough was written by Mike Nesmith of the Monkees). It's a great track, well until some girl you're in love with plays it to you because she's too inarticulate, embarrassed or callous to tell you you're history. Never happened to me obviously.

But how could I have forgotten how fantastic Linda Ronstadt was and which teenage boy didn’t harbour deeply unchristian thoughts about her….. well, until Debbie Harry came along, certainly? You see, any readers not growing up in the seventies may not be aware that the decade wasn’t at all about punk rock and miners strikes; no, it was about Linda, Debbie, Farrah, the girl in the flake advert, Anni-Frid and Agnetha, Bo and lets not forget, Fiona McDonald who lived down the lane, (wonder where she is now?), who apart from an unfortunate propensity to completely ignore me was, in the eyes of a growing Highland, boy, drop-dead-gorgeous……….. don’t think she ever spoke to me you know. I'm not bitter.

Of course, some of us of a certain age still remember the wonderful site that greeted the weary driver as one approached the Earls Court Road / Cromwell Road Junction and yes, she just looked just fantastic on a 60ft billboard. What is there not to love about a campaign with the strapline, "D – G; Because we’re more than a handful" I give you Eva Herzigová, inter galactic model of the millenia:

What passes for our self obsessed government these days continues to demonstrate a woeful lack of grip on both themselves and the economy. I've repeatedly written about the pressing requirement to eviscerate government spending and promote growth through lower taxation and smart investment. HMG though, has all but missed the boat. The penny will eventually drop but it will be too late for thousands of businesses and individuals and particularly for the politicians responsible for a lack of purpose and clarity of thinking.

It's a fact that government spending hasn't actually been cut. Simply, the trajectory of spending increases has been slightly lowered. Meanwhile the nonsense alarm is clanging away with hourly updates from Leveson telling us what an incestuous, corrupt and colluding collection of under qualified clowns our political elite have become. We can make a start on both the problems of government spending and political intrigue by jettisoning all special advisors. Don't chuck just the odd one under a bus, do a job lot. That's right, fire them all by 10am and by 12am the country will already feel a better place.

The taxation issue meanwhile is just plain silly. The chancellor has slashed the wrists of the wealth generating and revenue contributing section of society and blood is gushing out of the economic body of UK plc. Here's an example.

I’m told, (anecdotally), that sellers can now negotiate rates with the big estate agents. We can all see that property isn’t shifting up and down the country, (except in central London where the big agents don’t even now bother to work Saturdays. This is a typical market response to stupid tax policies designed to make chippy Liberals feel good when they get together for their sandal wearing, tofu munching sessions.

A stamp rate of 7% on a £2m property means that the buyer must earn £280k pre tax, at 50%, to pay the tax. Now, few of us will lose any sleep at the thought of Justin Fothering-Frampton of Hamptons not being able to upgrade his Aston, but the positive trickle-down effect on removers, plumbers, carpet firms, decorators, furniture retailers, gardeners and the rest clearly completely pass the dreamers at the Treasury by.

I sit in quiet bemused bewilderment and ponder how much economic damage they will be allowed to inflict on us before someone wakes up in a eureka moment and shouts, “I know, let's try the low tax = growth thing.”

In the unlikely event that this selfish, self indulgent preening shower actually switch on and start making some constructive decisions we might find ourselves eventually crawling out of recession just in time for the inflation storm that is coming our way, currently due to hit in late 2013-4 by my reckoning. That's a nice little by product of current central banking printing which will eradicate whatever wealth you may have left at that point.

Once in a while a film comes along that leaves you not caring about being ripped off by the thieving pirates at Odeon Cinema's charging £3.25 for a medium coke. If you're fed up then, with the latest Hollywood formulaic RomCom rubbish of boy meets girl, boy does a stupid thing, girl hates boy, boy seeks redemption etc etc then ease off down to the local cinema and watch The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. 

It won't assault your senses leaving you scared, breathless or in bemused wonderment at impossible special effects; it will simply leave you a little uplifted with a sense of having enjoyed the past 120 mins and lets face it, how many of us get 120 mins of straight enjoyment these days.

Cracking cast and some food for thought for those deep thinkers who want to ponder on the developing demographic time bomb throughout Western Europe. Me, I just enjoyed the movie; you should do the same. It is after all, really rather nice to see that someone out there can still do something to a reasonable standard and without $100m of special effects. I guess it's called acting.

Now I'll admit, some of them do look like extra's from Men in Black 3 but enough is enough. I think now that the foreign press are in and having a dig it's time to stand up and speak for our girls...... after all, what is there not to love about Liverpool lasses...

There was though, absolutely nothing I could do about this; in fact, what is this?

I can guarentee one thing though, Ladies Day at Aintree is only going to get bigger and bigger and joking apart, you can already see the beginnings of the camp crowd making it their own. Next up, students going in drag taking the mick, just wait and see!

One day I wandered down the corridor in the Company Lines to the showers where to my surprise, oh jings cribbens help ma boab; there was Fusiliar Mac........ standing with a tin of shaving foam and a razor and diligently removing all his body hair.

"What are you doing mate,"

"Got crabs, getting rid of the wee fxv%£s."

Well, at leat he didn't use Veet for Men Hair Removal, Read the first review....