dogfrog's adventures in the dark belly of a sleepy town

Not what the gaming industry needs

2011-04-27T15:58:00.001Z

I can picture the article now:-

"With the PS3 network down, day upon day, you have to feel sorry for the everyday gamer with the average attention span and hygiene of a Springer spaniel. His life is firmly at risk our there in what I'll call reality for now.

The outside world is a scary place for the gamer – it resembles a horror platform, role playing, space trading, strategy adventure that he might not just survive. Out in the real world, things move slower for a start, much slower. Each passing pram, jogger or cyclist is the equivalent of acid flashback. Each seagull, magpie and pigeon is a golden eagle to be ducked on the way to the next level – or McDonalds. Every person in a uniform is a potential target. If this interruption goes on for much longer, gamers welded to their lightweight steering wheels will take to the real roads to get their fix and cause carnage up and down our high streets."

Or that's what the mainstream press will be having us believe if the PS3 network stays dead for the weekend. Such is the reputation of the games industry among those who've not tasted the Kool Aid. The mistake that many detractors of games, gamers and the gaming community make – is that somehow, they, it and everyone else involved are dead set on turning their brains to mush and taking everyone down with them. Gaming wastes everyone's time, and guess what, the trash still hasn't been taken out and the car hasn't been washed. Games are bad, are young people are being turned in something we can't control and top it all off, now some other gamer is stealing all the money. What's to be done?

Gaming does have a reputation as a mindless pre-occupation. But I'd argue we don't scoff at trainspotters or birders, but given those two activities, I know I'd much rather be killing zombies or racing dune buggies. There are plenty of enjoyable activities that don't end in a tangible result. Can I just say the word jazz?

I think the reputation problem partly stems from the idea that there is a perceived relationship between video games and violence. The seed was planted and despite Nintendo's positive gaming campaigns and family friendly consoles, Killzone 3 will never replace Scrabble round the family kitchen table at Christmas. Partly it's come from a history of families owning a series of increasingly powerful machines – and let's be honest, not seeing any functional benefit and then there's the ongoing cost of the games themselves, the games that hog the TV and stop the normal discourse of family life.

Games and gamers are not all about chaos and destruction, despite what you might see your youngster blowing the shit out of. What is less understood is that the gaming environment is, more often than not, based around control rather than mindless destruction of people in uniforms and property. Gaming is about taking control of your own destiny in a world that is more defined and understandable than the world people find in their newspapers and on their televisions. Gaming is about completing goals and being successful. Gaming is about puzzle solving and impressing your friends. Gaming is about be enriched and being tired afterward.

So it turns out gaming is actually what life in the outside world should be about and why should we be surprised? Games come from life, so why treat them any differently to any other media? In theory, "I'm just going to watch a movie for a couple of hours" should amount to the same currency as "I'm going to drive roundNew York shooting and stealing stuff for a bit." We all know it doesn't. "I'm just going to watch the Godfather Trilogy" might be slightly more accurate, such is the depth of the gaming experience.

It would be noteworthy to discover how many young gamers have given up waiting for the PlayStation Network to grow a pair of legs and stand up for itself and indeed use their own legs to go outside and do something less interesting instead - like riding a bike, climbing a tree, breaking a collarbone, a wrist or two. Let's hope everyone who goes outside this weekend if the PS3 network is still down, can take some more control, complete some goals and impress some friends without being a total dick.

Childish

2011-03-24T15:34:00.001Z

There's nothing I love more than a childish giggle. So when someone sent me the massive list of swear words we use to filter offensive Tweets on our plasma screens, naturally I spent the day scrolling.

Well here it is, swear away.

Losing it, hopefully

2011-03-17T11:55:00.000Z

The art of putting less calories in your body than you have been doing to this point in time, is something that I've never really attempted before. When I've lost a few dozen pounds before, it's been down to exercise or a tape worm. It's been four, or has it been five days on a loose but serious diet - no it's nothing to do with Lent. Lola is attempting to convince me that more is actually less from breakfast to dinner, and I must admit I think I might be coming round. It sounds like a cliché, a wife putting her husband on a diet, but frankly, who else was going to do it? Someone had to tear up the menu of curries, chilli, spagbol, stir fries and lasagna with chips. She is extending my life expectancy, this is a good thing, I keep telling myself that.

And so it's happened. Eating more at breakfast seems to be the key to not tearing apart the nearest mammal at 6.30 each night to taste its blood. I feel better and the 'episodes' have stopped. Sshhh. I've probably eaten more of what you humans call "vegetables" in the last week than I have in the last decade. I'm not making light of it since it's probably healthier to pull sunflower seeds out of your teeth than a chicken drumstick.

St. Patrick's Day is probably a major spanner in the works tonight but I've always regarded Guinness as food anyhow. We'll keep it up but I'm worried that my new suit, which is a little big on me already, might start to flap in all the wind.

Look behind you!

2011-03-16T13:27:00.000Z

Waking the Dead inside

2011-03-15T23:31:00.001Z

Last night's concluding scene of Waking the Dead highlighted the extraordinary differences between US crime dramas and our dreary UK versions. At the conclusion of each CSI Miami or New York come to that, we see David Caruso (our household ginger hero), comforting a child or holding a victim in the creepiest way humanly possible, but nevertheless, oozing empathy. Even New York hard ass CSI chief Gary Sneezy (Sinise), as my mother calls him, turns on the sympathy as the truth is finally revealed.

Unlike Detective Inspector Boyd who at the end of Waking the Dead looked over at the two recently orphaned kids, who'd been subject to years of abuse from a delusional and murderous mother. It's not Boyd's style to hug and tell everyone it's gonna be OK, but was the look that said, "Here's looking forward to a lifetime of mental health damage and regret, best get on with it eh kids?" With that he got in his car and pissed off. End of. Charming.

In the UK, we rarely see silver linings in our murder and crime drama, or should I say when we do it becomes New Tricks, so that probably isn't a bad thing come to think of it.Which brings me to that idiot who claimed today that Midsomer Murders lacked ethnic minorities because it wouldn't work. I live down the road from Slough and personally I'd love to see John Nettles, poking round in disused garages at the corpses of homeless Polish tramps. We ignore non-British cultures at our peril and we're so damn good at it - Midsomer Murders isn't the only guilty show - see if you can stomach Doc Holiday. Britain is possibly one of the most multi-cultural countries in the world, like it or not. We don't have to be like Boyd, be as angry as Boyd, eat like Boyd or just get in our cars and drive away. If we in the UK were more open to more cultures, even the ones on our doorsteps, perhaps we might even wake up a little of what's dead inside them.

Japanese Smash

2011-03-11T16:08:00.000Z

Watching events unfold in Japan with everyone else and wondering whether Godzilla and Mothra will turn up to make things even worse - I don't think they could for what it's worth unless they accidentally knocked over a water tower with a mis-timed swipe and cooled the nuclear fuel rods.

Faced with such a wall of debris and water any imaginable survival is ridiculous. Sadly there's not much to learn in the face of such disaster, Japan is probably the most prepared nation on the planet and there wasn't much they could do when you've got big parts of the earth creaking underneath you.

I find it tough to sit there an watch while everyone around me tinkers with their spreadsheets and their business cases. As they're firing off emails to each other and arranging who's gonna pick up the kids from ballet, I just want to say, "Yeah but what about Japan? Have you seen what's actually happening? Do you even care?" The answer I'd love would be "OMG, we have to somehow get there, we have to somehow help, it doesn't matter if we only get as far as the M4, but we have to surely try!" Sadly the answer I get is a dull, predictable, British "No, we've got our own problems, and have you seen the price of petrol?" So chin up Japan, no-one from our Slough office will be coming to dig you out any time soon unfortunately, but for what it's worth, there's a guy in my office who's genuinely upset and wishes he could help. Get rebuilt soon.

While watching today I answered my own question - why do people in earthquake prone countries keep so many rattling ornaments on the walls? Ah I get it now.

Gelato

2011-03-05T15:55:00.000Z

The Incredible Zac, we'll miss you

2011-03-01T22:29:00.001Z

Toothpaste Museum

2011-02-23T09:03:00.001Z

The anti-social network

2011-02-22T15:13:00.000Z

Aaron Sorkin’s pacy but ultimately frustrating Facebook drama, The Social Network is hardly a contender for film of the year. By the end it felt like I’d been watching a dreary Premiership score-draw – another bunch of millionaire bitches running round, shouting, “It was my idea, no it was my idea.” My guess is that the majority of UK users of Facebook will have had no idea that the site had such lofty origins as Harvard as we didn’t get our grubby hands on it until after it had been through the American Ivy League.

Facebook's origins are fairly irrelevant, as is the film and the fortunes made by its founders and would-be founders. The real problem we should consider is that I don’t feel as if this story has run it’s course yet - not the whole, who invented Facebook story but, the Facebook story as a whole. The whole film feels therefore unworthy of such attention. My first feeling was, why haven’t they made the Bill Gates or Steve Jobs Story yet – perhaps they have, perhaps they’re waiting for them to die. Perhaps there is a sense that Facebook has reached its pinnacle and it’s all downhill from here with the emergence and rise of Twitter and the Chinese new generation social networks.

If there isn’t enough subject matter for the film to cover, then at least beef up the lead - Zuckerberg has been in a relationship since he began the site, why make him such a one dimensional asshole if you’re gonna make him an asshole? We even found ourselves in a fantasy Henley meeting Prince Albert of Monaco just to make it interesting for five minutes. The only person with the opportunity to spice is Timberlake which he never really gets the license to. Timberlake’s role in fact sums up how The Social Network leaves you, coated in a thin film of shiny unpleasantness, ironically much like using Facebook itself. And if it teaches us anything, apart from how some people made so much money it’s unfuckingbelievable, then that lesson is be careful how you choose your friends and if you can at all help it, don’t join Facebook. Oh for a can of UBIK.

The Four Horsemen of the Apoplexy

2011-02-21T11:51:00.000Z

Any trip home to my mother’s is littered with a litany of stories of death, cancer, injury and illness. Just before we arrived last week, the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse seemingly rode through the town to spread the love. Within minutes we'd heard of one prostrate cancer, two dog deaths and I swear there was a quadruple bypass in there somewhere. She insists I know the afflicted personally and I nod and uh huh. "You know, driving instructor who lives next to the alley up the road." I think so, I reply, "Well, he's dead." So and so’s knee was accidentally replaced with a green bell pepper and Aunty Joan, she’s got scrofula. It’s like a perpetual episode of Debbie Downer.

My feeling is that the generation in their 60's and 70's are better versed in death and disease, whereas mine, Thatcher's boys and girls, have no sense of it - no-ones actually dying any more. 50 is the new 40, 40 is the new 30, 30 is the new 20, 20 is the new 10. At the top end of the scale, perhaps dead is the new alive.

Of course, eventually a special brand of NHS famine, pestilence and death will come to us all, but as we increasingly fail to die, I’m really hoping I don’t have to rely on my Facebook friends to come round and peel me off the lino and take me off for a burnin’.
Let’s face it, Facebook will suck and blow simultaneously when you’re in your 80’s. My mother’s plague analysis brought to you on your daily feed via friends you’ve not actually met for over 65 years all playing I-just-bought-the-Farmville.

So if 50 is the new 40 and so on, someone has just given us an extra 10 years of life and what have we done with it? We aren’t celebrating that fact, we barely acknowledge it. In fact we seem to be simply taking the opportunity to borrow more and take longer to pay it back. It’s not like ten years is a breeze – you could probably get a low grade murder in and be out with two to spare.

So here’s my question, someone just gave you ten years back, how are you going to spend it?

New season TV in the US

2010-09-22T12:22:00.000Z

Molly & Mike, Hawaii 5-0, Chase, Lone Star

So I watched three of the new arrivals last night. It was quite tough as it turned out.

Molly & Mike, standard sitcom fair. Why don't they learn the lessons of Modern Family - quirky and unpredictable is the way forward. Basically I guess they figured fat people like watching fat people right? A simple demographic decision. For me the Mike (Billy Gardell)is waaaaaay too fat and unattractive. I just wonder what happens when the fat loser jokes run out. Oh my mistake they already did.

Hawaii 5-0. I'll be referring to this show as Hawaii 0-0 in future as frankly there were no winners. Alex O'Loughlin acts as if he's perpetually having his attention grabbed by something ever increasingly macho than the last thing that just grabbed his miniscule attention span. It's hard to work out who H.0-0 is actually for - it's not so much a show for a lost generation, more a generation that never really existed. I wanted Hawaii zero zero to descend to it's natural level, a massive gay-off between McGarrett and Dano. Fucking mindless shit on a nice island with bikini shots.

But not as fucking mindless as Chase. I'll not waste the words. Tough blond U.S Marshall wrestles fugitives. Tommy Lee Jones had better lines, even on his face.

Lone Star. For me the best and the most intriguing show of the season so far. Yes you had to bear with it and show a modicum of intelligence before the true nature of the show was revealed (and I'm not sure it even has been yet). It was nice to see a show that required an attention span greater than Alex O'Loughlin after a night playing Modern Warfare. Good music, not your regular characters and a hint of Mad Men. Three hundred pounds away from Mike & Molly, no make that five.

Pump it up

2010-07-27T09:33:00.003Z

Loving chips, seriously loving chips

2010-07-14T09:34:00.002Z

Chunky chips with curry sauce, can't beat it.

The Lost Monkey and his friends

2010-07-14T09:16:00.001Z

Taken earlier in the year on Brighton Pier, we're going on again on Tuesday for Lola's birthday.

Skies above the Mill

2010-07-13T12:53:00.002Z

Took this at work yesterday morning. Wonderful clouds.

Spit Roast Sisters

2009-11-12T16:57:00.003Z

Yesterday I had a referral from a site called Spit Roast Sisters, either that or someone searching for Spit Roast Sisters found my blog by mistake and was sorely disappointed to read about what I was having for dinner. The thought of someone sat there with a full robot chubby at their computer and landing here seems quite bizarre to me for some reason, but I'll encourage it. So I'm going all our for more Spit Roast Sisters traffic by mentioning Spit Roast Sisters more regularly than I would otherwise mention Spit Roast Sisters. So have you ever searched for Spit Roast Sisters online, or are you yourself a Spit Roast Sister? If so how does that work exactly, do you do the spit roasting or do you take it in turns to be spit roasted. I have a thousand questions and a limited attention span, so keep it short.

Slough beautiful Slough

2009-11-11T16:01:00.002Z

I so want to make one of these - http://testroete.com/index.php?location=head
Lola's hometown continues to provide some gems - http://www.thetimes-tribune.com/news/woman_accused_of_vandalizing_store_fighting_with_cops_in_taylor
Ooh this is quite fun - http://www.incredibox.fr/
Mussels are on sale today I'm informed by Lola. £2.25 in Waitrose. Yum.
Can't decide how to get to Manchester next week, train-car-train-car. Hmmm decisions, decisions

Brand new home

2009-11-09T16:53:00.010Z

We've moved house today from 260 to 264 so just next door really. Our floor is what I'm calling fake grass green. We are almost the only other residents and I feel I want to kick a football around in the empty space and break something valuable. Perhaps I'll just spill a coffee on the carpet for the time being.
There is a large chocolate muffin on my desk in front of me begging me to eat it. I may resist and take home to Lola. I'm sure she'll find that more than acceptable.
I've got my photography talk tonight and I still don't know where to begin. I think I may begin with the magic words, 'The beauty of photography is that you can take a picture of almost absolutely anything you like.' How brilliant is that? I'm starting to seriously worry about it now. I have become a massive fan of William Egglestone as a result.
Phew I think I finally worked out what the hell I'm going to be talking about. The words 'open discussion' were looming large at one point.
I've never had the luxury of working in the office with a visible sunset before. Slough almost looks beautiful. Although it may be the local car fires.

Pub Quizzical

2009-11-06T12:44:00.000Z

1. It’s not the best feeling when everyone tells you that you were steaming the night before and you hadn’t really thought so at the time. I was just having a good time, plus I hadn’t eaten much, plus I was drinking wifebeater.

2. Unbelievably hungry today, I could eat a scabby horse. In fact I just might. Anyone got one?

3. Last night in the WindsorPublicHouse it was the pub quiz. We established that JP’s chosen specialist subject was ‘Which college did Elbow go to?’ The answer is Bury College. You can now challenge JP in his specialist subject since you know now as much as he does on the subject. This morning Lola’s job search promptly spewed up with a Resource Librarian at Bury College. Is it fate that I’m to be re-posted to Bury and more importantly, do they have a Guy Garvey Reading Room?

4. We came second in the pub quiz btw and we didn’t use iPhones as we later found out the winning team did. When you’re playing for £50 or more, this is quite frankly tantamount to embezzlement. Perhaps we’re being naïve and pub quizzes have turned into search engine competitions but if someone said, do you want to come down the pub and see who can find stuff on their iPhone the quickest, you say, no, but I’ll come down the pub, you nonce.

5. I’ve been working on my lecture on Monday night. So far I have three photographers lined up to talk about, Martin Parr, Gregory Crewdson and Jeurgen Teller. The more I research the subject, the more I realise this photography business is all bollocks really.

6. Lola thinks she's blind today, she should borrow some glasses from Councillor Eileen Kinnear.

Chicken and Pears anyone?

2009-11-04T12:00:00.002Z

1. Today I have mustard poisoning, but I survived!
2. I’ve decided that it’s best to forget that I ever smoked at all and adopt the demeanour of a fresh faced Christian. In fact I’m thinking of growing a Ned Flanders’ November ‘tache and saying golly gosh and ooh rather. Perhaps I should give up the crystal meth too come to think of it.
3. At work it seems that next week we’re off to a prison camp. They’ve given us a plastic bag the size of a small cushion to place all our belongings in and a sticker to write our names on. Several people have expressed concern that a couple of people might hang themselves with their own belts in the first week. It’s troubling that a few people have felt a semi sordid pleasure at the new strict behaviour of the guards.
4. Speaking of hanging, Windows 7 seems to do this far too frequently for my liking. But at least it’s doing it politely and kindly looking into the problem for me.
5. Chicken and Pears, cooked by Christopher Walken. Do those three things go together?

2009-11-03T13:12:00.003Z

1. I guess it’s not too late to stump up the first blog post of the year. It’s only November.

2. Not only am I living in a new Underbelly, it’s a Royal Underbelly. If there’s dark deeds to be exposed then they have to be here right?

3. I now have an accomplice, Lola. We’re married she’s from another country altogether and she finds the new Underbelly every bit as weird and exciting as the last.

4. I’ve been encouraging Lola to write her own blog, Stupid England as these seem to be every sixth words out of her mouth. Lola’s current obsessions are finding the right kind of milk/cream to go in her coffee, black mould and CCTV (she’s probably being watched constantly.) Roundabouts are causing her much grief, despite driving over 300 of them on Sunday, Lola has no idea how they work and watching me drive doesn’t provide her with any worthwhile clues.

5. I’m to give a talk on a subject I know very little about next Monday to the Photographic Society. Given that I was as tongue tied as Harvey Price after 4 pints of cider last time, this might prove difficult. The more I think about it the more I think it’s a bad idea. The woman that asked me said she wanted me to talk about Commercial photography versus regular photography. My brain heard, ‘Talk shit for half an hour’. Lola beamed confidence and pride as always. I’m glad she’s one of life’s researchers.

Bingo Balls

2008-03-07T07:50:00.000Z

1. When you're living the dream in bed and breakfast accommodation there's not a great deal to do apart from lying on your bed watching the tellybox. I've never been a great tellybox watcher so when I do I like to watch quality items like Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Virgin 1. Well I would if it was any good. Why is it that any movie adaptation ends up like a mild action version of Dawson's Creek? Take Smallville. Fuck knows how many series of Clarke's sensitivity and Lana's miserable mood swings we had to put up with. Personally I think Clarke should have banged Chloe, Lana, Lex Luther and Lois in one night of ecstasy and coke fuelled excess, taped it and settled in for a good nights telly with the Kents.

2. I'm off to a Tone of Voice workshop this morning. Yeah like I need it...pfft.

3. An Italian girl who is a translator for The Simpsons told me last night that it's probably the most difficult thing she's ever done. It's so culturally specific she said that she can't imagine they even find it funny when it's translated. I asked her if she'd seen the new series and said that it wouldn't make any difference.

4. I've started taking pictures of people around the office. They hate me for it. Ha.

5. I love project meetings for projects that will never happen. It was full of 'lines in the sand', 'opportunities for change', bigtime bullshit bingo basically.

Image courtesy of Gimbulate

What goes around comes around

2008-03-06T10:04:00.000Z

1. Firstly genius headline from the Daily Star today - Harry's Back in Chelsea.

2. New York here I come. I'm starting to get excited, it takes me a while you know.

3. It turns out that my sister has in fact fractured her kneecap rather than torn her cartilage, ouch. No doggy style for a while I guess.

4. Watched the magnificent, Miss Inbetweeny on BBC 3 last night, if you haven't seen it watch it on the BBC iPlayer.

5. My new B&B is rather nice. It's run by Laurent a French fella and he's fastidious. After the first day, he'd worked out and remembered that I don't like tomatoes and he removes the yolk from my eggs. How sweet.

LINK: Who can blame them?

2008-02-27T16:54:00.001Z

Given the amount of paperwork the Police have to do combined with the amount of crime in Newport, who the fuck can blame these guys for wanting to get some sea air. If they'd have kidnapped a couple of Duffryn car thieves in the back it would have probably been classed as a Community service order or some such. Personally I think showing the ambition and skill to get as far away from Newport as physically possible shows courage and social progress. I'm glad they've resigned, perhaps they'll make the full step of moving out of the area and moving on with their lives.

Harvest Moonie

2008-02-27T09:17:00.000Z

1. The first big dump of the day has given me time to reflect upon last night's culinary affair. The Dumb Bell could not be a more fitting description of a 'restaurant' so steeped in the smell of mildew, a teenage athlete sat on a mountain of damp towels would be appalled. I could only assume the place had been flooded in the past month. When I asked, I was told, 'You get used to it.' I'm sure you can also get used to syphilis but I'd choose not to. Now I'll state clearly that I didn't expect much but in my mind I had a semi-romantic notion of eating in Pottery Barn, not eating in a run down farm on the outskirts of Phnom Penn. I remember visiting a Harvester years ago, and they actually said it,'Have you ever been to a Harvester before.' It added tiny unique value, but you associated the phrase with the salad cart. Ah yes the salad cart, picture it now and you'll think of The Haywain by Constable and every harvest festival you're childhood can conjure, minus the tins of out of date kidney beans naturally. In forty minutes, a restaurant of maybe 50 salad dodging British diners did exactly that. To be fair, a chef (or someone dressed in white for the occasion), popped out to blow the dust off some tomatoes and turn over the darkened salad leaves. In the past the 'Have you been to a Harvester' routine was quickly followed by an introduction to the salad cart. Perhaps in the 80's when Harvesters appeared, this felt more like an invitation to slit your own throat but in today's health conscious Britain, surely they should be queuing up? Partly the problem lies with the menu, some meals state you have access to the compost heap and others don't, resulting in sublime confusion for the diner. Things didn't get much better when my own meal arrived. When asked when I wanted some sauces, the waiter leaned over to the adjacent table where an entire family had just finished eating and snatched their used and overflowing rack of sauces off their table and deposited it on mine. Naturally I didn't go near the horror, but the same waiter was quick to pass on the same rack to the next unfortunate table. Part way through the meal, I noticed some commotion at the front of the restaurant and as I paid, I asked what the problem had been.
"Some woman tried to do a runner."
"It's hardly any surprise." I replied.

The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.

2008-02-26T13:15:00.000Z

1. I'm feeling full of dough and starved of adventure.

2. The new trousers are proving a success.

3. I'm writing an article on Napster, I was gonna call it 'More tracks than Amy Winehouse', but I resisted.

4. Is it wrong to go to a harvester? http://www.harvester.co.uk/the-earlybird.html - The original spit roast, count me in! I'm emailing them now.

5. One day I'll tell you about my night out with the Bafta Award winning Ross Kemp, to give him his full name.

6. Dear Harvester,

I'm interested in bringing my girlfriend to your restaurant. She's a great fan of your spitroast and has mentioned on several previous occasions that your kitchen staff did a marvellous job filling her up. She did mention that the dips she was offered were somewhat salty but that once she had a few mouthfuls inside her, she'd got used to it. Anyway, my good people, any chance of a table and a decent spitroast at 7pm on Wednesday?

Yours Ever-Roastingly

Timothy Arbuckle III

7. I might as well make a Harvester prediction now.
i. The service will be dreadful.
ii. The food whilst plentiful, will be poor quality
iii. I will respond to the question 'Have you been to a Harvester before, with 'Yes, but it was dreadful, I hope you can do better.

It's a little bit funny...or not

2008-02-25T12:23:00.000Z

1. I am evil. I am sorry I am evil. Grrrr me.

2. My sister said to me yesterday that in my car I have a Magic Tree and a tax disc in a funny position on my windscreen, just like serial squirrel Steven Wright. It's good to see that family members already have their suspicions.

3. Preparation for my interview on Friday seems to be progressing well, apart from forgetting my suit that is...oops. I could just wear jeans...Mental note: No Swearing.

4. I think sending Christian e-cards to my friends might become my new hobby.

5. Hmmm Chez Gerards this evening or a cheapo Sainsburys carb burn? It's a toughy.

6. Should I get the job, I've almost definitely decided that I shall live in London, Ealing probably. I mean seeing as London is the best place to live on earth right now and it's at it's cultural peak, I'd be bloody daft not to I reckon, I mean what's going on in Maidenhead?

Pushing Back

2008-02-21T12:27:00.004Z

Following on from the excellent 'We are where we are' I now bring you the 'Push back'. When written it sounds like a toilet muscle strain but is in reality a great way of calling some one a difficult bastard or bigging yourself up.

Here's an example:

MIKE: Does Tony agree with the new company strategy?
STEVE: He's pushing back on aspects of our new customer brand promise thingy
MIKE: Really? I thought we had him on board? How hard is he pushing?
STEVE: Very, I mean it's his baby
MIKE: Bastard

Alternatively it's a way of making yourself look harder than you are in reality.

BOSS: How goes the creative for the new book?
ME: The design company told me the this morning that the concept had 'moved on'
BOSS: That doesn't sound good, what did you do?
ME: I pushed back pretty hard
BOSS: How hard?
ME: Pretty damn hard actually
BOSS: You're a bastard but I like you

Picture by Zoester

40 days and 40 nights

2008-02-20T11:37:00.000Z

1. Yes it's a biblical time line and it co-incidentally it's the amount of time that this company takes to pay it's external suppliers. That's poor, especially for contractors who still need to get paid.

2. Things are calmer today, although I am waiting for the Director from hell to do his first presentation and I'm pretty sure he'll be a total cock about it. Who do these people think they are? Eh? Eh?

3. It's quite depressing to think I might not be working here for much longer. I can't imagine what it's gonna be like to go home and walk the dog for a living. Sigh.Although I've just had a conversation with someone who said, 'my guess is that you'll still be here in the Summer. Contractors never leave.' Hmmm, not sure about that.

4. Finally, I get to go to the States, I'm rather excited. I'm busy doing extra research on top of my researcher's research. I'm not convinced she's a proper researcher anyhow. *ducks*.

5. Well everything for the moment is going swimmingly, until the next disaster that is.

6. There is nothing funnier than an ecstatically happy German man although it does leave you wondering why he's so happy and why you find it funny.

7. Retail therapy, that's what I need. In particular a new red shirt.

8. Right I'm just burning time and energy. Blog off!

We are where we are....

2008-02-19T11:29:00.000Z

1. Well we are where we are. Nice isn't it? Six words that mean, yeah we've totally fucked up but what you gonna do about it? It absolves blame, mainly from yourself and your friends, it moves you on to the next action and into the 'lets learn from this' whilst you quietly ignore the issue and brush it under the rug. Genius.

2. I can't face another night of inactivity. Perhaps I'll go swimming in the Thames, drunk.

3. OMG I just went white when I realised I might have done something extremely career limiting, but I hadn't. It still might. I should keep notes.

4. I'm going to be so glad when this day is over. It's just one nightmare after another. Who'd be a project manager? You know people projects are the worst, give me a massive and unwieldy computer system to overhaul every time.

5. Apparently I've been holding it together alright. Thanks boss, just as I thought everything was about to cave in on my mooey.

6. Mountains, mole hills and treading carefully over them. Why did no-one give me these life instructions earlier damn you?

7. We can't come up with a decent name for the in-house magazine. All mine were rejected on the grounds of being too filthy or legally dubious. Any suggestions for whacky inhouse mobile phone mags, leave a comment.

8. I feel like I might have earnt my money today (for once, some might say).

9. I'm hungry I need something tasty.

10. It's 7pm. I'm going home. We are where we are.

Curl up and Die

2008-02-14T09:08:00.000Z

1. Soooooo tired. Didn't manage to make it out the office until 12.30am last night, a new record. Nothing like a 15.5 hour day is there? By the time we got home it was about 1.20. Pizza, bed, death and morning. Arrggh. I'm back here at my desk. It's early. Still...$$$$$$$$$...Cha ching.

2. I think I might treat myself tonight with some luxury. Mmmm Travelodge. The thing is that hotel rooms are just the same as each other regardless of the price or the location. You turn up in the dark, you wake in the dark. I do not care for their ornamental gardens, or the lakeside vista. A room is a bed and somewhere to shit in private. Yeah ok, just looked at the prices, no I wont.

3. Damn I need a holiday.

4. Getting a bit sick of powerpoint now to be honest. It is great though.

5. I've been here 2 hours and managed to do nothing. My mind is blank as is my conscience.

6. I'm wondering if Lola can do some rude word sweets. I bet she can.

7. Tonight I have promised myself cow. Alot of cow. Yesterday I was a falafel and beancurd vegetarian. Today I stink. Hello world.

8. I was just walking along and realised that my head physically couldn't get any lower. Lol.

9. It would seem that the old adage remains. People are stupid until they repeatedly prove themselves otherwise. Sigh.

10. Some great Valentines cards

An Arm and a Leg

2008-02-13T09:12:00.000Z

1. Heather Mills you've got it wrong. You say that you're leaving the UK because everyone hates you. This isn't strictly true Heather. The fact is that no-one actively likes you. What have you done to endear us to your heart lately and what was it that you ever did anyway? Showed the world your tits and growler, had an accident, became a martyr, a Diana lookalikey without the gravitas, and then batted your eyelids at a billionaire grieving pensioner who should have known better. Anna Nicole Smith would be proud of you. We didn't like her much either, see ya.
2. Phew. I'm recovering from a night which largely involved me being horizontal, eating sushi and falafels and inadvertently inventing new cocktails. I'd failed to finish my bottle of organic cider and begun on my can of Gordon's Gin and Tonic. Halfway through the G&T I realised my error and accidentally combined the two. Surprisingly it tasted less like the leftovers you'd find on your coffee table in the morning after a hideous house party and more like and extraordinary cocktail. Here I shall name it....The CG&T, the Cider Gin and Tonic. It has a certain ring to it, like the word wino.

3. My god, the falafels are kicking in. I have to run.

4. I'm not sure I agree with the cross pollination of tv shows. Last night there was an utterly awful CSI/Missing crossover. Grisholm and the other fella we don't care about from Missing, circled each other like a snowy owl circles a komodo dragon, each thinking, wtf is going on and who's bad idea was this? Owls, I know they're bastards.

5. Grrr don't send me back emails saying simply 'thanks' or I'll send you one back saying 'that's alright.'

6. It's quiet in the office today, everyone is up North until tomorrow. I sense a quiet before the shit storm.

7. And it begins. Our legal department stupidly think they have some creative influence. I quote.The white lines used on the front/back cover are rigidly straight; elsewhere inside the booklet they are curved. Is there any specific rationale for this difference? What the fuck do you care? Is this a coke thing? Next and this one is great. The colour of the flower is a concern - please confirm who in brand has approved this. Get over it, it's a flower, oh I get it, its an acid thing. Pricks.

8. Why do I get the feeling there is something I should be doing? I'm a liability when I'm left on my own. *Taps fingers*.

9. Clearly Mills is leaving for tax reasons as well.

10. This warms my heart - http://dlisted.com/node/23459
I just think she might have done a little better for herself.

Violent youth gives Daily Mail editor a good kicking

2008-02-12T13:54:00.000Z

Welcome back to me. I thought I'd relaunch the old ten point blog.

1. A return to the corporate life has meant I've had to curb my enthusiasm and language. It always amazes me how easily people are offended. So for the record, Slough is a shit-hole regardless of how many of you live there. The PR girl has an ass to die for, she knows it, you know it, I know it, lets share it.

2. Two waitresses, one with very bad breath, in Zizzi's, in Marlow both came over and asked me if I'd already eaten my pizza worryingly 10 minutes after I'd ordered it. 'Does it look like it?' I said eyeing my unused cutlery. When the calzone finally arrived, it was extremely tasty, so much so that I took a card and expect to order takeaway later in the week.

3. I have an idea that I want to go snowboarding.

4. Regardless of the dumb things he does, Ken Livingstone is a man of action.

5. Social networking sites are doomed according to those in the know. Poor selling opportunities, hardly any cross over, niche behaviour that people will get bored with. Facebook, 3 years life left max.

6. I'm hoping that I didn't cause Roy Scheider's death. What if he made some crazy pact with satan that if 300 million people watched Jaws and then he would die? I watched it the day before he died. It's class.

7. I'm really getting into soup. It always surprises me that Lentil and Bacon is so dark sometimes.

8. We were going to put on bottled water and popcorn for the masses. The bill...15k, they'll just have to whistle and chew gum.

9. Bad copy of the day - Caution - the beverage you are about to enjoy is extremely hot.

10. My current disregard for getting things signed off before sending them to print is frightenexcitening.

Climb Every Mountain

2007-05-02T09:40:00.000Z

My sister Laura and her colleague Michelle are trekking in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco to raise funds for the Marie Curie Hospice in Penarth near Cardiff.

They'd love your support so please visit their site.

http://www.justgiving.com/michelleandlaura

Horoscopes Day 4

2007-02-22T11:35:00.000Z

Read Thursday's Horoscope analysis

Today's Mumbo Jumbo

2007-02-21T14:20:00.000Z

According to Mystic Meg

“Instead of feeling you are just marking time; your love life is ready to race into action. Find time to call a relative who is on your mind.”

I know I live near the Forest of Dean but to suggest that is outrageous. I’m phoning the police.

According to Marjory Orr

“You may find yourself involved in noisy confrontations with family members or close companions with angry comments flying through the air.”

Yeah? Well go figure.
Read More

Bright Spark

2007-02-20T16:37:00.000Z

Go here, do everything he says.

Today's Horrorscopes

2007-02-20T14:10:00.000Z

Why don’t just I ring up my regular string quartet and hire a Lear jet to see La Traviata in Rome this evening with a prostitute I may or may not eventually fall in love with?
Read More

My Horoscopes

2007-02-19T17:40:00.000Z

She’s tricky, the old septic peg since she flatters the reader. She’s given me nigh on wizard powers today with the ability to read minds but only of older people and employers which is a bit limiting to tell you the truth. Wouldn’t it be better if she could give me the ability to be invisible? Read More

Bogged Down In Blogging

2007-02-19T12:26:00.000Z

Jealous moi? Nooo. When a bored housewife gets a £70k advance for her daily musings, we must surely be at the height of the popularity of blogging. This probably isn’t the largest amount given to a blogger but I’m sure there are major publishers out there who are employing people to sift through blogs finding the most interesting cash cows. If that is the case talent spotters, I’d direct you to a fabulous tale of mystery and intrigue at www.darkbelly.blogspot.com

Watching a documentary entitled The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain, I wondered what if anything might have happened if Kurt had blogged regularly. Clearly being a chronic heroin addict would have got in the way of him turning on a computer, let alone constructing any worthwhile thoughts should he have got that far. But if he’d managed to get a Speak ‘n’ Spell machine to allow him to blog, would have thousands of online fans been worried enough to intervene or would they have simply watched the car crash in real time? I thought as much." Read More

A menace to science | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

2007-02-12T14:01:00.000Z

Marvellous, Gillian McKeith is no longer a doctor. Well done to everyone involved, except Gillian that is.

Visit www.dogfrog.co.uk

Boozeberry

2007-02-05T17:05:00.000Z

There are alot of reasons for staying in on a weekend to watch celebrity ice skating whilst drinking bleach and slashing your wrists with a rusty kitchen knife. Driving your drunk friends around is perhaps one of the best. I'm coming to believe that the words 'actually I think I'm gonna drive' is an ancient gypsy curse. You'll find yourself saying them roughly every two or three years when you've either been put on a course of anti-biotics, you're absolutely brassic or you had so much booze in the previous three days, you can't face another drink but you've got to go because you feel socially obliged. Either way you will need to have forgotten how bad it was last time you drove your drunk friends home or else you'd never do it again.Read More

FOXNews.com - N.J. Warns Hunters Not to Eat Squirrel Meat Possibly Contaminated by Toxic Dump

2007-01-26T10:15:00.000Z

You see, just when you thought that Fox News was horse shit, they come up with a classic. I think you must have to go on a special Fox News journalism course to be able to write with a broom up your arse. Apart from being a MurdochSatan production, which is bad enough in itself, the spin that it puts on things is sublime. I have a new slogan for them if their interested Fox News, fucks news.

Hitwoman or Albatross?

2007-01-25T10:22:00.000Z

FOXNews.com - Brandy Involved in Fatal Car Accident

So basically she killed someone because she wasn't looking where she was going. Nice. Albatross, or a hitwoman you decide.

dogfrog and the underbelly

2007-01-22T13:47:00.000Z

dogfrog and the underbelly:

New Article: Japan vs. the West. No Contest

It’s a fact that the West ignores Japan on any meaningful cultural or intellectual level. Instead we prefer to wallow with Tarrant in their wacky game shows (that are virtually unheard of over there) and their seemingly fetishistic behaviours. We also steal all Japan’s best ideas for ourselves. One thing the West cannot steal or replicate authentically are Japanese video games. Colour, innovation, surrealism, imagination, dodgy plots and power ups. Video gaming is the one area of Japanese culture that has done its best to seep into the bland underbelly of Western culture and Japan's most important contribution to video gaming is their ability to subvert the linear Western narrative. Read More

What I Did Over Christmas Vacation « Miss(ed) Manners

2007-01-19T15:09:00.000Z

What I Did Over Christmas Vacation « Miss(ed) Manners

Clearly someone with far too much time on their hands. I'm gonna start building a mashed potato mountain in the living room this afternoon.

Tissues and Lies

2007-01-18T11:51:00.000Z

There’s this guy. I don’t particularly like him and I’m not usually the kind of person who goes round not liking people. He used to live next-door-but-one before I moved. The neighbours used to tell us never to let him into your house because he would, on occasion, remove his trousers. He also had a penchant for going into people’s back gardens, a peeping tom thing I guess. What is a contributory factor in the off-puttingness about this man is the Mark Lamarr, fifties throwback look; the greased quiff – always a winner if you need a look for a bad guy in a British drama: see Little Voice, Wish You Were Here. The man’s reputation was sealed in my mind however when I pulled up behind his Rover in the supermarket car park. He had a box of tissues on the back parcel shelf. I’ll admit it’s not a massive crime and those embossed gold ones you often see on the back of city centre taxi cabs are the essence of high cool. But when you have a box of man-size tissues near your back seat, what signals is this really sending out and what sort of passengers is he carrying? I’ll leave the rest to your imagination. If you’re that concerned about people making a mess in the back of your Rover, don’t let them eat sausage rolls.

dogfrog and the underbelly

2007-01-15T14:48:00.000Z

dogfrog and the underbelly

I have decided to go it alone as it were. I've carefully crafted my own blogspace at www.dogfrog.co.uk/pages/blog.htm so I can have more control really. Well we'll see, perhaps it'll amount to far too much effort and I'll go back to Blogger. Perhaps I'll even dual blog for a while. Hmmm, should really consider getting a proper job....

df

All Bets Are On

2007-01-12T15:51:00.000Z

Right I've just discovered I have £6 in my online Ladbrokes account and I've decided to place a bet on something spurious. Any ideas folks?

Explosion Oui?

2007-01-11T22:54:00.000Z

Tonight there is a 3,000 tonne tanker drifting towards an oil rig in the North Sea. Seeing as everyone has been hauled to safety I think it’s in everyone’s interests that there’s a fucking massive explosion that you can see from space and someone films it without getting their eyebrows singed. Bugger, they’ve re-started the engines now.
The storms here are really depressing. 70mph winds last night that woke me up in the middle of a top dream about trees.
David Beckham. How does it feel to know that your only role in life is to be a vacuous living brand? Now he seems to have given up competitive football, what is he for? I think I made this point ages ago, but what are these multi-millionaire football fuckwits gonna do when they retire. Hopefully they’ll all be shipped off to an island like in The Prisoner.

BECKHAM: I am not a number!
LAMPARD: Yeah you are Dave, you’re number 9. On me head son.

Being a living brand, does DB have to edit his own copy as it comes out of his mouth in case he says something off-brand? All modern celebrity is about being a brand or more to the point a bland brand. That’s why Amy Winehouse is such a fakkin’ larf.

Watched Tony Scott’s Man on Fire with Denzel Washington the other day. Not going to write a review as I’m oft tempted to since whilst the movie was entertaining enough, it was barely worthy of comment. In the commentary, Scott says he didn’t go for the violent justice ending since he didn’t want the movie to turn into a violent action movie. Hmmm, did that thought occur to you as Denzel’s character said that magic cliché “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”?
I don’t worry about this sort of stuff, but you might. Can you catch Salmonella simply by handling chicken? Find out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbhealth/F2671774?thread=3789262
Must have missed this artist, Mark Ryden the first time round. Spooky, creepy, brilliant. http://www.markryden.com/index.html
That’s yer lot.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Singer Preston storms off TV quiz

2007-01-11T20:38:00.000Z

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Singer Preston storms off TV quiz:

Can't wait to see that, I can't stand humourless little fucks like him but for some reason I can abide Simon Amstell. Ho hum.

Flickr: Photos from dogfrog

2007-01-10T18:24:00.000Z

Lots of new photos at
Flickr: Photos from dogfrog

Maya archaeologist Elizabeth Graham on Apocalypto | | Guardian Unlimited Arts

2007-01-09T23:58:00.000Z

Maya archaeologist Elizabeth Graham on Apocalypto | | Guardian Unlimited Arts

Mel Gibson in altering history for his own ends shocker!! Read the article, there's really nothing more to add. Really what does a man have to do to get blackballed these days?

Rant: Cheapness Has A Price

2007-01-09T23:41:00.000Z

The vast quantities of cheap imported goods mainly from China is all well and good but there I was stood at the head of a large queue today in an utterly unmentionable shop in Newport this afternoon. I'd seen some mugs that I thought I'd buy for my mum. £4 for 6 top quality boxed mugs (I should have seen this coming). "There's no barcode on these." The woman behind the till barked and I ran over and got one of the loose mugs complete with barcode whilst the rest of the queue tutted and shuffled around. It didn't scan. She went herself and got another two. They didn't scan. Another huge sigh of disappointment from the queue. She put out a call for another shop assistant to deal with the ever lengthening hissing snake behind me. "Look I said, it's really no big deal." She insisted it was. "They were scanning yesterday." The girl arrived and the woman disappeared up the tat laden warehouse in search of further assistance. She returned with a woman who merely picked up two more mugs which also failed to scan. Why does that happen so often? People ask for help and when it arrives, it does exactly the same thing and says, "Well I don't know." I'd resigned myself to persist now I'd been there so long. I was feeling hungry. "I'll need to ring one of the managers upstairs." She put the phone down as if she'd disturbed a hibernating grizzly. "I'll have to ring head office." Now I was finally getting somewhere, attempt to buy six mugs from these people and in 10 minutes I was dealing with head office, give me half an hour and I'd be dining out with the CEO. And then she said, "There's no-one there, could you come back say at the weekend?" I smiled and said "Couldn't I just give you £4 and leave with the mugs?" Why even bother calling yourself a shop if you can't sell things to people who are waving money at you? It dawned on me that the amount of effort she'd gone to and the number of people she'd engaged so that I could have my mugs must have cost more than the mugs. In the end her badge which said Retail Assistant was clearly a misnomer. She couldn't sell me anything despite the fact I showed her the shiny-shiny and she was ultimately no help. I looked back at the tat laden queue as I trudged out defeated; they'd stopped hissing and I detected a faint note of sympathy. I mean what sort of person can walk into a shop where the majority of items on display are less than a couple of quid and leaves with nothing?

Fat Fighters

2007-01-09T11:38:00.000Z

My mum's gone off to Fat Fighters this morning and she's been gone nearly an hour. Ironically it's held in a leisure centre. Hopefully they'll have had them all sat around in a circle and someone will have come in and said, 'Look will you just follow me.' They will all of been led to the expensive and dusty exercise equipment lying dormant in the basement of the leisure centre. 'You can either spend two hours upstairs, being lied to by a woman paid to sell food to you or you could spend that time actually losing the weight. Whaddya say?' The truth is that 90% of them will wander back upstairs because what they're really after is a nice cuppa tea, a chat and the recognition that there are fatter and uglier people in the world than them. And who can blame them?

Comment: A Perfectly English Malaise: Is it any wonder we can’t be bothered?

2007-01-08T13:14:00.000Z

Last Wednesday (3^rd Jan), the press was full of the horrors of sickie Britain. Tumbleweed bowled across empty streets in cities across the country as if simultaneous dirty bombs had gone off on New Years Eve. So what was the cause of this mass apathy? (massapathy?) There are clearly two reasons, one of which is the eternal deluge of rain but combined with the other two, there’s a good chance we’ll never leave the house again.

I have a friend, the epitome of 2K man, wealthy, converted property owner, dog owner, and above all one of life’s uber-shoppers. No, you won’t find any value brands in his house just ‘quality’ merchandise. He is strong in his belief that we are currently at the pinnacle of mankind’s shopping experience and he is determined to make the most of it. When else in an Englishman’s history have you been able to buy items from all the way around the world at such cheap prices? To him it is a near nirvana. And it’s true things are devastatingly cheap if you know where to look and you know what you want. Everything is pouring out of China faster than they can make the stuff and it makes you wonder whether there will come a point where no one will need another thing ever again. What will happen then? Well we’ll probably invent some even more pointless stuff.

When the shops and bellies are full with things so cheap, it’s no wonder the incentive to go to spend eight hours a day in the office seems about as appetizing as another Christmas dinner on Boxing Day. It’s a worry when an economy is ever so slightly successful and the first reactions of its citizen’s is: I can’t be bothered to do anything, and I certainly am not prepared to do a job the Eastern European labour force might consider doing. Come to think of it I suspect all this laurel resting is probably the same malaise that infected the English cricket side this summer and just as hard as it is to see them picking themselves up soon, it’s hard to see anyone else in this country attempting anything resembling work before April. Let’s just hope we don’t have a recession.

Review: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

2007-01-06T11:45:00.000Z

Review: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) – Directed by Tom Tywker

Length: 147 minutes

Starring: Ben Whishaw, Alan Rickman, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Dustin Hoffman

The thing about smell is that it’s all about language and memory. Perfume feels like it should belong to the school of magic realism, but it disappointingly fails to be as fantastical as it could be. One of the ironies about smell is that it takes language to describe it, something that the anti-hero Grenouille (Ben Whishaw), lacks and attempts to make up for by bottling every scent in the world. As for the link between memory and smell, Perfume wastes this opportunity at every turn.

When I hear the gravelled tones of John Hurt at the beginning of a movie, my brain begins a ten minute melt down from which I rarely recover. In the case of Perfume my recovery was not forthcoming. Grenouille is born literally into the blood and guts of a Paris fish market with an extraordinary talent – an amazing sense of smell. An encounter with a street woman leads to the belief that he needs to bottle the scent of a woman and he takes instruction from the perfumier, Baldini (Dustin Hoffman). When Grenouille realises he has learnt all that he can learn, he travels to the country where he perfects his scent capturing techniques and sets about his murderous designs.

All the performances are exacting and even the standard Rickman performance holds up. Frustratingly, Perfume is interrupted by Hurt’s needless narration. Movies that require narration are generally fairy tales, or in instances where a story teller is used as part of the plot. The movie only really gains pace in the last third when Grenouille begins his murderous path in earnest but strangely as this begins to happen, the film’s focus is switched from him, to the towns-people’s search for him as a killer and in particular Rickman and his daughter Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood).

Put quite simply, if Perfume had shown a little more humour, been a little more circumspect and creative, ditched the frightfully dumb John Hurt narration and been made in French, we’d all be shouting it’s name from the trees. A missed opportunity.

Review: Pan's Labyrinth

2007-01-05T15:34:00.000Z

Early in Guillermo del Toro’s latest dark exploration of the Spanish Civil War, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a young girl asks the matron of the house Mercedes(Maribel Verdú) whether she believes in fairies. Her answer is simply no.

The heroine Ofelia has journeyed deep into the forest with her pregnant mother to meet her garrisoned stepfather, the time obsessed, fascist army captain (Sergi López). Unbeknownst to the genocidal captain, his household has been infiltrated by the leftist resistance. Ofelia soon discovers this and is soon naturally siding with one of the infiltrators, Mercedes. The tense backdrop of violence, secrecy and intrigue is the perfect counterpart to the more fantastic aspect of Pan’s Labyrinth. On her arrival, Ofelia discovers an ancient labyrinth not far from the house and soon she is faced with a new acquaintance, Pan (Doug Jones), a faun who sets her tasks and makes her magical promises. Ofelia’s tasks are caked in blood, mud and dirt, foul insects and heart-stopping danger, but as wincing as her trials are, the real life dangers posed by her stepfather and his troops somehow exceeds all of this.

Nothing compels like the duality of emotions and Del Toro manages to an extent to capture the divisive destruction that only a civil war can bring in a fairytale. Ofelia finds herself torn between what she should and shouldn’t do, between a brutal reality and sick fantasy whilst Del Toro never misses and opportunity to squeeze an emotion from the viewer whether it’s a squeamishness, anger or disappointment. Pan’s Labyrinth as a fairytale is told efficiently and its effects are exquisite. Cinematically, Del Toro is never afraid of using the dark or bringing his skills from other genres to new ones and in this case he’s brought some clearly benefits from Hellboy.

There have been suspicions that the film is too lavishly grotesque for children and possibly too simplistic for adults and to an extent this is true which does beg the question, who is this movie for? Labyrinth also sends a confusing moral message through Ofelia who is at heart disobedient not only to her stepfather but also to Pan. If Ofelia is political symbol of the leftist resistance, then the message is clear: that we can only ever choose one version of authority over another. If this is true then the aftertaste is bitterly dystopic.

Perhaps the film achieves what all good fairytales do in the end, but as magical as it the story is to watch, you do wonder if this is a fairytale you could ever tell your children and surely isn’t that the point of fairytales?

Dogfrog's New Webspace

2006-12-19T23:26:00.000Z

www.dogfrog.co.uk

Check it out

2006-08-22T08:53:00.000Z

Dogfrog's Myspace page

plus

Dogfrog's Flickr page

Doctors and Nurses

2006-04-10T12:55:00.000Z

DOCTOR: How’s he doing?

NURSE: He’s weak.

DOCTOR: Where did they find him?

NURSE #2: In the river, they thought he was dead.

DOCTOR: What’s that stuff all over him?

NURSE: Dye, we think. It won’t come off either way.

DOCTOR: Have you tried Swarfega?

NURSE: Perhaps you’d like us to burn it off?

DOCTOR: No need to be sarky.

NURSE: Aren’t you going to shine a pen torch in his eyes?

DOCTOR: Good idea, perhaps you could take his pulse.

NURSE #2: Is he going to make it?

DOCTOR: I don’t know.

NURSE: You’re not really a doctor are you?

RAY: No. Look at the monkey. Points left, exits right.

Stokes and Osgood 1976

2006-03-03T09:42:00.000Z

Do you know the way to Guantanamo Bay?

2006-02-17T11:49:00.000Z

My hood was removed and the harsh morning sunlight began its slow burn of the dust and filth of my partially clothed body. I was in a wet cellar; I could taste the tuberculosis. I squinted as the blurry amorphous shape above me paced in heels on a stone floor with an unexpected malice. The shape became sharper and the colours stopped bleeding together and slowly a face and a hairdoo emerged from the glare. My hands were still tied behind my back and my ankles bound.

"Trudie?"

"Reports of my death and all that..." She was dressed for extreme bondage, there was no doubt. Her hair was chopped and dyed black and she wore a beautiful cliche - the black leather bodice, the heels and the fishnets. Personally I thought the riding crop was just gilding the lily. It's fair to say that I've never really been in touch with 'my pain' and so the thought of being chained to the ceiling by my nipples has never been high on my list of things to do before I die. Trudie smacked the crop against her own thigh.

"I never believed them."

"You started them."

"Ok, you got me there, but you have to admit, it wasn't looking good for a while."
"You just haven't understood all along have you?"

"Well I can't deny that."

"All those warnings, those attempts on your life, I can't work out whether you're mildly stupid or too stoned to care. Don't worry I'm going to leave you to think about things for a while and perhaps you'll have a things straight in a few days and remember, things don't have to be like this, they really don't." Trudie made to leave.

"Just one thing." I called after her and she stopped with the cellar door half open.

"Go ahead."

"You'd make a great magician's assistant."

"See you in a couple of days, let's hope there's not a high tide eh?" And with that, Trudie slammed the door shut.

“So theys bin trying to kill you toos.” A strange lisped voice came from behind me. I wriggled round in the mud and slime of the cellar floor. I turned to see a barred half-moon grate in the floor of the cellar. A small face shone through the gloom. I had to look twice and that still wasn’t enough. Ben appeared to be

“This might seem like two stupid questions but where am I and what are you?”

“Yous is in the cellar of the wine warehouse down on the river. I swims up here from times to times to sees whats theys is up toos and I’s your next door neighbour back home.”

“You’re Ben?”

“I am Ben the fishboy.” It was true. Ben’s lower half below his barrel chest and muscular forearms resembled a mud flipper. He didn’t even have the luxury of being half seal. On the upside, it meant he could fish shopping trolleys out of the foul mud of the estuary banks with ease. “And that over there,” Ben nodded to the far wall of the cellar, “Is Karl, Mr Konstantin’s son.” I struggled round one more time to see the skeleton of a man, handcuffed to a steel loop on the wall. His feet were bound and on his wrist a digital watch cast a bright reflection on the curved cellar ceiling. I was debating whether the sight made me feel ill given that some skin and hair remained dotted randomly around his parts when the alarm on his watch sounded.

“Now that’s gonna get annoying,” said Ben the fishboy.

Sackcloth and Fag Ash

2006-02-06T22:35:00.000Z

If two men burst into your house in the middle of the day wearing balaclavas, the first thing you should invariably do is look at their shoes. This has two benefits. Firstly by lowering your head, you are protecting the most vulnerable parts of your body, your eyes and your throat. Secondly you might recognize the footwear of your assailants as they place a large sackcloth over your head and bundle you into an awaiting vehicle. Next if you can try and recognize the chugging noise of a VW Campervan that you’ve spent a good deal of time in over the last year, then try and kid yourself that your two best friends are kidnapping for a really good reason. I couldn’t think of one, such was my state.

The last two months had been hell. I'd invested in a dirty washing up bowl full of guilt. No I hadn't converted to Catholicism. I'd given up on my oral tobacco fixation. The only way I was able to achieve this monstrous feat is to con myself into feeling like the biggest cunt on the planet should I buckle and smoke an actual cigarette. The thought of waking up in the morning, no matter how many episodes of the Shitford Files I appeared in the previous night, and realising that I ingested a lorry load of Phillip Morris lung candy, frankly is more than I could take. How long had it been four maybe five maybe six weeks, I couldn't tell, perhaps I didn't give a fuck anymore. I'd got to that stage where even if so much as a twelve year old girl passed me in the street smoking a fag, I'd be likely to twist her fingers off and stub the bastard out on her cheek. If Bill Hicks were still alive, I'd have fucked him in the ass and tell him where to stick his fags. I wonder if he really felt a bit of a twat at the end? So I was over the cigs, but I was unhealthy, angry and unpleasant. Either way it got me thinking. Guilt might finally be a useful emotion in my battle to final achieve full human status (it was a long shot I know.) What if I used this new found guilt emotion to achieve some lasting stability in my life, form empathetic relationships with other humans? What if I could feel guilty when I failed to listen to someone right the way through to the end of their sentence? What if I began to feel bad about my disastrous lack of sensitivity? The more I thought about it the crazier it sounded and the more it sounded like it just might work. Right then the phone went and instinctively I picked it up regretting it instantly. It was my sister. "What do you want?" I vaguely remember saying. I hadn’t spoken to her for a year and instantly she hung up like a needy thing. Right before I went to get up to go to the bathroom, I stopped myself. I should feel guiltier about my appalling phone etiquette or at least get someone or some software to field my calls. Surely it's better to be permanently unavailable than permanently rude. I would have to address this.

In the last month since my cravings began, I hadn't left the house. I'd refused to communicate with anyone unless they'd had a computer and a broadband connection. My mother was on dial up, bitch. This communicative restriction proved easy enough to begin with. The local supermarket delivered all the items I previously had to go out for. The curry houses all delivered via Instant Madrassenger as I called it. My jokes were getting appalling and I had a string of Eastern European honeys ready to pee on demand via webcam. I had reached my filthy zenith.

It had all started the day after all that nasty business at the club I'd calculated that on the previous evening I must have smoked more cigarettes than my grandfather did in the entire war. I lay in bed looking forward to a life of emphysema. The battery in my phone had died, the credit had run out. I leant over the side of my bed in my cattle shed room and looked Zac in the eyes; he was as weary as me. "Get me a fucking gun and I'll do us both a favour." He looked at me in disgust and left the room to lick his balls. And for the next month inside was where I stayed, between my bed and my computer, between the fridge and the television. Helen the widow next door neighbour goes out walking with Zac most days, so that was covered off and I’ve just been ignoring the phone and the front door bell. Frankly I’m surprised a dumb young constable hasn’t kicked in my front door in attempt to throw up at the feet of my leathery flyblown corpse. But that’s typical me, wallowing in the martyrdom of a lack of attention (there I go again.)

And now I've been kidnapped and I’m bouncing around in the back of Ray’s van like something he pulled out the river. Marvellous. I’m never gonna trust Ray and Mike to do another job for me again, not even if it’s just a mild favour. Amateur doesn’t really cover it. I’m mean I don’t even care whether they had good intentions, their execution sucks and blows at the same time. Anyway we’ll see what they have in store when they get me to where we’re going and untie me. I can’t believe I can actually hear their voices, they’re talking about Beth. Fucking cripples.

Caption competition...

2005-10-24T13:29:00.000Z

2005-10-02T12:01:00.000Z

"I've given up fighting." Tim - Friday.

Hear Dogfrog Bark

2005-09-26T10:31:00.000Z

I have recently created audio versions of four poems complete with musical soundtracks (sic)

Here they are:

Dirty Country Girl

Homeless Bound

There is no Love Between us Anymore

Dark Sun

Look out for a forthcoming installment: Last Night A DJ Shaved My Wife

2005-08-18T16:20:00.000Z

Dogfrog's poem How the Dead Evolved has just been nominated for publication in the UAuthors 2005 Anthology Voices From the Web
Available later this year.

The Evil Pond Weed

2005-07-12T09:40:00.000Z

I’ve always found it easier to talk in the dark. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s because people see my face. Beth and I sat on the scabby sofa in Ray’s flat. She suggested we turn the lights out and wait for Ray and Mike. I think she wanted the advantage of surprise, plus we wouldn’t have to look at the décor whilst we waited. It was late and dark.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Go for your life.” She said with some resignation.

“We’re sat in the flat of perhaps the only man in town who would have the balls, the guts and the stupidity to dump a tractor load of fertilizer on a golf professional actually inside a charity ball. That person, let’s call him Ray, is your on and off boyfriend…”

“More off than on.”

“Yes but I wonder if those two things could be linked?”

“It was kinda sweet dontcha think?”

“So you and Bamber?”

“Yes me and Bamber, plus Trudie and Bamber; it’s complicated.”

Muffled voices and the jangling of keys interrupted us and was followed by the sounds of footsteps up the stairs to Ray’s flat. He was struggling to get the key in the lock. Eventually we heard the words “Fuck it” from the other side and two heavy kicks resolved the situation. The door burst open and slammed against the wall and every Athena poster Ray owned rattled in it’s own dust. I heard Mike mumbled miserably about his Rizzlas being wet. Ray flicked the light switch. Beth swooped.

“Evening boys.” Ray and Mike grabbed each other like Shaggy and Scooby.

“For fuck’s sake.” Ray screamed. They let go of each other and we noticed that they were soaked, head to toe. Mike had about half a pound of pond weed in his straggles. Puddles were forming around them. Beth and I started to snigger. “Don’t you dare. This is all your fucking fault anyways.” Beth stopped sniggering but continued to smile.

“Is this a jealousy thing Ray? Because as sweet as it is, don’t you think that your little fertilizer stunt was just a teensy weensy bit over the top?”

“It’s not like I wasn’t trying to impress you or anything.”

“Nothing to do with me.” Mike held his hands up.

“It never is, is it Mike?” Beth was still on the offensive but it was my turn.

“So let me guess, in your desperate attempt to avoid the Country Club security, you ran across the golf course and straight into the lake on the fourteenth?”

“Something like that.”

“Well you almost provided us with a spectacular diversion.”

“Almost? They don’t get much better.”

I explained that Beth and I had seized the opportunity to slip up the back stairs towards the offices. The stairs were lined with deep carpets and mahogany panelling. You got the sense that you were either about to enter a seventies snooker club. We’d only managed to get to the landing when we came across Laverne and Shirley, the Club security standing like two bruised and angry bulldogs fresh from their beating at the gym at the hands of Billy. Despite the sizeable commotion downstairs, they hadn’t budged. We backed away slowly and left the party in a hurry.

“It’s a good job we fell in that pond anyway.” Mike said.

“Why?”

“How would we have found this otherwise?” Mike grinned and reached outside into the hallway threw the object down onto Ray’s floor at our feet. “He hey!”

“For Christ sakes.” Beth was momentarily disgusted but my eyes widened. At our feet was a life-sized female sex doll.

“It’s not one of them cheap ones either, these things cost thousands. You have to import them from the States.” Once more Mike’s invaluable knowledge of pornography had enlightened us. “God know what they’ve done to it’s hair though.” On its head, a purple wig had been crudely glued. Beth went to kick the doll away.

“Trudie’s alive.” Everyone stopped and turned to look at me.

“What?” Beth said.

“This is what I must have seen from the bridge, not Trudie. Trudie’s alive.”

A Quick Lesson In Happy Slapping

2005-06-19T22:08:00.000Z

Dogfrog
It’s an interesting concept. A device that makes all hell break loose at the touch of a button. If you could invent one, it would destroy the world, probably through a series of pub fights. Everyone would want one in the office, to cover up the fact that you've been stealing stationery or banging the secretary, at home - to get out of the washing up or mowing the lawn, in the pub - when its your round or you’ve looked at someone the wrong way. You push the button and fights break out spontaneously. Lovers quarrel and seethe, pets bite and fly, paper spreads itself like confetti, all the lights go out and the photocopier stops working.
That night it felt like I had one in my hand at the country club. We'd moved inside from the patio. Beth had gone off to look for some drinks. I was stood around looking at the dozens of self congratulatory club members, thinking for the first time in my life, that I could be the best dressed person in a room. I spotted Bamber, the golf pro, looking casual dumb; he was holding that rat-like dog that belonged to his wife. And what was going on with his hair? Photo-opp I thought and I touched the button.

Beth
OK confession time. Me and Bamber did have a 'thing' once. It makes me sick to think about it now. He's a dirty fucker. It's laughable that he has the word 'professional' in his job title. Soon as he saw me tonight, my bet is that he made any old excuse to get away from his wife. I had never gave him what he asked for back then; In some ways I wish I had, perhaps he'd leave me alone from time to time. The worse thing is when he comes into get his hair cut. He came into the shop this morning. Bamber talks dirty and makes sure I notice he’s got hard. I grunt, nod and try and give him a truly bad hair cut. He’s so obsessed, he never even looks in the mirror. As soon as I see that hand reach around the chair to try and touch my arse, I jab his hand with the scissors. I charge him triple.
Tonight he caught me off guard. Out on the patio, he span me round and shoved his tongue down my throat. I could have bitten it off. Instead I squeezed his balls hard. He was still holding that rat between us. Eventually he let go.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I shout-whispered.
“Don’t tell me you’ve gone all shy on me?”
“Just leave me the fuck alone.”
“Why don’t you just give me what I want?”
“Go fuck yourself Bamber.”
“I wish.” He turned to go back into the party adjusting his trousers.
“Oh and Bamber.”
“What? Change your mind.”
“I think I felt a lump down there, you want to get that checked out.”

Mike
You don’t need me to tell you that Ray is a crazy bastard. He’s unbalanced. I mean that sometimes he goes too far, sometimes he doesn’t go far enough. That’s unbalanced isn’t it? And if anyone knows how to tip the scales, it’s Beth.

Dogfrog
At first I thought the flash had startled the dog. Then again I'm not so sure. I don't think Bamber saw it coming. Looking at the photo now I can see that it's not surprise in his eyes, it's terror.

Ray
That hasn’t happened for a while, the red mist I mean. I must be feeling better. It’s amazing the inspiration that anger gives you. I think I know how these sick bastards who torture people feel. It’s not about the torture it’s about being creative. I can tell you exactly how I came up with the idea, it was like a chain reaction. I knew I had to do something.
Where am I? At the club. What kind of club is it? A golf club. What do golf clubs have? Balls, clubs, greens, bunkers, all this was running through my mind like a runaway National Express coach with a blocked toilet. And then it came to me.

Beth
I was at the bar.

Mike
I was watching from the bushes. It was nothing to do with me.

Dogfrog
I took the photo.

Ray
I hotwired a mini tractor full of fertilizer and reversed it through the patio doors of the club.

Dogfrog
Bamber, stunned by the sound of splintering wood and breaking glass, fell backwards on the shiny tiled floor.

Beth
As soon as I heard all the noise, I turned away from the bar. I think I smelt it before it registered what had happened. Bamber was on his back trying to crab his way backwards. His slip-ons provided no grip on the Italian marble floor as two tonnes of golf course fertilizer slid off the back of the trailer until he was literally up to his neck in shit. One Rolexed hand held the rat in the air, like a man saving his pint as he falls into a swimming pool. The rat was licking his face.

Dogfrog
I took another photo. One for the paper.

Mike
Ray stepped down off the tractor, wiped his hands down his jeans and uttered those immortal words, “Right Michael, time to fucking leg it.”

Ray
We legged it across the golf course. On the way, Mike said I’d gone too far this time. Makes a fucking change I said.

Dogfrog
I looked over at Beth. She smirked whilst everyone around her either backed away, or froze in abject indecisiveness. She signalled for me to make for the back stairs. This was the diversion we had been hoping for.

Stealth Bonger

2005-03-09T09:32:00.000Z

SCENE: Behind a small bush on the patio, outside the Club. They whisper.

MIKE: I cannot believe you talked me into this. My feet are fucking freezin’.

RAY: Shut your whinging.

MIKE: In case you hadn’t forgotten we do have a bit of form here. If those bouncers get hold of us, we are officially mince.

RAY: We’re not doing anything wrong Michael, we’re just looking out for a friend.

MIKE: Can you see them yet?

RAY: No, not that many people have arrived. I swear, if he touches her, I’m gonna…

MIKE: What are you gonna do?

RAY: Express my disappointment.

MIKE: You could have done that when he asked you if he could bring her here.

RAY: True. I had other things on my mind, besides, he’s clever. I couldn’t really say no, he uses Trudie as a cover.

MIKE: Do you really think he cares?

RAY: About Trudie? No. About Beth, I think we both know the answer to that.

MIKE: You don’t exactly go out of your way to keep her Ray.

RAY: I know what your saying, I’ll admit that, but that’s not the point.

MIKE: What is the point?

RAY: You don’t mess with a mates’ bird, simple. Look there they are.

Mike and Ray scamper closer to see what is going on.

RAY: Fuck, they’re coming outside.

MIKE: Is it non-smoking in there? That’s funny cos we’ve smoked in there. There’s other people smoking in there.

RAY: (whispers angrily) Shut the fuck up about smoking. Christ I swear…Where are they going?

Mike and Ray follow their targets from the bushes

MIKE: They’ve stopped. Who’s he talking to?

RAY: Rocker.

MIKE: Where’s Beth going?

RAY: Follow her, I’ll stay here.

Mike scampers back following Beth. Ray stays where he is. After a few minutes Mike returns to Ray.

MIKE: Alright?

RAY: Yeah, you? What happened?

MIKE: Erm, I dunno how to, erm.

RAY: Just tell me.

MIKE: It can wait.

RAY: They’re on the move.

Mike and Ray scamper back to the patio.

RAY: Bastard. I told you. He’s hugging her.

MIKE: Ray, he’s not your problem.

RAY: I’m gonna fucking ki…

MIKE: Ray, listen for fuck’s sake. When I followed her back, Beth met this other guy. I didn’t look good.

Ray fixes his stare on Mike

RAY: (earnestly) What do you mean?

MIKE: She was kissing him, I mean really kissing him, full on like, hands everywhere.

RAY: Alright, alright, enough. Who was it?

Mike pauses.

MIKE: Him.

Mike points at the face of a man staring out of a window of the Club onto the patio. He is holding a small dog.

Greasy Silver Spoon

2005-03-08T13:16:00.000Z

Taking my inspiration from Mr Konstantin and the Polaroids in his shop, I decided to start taking pictures on my mini digital camera. It’s the only way I’m going to get to the bottom of anything. I caught Ray unawares as he sprawled on his sofa watching the snooker. It wasn’t the best picture, but then again he’s not the best subject. Mike came in and doffed his spliff. That made for a better picture. I took a picture of Beth as I helped her out of the cab on our arrival. She wouldn’t have thanked me for the result.

Beth and I walked with a calm confidence out of the door that led on to the veranda. We slipped past the gas heaters that burned a hole in the atmosphere and down the side of country club towards the back of the kitchens. I heard the sounds of stirring sauces and the rousing of a roux and then I spied a cloud of blue cigarette smoke round a corner.

“Wait here.” Beth complied.

There was a definite odour of something despicable. Rocker had been identified to me by Ray this morning just before I asked his permission to take Beth to the party.

“So what does this Rocker look like?”

“He basically looks like the greasy kitchen porter from hell, you can miss him.”

“What if it’s dark Ray, or I need to identify him in a hurry?”

“Rocker has a tattoo of a butterfly on his ear, self inflicted.”

“Now just to make me feel a whole lot better, he’s called Rocker because…”

“He’s off his rocker.”

“Great, that’s what I thought.”

Ray was right I had no trouble identifying Rocker. I peered round the corner to see possibly the greasiest man I have ever seen or smelt. He was dressed in a boiler suit that had clearly never been boiled. The fact that this man was allowed anywhere near the back door of a kitchen, let alone in it, was a cause for major concern. My membership cheque was certainly put on hold. Rocker sniffed the air, through the smoke. He’d smelt something unusual, something fresh, something clean, something me. I stepped out.

“Rocker?” His small ratty features conspired to confirm his identity.

“Yeah who are you?”

“I’m a friend of Ray’s.”

“Oh yeah he did mention sumfink a while back, said you might be poppin’ along. After some goods weren’t ya?”

“I was Rocker, but now I’m after something a little different.”

“I don’t do none of that funny stuff friend, no way, not for no one.” Rocker lit another cigarette off the butt of his previous one. He looked up at me expectantly.

“I’m after some information.”

“Why didn’t you say? I got plenty of that. Loadsa information.” Rocker’s fingertips rubbed together greasily.

“We’re trying to find out what happened to this girl. You seen her around here Rocker?” I showed him the picture of Trudie, Beth had supplied me with for identification purposes.

“Now I ain’t seen her for a while, not for a long while. She had a room here up on the top landing, a permanent one, like she was one of the house staff, but she was no staff. What you got there?” He pointed at my digital camera. I refused to let him touch it. I knew a magpie when I saw one. “Who’s that?” I turned the camera round. The picture of Beth I had taken earlier lit up the evening gloom. “Now that girl, she’s round here a lot.”

“What? This girl?” I lowered my voice, she was only round the corner.

“Yeah, I fink she’s been havin’ it off with Bamber, the golf fella.” I felt hollow.

“Are you sure?”

“No mistake, Rocker always remembers a face, even when they cut their ‘air.”

“Thanks Rocker.” I gave him a fifty. “Go buy some soap.”

I dragged Beth along the way we came by the arm back to the party. An instrumental surf band played

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, I just need to think OK.”

“What did he tell you? You can’t keep things from me.” Beth protested.

“What about you? Is it alright to keep things from me?” We were stopped on the veranda, looking at each other. The warmth of the patio gas burners was harsh on my cheeks. Regardless of what she had or hadn’t told me, Beth looked beautiful in her black dress and heels. Her hair had returned to the dark colours that I preferred and it swept round her face like a half moon. She stepped towards me as the band played the theme tune to Hawaii 5-0 and hugged me and held me close. I breathed in her cherry fragrance and looked over her shoulder to see Ewan Bamber staring back earnestly back through the windows of the party.

Placenta Springs National Park

2005-03-07T13:12:00.000Z

Today we live in the world of the tea bag rather than that of loose tea which renders the saucer largely useless save for those who rest their digestive biscuits on the side. I know what I am and I am not one of those types. Japan's national earthquake alert system, the sound of china wobbling on china was enough to wake me and my terror was magnified as Mrs Williams' bow legged gait stuttered across my bedroom in her transparent night dress. The erotic memory of last nights dream were napalmed instantly from my mind.

"What are you doing? What time is it?"

"Almost seven-thirty. I thought you might want a cup of tea dear."

"Why would you think that, I don't even begin to think until ten-thirty?"

"You have to get up dear."

"Why do I have to get up?"

"Because you have to get ready." This was getting tedious.

"For what?" I sighed.

"You're going to a party." My eyebrows raised. I'd just been to a perfectly good party. Mrs Williams handed me a piece of stiff card. It had embossed writing on it like a wedding invitation.

"Glenys, this isn't until later tonight."

"I know but there is something else. I'm moving back home."

This was great news. I put the card to one side and called the gang as soon as I dared to ask them if they'd consider helping. In Mike's case, I thought eleven-thirty was pushing it. Beth was there within the hour. Her hair was blue and a bit frizzy nothing like her starring role in my dream.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Beth quizzed me outside my garage as we sorted through Mrs Williams things.

"Sorry, I didn't know I was."

"How come she's moving back? I thought she lost everything."

"Mike did a deal with the bailiff. They filled her house with loads of rubbish furniture and cheap electrical goods and turned on the bath taps upstairs. Fortunately, after Geoff, her husband died, the only thing that she continued to pay was her house insurance."

"Aw, that was nice of him."

"To flood someone's house and risk a bogus claim?"

"You know what I mean."

I opened the main garage door and took a step back. Beth put her hand to her mouth. I seemed to be raising my eyebrows a lot this morning.

“Oh my God!” The garage was piled high with furniture, electrical equipment and white goods

“She’s been at it again. This time using my address and probably with my card. Fantastic.” A car pulled up behind us. It was a taxi.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry, it’s all bought and paid for.” It was Mr Konstantin.

“What? She got you to pay for all this stuff?” said Beth.

“Yes, well,” He coughed, “We are moving in together.” Beth and I looked at each other in disbelief. “Don’t be so surprised, we had a wonderful Christmas together.”

“I know, I heard.” came my reply.

A lot of the stuff had obviously come from Mr Konstantin’s electrical emporium. I was interested to find out what would become of his shop. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.” Mr Konstantin had a strange look on his face. He struggled for the words. “That shop has been my life and in some ways my death. I hate it, but I’d hate to see it go, turned into some mobile phone shop. What I’m saying is…I’d like you to take it over.” I looked at him through narrowed eyes and remained silent. It was hardly a fairytale offer, I’d been in there. I needed to think about it and the possibilities it presented. “There is just one condition.” Mr Konstantin pointed a bony finger skyward. “You need to find my son.”

We spent the afternoon moving furniture, fitting Mrs Williams’ kitchen and then setting up her enormous audio visual entertainment system in her lounge. I predicted correctly that I would be able to hear Songs of Praise in crystal tones from over the road. Sitting with Beth at my kitchen table, we drank tea from mugs and dropped crumbs everywhere.

“Do you think they’ll be happy?” said Beth.

“They share an interest in all things retail and they both know a lot of dead people, what more could you ask for in a relationship?”

“Someone who doesn’t use newspaper as a toilet mat would be nice.”

“Hey, I know this is late notice, but do you want to go to a party?”

“Where is it?”

“It’s at the club.”

The invitation had something scribbled on the back of it. It took me a while to work out what it said. I passed to Beth. “What’s that say?” She puzzled at it for a few seconds and then turned it over.

“Hope you can make it, I owe you one remember? Ewan Bamber. It’s black tie. You do move in some circles don’t you?”

“Ever decreasing ones I think you’ll find.”

Ewan Bamber, the errant golf professional was the picture of smarm as he welcomed guests into the paint fresh sports bar of the club. No matter how many times they changed the colour of the walls, the membership fees, barely felt worth it. Architecturally, the club was an unfashionable mix of Scottish stone and American forest lodge. The heart of the building was diseased by a modern gymnasium encased in a 1970’s tertiary college folly and you could sense that even the surrounding golf course was wet and brown in all the wrong places. On Ewan’s arm was his wife Julie. Actually I wasn’t sure who was on whose arm but they were accepting gifts like ambassadors from the queue of people up ahead. They were stacked up on a table behind them. We spoke through our teeth and ignored the ubiquitous cigar smoke in the night air. Inside we could see people bustling and self congratulating. There was an ease to this crowd, a group familiarity. I thought of my dream last night and winced.

“They’ve all got gifts.”

“I know.”

“Should we bail?”

“No!”

Eventually Beth and I got to the front and were faced with the Bambers and a rat like dog under Julie’s arm. There were more teeth on display than a museum of dentistry. As we approached Julie reached out a gloved hand.

“Good evening. Thank you for coming. I don’t think we’ve met.” I was certain I’d seen her somewhere recently.

“A friend of Ewan’s.” He looked over as I mentioned his name and looked momentarily nervous.

“Yes darling, this gentleman…” He was tripping.

“I keep an eye on Ewan’s business interests.” I caught him. Beth slipped a hand inside her purse. The dog yelped and flew out of the pearly wife’s arms. Ewan ran off after the mutt and Beth smiled and handed Julie a tiny box, neatly wrapped and freshly lifted off the table behind them. We walked off towards the free bar and the buffet.

“Have I ever told you how much I hate buffets?” It was going to be one of those parties with a lot of whispering and we’d started it.

“No I don’t think you did. Everyone hates buffets.”

“I mean it’s like eating but not eating. You can go to a function with a buffet eat as much as you want, go home and act as if you’ve never even seen a limp chicken goujon.”

“Are these chicken or fish?” Beth held one up?

“That’s my point. I think I hate the cling film the most.”

“Especially when they put it over jugs of fresh orange juice.”

“It’s the fact that thirty people you don’t know have just rummaged through your dinner before you’ve even decided what you want.” We walked away but not before I stole two cocktail sausages.

The party was filling up rapidly. I noticed that Ewan had finally retrieved the furball and was handing him over to one of the waiters who carried it at arms length towards the kitchens. I could only hope.

“So what’s the plan?”

“I think we need to move now before we are missed. We can drink their booze later.”

“Agreed.”

We were off in search of a man called Rocker.

Swingers and Roundabouts

2005-03-03T13:11:00.000Z

We were outside the only house in bungaville. It was freezing. As swinging parties go, this one I was told was to be fairly tame. It's my feeling that I don't go around looking for these things but it's nice to be asked and it would be rude not to at least show one's face. I'm not one for extravagant dress or over exposure, so I opted for the chaps, spangly waistcoat topped off with cowboy boots and stetson. No more, no less. I stood on the doorstep next to Ray and flicked through the small book I presumed he had given me; Hints and Tips for the Modern Swinger.

Page 2

Remember, not everyone at the party will be there to have sex. Some people will be there to watch or simply meet other people. Please do not think that because you're at a a swinging party that you have the right to touch just anyone and everyone present...

"Don't worry it'll be fine." said Ray.
"That's easy for you to say." The cold weather was taking a ridiculous toll on my penis.
I tossed the book into the nearby bushes and pushed the buzzer. Detective Inspector Cutler opened the door. His bushy moustache pressed up against the tight latex of his mask. He was instantly recognizable and made a gruff sound and retreated as I stepped in. The smell of high grade skunk was in the air and laughter came from every room. I noticed Mike in the corner of the main reception room, dressed only in a pair of nasty purple briefs. The briefs were rolled round his buttocks. He was masturbating furiously into a large cheese plant.
"How's it going?" he looked up cheerfully.
"Fine Mike."
"Wild party eh?"
"I just got here." I looked closer. Lumps of pastry were falling from his hand. He was jacking off with the remains of a sausage roll.
"Watch the carpet Mike."
"Oh Christ, don't worry there's plenty more in there on the table." he pointed through to a large dining room. It was beautifully decorated in Victorian arsenicum green. Asperdistras hung around in rasterfarian huddles whilst a large mahogony dining table filled the centre space. The most exquisite cream cake buffet was laid out with doileys and the finest china tea set. Compared to the rest of the party, this room was the eye of the storm. I was contemplating tea and where I should sit when a female high pitch scream of delight burst through the door followed by 18 stone of sheer muscle. It was Billy from the gym and Helen my next door neighbour freshly widowed. Billy caught her fleshy arm and in one smooth movement picked her up, span her round and brought her to rest on the dining table. It was only now that I realised the state of undress that she was actually in. I and the rest of the world was used to Billy's half nakedness. Billy stood between Helen's legs at the head of the table. Helen's grin contorted her face; there was no hiding from pleasure here. Billy picked up two of the largest cream cakes either side of Helen's head and plunged them down into her gaping bosom. Within seconds the two of them were writhing in assorted dairy produce. My penis was beginning to recover.

I noted that the adjoining kitchen was remarkably civilized considering the potential for food sex and utentsil hiding. People I half recognized stood around in various states of undress, elegantly tipping large goblets of wine into flip top mouths and guffawing like ponies. I side stepped a middle aged woman naked to the waist, in velvet jacket, riding hat and crop tucked neatly under her arm as she squatted down and urinated noisily in a silver dog bowl by the back door. She looked up at me and smiled as if she expected a reward. I had none to give and felt distinctly guilty about it. I left for the lounge.

I almost half expected the scene that greeted me on my entrance. A sprawl of writhing flesh that grabbed at my ankles, ran palms up and down my hamstrings. Every now and again a glimpse of someone I knew who had come up for air between courses. Ray, PC Derringer, the barmaid from the Dog and Frog, the landlord from the Dog and Frog, some girls I recognized from the club. Mr Konstantin? No, can’t have been. At the centre of the piece was the head of the snake, glorious on his upholstered leather lazyboy, two flimsily dressed flapper girls draped around each shoulder. They rubbed, stroked and kissed the centre of their attention, Pharaoh Jones was seemed infinitely more interested in the blonde of the pair. Someone grabbed again at my ankle and then I felt a cold wet mouth on my big toe. I wanted to kick out, tell them to get off. I remembered my get out clause on page 3 of the swinger’s manual.

Page 3

If you find yourself uncomfortable with anyone or anything you are asked or invited to do, remember you can politely say ‘no thanks’ with a smile and say that you are off to find a drink. It can be very tempting to have feelings of hostility or insecurity when at a swingers party. If you have these feelings, relax and take a deep breath. Go and have a drink. If these feelings persist, perhaps swinging is not for you.

“You didn’t read page 3.” It was Ray.
“What do you mean?”
“You threw the book in the bushes after page 2.”
“So how do I know what’s on page 3?”
“You figure it out, I got work to do.”

I decided to take my own advice. I smiled at the young girl on the floor reaching up for me like a sex crazed zombie. “No thanks.” I said and smiled with a smile so faux not even she believed it. I open the door to what appeared to be a darkened room. It was except for the triangular canopy over the snooker table in the centre. I thought to myself that snooker was so satisfying and yet utterly frustrating. I decided to play a frame. There was a shadow at the door.
“Hey cowboy.” I recognized the voice instantly, it was Beth. She had been one of the flimsy flapper girls sat on the Pharoah’s knee. The light leaking from the doorframe behind her made her dress translucent. I gulped as she approached and ran a soft hand up the inside of my chaps. Beth whispered in my ear. “What’s your biggest break then?” I thought I was going to explode. There was a voice behind me.
“Fifty four, come on.” There was a loud crack, the sound of snooker balls being split. Ray was spinning his cue between the pincers of his lobster hand as Mike started throwing the hefty balls though at the curtained windows smashing the windows. Beth took hold of me. I could feel her breath, the cherry smell of her hair. And then the light, Mike was letting in so much of it. Stop the light; everyone would see. But before they could, they were all gone including Beth..
.

My writing friends

2005-02-27T22:34:00.000Z

please visit

2005-02-24T12:33:00.000Z

Secrets and Lies

2005-02-14T21:56:00.000Z

The Dungeon

2005-02-11T11:20:00.000Z

If you have Yahoo Instant Messenger you can message CompetitionBill and view the live cam and see me at work!

The Night of Christmas Day

2005-02-03T09:57:00.000Z

The Dog and Frog on the night of Christmas Day. It was the only pub open in the Underbelly but Beth, I and the fire had the place to ourselves. Damp wood cracked and spat onto the flag stone hearth as it burnt one side of our faces pink. She had returned to black from the pre-Christmas mousey look. Beth’s ever-changing appearance made me study her childish face with ever more intent. We talked about the a rotten Xmas we’d both had. Mine with Mrs Williams and Mr Konstantin; Beth’s with Ray. After a few warm shots the conversation started to flow. I found an almost full packet of cigarettes in the bottom of my bag and within minutes the place was fugged.

“Where’s Ray?”

“In his flat, pissed, asleep, who cares?” Beth replied.

“Fair enough.”

We slagged off and laughed at Ray and Mike then raised more than several glasses to Trudie. Beth told me about her days living in a filthy squat playing bass for a punk band by night and working in Camden Market by day.

“Did Trudie do that too?” I’d lost touch with her many years before.

“Christ no. I was the truly bad girl, she just dyed her hair, wore stripy stockings and short skirts. Trudie liked her home comforts. She was not the adventurous sort.”

“Which makes her disappearance all the more baffling.” I changed the subject. “So the punk thing is the real deal for you then?”

“Of course it’s a real deal.” She flexed her index fingers. “We’ve all got to be somebody. It’s better than a nobody right? What about you, are you a somebody or a nobody?”

I swilled my ice round the whisky and looked down into prospectively.

“It’s hard to tell. They say you’re only a somebody if somebody loves you and I guess that makes me a first class nobody.” I downed my shot.

“That makes you stupid.”

“Probably.”

“Look at all the successful people who never met anyone but were still somebody. There have been some well famous celibates, look at Gandhi?”

“Yeah, Phillip Larkin,

“The Pope.”

“Stephen Fry.”

“Cliff Richard ;all men either to warped, old, ugly or unfashionable to have sex. Which bracket would you put me in?”

“Unfashionable.”

“You bitch.”

“Well you are. None of your clothes fit you and if they did, you’d have to go on a diet.”

“See you’ve hit upon the basic problem. Unless you’ve got a girlfriend to dress you, you can’t get a girlfriend. It’s unlikely that Mrs Williams is gonna be much help.”

“I take your point, you may well be right.”

“So where does Ray go wrong?”

“Ha you tricked me.”

“You tricked yourself lady.” I jabbed an accusing finger in her arm.

“I’m not talking about Ray, not tonight. Tonight is a Ray free night.”

“Why do you stay with him?”

“Do you know what he got me for Xmas?” Beth reached into her large. “This.” Beth stamped an exact replica of the dolphin oil burner I had received from Mrs Williams down on the table. I burst out laughing.

“It’s not funny!”

“I beg to differ.” In one deft move I reached down into my bag and retrieved mine.

Leaning on the white balustrade of the bridge, we let the December night air wash over our pissed and smiling faces as it pushed on downstream with the current. The dark whorls curdled and gurgled like dozens of babies under the stanchions below.

“It doesn’t bother you being here?”

“Not really, I find it calming actually. Despite all the mud and the muck, I don’t think of it as an evil river. It just does its job. In fact I feel quite sorry for it having to deal with all the shit that we and everything else dumps in it.”

There was little doubt, Beth was extraordinary to me and I sensed that she knew this but as much as I wanted to tell her, I couldn’t help feeling that any such stance would be viewed as unspeakably predatory. She turn and looked upstream and then back at me. The breeze had blown a subtle tear across her cheek.

“You know what we should do?” Before I could reply she spun me round and was rifling through my shouldered bag. She emerged with the dolphin oil burner. It was soon part of a pair in her hands. She passed one to me; her intent was clear.

“I thought you felt sorry for the river?”

“Think of it as an offering. Besides we are returning the dolphins to the sea. Ready? On three. One, two, three.” We tossed the ornaments over our heads and waited for the splash. We were surprised therefore to hear a smashing sound and a loud groan.

2005-02-01T08:56:00.000Z

Saturday's don't get much better than this

Southampton 2 Portsmouth 1
FACT

Morph Link

2005-01-27T13:05:00.000Z

2005-01-27T11:45:00.000Z

Now we're getting closer to reality

2005-01-27T11:42:00.000Z

Dogfrog Manga!

2005-01-27T11:40:00.000Z

Dogfrog Baby! Yuk I never looked like that.

2005-01-27T11:38:00.000Z

Dogfrog female morph job (still keen on women methinks)

2005-01-27T11:37:00.000Z

The Original Dogfrog

Christmasticated

2005-01-25T10:13:00.000Z

I wish they’d shut up. I was trying to watch the television that Mrs Williams had laid siege to for the last six weeks and all I could hear was her laughing like a schoolgirl in the kitchen. I know we all get old, given the chance. Sadly at the moment, I’m feeling fairly intolerant towards the elderly and this is almost exclusively the fault of my vintage lodger and her new friend. I am not a creature of routine. The hour of my awakening differs every day as does the flow of my waste and my feeding times. For this reason alone the prospect of infirmity fills me with despair.
Let me describe the best part of her day. Glenys gets up with the wood pigeons at five-thirty every morning. She makes tea and proceeds to scoff half a loaf of her beloved toast. The effort of her consumption forces her horizontal onto the sofa for the next hour as she briefly watches breakfast news. Her hand slides off her nightgowned belly and onto the carpet where Zac licks her buttery fingers as she sleeps. What she dreams one can only guess. By half seven she is fully dressed and ready for a full day of televisual retail therapy which lasts until the Australian soap hour when she bolts back the second half of the toasted loaf and washes it down with more tea. She leaves the house at four o’clock and returns at nine in the evening only to go straight to bed without a word. I don’t know where she goes and frankly she’s annoyed me to the point where I can’t even be bothered to take an interest.
As far as I’m concerned, Christmas is a bitch with its back legs broken and the prospect of spending it with Mrs Williams seemed less than thrilling. You could smell her excitement of the saccharine season of forgetfulness on her hair. Then Mr Konstantin arrived. He had dropped off a new remote control since she had worn out the old one along with the telephone she had sucked all the juice out of. I heard them talking in the kitchen, they had just worked out that they had been to school together. And there was me thinking that Mr Konstantin came from Hungarczechloslavnia.
“My wife died years ago. I miss her now and again, well I miss her cooking.”
“You look like you could do with a good meal. Will you be spending Christmas on your own Mr Konstantin?”
“Call me Robert. Yes unfortunately so. My son, ah my son, who knows where he is?” Mr K looked round the corner of the kitchen and I caught his eye. He nodded and smiled and I wasn’t sure why.
“You must come to us for Xmas, and call me Glenys.” My day was getting better. The thought of playing Scrabble with these two was enough to make me swallow a Steradent. Still it was nice to think that it is still possible to make new friends at the age of seventy-nine, even if they are old ones. “That’s alright isn’t it dear?” This time her head poked round the corner and smiled. She had never asked my permission for anything before.

***

The heat generated in a bungalow by three adults, a nervous dog and an oven are roughly akin to that of the nuclear power station you can see from kitchen window. Zac scuttled across the laminate like a duck on ice each time Mr Konstantin’s walking stick fell to the floor, slapping it like a ruler hits a schoolboy’s palm. It wasn’t long before he took refuge in his bed and I could hardly blame him. Our guest had arrived at midday and between him and Mrs Williams began drinking the bottle of Advocaat that he had brought with him. They chatted about their old school days and all the dead people they had in common.
“Do you remember Arthur Davies?” Mr Konstantin topped up the glasses. “Tall boy, face like a trout, father was the tailor at the top of town.”
“Why yes, I do believe I do. He took me to the pictures once.”
“Well he’s dead.”
“What about Irene Mason?”
“Dead.”
“Tony Partridge?”
“Long time dead.”
“Do you two know anyone who is still alive?” I couldn’t help myself.
“When you get to be as old as we…” I switched off.
By the time Christmas dinner began, the end couldn’t come soon enough. I hope I’m not being cruel or unnecessarily unkind but I’d much rather endure leprosy than watch and the aged eat. The loose lips, the bovine mastication and the dribbling gravy collaborate to make me retch and I swear that there is a game of footsy going on under the table.

***

Eventually we get to the presents. I have no right to be disappointed since, as usual, I am not expecting a thing in the way of a gift. I am therefore surprised and strangely disappointed when Glenys hands me a gift.
“This is just a little something to say thank you for putting me up.”
“Ha, you mean putting up with you.” Mr Konstantin jumps in and they both begin laughing.
“Thanks I say. What is it?”
“Unwrap it and find out.” I strange at the badly gift wrapped present and carefully pick at the tape showing far too much respect for the cheap paper. I expose the gift. It is partly ceramic, partly metal and utterly tasteless. Two dolphins garnish the sides.
“What is it?” I say as I finally hold the object in my hands.
“It’s a dolphin oil burner.” I notice the small bottle of oil nestled in the crucible and pick it up and shake it.
“And this dolphin oil, what’s it supposed to do?”
“It’s supposed to relax you, like when you go swimming with them.”
“And the smell their burning fat does that?” I put it to one side noticing that Mr Konstantin was trying to hide his smile.

***
It was getting late, even the television was getting bored. The two wrinkled bags of giggling skin on the sofa had almost reached the sugary dregs of the bottle of yellow goo and it had almost got to the point where both of them had to try and pee every ten minutes. It was like they had a rota. This was another crucial reminder to smoke copious amounts of marijuana when you get older – forget those prostate problems. The phone rang in desperation. It was my savoury saviour, Beth.
“Whatcha doing?”
“Chewing chocolate.” She didn’t get it, few people did.
“Wanna meet up? I got your present.” Two in one day, this was a record.

2005-01-21T11:30:00.000Z

Electric Donkey

2005-01-20T13:00:00.000Z

Blairdevil

All my own work
More soon.
Dogfrog

Real Crimes in the Underbelly

2005-01-10T10:18:00.000Z

Shooting

Murder

Cat in Limousine

Polished Dust

2004-12-16T13:41:00.000Z

polished the dust for the umpteenth week

stripped and waxed the aspidistras

rifled through pocket fluff for promises

found none and was disappointed to

have the sad ears ripped right out of my best jeans

a strange lie masks the strangled invective bleat

garbled across the dreaded centre stage

hard-done-by tales of tired old Jones mouthed as

stagnant pond water pours at bound feet

from the pissing fawning vultures

the clever knot tightens with each struggling second

round a tight white calf lassoed and hauled

- quick pour the burning shampoo in its eyes

animal testing is never the problem

it’s stumbling around the cure that causes untold distress

as you charge on to the bloodiest of all Corridas

with bankrupt stubby quickened fingers

fountain pen spears like feathered banderillas

protrude and yet I stand here cold unaffected

always brighter than any version of you

Spoiled Ink

2004-12-08T08:48:00.000Z

My story, Night Fishing is on the front page of Spoiled Ink this month.

Go and have a nose

Faith Dope and Charity

2004-12-07T14:43:00.000Z

The informal arrangement that I had with BIDNOWTV was as follows: Mrs. Williams would sit there for the best part of the morning and pay for what she saw on the television with a credit card number that was non-existent. She wasn’t interested in the goods actually being delivered; Mrs. Williams derived her thrill from the act of purchase. The television company literally played along. Her details would be taken by a random call centre monkey who would read her customer notes, humor her and tell her that her transaction had gone through perfectly. Mrs. Williams would gently put down the phone, close her eyes, clasp her hands together in delight and go off to work.

Geoff, her late husband, had never bought her as much as a new summer dress; she made her own out of old pairs of curtains. Over the years, she had worked in the multiplicity of charity shops in the Underbelly along with an entire battalion of women with similar wardrobes. These women were between fifty and their early sixties and had once done most of their clothes shopping at regional boutiques. The regional boutiques had been replaced with video shops and mobile phone resellers so the ladies had been reluctantly forced into retrieving hand-me-downs from the dead.

Mrs. Williams soon discovered the reason for working in charity shops had less to do with charity and everything to do with acquiring a Louis Vitton handbag or a virtually new pair of Bruno Magli shoes. The competition for such items, she discovered, was intense and cutthroat. Barbara Fortune, an old but unwrinkled hand at the charity racket explained.

“Most people don’t probably realise that the clothes of the dead are in most cases shipped to other towns and cities where they remain anonymous. You wouldn’t want to see your new boyfriend in your dead husband’s best suit would you my dear? It is a little known fact, that the charity shops in this town are the unlikely, but gracious benefactors of the shops in the West End.”

“West End of where?” Mrs. Williams had left the Underbelly twice in her life, once for her honeymoon, and the second time by accident. Barbara looked at her with mild disbelief.

“London. We get the remnants of the rich and famous, the wear it once brigades of Chelsea and the Kings Road. Only last week I managed to reclaim a beautiful silk scarf from Liberty.”

“How much did you pay for it?”

“Pay for it?”

“Yes surely you must have made some donation?”

“Donation?” Barbara’s voice tightened.

“To the charity.”

“The charity, ah yes, of course the charity. I wondered what you were getting at then Glenys.”

The second time that Glenys had left the Underbelly, it was by accident. When you have never left your hometown and then one day someone takes you from it and leaves you in the middle of nowhere in nothing but your dressing gown; that can be quite traumatic, especially when you don’t drive or have a basic sense of geography.

Before Geoff and Glenys moved up to Bungaville, they lived in a reasonable 3 bedroom, red brick square house at the heart of the Underbelly. At first it was pleasant and for many years they even enjoyed the occasional wild singing hummed from the pubs at Christmas and on St.Patrick’s Day in the nearby Dog and Frog. The house provided them with the comfort and tenure that suited their meager style. Over the years, whether the Underbelly became a worse place to live or whether the Williams began to feel their age, they were not sure but they had felt a move coming for a while. The move was hastened after a seemingly innocuous incident as Glenys picked apples from their small roadside garden one September evening. As she placed the apples in her basket a large coach pulled up at the lights right outside the William’s house. The door hissed and opened, presumably so the driver could get some air. Glenys looked up to see a young smiling man asking if he could beg one of her apples. Naturally Glenys agreed and before long she found herself wandering the aisle of the busy coach passing out her apples to a cheerful crowd of rugby players. They made her laugh and pinched her bum. They told crude jokes and she bounced up and down on their muscular laps. She looked down and nearly all her apples had gone but she didn’t mind, Geoff would be disappointed but it was worth it to be amongst such liveliness. She reached down and grabbed the last apple. She would keep that one for herself and remember the fun that she’d had between the stiff, carpeted seats of the coach. It was only then that Glenys realized that they were moving. She recognized nothing; it was all a blur. She staggered down the aisle towards the driver and had to shout to make herself heard.

“Where have you taken me? Stop the bus.”

“I can’t stop the bus love, we’re on the motorway.”

“Turn around take me back.”

“Sorry love, I can’t do that, not just yet anyway.” The driver explained that the contents of the coach were on their way to play rugby and that after the game he would be bringing them back. Glenys couldn’t believe it, she’d be kidnapped, accidentally.

“Don’t worry, we can watch the game. I’ve got a flask of tea and a spare coat if you like. Don’t worry we’ll look after you.”

The sky was dark and bruised like the contents of the coach as they drove back in the dusk. Their spirits had been roused by a win and the boys bounced Glenys from one knee to the next and gave her beer. She had never had so much fun in her life. The coach dropped her off outside her beautiful red house. She could see that Geoff was still up. She said her goodbye’s to the boys and winked at the driver before stepping down onto the pavement.

Geoff had looked distinctly displeased with her when she came in fusing her resolve not to tell him of her little adventure. He had asked her about the apples, but she said that they were all full of maggots. That tree was no good. She lay in bed quietly giggling to herself as the beer wore off. Her mouth tasted funny and so she reached into her nightgown pocket for the shiny green apple that she had kept for herself and took a plunging bite. Geoff sat bolt up in bed and peered at his wife through the dark. Glenys just smiled.

Operation Bumblebee

2004-12-06T11:27:00.000Z

“I’m gonna kill this sick fuck.” Ray thumped the dashboard of the van. It was clear that he was fighting to stay angry. Personally I think he was a little confused and more than a tad worried that she had in fact run off with someone else. We pulled up outside Beth’s house. The darkness of the inside seemed to grey the white paint on the outside. Ray and I stood outside the front door looking at it pensively.

“You haven’t got a key to your girlfriend’s house?”

“No.”

“She’s got one to yours.”

“I trust her.”

“So, she doesn’t trust you?”

“I’ve got no reason to come here. I don’t need a key.”

“It’s nicer than your place.”

“But it’s not my place.”

Mike opened Beth’s front door from the inside after he had scaled the back wall, the bathroom roof and levered a window. I could see a big wet footprint behind him on the carpet and back up the stairs

“Why’s your foot wet?”

“My guess is that he put his foot in the toilet.”

“As he stepped in the window.”

“Total schoolboy.”

“OK. I feel like an amateur. Where does she keep her towels?”

Beth’s tiny stone house had a Baltic chill. Someone had obviously cut the power before abducting her and I imagined how terrified she would have been as the lights went off, the telephone went dead and she felt the cold, flat blade pressed against her neck. The fear of being bundled into the boot of the car, trying to remember the sounds of passing church bells, the smell of a brewery and the feeling of the tires traveling over a level crossing. I felt like an interloper and I knew she would hate us for snooping around her flat. Mike strutted about, pecking and snooping and picking up any interesting object that took his eye until he came to the kitchen where he literally rooted in her cupboards predictably for food. Upstairs, Ray was sniffing about her bedroom, upturning pillows, pulling out drawers and overturning the contents with his good hand like a food mixer.

“What are you looking for exactly?” I stood in the doorway arms crossed.

“I dunno, there’s gotta be something here. It’s like what they all do in all the films innit?”

“It’s like what does in which films?”

“Just help me will you.” Ray barely looked up.

“Are you sure this isn’t an excuse just to go through her stuff?”

“Well yeah, clearly but...aha.” Ray emerged from under her bed with his prize, Beth’s diary. I wondered how long his broad toothy smile would remain.

“Just remember, I had nothing to do with this or that.” I said pointing at the diary. Ray looked confused, the smile dropped and the diary subtly became a proxy weapon in his hand.

“Is there something you’re not telling me here? Now’s your chance.”

“No you Ray you idiot, there’s not anything I want to tell you apart from the fact that none of this will help us get Beth back. We are better off telling your friend PC Derringer and doing things properly this time.” There was a pause whilst Ray thought about what I’d just said. I turned and looked down the stairs for Mike. I could see him down in the kitchen. He had found some chocolate digestives and was bizarrely counting them. “Ray?” Ray had his head submerged in the diary and his finger scanned across the pages as he attempted to decipher Beth’s nocturnal scrawl.

“I know where she is.” Ray looked up from Beth’s bed he was sat on.

“Really?”

“Yes.” He snapped the hard backed diary shut like a shell.

“Where?” Mike joined me at the door with chocolate smeared round his stubble. His foot was still leaving damp impressions everywhere.

“Spain. She’s on holiday with her mum for a week.”

I knew how Mike felt as he launched himself at Ray. We’d broken into Beth’s house, stamped toilet water and untold dirt though it, then rifled through everything she owned including her most personal belongings only to discover that it was completely unnecessary. A burglar would have been more careful. When Beth’s interest was at the centre of our hearts, we were there in good faith. Now it just felt wrong breathing her bedroom air. Right now, the last thing we needed was for her bed to collapse under the weight of Ray and Mike rolling around on it like sea otters.

Kickin' Through The Jogger Vomit

2004-11-25T10:28:00.000Z

The alarm goes off. I push it on five minutes; I don’t trust snooze. I dream randomly and at pace. The alarm goes off again. I push it on a further ten; why I put my through this masochistic medieval torture and why I don’t just get up, I don’t know. The more times I do it, the more lurid and vivid the dreams become. Eventually, my conscience gets the better of me and I jump out of bed onto some Lego. I don’t have any children but I like to leave some lying about - keeps you on your toes.

Since the decompression I’ve felt different, not bad different just different different. Strangely I feel like I have more lung capacity, more energy, and more mania. If you are unfamiliar with the Bends, here’s what happens. Let’s say you go down ten metres and get over the shocking pain in your skull as the weight of the water crushes your tectonic plates, your lungs contract by a factor of two. That’s right you’re working on one lung. If I hadn’t used one of the oxygen tanks I’d found at the bottom of the quarry I’d have been fine, albeit drowned, so I was really all out of options. When you breathe the air from a scuba tank, the oxygen in them is at the same pressure as the water that is now crushing your lungs. An unfortunate side effect of being underwater for a while at some depth is that some of the nitrogen will dissolve in your blood, so if you swim to the surface quickly, it’s like shaking up a bottle of lemonade and undoing the lid. So this morning I had the wholly unnatural desire to go for a run.
“Come on then.” Zac looked at me like I was mentally ill. He might have been correct. I could see he’d put on a few pounds with all the inactivity and treats he’d no doubt enjoyed at Beth’s cottage. I stood on the pavement outside my house in middle of Bungaville, stretching and limbering up. Cloudy exhaust fumes chugged from my face. Zac threw me a filthy look as if to say ‘Twat’ and turned to go back inside.

Jogging, running, cross-country, call it what you will, is the most basic form of exercise you can do. All you need to do is start walking somewhere and then, as and when you feel like it, do it faster; put one foot ahead of the other faster and faster until you feel your kidneys hurt. The origins of this complex pastime, the scientists tell us, are founded in ‘running away from something that wants to eat you’ or ‘running towards something you want to eat.’ You can guess the problem. There is nothing in the modern world that wants to eat us, but somehow, the desire to run toward our packaged prey has remained. Our food chain exists on an alternative plain I suppose, financially, emotionally and socially, but the physical elements have all but disappeared. It is a shame that ‘the gym’ has become a separate entity to a gymnasium. Clive’s gym has an altogether separate association for me, but that’s largely to do with Billy’s horse-sweat. The old gymnasium at Underbelly High is largely remembered for the many dozens of children that have broken limbs in it. PE teachers come war criminals, herded shivering squadrons of young boys into the wooden chamber and forced them into playing what was known across the county as ‘Murder Ball’. On a basic level, this involves playing a full scale game of rugby indoors. On a more complex level, this involves compound fractures and serious head injuries. Why the teachers were never dissuaded from organizing this brutality considering the amount of injury they witnessed often bothered me. The words “Alright, enough is enough,” just don’t occur to some people like genocidal maniacs.

I ran round Bungaville like a man who hasn’t run anywhere for over twenty years. Jogging is not, it would seem like riding a bike. I could do this for six months and not lose the feeling that I’m not doing this properly. Finding your pace, I should imagine is the key, well that and trying to avoid bending over double and retching into a storm drain after four minutes.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Ray pulled up in the camper van. “Get in you idiot.”
“It’s too early, I know. I don’t think I’m a hundred percent.” I sat in the back of the van breathing hard and wiping my mouth with my sleeve.
“No I mean what were you thinking taking exercise man. That’s sick.”
“Sorry Ray, we don’t all have your racing snake metabolism.” It was then I realized that Mike was in the back with me. I’d been in such a state, I hadn’t noticed. What was that look on his face, disgust? He tipped me a desultory nod. “How come you two are up so early?”
“It’s Beth.”
“What about her?”
“She’s missing.”

Calling Murray Hume

2004-11-19T13:53:00.000Z

Where are you mate, what's your email address donkey bonker?
I'm assuming here that you google yourself regularly.

Woody Allen's Sheds
I kid you not.

Topless Gear

2004-11-18T10:39:00.000Z

We were all getting a bit sick of each other’s company especially Mike and Ray who had started to argue about abstractions like whether we would ever go to war with China. At five past pissed out of our heads, we left the Dog and Frog. Mike, unaccustomed as he was to drinking as much alcohol as he had without counterbalancing it with three or four large spliffs, took two steps outside and Scotchguarded his suede boots. Before anyone noticed, he disappeared, presumably to wherever he lived.

“Right,” said Beth. Ray was hanging just off her shoulder swaying like a mannequin on one foot. I squinted through the darkness as he put a hand on her shoulder which she shrugged off almost immediately. “Go home Ray.” Perhaps Ray recognized something in her tone he had heard a hundred times before but he simply turned and walked off in the direction of the Underbelly without question.

“You’ve got him trained well.”

“Dog’s don’t take much training.” Beth hugged herself. Since learning of Trudie’s death, appearance had softened accordingly.

“You wanna talk?”

“Show me where you saw her.”

We stood on the centre of the white iron road bridge that spanned the dirty river. The bridge is wide enough for one vehicle and access to it is controlled by extremely lazy traffic lights at either end. Beth’s burning cold hand clamped mine like a claw. Standing next to me, hand in hand, it was only now that I realized how short she was. I spoke just to lighten the moment.

“You know, women have this control over their height that men simply don’t.”

“Yeah, but if everyone kept going up and down that would be plain silly. People would be saying stuff like ‘Ooh I like your new height, it’s very you.’” Beth was shivering and laughing.

“Good job we don’t have adjustable legs then.”

“Quite.”

“Just shoes.”

“Where was she?” Beth's tone changed to one of seriousness.

“Over there on the other bank.” I took my hand out of my pocket and pointed. “The tide is too high at the moment, you can’t see exactly.”

“How do you think she got there?”

“Thinking about it now, she was either washed here from downstream or she was simply thrown off this bridge.”

“Perhaps there is another option.” Beth started route-marching down the pavement to the other side of the bridge. Leading down to the other side of the bridge is a steep hill that circumnavigates the cliffs that line the river. The hill is so severe that the invisible council workers have fenced off a deep gravel pit adjacent to the bridge should someone’s brakes fail. Unfortunately this run-off area still borders the river’s edge only protected by a thin metal fence and locals have taken to parking their cars in there, just to make sure of its uselessness.

“Look, that’s her car.” We crouched and peered into a damp smelling Japanese motorized shopping trolley. Its nose was pressed right up against the railings at the edge of the run off. The keys were in the ignition and it was plain that the car had been on when it had come to a halt.

“The windscreen’s smashed.” I looked back up the hill. “Beth, this could have been an accident.” I found myself querying the disappointment in my voice.

“An accident?”

“Yes, well of sorts. Imagine it. Trudie comes bombing down the hill, around the curve – we all do it – and then she realises that she has no brakes.”

“This is what I’ve never understood. Why make for the run off? Why not go straight over the bridge? The hump will slow you down.”

“If there was something coming over the bridge from the other direction, you wouldn’t have any option. So, she enters the run-off.”

“And stops.”

“Yes, stops apparently a bit too quickly and goes through the windscreen. And that’s where I saw her, where she landed.”

“Nice theory, just one question though, why was she naked?”

I walked Beth home and she gripped my hand all the way. We concentrated on our icy breath before us as we walked up the hill of the Underbelly.

“What was she really like, I mean Trudie, I never knew her?”

Beth stopped mid-stride and began to cry. I turned to face her.

“It’s weird really. I can’t say I really knew her, I mean we grew up together but what do I actually know about her? What could I tell you right now about my sister Trudie?”

“I don’t know Beth.”

“Nothing, absolutely nothing.”

Outside her door I let her hand go but tugged on her finger. “You gonna be OK?”

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

“Good. Can I have my dog back now?”

Lying in my own bed for the first time in what felt like a month, I thought about Trudie and her nakedness. Why would someone be in a car naked in the first place? I went through all the stupid reasons first.

Sudden and extreme allergy to clothes required urgent medical attention.
Poisoned bath incident.
Clothes stolen by naked hitchhiker.
Naked driving turned her on.

This was getting me nowhere. The logical explanation for anyone naked in a car is that they are running from someone or something. I corrected my own thought. Not running, escaping. The question was, from who?

The Phoney War Council

2004-11-11T10:30:00.000Z

We are all four of us sat round a table in the smoky snug of the Dog and Frog. Beth, Mike, Ray and I are all slumped back in our chairs. I look like shit, Beth feels like shit, Mike’s been smoking some shit, and Ray is a shit. We are all aggressively drinking strong European lager.
“So, who’s gonna start then?” Beth slammed her pint down on the table and looked at me. Ray was clearly never going to start and Mike seemed barely capable. It was a surprise therefore when he spoke.
“I’ve lost my job.”
“I’ve lost half my hand,” said Ray.
“I’ve lost my dog,” I said and with that Beth started pointing.
“Your job was a piece of shit you shit. Ray, you’re better off with only one hand, it was idle anyway, and you,” she paused, “I’ve got your dog and I’m glad you’re not dead, you shit. Oh and did I mention I’ve lost my sister?”
“Um…we were going to tell you about that, but we weren’t sure…” Ray was cut off.
“Sure of what? How I’d take it? You bunch of shitty cowards.”
“Beth, we aren’t sure if she is dead. I didn’t even know she was your sister to begin with and then I wanted to be sure.”
“You saw her face down in that filthy river for fuck’s sake. She wasn’t looking at all the pretty coral and the nice fishies.”
“Look, all I want to know is what is going on” said Mike.
“Keep your voice down will you?” We all looked around us and a silent group decision was taken to whisper and we all simultaneously sat up and huddled.
“What about Cutler?” I said recalling the name of the only policeman I knew. “Can’t he help us?”
“No.” Beth, Mike and Ray chorused breaking the whisper.
“Alright then, what about the local press, there’s a reporter, I’ve met her.”
“She’s the fourth this year. I’m surprised she’s lasted this long.” “Haven’t you noticed all the stories in the paper about fêtes, jamborees, car boot sales and egg painting competitions?” Beth chipped in.
“It’s not exactly gritty stuff I’ll admit.”
“You’ve got to remember, normal rules don’t apply here. People get away with what they like, when they like. The only justice anyone ever gets is revenge.” Mike said.
“Violence and intimidation is the answer,” added Ray.
“But do you two actually know anyone violent and intimidating?” Beth asked.
“I do,” Ray said just as an off-duty PC Derek Derringer heaved his sizable frame to the bar.

The gap between the people who live in this town and the police is widening, if only in height. PC Derringer is 6’9” and a half. He cannot help but talk down to you. If you ask him, he will tell you that whilst his lofty view carries with it a considerable advantage in his line of work, he can’t help but feeling it singles him out as a target and a freak. He’s right of course. When on duty, his helmet refuses to help and it extends his mountainous portfolio to well over seven feet. Looking up at his bearded mass from my lowly bar stool, I get the feeling that PC Derringer’s solution to most issues is ‘Smash it’ even if it’s not. People aren’t built that size so that they can become actuaries or financial advisors. PC Derringer is a dynamic wall in every respect. In uniform, for every one of your arguments he has a bland Home Office response. The introduction of targets has largely meant that the police can quote statistically at you even if they are not able to help you directly. Either way, I have found that there is little point in arguing with someone who has the ultimate sanction of force on their side even if they have no intention of using it. If you can pick your prey up gently by the throat, why should you compromise?

Ray struggled to free his legs from underneath the table and squeeze out in the direction of the bar. Everyone as expected raised their glasses to signify that it was Ray’s shout.
“Derek. Long time no see.” PC Derringer stood at the bar with his head ducked.
“Long time no arrest Ray, none that I’ve heard of anyway.” Beth coughed on her cigarette; Mike kicked her under the table.
“You’re not undercover right now I take it?”
“What in here? You must be joking.”
“Point taken. Listen Derek, a friend of ours is missing.”
“Really Ray?” Suddenly PC Derringer was suddenly interested, “Anyone I know?”
“Trudie,” Ray looked over his shoulder towards Beth, “Her sister.” PC Derringer turned round to face the table and looked us all up and down one by one. When he’d finished scanning us he asked when the last time any of us saw her. We mostly looked down. Just as it was getting awkward I took the lead.
“That’s just it, none of us can remember, she’s not answering calls and we can’t find her.”
“This Trudie, she’s not on holiday?”
“No.” Beth said quietly.
“Look is there something you’re not telling me?” I felt a nudge in my leg; Beth urging me to say something. Before I could open my mouth, PC Derringer stepped in. “I understand how it is round here. Write down her name and address, I’ll make some enquiries.” With that he swallowed his pint of strong European lager and left.
“I thought that went well,” said Ray.
Everyone else just looked up with eyes that said, “Shut the fuck up Ray and get the drinks in.”

When Ray finally returned to his seat the grilling began.
“What the fuck did you do that for Ray?”
“He might be able to help.”
“Who do you think Derek works for Ray? Here’s a clue, you tried to use his passport to get to Amsterdam last week.”
“Derek is a good guy.”
“What makes you think that? Because he didn’t bust you last time he found you drop dead drunk in the gutter?” Beth was really laying into him now.
“Yeah Ray, just because he lets you smoke dope only means he can’t be bothered to do the paperwork.”
“Look he’s OK, you’ll just have to take my word for it.” Sniggers went up around the table.
“Bullshit Ray, he’s filth and he works for Cutler.”
“Let’s just say he owes me one.”
“How do you mean?”
Ray held up his mutilated hand. “Derek was the one who did this.”

Dry Thoughts in a Wet Season

2004-11-11T01:26:00.000Z

I’ve lost my job at the post office. Ironically they notified me by letter. As you will have gathered, Ray with his lobster claw managed to get us both locked up in a detention centre near Dover for the best part of a week. I can’t say it hasn’t been fun. We talked some rubbish and became better friends. I find it hard to get angry with Ray especially now he’ll never play the piano again; not that he could before. You may have noticed I ramble a bit. That’s what I do, that’s why I loved my job. All that wandering about being nosey. I like sauntering round the housing estates in the evenings smelling what everyone’s having for their dinner. A good curry, cheap fish, spaghetti Bolognese – heavy on the garlic, they way I like it.

<>I like being on the outside looking in. Watching mum in the kitchen preparing tea whilst the kids play tug of war with a video game controller. The occasional glimpse of towel and flesh before the bathroom light goes off. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a prowler, I just like being in the empty streets imagining the conversations going on inside. As a kid I used to imagine that there would be a virus that would wipe out most of the world’s population. Those of us who lived would be left to pile up the dead in lower league football stadiums. Some would clear down the motorways and race round the country in supercars. Others would fly helicopters and bomb new towns in military jets. Some would leave for sunnier shores in luxury gin palaces. I on the other hand would investigate peoples lives, search through their houses and their secrets. Find out what was really going on.

I’ve always thought that there is a fine line between wasting your time and biding your time. I am almost certainly biding. The fact that I am largely an itinerant kind of person is why I rarely shave, wash my poodle head, and seldom answer letters from the bank. It’s why I hated being locked this week and it’s made me start to re-think what I’m doing with my life. A postman rethinking his place in the world, there’s ironic. That’s why people become postmen generally isn’t it? People who can’t hack it in the real world whatever that is. Whilst we were locked up, Ray and I chatted; more than we ever have. We established that in many ways Ray and I are very similar. Unsurprisingly, it interested me more than him; I am the one who does the talking and the majority of the thinking. To me Ray is like a shadow, he exists on some levels and on others he just fades away. We are two relatively young men with no clue about what to do with their lives. We were never trained to do anything in particular. We had no strong role models for fathers; no-one telling us to go get a trade, be a fireman, learn a language, help others less fortunate than ourselves. It’s a Thatcherite thing I guess. When everyone was busy making good for themselves, people like me and Ray couldn’t be especially arsed. Neither of us own a house, neither of us want to, truth be told. Money means about as much to me as marmalade although I can’t really say the same for Ray and that’s why I’ve never entirely trusted him, well his judgement anyway.

<>It’s easy to look at me and assume that because I don’t particularly care for my appearance that I don’t care for myself and I therefore don’t care for other people. A lot of people make that mistake. Take Mrs Williams for example, how could anyone not care for someone so sweet and so deluded? The old chap in the High St, Mr Konstantin, a lovely old man although saying that, I’m not sure I could bring myself to wipe their arses when they can no longer reach around for themselves.

It’s not that I’ve done nothing with my life and I don’t want make apologies for not making the most of things in general. It’s just that this morning I watched an old lady in the street. She was moving at the speed of slug in treacle, uphill into an oncoming wind and I just thought; I never want to be like that. I then wondered at what age you decide that the ‘plastic bag on the head,’ is a good look? Perhaps I do find it hard to empathise? Empathy is, I suppose ultimately a selfish response to someone else’s hardship. You can ooh and ah all you like but really, you’re thinking, “You poor bastard, I’m glad that’s not me.”

You know, despite the fact that this country is so allegedly small and jam-packed, I see very little evidence of this outside the cities. At night and in the early mornings, the streets are deserted. I sometimes think we could double our population and set-up a nightshift and a dayshift. People used to look at me when I was on my round as I trudged about in the pissing rain and the autumn gales and think “You poor bastard, I’m glad that’s not me.” I used to watch them get into their company cars waving at their company wives in their company houses and think “You poor bastard, I’m glad that’s not me.” Anyone who tells you that empathy is one of our more endearing human traits is sorely mistaken. If we were capable of true empathy, war, suffering and daytime television would be a thing of the past.

Now this neatly brings me back to Ray. I don’t feel sorry for him, we do have things in common but it’s not the same as empathy. Mates don’t feel empathy just mateship. I know Ray doesn’t treat Beth the way that she deserves to be treated considering what she does for him, but it’s hard for me to say as much. If there is one thing I categorically deplore about Ray it is this and as his mate it is my solemn duty to say nothing on the subject.