Gadjo Dilo

Name That Cat! #2

2009-11-06T22:31:00.000-08:00

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS A GRATUITOUSLY LARGE NUMBER OF SMALL FURRY ANIMALS

Yes folks they’ve finally arrived, 3 months after Ţuţica sprogged out she’s at last deigned to bring them to see us (and be fed, of course). We thought they’d died; we thought she’d had them, at location unknown, and they’d been eaten by the neighbourhood dogs or drowned by other deluded humans who considered themselves “owners” and with some heavy sense of responsibility. But there’s just two of them, which may be manageable and not necessitate a sack and a trip to the canal. And here’s what makes it all worthwhile: these two also need names. The names of the mother and Tanu, her “friend”, were chosen by your good selves and have served them well. We were unsure of the kittens parentage: it could have been Tanu, whose colouring is the same as Ţuţica’s, The Dark One, or The Ginger One; but the youngsters have a pleasing touch of the tarbrush and so it wasn’t incest and as Mrs Dilo and I agreed we’d be happy whatever they are as long as they’re not ginger... we’re very happy. We’re not entirely surely what sex they are either, but whenever we pick one up and have a look, it’s a boy; unfortunately we haven’t been able to catch both at the same time (cf, The Four Dachshunds Problem), but I’m with Chris Eubank (wasn’t it??) in believing that because I’m so incredibly butch and rugged any child on mine (albeit adopted, albeit of a different species) would have to be a manchild. The two names you chose last time are Romanian, but this time they’re going to be named after my heroes; oh, and the rules are slightly different - I’ve already decided, so you win a prize if your choice agrees with mine:

#1 Elvis: I’ve always wanted a pet called Elvis and I won’t get a better chance than this. (I admire his singing and dancing but most of all his noshing.) Also, due to the rubbish that is on cable TV, Mrs Dilo and I are often reduced to watching old films on MGM Channel and we’ve fallen in love with The King in a whole new way.

#2 Noddy Holder: Another personal Rock and Roll hero and with all the right attributes: a top pair of lungs, actual whiskers, and by all accounts one who can handle himself in a fight. Using The Jules’s excellent suggestions, I’d want our Noddy to introduce all the festive seasons for us by caterwauling on the doorstep: not only “It’s Christmasssss!!” but also “It’s Easterrrrrrrr/Ramadaaannnnn/Yom Kippurrrrrrrrr!!!!!” etc.

#3 Gandhi: I’ve always admired the Mahatma but felt he must have had a hard life what with one thing and another. I want to give him the chance to be reincarnated (if only in name) as a kitten so he can enjoy his sensual side and get the pampering he surely deserves.

#4 Nelson: Not named after genuine heroes Admiral Nelson or Nelson Mandela but, contrarily, after Nelson Gabriel, former BBC Radio 4 The Archers character, who made his living selling junk to gullible people - skills, sad to say, of much more use over here than those of the other two.

#5 Wellington: Again not a British wartime hero but the specky one off of The Wombles, those cute animated critters that tidied up the rubbish on Wimbledon Common, and he can start by tidying up the mess he’s made in the cardboard box we gave him to sleep in.

#6 Stig: Not named after that bloke off of Top Gear (who’s supposed to be a good driver, yeah, but has to wear a crash helmet inside the car… duh!), or after any number of Swedish blokes, but after Stig of the Dump, another childhood hero who was dead rugged.

#7 Bela Lugosi: Mrs Dilo’s often heard to say “Hmm, he looks a bit Hungarian” about any character in a film who’s started to behave in a disdainful manner. I’m expecting her to say this about one of the kittens when it turns its nose up at some new piece of bedding we’ve offered it from our wardrobe. Still a top name though.

#8 Linda Lusardi: (Just in case one of them is a lass.) I can’t get over the fact that I think cats are sexy. Ţuţica’s been full of milk and I’ve never seen such breasts on a cat, not even on Eurotrash. I don’t want to go down this road much further, but I might just go as far as naming a cat “Linda Lusardi”.

Alright, Caalm Down Caalm Down!!

2009-11-02T22:47:00.000-08:00

Our Romanian dance teacher said something at class last week that cheered me up: I told her I was having trouble remembering a certain sequence and she said “Don’t worry, by summer you’ll be good enough to be an honorary Scouser!” “Hey, lady” I said, “I yield to none in my admiration of the business skills, comedy timing and joie de vivre of our Liverpudlian compadres, and I feel that is one accolade I may surely never deserve!!”; but no, what she said was “honoris causa” - which sounds almost exactly the same - and means something like magna cum lauda, the best of the best, which was very sweet of her. So, here I come Ken Dodd, Cilla Black, Ricky Tomlinson, Robbie Fowler and especially Beth Jordache off of Brookside (right). Speaking of the last of these, that’s surely a Scouse version of a Romanian name. To end, a choice of listening: Beth’s 2nd cousin twice removed, world’s greatest ţambal player Toni Iordache; or the first few bars of Ferry Across the Mersey followed by a good fight:

Back on the Rock and Roll

2009-10-29T23:50:00.000-07:00

Hi folks, I’ve been in a lousy mood because my boss has told me he won’t be renewing my contract when it expires in the New Year. Here (A) is what he actually said, (B) what he may have thinking, (C) what I was expecting to hear, and (D) the nightmare scenario:

(A) I want to thank you for your contribution over the last year and a half but I feel your skills are rather too narrowly academic for any future projects at this company and that we require people who are better suited to general computer work. I wish you all the best in finding another job.
(B) I have other employees who are younger (can’t argue with that, I’m the oldest git in the office by a long chalk), quicker (well of course they’re quicker at computing than I am, their minds are not burdened by the massive sense of fun and absurdity under which I‘ve been forced to labour every day of my miserable benighted life), and I pay them less (probably the clincher).
(C) Gadjo, this has been the most wonderful time of my entire life and though I have other employees they’re just children, they don’t know life like you and I do, they’re holding you back and (tears start to well up in his eyes) some times when you love somebody (totally losing control of his emotions now) you have to let them go.... fly, Gadjo, fly!!!
(D) Alright, Dilo, enough’s enough. I know you’ve tried but frankly you’re an over-educated twit, a fop and a smurf, and if I ever catch sight of your silly grinning face again – you think you’re funny but you’re not – I’ll personally see to it that you’re kicked out of this goddam khazi of a country for once and for all!!

Well, then of course the self-recriminations start: what if I hadn’t been late for that meeting, what if X hadn’t overheard me saying what I said to Y, what if I hadn’t pressed myself up against Z in the lift that time. But the boss is a very fair man, and I did try my best. It’s a f**king miserable feeling but I’ll not starve; I’m a tryer if nothing else, I can survive on very little, and I’ve worked long enough and been fortuitous enough to build up some financial security for myself and Mrs Dilo.

To herald my return to the dole office – assuming I was eligible to receive the 50p a week that would get handed out to me at the Romanian equivalent, which I don’t think I am - here’s a song from Half Man Half Biscuit’s LP Back in the DHSS:

Jazz Is Totally Up Itself

2009-10-23T23:47:00.000-07:00

I’ve been compelled to write a post with this title as a consequence of my previous post in which I slandered another perfectly respectable music genre. However, such is my new-found cantankerousness and intolerance that I find myself able to fulfil this task as well.

I am going to present my argument solely in terms of Trumpet Playing and Anal Retention. Have a listen to the first part of Louis Armstrong’s West End Blues:

Over and over I tried to play that intro on my trumpet, then the tune, slow and melancholic (here’s a later, brassier version, which is also good) yet it flickers with the humanity that Armstrong could rarely keep to himself. Unfortunately I can find no clip of the only track to which I’ve ever attempted to do a striptease: Armstrong’s early recording of Tin Roof Blues (Tiger Rag and it would have all been over in a flash....) Satchmo kept himself ticking with a bit of marijuana and the help of Swiss Kriss, a laxative of which he was such a fan that he once recommended it to Britain’s Royal Family, and I admire him as a man who kept his embouchure clenched and his bowels open.

Now, there were other trumpeters with nice styles (and some modern players of other jazz instruments that I like). But somewhere it goes wrong, it all becomes a bit, well, Jazz Club. And I reckon the cause is Mr Miles Davis. He’s probably a genius, enough people have told me that he is, so I’m probably a philistine, I’m probably missing out. But for me the most accurate word I’ve ever heard applied to him is “costive” – I just want to shake him.... shake him and shout “Wake up, you dozy bastard!! Wake up and go to the lavatory!!!!”.

Fortunately, however, all is not lost. Musicians from other genres have been inspired by jazz and incorporated it into their shtick. Here are my favourite Russians, Markscheider Kunst, whose trumpeter I reckon listened to more Louis than Miles; have a listen to the intro in the 1st one, before the band gets into its lovely Latino-Leningrad stride, then look at the 2nd one if you wanna see them in a proper video. Now, this is obviously just my personal preference, but to me that’s Nice!

Gadjo’s Heavy Half-Hour

2009-10-19T22:05:00.001-07:00

(DISCLAIMER: Gadjo would like to state that many of his best friends are Greeboes, that he appreciates the valuable contribution they make in terms of IT support services, and that none of what he's about to say applies to them personally)

It seems Mr Lemmy Of Motörhead (2:48 into this classic comedy clip):

was the star of the previous post; everybody’s interested in him, and (in the John Lennon sense) he may very well now be “bigger than Jesus" (though his trademark habit of setting his mike higher than his gob - see right - tends to make him look smaller). Anyhow, this doesn’t stop me thinking that Heavy Metal is all just, well, A Little Bit Silly*, and for reasons I still don’t fully understand I feel required to issue this Ten Point Plan to deal with it.

#1 Identification
Metal fans often try to avoid persecution by subdividing themselves into smaller groups so they’re more difficult to catch: “Thrash Metal”, “Death Metal” and “Doom Metal” are examples. However, one thing unites them all: they all wear black t-shirts with Poland tour dates printed on the back.

#2 Divide and Rule
Disillusion may be generated by inventing some more Metal subdivisions which are rubbish: (A) Deaf Metal, like Death Metal but you can’t hear the lyrics; (B) Thresh Metal, like Thrash Metal but more agriculturally orientated - basically embittered folk singers with a crate of Jack Daniels; and (C) Green Metal, like Black Metal but instead of Satan they’ll sing the praises of The Universal Earth Mother.

#3 Systemization
In case they grow wise to our strategies in #1 and #2 we’ll require them to wear at all times a lovely, colourful, Paisley blouse.

#4 Acne Tax
This speaks for itself, but as with any fiscal policy it must be set out clearly and fairly. To this end a complicated algorithm has been devised which calculates the surface area, pustulance and predicted vulco-acnic activity.

#5 Unsubtle Make-Up Tax
Mainly just for Kiss fans. (Covering up acne with makeup turns you into a Goth, which is a whole other post entirely.)

#6 The Heavy Metal Lyrics Entailment Law
All Gadjo’s heroes walked the walk: Jagger spent the night together with many people, and Hendrix really kissed the sky. Metallers must now accept the implications of their own grandiose statements. For example, Iron Maiden’s Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter..... does the band’s singer have any female progeny? He does?? Great! “Get your coat on, poppet, your mother and I (gulp) have got to take you somewhere today”.

#7 Free Shampoo
Ok, I’m sure Headbangers wash their hair as much as anybody else, but this shampoo is different - it makes your hair fall out. Headbanging’s no fun without half a yard of Laboratoires Garnier-ed wedge to wave about! Admittedly this policy creates a lot of angry teenage skinheads, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

#8 A Moratorium on Death
Metallers name their bands after things that kill you and love to play with images of death, helping them feel “grounded”. To wean them off this I’m devising an elixir of life (still only in the ideas stage, admittedly) which’ll mean nobody’ll die, just for a while at least, and death will no longer be interesting - think on!

#9 Resettlement Policy
Metal fans love the darkness, where they can incubate their inverted ideas of happiness. Many are quite sedentary and may spend all their time in one place - e.g. Knebworth or Germany - where over the course of any calendar year they enjoy 50% of their time under the cloak of night. To stop this we’ll establish resettlement camps in Greenland and Tierra del Fuego: April-September in the former, October-March in the latter.

#10 Parody
When I think about it Metallers do have redeeming features, foremost being their good-natured acceptance of having the (Metal) Mickey taken out of them. Here’s Bad News:

So, there’s the plan for the brave new metal-free world. Are you thinking that it seems a bit, like, unnecessary? A bit over-the-top? A little heavy, perhaps?? Yes folks, it is! It’s treating like with like, akin to a homeopathic remedy. Rock on!

* Don’t fret, Metal fans, by way of balance there’ll be forthcoming posts entitled “Classical Music is for Poofs”, “Jazz is Totally Up Itself” and “There’s Nowt as Queer as Folk”.

Fantasy Island Discs #1

2009-10-13T22:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a completely arbitary list of records I’d like to be made. As on Desert Island Discs there are eight of them; the one I’d want with me if all the rest where washed away would be the one that I want to like but never actually listen to, and the book that I’d want with me apart from the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare’s Sister (... is that still a stipulation??) would be Harry Potter and the Witch-Finder General.

#1: The Dark Side of Keith Moon by Pink Floyd (with The Stockhausen Sinfonietta): The sound of television sets smashing on pavements, occasional tables being thrown against walls and baseball bats hitting Corby trouser presses.

#2: Smells Like Methylated Spirit by Nirvana: I’m not condoning imbibing meths, but if poor old Kurt Cobain had chosen this as his tipple instead of the smack then I wonder if, rather than dead, he might simply be blind, mad, and with an extremely unpleasant taste in his mouth.

#3: Glaswegian Rhapsody by Queen: “I see a little silhouetto of a man”… “You lookin’ at me?”… “Scaramouche,scaramouche will you do the fandango?”… “Sassanach, eh??”… “Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening meeee!!”… “Aye, sonny, and this is only me second-best Stanley knife!”

#4: The Three of Clubs by Motörhead: In which Lemmy owns up that, despite having slept with 1,200 women and being covered in warts, when playing cards he can’t always guarantee to have the ace of spades in his hand. On the B-side he apologises for being a Nazi fetishist f**kwit and for using diacritics inappropriately.

#5: Live at Strangeways by Morrisey: Johnny Cash made a record called Live At Folsom Prison, which apparently is a classic of the genre, and The Smiths released an album called Strangeways, Here We Come. If Mozza was any sort of man he’d follow through on this and perform to the Scallies there; and, considering that his fanbase is the most astonishingly diverse of any singer ever, he’d probably do alright.

#6: Heartbreak Motel by Elvis: Like Heartbreak Hotel but it’s a bit cheaper and more convenient when parking your car. It’s never easy to get over heartbreak, but this time it’s lighter on your wallet and you can move on more quickly.

#7: Music to Watch Girls Buy by Andy Williams: Guys, ever been clothes shopping with your Significant Other? Ghastly, wasn’t it. Didn’t you wish there’d at least been a soundtrack to it? This follow up song by Mr Williams is a medley: You Wear it Well (so why don’t we just get buy it and get this over with), You've Lost that Loving Feeling, We Gotta Get Out Of This Place and Girlfriend in a Coma.

#8: Great Balls of Fur by Jerry Lee Lewis: He played the piano with his feet and with his arse and then married his 13-year-old first cousin; I reckon it would’ve been a great finale to his act if he’d then coughed up a couple of large fur-balls.

To end, of course, here's the Desert Island Discs theme tune By The Sleepy Lagoon by Eric Coates. So make yourself a mug of Horlicks, stoke the fire up, put a blanket over your lap and forget that New Labour, the X-Factor, Jade Goody, the 60s, etc ever happened. Nighty night!

Lookalikes #2

2009-10-06T22:56:00.000-07:00

I attempted a kind of homage to Gyppo in the previous post, and now it must be No Good Boyo's turn.

Wales

I was dragged up to a Nissen hut in the north of Wales every Easter as it was the only landscape bleak enough to accord with my father’s world-view and thereby help him feel comfortable within himself. An Ivor The Engine train ride from there is wonderful Port Merion, the “Village” from The Prisoner; and I was once further down the coast but remember nothing but jellyfish... big, red, flabby, embarrassing jellyfish, like a thousand Ron Davieses after an all-night “paddling” session. Over to the East we have the lachrymose beauty of The Llangollen_Canal but also places like Wrexham, Flint and Mold, which don’t really sound as Welsh as they should, maybe they're a bit traumatised by this. The middle, if my Counties of Britain jigsaw puzzle was correct, is Radnor and Merionethshire, which I've always imaged as R. S. Thomas country, in other words as miserable as f**k, though I’ll be happy to be wrong. But Down South are some splendid boyos and an ex-girlfriend whom I shall call Morfudd. I met her on the Internet and when I arrived for a first date found out she was really quite deformed - what’s the PC expression for this, guys? - poor lass; but that didn’t put me off at all; no; I’m like that. What did put me off however was her mother, who was a a witch: not the pointy-hatted, mixing-up-herbs type from Bangor University’s Department of Celtic Dawn Studies and Shamanism, but yer actual witch, a female nasty-piece-of-work. The fact that Morf was utterly devoted to her despite the constant put-downs made me eventually make my excuses and leave*. Moving on, we have the gorgeous Ystradfellte waterfalls, the deep sandy beaches at Rhossilli, the actually-quite-pleasant seaside destinations of Tenby and Manorbier and the invigorating Pembrokeshire coastline.

Siân Lloyd’s Face

The face of TV Weathergirl Siân Lloyd covers an area 0.000000003645847 the size of Wales, which is a fascinating statistic but not of immediate relevance here. What drew me to realise the similarity was the disproportion: Siân’s face is much bigger at the bottom that at the top, more fulsome, more generous, more sensual around the mouth and jowl region than around the forehead and crown. Down below we have a half of a face ready to enjoy life, to smile, to laugh, to eat and drink, and - oh yes - to kiss and to tell. Up top we have a more shrunken physiognomy, a personality meanly crouched inside a cranium that’s already too small for it. The mid region is represented by the eyes, supposedly the window to the soul: as we look at her, the left looks nice, bright, welcoming, but the right looks sad and, frankly, traumatised, half a seaweed short of a laverbread. The middle, the nose, is where LLoyd's ex Lembit Öpik is MP, and though I warm to him as an East European and an eccentric, he’s clearly been sticking his nose in where it’s not wanted, e.g. into the private affairs of asteroids and into Cluj’s own Gabriela Irimia, and he’s also reputedly as tight as a gnat’s chuff. Lloyd, Wales’s Marianne, deserves better, as does any country that looks a bit like her.

So there you go, that was my own Welsh Letter - like a French letter but made not from rubber but from the outermost “sheath” of a leek.... and not one of them thin spindly ones, innit - and I hope you enjoyed it. Further information, tourist brochures, Bara brith, etc can be had at the good offices of No Good Boyo, and while he’s dragging the judge, jury and punishment squad out of the Ffwrch & Fferkin in response to this (and to serve on me the martyrdom I’ve always craved) I shall bid you iechyd da!

*Also, her mother, though of retirement age, had a boyfriend who was young enough to be her son. Live and let live. Then I met other couples there with a similar reverse-May-September thing going on – nothing wrong with that, but it was the only community I’ve ever been in where this seemed to be the norm.

Gypsy Dualism

2009-09-30T23:39:00.000-07:00

This post is partly in honour of our own Raggle-Taggle Gypso-O Mr Gyppo Byard, who seems to be back blogging with a passion, and partly because I live in country that is virtually a stud farm supplying gypsies to the world. It’s often occurred to me that there’s a serious gap between the perceptions in, on the one hand, literature and, on the other, the pages of the e.g. The Daily Mail. I was once involved in a play based on an sappy Spanish story about the romantic lives of gypsies, then when the director was driving us back to his house he saw a caravan at the bottom of the road and exclaimed “Bloody tinkers back again – go on, clear off!!” I’m sure he had his reasons, and good ones, but the dichotomy struck me as exquisite and led me to thoughts of Cartesian Dualism, Platonic idealism, Hegelian dialectics and all manner of other types of shite. And so, I wish hereby to do my bit to close the gap between these two perceptions, creating a synthesis that fosters mutual understanding and allows the peoples of the world to live in peace etc, by substituting the pejorative “Gyppo” for the still romantic “Gypsy” into several well-known phrases:

The Gyppo Kings

Many people’s introduction to flamenco and flamboyant Spanish gypsies. But the group’s actually from France and plays mainly rumba, which is borderline flamenco at best. However, kings they are as all Gypsies are royalty: their sub-culture status allows this, while the rest of us are mere subjects of some inbred anachronism. The Romanian King (of kings) is a man called Florin Cioabă, whose surname means “soup” (almost) and who got into hot water when he forced his 12-year-old daughter (against her will) to get married. Them royals, eh??

Gyppo Creams

Whatever happened to Gypsy Creams? is one of those questions that people of a certain age with lots of spare time and an Internet connection love to ask. They were a type of biscuit made by McVities - and maybe will be again – and if memory serves were like round Bourbons but more crunchy and with a filling like butterscotch. I suppose the only “Gypsy” thing about them was that they were here one day and gone the next.

Gyppo Toast

Bread soaked in milk and raw egg and then fried in a pan. I’ve never heard of gypsies eating this, though in Romania they have a reputation for eating snails; (and I don’t blame them, the ones here are the most succulent-looking I’ve ever seen and remind me of those I’ve paid good money for in fancy delicatessens). I’ve also heard it called ”French toast”. Taking everything together, this begs the question: Les Gyppos… Les Français … ou est la différence??

Dehavilland Gyppo Moth

Geoffrey de Havilland must have been a brilliant engineer: he gave us the “Wooden Wonder” the world’s first commercial jet airliner, very nearly the world’s first plane to break the sound barrier, and the “Moth” series of biplanes beloved of amateur enthusiasts such as David Gower. Maybe it was due to de Havilland’s swashbuckling style that he gave the name “Gipsy” to the engines he manufactured to power many of these, and this stuck as a generic name for the ‘planes as well. Seeing the way that gypsies drive their horse and carts, it’s not a bad one.

Gossard Gyppo

Anybody remember this bra? Anybody ever worn one? Was it comfy?? I was once walking in the hills here on a very hot summer’s day and met a fine Gypsy woman of about 35 who’d stripped down to her skirt and bra and, judging by her smile, was enjoying the feeling. Had I been any sort of man I’d have laid her down her there and then in the corn field with the proud maize cobs battling like swords in the air above us. But she probably had her husband and brothers waiting with knives behind a tree for just such an occasion. I also never got to ask if the bra she was wearing was a Gossard, and if it was comfy.

Next time, to the same ends, I carry out the reverse process: “Oi, sling your hooks you Gentlemen of the Road!”, “Why don’t you clear up your bloody rubbish you Princes Amongst Men!” and pub signs declaring “No Real Rroms”. To end, scenes from the Moldovan Emil Loteanu’s 1971 film Şatra , based on stories by Gorki, and starting with a song that all Romanians can sing no matter what they think of Gypsies (and is if that wasn’t enough, the male “love interest” is an Austro-Hungarian!):

Titbits from The Romanian Kitchen #1

2009-09-15T23:10:00.000-07:00

As I said once before, it took me some time to adjust to the food here, and to be honest I still haven’t fully appreciated that Romanian is one of The World’s Great Cuisines, but, for your delectation, I've collected half a dozen exquisite examples that do present it at its best:

#6 Slănina: Romanian heaven will be made of slănina: they’ll be thrones carved from a solid blocks of it, and the white clouds upon which pass the harp-strumming gypsy seraphim and cherubim lăutari will also be slănina, still dripping translucent globules of cardiac-arresting goodness from their warming on the end of a stick at some celestial camp fire.

#5 Salată: This word covers both “salad” and “lettuce”, and of course the two meanings are not mutually exclusive. If you order salată in a Romanian restaurant you may very well get lettuce.......... with SUGAR on it.

#4 Sarmale: Actually, this is perfectly respectable food, one of the Archetypal Foods of Eastern Europe, a legacy from the Ottomans and recreated in one form or another by many nations over here. A confection of cabbage leaves and pig nonsense (lungs, knees, testicles, etc), and flavoured with savoury, a herb we no longer use in Britain, because it’s rubbish, and which for some reason I cannot smell without feeling ill.

#3 Cluj Tap Water: I recently organised a “no-frills” holiday for ourselves and some of Mrs Dilo’s friends and requested that we all “pack light”. Sure enough, the girls forewent many of their party dresses, but I couldn’t believe the amount of provisions they’d bought from home. The most astonishing was a 1 litre bottle of water. “Is that mineral water??”, I asked. “No, it’s tap water, I wasn’t sure if the water in Spain would be any good”. Bless.

#2 Ant Piss: Mrs Dilo: “When we were children we used to stick a twig into an ants’ nest, pull it out after a few minutes, shake the ants off and suck the twig. It’s got quite a funny taste - a bit acid.”

#1 Bulă: A pig, lovingly executed with a Stanley knife, five full-sized cabbages shoved up its arse, its ears shoved up its nose, fried for five hours, then covered in a layer of mashed potato moulded in the shape of a slightly larger pig. (OK, I made that one up).

Ok. Now, at the end of this week I'm off back to the land of fish 'n' chips and Cheesy Wotsits, to my ancestral birthplace, the only two famous sons of which were Pope Adrian IV and Vinnie Jones, and so, 'cos the YouTube clip of Pope Adrian's version of My Way seems to have been removed, and while we have bad taste very much in mind.... take it away Vinnie! (and please don't bring it back again, ever):

Once In A Lifetime

2009-09-10T23:52:00.000-07:00

I’ve been kindly memed by Gyppo Byard and must name 10 things I've done once in my life which I wouldn't want to repeat ever. (Though in accordance with my previously stated desire to blog slightly less, I’m doing only 5) This sounds like a great opportunity for vanity - possibly even inverted vanity - since, though the things in question were presumably Not a Good Idea, they may also have been Incredibly Dangerous and Brave....:

#1: Walking Through a Railway Tunnel in Spain: “Go along that path to the lake - it’s quicker if you walk through a couple of very short railway tunnels on the way”, they said; yeah, but forgot to add “.......but not the first one!”, which was very long, blacker than the Earl o’ Hell’s britches and in which I met a train coming the other way.

#2 Hugging a Psycho: I was out for a drink with a friend who’d brought along another bloke who’d recently moved into his house, a brawny security guard, who was clearly quite distressed. As we left to make our separate ways home, in an half-drunken outburst of naïvete and goodwill I hugged him in the hope that this would cheer him up a bit. I was told later that he was serious knife nutter.

#3: Writing the Most Incredibly Rude Things about my Maths Teacher, then By Mistake Handing this Missive in with my Maths Homework: She either didn’t read it or the words simply weren’t in her vocabulary.

#4: Crushing a Wine Glass with my Bare Hand: My girlfriend at the time was flirting with another guy. Many chaps in that situation have done far worse.....

#5: Letting the Oil Run Dry on a Gas Turbine: It was during my abortive attempt to train as a mechanical engineer. I simply didn’t have any common sense. Spectacularly so. Mechanical Engineering has flourished without me.

So, there they are, and I shall endeavour to make other, better mistakes rather than repeat these ones. Gyppo tagged 5 other people to perform this task and I shall tag Kevin Musgrove, Pearl, The Jules, Madame DeFarge and Brother Tobias; others are of course welcome to do it too. Mind how you go.

Gadjo’s Video Jukebox #8: Summer is A-Coming In

2009-09-07T22:23:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone, I’m thinking I should write shorter posts for a while - for which you may be glad - and spend less time blogging so that I can concentrate on other things (like my singing lessons which start again today). Whether I can achieve this remains to be seen, as you lot may be So Gorgeous that I simply can’t leave It alone. Maybe it’s because summer’s ending that I feel this way. A season we’ve enjoyed, sitting in the garden soaking up the sun, but now dowager Autumn stirs from fragile slumber, starts to clear away the summer’s spread, soon laying lace upon the bare table. I’d like to string it out a little bit longer, before the fuel bills go up and the alcoholic members of Mrs Dilo’s family return to their self-defeating ways of getting through the winter. “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”?? Arse. So, here are Helno and the lads of Les Négresses Vertes with their hymn to summer Voilà l'été:

And here they are again in the no less summery but more flamencoy Sous le Soleil de Bodega:

Seven "Quirky" Personality Traits About Myself

2009-09-01T23:31:00.000-07:00

ADDENDUM: I've now realised that it was churlish - nay, hypocritical - of me to complain that nobody ever memes me (which is also not true, now I think about it) and then not pass on this thing to 7 other people as requested. So, I'm hereby passing it on to: Brother Tobias, GAW (here's hoping he is on the road to recovery), Brit, Ana (wherever she is), Barry Teeth, Mr Inkspot, and last-but-not-least The Dotterel.

I don’t usually do memes – mainly because nobody asks me – but now I’ve been memed by our Kevin Musgrove, thank you kindly, and must supply the information described in the title of this post. (There’s a modifying clause to this which reads “as evidenced in my blog”, but I shall ignore this: as Kevin sez that I can be counted upon to come up with something unexpected I maintain that my blog is intractable to such a coarse-grained sub-categorisation approach, even one that includes the word “quirky”).

1) I Talk to Myself: The legacy of having been a stammerer and a habit that I refuse to give up. Though actually I’m merely practicing the conversations that I’d like to have with others - it’s not the same thing.

2) I Talk to the Television: Ditto. And also I’ve found this the ideal way to relax after a long day at the office; e.g. “My grandma can sing better than that, and she’s dead!”, or “Blue trousers with an orange shirt??... what were you thinking!” or “Oi, get your hair cut!”, etc etc.

3) I Talk to Animals: Ditto friggin’ Ditto. I can practically talk a tabby cat into bed with me.

4) I Have the Most Appalling Posture Imaginable: For years - decades, even - I’ve earned a crust slumped in a chair at a computer screen and then spent the evenings at dance classes. The latter may have won my soul but the former has certainly triumphed corporally.

5) In Moments of Anxiety or Confusion I Pick My Nose: Drinkers open a bottle, smokers light a fag and Bonobo monkeys get jiggy wid it, but I find a bit of nasal excavation to be the ideal “security blanket”.

6) I Have in Me an Aching Gap where Hard, Naked Ambition Should Be: I wanted to be a dancer but started too late; I trained in martial arts but ultimately lacked the killer instinct; I wanted to be a famous poet... but, ahh, I may yet be one day - I do hate other poets and their poems sufficiently to achieve this.

7) I’m Quite Tactile: This served me rather well during the huggy-kissy “New Man” era of the 1980s but also led to episodes of “inappropriate behaviour”. Here’s Madness:

Book Review #1: Writing Therapy by Tim Atkinson

2009-08-30T22:42:00.000-07:00

WARNING: THIS POSTS DISCUSSES LITERATURE AND CONTAINS NO PERCEIVABLE ATTEMPTS AT HUMOUR

Tim Atkinson is one of our number, a blogger who goes by the name of The Dotterel and also writes Bringing up Charlie. He has written a book, which is quite excellent, and which I promised to review here. Now, I don’t have too much time or previous experience, so staff members on the Times Literary Supplement can breathe a sigh of relief, but here goes:

The story centres on a teenage girl who drops out of school and spends all her time reading in the local library. A good idea on many levels: hockey is not an important skill in the job market, (neither are history or geography but I’ll let that pass...) Atkinson somehow manages to understand this girl’s way of thinking – jealousy of her classmates, the failure of communication with her mother, her crush on a male teacher – very well indeed. He’s been a teacher himself and is clearly observant. She then gets admitted to a teenager unit of the local psychiatric hospital, where she meet other kids: self-harmers, bulimic, sex-addicts, fantasists… She has a lesbian relationship with another girl there, described in a direct and non-cringe-worthy manner. There ensues a battle between the “old guard” members of staff and a trainee who encourages her to write as a form of therapy. This fulfils what I take to be the theme of the book, and somehow she manages to avoid the traps of escapism and work her way to a clearer view of her place in the world. The conclusion is sufficiently heart-warming and, most importantly, convincing.

Its book that you keep on wanting to read and read. The subject matter is in and of itself engaging. (From a personal perspective, I had a close family member who also sought to escape the world through the medium of literature, though I don’t think this ever led him to having a lesbian affair.) In addition, the author manages to write it as the teenage girl, a feat he pulls off remarkably well. And it has coded literary references, which one hopes will give young readers inspiration to read further and maybe even write books of their own :-) I hope that it reaches a wider audience - it deserves one.

Top Cats #2

2009-08-21T00:21:00.000-07:00

Those kittens still haven’t showed up yet, so I’m forced to present the second half of my Top Cats list, my Five Favourite Fluffy Felines, as with the Ferals, mainly in terms of fictitious moggies*.

#5 Bagpuss off of Bagpuss: A very popular candidate in comments on the previous list. But I have to confess that I never “got” Bagpuss. Ivor the Engine, yes; The Clangers, most certainly; but Bagpuss was just too esoteric, too dense with subtexts, simply too Modernist – like trying Finnegan’s Wake after having enjoyed Ulysses. The plots seemed to involve mechanical mice and a large cat that did nothing: Waiting For Godot wasn’t in it. I’m clearly just irremediable middle-brow.

#4 Vienna/Ponsonby: I always remember Leonard Rossiter talking to large fluffy cats: it was the former in Rising Damp (6:14 minutes in), and the latter in The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin. Rossiter, by all accounts, had an exceptionally high opinion of his own talent, perhaps justifiably so considering his nanosecond perfect comic timing. There’s no more obliging straight-man than a lazy pussycat, which is he probably how he honed his craft.

#3 Custard off of Roobarb and Custard Admittedly the dog was the star, but as the phlegmatic pink cat from next door Custard was Sancho Panza to Roobarb’s knight-errant. The animation was as edgy and fidgety as most of the target audience surely felt at that age, and the theme-tune so perfectly grungy that it could’ve been written by The Ramones but with jazzy mouth-organ and (later) double-bass, by Toots Thielemans and Danny Thompson… just my little fantasy :-).

#2 Jess off of Postman Pat: I always felt there was something disturbing about Postman Pat. It’s the way he drives around the lanes of Greendale without ever having to slow down for corners or watch out for other traffic – he’s clearly made a pact with the Devil. And he’s never without the company of that cat – it’s his “familiar”. So what makes Jess A Fluffy? I hear you ask. Well, just think how much worse Pat would be without it.

#1 Tanu: Of our two, Ţuţica is the more trichologically luxuriant but, personality-wise, Tanu’s as Fluffy as they come - he’s simply too stupid to be Feral. Spends his energies chasing butterflies rather than eatables, and has a habit of banging his head on things - very endearing when the thing in question is a part of one's body; another good trick is, when he’s on your lap, surreptitiously move the chair under a table, when he wakes up he’ll yawn, stand up, and bang his head… every time.

* NB: I’ve made no mention of Mrs Slocum’s Pussy – also a popular viewers’ choice in the Feral category - as I felt we’d probably had quite enough of “that” sort of thing in the previous post....

To end, something for all you young people out there, here’s the rave version of Roobarb and Custard:

R.I.P. #1

2009-08-18T00:07:00.000-07:00

The recent death of Michael Jackson left me strangely unmoved. When Princess Di died I was living in a house in Denmark full of hippies who didn’t give a toss, so I’d no prior experience of being unmoved and being told this was strange. I felt genuinely sorry for their families but not much else, possibly because I hadn’t enjoyed Jackson’s later music much and adhered to the Jarvis Cocker school of thought that though talented and possibly harmless he probably wasn’t the saviour of all the world’s children. Then I remembered he had brothers called Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon; that night I dreamed a dream – good grief I must have eaten a lot of cheese the previous evening - what it would’ve been like if Jackie Chan, President Josip “Broz” Tito of Yugoslavia, Germaine Greer and Marlon Brando had been the pallbearers:

Germaine: You know, he was such a beautiful young man, in that special age between innocence and maturity.
Marlon: He coulda been a contender.
Germaine: He was a contender, you idiot! It’s just that you choose to judge him by the handed-down values of a Patriarchal society...
Jackie: Hey, this funeral is kinda boring, how about if the hearse is hijacked by the Triads, door opens, coffin flies down road and through the streets of Chinatown, and we go after it fighting everybody we meet on the way?
Germaine: ...that gives women nothing but second-class sexual citizenship and shitty orgasms
Marlon: Got any butter with you?*
Germaine: No I haven’t, you fat, pervy narcissist! So what are you rebelling against?
Marlon: What have you got? Dairylea would probably do.
Germaine: I didn't fight to get women out from behind vacuum cleaners to get them onto the cheese board.
Jackie: Ha, so you think your verbal kung fu is good, heh, Sheila?? You wait till Julie Birchill show up, then we see who is true master!
Marlon: The horror, the horror...
Tito: Hey, I successfully led partisan troops against the fascist armies during World War II and then united the mutually antagonistic Southern Slavic peoples during 35 years of relative harmony whilst both making friends with Western leaders and keeping the Red Army at bay, while this Jackson was just a singer with an squeeky voice and a funny face. I can’t believe I agreed to do this. Still, I ‘spose, a gig’s a gig.
Vicar (David Bowie, for it is he): Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, Michael Jackson was a junkie; Gone to the llama ranch in the sky, hitting an all-time high.
Everybody: Amen.

Gadjo Dilo wishes to thank the producers of On The Waterfront, Last Tango in Paris, The Wild One, Apocalypse Now and all of Jackie Chan’s films, and the publishers of The Female Eunuch, The Beautiful Boy , Ashes to Ashes and Yugo First: An Autobiography for their kind permission etc.

* I hesitated, much, before referencing this by-all-accounts terminally unpleasant film; but then I thought, if anyone can handle it Germaine Greer probably can.

Here's the geezer with his bros from the era which I personally prefer to remember:

Top Cats #1

2009-08-11T23:14:00.000-07:00

The result of the votes counted after the Previous Moggie Post was that our two trencherman tabbies are now named Tanu and Ţuţica, the most Romanian names on offer, and already X is leaning how to mix dodgy cement and Y is seeing how much cheap gold she can fit into the gaps between her molars. And, hurrah, the miracle of childbirth has once again been visited upon the world! Somewhere. Ţuţica’s tummy is now full of milk rather than babies, though we have no idea where she’s put the latter. Mysterious. While we look for them, in honour of All Things Cat – for taxonomic reasons I’ve divided the contest into Feral and Fluffy - here’s my all time list of Five Favourite Feral Felines:

5: Tom off of Tom & Jerry

Only the episodes from the Fred Quimby era, of course, or Kevin would kill me, and rightly so. Not the most imaginative name for a cat, perhaps, but then he was EveryCat: playful, adventurous, soft-hearted, cowardly, greedy, but above all just very very violent.

4: Cat Stevens

Born Shakin’ Stevens to a Greek taramasalata salesman and a Swedish masseuse in London’s Welsh Quarter in 1948, he had a troubled youth not knowing who he was. Eventually he found solace in beard-wearing, in all its many fine manifestations, and changed his given name to something more hirsute-sounding. (With his peace campaigning and his moderate Islamic views he should maybe be a Fluffy rather than a Feral, but I fear I may need all 5 slots of the former for the kittens, when we find them.)

3: George Galloway out of Respect

A maverick, left-leaning politician with a following from Ken Loach to (at a guess, but for the man's sake I'm hoping not) Derek Hatton, when one fateful day in January 2006 he was seen purring and pretending to drink milk from a saucer. As a trained mime artist I respected him very much for this. He’s since confessed to suffering from felo-variant Kepler’s Syndrome, and has put himself on a special diet of Whiskas Junior as the first step in a rehabilitation programme.

2: Top Cat off of Top Cat

Pleasingly, exactly what is says on the tin: leads a mélange of alley cats in a constant scampery of foraging, romancing, rock ‘n’ rock and abuse of authority. Loosely based on Sgt. Bilko, apparently - indeed the actor playing Pvt. Doberman there voiced TC’s sidekick Benny - but with the leadership skills of Napoleon, Che Guevara and Mike Brierley all rolled into one. You’d follow this cat anywhere.

1: ”Cat” off of Red Dwarf

The coolest cat in the cat-basket. You might think I’m only saying that because he’s anthropomorphosised. But no, the comedy sci-fi show actually had it right: “Cat” is the Future of Felinism. A hundred or so years ago we became aware that Life Imitates Art, and now, I am sure, so will Evolution*; in 3,000,000 years I fully expect moggies to be standing on hind legs and wearing cyclamen-coloured zoot suits.

* Dilo, G. “Unnatural Selection: Post-Modern Evolution of Species”, PhD Thesis, University of Life, Cluj-Napoca, 2009.

Gadjo Dilo’s Peccadillos #4: Housewives, choice

2009-08-06T00:32:00.001-07:00

Mrs Dilo’s away this week and so Gadjo’s mind again starts to wander a bit - and he also realises how the housework builds up during the course of seven days... And so, as we focus in ever closer on the ideal of perfect female luvliness, this time we’ll discuss the necessary qualities of The Housewife:

Jane Asher

Is it apocryphal or has Jane Asher really promoted more homecare products than any other housewife?? Jane must be pushing 70 by now but she’s still quite pretty. And that’s the problem. To be a proper housewife you’ve got to age properly. Jane looks fine because she’s got some Ecuadorian slave lady on 50p a month doing her chores for her - I bet she’s never unblocked the lav in her life!! Sorry, not impressed.

Sheena Easton

“My baby takes the morning train,
He works from nine till five and then
He takes another home again
To find me waitin’ for him”

She’s just been sitting there, waitin’ for him. Maybe she’s rearranged some things in the fridge or thought about doing the ironing, but she’s mainly been just waitin’, and we know what that means – right, lads? You’re exhausted but as soon as you get in you have to listen to her rabbiting on about who was going into Mrs Tibbs’ house, what was on Richard & Judy, and can she buy a new washing machine. D.I.V.O.R.C.E.

Dame Edna Everage

The self-proclaimed “Housewife Superstar". But is she? She’s certainly sturdy and has aged appropriately over time, but there’s something not quite right there and I can’t put my finger on it. Too much make-up, possibly.

Freddie Mercury

Something fishy going on here too but again I’m not sure what. Ah yes, I’ve got it now, it’s the hovering technique. Take a look: she doesn’t go under the sofa or the table. Move the chairs to the side, tell Gran to stand up for a minute... come on luv, it’s really not that difficult!

Sofia Loren

2nd time in for Sofia. She’s a statuesque and Cleopatra-nosed housewife in A Special Day, therefore fulfilling most of my previously elaborated criteria; (the chance to do some pole-vaulting in that film’s rooftop scene amongst the washing lines was missed, which I think was a mistake, but I’ll let it pass). The character she plays is dowdy, yet underneath a well of passion that’s been suppressed by years of domestic choirs and an unthinking twerp of a husband. Luvly.

Pam Grier

Pammie was always well-proportioned and in every way up there with Sofia according to my criteria. Admittedly, we’ve seen her more often toting a Colt 45 than an Electrolux Z1030C, but I reckon she could still do a job about the house - in fact she may be yearning for it after all those tough-girl rôles. The best thing Quentin Tarantino ever did was in Jackie Brown when he simply let the camera soak her up, often just walking from one place to another. It had been 20 years since she’d been a Blaxploitation Babe but she was luvlier than ever (though just imagine, just for a second, if she’d also been pushing a Eubank carpet sweeper at the time, mmm…). Yep, I think we’ve got a winner!

To end, here’s some of my favourite flamenco music; get a load of gypsy housewife La Perla de Cadiz:

Basil Fawlty Moment #3: RyanAir

2009-07-31T23:46:00.000-07:00

I’ve just booked some flights with RyanAir, and I used to love RyanAir, but not any more. I used to plan great journeys involving getting up at 3:30am, travelling through several different countries, running between bus stations and airports and only ever taking hand luggage, just so as I could use RyanAir flights to get to my ultimate destination and thereby save £20. But now it seems they’re getting sneakier and sneakier: “ţigănie” they’d call it here – “Gypsy business”. There are lots of boxes where you must select (or, more cleverly, deselect) stuff, and each thing you want puts an extra £10 on the price. Here’s your RyanAir webpage these days:

1 MILLION FLIGHTS GOING FOR £1, OFFER MUST END TONIGHT!!!

Flight F666: East Burnage “Liam Gallagher” Airport 04:55am – Zgzygrxysk 07:45am - £1

Please select the following options:

On your RyanAir flight would you like to eat: 1) Nothing except your fingernails 2) A blueberry muffin for £3.99 3) A cheese sandwich for £4.99 4) Your words (boom boom!)

On your RyanAir flight would you like the air stewards and stewardesses to be: 1) Well-trained, courteous professionals 2) Slags 3) Leprosy sufferers 4) Deaf

On your RyanAir flight would you like to breath: 1) Air 2) Carbon Dioxide 3) The exhaust from the engine 4) Zyklon B

Upon arrival at your destination, would you like the baggage control staff to: 1) Process your baggage carefully and efficiently 2) Send your skis to Addis Ababa just for a laugh 3) Practice penalty shootouts in their smoking room with any small packages you’ve checked in labelled “FRAGILE” 4) Not even bother coming in to work that day

Would you like to pay for your tickets with: 1) A credit or debit card, or perhaps a postal order or a bank transfer 2) RyanAir’s special “Favoured Customer” Platinum account (interest rate %105 per month) 3) Your family silver 4) Your life

If you’ve selected all No. 1s then the bill is now £51 and that’s just one-way. You’ll wish you’d flown cheesyJet instead.

Right, well, don’t say I haven’t warned you – this time I’m going to give you a damn good thrashing!!

Name That Cat!

2009-07-28T00:21:00.001-07:00

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SMALL FURRY ANIMALS

I felt it was time for something light-hearted after the white-hot intensity of the last few offerings. Yes, lacking issue of their own, the Dilos have gone gaga over a couple of walking-stomachs that present themselves at the door and for a bit of nosh will purr and chase balls of wool etc like complete tarts. Apart from needing food they also need names, and as I reckon I can make a bob from fellow felophiles I’m asking you, The Blogging Public, to choose the names! Just send me your choice with a postal order for £4.99 (or tins of Scoff-a-lot Venison Chunks in Bovril to the equivalent value) and you could win.... a kitten!!

CAT X

Definitely a male of the species, as he has an enormous pair of testicles of which he is (rightly) very proud. Absurdly friendly given he’s supposed to be feral and out and about pawing giant herring skeletons out of trash cans like on Top Cat. Choose from these names:

Tanu: Derived from “Motan”, meaning “tomcat”. Definitely the hardest name here and one he’d have to work hard to live up to, by taunting bulldogs and humiliating policemen (again, like on Top Cat).

Pufi: Pronounced “Poofy”, means “fluffy”... the least hardest name here. “If you have to get a cat, get one the same colour as your carpet” my Grandmother might have said. The fluff emanating from X is pretty much the same as our carpet, keeping cleaning chores to a minimum, so, thanks Gran.

Stinker: A name he’s already earned by his own efforts. Though fastidiously clean most of the time he “loses it” in moments of great excitement and the stench cannot be removed by any known means. Nothing wrong with those testicles then.

CAT Y

The girlfriend/sister/mother of X, and apparently those things are not mutually exclusive... moving swiftly on... Has large tummy and prominent teats, so already pregnant, which explains why she likes the diet of salami, toast, spaghetti and taramasalata Mrs Dilo feeds her. Choose from these names:

Ţuţica: Derived from the Hungarian “Macska” (meaning “cat”), via Transylvanian dialect “Mâţa” (from the Hungarian, meaning “cat”), diminutivised and feminised to “Ţica”, pet-ified to “Ţuţica”. Obvious, really.

Musette: Apparently it’s from The Aristocats. I’m not convinced Y speaks French, but it does display a certain, classy, sang froid in situations not involving the opening of the fridge door.

Kitty DeLuxe: When in an ecstasy of wanting dinner starts wiggling about with eyes half-closed like an adult film actress. Also the name of the character memorably played by the lovely Megan Dodds in BBC TV’s Viva Blackpool.

R U Bonkers? #3

2009-07-21T23:13:00.000-07:00

WARNING: GADJO DILO IN NO WAY RECOMMENDS TRYING ANY OF THE ACTIVITIES DESCRIBED HERE AT HOME, ESPECIALLY THE CHESS

Chapter 2: What's My Line?

Right, you’ve found yourself institutionalised, been drafted onto the Acute Department football team and now you’ve got to make yourself at home. Lesson two is: Every psychiatric patient needs a gimmick. If you haven’t got one you might just as well be sitting at home in your underpants or in a pub all afternoon staring into a glass of warm lager. You could for instance be The One Who Dresses Up As His Mother or The One Who Eats Insects or The One Who Believes He Is The Messiah or perhaps The One Where Rachel and Phoebe Disinter People and Turn Their Body Parts into Household Ornaments (that’s “Friends” – Ed.). But these have already been done. Hopefully you’ll think up a new one, one that’s really “you”. Here are some top ideas to try out:

The One Who Talks to the Goldfish

Everybody needs somebody to talk to, and sometimes the psychotherapists are So Rubbish that you turn elsewhere. The hospital cat might pretend it’s listening to you but it’s not a reliably captive audience. That’s why if you’ve got any sense, you’ll pull up a chair next to the fish tank. And don’t worry, you’re not “interrupting” just because your friend’s mouth is still opening and closing your mouth when you want to say something.

The One Who Plays Chess with Himself

(And it’s definitely himself, by the way). Chess players are plain strange, and I myself spent a bit time playing it when young. But to be weirder even than Bobby Fischer you need to go beyond the paranoia by eliminating actual competition. As with other forms of masturbation, solo chess is self-satisfying and self-congratulatory and, most importantly, you’d be even more autistic if you didn’t do it.

The One Who Thinks He's a Robot

Former computer programmer, natch. Again, I’ve fulfilled this function so feel I can speak with impunity. A standard process of psychological disintegration is observed: 1. Admiration (they’re just so smart, and clean, aren’t they!), 2. Sexual Attraction (I take my laptop to bed to play Solitaire but end up falling asleep cuddling it!), 3. Rejection (why don’t girls like me now?), 4. Identification (only computers understand me!), 5. Bonkers (Look into my eyes... see where the circuitry is wrong! No, don’t touch me with wet hands!!!)

The One Who Swallows Light bulbs

To recapture that inner glow, that spark of life, that radiance you felt you lost when you had your breakdown, why not swallow light bulbs? Start by swallowing them when they’re not switched on, to get the hang of it; then wait till Christmas and pop a couple off of the tree in your mouth whilst nobody’s looking - the transformer will ensure that you’ll only get a slight tingle inside (the flashing ones make it even more tingly); then work your way up to 60W Osrams and 3’ long neons. Soon you have an act that you can take on stage and they’ll let you out knowing you can find a place for yourself in the outside world! Hurrah!!!

The cheery song ending this chapter is The Velvet Underground’s “I Heard Her Call My Name" - about 28 seconds into this rather distracted young chap’s home video – which has got me through many a night.

TV Transylvania #4

2009-07-15T22:21:00.000-07:00

In a last-ditch attempt I finally got in touch with the Director General: I made myself up to look like one of his squeezes and sauntered as slinkily as I could into the Trans TV mansion hoping to curry his favours. He said he hadn’t received my previous suggestions for TV programmes, would immediately fire all his secretarial staff, had a new position for me and felt sure I could handle it. It was ghastly. But then I hit him with my brilliant idea and he stopped trying to remove my Moldovan peasant bodice - 24 very small buttons, ladies, not so stupid after all - with his horrible hairy hands. The idea is this: Romanians don’t need new TV programmes – they’re still watching reruns of Dallas, waiting to see if it was still just Bobby’s dream - but we can make programmes to sell abroad. Cheap labour costs and low production values ensure we can make anything more cheaply here. Here’s my first programme idea, triggered by comments on Lulu’s blog about my wife’s regrettable attitude towards lower life forms:

WORLD’S WORST BUDDHIST

A knockout competition, where each week several contestants vie for this title. The format will be based on the hugely entertaining (and cheap) British TV programme Banzai and, as there, will be narrated by the great Burt Kwouk and is in no way intended to be an accurate depiction of the way people from Asia or anywhere else really speak etc etc etc:

Contestant 1: Look like baldy bloke from Bucharest but he say he Tibetan spiritual leader! Live in luxury penthouse monastery, spend disciples’ money on beer and say to world leaders not to visit him as he don’t give shit about their problems – yeah, he Lama With Bad Karma!!!

Contestant 2: He say he “Vlad Impaler Number 2” and carry big spike of wood around with him – look proper plonker! Ha ha ha!! Say he going make kebab with giant panda, Siberian tiger and very endangered Javan rhino - if you do matey you coming back as a worm for sure!!!

Contestant 3: This one say he Richard Gere and want to be Buddhist, but he make stupid films for girls and stick a hamster up his jacksie - that not in teachings of Awakened One... you go back to California Freaky Man, even World's Worst Buddhist too good for you!!!

Contestant 4: This one Mrs Dilo; in daytime work as nurse but when has day off she sure no angel!! Today she squash 5 snails, 3 frogs, throw brick at dickey bird, punch cute bunny rabbit in face and kick little baby dog across street – she don’t care nuffing!!!!!

OK. Test 1 is break paving slabs on head for 10 minutes like Shaolin monk while chanting sacred mantra “Steven Seagal world’s best Buddhist and movie actor” without being sick, going to toilet or crying for your mummy.

PLACE YOUR BETS NOW!!!!

Basil Fawlty Moment #2: “Romania - The Land of Choice”

2009-07-10T00:09:00.000-07:00

To encourage tourism this country has decided to re-brand itself. Yeah, and that’s the snappy title it came up with. Somebody got paid for thinking of that? (The previous slogan was "Simply Surprising" - !) As Mrs Dilo says pithily, "Yes, in this land you can choose to eat either a potato or a beetroot”. I had another Basil Fawlty moment. So, as I’ve become obsessed by lists - give me a subject, any subject, I’ll give you a 10-point list about it, easy - here are 10 better epithets. I’m not claiming they’re especially funny, but I hardly needed to break into a sweat thinking them up, which is the point. There’s a couple of pointless rhyming ones for starters:

The Land of James Joyce

Joycie never made it here, but he did work for some time in Pula - a town in Croatia - which is also the worst swearword in the Romanian language. He’d have liked that.

The Land of Max Boyce

Boycie never made it here either, as far as I know; but we have rugby, sheep, and lots of prime cowshit for him to grow his giant leeks in.

This Land Is Your Land

Soap-dodging American protest singer Woody Guthrie also never got here. Maybe just as well: his anthem about land rights might have been misunderstood in a country whose 1930s fascists took to wearing symbolic bags of soil around their necks.

Get Orff Moy Laaaand!!

Viz Magazine’s Farmer Palmer would look a daft bastard: each farm is so small that any trespasser would have walked to the other side of it before he’d finished that final vowel. We’ve plenty of work for The Fat Slags though.

The Promised Land

If you've been promised that you can come and live in this country, we'll support you, as long as you get the Gypsies and Hungarians to move on. Milk and honey provided. Live The Dream.

Land of Hope and Glory

Nadia Comăneci, Ilie Năstase, rabies vaccine, the discovery of insulin, the world’s first unassisted-take-off aeroplane flight in 1906, the world’s first jet aeroplane in 1910....

World of Leather

The crumpled, smelly, black leather jacket is the traditional costume of the proletarian Romanian who’s built all of Spain and Italy’s patios with his special “Moldovan Mix” concrete made to a secret recipe of sawdust, dog bones and cornflakes.

Lands on its Feet

Despite amazingly low wages, low manners and the low esteem in which they are held abroad, Romanians muddle along with surprisingly low levels of suicide, self-consciousness and self-questioning.

The Land that Time Forgot

This is the obvious one for f**k’s sake. Horse-drawn carts in towns, oxen-drawn ones in the hills... an embarrassment to Romanians, but western tourists love this kind of shit! Throw in the funny costumes, cute furry animals and cheap booze and the Tourist Board should wake up to the fact they’re sitting on a bucolic Las Vegas.

Manuel, let me explain:

Memorable Books

2009-07-06T23:14:00.000-07:00

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS BOOKS

Gaw and others have recently been answering the challenge to list books that have “influenced your thinking, that you have found yourself referring to most often in reflection, speech, and writing”. (I suspect this game was originally meant for people writing professionally and whose opinions actually matter.... but that didn’t stop me, oh no....)

Ulysses by James Joyce

Ok, sorry, an appallingly pretentious first choice. A third of the way in I thought Joyce the most arrogant and annoying of writers, but for some reason I persevered and became enthralled. It’s the occasional speeches, vignettes and descriptions which most stay in the mind, and it’d be a shame to analyse why.

Omeros by Derek Walcott

Another work with a Homeric theme: Helen as the symbol of beauty that men must fight over, but transferred it to the island of St. Lucia. An epic poem which superbly combines wordcraft and pungent depiction of West Indian life. Two years later Walcott was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

A book which taught me a little (I dare to hope) about growing into manhood. Others had Robert Louis Stevenson or Hemmingway, perhaps, but this story about single-mindedness, pursuit and the overcoming of fear – and the consuming madness of it all – helped fill a gap in my education.

The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

A Jesuit priest who wrote in secret and in a very intense, innovative style compared to his Victorian contemporaries. In addition to religious themes his depictions of nature are exquisite. He resurrected a more “vigorous” Anglo-Saxon prosody and wasn’t afraid to chop English syntax down to convey maximum effect.

The Poems of John Donne

I love metaphysics, me! Even though I still don’t really understand what the word means. I enjoy the almost transgressive way Donne treats concepts and emotions as palpable entities, which he can then manipulate as he wishes. Oh, and there’s quite a bit of smut in there as well.

The Poems of Robert Lowell

A manic depressive, drunken, disaster of a man, perhaps, but for me maybe the best post-WW2 English-language poet. He could do free verse, but whilst others were splurging out whatever entered their heads he also realised the power of formalisms, mastered them, and made them fresh and exciting.

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart

A novel about being in love, even when that love rides roughshod over morality and common-sense. To make her point Smart weaves in bits of other literature, like the sexier bits from The Song Of Songs. It’s also a book that turned me onto the tricky genre of prose poetry…..

Our Lady of The Flowers by Jean Genet

Written about the same time (1943) as Grand Central and another work using poetic language. But it’s about transvestites. Genet, having been frequently in prison and doing his best writing there, also showed disregard for boundaries: Jean-Paul Sartre called it "the epic of masturbation". Tasteful!

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

The books of Carson McCullers affected me a lot when I was young. They’re set in the Southern States of the U.S.A. and involve outsiders: deaf-mutes, dwarves, transgendered people, and those who simply feel they don’t fit in. All done with great empathy. The Ballad of The Sad Café is another good 'un.

The Good Soldier Schweik by Jaroslav Hašek

Great satire. Schweik is a little man who deals in stolen dogs, but as a Austro-Hungarian citizen in 1914 he’s drafted into World War I. He appears to have good intentions but is hilariously incompetent and the frustration of all who have to deal with him - I rather identified with him.

R U Bonkers? #2

2009-07-01T22:52:00.000-07:00

As my “homey” Andy would say: WARNING: THERE NOW FOLLOWS A FOOTBALL POST. (Though I don’t actually know squat about it, so don’t worry). The two newest and keenest guests here are the très sportif Messrs Gaw and Brit, so to encourage them here’s my first (and possibly only) post about footy.

CHAPTER 2: WHERE DO I FIT IN?

Many people ask at one time or another “Where do I fit in??” It is for this reason that structures are created, and people are employed to impose them. Football is such a structure, and with some tracksuited goon on the sidelines shouting at you to run somewhere or stop falling over (that’s start falling over, now - Ed.) you’ve no need to question the point of your existence. Mental health professionals also know this. So, using my own experiences and still aiming to destigmatise being a pork pie short of a picnic, here’s my Fantasy Football 11, comprising only psychiatric patients or those who should have been.

(NB: My knowledge of The Beautiful Game comes from a golden 4-4-2 era when players had to walk to away games and the ball was filled with gravel before each match. I make no apology for this. Also, these days players taking the field appear to have numbers greater than 11 on their backs. They are clearly homosexuals. I neither know nor want to know what any of this is all about.)

No. 1 David Icke: Actual former professional goalie and actual nutter, bless him.

No. 2 Spike Milligan (bipolar disorder): The original Goon(-er), and so, as my memory of how Arsenal play is 1970s-based, he’d be very defensively minded.

No. 3 Ronnie Kray (paranoid schizophrenia): Ruthless psycho in central defence, and definitely a “man-marker” if you know what I mean.

No. 4 Ian Curtis (depression, not helped by epilepsy): Former Joy Division frontman. Not a great mover so stick him at the back. And with his knowledge of divisions generally he’d be able to tell me what the flip “The Premiership” and “The Championship” are.

No. 5 Paul Merton (episode of hallucinating persecution by The Freemasons): With his one straight look at the audience he always gets people on his side. He could do that to the ref, just like that slimy Cristiano Ronaldo did to our Mr Wayne Rooney.

No. 6 Paulo Coelho (his parents had him committed, age 17): Wrote a novel called The Alchemist, so we're expecting a little magic from him. Oh, and he’s from Brazil.

No. 7 Buzz Aldrin (depression): Lent his name to a video game called “Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space” which shows how to intelligently get on the end of long balls and crosses.

No. 8 Steven Fry (major depressive disorder, allegedly): Don't get me wrong I love Sir Steven as much as anyone, but he’s seen the insides of prisons rather than hospitals so maybe he’s more bad than mad. And he’s a slacker. Dr Dilo prescribes “Football Therapy”.

No. 9 Lt. Colonel Oliver “Iran-Contras scandal” North (mental breakdown 1974): Ran naked through the streets at the time, so would be a natural striker (that’s “streaker” – Ed.)

No. 10 Morrissey (he certainly sounds a bit depressed): We need a big, magnetic No. 10, and Mozzer will do a job for us. Oh, and he’s from Manchester.

No. 11 Bill Oddie (clinical depression): As an ornithologist he’d be good on the wings - (Geddit?!!??!)

As you can see we’re going to win everything in sight. This chapter’s closing song is by the inestimable Napoleon XIV. “Napoleon” would be a great sobriquet for a footballer – better than “Kaká”, certainly - though I’m not convinced that even a number 14 shirt has an place on any substitutes’ bench.

Dark Night of the Soul #3: Mein Kampf

2009-06-26T00:44:00.000-07:00

This seems to have been a popular subject on several of our blogs recently, so here goes... Everyone has their own personal struggle; Adolf Hitler’s – if only he’d left it at that - was with farting, and to stop it his quack doctor prescribed little black pills containing dangerous substances like strychnine and antropine. The Führer's over use of these probably accounted for his increased irascibility and losing the war. When I first arrived in Romania I had my own gastric struggle; the food here is very heavy - “peasant cuisine” makes it sound more glamorous than it is – and my mother-in-law is a woman who doesn’t understand “no”. I was in hell. After 3 days I phoned the Guinness Book of Records*:

Me: Hello, can I speak to Ross McWhirter, please?
Girl: I’m afraid he’s no longer with us, sir
Me: What, you mean he’s gone off and formed a rival Book of Records??
Girl: No, I mean he’s dead.
Me: How old was he?
Girl: He was 50
Me: Well, that’s not much of a rec…
Girl: He was assassinated by the IRA
Me: Oh I see, sorry. What about the other…
Girl: Mr Norris is also no longer with us – maybe I can help you?
Me: Yes, maybe you can, you see I’ve been constipated for three days now and I was wondering if this is a record
Girl: Have you been eating Romanian food, sir?
Me: Yes of course I have! My mother-in-law keeps shovelling it down me and I can’t get it out again!
Girl: We get this a lot. Well, the record for being constipated whilst eating Romanian food is very long; in fact the McWhirters thought it would probably never be broken.
Me: How long?
Girl: 3 weeks, 2 days, 24 minutes and 49 seconds
Me: What?? Oh good grief! I must go to toilet sooner than that, I must I must I must….
Girl: Sorry
Me: Tell you what though, I’ve stopped eating food altogether now as I can’t get any more in – what’s the record for not having a dump whilst eating nothing at all?
Girl: Probably 94 days: Cork Prison hunger strike, 1920. The Irish republican movement had the last word on that as well.
Me: (gulp)
Girl: Might I suggest you see a doctor, sir?
Me: They’d laugh at me
Girl: Well, you seem to be an intelligent person, perhaps you could find a scientific answer yourself; you could start by sitting down and working it out with a pencil.
Me: Yes, well, you’re right of course, I’ll go and get a pencil and some paper and…. Oh, I see, ha ha, very funny

So, that was a waste of a phone call. But I’m happy to report that time and Turd-Purge Plus** eventually worked their special magic, and the situation has since then largely been avoided by feigning sleep/death/madness when the fourth course is plonked in front of me. I’ve still no idea how the IRA got so involved in all this though. To finish, here’s the best - possibly the only – song ever written about constipation; Screamin’ Jay Hawkins telling it like it is, accompanied (for some bizarre reason) by Serge Gainsbourg:

* I couldn't find a clip of the BBC programme Record Breakers with them on, but here from American TV (1:20 minutes in) are The McWhirters.

** New improved formula with plutonium sulphate. (I also tried Recto-Rout and Shit Shifter but frankly they just weren’t up to the job.)