Common, are we?

I have found myself with a sudden yearning to visit Tomsk. It's in the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere, Russia.

This is largely @Konnolsky's fault, but it also has a lot to do with growing up with the fucking Wombles.

Although some might, I can't blame the Wombles for the environmental or left-ish politics I have in me; that's a reaction to my parents, being bullied at school and - mostly - the hideous injustices wrought by Thatcher; but they have apparently given me some hitherto unrecognised urge to visit places.

I suddenly realise that I've already been to Bulgaria & Tobermory. Perhaps now is the time for the rest...

A Wombling world tour would be very, very expensive. To visit the names of the first proper cast list would mean getting to Orinoco, Bungo, Tomsk, Wellington and Cholet in addition to the two I've been to.

Hmm.

It needs a plan.

But then, as well as that first five, there's also Cairngorms, Alderney, Shanxi, Adelaide, Stepney and Obidos from the second series.

Shit. It's a fucking nightmare! Do those even really COUNT as true Wombles?

And then, worse again! There are some really bloody obscure ones; Omsk, Culvain, Yellowstone Boston, Ness, Ross and Cromarty (The Water Wombles, it seems), Botany, Speyer and Heilbronn, Atlanta, and Idaho, Heidelberg, Hohenzollern, Cairns and Perth, Eucula, Dalai Gartok (!) Cousin Tokyo, Hirado, Dunedin, and Great-Great Aunt M Murrumbidgee...

And saddest of all there's poor Nanking. Fancy spending all that nameless time as a young and adolescent Womble, longing for the day when you can go to school having come of age, so you can prove to your Womble sixth-form mates that you're now the big man with your cool new name.

And then imagine arriving at Bulgaria's study, proudly stepping up, convinced the moment of cool adulthood has arrived and randomly sticking your pin in the atlas only to get a name that rhymes with wanking.

What a cruel bloody Womble tradition. The Wombling bastards.

Hmm. I may have over-concerned myself with Wombles.

Make good use of bad rubbish, eh?

Handbags and Glad Rags

Last night whilst out with friends, the subject turned - inevitably at this late time of year - to the annual compilation of the competition Dead Pool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_pool

For reasons about which I am unclear, I was not permitted to have Frank Bough, but that's not the point.

Anyway, equally inevitably, thoughts turn more to hope than prediction, which - of course - means Margaret Thatcher's name comes up.

And a fully horrific thought struck me.

She's going to die about ten days before the 2010 General Election, isn't she?

Isn't she?

You can picture it if you try. The perfect opportunity for those unscrupulous bastards to exploit the moment. An Election Broadcast, In Memoriam.

There's one of those Big Video/film advert voiceover voices.

"Remember her commitment to modernising Britain..."

CUT TO THATCHER - "And what a prize we have to fight for: no less than the chance to banish from our land the dark, divisive clouds of Marxism".

"Remember her victories abroad..."

CUT TO THATCHER - "Just rejoice at that news and congratulate our forces and the marines".

"Remember her victories at home..."

CUT TO THATCHER "We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and much more dangerous".

"Remember her compassion for all of us... "

CUT TO THATCHER - "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women; and there are families".

"Margaret Thatcher may have gone, but you can honour her memory. Remember all that. Remember what she stood for. Remember Margaret Thatcher....


... And Vote Labour this polling day".

Why Animals Eat Their Young

Teenagers. In general. There's another detestable thing.

In particular I hate the bloody yacking they feel they have to do at full volume on any kind of public transport, as if their shallow, brainless, half-formed little lives were of ANY interest to anybody but themselves.

Why do they need to shout at people they are sitting next to? Why do they swear their fucking heads off? Why do they feel the need to play music in public places without using headphones!!?? It was bad enough when we could all hear that 'ttsssiiittsss tssiss tssiiss ttsssittsss bump ttsssiiittsss tssiiss tssiiss ttsssiiittsss bump' thing going on because they had decided to prematurely end any chance of avoiding deafness by cranking up personal (note that - "PERSONAL")
stereos so loudly that we could all sing along. But now they're using mobile phones to play their crappy dance music to the whole bus!!

This morning there were a couple of vapid in-breeds at the back of the bus. Shouting at each other.

"Ah feckin' 'ate 'er Ah do. Silly cyow. Wah do she alwerrs 'ave to go out in clerthes like whar Ah do?"

"And Ah've 'eard she's shagging that Martin blerk. You knerr, 'im wif ve ta-ooze"

"Ah wunt feckin' touch 'im wih yaws, kner warrameen?"

"'Ere. 'Av you 'eard ma noo dahnlerd? S'on me fern".

"Sam Sparrer, innit?"

"Fuckin' IS , yeah".

"I beh she's gorrih. Silly cyow. I feckin' 'ate 'er".

I'm glad we all heard that.

There was a time when bus drivers took some responsibility for their passengers, and would have dealt promptly and brutally with shouting, swearing, smoking, fornication, playing of loud music loudly, the duffing up of old dears, fishing without a licence and the building of outhouses on the bus without planning permission. These days they let it just go on around them. And more importantly around us passengers.

It's a lack of customer focus, that's what it is. They don't get paid well enough to care either. And we don't pay enough to be cared about. It's the curse of public service industries. All are assumed to be second-class services for third-class people.

I blame Thatcher.

And I'm fed up with it. Just last week as I went to get off at my stop I had to fight my way through some bloke's hastily constructed garden shed.

I wouldn't have minded, but I fell over his bike.