Aieeee!

And so, the magical season of terror is on us once again. Just like Christmas, apart from the presents are all great big parcels of spittle-flecked fear, and Santa has laced the tree with tinsel made of ricin.

I'm a bone-fide Londoner, which means I'm in possession of two things: one, a real true-life story of how I or one of my nearest and dearest missed the tube bombings by mere milliseconds by oversleeping, or bunking off work, or just noticing the poignancy with which their children said goodbye ("As if it was the last time I'd see them!"), deciding that some bad shit was DEFINITELY going to go down and hiding under the duvet; and two, the ability to completely forget about any threat about two weeks after said bad shit arrives, and revert to the normal state of internally screaming blue murder at anyone who breaks one of the forty thousand unspoken rules of riding on public transport. You know, like not moving down the carriage, or talking loudly, or existing in a three dimensional state, or something.

So when terror arrives again, it don't half shake me up something rotten. But the thing I hate most of all is how it can turn me - me being liberal leftie Guardian-reading etc cliche cliche wanker - into a pathological racist. Take, for example, a mid-afternoon tube journey yesterday. Half-empty tube, usual stuff, but for the vaguely Arabic-looking bloke sitting opposite me, with what looked like the Koran, and reading it, or praying or something, but out loud. It was a constant low-level mutter, not loud enough to disturb anyone, but enough to make me a) consider getting off the tube and getting the next one, b) check to see if he had any conspicuously big backpacks and c) go into spasms of panic when he reached into his bag and brought out...a pair of glasses.

So I was convinced that this guy was about to leap from his seat, scream Allahu Akbar! and blow himself up, because he was PRAYING? Every logical part of my brain, of which it turns out there are not many, was screaming at myself to not be so stupid, Muslim does not equal terrorist, and the nutjob tendency of terrorists towards mass murder was probably in place before the "Islamic extremism" gave them something to hook it onto, but I was still scared.

Frankly, I'm disgusted with myself.

Although I will allow myself a tiny excuse that anyone who mutters to themselves on a tube is breaking one of the most holy of the forty thousand rules, and no matter what their reason is, they should expect to be looked upon with suspicion. So there!

Maybe It's Because I Was Bad In A Previous Life

The otherwise howling emptiness of my life aside, I do sometimes struggle to understand why I persist in watching EastEnders. I think it's a mixture of a few things, which may or may not include gin. Firstly, begrudging admiration for the writers who seem to be able to write themselves out of any plot difficulty with absolutely no finesse whatsoever, but all the while hoodwinking us into believing that it's all nice, natural character development that's perfectly all right and nothing to worry about. There are surely hundreds of examples, but I'm tired and no-one cares.

Second: acting. Oh, there are those that will carp and moan and niggle and turn their noses up and say good god, how can you watch that, no-one can act? To which I cry, pish posh and nonsense! There is a certain skill you have to have to be able to carry off acting in a programme which is so exposition-heavy that 28 minutes of every thirty are dedicated to the characters telling each other what they have experienced in the last week so that viewers who've been in Marbella for a fortnight can sit down with a cup of tea and get right back in it without recourse to Sky+ or any other such devilry. This ain't about subtle nuance, it's about intensive plot action, hardcore, throbbing, plot ACTION.

Just look at that Vicky bird what was in it a few years ago, you know, the one with the terrible American accent that suddenly disappeared overnight with a just-acceptable explanation (ah-ha! Knew I'd find an example!) Nice girl, obviously fresh out of RADA or some such, used to staring out of windows whining about the ducks going to Moscow, and clearly she was a good actor, but her "look at my naturalistic performance Christ I could be in a sodding Mike Leigh film" stuck out like a sore thumb among the frenzied mugging and eyebrows. I sincerely hope she's having a thriving career in theatre now. Actually, no, her voice was too damn annoying.

Nah, give me Babs Windsor screeching and confidence-is-a-preference-for-the-habitual-voyeur-of-what-is-known-as-phil-daniels and his action man hand acting any day. God, that fills my soul with snowflakes.

Anyway, I'm just writing about this cos I'm in shock. Now don't get me wrong, I'm no prude, in fact I am right now having live-streamed snorkel sex with a Belgian waffle iron, but on Tuesday Jake and Carly seemed to have real actual penetrative intercourse all over my spaghetti bolognese, and tonight there were not one but two ACTUAL penis jokes. I mean...! Not that the kids were watching, fuck'em, they surely see far worse on myspace of a Thursday afternoon, but it was just...distasteful. It's like seeing Diane-Louise Jordan languidly stroking a Cornetto and then saying "flange". Not bad, but not good.

So in conclusion - Stenders rools! Apparently.