Hate Hate Heat

Here comes the sun, do-dum-do-do. And while I love the Beatles as much as the next idiot, I have to rise up and roar indignantly at the mere whisper of a mention of that song. Because, quite frankly, it is NOT all right. Bah-da-da-da-da...

I truly despise this country at the moment. Just as I seemed to do eight months ago. But let us put a merry smile on our faces and gaily dance past the fact that in the space of 19 blog posts I have run out of ideas, and then settle down for a nice thirst-quenching rant-o-rama. Love it.

You see, and I'm sure you will, it's not just the heat. It's not even that hot. True heat is something I know all too well, seeing as I spent the hottest day since records began, in 2003, sealed inside a small black box next to a cricket pitch in the blazing sunshine, which is an altogether strange yet uninteresting story. It's the horrible nagging guilt that comes when even the smallest trickle of sunlight filters through the smog of fag smoke and regret that permanently permeates my horror-hovel. Oh, screams the last remaining neuron of niceness in my brain, which by a meaningless coincidence is also sealed in a small black box, look! The sun is out! Maybe you should go and enjoy it! Permit yourself a small squeeeeee! But here's the thing - I really, really, really don't want to. Why in the world of hellfire would anyone want to go outside, with the evil Japanese hornets the size of my fist killing all the nice bumbly bees, and the hoards of lithe young beings salaciously flashing their ankles all the way to damnation? No, I want to stay in here where it's uncomfortably humid, and where I can't open the windows lest I be aurally assaulted by the satanic children next door mewling for attention (completely true sample soundbite from a few days ago: "Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! Carl! You're a liar!") But I can't be happy, because my deep-seated English genes are drying out for me to take advantage while the sun shines to, you know, make hay or whatever.

I live just off one of those new-fangled high street-type affairs, where there is a broad choice of overpriced gastropub nightmares. And every single one of them has suddenly sprouted a fine selection of Homebase's best garden furniture on their little bit of pavement. Which is perfectly sensible, because do you know what I find really sets off a £12 burger (oh, do excuse me, of course I mean £12 fillet steak melange in foccacia served with homemade Jersey Royal rhombic prisms)? The collective diesel belching of 400 double-deckers, the sweet symphony of Thames Water's best jackhammers, and the piqued interest of every wasp in West London. Gaa-, and I don't say this lightly, -aaah.

I shall leave you with completely irrelevant words from Peep Show, which I have only just discovered because I am four years behind everyone else in the world: "So this is it then. Me tripping off my tits, watching you do endless pooing?" Quite, Messers Bain and Armstrong. Quite.

Don't Worry, It's Not Contagious Through Blogger

I was a bit ill last week. There's no real evidence for this, but it is scientific fact. Nothing life threatening, you will no doubt be extremely disinterested to hear, but enough to make me steadfastly refuse to lift my lazy head from my lazy bed apart from to feebly croak apologies to my boss (through a mobile phone, I hasten to add, he wasn't in the bed with me. Although, that might have worked too). And 'twas all well and good, as it did give me the chance to experience those rather nice, slightly feverish and surreal mind-ramblings that accompany minor poorlyness. At one point, probably sometime between Diagnosis Murder and the third episode of Scrubs (just how many channels is that show on?! At last count, 14 million) I realised I had been rubbing my face on my duvet continuously for two hours like some maniacal cat because my brain was only capable of this train of thought: "soft...soft...soft...soft...Oh, Zach Braff, you're so irritatingly loveable!...soft...soft..."

Thankfully, I had recovered by the next day, which was lucky, because I was dangerously close to throwing my 40kg TV out of the window in a furious, righteous rage fuelled by loan and credit agreement adverts. Also, I had run out of soup.

So anyway, these are some things I have learnt from watching the TV in the last week:

1. I have worked out what Louis Theroux's trick is. In order to extract the most tortuously personal innermost feelings from his cast of whack-jobs, he just stares at them exactly like he's about to passionately kiss them. You know that really intense eyeballing that always happens in schlocky romcoms between people who totally-shouldn't-be-kissing-each-other-but-totally-will-be-in-about-three-seconds? He does that, to everyone. Then the victims get so flustered by this foppish giant looming over them, so panicky that they are about to get swept up in a sticky embrace accompanied by a flourish of strings on their internal soundtrack, that they blurt out whatever he wants to hear. Just to make him back off. Back off, Theroux!
2. The peerless Life on Mars, in which Gene Hunt has become not only my favourite man on the TV, but now my favourite man ever. Bizarrely, I think I'd quite like him to be my dad, which really doesn't suggest fabulous things for my personality. Anyway, here's my theories on just what the heckfire is going on: A) The new DCI is also a man from the future in a coma; possibly, if the writers have been watching The Cell, deliberately so, in a way to try and contact Sam. If I see a really freaky segmented horse, or J-Lo, I'll know what they're up to. B) Sam has to kill Gene Hunt (noooo!!!) because Gene Hunt is the one wot run him over in the first place, in some kind of horrible karmic retribution. Admittedly, I didn't see the first series, so it may already be known who ran him over, in which case I am a ruddy fool. Here's what I really, really, really hope isn't going on: anything, but anything, that will remind me of Quantum Leap. No quests to change the future, no suggestion he is not Sam Tyler at all (Sam! See, he's even called the same thing. Yeesh), no "oh boy", and especially, no Donald Bellisario.
3. I couldn't give less of a shit about what is happening to every single person in EastEnders, and yet I still watch it anyway, even though it is just frankly bloody stupid. I just don't know how to stop. And I need some serious help.

Coming up, this Easter: soup replenishment ahoy!