Monday 18 March 2024

Dead cat dance

Oh, yes. Monday again!

Thankfully the weather this weekend wasn't a complete washout (for once). I managed to get a few jobs done out in the garden on Saturday - in some quite warm sunshine on occasions! - and had a good chill-out yesterday.

Unfortunately work rears its ugly head once more - but at least I am happier than usual, as there's just these five days to go and I am off again until after Easter!

On this Tacky Music Monday, have another mindfuck, dear reader, courtesy of an old Italian TV spectacular:

Apparently it's a song about a dead cat. Bugger only knows why...

Have a good week, peeps.

Sunday 17 March 2024

Sláinte Agus Táinte!

Do you have any Irish in you?

Would you like some..?


[clockwise from top left: Jamie Dornan*, Cillian Murphy, Colin Farrell, Aidan Turner]

Happy Paddy's Day, dear reader!

By way of a celebration, here are two proud Irish boys, showing off their quite remarkable - ahem - talents...

And here, something a bit tackier...

Myth-busting facts about Paddy's Day "traditions":

  • Porter or stout is a drink invented in London around the 1720s (possibly earlier); Arthur Guinness only started marketing his brand of the drink in Dublin in 1778.
  • Saint Patrick was Welsh.
  • There was no real link between the 5th century missionary activities of St Patrick and the Shamrock until a botanist wrote about it in 1726.
  • Scotland as whole has a higher percentage of ginger people than Ireland.
  • Many believe that the Paddy's Day celebrations in March were in fact invented as a way to lift the usual fasting restrictions of Lent and provide an excuse for a day's drinking.
  • St Patrick's Day parades began in North America in the 18th century but did not spread to Ireland until the 20th century.

I raise a glass of "the amber nectar" - clink, clink!

[*Yes, I know Jamie Dornan was born in Northern Ireland, so is British, but...how could I resist?]

Saturday 16 March 2024

Friday 15 March 2024

Too. Much. Lycra!


Yeah, Baby, Yeah!

TFFT. Another frustrating and stressful working week staggers slowly to its conclusion - and we need to get the celebrations off to a flying start!

Well, maybe not quite as frenetically as this...

Thank Disco It's Friday!

Have a great one, dear reader!


PS

Beware the Ides of March...

Thursday 14 March 2024

Wet totty, music, mud and old boozers


Gratuitous totty shot? As if. Happy 30th birthday today to Ansel Elgort [whose name actually sounds like an anagram]!

Another "snippets" post today, dear reader...

  • Good news: One of our favourite shows on radio Friday Night is Music Night - the world's longest-running live orchestral music radio programme - [which was unceremoniously moved to Sundays, and then surreptitiously killed-off last November by the gnomes at BBC Radio 2] will be revived by Auntie Beeb's classical station Radio 3 this April! I cannot wait...
  • Dancing in a muddy field news: Dua Lipa (yawn), Coldplay (even bigger yawn!) and SZA (nope, not a clue; sounds like an energy drink) have been announced as headliners at this year's Glastonbury Festival. Even the news that Shania Twain will be taking the closing top-of-the bill "Legends" slot, or the fact that Cyndi Lauper's there as well (for the first time), would ever tempt me to go - even if the tickets hadn't sold-out completely within half an hour of being put on sale last Autumn!
  • More muck news: The UK is apparently in the middle of National Compost Week, which is literally a load of old crap. Recycled by worms, of course.
  • More good news: Our "house band" here at Dolores Delargo Towers, Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox are back in the UK this May, and - thanks to a Ticketmaster voucher card from Baby Steve and Houseboy Alex for my 60th last year - Madam Arcati and I have booked to go and see them live at the prestigious London Palladium!
  • And, finally: Maverick Soho members' club The Groucho [named after the Groucho Marx quote: “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member”], second home of the likes of Terry Pratchett, Francis Bacon, Jeffrey Bernard, Jarvis Cocker, Anthony Bourdain, Lily Allen, Melvyn Bragg, Blur’s Alex James, Rachel Weisz, Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Robbie Coltrane, Nick Grimshaw, Stephen Fry, Julie Burchill and even Harry Styles - which we were honoured to visit way back in 2009 - has opened its very first "out-of-town" outpost near Wakefield in Yorkshire!

And the weather? More Spring-like than it has been in ages...

Wednesday 13 March 2024

By the power of the adjustable spanner!

An emergency plumber with an exorbitant call-out fee and a string of desperate clients is feeling more powerful than Zeus, he has confirmed.

Due to offering a round-the-clock service, Bill McKay can toy with the fates of normal humans like a supreme deity looking down from Mount Olympus while holding an adjustable spanner.

McKay said: “Got a burst pipe and need urgent help? Water pouring through the ceiling at 2am? Call me, feeble underlings, and I will decide whether to bestow my mercy upon you.

“If I’m honest, being richer than Croesus simply because I know how to tighten the hose on a washing machine gets a little dull. To keep things interesting I have considered asking a man with a blocked toilet to fight a family with a flooded basement for who gets my services first.

“However, my missus says that would be even more morally dubious than tripling my hourly rate for a client just because I arrived at their place a second after 5pm on a Friday, when I should be down the pub.

“But it’s hard not to feel contempt for the pitiful idiots who could sort most of this shit out themselves if they learned what a stopcock is. So until they do I will continue to rule as an almighty king, while charging £320 an hour, plus VAT.”

The Daily Mash

Of course.

I know who I'd call...

Tuesday 12 March 2024

Paradisum ex Chelsea

Cadogan Hall in swanky Sloane Square, Chelsea is a fascinating oddity. Originally built in 1907 as a Christian Scientist church, it was designed in the radical "Byzantine Revival" fashion by architect Robert Fellowes Chisholm - and its singular style was obviously an influence on later Art Deco building designs.

Christian Science [fiction, double feature?] having declined dramatically in the later 20th century the church's congregation dwindled, and it closed in 1996. Enter, stage left, mega-rich, mega-loony Mohammed Al-Fayed (then-owner of Harrods and father of Princess Diana's last lover Dodi) who bought it and wanted to turn it into a luxury private mansion(!). Thankfully the council turned the plans down - this is a Grade II listed building, after all - with the unfortunate result that the building ended up in serious danger of dilapidation.

Thank heavens for the British nobility! The Earls of Cadogan have owned most of the prime lands in the area - basically everything from just above the Royal Hospital Chelsea (home of the famous Flower Show) to the King's Road, to just south of Harvey Nicks, sweetie - since 1753, and it was their estates management company that bought the building in 2000 and transformed it into the magnificent concert venue it is today.

And so it was, for the first time since the very last weekend before London went into lockdown because of COVID way back in 2020, that Madam Arcati and I ventured through its illustrious portals on Saturday evening, for a performance by Wimbledon Choral of the lovely Requiem by Gabriel Fauré.

And here, for your delectation, dear reader, is a beautiful version of it...

It's about time this den of depravity got some class! [With a capital "K", of course.]