Destroy All Onions!

A friend bought a reading book for his young son the other day. Highly commendable! I approve.

But when he showed it to me, I was unexpectedly horrified.

The first page introduced the characters, by showing them all in a line with their names underneath them. You can find the same characters here, as it’s also been made into a television series. Mum and Dad – seems perfectly reasonable. No problems there.
Then Biff. Now that seemed odd to me, for lots of reasons. For a start, Biff had long hair in a ponytail, which says to my simple mind that Biff is a girl. The text confirms this assumption. But I thought Biff was a boy’s name. It certainly is in Back To The Future, and the Hardy Boys books. A quick wikipedia search for the name Biff shows a reasonable list of people, and crucially all of them seem to be male. But that’s not all – most of them are also American, so I assumed that this must be an American book.

We move on. The next character is Chip, Biff’s brother. Well, that clinches it – it must be an American book.

Then the final child in the family, Kipper. No, hold on, Kipper must be the dog’s name. No, the dog is called Floppy. So the family called their youngest child Kipper.

That’s not American – it’s just NUTS!

Then I discover that the book isn’t American at all, it’s published by the Oxford Univerity Press. So what are they trying to teach our children? Apparently Biff and Chip are twins. Friends of mine had twins recently, and I gave them many helpful suggestions for twin names, – Zig and Zag (which is beautifully simple), Laurel and Hardy (which works very well – Laurel is a nice name for a girl, and Hardy has just the right amount of upper-class twittery to make it a fashionable boy’s name in these troubled times in which we live), Lilo and Stitch, Shrek and Donkey (or, I suppose Fiona). But none of these suggestions are as silly as Biff and Chips. Especially if Biff is a girl.

So what are the boffins at Oxford University trying to teach our children? I’m only an amateur conspiracy theorist, but I have to say that this sounds like some kind of grand psychology experiment to me. Apparently these books are very popular, and lots of children read them. What kind of ideas are they planting? And why? Quite frankly, I have no idea. But I worry for the poor kids, whatever their names may be…

What kind of person leaves one of those impossible infuriating puzzles with the little balls and holes on your desk? I mean, what kind of mental cruelty is that?

Is sabotaging my day in work the sort of baheviour that made this nation great?

Well, I managed to solve it anyway!

See! See! I did it!

So there, Alan!

I’ve finally taken down all my Christmas cards, and done a complex analysis, and decided that the Christmas Card of the year is this one, from my cousin Mark.

Apologies to all the artistic and crafty people who sent me hand-made cards. They were very nice, and appreciated, but the comedy and controversy value of this one wins.

And for anyone who is offended by the lack of focus of the speech bubble at the top, and can’t brng themselves to read it, it says “Is it just me, or is the polar ice cap getting smaller?”

And yes, it is a long time since I posted anything. I will try and do better 🙂

I was out on my bike today, and on the way home, at the end of my own little street, I saw an impressive piece of motoring history.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the internet, may I proudly present the Allegro Vanden Plas! As far as I can recall, one of the car magazines once named it the worst car of all time. You can see how they unexpectedly managed to transplant half the noble nose of a Jaguar onto the less than noble body of an Austin Allegro. They also managed to fill it with shagpile carpet, half a walnut tree, and leather seats. It was quite the Hyacinth Bucket Mobile of its time, and its a rare treat to see a fine specimen out in the wild.

(Photo not taken by permission, but blatantly snapped in the middle of the pavement. No offence intended, your statutory rights are not affected)

I saw a sign on the back of a bus on the way to work the other morning advertising television rental. I have to say, I think it’s a long time since I saw one of those (the advert I mean, not a bus). Radio Rentals and Granada left our high streets many years ago, when renting went out of fashion. But it looks like the credit crunch has led to the return of a lot of old ideas.

I wonder what’s next.

I made it to the cinema last night to see the latest James Bond movie. And I thought it was excellent! A spoiler-free review follows.

It very much continues in the darker vein that Casino Royale started, with a brooding and violent Bond. Well, I suppose violence goes with the territory. Maybe pitiless would be a better word. And almost without wit – this is a Bond who has been hurt, and he is taking it out on the world.

The film starts off with a blistering pace, with so everything happening so quickly that it’s a bit of a relief when things settle down a bit. I have to admit that while I liked the movie, I do miss the light and shade of the earlier movies, and I would prefer it to be a little less bleak. And I’d rather that he didn’t wreck his beautiful care just so quickly. But I enjoyed it, am looking forward to where they’re going to go next with the franchise, as they continue to evolve it into a slightly different beast.

Although there’s still some counting going on at the edges, the American election is over. I’ve got slightly mixed feelings about it, because personally I favoured Barack Obama, but I know that my American Republican friends are very disappointed by the result.

The first, and probably most important thing about the election, is the incredible turnout. For this to be the biggest voter numbers in American election history indicates that people have really engaged with their system, and that can only be a good thing. I also think that it’s a real challenge to us in the UK, where democratic engagement has been on the slide for a long time. What can we do to energise ordinary people the way that the two American parties have other the last few months?

The second thing that I think is very interesting is the odd effects of their particular electoral system. All voting systems raise their own peculiar effects (for example, here in Northern Ireland, we mainly only vote for idiots or gits, with the challenge being to identify which category any particular politican falls into. But I digress). One peculiarity of the American system is the cascade effect which amplified a small difference in the actual votes cast into a very large majority in the electoral college. On the electoral college votes Obama has roughly a 2:1 majority. But on the ground, he had only 52% of the actual votes cast. That means that behind those headline figures, this election was really close. While that won’t bring much comfort to Republican supporters right now, I think in time that it will, because it means that as a party they are not actually down and out.

I also worry for the new president. This election victory seems to me to have some parallels with the election of Tony Blair in the Labour landslide of 1997. The UK was a country that was fed up with an unpopular government, desperately wanted change and so chose a young and dynamic new leader. Unfortunately, the New Labour project constantly struggled with the weight of that expectation, because of course it could not live up to all those hopes and dreams. I think it’s fair to say that Barack has even more pressure on him to deliver, and given the current state of the world, even less chance of delivery. He has a unique opporunity, as I think most of the world is behind him right now, but that won’t last long, and isn’t much good if he can’t bring most of America with him.

But most of all, my thoughts are with him right now, as in the next day or two he will have to deal with the funeral of his grandmother, the lady who brought him up for many years. I’m sure in his heart it’s not quite the celebration he was hoping for.

I’m really happy for Lewis Hamilton, for managing to win the Formula 1 World Championship yesterday. But I have to admit that I feel really sorry for Felipe Massa, who lost the championship tragically. He came in first place, in front of his home crowd, and couldn’t have done any better. And everyone thought that he had it in the bag, until he then lost the championship in the final seconds.

I’m happy for Lewis, who managed to win, but not by much.

I wonder what is going to happen to the other guy tomorrow. This week might be a great week to be black.

“The Midnight Falcon”, by David Gemmell, page 137.

The first sentence that contains this shocking news is “Sole owner of a rundown circus with a mountain of debts and only two assets, the little slave Norwin and the aging gladiator Rage”.

50 pages later, you’ll be pleased to known that Norwin is still alive. I will post further developments as I get to them.

I always knew that sooner or later I would come across my name as a character in a fantasy or sci-fi book, it was just a matter of time.

A friend was described in his Japanese medical report as having an “elevated level of abdominal circumference”.

That’s the most wonderful description of overweight that I have ever heard.