Choice Blether

So, as trailered on these pages, we had a week over at Levenshulme Daily Photograph, regaling that August publication's readership with artily wonky (or is that wonkily arty) shots of roadsigns, groups of young Asian women on their way to a banqueting hall, etc.  It was a fine adventure and I would do it again at the very drop of a hat, not least because I became by approximatly Tuesday completely obsessed with taking pictures of anything that moved in M19 as well as several things that didn't, and as a consequence have a camera choc-a-bloc full of hastily-snapped images of 192 buses, forlorn night-time displays of onions outside of closed grocers' shops, etc.  I might have to start a separate site, 'slightly rubbish Levenshulme Daily Photograph', just to find them a loving home.

Quite apart from being an adventure, the discipline of having to write something every day (because of course being me, just putting the photos up was never going to be enough, I had to produce two paragraphs of choice blether with each one otherwise I would fear I wasn't doing myself justice) was quite a salutary corrective and altogether the Very Man to rouse me from my natural inclinaton towards sloth.  

Sloth having been seen off over the marathon course of one week (albeit only just, there were at least a couple of days where the 'Daily' part of 'Levenhulme Daily Photograph' was only maintained thanks to frantic eleventh-hour typing), I resolved to keep up the momentum by posting on Crinklybee every day for a week, nay, a month- then instantly forgot.  In mitigation for this abject failure I can present three reasons (read, 'excuses') which I will now present to you as a sort of excuse for a proper post.  To whit:

 

1.  The election

You've probably noticed about the election, it's been in all the papers and everything.  I must admit I've become properly obsessed, to the point of skiving off from work to follow the minute-by-minute coverage of Peter Mandelson's morning press conferences on the Guardian website and tuning in religiously to the nightly Campaign Show on BBC News Channel (it's fantastic, like Match of the Day for politics geeks) to watch Neil Kinnock and Michael Howard debating the Edward Heath hung parliament of 1974 and how Gordon Brown has just been caught on camera calling a pensioner in Rochdale a bastard (or something like that anyway, I might have just turned over to the snooker on the other side at the crucial moment).

 

2.  The snooker

Look, the thing is I grew up in the 1980s, when the BBC News Channel didn't exist and (as far as I remember) the only things on the telly were That's Life (which was on for an hour on Sunday nights) and the snooker (which was on absolutely all the rest of the time).  It must have been on a lot as my sister Abby (who hardly even used to watch the telly in the 1980s, as she was too busy winning sixth-form debating competitions and harassing students at bus stops in her capacity as founder member of the Fenham Casuals) still finds that she can instantly recall names such as Doug Mountjoy, Terry Griffiths, and Bill Werbunuik.

Anyway the thing is that when the world championship snooker is on I become quite mesmerised (much like the cat we used to have in the 1980s who completely ignored 'That's Life' but used to get very engaged in the snooker and go looking behind the telly for the balls that Doug Mountjoy had dispatched out of sight into the pockets). Thankfully (much like the General Election) the tournament only lasts two weeks otherwise I might be reduced to a quite cat-like slavishness to the constant clacking of the cueball and take up associated feline habits, such as becoming nocturnal, sleeping under the hedge in the front garden, and developing a thoroughly-thought-out thesis on the inherent frailties of Graham Dott's safety game.   

 

3.  The birthday

My 42nd, to be precise.  Among other delicacies I received a dangerous Cuban autobiography from my sister Abby and a T-shirt to wear while watching the Campaign Show.  Oh and a £20 note from me mam and dad, which (in a miraculous if temporary escape from the election and the snooker) we spent last Saturday teatime in a shambolic tapas bar in Chorlton serving Ice Cold Cruzcampo and only very slightly more tepid calamares.  It was like 1993 again, which at least made a difference from what it has been for much of the week, ie 1981 and the heyday of Margaret Thatcher and Steve Davis.

So there you have it, and if you want my tips for the coming week (which of course you don't), they are Neil Robertson (Australia) to win the World Snooker by a slim majority, and David Cameron (Witney, Oxon) to triumph in the General Election by 18 frames to 12, with a top break of 138.  You read it here first.

Comments

[Izzy]

The words chip and old block spring to mind!!!

[abby]

Eeeee, yes, Bill Werbeniuk! I just checked Wikipedia and it confirms that he used to drink 30 pints of lager on game days to counteract his tremor. I doubt that such things are allowed these days. I had also forgotten how much cats like snooker!