Ya Bezzer!

You are right. I got them mixed up.

Last night I dreamt that I was tipped off that I had to get a pack of cheese and onion crisps for my boss for 9am or I'd be fired. I rushed out the office desperately trying to find a vendor of cheese and onion crisps. Eventually I found this huge shop in a mall. I got my crisps and was waiting in an agonisingly slow moving queue when my alarm went off.

That actually makes more sense than anything in the novel.

'Wide Sargasso Sea' by Jean Rhys 2 out of 5. If I remember correctly Jean Rhys was an alcoholic who never left her bed and when her publisher wanted a draft she'd go round to her house and pick up leaves of paper from the floor half buried in empties and general detritus. If that is correct then it certain explains how disjointed and unreadable this novel is. Character motivations are often inexplicable as if you've skipped 20 or 30 pages. I have since heard that it makes more sense if you have read 'Wuthering Heights' (I have not) but I doubt even that. It's about 140 pages long and I read my next book, 400 pages, in the same length of time. Tells you everything. Avoid. 'Arabian Sands' by Wilfred Thesiger 4 out of 5. Wilfred Thesiger was a former SAS soldier who had fought in the desert during WW2. Indeed he had been born in Ethiopia and taken to adventuring from an early age, having little time for 'civilisation' or his education at English public school. Even in the 1930s he is described as old fashioned and out of time. You also feel his constant requirement for hardship, survival conditions and the solitude of the desert might have something to do with his repressed homosexuality. Ostensibly the book is about Thesiger's journeys in the harsh Empty Quarter of southern Arabia, one of the last unexplored regions on Earth, at least by Westerners. However, rather touchingly, these journeys are merely brushed over and provide nothing more than a frame work for his admiration of the Bedu people, the Rashid tribe in particular and with the close personal relationships he forms with his small band of travelling companions, notably bin Kabina (who you suspect he has unmentionable feelings for) and bin Ghabaisha, a sort of roguish Han Solo of the dunes. The traditions of the Bedu and Arabia have not yet been destroyed by the discovery of oil but there is an sadness woven into the text as Thesiger, the Western outsider, sees the signs that the locals do not yet understand. The end, which I will not give away is sad, beautiful, touching and offers a prophetic final image as thousands of years of tradition are swallowed up by 'progress'.

When humans walk through woods or forests, trees will often mock, insult or use threatening language towards us but we can't hear it as, at 2 Mhz, it is beyond our hearing range. Prof. Doug Sax of the University of California has recorded various trees using special equipment including Big Leaf Maple "f**k off you baldy c**t", California Box Elder "You suck! Just die you waste of space!" and Western Juniper "I hate your stinking guts!".

I have two bookcases but I need a third one and I have no room or money. As a result I have various 'Penguin Piles' in need of better lodgings that are wedged into any available space. I'd like all my books in one place and in alphabetical order but that's probably never going to happen unless I get rid of other things I have millions of - football programmes, 7 inch singles, CDs, LPs, 30 year runs of magazines, hundreds of minidiscs with recorded John Peel programmes on them etc, etc.

In fact the Blair government did a lot of good things and corrected many of the ills of the previous Conservative governments, at least before they lost the plot. They are probably as left wing as anyone in this country can be post Thatcher and get elected although I supposed everything is relative. Overall a pre lost-it's-way Blair government would be vastly preferable to the current gang. Centre left might overlap with centre right in some regards but they are not the same thing and as much as I personally despise Tony Blair I think it's verging on reductive to suggest they are.

I agree in general but it's not simply a right wing thing. Tony Blair took the country to war based on a pantomime. Guys like Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell are the same species as Cummings. The extermination of objective fact is being perpetrated by both sides and has now been normalised across the board in general society. That's why it's truly frightening. There are very few defenders of truth or reason. Virtually the entire nation is now living in a cloud of delusion and it's not likely to end well.

Read The Plague last year. Little did I know.... Honestly didn't like it much but obviously given recent events I might have a different take on it now. Generally though I prefer Camus' non fiction writing.

Is there anyone with even a sliver of integrity in government? Fucking Robert Mugabe would have fired this guy days ago.

'Therese Raquin' by Emile Zola 4 out of 5 By a strange coincidence my second 'Therese' novel from my last three books. I know a lot of people don't like old books (this one is from 1867) but I've always been fascinated by the glimpse back in time that they give you. 'Therese Raquin' tells the story of matriarch Madame Raquin, her sickly, mollycoddled grown up son Camille and an adopted cousin Therese Raquin who are married at the behest of Madame Raquin despite neither party having any great passion for the other. Things pass off quietly until Camille introduces his old friend Laurent and the emotionally and sexually repressed Therese blows a gasket (and possibly other things) for the new man who, unlike the asexual, illness ravaged Camille, is big, strong and very, very lusty. The affair between the two reaches fever pitch and the lovers decided to bump off poor old Camille and get married. The first half is your standard sort of love triangle set up but it's great and reads smooth as silk. The way everything in the story knits together is really well done and there is lots of foreshadowing. The second half of the novel is almost a horror novel - both real and psychological - as the lovers are confronted with the physical reality of what they have done (the morgue scene is memorably horrible and creepy) and are beset with a tremendous mental stress composed of guilt, fear and horror. Nonetheless the plan is successful, they commit the perfect murder, get married and Laurent moves in to become Madame Raquin's 'second son' (I liked this secondary level of betrayal by Laurent on Madame Raquin) but from then on it's all downhill for the couple with misery drying up their libidos and fear and loathing looming. The destructive influence of ego and self interest are the main themes and the role of the river in the novel is quite interesting although I'd still cogitating that. NEXT UP - The next two will be 'Wide Sargasso Sea' by Jean Rhys and 'Near To The Wild Heart' by Clarice Lispector, not decided in which order yet.

There was also a fatal fire at Kings Cross underground station about the same time which started for similar reasons - a build up of rubbish under a wooden escalator. The awareness of fire safety was pretty rudimentary.

Rangers are doing what everyone else is doing - what suits them personally. The fact that they are on the 'right' side is nothing to do with any inherent sense of fairness. However anyone who lets their hatred of Rangers get in the way of seeing the SPFL is the problem here needs to stop and think for a minute. We have a third world level of governance. The SPFL is vile, corrupt, not fit for purpose and is dragging Scottish football towards oblivion. It needs burned out with flamethrowers.

To tie in with VE Day Scottish football has now become like the Second World War where you have to support an evil empire (Rangers/USSR) to defeat an even bigger greater evil (SPFL/Nazi Germany).

I have 'Champie' on an old laptop but I decided to download it on to my main desktop PC and start up a game. Went Chorley as they are currently bottom of the Vanarama League. Romped the Conference and Division Three in our first two season but so far Division Two has been a tougher challenge. I have managed to beat a couple of Premiership sides in the cup competitions (Southampton and Blackburn Rovers). Big summer signing was Greg Docherty from Rangers!