Lidl Trolley

Can we take from this that grown adults are now allowed to ride in the shopping trolleys? That's certainly not borne out by my own experience.

Traditional Butcher

By "Traditional Butcher" I'm guessing they mean that they sell dead animals. But all cut up so's that they don't look so much like dead animals any more. Then again, perhaps they mean "Please don't ask us for any of that fancy stuff you've seen on the telly".

Perhaps we'll never know.

Bellababy

I suppose we must assume that if the good people at "bellababy.ie" have gone to all the trouble of getting an expensive sign made up, they must mean what they say on it. So, in that spirit let me commend them fully to you for all your baby shopping needs. For they truly are:

Baby Shopping at it is very best!

On Lawnmowers

I bought a new lawnmower yesterday on the back of some excellent advice from Jim who, in turn, had the word HORTICULTURALIST emblazoned across his own back. Well across the back of his Woodies DIY shirt at any rate.

Jim explained the options to me clearly and with no little amount of urbanity.

They were:

1. Petrol. Too expensive. A sledgehammer to crack a nut. Out of the question. Don't be absurd.
2. Electric. Absolutely shite. Waste of time. Flymo my arse! Move on.
3. Manual. A push one. Like back in the olden times. Environmentally friendly. The wife will be pleased. Kid friendly. They can mow the lawn themselves.

"Jim", I say. "I'm gonna take the push one. In blue. It's cool".
"Good man", he replies, adding the most interesting thing anyone has ever said to me in a shop. "Be true to yourself".

As I sat in the garden last night, listening to James Taylor, a cold glass of Chablis resting on my chest, watching the kids fighing over whose turn it was to cut the grass, I felt I had been.

Carling Lager

Maybe this says much about the circles I move in (insofar as I move in any circles at all) but I don't think I've ever seen anyone, not an Irish person at any rate, sip a pint all the way. The rare time you see a sip is when a pint requires transportation from bar to table without spillage. Often a quick extract is taken just before the change is handed over. A common enough sight and a small, but vital, component of pub esoterica. Pints, certainly pints of Guinness, are gulped or sometimes, by drinkers of a certain vintage you'll note, poured directly into the gullet. A fine skill taking years to train up to. This practice slows down after the 3rd or so but never reduces to anything approaching a mere sip. My goodness, no!

The good people at Carling are suggesting that their lager has a "GREAT TASTE. EVERY SIP OF THE WAY" and who is to say they're wrong about that. I don't know anyone who drinks Carling. If I did I'd ask them about the sipping thing with academic curiosity. Is it true or yet more blue-sky hooey from pony-tail sporting marketing featherbrains with fat arses? If I drank Carling personally I'll tell you this. I'd drink it really quick. Then I'd jump in front of the nearest moving articulated vehicle. That'd learn 'em.

The Last AirBender

This is either:

• About a piss-up on a plane, or
• A modern Top Gun-esque treatment of man-on-man love in the cockpit.

I don't know which but, thankfully, it's definitely the last one. So that's encouraging.

Gay Search

The author of The Impatient Gardener is Gay Search. If that's your thing, you need look no further.

Radiohead : Amnesiac (#1)

I could easily pick The Bends or, of course, OK Computer but if I am really honest I'm on the sick side of both of these superb albums by this stage. One or two listens a year would be plenty and that wouldn't be much use if I was, quite literally, stranded on an island.

(As indeed I am for the purposes of this self indulgent exercise I've decided to bore you with).

After OK Computer came the abstract, genre-bending Kid A which just sounded plain weird. This was quickly followed by Amnesiac which, largely due to relentless exposure to Kid A, sounded only a bit weird. Now it doesn't sound any weirder than strictly necessary. It's an utterly inspiring album and it blasted joyously from Wiltshire into Somerset out the wee Citroën thing I'm driving this week.

(If it must be a ladies car then let it be a Citroën C1.)

Anyway Amnesiac is in. At a push, but not that much of a push, it would serve as my 2nd jazz choice.

Seen To Be Different

But don't, for the love of God, actually be different.

Pommelling

I always feel that if you're going to be not funny you'd be as well, at the very least, making some sense whilst doing it. This, from the otherwise excellent Old Green Tree public house in Bath, being an attempt to warn off potential smokers whilst being lighthearted and jovial at the same time. Some people I'm sure will find this hilarious. Predictably, I am simply bound to point out the following defects:

1. a pommel is the upper front part of a saddle; a saddlebow. I've no idea what pommelling means.
2. subconsciousness is a state not immediately available to your conscious mind in which you fancy your sister, hose down an elephant and run through the office naked. Generally worth avoiding.