Moan, moan, moan.

Yeah yeah yeah, it's gorgeous. Try slogging across it in driving Arctic rain.

So Hammersmith bridge is closed all this week for construction work (obviously I've read all that stuff about NOT GIVING AWAY TOO MUCH PERSONAL INFO ON YOUR BLOG so as to avoid stalkage, but frankly there is only one bookshop in Barnes, so a determined stalker could find us fairly easily if pressed). Hammersmith Bridge is closed, which means that I have to get out of Hammersmith Tube, and walk across the bridge to get a further bus. Not too bad in the big scheme of commuting, I agree, but it's all relative - I'm so used to a few stops on the tube, wander out to the bus stop, tra la la. This bungs a whole fifteen minutes of exercise into my day, both ways, and furthermore it was absolutely chucking down this morning, so I spent this morning's little journey doing exclamations of indignation in my head - to the point where I was worried I'd start saying them out loud. Rough transcript as follows:

Oh bugger, it's... it's running off my nose! It itches! But my hands are too wet to wipe my nose! GET OUT OF MY WAY! Why are people with umbrellas incapable of moving to one side to let you pass? IT IS ILLEGAL TO CYCLE ON THE PAVEMENT!!!!! My nose itches! IT ITCHES!!! No really, hit me with your umbrella!!! DON'T BOTHER STOPPING, IT'S ONLY A BUS STOP AND YOU'RE ONLY A BUS!!!!!!!! There's a wet patch on this seat! Is it... me?

And so forth. My inner monologue on the way to work (when not muffled by the louder voice of whatever book I'm reading) tends to be a thing of sleepy oh wowness since I'm not fully awake until I've had my first coffee at 9.30ish. Today I have morphed into my occasional alter ego Mrs Freakishly Short Fuse. Sigh.

My Ears Were Not Made For This

Currently, for some reason, I seem to be running on a very short fuse. Things that normally I would allow to wash over me are annoying me more than is strictly reasonable. And bizarrely a lot of them seem to be musical. There are too many songs out there that aren't trying hard enough. I'm aware this is very subjective so I apologise in advance if any of them is your personal favourite, but the tetch demands to be released...

1) Songs that fail to live up to the initial promise of the intro
Well, at the moment just the one: Sweet Child Of Mine by Guns and Roses. A sublime introduction that promises great things. And then, after a perfectly OK but not special set of verses and choruses, winds down to a dreary "we can't decide what to do with the end of this and are even singing about it... where do we go where do we go where do we go...". Poor effort all round, Mr Rose, must try harder.

2) Songs that are totally let down by an inappropriately jaunty bit
Here Comes The Night by Them/Van Morrison. What went wrong here? Excellent intro. Excellent chorus. And then the verse has a ridiculously misplaced Benny Hill oompah quality to it. Every time I hear it I want, in a Frankenstein way, to rip out the verses and replace them with something from the Doors.
Spirit Of Radio by Rush, and Jane by Jefferson Starship. What was wrong with those post-prog people?? Why couldn't they leave things alone and not meddle? These songs are the musical equivalent of a cake that has been iced, decorated, and then iced some more, and then soaked in rum, and then served in a lettuce basket with a smoked salmon garnish. Although when I say "smoked salmon garnish" I mean "startlingly embarrassing misguided reggae-style bridge". There's a point in the middle where you actually have the feeling that you're watching your father breakdance at a wedding. Dear God, somebody stop the horror.

3) Songs that are just downright lazy and were phoned in by artists too complacent to care if their work was sub-standard or not
Do I need to say any more than All You Need Is Love by the Beatles? Combining a dirgey sub-Maharishi melody with the most offensive tuba-driven chorus, this resembles nothing so much as a badly-organised minibus singalong on a mental hospital's Chessington day out. Except the singers aren't even pretending they're enjoying themselves. The wah-wah-wawah-waaaah trombone on the chorus sounds like the incidental music from a Carry On film, where Charles Hawtrey has just put on a hat full of custard. Poor, poor, poor.

That's all for now. There'll be more. I haven't even started on the worrying tendency to try to make things youth-accessible by adding rap sections yet.

Turn on, tune in, get tetchy

Technology is very unforgiving to the sizeable proportion of the population who can't afford to upgrade to a widescreen TV, or HD TV, or Blu-Ray, etc etc etc. I was watching something or other last night and realised, at a vital point in the plot where a RELEVANT PIECE OF INFORMATION was shown, I could only see the middle section because the picture was cut off at the sides. I got unreasonably grumpy about this, and actually found myself making "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" noises out loud - along the lines of "Well! They'd better not think I'm going to rush out and buy some vastly expensive piece of widescreen kit just because they're bullying me into it, oh no."... more or less what I was saying 15-20 years ago (my memory is hazy) about upgrading from vinyl/cassette to CD. However. It does have some diverting side-effects, such as the fact that the onscreen guide can't fit long programme titles side by side, so overlaps them. Curious hybrids we have sadly been unable to to watch include:

Real Housewives Of The Bill
Britain's Sexiest Newsnight
The X-Files: I Want To Meet The Fockers
Three Men And a Little Taxi Driver
I Know What You Did In Bruges
Slap Her, She's Being John Malkovitch
The Lion, The Witch, And Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Shrek (an all-star cast in that one!)

And, doubtless, many many more. (late addition: here are some of them)
Sleeping With Dirt
Churchill's Antiques Roadshow
Unseen Russia For God's Sake
Masterchef The Hairy Gary Rhodes
Holy Warriors: Richard The Disappearing
Oblivion: The Ten Biggest Hits Of The 90s
Liar Liar The Bachelor
I Now Pronounce You Chuck And The Breakfast Club

Unfortunately since the remote (or, as we and many millions of others call it, "the doofer") has pretty much ceased to work, we may be forced into buying a giant flat slab of LCD and hang it on the wall as if it's some kind of artwork. Sigh.

Targeted by psychopaths

I may have mentioned before how much I love the Internet. Maybe several times, who knows? There's a wonderful birthdayish feel about ordering things, paying for them, forgetting about them, and then a week or two later getting lots of presents in the post. However. I seem to have become the target, recently, for any and every pointless "homeware" catalogue the postie can shove through our letterbox. I wouldn't dream of suggesting that my address has been pimped out by somebody I actually subscribe to (Lakeland, I still love you!! Call me!!), so can only assume it was a one-night-stand (i.e. something I bought for Christmas from some company I'll never use again) who has stitched me up like this. I religiously tick every box that says "I do NOT wish to be contacted with exciting offers by your carefully-chosen partner companies thank you very much, now or ever", but there's obviously some loophole even the pathologically cautious like me have missed.
My most recent unsolicited arrival was the catalogue for Really Linda Barker, which seems to specialise in cast-iron rabbits and "wall art". As I flicked idly through it I realised that far from being an advertisement for Ms Barker's range of metalwork chinoiserie (well, it's all made in China), it's actually one gigantic cry for help. In her own words : "Looking back through my previous collections, I've noticed I have a growing obsession with hooks, and for some reason, chickens". Which, to the trained eye, says "STOP ME BEFORE I KILL AGAIN". It's a short and fatally easy step from an obsession with hooks and chickens to ending up like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, experimenting with livestock and wearing a waistcoat of badly-cured human skin. And why restrict this worry to the otherwise wholesome-looking Linda Barker? God knows what festers in the mind of Johnnie Boden. Why does he so keenly want to share his views on feather-stitch and patent leather with you? WHY????? Is he making himself a girl-suit like Buffalo Bill in Silence Of The Lambs???
Best not to ask really.

"Oh look, there's a daisy-chain of human hands in the rigging!"

Nightmares and horror films

Felt like adopting a Vincent Price tone for this post (sadly when I try and do the voice I sound more like Loyd Grosman in drag). We were discussing what it is that scares you, apart from the obvious (Inland Revenue, ant infestations, credit card fraud etc) (vets' bills..) and the first thing I remember being screamingly terrified of as a child was the shadow of my hand on the fridge door. Odd I know, but I was about 18months old and I remember watching the shadow, then moving my hand slightly, and suddenly MY SHADOW FINGERS GOT LONGER AND LONGER AND WITCHY AND LONGER. I recaptured the feeling perfectly when I was a student, watching "Nightmare on Elm Street". It wasn't the slashy gore; it was the way Freddy's arms extended and extended as he walked down a dark alley until they were about 10 feet long.
Which leads me to hypothesise (ooer) that there are two kinds of fear: one is the rational fear of knife-wielding maniacs and body-snatchers (ie random violence and losing one's mind/autonomy), and the other is far more irrational and comes from the inarticulate animal brain - that of things being WRONG, in terms of scale or gravity or logic.
Will now go and sit in the lovely sunshine with a copy of "That Hideous Strength" by C S Lewis - one of my favourite books ever. I still have to adjust my brain a bit when I read it, because I have never forgiven him for unceremoniously dumping Susan at the end of the Narnia books, and there's more than a hint of God's-Own-Anointed nationalism which you have to choose to read as benign rather than bigoted - but I still love it.