Sunday 7 Feb 2010 - Bus bastard, Ash the Angel, We love you Andrew, Kill Nicky Campbell, Beware the Elephant and A Little TV before Work.

We got back to Leic this A.M. at approx 8:15. The driver, when I asked him before we left Birmingham, said he would drop me near the M69/M1 junction because I live nearby. He sped passed saying he couldn’t stop if there wasn’t a bus stop. There was a bus stop he simple turned at the wrong place and took the long route back to work. So it looked as if I might end up stranded back at the Leicester site, because Deb was due to take the kids to a Rugby tournament in Lutterworth and would be leaving home at about 8:45. It looked as if I might be facing a long and painful walk. Luckily Ash, a colleague, offered to give me a lift home so the crisis was averted. If I’d had to walk home, with my hip the way it is at present, then I’d have, most likely, ended up bed bound with the pain for the next 24 hours. Ash dropped me at home shortly before the terrible trio departed and I bid them a brief but fond farewell.


To Chillax and wind down before going to bed I watched the Andrew Marr Show  (Excellent, as usual) followed by that total bag of horseshit* The Big Question

Hosted by Nicky Campbell (Christ I hate Nicky Campbell he comes over as such a supercilious twat) the show comes complete with a cohort of well meaning, media friendly, workaday religious hacks and sometimes a token sceptic – occasionally Prof Richard Dawkins (stop wasting your time Prof). They are there, supposedly, to ponder the BIG questions with a view to then telling us, the little people, how these matters should be resolved. In actual fact very little, if any, pondering is done. They, all of them, arrived pre-prepared, armed with the rotes of their received as opposed to perceived wisdoms. This is why their answers ALWAYS involve, in one flavour or another, God or Jesus or Mohammed or one or more or all of their various “Holy Books”.

So right this is just what I need on a Sunday morning, advice from people who think that the universe was created, in six days, by a beardy bloke who lives on a cloud and who, in addition to believing this, also believe that the sum total of all true wisdom and knowledge is contained in a two or three books written either by bronze age pastoralist, post Diaspora Jews or a Seventh Century Arab merchant (most historians now agree that the Koran was, in fact, written in dribs and drabs during the two centuries following the death of the prophet; but never let an inconvenient truth interfere with a useful lie).

I wait, with baited breath, to hear their answers to these questions; what wisdom will these learned persons soon bestow upon me? In the end, it’s a fairly short wait; as armed only with their simple truths (one God** and sundry books***) and their razor sharp logic, they all, in but a moment, cut straight to the heart of the matter!

It was God (in whichever particular flavour you favour) what done it (or maybe Jesus working on his behalf if the learned answerer is of the Christian persuasion)

How dare we mere mortals have the audacity to imagine, for one moment, that we might reason freely, think critically and make rational decisions without the help of an all powerful imaginary friend and his big books of behaviour?

But this isn’t everything, there’s also some additional horrible icing on this cake of cack. Some of the regular learned folk are an extra turn of the screw!

Do you know who grates on me even more than Nicky Campbell?

It’s that blonde “Bird” who’s chaplain at a flipping fashion college! Why is she there then, it's obvious she's there as blonde clergy porn! When she does speak you could wade through her deepest thoughts without getting your ankles wet. This twenty something, who has, probably, never had an original though in her entire life, sits on stage gazing about her with such condescending arrogance.

In addition to this, every “representative” of the “Moslem Community” prefixes his (sometimes there’s a token her) opening comments with “as a religion of peace” before going on to describe, in great detail, the numerous reasons why this religion allows him to kill me. A Religion of peace; what a load of bollocks, and finally we have the obligatory Rabbi and this guy’s even more patronizing than Nicky (Superfuckingcilious) Campbell.

Mind you, compared to the fundamentalist Bible bashing lunatics sprinkled amongst the audience the above characters are reasonably moderate in their views. But remember moderation, as Einstein should have said, is relative and the panel are only moderate in comparison with the total raving loonies in the audience. They’re still fruitcakes in their own rights just not quite so over cooked.

YOYOYOY (is not the sequence of my chromosomes) Sorry, couldn’t resist that one.

Why does the BBC still put this shit on? Even on the odd occasions when a decent argument does get the chance to get under way e.g. this morning (Is it ever right to pay a ransom?) you can absolutely guarantee that Nicky boy will interrupt at a totally inappropriate moment with some arsine comment and bring the discussion to a screaming halt.

Hanging’s too good for the whole shower of shits involved in this abortion of a programme. The trouble is, mind you, that it’s additive, it’s like the Jeremy Kyle Show, you know you shouldn’t watch it but there’s some thing almost irresistible about these car crash programmes!


Anyway, sufficiently chillaxed after my morning’s viewing I went to bed at about 11:15 and, as is the norm, experienced great difficulty in getting to sleep because of the pain in my hips and knee. I switched on the mp3 player in my Nokia N82 and listened to podcasts until, eventually, I dropped off. I was woken at 12:30 by a telephone call from Connor, a school mate of Nat’s, ringing to ask Nat for help with his homework. Subsequently I was woken at about 2:30pm when Deb and the kids returned and Han proceeded to make enough noise for a herd of elephants. I SHOUTED downstairs for them to keep the noise down and the noise abated for a short time.

Again I sort the solace of my mp3 player and eventually drifted off once more only to be woken again by Han this time around 4:00PM. If I did this to them at 2AM and 4 AM they’d think I was mad but for some reason none of them seem to realise that the afternoon is my equivalent time. I eventually gave up on the idea of sleep and decided to have a bath to ease the various aches and pains. The results were mixed, eased my leg somewhat but I’ve still got a stiff neck that’s turning twitchy and my machete hand a trembles whenever I hear the elephant that is my daughter!

Downstairs for 6:00, Sunday dinner (chicken - don't quite know why I've seen fit to be quite so specific here?) followed by Click , from BBC News Channel then half of the second episode of The Virtual Revolution  (absolutely outstanding). 7:30 left for work and here I am now at 00:47 on Monday morning.

*Watching the Big Question proves that I am, most definitely, a masochist!
** Except of course when there’s a token Hindu as well
*** The Old Testicle, The New Testicle, The Caravan, the Book of Moron and any printed material endorsed by Opera Wineferry and her sundry acolytes!