Cats and Dogs

Crisis of confidence yesterday. Have I done/am I doing the right thing?!? Where is my life going?!? Etc etc. So the LTLP suggests we sit down, relax and watch ‘Cats and Dogs’, which is described by The Guardian as a ‘decent family comedy’.

True, perhaps, if you happen to be the Mong family from Basildon. I stare at the screen in bewilderment and black depression, as the dogs frolic around the screen with their amusing and wacky antics. I literally, yes literally, hold my head in my hands as they speak to each other using that ‘animate the mouth’ computer technique that they developed a couple of years back and then proceeded to use in every other sodding TV commercial for everything from booze to financial services. I smile when the mice are introduced. Perhaps I am more of a mouse person.

Every single ad in the breaks features either a cat or a dog. Clearly the media buyers worked overtime to come up with that idea – people watching the film are likely to be cat or dog lovers and therefore… etc etc.

I have nothing personally against dogs. Apart from two things:

They are unable to control their bowels;

They give me asthma.

I realise that there is a risk in posting this. That is, everyone that ever makes a mild criticism of our doggie friends, ends up with their personal details in a long file entitled ‘nazi dog haters – eliminate’ in some nutter’s shrine, who then proceeds to write abusive letters to them, send anthrax etc. Well I don’t have anything against dogs, as long as they keep themselves to themselves and don’t crap on the footpath.

I have nothing personally against cats, either. Apart from two things:

The bowel problem, as before, although admittedly not as bad;

They give the LTLP asthma.

Mice are OK. I’m easy with mice.

The cess pit emptying man leaves.

The cess pit emptying man has just left.

I have great respect for the cess pit emptying man. In our frightfully civilised and advanced Western civilization, the role of cess pit emptying man ranks right near the end of any list they may give you at the careers advice centre. However, he is always cheerful, jokey and smiling, which I guess you have to be if you spend your day playing around in other peoples’ ordure. He empties the cess pit, using his big pipe. I give him a cheque, but can’t find my guarantee card.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I can always bring this back.”

The LTLP’s hair is completely back to normal. Our emergency dyeing was a tremendous success.

And I have been listening to ‘Punchbag’ by The Bees. It really is rather good. Perhaps they have a really really good marketing person in cahoots with Amazon.

I rail at my exploding soup.

The Covent Garden Soup Company still haven’t replied to my email complaining about their exploding soup. A wave of old gittishness engulfs me. Those fat cats pretending to be all cottage-industryey whilst they gorge themselves on the profits of their range of unreliable potage products.

Well I’m not buying their stuff again and may well phone personally to complain. And then they’ll be sorry.

Midsomer Murders

TV is so full of inverted snobbery that it’s quite nice to sit down to Midsomer Murders, which is as middle class as you can get. So on Sunday night we veg in front of John Nettles, fresh from the same plastic surgeon as Kryten from ‘Red Dwarf’.

The plots are usually the same. Somebody is murdered in unusual circumstances, and their body is found by a man walking a dog. Later, somebody else will be wasted, invariably at a ghastly-looking ‘village event’, right in front of Nettles and his wife.

Everybody involved lives in a nice cottage. Several will be suspiciously rude and uncooperative with the police, for no reason whatsoever. Others will cast aspersions on the ‘locals’. These occasional characters, young, scruffy and often riding motorbikes, are not specifically referred to as ‘pikeys’ by the script, but the suspicion is that they are of vaguely gypsy origin and/or a threat to The World As Daily Mail Readers Know It.

Of course, these youngsters didn’t do it – far too obvious – although as a subplot they may well have been engaging in a little petty ne’er-do-wellism/secret good acts/banging the local landowner’s daughter etc. Rather, a fact comes to light involving an outrageous coincidence, Nettles’s wife’s interest in local history and some questionable leaps of logic, that leaves you cursing your naivety in bothering trying to work it out beforehand.

Of course it was the elderly local church historian spinster who’d killed the village rugby team with her bare hands, and Nettles regretfully arrests her after thwarting some mortal danger to his own family.

Cullie’s got a nice arse, but she’s so WET – you just… couldn’t.

This week it was all focused on witchcraft. What was all that about then?!?