La Sala X

Many years ago I did a 4-month stint in Madrid doing a bit of work experience in the headquarters of one of Spain’s most monolithic corporations. Happy days. I managed to land a room in an apartment in fairly central part of the old town sharing with three other lads. The four of us were very different both physically and in personality. When we were gathered of an evening in the kitchen talking the usual bollocks that young men talk, I couldn’t help but think that my life had taken on a certain sitcom quality. Apparently I was the stabilizing force in the group because after I left there were blazing rows, accusations of theft and eventually one of them buggered off without paying the month and a half’s rent he owed.

It was a fine time, my job was fairly laid back - I was more or less used to translate the department’s technical documentation. Most evenings were spent on the town and I can testify from firsthand experience that Madrid leaves Barcelona in the dust when it comes to nightlife. Nevertheless, every Monday I had to drag myself out of bed bright and early and haul my unwieldy corpse into a suit and onto packed metro train just to sit in my cubicle and try to appear awake.

One of the few things that cheered me up on these painful mornings was the fact that we lived a couple of doors down from an erotic cinema. They changed their double bill every Sunday evening so the next day I could pass by the front door and admire the fresh new titles. It was an experience that not only brightened up the morning, but also hugely enriched the quality and quantity of my colloquial Spanish.

Who thinks up the titles for porn films? It’s quite a challenge really considering the limited amount of subject matter in your average skin flick. It should be witty and saucy but not too obvious. Modesty aside, I reckon that I wouldn’t be too bad at it. So let’s open the floor to our half dozen readers. Can you think up or remember the best title to a porn flick. And I’ll get the ball rolling so to speak:

“Saving Ryan’s Privates”

Go on then. Top that.

Spanish Elections for Dummies

This Sunday the fine Kingdom of Spain will be electing this next government and since Latin politics are so darn entertaining, I thought I’d give a brief refresher course on the whole gig. In layman’s terms you understand. If you want an in-depth, well researched article about this Iberian electoral clash, get up off your arse and go buy the Economist.

In order to appreciate this face-off to the fullest, one would really need a bit of background.

Crash Course in Recent Spanish Political History:

1975 – Franco Dies. (Yippee!)

The whole country stands around nonchalantly whistling because nobody knows exactly what’s going to happen. The Generalisimo had been grooming another military strongman to succeed him but a couple of years earlier ETA had had the presence of mind to assassinate the poor bugger with a landmine in Madrid. (The blast was so strong that it blew this guy’s chauffeur driven limo over a four-storey building and into the patio on the other side. He has since gained the nickname the ‘grasshopper’).

Franco had also been grooming the young prince Juan Carlos to take over as the figurehead of the nation. But what the Caudillo didn’t figure on was that even a cousin-marrying Bourbon could see that the writing was on the wall for a totalitarian state in modern Europe. Nonetheless, the liberals and intellectuals had to usher in democracy very slowly and gently over several years, making sure not to upset the old guard too much. This period is known as the ‘transition’. The only big hiccup was that failed military coup in 1981 when some colonel tried to take over the country. You might remember the footage of the fascist little prick shooting his pistol in the air in the Madrid parliament. But the coup petered out and the tin pot Napoleon went to jail, ha-fucking-ha.

OK where was I? Oh yeah. There was an interim government for a few years lead by a rather dashing moderate conservative called Suarez. Then in their first democratic elections in 1982, the Spanish voiced their backlash against right wing tyranny by voting in the socialists lead by one Felipe Gonzalez. At this time Spain, after more than 40 years of dictatorship, was frankly a backward shit hole. So it had nowhere to go but up and life for the average Dago began to improve.


Politically Shooting Oneself in the Foot – A Spanish Pastime

The problem was that political parties who stay in power for too long tend to stagnate. Granted this is something an average Italian wouldn’t understand as their governments tend to last about as long as an episode of Friends but we’re talking about Spain here. After 14 years leading the country, the socialist party was beset by scandals – political favours, bribes and even a secret branch of the police who went about furtively bumping off supposed members of ETA. (A third of the victims were innocent – cases of mistaken identity – but hey shucks nobody’s perfect!) This era of corruption became known as ‘felipismo’. Go figure.

So in 1996, the lefties lost the elections to the conservatives who were lead by a repulsive moustacheod dwarf named Aznar. Imagine a cross between Charlie Chaplin and Gollum. I suppose it was a good thing to shuffle the establishment around a little, but did they have to hang around for ‘two’ terms? I could never understand that vile little man’s popularity.

The seeds of the conservative’s downfall were sown in their second term. It should be mentioned that the party always tried to project the image of being tough on ETA and all forms of domestic terrorism. Aznar had also become a world class ass-kisser to that Whitehouse simpleton Bush and quasi-Tory whore Blair. So when these two fools decided to enter into an Iraqi war that had the word ‘quagmire’ written on it in big red neon letters, Aznar their faithful puppy dog, dutifully followed. He did this, I might add, against the wishes of 90% of the Spanish population.

Tragedy

On the morning of the 11th of March, 2004, four days before the Spanish general elections, ten backpack bombs ripped through four crowded trains belonging to the Madrid local rail service. The wagons, made from tough carbon fibre, burst open like tin cans scattering the belongings and limbs of those trapped inside all round the trackside. In all 191 people were killed and the whole country sent into a state of shock. It was the biggest terrorist attack ever committed on Spanish soil. I marched, along with a million others, through the streets of Barcelona in support of the victims and the people of Madrid. To see these Catalans, who usually do nothing but bitch about the nation’s capital, carrying banners stating ‘We Are All From Madrid’, was quite moving to say the least.

Before all this happened the conservatives were actually favourites to win the elections but now they were in a bit of bind. If the bombs were planted by ETA they were in the clear, seeing that they had always come down hard on the Basques. However, if radical Islamists were involved then the electorate might blame them for getting the country into a war that nobody wanted and that probably made Spain a legitimate target for Al Qaeda. So it was vital, in the run up to voting, that people suspect the Basque nationalists or at least harbour doubts about the Islamic connection.

However, something was not right with the ETA theory. No warning? A highly coordinated attack by an organization with its logistical branch in tatters? An act of mindless butchery whose only objective was a maximum body count? ETA denying responsibility? No false licence plates used? Detonators never before used by ETA? There was a lot of circumstantial evidence suggesting that the authors of this outrage were new to Spain.

To call what the conservatives did cynical would be like calling Watergate a trivial faux-pas. There is ample evidence that while the police were finding more and more proof of Islamist involvement, these ministers were making knowingly misleading calls to national newspapers telling them that there were ‘indications’ that ETA was implicated. The Spanish police were not helping, following up on clues in such a rapid and efficient manner. CCTV pictures were shown where the bombers boarded the trains, the mobile phone that was supposed to detonate one of the unexploded bombs was being traced, a small van was found in the car park of one of the stations with bomb making equipment inside and with a cassette of the Koran in its tape deck but the governing party kept insisting on ETA's guilt. This sinister strategy backfired and cost them the election.

The majority of the Spanish electorate, still reeling from such a recent tragedy, saw through the conservative’s ploy and took to the streets to express their fury and disgust. The voter turnout was huge. People flew home in planes just to vote in rage. The socialists comfortably won the day and formed a coalition government. Since then, more evidence has emerged and a month later an Islamic terrorist cell associated with the train bombings blew itself up in a besieged apartment instead of letting itself be captured by the police. Nonetheless, there are still factions of the conservative party who are churning out conspiracy theories involving the Basques, the socialist party and even the Moroccan secret service. Some of them are quite amusing.


Big Sunday.

So who are the players in the Sunday election?

The Socialists – PSOE
Their leader and current prime minister is José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero which is a bit of a mouthful so I think I’ll call him by his nickname ‘Bambi’. You see he’s an unassuming, skinny, gangly guy with big eyes and a sweet Mr. Bean kind of smile. And when you see him giving a speech at a huge political meeting, you can actually imagine him doing the oratorical equivalent of slipping around on a frozen pond with Thumper. It’s a testament to the sorry state the conservatives that Bambi has actually won the two pre-election debates.

He seems like a decent enough guy, as shown by the way he handled Chavez in the ‘Why don’t you shut up!’ incident, and although his government hasn’t exactly been stellar, they haven’t screwed things up either. In fact that could probably be their party's electoral slogan ‘Four More years of Not Fucking Things Up!’.


The Conservatives - PP
Their candidate is Mariano Rajoy, successor to Aznar and according to his followers, theft victim of the last election. The big problem with Rajoy is that he’s got all the charisma of an autistic undertaker. He was a boring, stiff and grumpy looking minister under Aznar and no matter how hard his image consultants try to paint a relaxed confident veneer over his persona, the mildew keeps seeping through. He is your girlfriend’s cranky disapproving father when you were a teenager, he’s the stone-faced ticket collector on the train, he’s a headmaster in a brown corduroy jacket.

I mean it’s not like Bambi is this grand Rooseveltian statesman. For Christ’s sake he’s a socialist and he can’t even form a proper fist. At the end of party conventions, he raises his hand and it looks like he’s holding onto an invisible helium balloon. He is definitely beatable. But with the Undertaker at the helm, I don’t see the PP rallying at the last minute and clawing their way back into power.

The other problem are the tactics used by the conservatives. They are still sore about 2004 and frothing at the mouth to get back on top. As a result of this, their strategy has been to viciously criticize absolutely everything that the government does. They blame the government for a slight economic downturn (even though it has affected all of Europe), they blame the government for the rise in unemployment (although employment has also risen considerably), they blame the government for negotiating with ETA (without proof that this actually happened), they blame the government for greenhouse gasses, for the hunger in Africa, for the fact that it sometimes rains on weekends, for the existence of the bogyman, for the varicose veins in pensioners, for the fact that Spain has never won the world cup etc. I reckon that the electorate has gotten a bit tired of this constant haranguing.

Other parties:
If the Spanish Civil War taught us one thing it is that by their very nature, the right is united and the left is fragmented into various shades of left. One must also consider that Spain is a nation of distinct regions, each with a very autonomous political system and culture. Some of these regions’ nationalist parties can play a decisive role in the nations direction.

So in a nutshell, the minor parties consist of the greens, a couple of parties further to the left of the socialists and a handful of regional hard-hitters. This is important as coalitions are the norm.

Anyway, I’m putting my money on the status quo. A narrow socialist win and a new coalition. Plus ça change.

We’ll see on Monday.

Take your bets, ladies and gentlemen!

What a Difference a Decade Makes

Once again, this post has been marinating in the cesspool of my hindbrain over the past two weeks until I could find a moment to commit it to text.

The party.

Ah yes, the party.

As mentioned in the previous post our first big February bash occurred ten years ago to celebrate my thirtieth birthday. It was curious to contrast that event with the party of a few of weeks ago. I found the most striking points of comparison were the following:

TEN years ago, a lot more people showed up than were invited. Because naturally, a lot of the people we invited wanted to bring friends along. And very welcome they were, the more the rowdier.
THIS time round a lot fewer people showed up than were invited because some had the flu, some of them had kids who had the flu, some of them had had a tough a week and couldn’t summon the energy to walk out their front door for a bit of weekend leisure and some of them obviously couldn’t handle the stairs with their Zimmer frames.

TEN years ago we had just enough booze to keep the thronging masses at bay and the guests were smart enough to bring along the cheapest booze they could buy. So by the end of the night, the diehard guests were hitting the Andoran counterfit gin, the DYK (pronounced ‘dick’) whiskey and the Moscatel wine that the gay couple had brought along while others were licking the bottom of the Sucker Punch bowl. (ref: previous post)
THIS time round, we were shocked to welcome punters at the front door with bottles of Bombay gin and decent Rioja Crianza wines stuck under their arms. And even more shocking, most of this quality hooch wasn’t even touched! I think we ended up making a net profit with regards to quantity of booze and certainly with regard to quality. Our bodega overfloweth. We could probably throw another two parties with the alcoholic procceds of this one.

TEN years ago, I was young, fit as a fiddle and had only begun going out with my new girlfriend and yet I didn’t notice any woman paying particular interest to me at the February bash.
I am now a slightly overweight, married forty year old with a nipper back in the fold and was pleasantly amazed to discover a couple of the lady guests shamelessly flirting with me. Now let me be clear, this was the highlight of the party for me, getting my dusty old ego shoeshined. Unfortunately it also confirmed that as old as I’ll ever get, I will never understand how women’s minds work let alone their libidos.

TEN years ago the neighbours (who were all invited) were shocked at how much noise we made.
THIS time round the neighbours (who were also all invited) were shocked at how little noise we made.

TEN years ago, it took us half a day to clear up the flat and cart all the empties down to the dumpster.
THIS time round, it took us an hour because a few of our more responsible guests collected and brought down bags of empties before heading home.

And finally…

TEN years ago I would have been really pissed off to have hosted such a mellow, well ordered party.
THIS time round, I’m kind of relieved and grateful.

Sucker Punch

This Saturday we will be throwing a rather sizable bash at our top-floor Barcelona apartment. It’s a shame you can’t come. I began these February festivities ten years ago to celebrate my then thirtieth birthday (which actually falls in January but we won’t go into that).

The mathematically astute among you will no doubt have perceived that I have just reached the ripe old age of forty. So this year the celebrations will be a little special, this being my official coming-of-aged party.

That being said, we’re not planning anything out of the ordinary. Our stalwart belief in tradition would not allow it. Our party supplies will be limited to the essentials - big bowls of unflavoured crisps, nuts and olives – a fridge filled to the brim, a veritable sarcophagus of beer cans – ice flung into the bath to be used as an subsidiary cooling point – spirits and mixers strewn over a covered table and eighty to a hundred people invited to attend the proceedings. We always prefer to throw wholesale parties with an emphasis on bulk rather than customized. I consider my guests less as a kaleidoscope of quality individuals and more in terms of biomass.

And of course, no Lung bash would be complete without the compulsory tub of sangria. Ah sangria, the cruellest joke that the Spanish ever played on the rest of the world, (the Inquisition and Conquista not withstanding). It was probably invented in the late sixties and I can just imaging how:

“Hey José, these jodidos German and British tourists are drinking my bodega dry! Now I will have to go buy some more wine from my neighbour Ramón. And that hijo de puta charges me two cents per litre. Look how he screws me, that Billy goat, I shit on his ancestors!”

“No problem Jorge. You can easily dilute your own wine with the water that you wash your fruit with, and then dump in a bunch of ice, some anti-freeze and sugar to disguise the foul taste. Then you just tell these estupido tourists that it’s a traditional punch our forefathers drank to celebrate cutting the throats of Moors. For this reason it is called ‘blood’ or ‘Sangria’.”

So here are the ingredients to my trademark February sangria:

Three or four Tetrabriks of Don S. red wine. Ah yes, Don S., fuel to a generation of street tramps, penniless teenagers and frustrated housewives. To call it cooking wine is to do it too much justice. Even cooking wine usually comes in bottles. Actually come to think of it, calling it wine might be doing it too much justice.

Three or four Tetrabriks of supermarket brand fruit juice. My favourite is the ‘Mixed Tropical Fruit’ juice because you just know they swept the floor of the fruit factory at the end of a shift and threw the contents into the press while the next crowd were clocking in.

Empty the contents of said Tetrabriks into a plastic basin (remembering to remove your dirty laundry first). Add a fist full of sugar, a squidge of lemon juice, a flummox of ice, a few drops of nail polish remover and a scatter of cloves. (Curiously, in Spanish the word for cloves is the same as the word for nails. So if you don’t have one, you can always use the other.)

Stir the contents of the plastic basin with a tire iron.

Serve into polystyrene cups with a common ladle. (If you don't own a ladle, a chipped teacup will do nicely)

I call this drink my ‘Sucker Punch’ for the following reason:
We usually ask our guests to contribute some extra booze to the event. So the idea is that some of the lesser intelligent, more lily-livered of them (designated drivers, anorexics, Spanish etc.) will bring some tasty beer along and then dive into the sangria, wrongly assuming that it’s a more harmless alternative to their fresh pilsner. Their offering is therefore free to be imbibed by a more deserving guest or more importantly, by me.


SUCKERS!

Twenty Things that You Never Wanted to Know about Chemistry.

1. The cleaner the lab coat, the less the sense of humour of the wearer. (so to answer to your next question ‘Yes - CSI is full of shit’)

2. The more the piece of laboratory equipment looks like a washing machine, the more it costs. (NMR, electron microscopes, Plasma spectroscopy,..etc)

3. You "can" judge a book by its cover. The prettiness of a chemical corporation’s catalogue is directly proportional to how sinister the nature of its activities . They tend to compensate for their evil ways with publicity.
For example if there is a paper manufacturing company that has a simple aerial photo of their factory on the cover of their catalogue, then you can rest assured that they are probably just what they claim to be i.e. a company that manufactures paper.
However, if you see a catalogue with a photo of waterfalls, a mother holding a baby or a family having a picnic in a field of sunflowers then you can pretty much conclude that this company puts dioxins into baby food or experiments on pandas.

4. The presidents of nearly all large German chemical conglomerates look like child molesters. I’m not kidding. Check it out. It must be something to do with the blond moustaches and the devious smiles but I personally wouldn’t let one of them within half a mile of a playground.

5. Unlike architects, writers, computer programmers, engineers or librarians, chemists don’t usually have friends who are chemists outside of their workplace. Because let’s face it, who the hell wants to be friends with a friggin’ chemist. “Hey Mike, lets get together tonight for a few brewskies and chat about surface catalysts for ketone synthesis”. “Hell yeah! That’d totally raaawk.”

6. Any chemist worth his/her salt should be able to cook. The processes are almost identical even if the smells are not.

7. All chemists above 5-foot ten have a stoop.

8. A lot of high level chemists have a chip on their shoulder about the fact that quantum physics and genetics are the sexy, trendy sciences that are getting all the media attention at the moment. I’ve heard stories of photos of Craig Venter being stuck on dartboards in University staffrooms.

9. The chemistry departments of almost all universities are usually housed in the ugliest building on campus. Something resembling a high rise prefab or an inverted bunker. The obvious thinking behind this is that the college shouldn’t spend a lot of money and effort on a beautiful and expensive building when there is a fair chance that it might accidentally explode some day.

10. Surprisingly, the hardest thing to find in a large laboratory is a small glass rod to stir the shit in your beaker.

11. BAKELITE’S MAKING A COMEBACK, MAAAN! MARK MY WORDS YE HEATHENS. Ehem...I beg your pardon.

12. You know those ignorant philistines out there who think that the most useful application for helium is to make your voice sound like a smurf’s?
Well, they’re actually right.

13. It is not generally known that in 1997 after extensive research into Mexican food, IUPAC reclassified the term ‘Noble Gas’ as an oxymoron.

14. You know in the film ‘Blade’ when Wesley Snipes makes Stephen Dorff explode by injecting him with a solution of the chelating agent EDTA? Well that was frigging cool, that was.

15. Don’t even bother asking a chemistry student if he knows how to make LSD. I can guarantee you that the book was borrowed from the university library in 1967 and never returned.

16. Chemists and cordroy. Don’t ask me why.

17. That ‘hide-the-metalic-sodium-in-the-swimming-costume’ gag stops being funny after the third or fourth time.

18. Primo Levy is the chemists’ Jim Morrison.

19. (To be rapped)
Beaker and Bunsen Honeydew.
It’s funny coz it’s so true. (Motherfucker)

20. There was a girl in my college year who could fill a 50ml pipette with her mouth in eight seconds flat. Boy was ‘she’ popular.

Bah Humbug!

I woke up this morning with a slight case of the snuffles, the suggestion of a hangover lurking behind the eyes and decided to hate humanity for the day. It happens every now and then and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to everyone. Just let yourselves go for a twelve-hour period and actively despise the six and a half billion people who infest this blue turd of a planet. Purge all those bad feelings in one mighty catharsis and tomorrow you can get back to being your sweet altruistic selves, refreshed, with batteries charged and ready for the season of good will.

Of course to be a proper misanthrope one must remember to hate absolutely everyone, otherwise there’s always that risk of slipping into vulgar racism. Nonetheless, today I decided to pick out some of my all time favourites and hold a kind of beauty competition of pet peeves in my head. The candidates were limited to Europe as I’ve lived and travelled almost exclusively on this continent. There is also the added advantage that Europe is not exactly lacking when it comes to odious stereotypes.

So I made a mental list which included telesales executives from London, North African pickpockets, Rangers supporters, loud American tourists ... etc. But in the end, there had to be one winner. So here in reverse order are the people I most love to loathe:


Bronze medal:
Taxi Drivers Everywhere.
Do you ever have that urge to get short changed by a right wing fanatic with BO? Then just dial up your local cab service anywhere in the world. Why is it that I have such a natural aversion to taxi drivers? I suppose I’ve always assumed that they’re going to try and rip us off and so often they’ve proved me right.


Silver medal:
Anyone in Vienna who Deals with the General Public.
It took a couple of days of our holiday to realize that the Viennese person on the street can be quite nice and will usually try to help you if you’re lost. But the moment you step into a hotel, museum, gallery or restaurant and the staff suss that you don’t speak perfect German, you will be treated like something the cat coughed up. I’m not joking, this happened ‘every’ time without fail during our stay.
Now, under other circumstances you don’t mind this sort of thing happening occasionally while travelling abroad. For instance, getting the obnoxious treatment from a French waiter isn’t so bad because you half expect it, it’s done with a bit of arrogant flair and it only represents a small part of the holiday experience. But when an entire service industry of a capital city seems to be sneering at you from day one, it does begin to grate on the nerves somewhat.
On the last day, I finally lost my rag with the receptionist at the hostel and sarcastically complimented her on her country’s fine culture “I mean isn’t it amazing how everybody in Germany speaks Austrian as well. And goodness me, just look how many sensational brands of car your country manufactures.” I walked out before she had time to react feeling such a wonderful sense of relief.


Gold Medal:
Old Bourgeois Parisian Ladies.
Ah yes. The posh old dears from the city of lights. There will always be a dank little black spot in my heart reserved for this fetid species of humanity. But why choose them as the ‘haine du jour’ when there are probably more nefarious characters at large?
Well it wasn’t the fact that they would skip queues, park wherever they liked, let their little doggies shit all over the city without even entertaining the thought of cleaning up the mess, push their way onto metro trains before letting anyone off, argue for half an hour over a penny, practically shove you out of the way when you offered your seat on a bus with not even a hint of a ‘Merci’, make all the other customers wait while they abuse the waiter/bank teller/cashier/mechanic or bitch out loud about immigrants.

No - the reason that old Parisian ladies get to top the podium of chagrin is their pure and unadulterated hypocrisy. When they were not being obnoxiously rude to everyone around them, they were complaining about the rudeness of others. These bitter hags dressed in furs, with their Hermes handbags and polished high heels would gather in mid-morning groups in the cafés while their husbands (if still alive) were probably somewhere banging the secretary. Then, when comfortably seated, all they would launch into their whine-fest in those tired condescending voices about everyone else. “Oh, the young people today have no manners, the young women have no style, the immigrants don’t know how to behave in a civilised country, the traffic is so bad that I can’t park my Mercedes anywhere anymore, you just can’t find good service these days, I had to fire my Colombian maid for staining the silver, it was such an ordeal for me.”

After living in the sixteenth arrondissement for almost a year, these arrogant old biddies eventually wore me down and I developed what could best be described as a cultural allergy. For this reason I honour them with this award.



While writing this diatribe, I was reminded of a brilliant scientific theory put forth by one of the great Irish satirists, Mr. Flann O’ Brien. In his novel ‘The Third Policeman” O’ Brien describes the peculiar anxiety of a policeman who spends most of his day on his bicycle. The copper has the strange sensation that, through the constant friction, the molecules from the bike were passing into his backside and that his own molecules were likewise being transferred into the saddle. The result of this was that over the years, the saddle had gotten softer and more flesh-like while the policeman’s rump had gotten harder and more leathery. The constable was terrified that he would eventually turn into his bicycle and vice versa.

Pray, scoff not at this wonderful theory as it could explain a lot of the above.

Just think about it. With what is a taxi driver in physical contact for hours at a time, sufficiently long enough for a sizable exchange of molecules? Why the taxi itself. So logically, after a few years the taxi driver begins to look slightly dented, starts to stink of smoke, piss and stale leather and has a tendency to growl when he’s not well oiled.

Same question for the old Parisian biddies. If you’ve ever been to Paris, you’ll no doubt have observed that this breed of urban dame is never, ever seen on the street without her fur coat. Animal rights be buggered, anybody who gets between a mature Parisienne and her mink is likely to have their eyes clawed out by perfectly varnished fingernails. However, if you look even closer, you’ll notice that after a few years most of these furs begin to look faded, wrinkled and should you examine the eyes of the dead vermin up close, you are quite likely to see the onset of glaucoma. The reason for this is that the animal’s carcass has absorbed too many of its owner’s molecules and it is therefore beginning to resemble her. Likewise, over the years the old French lady begins to take on the aspect and behaviour of a vile and vicious little rodent.

I haven’t figured out exactly where this theory fits in to the Viennese service industry yet. One can only suppose that as a job requirement, these people have to take a poker out of the freezer every morning before going to work and shove it where the delightful Austrian sun doesn’t shine.......

.......actually now that I think of it, that would also explain where yodelling came from.

A Seasonal Verse for my Chums Back in the Auld Sod.

KITCHMAS

The Yuletide's in and by the fire,
Our toasty toes are toasting,
I'm sending this to wish you well,
And save the cost of posting.

I've got a little news to tell,
You'll all be glad to hear,
That just to spite the airlines,
I'm staying put this year.

So of all the Christmas visitors,
You'll be happy not to see,
Upon the list feel free to stick,
Bin Laden, Twink and me.

And open presents, gorge and quaff,
With extra fun and cheer,
Knowing you wont have to see,
My ugly face this year.

When down the pub, on Krimbo Eve,
United shoulder to shoulder,
All drunk and sentimental,
And feeling one year older.

Spare a thought for me while staring,
Into the celtic night,
And thank Christ I'm not around to talk,
The usual ex-pat shite.

And on the stands on Boxing Day,
All freezing mud and dirt,
Think of me and whimper,
While losing all your shirts.

And ponder me when crossing arms,
The last day of December,
I hope for you it is a night,
Worth trying to remember.

I'll celebtate here, all on my todd,
For in foreign soil I'm stuck,
With cava, turron and chorizo,
And all that dago muck.

But it's not the same without your mates,
Despite the latin sun,
So I'll raise my glass to my dearest friend,
Whashisface, him, yer one.

As it's the time of year when one is free,
To peddle shameless tack,
I'm sending you the kitchest card,
Please don't send it back.

A HAPPY BLOODY CHRISTMAS TO YIS ALL.