You’ll all be cock-a-hoop with joy to know that I’ve now moved house successfully, and am back on t’interweb (albeit in a Shitalian manner, staying as I am with my folks for a week or so). It’s exhaustingly uncomfortable and sticky without being particularly sunny out here, so please excuse the lacklustre and feckless approach to prose quality and humour which I’ll be adopting for these paragraphs and the forseeable future.

Not really much to report from the move, apart from the fact that, as predicted, the removal company were fairly unimpressed by a) the amount of crud I had, and b) the fact that quite a bit of it was still unboxed. For my part, I was fairly unimpressed by the fact that my removal men were all 15-year-old monkey-boys wearing baggy trousers who called each other “cuz” and “bruv” and seemed to be more interested in happy-slapping each other than in moving my chattels. No, to be fair, they put their backs into it - they certainly earned the £20 tip (approx. £2.90 a man! Cash-BACK!) which I generously provided.

The Sandwich will be undergoing a massively radical change on my return to Blighty (5/9 - that’s 9/5 for any Americans out there), which I’ll shortly announce properly with fanfare and subsequent national chagrin reminiscent of the Olympic Logo launch. In the meantime, let’s all remember Lady Di Spencer, and that fateful day when she lived up to her name (and I don’t mean the time when she went around in a beret saying “Oooh Betty” repeatedly).

Well, this is it… pretty much… I move house on Friday, and unless BT suddenly and miraculously start partaking in their customers’ desire to get a broadband connection in LESS THAN TWO FUCKING WEEKS, I’ll be internet-less at my new home for a considerable while. Obviously I’ll be checking in from time to time, but judging by the paltry return of comments on my last 3 entries, I’ll be one of a chosen few. Thank God for today’s contributions from Chat Wind Hiss*, who sounds like a REALLY bright and articulate, not to mention handsome and very well-hung, man.

Boomshanka**, y’all.

** - 10 Sandwich points for an accurate translation.

* - (and Technical Monkey)

Things which you inexplicably felt you needed to try, but ended up regretting it exactly like you knew you would.

- Picking up a hitch-hiker. Mostly for the smell, but he was also as shifty as he looked. I never did find that packet of Doritos.

- Going to Leicester

- Shopping in Ikea on a weekend during the school holidays

- Buying a post- “Kid A” Radiohead album (or any Blur album)

- Attempting to grow vegetables (it never works. Nature’s bounty is best channelled via the medium of Tesco’s)

- Buying a round of drinks. Unfortunately now a precedent has been set, and my friends expect me to buy rounds of drinks like they do EVERY TIME I GO OUT!

Feel free to share your own, or even some of your “None -ce (note careful spelling) was enough”s - e.g. going to the Glastonbury Festival, or rimming.

So, the final week is upon me. I’m still reasonably anxious about the whole move, but I’ve done all I can do (bar packing my enormous volumes of worthless rubbish into boxes). Having chased them relentlessly for the last 3 weeks, I’m now at the stage where I’d rather NOT hear from either my estate agent or solicitor, as any news is likely to be bad news (monies withheld, documentation delayed, 5th party in the chain succumbing to dengue fever and pulling the plug on the entire process, etc).

It’s all been surprisingly easy so far; I called my electricity and gas company to inform them of the move and, rather than the 3rd degree on account numbers, meter readings and that, they simply took my name and addresses, and the date of the move, and said “right, we’ll arrange that for you”. 30 seconds. I’ll believe it when I see it.

The only difficulty at all has come from my electrician, who can’t get his head around my surname (Galvan); I’ve left him 3 messages, all with my name - the first time he called back it was “Garman”, the second time “Galmin” and his most recent attempt was an untranscribable barely-audible sotto-voce mumble along the lines of “Ghrmm-nnnn”. I would set him straight, but I’m interested to see his final interpretation on the written invoice…

Excellent BBQ at the home of Sandwich regulars beebebebbebebebeebe and Matt yesterday; the sun shone, the booze flowed and the beautifully round baby potatoes and cross-cut spring onions basked luxuriantly in their mayonnaise (before being masticated into a gooey saliva-infused onion-breathy pulp, of course).

I made at least 2 new friends, and managed to comport myself with unusual reservation, good humour and even a modicum of dignity - until about 10pm, when the alcohol tipping point was reached and life suddenly became a primal struggle to keep the contents of my stomach in place. Sadly for me, a very nice young lady whose acquaintance I’d just made chose that moment to volunteer her mobile number. I offered to write it down - a terrible mistake. Writing was WAY beyond my capabilities - I did manage to hold the pen, but fell apart at the “focussing” stage. Unimpressedly, she grabbed the paper and wrote it down herself - deciding, however, to commute mobile number to e-mail address. I will write, but
I think a reply is about as likely as recognition from the National Temperance Foundation.

Still, a moral victory.

Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” entered a new phase recently with the launch of its new “Sleeveless Ready in 7 Days” campaign for smooth armpits. But I’m a bit confused.

Firstly, if it’s “real beauty” we’re after, why shouldn’t a sleeveless-minded girl be happy to show off her armpits without shaving? And secondly, where have the fatties gone? Those of you who’ve seen the new advert will have spotted that Dove have reverted to svelte models rather than the wobble-bottoms who were adorning every inch of the London Underground about a year ago. To be fair, the girl who has the speaking part has slightly wonky teeth, but does that make for a radical new agenda in women’s issues?

The “Campaign for Real Beauty” was evidently always going to be a short-term cynical marketing ploy, and a fairly crap one at that - I mean, did they figure that any woman with a self-image problem was going to see the advert and conclude “Oh, I’m a bit on the lardy side with blotchy skin - therefore Dove is the most appropriate product for me”?

(* - for anyone who doesn’t know, “Dov’e” conveniently means “where is it?” in Italian)

The more avid readers amongst you will have noted that I keep banging on about moving house; it’s a process which has ground on since late April, bringing chaos to my wallet and my sanity. But finally, it looks like things are going ahead - everything being equal, I’ll move next Friday.

Problems I foresee -

1) we haven’t yet been able to exchange contracts, and it’s now likely that this will only happen on the same day as the completion. So if anything goes wrong on the legal side, I’m right royally screwed.

2) My removal company has given me a quote without actually seeing what’s in my house. It’s axiomatic (in my case at least) that you accumulate crap to fill the space you’ve got, and my current residence is pretty large. Add my eBay stock to the hefty piles of “leisure crud” and you have literally acres of heavy boxes. And a piano.

3) Cheriton, the area where I’m moving to, is considered quietly genteel but currently has a problem with 12-14 year-old yobbos vandalising buildings, terrorising grannies and exhausting the town’s supply of Sunny D. Their nerve-centre is apparently the street next to mine. Now, I’m quite “down” with the “kids”, man - so if there’s any sign of trouble, I might try playing them some of the latest pop picks (Vanilla Ice, Wet Wet Wet, that kind of stuff - or maybe some dance; dub and bass, hip-rap, acid horse, something along those lines), or I might try channelling their negative energy through the medium of table-tennis. Or on the other hand, I might just buy a baseball bat, hammer a 9″ nail through the top and, grasping it for dear life, sit up in bed all night in a state of absolute petrification.

I’ll let you know how it all goes.

Confirmation today that the Baiji, the Yangtze river dolphin, is extinct - only the fourth entire mammal family to disappear in the last 500 years. As a result of human activity, naturally. The worrying aspect is that the Baiji wasn’t particularly hunted or persecuted by humans or any other predator - just that we were too feckless / lazy / shit to do anything about it.

Sadly, it’s a similar story for water-living species worldwide; whilst humanity has made some progress in slowing (if not halting / reversing) creature-slaughter and habitat destruction on land, in the water it’s still the wild west. 90% of ALL large aquatic predatory fish (sharks, tuna, marlin, swordfish etc) have been wiped out since 1972. Fishing methods generally result in huge waste of life, be it unused by-catch, animals (most famously turtles / albatrosses) mistakenly caught by longlines, or ocean floors crushed by bottom-trawling.

The fishing industry (occasionally aided and abetted by the media) still manages to sell the lie of quaint age-old local small-boat communities which would be destroyed by any cut in quotas. From a vegetarian perspective, it’s difficult to understand why “pescatarians” eat fish but not meat; the meat industry is sustainable and (in the UK at least) relatively humane - the fishing industry is one of the great environmental evils of the world.

Ultimately, though, nobody really gives a shit about what goes on in the water, either in government or in the general public. They’d rather just tuck into their cod and chips (shark fin soup if you’re in Asia) and read stories about mythical Great Whites off the coast of Cornwall. They may reconsider once there’s nothing left but jellyfish in the sea.

Some more cretinogisms which have irritated me recently.

“The water’s OK for baby to drink” - why not YOUR baby? Or THE baby? Bah. In fact, damn the whole faux-goo-goo-ga-ga artifice used by the media / corporate interests when addressing recent parents (usually in order to make them part with money). Damn it to hell.

“Welcome to your Ryanair flight”… if it’s MY flight, I want to divert to Honolulu, I want free cakes, and I want the finest wines available to humanity. And while you’re at it, find some cabin staff who don’t look at me as if I were a dog-turd in their child’s sandpit.

“Cowboy Builders” - a) why should two perfectly respectable professions combine to equal bad men, and b) why is the term “cowboy” never applied to REAL rip-off merchants; “cowboy accountants” or “cowboy lawyers”?

“End Of” (e.g. “Chelsea are better than Man United - end of.”) End of what exactly, apart from your ability to express yourself, you appalling lower-middle class yobbo? (I’d love to come back with exactly that retort in pub arguments over football, but I inevitably shrink back into something slightly less acerbic, along the lines of “yeah, I know what you mean, mate”).

Dog / other animal being “put to sleep“. Only ever used in conjunction with pets. Whitewashing of killing. Why not just call it as it is?

“Traditional Curtain Raiser”. Only ever used in conjunction with the Charity Shield. Whitewashing of the dullest occasion in the sporting calendar. Why not just have it put to sleep?

So Chris Langham is convicted over kiddie-porn images found on his computer. Since I heard the news, at approx. 4pm, I’ve been trying to find some kind of mitigation - I’m a huge admirer of his work, and it’s hard to come to terms with the fact that his career is now over. As I said when charges were first brought - it’s easy to find a pigeonhole when it’s Gary Glitter or Jonathan King, it’s a lot harder when it’s “one of ours”.

But there appears to be no mitigation. My first reaction was “phew, he’s been acquitted of the charges of having sex with a 14-year-old - surely the other charges are far less serious”. However, the images found on his PC were apparently horrific, and numerous. His lawyers had a pop at the “Townshend” defence (”I was doing it for research purposes”), and later also claimed that he was doing it in order to come to terms with abuse he’d suffered himself as a kid (?? - someone will have to explain to me how that’s supposed to work) - but it all came to naught.

The images were actively sought out and downloaded, not once, but many times. The best you can say is that he’s INCREDIBLY stupid given the current climate, but the far more likely conclusion is that he’s a paedophile, pure and simple.

A big brouhaha will of course be made of his case - he may even go to prison, and he’ll certainly never work with such a high profile again. My suspicion is that there are hundreds of thousands of lower-profile men - millions worldwide - viewing this kind of stuff all the time with relative impunity. There are a lot of weirdos out there.

(* - this will almost certainly be the Sun’s headline tomorrow, although without the question mark. Apologies for not coming up with anything more intelligent.)