Enjoyed a scandalously large and boozy pre-Christmas lunch with some friends of my parents at a very swanky apartment in central Nice, and, semi-miraculously, I managed to restrict myself to just the two faux-pas, as follows:

1) We got onto the cheery, Christmassy subject of old age / euthanasia; “Yeah, three score years and ten”, I rejoindered - “that should be enough for anyone.” Our host pointed out that he was 74. “Erm… I meant four score years and ten, obviously” was my subsequent attempt to dig myself out of a Krakatoa-sized crater with a child’s plastic trowel.

2) The subject of bathrooms came up; specifically wet rooms / walk-in showers. With my mouth once again bravely leading where my brain was too slow to tread, I commented that I thought wet rooms were “quite fashionable a few years ago, but a bit chavvy now.” Of course, I hadn’t yet seen our hosts’ bathroom; had I taken the trouble to relieve myself (both bladder-wise and of my ignorance), I’d have seen that they’d had a walk-in shower installed earlier in the year at considerable expense. They graciously tried to deflect my idiocy by saying “oh, but we’re intending to put in a shower curtain”, but it wasn’t enough to stop me spending the rest of the afternoon with my head under a cushion on the sofa repeatedly moaning “Oh GOD, NO!”

Still, they say that Christmas is a time for giving - I suppose that must extend to offence…

Merry Eczemas too all regulars, occasionals and, heck darn it, anyone else!

Salmonoid space-battling tactical genius and saviour of the free galaxy Admiral Ackbar -

… and innovative animal-mangler Heston Blumenthal

(* - 10 easy-ish points for whoever gets the reference).

I was struck this week by the extent to which, as a famous person, the nature of your memorial is a complete historical lottery. Ike Turner, most famously husband / discoverer of Tina, died this week on the back of 2 or 3 solid years of revisionist coverage which garnered him a Grammy and has painted him as the inventor of rock music because he wrote an obscure song called Rocket 88 in 1951. (Heard it? Me neither. I’ll stick with Chuck Berry.) Had Turner placed boot forcibly on bucket (as he often did with Tina) even as recently as 2003 / 2004, he would have been remembered purely as a coke-raddled wife-beater.

Other examples? Had Freddie Mercury succumbed to AIDS a couple of years earlier (and less publicly), he would have gone down as an outdated racist rock dinosaur - the whole Sun City debacle cost Queen a lot of credibility. But because of the public nature of his demise, people quite rightly forgave and forgot. Mercury’s friend Kenny Everett, another AIDS victim, wasn’t so lucky; even though he was every bit as much of an innovator as Mercury, the tides of telly fashion had washed Everett into obscurity long before his death, and even now his profile is far lower than his talent merited.

Others still are rightly forgotten; Mick Hucknall, for instance, will always……. eh? What do you mean he’s still alive? What, really? Oh bollocks.

Ahh, Eczemas. Red, persistent, irritating, flaky… erm …. dry, and … ahhm….. recurring. That’s why we all love it.

But what about the sounds of Eczemas? Well, the celebrated Folkestone Academy of Rhyme and Tonality tells us this:

“Festive music is really the story of two great traditions: firstly the great creativity of the 18th and 19th centuries, in which most of our most famous carols were composed. It was a golden time for publishing generally, for the standing of the Church of England, and for British music. The Victorians thought they had the whole Eczemas Music thing nailed down… but they reckoned without the power of 1970s and 1980s cheese. Slade’s “Merry Christmas Everybody”, Wizzard’s “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday”, Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime”, Wham’s “Last Christmas” and Shakey’s “Lonely This Christmas” - voices of angel delight ringing through the firmament of our modern places of consumerist worship; sailing across Bluewaters and lighting up Brent Crosses.”

Well, I dunno about all that, so I’ll put it to a poll. What Eczemas music builds your snowman - classically British poetic settings of the Christmas story with simple harmonic progressions and descants? Or this?

Well, a new experience for your humble editor on Saturday - not one I can explicitly share in a public forum, but the post title may give you a clue. If not, think Shamen. I realise that I’m about 15 years late, but at the time when it was all first happening, I was a rather uptight undergraduate who thought that progressive rock was the be-all and end-all of music (as opposed to today’s still-fairly-uptight eBay slob who still listens to lots of progressive rock but with the vain hope that he can pass it off as some kind of post-modern-ironic statement when cool people ask why).

Pluses and minuses; a nice, relaxed feeling about 45 mins in, which quickly became a much more intense passage-of-time slowing. Music started to sound INCREDIBLY different (and I’m talking Van Morrison here, not MC Wicked featuring DJ Sorted or anything). At the same time, everybody started being exceptionally nice to one another (hugs, encouragement and all that) - luckily, my innate scepticism forced me to keep a distance from the lovey-dovey stuff, and, as a first-timer, I’m quite proud of that in retrospect.

And then? Well, then all of a sudden it was 10am, Ricky Hatton was nursing his bruised sprout-face, three bottles of wine and two packets of cigarettes had mysteriously disappeared and I felt like an animal had shat in my head. As did I for all of yesterday.
In summary - quite nice whilst it lasted, but be prepared to write off the following 2 / 3 days. Which might be OK for an eBay slob, but anyone hoping to hold down a proper job might have problems.

(Many thanks to the Poirehomme Institute of Pharmacology for facilitating this groundbreaking experiment.)

Q - Why is Oasis’s weather forecast like an Iraqi Muslim?
A - It’s either Sunni or Shi’ite.

Hmm. Not sure what to make of this one (man who disappeared whilst canoeing and then turned up in a police station a few days ago after 5 years and a life-insurance payout); as Technical Monkey has observed, his eyes are fairly close together, which probably means he’s guilty at some level. He’s either very clever (will avoid charges, pay back the life insurance, amazingly “recover” his memory and then make a mint from a serialised autobiography) or, equally likely, astonishingly stupid. Or he might actually be telling the truth, but I doubt it.

One slightly worrying aspect that TM has also pointed out - the unsettling nature of all this “new” news. The papers seem to have forgotten the importance of Maddie and Diana. It’s been several days without any developments, real or imaginary, in either story; I’ve found myself starting to rock gently back and forth biting my fingernails and humming insistently waiting for my next “hit”. I’m not sure how much longer I can cope without enlivening my own crappy meaningless thick-shit little existence by vicariously experiencing the tragedy of their lives via the medium of an endless stream of groundless media speculation.

I even had the terrible fantastical idea last night that (and I hope this doesn’t shock you too much) nothing of any consequence has actually happened in either story for several months! But the Express wouldn’t lie to us, I’m sure. Nonetheless, if it goes on much longer, I might have to go out and beat up an immigrant / set fire to a paediatrician’s house or something to relieve the tension.

No, I haven’t finally bitten the bullet and acquiesced to a girlfriend - not even a superannuated one. My life was (as I say, briefly) made a whole lot fuller this morning when I found a half-starved cat cowering at the back of my (locked) garden shed. How he got in there without me noticing is something of a mystery as it’s always locked - but judging by his unsteadiness and skinniness, he’d been there for quite a while. In fact, he’s a very lucky fella - I only go in there once a fortnight or so, and it was only because I was throwing boxes around in a fit of pique at my own abysmal space utilisation that he started mewing quietly.

Anyway, I got Fizzy (for ’twas his name) indoors and called the number on his tag; no reply. He was extremely nervous, but soon settled down (especially after I popped down the Co-op to buy him various tins of finest mechanically-recovered-meaty chunks). In fact, we were getting on swimmingly; he was very docile and, I’ll even venture, rather handsome (a pedigree half-breed - Persian Blue or something. Sadly I lacked the wherewithal to take a picture).

The afternoon came and went; he even joined me upstairs for my customary booze-fuelled Sunday siesta. Enjoying the responsibility (and yes, the company) thoroughly, I even invested in some “infrastructure” - cat litter and a tray - from the local corner shop. Fortunately, before he could perform his ablutions in the tray or anywhere else in the house, his owners rang and came round. Nice couple, delighted to have him back (he’d been missing since Bonfire Night, which explains how he managed to devour three entire tins of chunky goodness in under an hour this morning). They gave me a bottle of wine for my trouble and were on their way. And suddenly there was a Fizzy-shaped hole in my life. I now find myself looking wistfully at the litter tray and wondering what might have been….