I'll give you ho ho ho

I'm afraid. Christmas lists and mails are flying thick and fast and the gorge-fest that is The Season to be Jolly (tm) rapidly approaches. In-depth discussions clog my gmail, about cheese and beer and breakfast and who's cooking what on which night. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for planning ahead, especially when you're dealing with a multiplicity of mouths to feed and childers to entertain. It's just that it all happens so quickly this Christmas thing and then before you know it you're staring into the frozen abyss of January, the ghostly taste of brandy butter lingering on your tongue.

Perhaps it's the cold and the dark nights that seem to dramatically accelerate the hours (duh William, ya think?) but Christmas in Africa seemed to drag on interminably. The day itself lasted forever. Up with the larks, or in our case, hoopoes, tapping away frantically (no Spencer, not that sort of tapping away) at the dead elms lining our property. (dutch elm disease, tis a bitch) We'd stretch our toes down to the ends of our beds to provoke a delicious rustling from the sack/pillow case of wonderful things nestled there. From that point on it was impossible to sleep. We'd drag on our Sunday finery and make the obligatory trip to our local church to drone some ghastly hymns and shake sweaty paws. In the space of minutes the thermometer would rise dramatically, hats would wilt, ties loosen and all would eye the door with the sort of fervor our Rev could only dream of. Eventually it was off with the nylon trousers/school shirt combo and on with the boxers and the new Willie Worm t-shirt santa/mater had scored me. Foodandpresentsandfoodandmadgameofcricketonthelawn before an afternoon lull to regain our strength. Hopeless really as it is now 40 degrees C and all have been felled by a mighty fist of heat. Time is molasses as the children gather at the shallow end of the pool, cramming watermelon and mangoes into the last available crevices in their bodies and praying for hot fat beads of rain to end their suffering.

Naturally I am expecting something similar in Fumbuckshire or wherever we are gathering (where are we gathering?) except for the bit about heat and perhaps, watermelons. As entertainment rep, I'll be taking my duties very seriously, so all aboard the er fun bus, Chrissie is upon us.

B

Roboten feel no pian

Soon they will rise, soon. In the meantime I will have to make my own banana loaf.

I lack coordination. I can walk and tie my shoelaces and navigate the mean streets of Londres with the best of them, but lose concentration for a second...

I walk into things all the time; door frames have a mysterious magnetic pull and once I've actually made it through, the door-handle will inevitably catch on my shirt and wrench me backwards. I hit my head on cupboards, cut myself, burn myself, crunch my elbows into mantelpieces and stab my eyes with teaspoons. The kitchen is a deathtrap for me and baking, my new temporary hobby, is a sad lesson in self-harm every time I reach for the Hummingbird.

While being blessed with my Father's genetic GPS which allows me to navigate the most confusing city and find my way back to my hotel with nary a glance of the map, I seem incapable of being able to read a recipe. I'm not sure why I equate these two things, I just don't want people to get the impression I'm a complete moron. A work in progress perhaps. My first foray into baking was my Mother's lemon drizzle cake recipe, written out for me on a scrubby piece of paper. Granted I misread 3oz of orange juice as 30, but what idiot would think the sloppy mess I'd dutifully poured into a cake tin was in any way the right consistency for producing a delightful sponge. The resulting lemon tart was perfectly edible though, but had seeped out of the cake tin and all over the baking tins in the draw below the oven. I'd regard this as a failure.

Undaunted I took to the aforementioned Hummingbird bakery book and attempted a banana loaf. I dropped boiling butter on the floor, flicked a muddy arc of batter across the kitchen wall and broke one of the unbreakable measuring spoons. Still, I was fairly pleased with the mush I put in the oven, despite having the niggling feeling it still wasn't quite the right density. This feeling turned to certainty when I noticed a bowl full of flour still sitting on the work surface. So let's be clear about this, I'm baking here, and I forgot to add flour.

The bananas are ripening, I've acquired a bigger mixing bowl, the signs are good. Hold off on that robot Loved One, I think I've got this cake thing beat. (ahem)

B

Stadtkind

Berlin greets me with a cold wet smack in the face as I head down towards the U-Bahn and Rathaus Neukölln (or Rat-house Newcolon as I like to think of it), location of Cruiser's new flat. This town oozes coolness and kultcha from every pore. Walls and doorways are splattered with street art and stickers promoting a hundred different parties, exhibitions and groovy happenings. There are ramshackle bars on every corner; scaffy, makeshift holes-in-the-wall with minimal decoration and minimal beats scratching out of some crappy sound system in the corner. Cruiser and I attempt a quiet first evening by going on a crawl of these local sprechen, erm, easies. Alas, Berlin has chosen to not only ignore the smoking ban, but carry on as if it were never implemented in the first place. By bar 3 I've got that old familiar carcinogenic reek about me and our quiet evening is rapidly spiraling down the neck of a never-ending bottle of beer.

Dawn breaks around 11 and despite some healthy muesli action and a hearty interface of apple, carrot and ginger, an air of fragility pervades our brains. We make a half-hearted attempt at shopping, but as a whole new brace of adventures stretch ahead of us tonight we opt for a strategic nap instead. Fortunately Berlin only comes alive around twelve at night, so we have time to recover, eat a crap burger and hang in a gay co-operative for a glass of cidre, before it's off to the Nightmare Party. This gig takes place in what was once a youth indoctrination centre, a venue which seems to have happily swapped one form of brainwashing for another. There's a DJ in every corner and the place gradually fills with louche kinders embracing the Halloween vibe in a variety of blood soaked costumes. I'm sure I saw a Zombie Nazi from Dead Snow and there's quite a heartening air of indifference the kids show towards this whole period of their history. They've moved on even if no one else has.

Much banging takes place and I'm pleasantly surprised by how good I feel come six o'clock, having abstained from drinking the whole night. It's crazy I know, but you can actually go out and not drink, who would have thort it?

Saturday evening we devote to the Illustrative 09, an exhibition of the finest graphics and illustration Berlin has to offer. I'll post a flickr link of this exhibition shortly. Another cool venue and the usual hit and miss of design; some pieces were brilliant, others looked like poor course work from some third year art class. We headed back home to cook a jolly dinner for Heinz 57 and Clarabow and managed to hit the sack before one, making the ghastly pain of rising at six to get to the airport a little more bearable.

Those of you in London on Sunday may have noticed it was quite windy. Now imagine being in a weenie Easyjet airplane attempting to land at Gatwick. We are thrown about violently as the pilot is forced to do an emergency abort of his first approach. He comes in slower the second time, but the entire craft is yawing and bouncing from side to side and there is much weeping and lamentation from all. We finally break cloud cover and appear to be approaching the runway sideways. The lamentation level increases dramatically. The pilot wrenches us around at the last minute and we skip and slide to an eventual juddering stop. A brief silence ensues before everyone bursts into relieved applause. Without a doubt the most disturbing air experience I've ever had.

Muchos gracias to the Cruiser, your hospitality knows no bounds. London, it's good to be back (in one piece).

B

Green Day

Taking a turn around Tony's Tent, or, as it is now known, the O2 Arena, one is reminded yet again of the ginormous waste of money and effort this big top acid trip represents. That it has become the weekend venue of choice for marauding bands of East End slappahs bent on alcoholic annihilation, seems only fitting. Especially when you consider the idea for building it could only have been conceived at the end of a particularly ruinous and depraved New Labour drinkathon.

No matter. We are here now, T Psych and I, to immerse ourselves in the three chord clatter of California punk puppies, Green Day. By puppies of course, I mean grizzled hounds. Perhaps out of denial of my own advancing years, it hadn't really dawned on me how long this band has actually been around. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong soon puts me straight as he dashes across the stage like a demented Emo Pixie yelling,

'We've been doing this for fucking twenty years now, and this shit never grows old.'

Ye Gods, twenty years! I fumble for my fisherman's friends and turn down my hearing aid as the first single off the new album that sounds like the last single off the previous album, jangles into life. Bless his skull n' cross-bone socks though, Billie Joe sure knows how to please his demographic. He's constantly pulling up kohl eyed kiddies from the front row, taking pictures of them, encouraging them to stage dive and generally treating the whole thing like the end of season talent show at Butlins. He even comes over all lay preacher at one point, demanding children be brought before him so he can lay hands on them in some profound metaphorical way that possibly related to the song he was singing, but utterly went over my head and probably those of a number of slightly disturbed parents too.

In a final act of tweenie fan heaven, he calls on any young drummers, guitarists and bass players to show themselves, then selects three budding musos to take over from Tre Cool, Mike Dirnt and the other dude playing guitar whose name eludes me. Never has a child been so gifted from on high as BJ sing along over their brave efforts and every adult in the room go' Ah bless.'

T Psych has staggered back with four more pints thank G and we are able to reinforce ourselves for the inevitable encore. Or encores I should say, as the greedy buggers have the cheek to go off and on twice. This is a stoning offense in my book, but Lo, all is forgiven as BJ take to his acoustic and do a soopa medley of 'Time of your life/ When September ends', reducing all to blubbering wrecks, tho perhaps that was my distended bladder placing pressure on my eyeballs.

We're finally allowed to leave the building after being told we are a much better audience than any American one, which seems a tad of a betrayal but never mind. A cheeky beer/depissing in one of the many faceless drink o' mats residing under this tatty canvas, then it's the last tube home for us.

Ta muchly to T Psych for his great generosity and ebullient company, perhaps just the one bottle of Sake next time, we have been doing this shit for twenty years after all.

B

Jobs I could do Part 1

Now, this looks like the sort of gainful employment I should be seeking out. Taking in the noonday sun, a band of panting 'best friends' round my ankles, the promise of a jolly gambol on Clapham Common ahead of us. With an enterprising spirit and lots of 'boggle' bags, (as the Wild Australian Boy used to call what I prefer thinking of as 'shit sacks') I could soon become the Barbara Woodhouse of the South.

Unfortunately, I see it all going wrong very quickly. Being given responsibility for someone's pet in this country is right up there with watering their plants or weeding their allotment; you don't take the task lightly. If it was their kids you were coddling, sure, you can slack off a bit, but mess with precious little Colin's walkies...

I'd cope for the first week or so, but repetitive, inane jobs atrophy my little brain, causing it to wander into subversive territory quite quickly. I'd then become obsessed with the idea of attaching micro-cameras to each animal and streaming these collar-cams live to the web. 'Dog days of our lives' would soon develop an audience of millions. People would jump from collar to collar, goggling away at unexpurgated views of tedious and feral British life, as seen through the eyes of the one creature they all thought they could trust. The outcry would echo across the azure fields and brute retribution of the tar and feathers variety would follow swiftly. Worse yet, it would be back to the old job centre for me (after a short stretch in chookie).

Fine, let's tick that one off the list.

B

It will have blog they say, blog will have blog

No need for fanfare, or any form of ticker-tape parade, Billsworth is back. Slightly revamped and sporting a jaunty new cap, the blog that never really gave much, returns to serve up even less, as it regales you with tales of daring-do from the world of the employmently (and perhaps grammatically) challenged.

Not being one to make a fuss, I've chosen this astounding piece of kitchen sink realism to be the first new image to grace these pages. That said, it is an elegant lesson in plastique minimalism which brings a smile to mien fleshy facial protuberances, every time I look at it. uPVC is a ubiquitous beast that many an impoverished homeowner has been forced to invest in due to the crippling cost of double glazed wooden sashes, but dammit it all, I think it looks good. Its twin went into our en-suite bathroom, and new doors now grace the rear entrance and the balcony. I've had the Mondrian hung in the West Wing and faithful Farnsworth is polishing the Buconium chandelier in the Bassoon Hall as we speak.

Being as I am, a man of enforced leisure, I get to dip my toe, and in some cases my entire body, into the dark and murky waters of the Day Borne Dead (TM). Those that wander listlessly through streets and supermarket isles during the daylight hours, desperately throttling time, while time gently and methodically chokes them back. I could of course slide into utter catatonia by suckling on the cankered narcotic teat of day-time telly, but this is an end of days activity; a point (I'm fairly sure) I haven't reached just yet.

So instead, I shall blog. Who knows, perhaps the novel everyone keeps banging on about, lurking dormant in some primordial recess of my brain, will lurch and stumble into action. Hell, it sure beats watching Jeremy Kyle.

Follow the light, the light will guide you

The only way is up, baby, as Yazz once said and how right she was. As this is a new year and new beginnings, I'm returning to this whole blogging business with a new attitude. An attitude of utter indifference. Y'all just have to accept that (all six of you).

I'll try be more diligent, but really, it's not easy, this thing requires perseverance, and frankly I'm slightly distracted at the moment. Let's take this slowly shall we?

B

If it's brown...

For those of you who think most modern art adds up to a big ole' pile o' poo, here's a wall of it to confirm your worst fears. On the opposite wall was every meal over a six month period that resulted in the archive of excrement you see above. Is it art? What do I know for shizz. Needless to say, Room 101 was a resounding success and hats off to ML for all her hard work and fantastic yellow mini-skirt.

B

Cubism

Nothing like turning around an executive board freebie in record time. This crystal cube, complete with master code running all around it, is made up of 27 little cubes, all branded with individual board member's company names. The concept being our code has been represented by a cube for the last two years, they all collaborated to create the code, and now they get to take a piece away at the end of their slap-up meal, ah bless. So it's a bit hokey, but not bad considering we're in the middle of our busiest show ever and really didn't have time to be fiddling about with giveaways for a bunch of individuals who could collectively buy most of Africa, but there you go.

W

Crazy Bear

Crazy Bear has very interesting toilets. It has great food and nice booths you can hang in and attracts lots of bootiful people, but mostly it has loos that a) you can't find and b) you can't get out of. They also allow for some dramatic, if slightly hammer house, self portraits.

B

Aaah Sienna

OK, so about 10kms outside Sienna actually, but 'Aaah Sovicille' doesn't quite have the same ring to it. The Wild Australian Boy wet his second baby's head in grand style, shipping out family and friends to a 13th century Tuscan castle and filling them with champagne purchased a few days earlier in Champagne central. The route to the Champagne region was a speedy one, pushing Vorsprung Durch Technik to its limits and eventually resulting in a shredded sports radial on the journey back. We arrived at Pisa airport with time to spare to pick up the star of the show and after a minor sense of humour failure, I was behind the wheel of a Fiat Anon and heading down the Fi Pi Li (Firenze Piza Linovo). Having only ever driven a left hand drive car once (and only then around the block), hitting an Italian highway at rush hour was a baptism of fire, make no mistake. Combining the wrong side of both road and driving position with utterly incomprehensible signposting leads to great panic, but we eventually made it to the old castello and the first magnum of the week.

Five days of pasta, pizza, red wine and getting repeatedly lost within a 12km radius followed. We visited the ancient Papal hideaway of Vitterbo, which wasn't exactly the rustic village we were expecting and walked the cobbled byways of San Gimignano once again, to relive the first magic moments of our fledgling relationship, ah bless!

All in all, a jolly jaunt, but now my liver and stomach must rest, at least until the weekend, or Friday, or later this afternoon.

B

CEG

Ah so small. Little CEG has joined the hurly burly of Loved One's clan, but like her parents, remains blissfully serene and remarkably relaxed. Which cannot be said for Loved One and myself as we dash from new born to High School Musical party to Marks n' Sparks to Kupahville, to 30th birthday tapas to house party to bed to rise to food tasting to champagne to train to bed. We're pondering a more extensive sojourn in the future to ease the frantic pace of these visitations, but that won't be happening just yet.

Tomorrow begins the Lad's road trip to the ferry to Dunkirk to the Champagne district to Lake Como and then off for a week to some Tuscan shack for a wee christening. It will be an arduous journey but I will be strong.

B

Still rabbiting on

It is a late Grahamstown night. The rugger buggers have finally stopped mauling each other outside my res room door and the last happy revellers have staggered up the hill from the Vic and passed out in their own pooh. The only sound is Ian “Mac” McCulloch's Scouse croon dripping from the tin can speaker of my mono tape recorder.

Fast forward nineteen years (nineteen years!) and that same voice fills the Royal Albert Hall. This is one of those rare occasions where I am surrounded by my peers. I've always been that bit too young to be blending in at those 70's rock gigs (Judas Priest, Motorhead, Alice Cooper et al) and a bit too old to not look slightly out of place at CSS gigs. Here, I'm just about right. The Bunnies (were they ever abbreviated thus? I care not) have kindly trawled through the classics, before having an interval break which allows the entire hall to scrum down at the bar.

When we return, a full orchestra has joined the lads on stage and they play 'Ocean Rain' from beginning to end. Fortunately this album contains four tracks from the greatest hits tape I had all those years ago, so I'm still able to sing along without mugging incoherently in that odd, badly synched way that clearly indicates you've never actually heard the song. Throughout the album set, images from the band's past slowly drift across two large screens and the crowd falters for a moment as a young and beautiful Pete de Freitas stares down at us with a small sad smile. The pictures start me thinking that sometimes the mere act of documentation is enough. It doesn't matter how good these pictures are (a lot are crap) or any pictures for that matter, it is the capturing of the moment that is important. It is with this profound revelation that I realise both I and Mr.Incredible are enormously drunk. We stagger out with the joyous crowd and make our way home via that evil pasty shop in Waterloo Station.

Next week, I will not drink anything, no really.

Dedication

It's not easy maintaining a blog. Having the inclination and inspiration to post something on a regular basis that's vaguely interesting to the dozen or so people who can be bithered to visit. Ah well, what can you do.

Went to Oxfordshire and saw a 17th century pile and a girl who spoke to cats. Went to Brighton and looped the Loop festival. Here are some pictures. The band is called Transformer, they do an interesting line in cheesy electro disco and bad eyewear.

Blogging, it's exhausting.

B

'Allo John

Like crazy mad monkeys, we snatched up this baby in the space of minutes. Many happy years of motoring in the wee mini cooper will soon be but a memory. Ah well, a new vista of driving bliss unravels before us. Now all I have to do is get my license so I can drive the stupid thing, how tedious.

B

By any other name

I can't deny a twinge of guilt as I liberally spritz my roses with anti-black spot (I warned you this would be blogging material) anti-some other hideous floral disease and anti-any bug fulish enough to wander into the general vicinity. Chemical warfare strikes me as the sort of thing that shouldn't really be practised in the back garden. Anywhere else is fine, but the back garden is a no no. It's all so violent gardening. You mow down your grass, dead-head your daisies, lay down napalm pellets on unsuspecting slugs and snails before sprinkling blood n' bone over everything else. I want to sit on my faux rattan furniture and be one with nature, rather than brutally subsuming it to my will. I now realise why my mother has been so keen on gardening all these years. She's been carefully channeling her rage into grafting, plucking, strimming and forking rather than flipping out completely and stabbing my father in the eye with a butter knife while he was enjoying his breakfast grapefruit. Still, the lawn has returned from the brink and looks positively verdant and there's no denying the roses look good. The pessimistic sci fi geek in me can't help fearing the worst however. I'm going to wake up one day to find the entire house enveloped by some gigantic mutant rose/slug hybrid. Actually, come to think of it that would be quite cool, more agent orange, break out the toxic weed killer, let's build a monster!

B

Re-enter sandman

Ooooooh! So shiny, so smooth. Complete with newly painted skirting board and touched-up (no spencer etc) hearth, it almost seems a shame to shove a bed on top of it. All we have to do now is either knock a hole in the lounge wall, or reroute a major piece of piping to resolve the five month old leak issue. Then we'll be all set to take everything out of this room again to fit secondary glazing, huzzah! This house business, it never ends.

B

Rainbows in my head

Oeeoooooeeeeeeeoooaaaaah' says the scruffy little chap in red jim-jams, standing on the organic, low emission, carbon neutral stage in front of 50 000 odd people, all of whom are going 'Oeeoooooeeeeoooaaah' in return. Thom Yorke (for it is he) always brings to mind the narcoleptic dormouse from Alice in Wonderland. The weight of the world sits on his eyelids, making it dreadfully tiring to open his eyes and actually focus on the undulating sea of acolytes prostrating themselves before him. Perhaps it is all those energy efficient lights shining down from on high that keeps those peepers hidden, perhaps not. Needless to say, the man doesn't require sight to sing, and sing he does, solidly, for three hours.

The entrance exam for Radiohead must have been extremely hard to sit, as every single band member including Thom (or T Hom to use his gang name) demonstrates a complex array of musical dexterity. Equally at home behind the drums, strumming guitars, tinkling the old Joanna or singing, the band sheds instruments like beads of sweat. Les Pauls fly off and Fenders fly on and everyone seems to switch positions with every song. This band is a fluid and synchronous machine, oiled up and polished to a harmonious sheen by a thousand performances and 7 studio albums of consistently individual, exceptional rock music. Driven by the knowledge that they have utterly nothing to prove but what the hey, they'll prove it all again anyway.

B

If it's yellow...

The relentless broiling sun of Cyprus seems like a distant memory as I gaze out the window at the drab Grey blanket smothering Sol UK(tm). Twelve days of intense sitting and reading, a lot of frenetic lying down and at times even some furious wallowing seem to have passed by in a blink. Cyprus Spirit was quaffed in vast quantities and profit margins for local brewery and purveyor of all things liquid, Keo, rose dramatically. Even their truly diabolical Keo Vin Rouge was consumed with gusto. Some Olympic standard games of pool volley-ball were played, and not even the random intervention of that 'crazy wind' could prevent the boys team from triumphing.

A venerable birth was celebrated and the neighborhood regaled with multiple renditions of 'Happy Birthday'. Brandy sours were compared and contrasted, moussaka and skewered pork consumed and no doubt there are remnants of the 10 kg b'day cake still in existence today (and for the next few years). Balls were whirled and skills developed from a childhood spent trimming pineapples on the old farm, finally came into their own.

Not that we didn't stray from the pool and bottle from time to time. Our trip to Kalamata, er, Kalimari er, something beginning with 'k' gorge was most enjoyable, though it wasn't long before we were gorging ourselves in a different way on yet more vast chunks of pig at a local eatery. We also did a boat trip and never has the word azure been more appropriate to describe the waters around the island, as we all set off for hours and indeed hours of jaunty ocean-going fun (and more pig, hurrah!)

Now we are home and forced to console ourselves by stroking our Sky boxes and sipping on that bottle of Cyprus Spirit that's been rotting in the cupboard since the last family jolly. Was it all just a dim hazy dream? No! Look here and remind yourselves.

Birthday 2.0 on the weekend, excellent!

B

Let's go fly a kite

Anyone who swims in the ocean off the coast of England is obviously suffering from some form of frontal lobe injury, possibly sustained by running repeatedly into a brick wall (or being hit over the head by a carbon fibre surfboard). Anyone who straps a board to their feet and a giant kite to their hands and then enters said waters is certifiable. Then again, the land based kite flying done by the rest of us became crushingly boring within seconds, as the wind was so strong the stupid thing shot into the air and hung rigidly in the sky like it was on the end of a long pole. Perhaps if I was being hurled about by the elements rather than hanging grimly but uneventfully onto a thin string I would have found the entire exercise more gratifying in the way that near death experiences often are.

I vividly recall when I was at Uni, swimming naked in the sea off Kenton, in the Western Cape. I remember an ecstatic euphoria enveloping me along with the unseasonably warm water, and the strangely disorientating effect of being spotlit by the full moon's all-encompassing flat glare. Just ahead of me I saw bobbing in the water the other full moon of JN's naked buttocks. 'Join me' I thought I heard her say, and manfully (and perhaps a bit lustfully) struck out after her. It was only when I got closer that I realised she was actually saying 'Help me', by which time I too was caught in the unyielding maw of the undertoad. An hour of desperate struggling and many litres of salt water later, I felt the tantalising scrape of sand beneath my grasping toes. Staggering onto the beach I vomited a ruby cocktail of Tassenberg and brine onto JN's feet and we collapsed onto our towels, sobbing like babies.

Right, not sure why I recounted that story. Something about near death-ness and excitement, frankly I prefer boredom. Needless to say, the water in Cyprus better be hot n' flat n' shallow, otherwise I'm buying a kite.

B