Chickens? Hatched?

Arrogant? Arsenal?

Ancient and sacred to many, many

Me: Er…Excuse me. What’s going on here?
Woodlice: Greetings.
Me: Never mind that. What are you all doing in my living room?
Woodlouse: Ah. ‘Living Room’? I think you misunderstand.
Me: Have the squirrels put you up to this?
Woodlouse: Squirrel? I have not heard of this creature. Is mythical deity?
Me: They’d like to think so.
Woodlouse: Please. You make tiny misunderstanding.
Me: Misunderstanding?
Woodlouse: Yes. This not ‘Living Room’, this ancient and sacred woodlice site of worship.
Me: And you’re all here to worship?
Woodlice: We are.
Me: I see. And what are they doing?
Woodlouse: The spiders?
Me: Yes.
Woodlouse: This ancient and sacred spider site of worship also.
Me: And the millipedes?
Woodlouse: This ancient and sacred -
Me: Millipede site of worship?
Woodlouse: Ah. You understand us.
Me: All of you have an ancient and sacred site of worship in my living room?
Woodlouse: Yes. ‘Living Room’ much like Jerusalem of insect world.
Me: Excellent.
Woodlouse: Please excuse me. Must join 345,000,000 long queue for bathroom.

(pause)

Me: Excellent.

A Surfeit of Squirrels (Hey!)

Hey! That's my sandwich!

Too indecisive for my shuffle

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, you probably have – you seem like a clever kind of a person, that I haven’t really decided yet what kind of blog I want this to be. It seems that at the moment I’ve got all the major genres covered (bizarre dialogular squirrel nonsense, nonsensical local news items, what I did at the weekend, photographs, local politics) except technology. Sorry, I mean tech.

So, to remedy that today I shall be telling you all about my ipod shuffle. Won’t that be exciting? Hey, come back. It’s either that or my triumphs on championship manager 06 on my mobile phone.

I have an ipod shuffle because I am far too poor to buy a nano or mini, and therefore I think that they are a waste of money. Do you see how that works? Anyway, I love my shuffle and I don’t mind that it hasn’t got a screen because I’m only going to put it in my pocket and scratch it. Contrary to popular belief you can listen to your songs in album order, if you so desire. You can flick forward and backwards, you can make your own playlists, you can download lots of exciting things from the i-tunes store. Even those lengednary podcasts. I know - wow.

But all of this is largely irrelevant to me because what I like to do is listen to the first seven or eight seconds of a song and then skip to the next one, listen to the first seven or eight seconds of that song and so on until the playlist begins again.

I hear tell of places like last.fm where you can download an instrument, or plugin, named audioscrobbler which send details to the site and compiles a list of tracks you’re listening to. You can even run an api (or something) which could list this information on your blog. How marvellous.

This would be of no use to me because I haven’t listened to a whole song since 2004. I exaggerate of course. The other problem is that a family member, good buddy and part time DJ burnt us some mixdiscs for our wedding and I have them on loop. Which is all fine except that we didn’t get a tracklisting so I have no idea what most of the tracks are called, or who they are by.

Nevertheless, because when I grow up I want to be like the other bloggers, I will blunder on regardless. Here is a list of the songs that I have been listening to in their entirety this week:

Gone, Daddy, Gone: Gnarls Barkley
Happy mambo-hip-hip track: some funky brazilians
That song that goes Well Khhhhello, Khhhhello: no idea, they sound british though
El Manana: Gorillaz, I know that one
Starts with a cough then a woman goes ee poo poo until the versus starts, very sunny sound: a woman, I think she might be portuguese
Chorus goes ‘watching their souls wallow, left you for me, left the room hollow, many will fall, a lot more will follow’: a very good soul-y female rapper
The Nosebleed section: Hilltop Hoods
Gone: Kanye West

Shape up or ship out

Armitage Gallswinger has lived in the leafy environs of Willesden Green since 1459. Almost as long as next door neighbour Mimsy St.Jigsaw who had only been resident since 1503. But the pair have been labelled anti social by local residents who had sick and tired of their long running feud.

‘It’s ridiculous,’ said Henty Boonstack, who lives at number 7. ‘All through the night they scream abuse at each other, some of it very blue indeed. They have been throwing cutlery and other small kitchen items at each other since the fifties.’

Although neither Gallswinger nor St.Jigsaw will admit who is to blame it, it seems that the dispute began sometimes in the summer of 1843 when Gallswinger parked his horse and cart on Mimsy’s grandmother. ‘She shouldn’t have been lying there, no one expects to find an old woman having a nap in the road, do they,’ said Gallswinger.

Mimsy St.Jigsaw tells a different story. On the afternoon in question Mimsy’s grandmother had gone outside to kick a small child who had been throwing cowpats at the family goat, who was elderly and not able to defend itself as other goats might. The small child was, unsurprisingly, very fast and had enormous stamina and the old lady had been forced to chase him up and down the street for a good two hours. She had been almost about to catch him when she tripped on an oversized stag beetle. Moments later she found herself, rather unexpectedly beneath a horse and cart.

‘Poor grandmother,’ said Mimsy, weeping. ‘She passed away later that century.’

Now Boonstack and fellow residents have been ‘forced’ to get the local authorities involved and both St.Jigsaw and Gallswinger will be made to move to a sink estate in the heart of rundown Notting Hill if they do not resolve their issues. Fortunately, this has given them something they can both agree. ‘How awful,’ said Gallswinger. ‘Making someone move to Notting Hill.’ Over the fence came the sound of Mimsy; ‘It’s cruel and unusual, is what it is,’ she bellowed.

Could this be the start of something new?

A Surfeit of Squirrels (4)

Squirrel: Whatcha doing?
Me: Nothing.
Squirrel: Whatcha doing?
Me: Nothing.
Squirrel: No really, what are you doing?
Me: Nothing.
Squirrel: Tell me.
Me: Go away.
Squirrel: If you don’t tell me I will just sit here and annoy you for the rest of the day. And you do realise that it’s only ten thirty I mean that’s a lot of annoying, man, I can go on for hours and hours and hours if I have to, I really can and believe me I will make it my sole purpose in life to annoy you I am excellent at bugging peop-
Me: ALL RIGHT! I’LL TELL YOU!
Squirrel: Very well. Am all ears.
Me: I’m cementing these slabs down, on this step here, because when we come out into the garden the slabs wobbles and we can’t have anyone falling with the baby. Okay?
Squirrel: You see, it’s much nicer when we just try to get along isn’t it?
Me: Hmmm.
Squirrel: Aw, come on. You know I love you.
Me: You disgust me.

Two hours later I return to the garden to inspect my handiwork and to make sure the treacherous slabs are stuck down and no longer posing a dire health and safety risk.

Me: What have you done?
Squirrel: What?
Me: What have you done to my step?
Squirrel: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Me: Look at this.
Squirrel: What? It’s fine.
Me: Fine? There’s a great bump under it. And look, it wobbles even more.

(pause)

Me: What is that?
Squirrel: What?
Me: That lying there. All covering in cement.
Squirrel: Where?
Me: Here, under this slab. What have you buried under here?
Squirrel: Can’t remember. Was it even me? I'm not sure. You know us squirrels, we’re always burying stuff and then can’t remember where we put it.
Me: It’s a….sweet jesus…it’s a dead wood pigeon.

(pause)

Squirrel: What? It looked at me funny.

Save the Mungspleed

Trumpty Blaggers, vegetarian butcher and amateur French horn player, will take to the streets of Willesden Green later this month in order to raise awareness of the plight of the Greater Spotted Hungarian Mungspleed. Numbers of this rare creature, once common on local streets, have dipped to a new low of 3.4 this year and Blaggers is not prepared to let the Greater Spotted Hungarian Mungspleed follow the Dodo and the Grey Tipped Traspin into extinction.

‘It saddens me greatly to think that the Mungspleed, the beauteous Mungspleed, may no longer be with us,’ Blaggers said, tears rolling into his greying beard to mingle with the old cream of asparagus soup and cracker crumbs.

Trumpty Blaggers will be recreating the Mungspleeds mating ritual and his daily route will take him from St Gabriel’s Church to the Willesden Bus Garage. ‘I will be sleeping beneath cars rolled up in old newspapers and polystyrene kebab boxes, just like the Mungspleed,’ said Blaggers. The ritual, which is a closely guarded secret until all is revealed during the event, is said to include a blood curdling lament which can cause temporary deafness and a naked Blaggers will be sporting cerise and violet stripes on his ample stomach. ‘Only a few years ago the Mungspleed danced this very route,’ he said. ‘Small children developed post traumatic shock syndrome and old ladies feared their varicose veins would explode. Happy days indeed.’

Blaggers’ display will be repeated once and day Monday to Thursday and twice on Friday during the last full week in May, to coincidence with favourable astral patterns and local engineering works.

Trumpty Blaggers was inspired by humility vortex David Blaine. ‘I love David with all my heart. He is a God,’ said Blaggers. ‘Just like David does; I will be pushing my body to the limits. I’ll not eat anything other than the Mungspleed’s diet of old windscreen wipers and empty yoghurt pots and drink only rain water caught in the feathers of pigeons sitting on the window ledges of second floor flats.’

If you wish to support Trumpty Blaggers then you can email him care of the Depleted Sisters of the Heavenly Order of the Broken Tripods.

New Google Bomb

Type 'fuckwit' into Google then hit 'I feel lucky'.
I'm not linking - do it yourself; it'll be more fun.

World Cup Winners?

England (provisional) squad:

Robinson, James, Green; G Neville, Campbell, R Ferdinand, Terry, Carragher, A Cole, Bridge; Beckham, Gerrard, Lampard, Carrick, Hargreaves, Jenas, J Cole, Downing, Lennon; Rooney, Owen, Crouch, Walcott*

Am baffled. But in a good way, I think.

*Theo's never played a premiership match. Garth Crooks isn’t happy at all.

Sultan's Elephant : Part 1

As I walked from Westminster tube I did wonder how I was going to find the Elephant because the map and itinerary (I never realised elephants were so organised whilst travelling) were a bit vague. And then I turned into Horse Guards Road and there was the distant sound of an incredibly loud live band playing that specific brand of French pop music. I knew I was in the right place. And there were to crowds too, they were a bit of a give away.

I was brave and went on my own. I decided that I would go to the finale as I couldn’t go for long and wanted to make sure that I spent that time well. We are, at Froosh Towers, awaiting the transformation of bump to baby so we don’t like to stray too far from the nest for too long. It turned out to be a great decision.

Just as I arrived at the parade, which was full of people the Little Girl and the Elephant were making their way round the corner from the Mall. I managed to wriggle my way quite near the front as they came past.

It was awesome. It made me feel a bit tearful, actually. There were lots of small children on people’s shoulders (it was the must-have accessory) and I thought I wish I’d seen this when I was a kid and then I realised that it didn’t matter that I wasn’t a kid because it was working the same old magic. It’s nice sometimes to realise that life hasn’t got you trapped in its icy grip quite as tightly as you thought.

Its the Royal Court's fifieth anniversary this year and there are lots of events and galas celebrating fifty years of one of the great british theatres. The Sultan's Elephant goes to show that we, in this country, know nothing about theatre. Timely bit of Arts Council funding there.

Anyway, here are some photos.

And then Elephant squirted water out of its trunk over the crowd and I was so amazed that I forgot to duck like the rest of the crowd and got a bit wet.

See the tiny, tiny people on top of the elephant - that's how big the elephant was. The sultan is the guy in the red hat, I think.

Here's the Elephant, here's his steeple (trunk) look inside and here are the people. That's how it works! I get it. Oh, no actually I don't. Its still amazing.

Sultan's Elephant : Part 2

For some reason, my being a muppet I expect, blogger won't let me do this in one continuous post. So, here it the next exciting instalment of Froosh and the Elephant's city break:

She was the hugest Little Girl ever.

The Elephant and the Little (huge) Girl congregated in the parade ground near the rocket. I think the Elephant was a bit sad because it was nearly all over. As we all were. On the balcony, near the windows, there were two dancers, which goes to show how enormous the Elephant was. The music was great too. It was so loud that it was making the ground vibrate with the bass.

The tiny tiny men lowered the Little (huge) Girl in the rocket after they had put her helmet and goggles on. Safety first.

Clunk click every trip

And then the Elephant blew water into the rocket to fuel the Little (huge) Girl on her journey home. Then all this smoke and orange light filled the parade and when they lifted the lid off the rocket – she had gone. We all gasped because it was amazing. Where did she go? I don’t know. That’s the magic of theatre, people.

I crawled through the legs of people thronged ten, even twelve, deep to bring you these pictures of the elephant in repose. Because as every Roy Castle fan knows - dedication's what it takes.

Bye bye Elephant - come back soon. And bring friends, let's make a really huge party of it. You can stay in my garden, the squirrels said its okay.

I found it

It was on it's way to visit the London Eye.

Local local elections results

Ta-da! The placards do not lie.

Racoons - they say they'll call but they never do.

I think Orange picked the wrong animals to go with their talk plans. Firstly, how do dolphins send text messages? They haven’t got any thumbs. Also, the word ‘text’ much like the word ‘party’ isn’t a verb.

I therefore propose:
Squirrel
For the absent-minded
Squirrel is for people who put their phone down and then can’t remember where they left it.

Hyena
For the socially inept and irritating.
Hyena is for people who think the whole train/bus/street/pub/world want to listen to their conversation. When actually the whole train/bus/street/pub/world could cheerfully strangle them with their annoying lanyard.

Peacock
For the vacant poseur.
Peacock is for people who have the latest camera, pda, mp3 phone and can move the satellites over Russia but can’t work out answer it when it starts endlessly chiming Goldfrapp.

Mole
For the older user.
Mole is for people who press the buttons on their handset very slowly and very very hard and for people who have to hold the phone as far away as their arms will allow in order to see those buttons.

Sultan’s Elephant
For those who have the wrong number.
Sultan’s Elephant is for those people who get a lot of calls not really meant for them, not quite wrong numbers but still not actual callers.

Will this weather last?

Yesterday we ate dinner in the garden.

Fog index

Apparently the Fog Index is a measure of clarity in writing – writing with a high fog index will be difficult to understand; with a score of 50 meaning your writing is unreadable. Clear writing has a fog index of between nine and 12.

To calculate: Take an extract of 100 words, don’t count proper nouns and hyphenated words are one word.

Fog index = (X+Y) x 0.4

X = average number of words per sentence
Y = words with three or more syllables unless they are plural or in a particular tense like ‘achieving’.

Who the hell worked that out?

A tribute

To today's oddly addictive, strangely thrilling blog of note

Local elections

I am minded to believe that you should vote on local issues in local elections, rather than bloody the nose of the government at the expense of a lot of councillors who want to do a good job for their communities. But sometimes, happily, you can have your political cake and eat it.

Once upon a time the Froosh lived in quite near Queens Park, when it wasn’t the four wheel drive infested nanny exploiting Notting Hill sluice pipe it is now. I rented a flat which was owned by a Labour councillor. Let’s call him Marmoset Jenkins. It was in a house that had been badly converted into two flats. Marmoset owned the whole house.

Although this property was Marmoset's registered address, allowing him to stand in the ward, he didn’t live there. He lived in another ward entirely. Although the property had formally been divided into 2 separate flats, we had our own gas and electricity bills, each flat paid half the council tax bill, which suggested as though all the tenants lived in the same house. How mysterious. How dishonest. How Nu Labour.

So, given that Sarah Teather seems to be doing such a great job, which suggests that she’d do an even better one with the council behind her, I shall vote Lib Dem. Along with most of Willesden Green if the posters in windows and placards in gardens are anything to go by. You could be forgiven for thinking that 'Lib Dem Winning Here' was an extraordinarily busy estate agent.

The Sultan’s Elephant Update

Maps Ahoy!

Other enormously informative post with nice picture. And another one.

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