Changing Perspectives

Don’t expect to see much activity on the live Chip Dale monitor today. The subdermal tracking device has been setting off car alarms all morning so I’m restricted to the flat until Gabby can contact her supplier in the Romanian government and find out how to jam the frequency. The confinement has given me time to reflect on the exciting times I shared with Trixy. How we laughed when I got my thong caught in the heel of her shoe as we fled Bangor through the back gardens of Holyhead Road! I also think that marriage has left me a changed man. And I don’t just mean in the sense of my now being the biggest emitter of radio waves in the North Wales region.

The thought came to me this morning as I found myself browsing the increasingly troubled musings of Richard Madeley. The man has a monster of an ego but I think he occasionally serves a purpose. This morning, that purpose was in directing my attention to Why That’s Delightful, the comprehensively mad blog by Graham Lineham, who will be forever blessed (perhaps even cursed) as being known as one of the writers of ‘Father Ted’. The latest post is a gem and goes down as one of my favourite YouTube finds.

Harlan Ellison has written many science-fiction short stories, books for teenagers, and TV shows, though I can’t, honestly, ever recollect reading anything of his. His rant touches upon one of the truths of modern life as a writer, and indeed, as a blogger. I’ve often been contacted by people in the media asking me to do something for them, whether it’s give an interview or write a brief snippet for something they’re doing. What’s striking is that, every time, they don’t mention money.

‘Hi Chip,’ begins an email. ‘Would you give us a quote about your life as a top stripper in Wales?’

Or the phone will go. ‘Chip. We loved the thing you wrote about pineapple chunks and the guide dog. Could we reprint it in our next magazine?’

At other times, I’ve seen my wisdom crop up in newspapers, quoted in full, with the barest indication as to who said it. I’ve even seen my pictures used in the media without my permission. Blogging is the problem. The media treats us as though we’re easy filler for their papers, shows, websites. Many of us produce quality content for no money. It's insane!

Since I opened this blog in January, I’ve written 345 posts. If each post is, on average, 500 words long, then that would make this blog 122,000 words long, or as big as a thickish novel. Actually, many of my posts are more like 1000-2000 words long (some even longer) and the total word count for this blog is actually over 180,000 words. The point is, I’ve not earned a penny from all this effort. That’s like my having written two comic novels in the last year – or what Jeremy Clarkson or Billy Bryson write between them. Perhaps you could argue that there’s still fewer laughs. I’d hope there have been more. What would a serious bad writer expect to profit from a novel? A thousand pounds? Two thousand? I don't know but this blog has earned me $9.88 from Google ads. So that's 180,000 words written for $9.88, or about 0.002 pence per word.

So I gave a loud cheer when I heard Harlan Ellison’s rant. I've listened to it ten times now and it makes me smile and cry in about equal measure because there’s a degree of self-recognition there too. If I ever want to consider myself a professional writer, perhaps I should give up blogging. Why should I write for nothing other than my own amusement? As much as I enjoy writing about my adventures, isn’t it just foolish to do it for nothing? I’d ask anybody reading this the same question that Harlan Ellison asked the woman who rang him up: would you work for nothing? And isn’t this a failure of blogs? Doesn’t it make writing look easy? Doesn’t it devalue the very thing that so many of us are trying to accomplish?

[Update: The video is from a documentary about Ellison called 'Dreams With Sharp Teeth', which has leapt to the top of the list of things I want to see. The great thing about books is that you can go years believing you've read all the writers who deserve to be read yet I now find myself browsing Amazon for an apparently significant writer I hadn't heard of before today. And the man seems to be my kind of madman. He sits at his typewriter wearing silly hats, for Christsake! That almost beats writing in a thong.]

The Yorkshire Moors

It came to an end, as most adventures of this kind end, at a remote farmhouse on the Yorkshire moors. It had been Trixy’s idea to head north, thinking that Gabby’s natural inclination to veer towards Romanian airspace would steer her in a south-easterly direction. We were wrong. Trixy was busy arranging her shoes in the hay loft that she’d conveniently turned into a walk-in cupboard, when the noise of an engine fired up from somewhere outside the cottage.

‘It’s her,’ I said, not knowing what I was saying as much as just instinctively reaching for the obvious conclusion.

Trixy quickly gathered up her shoes and made a jump for it as a tractor ploughed through the wall of the cottage and something snarling leapt from the driver’s seat.

‘Ayiiiiiiiiii!’ went the same war cry that made the Mongol hordes stop at the Romanian border.

‘Gabby, won’t you listen to me?’ I cried as I felt steel-like fingers grip me by my neck.

‘Divorce her now, Chip Dale, or you lose windpipe.’

I waved my hand in the air, a sign of a thonglateer’s truce. Meanwhile, Trixy had disappeared and only when I sat up did I spot her running for the main road at an unbelievable rate of knots for somebody so given to cravings for nicotine. Not that I had long to consider this fact. Gabby leapt up to the tractor and pulled a large canvas bag from the back of the seat. She unzipped it and shook it out.

The figure was that of a man, tied up and with tape around his mouth. It was only when Gabby made a slit in the tape that I recognised the wheezing noise of Mr. Meradith, my solicitor.

‘Say it,’ threatened Gabby as Mr. Meradith gasped for air.

‘You are not legally married,’ he said. ‘Facebook can’t hold you to it and if you can’t technically be married given the documents that Ms. Gabby has shown me.’

‘Documents?’ I asked. ‘What documents.’

‘It would see that you’re already registered as the private property of Ms. Gabby under Romanian law. Technically, it might be argued that you’re a free man but given the EU’s relationship with Romania, I wouldn’t bet on that. You couldn’t marry anybody with Ms. Gabby’s permission.’

I didn’t know how to feel, even as Gabby pulled a length of rope from a hook hanging in the cabin and began to bind my wrists to my ankles.

‘I’m so sorry about this,’ I said to Mr. Meradith. ‘You must think something awful about us…’

He managed to get a smile out before Gabby resealed his mouth with more tape.

And that, as they say, is that. The marriage was short lived and I think you’ll agree a welcome diversion from the usual round of dull events here at Chip Dale’s Diary. The solicitor was released unharmed back in Bangor and I was dragged up to the flat where I was finally set from of my rope bonds once Gabby had inserted numerous GPS trackers under my skin. Some of you might feel it goes against the Libertarian grain but I do like a clever use of technology. Especially when it gives rise to a new feature, which you should be able to see in my sidebar. It’s a live track of my position, fixed via Romanian GPS satellites and updated every five minutes. It’s innovations like that which you begin to miss as a married man.

Big Chip Dale's Got Married!

I never imagined Armageddon would look like this. I certainly didn’t expect there to be so many shoes.

It began last night. The marriage ceremony had been short and relatively sweet. It had also been totally unexpected. I hadn’t planned on getting married this year, though if I had, my money would have been placed on a certain Romanian being the bride and there being a shotgun involved in the ceremony. Not that I would have expected Gabby to ‘be with child’, you understand. I just imagine that Gabby wouldn’t get married unless she were surrounded by friends, family, and her weapon of choice. Luckily, I didn’t place that bet. I’m now married to a woman called Trixy.

Gabby was at her judo class when the doorbell rang. I opened the door and saw a forlorn creature standing there, one shoe missing, and an overnight case in her hand. The rain had flattened the stranger’s spirits as well as her hair so I didn’t immediately recognise her.

‘Can I help you?’ I asked.

The woman smiled, brushed a stray tendril of hair from her eyes, before she collapsed into my arms.

‘Chip,’ she gasped, ‘it’s taken me ******* hours to get here…’

‘Do I know you?’ I asked, as I dragged her across the room.

She recovered before I could throw her over the back of the sofa. She pushed herself upright and gestured to my thong. ‘You are Chip Dale, aren’t you? Only you're more handsome than the photo on your blog.’

‘I get that a lot,’ I explained, ‘but I still can’t work out who you are.’

‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘Trixy, from the hugely successful blog, “Is There More to Life Than Shoes?”’

I looked at her feet and the missing high heel.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Ironic isn’t it? I lost it when the taxi driver threw me out of the cab. I don’t think I should have called him a ****.’

‘Alas,’ I sighed, ‘isn’t that just the way out here in the provinces? What passes as a clever use of swearing in the highly charged arena of Westminster politics comes across as overly aggressive in Bangor.’

‘So it ******* seems,’ she said.

‘I hope you don’t think I’m sounding unhappy to see you, Trixy, but can I ask what exactly are you doing here?’

‘Oh,’ she said, relaxed enough to kick off her remaining shoe. ‘We’re getting married.’

‘Who are?’

‘We are,’ she smiled. ‘You and me.’

‘Are we?’

‘Well, technically, we already have. Many people already think of us as man and wife.’

I was confused. Moments earlier I had been sitting enjoying a cup of hot chocolate with Dragon’s Den. Now I was in the process of negotiating a post-nuptial agreement with a drenched London blogger with the mildest case of Tourettes.

‘It’s complicated,’ said Trixy. ‘The thing is: I went and ******* told Facebook that we’re married. I don’t want to go into the reasons other than I was looking for a man with fantastic good looks, a brilliant sense of humour, and with a chance of superstardom in the next two years. It was between you and Richard ******* Madeley but I preferred you because Facebook already recognises him as being married to Judy.’

‘Does that matter?’ I asked, thinking I was missing something.

Trixy laughed. ‘Does it ******* matter? Of course it ******* matters! A declaration of marriage on Facebook is a legally binding agreement in certain countries.’

‘Certain countries?’

‘Iraq, Peru, Norway and…’ she smiled winsomely, ‘Wales.’

‘Oh, I see,’ I said, not quite seeing. ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’

‘I do, actually,’ she said, dropping her bag and opening it. Unsurprisingly, it was filled with nothing but shoes. ‘We have to get to either a sea captain or a priest before midnight. Otherwise I’ll have broken the rules of Facebook and they’ll kick me off.’

‘Is that a bad thing?’ I asked, not being, as you probably know, Facebook’s biggest fan.

‘It would,’ she replied as she slipped on a new pair of high heels. ‘I couldn’t live without my account on Facebook.’

‘Only,’ I said, nodding towards the TV, ‘Dragon’s Den is on and there’s somebody about to get the force of Duncan Bannatyne’s considerable Scottish wrath.’

‘Sod Duncan Bannatyne!’ cried Trixy. ‘We have a wedding to arrange.’

An hour later, an unreasonably sober man crossed the threshold of his apartment carrying a woman called Trixy in his arms.

‘Did you need to call the taxi driver a ****?’ I asked, as I dropped her onto her again shoeless feet.

‘Force of habit,’ she said as she sank into a chair. ‘How’s your back?’

‘Better than I would have expected after carrying you three quarters of a mile.’

‘I’m ******* exhausted,’ she said. ‘I’d grab a shower but I think somebody’s already using it.’

That’s when my blood ran cold. I could indeed hear the noise of a power shower.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Trix, as the new Mrs. Dale likes to be called.

‘It’s Gabby,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t know.’

‘I’m sure she’ll be reasonable,’ said my darling wife.

‘Have you actually read Chip Dale’s Diary?’ I asked. ‘I know plenty of people link but only a few read. But don’t you know what kind of woman you’re about to cross? I hope you have shoes in that bag that contain high levels of neurotoxins cleverly concealed in a sharped toe?’

She looked regretfully towards her luggage. ‘I don’t think I do,’ she said, and suddenly brightened. ‘But you make me wish that I did! We could always go out and do some late night shoe shopping?’

But it was too late. The power shower powered down and a small shadowy figure appeared in the corridor. It was wrapped in a bath towel that did a poor job of concealing duelling scars.

‘Chip? Where have you been?’ asked Gabby. ‘And why are you dressed like you go wedding?’

I looked down at my crushed velvet jacket and purple cummerbund riding high above my formal black CofE thong. Then I looked at my poor wife who seemed oblivious to the fact that we were both about to witness The End of Days.

‘Gabby,’ I said, ‘I don’t want you to get excited. I want you to listen because what I have to say might sound a little bit strange.’

‘Who is woman?’ asked my girlfriend, always quick to feel jealousy when I have a wife sitting on the sofa and picking confetti from her hair.

‘I’m not just any woman,’ said Trixy before she added, I thought a little foolhardily, ‘I’m Mrs. Chip Dale.’

The towel fell and I gazed down at a perfect Romanian body with at least three orifices concealing more arms than an IRA weapons dump.

‘Chip got married?!’ she screamed.

‘It was Facebook,’ I began to explain, backing towards the door and Birmingham. ‘Poor Trixy here went and clicked on the relationship option and accidentally married us and…’

How we managed to get out of there, I can’t reasonably explain. And how Trixy managed to escape with her shoes will remain one of the great mysteries of the century. I do know that we are currently hiding in a Travel Lodge outside Essington on the M54. We’ll be moving on soon so Gabby won’t be able to track us. There might well be more to life than shoes, but from where I’m lying, there seems to be more shoes than there are chances of my escaping this little episode with my life. I do know that it’s hard to flee Romanian justice when you’re loaded down with so many pairs of ******* shoes.

All The Right Moves

The Chipster is in a dilemma and he doesn’t know what to do. I entered one of my own private thongs, designed and hand sequined by the Thonglateer himself, into a competitive fashion show last week. To my horror, I discovered on Friday that I’d won.

‘Mr. Dale, we are so proud to have your thong in our collection,’ said the designer when she rang me on Saturday. ‘Now, as you know, we’ll be doing a special London catwalk and we’d love you to come along and dance in your thong. It’s really quite an honour and I think you’ll like the exposure it will give you.’

If you know me at all, you’ll know that ‘exposure’ is my favourite words of three syllables. I couldn’t have been more happy. Happy, that is, until it got down to some muttered details at the end of the conversation.

‘And, of course,’ she said, ‘if you could come down a couple of days before the show, we’ll give you a few of lessons with our choreographer who will teach you the dance moves.’

It wasn’t professional of me, I know, but I laughed. ‘Dance moves?’ I asked. ‘You needn’t worry about that. I’m Wales’ number one male stripper. I think I have some pretty good moves of my own.’

Only the designer didn’t want to know. ‘But Johnny’s written you out a wonderful line of steps which he says will really show off your thong.’

I sank into my chair, wondering what to say. ‘But that thong has history,’ I explained. ‘We’ve worked together for years. I think I know what moves go well with it. Can’t you listen to what I’m saying to you? This thong will look fantastic if only you let me dance my own moves.’

‘But Johnny’s already worked them out,’ insisted the designer. ‘He’s won awards for choreography.’

‘Well, couldn’t he at least incorporate my ideas?’ I asked, growing more desperate.

She fell silent. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I think we’d be happier if our choreographer does it his way.’

The Chipster may be many things but he’s not demonstrative. I hung up the phone having agreed to dance the steps arranged by the choreographer. The only compromise I’d managed to win was that of the designer promising to post the sheet of steps to me. They arrived this morning.

Gabby had already gone to work, it being the day she does the 7 to 2 shift as the only member of Bangor’s traffic warden licensed to use firearms. I stripped down to my thong and cleared a space in the living room. I practised the moves all morning, broke for lunch, then practised again until three. That’s when Gabby came home with half a dozen of her friends in the traffic warden department. I’d forgotten it was the day she gave them extra instruction in methods of disemboweling a man with just a biro.

‘What Chip doing?’ asked Gabby, finding me stood in the living room in just my thong. I never like sweating heavily before strangers unless they know what I do for a living. But like most people, they seemed quite relaxed once I explained it to them. Then I told them all about the honour of being chosen to dance in my thong in London. I also mentioned how I’d been working on the moves sent over by the choreographer.

‘Lets see them,’ said Gabby, ushering her friends to chairs around the room.

‘Come on,’ said one young warden. ‘I used to take dance class.’

‘Yes,’ said another. ‘My sister dances with the Royal Ballet.’

What could I say or do? I put on the music and danced the dance.

The reaction was polite but not exactly ecstatic.

‘You see,’ I said to Gabby. ‘It’s not winning people over.’

She shrugged. ‘I see you dance better,’ she agreed. ‘So why not show us Chip’s moves?’

So, I played the music again and danced again but this time to my own steps. They were less elaborate than the choreographer’s moves, and they took less skill, but even as I was doing them, I thought they somehow fitted more with the essential nature of the thong I’d hand stitched myself. When I was finished, the sweat was coursing down the contours of my highly muscled torso.

The reaction was unanimous. ‘Chip stick with his own steps,’ said Gabby as the applause came to an end. ‘They suit you better.’

All her friends were in agreement. ‘Funny and intelligent,’ said one of her friends in what I thought was an American accent.

I pointed at the woman. ‘You see,’ I said. ‘That’s exactly what I thought. Funny and intelligent. Exactly what I want an audience to think.’ It was a comment that just convinced me that I was right and that there was a dilemma out there with my name on it.

I couldn’t face talking to the designer so I sent her an email. She still refuses to budge. I’m going to London in two days and I don’t know what to do. I’m honoured to be part of her show but it disappoints me that my point of view is being ignored. Am I even in the right to think that I should have a say in the dance I’ll be dancing? It’s her show but my thong. I just want her to listen to my suggestions. Is it so very wrong?

Back

Well, I’m back after my weekend break. I feel a little more energized after avoiding the PC for a whole weekend. I remember the time I once spent a week wearing underpants (due to a medical condition I don’t want to go into) and when I went back to wearing thongs, nothing felt right. It was as though I had my hips on backwards and my buttocks were six inches too high. I feel the same way now about the computer. The keyboard feels odd, as though the keys don’t quite lie right under my fingers. My brain can’t snag a good idea. It will clearly take me a day or two to get back into the habit of writing.

I wish I could report a weekend spent doing something outlandish, but I spent it hidden in a corner of the flat, reading a book that did me little good. It was a ‘bad book’ weekend, in that I deliberately had to choose a book that wouldn’t get me thinking. The only trouble with that is it has left my brain working on standby and I can’t get it going.

News From A Sagging Thong

Where is everyone? The blogosphere seems subdued, as if it’s gone into one of those occasional periods of hibernation. Or perhaps that’s what’s called the pathetic fallacy when the truth is that I wasn’t going to blog today. To be honest, I wasn’t going to blog for while.

As you can probably tell by my rather mediocre week’s work, my heart hasn’t been in it. I’m lacking my usual slightly crazed enthusiasm to write. Deflated, withdrawn, reduced to browsing other blogs, I’m aware that energy here doesn’t go into more profitable industry. I have three novels in different stages of completion, and ideas for others that I won’t start until the other three are complete. Every 1000 words I write here are a 1000 words I don’t write there. I think I need to break away from the blogs, for just a few days, refresh myself and come back with new enthusiasm to be usual foolish self.

Stop The World....

Shamelessly taken from the Girl Friday blog, the very existence of this book sums up my mood, my week, and I why I want the world to stop right now so I can get off and go do something more meaningful.

Blogging From The Bathroom

For the sake of my health and my dignity, I’ve locked myself in the bathroom. Gabby is waiting for me outside and she’s armed herself with a pair of lacy knickers. Some might look on this scene of domestic disharmony and think it an example of why relationships don’t last in these troubled times. I merely say it’s good that people can express their honest feelings so we can work them out.

The argument began over a set of keys that Gabby had given to a homeless guy she met while doing her round as a traffic warden this morning.

I had slept late, as usual, only to wake up and smell bacon cooking. I emerged from the bedroom to find a stranger standing in the kitchen wearing Gabby’s nightgown and frying himself eggs, sausage, and the aforementioned rashers. He must have stood six feet three, with a large mass of hairy stomach pushing its way through the gown like some demonic pregnancy. His nose had been flattened by the impact of a small asteroid.

‘Morning,’ he said, stabbing a banger with a fork.

I reached for the nearest blunt instrument which I proceeded to wave in his direction. Only later did I realise it was a plastic pepper mill.

‘Who are you?’ I shouted, looking towards his large distended stomach. ‘And what have you done with my girlfriend?’

‘Done. I ain’t done nothing,’ he replied, slowly. ‘She gave me these keys and told me to make myself at home.’

You could argue that Gabby has a big heart but I knew that it was more complicated than that. She was getting her own back after reading some of the comments you’d all left to the photographs I’d posted of her last week.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘you can finish your breakfast but you can’t stay here.’

‘Not your business to say,’ said the man, stabbing another sausage in a somewhat threatening manner.

I shifted uncomfortably. ‘You might think that but I’m the owner of this flat. I get to decide who lives here.’

He turned and picked up a sausage from the pan. ‘You want me out,’ he said, waving the sausage with a malicious intent, ‘then you’ll have to throw me out.’

I had a better plan. I waited until the greasy breakfast had slipped its way into the large stomach and our guest stretched himself out on my bed to sleep off his breakfast. I found Gabby ticketing wheelchairs outside the hospital.

‘You’ve made your point,’ I said, ‘now could you get rid of him?’

‘Gabby not want to see any more bad comments about her on Chippy’s blog,’ she said, fixing a ticket to a paraplegic’s electric scooter.

‘No more comments,’ I promised.

She nodded and tucked her pen away. Ten minutes later we were back at the flat. Two more minutes and there was a lump of a man sitting unconscious in the seat of an electric mobility scooter that wheeled him down the road.

‘Now Gabby has one more request,’ she said, once we had returned to the flat. ‘Chip wear my knickers and I take picture to put on his blog.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Chip enjoy laughing at Gabby so now Gabby say people laugh at Chip. You wear my knickers and you put picture on your blog so people can laugh at transvestite Chip.’

‘I’ll do no such thing,’ I told her, backing slowly to the bathroom. Luckily I had the foresight to pick up my laptop as I did the backing.

‘Chip wear knickers…’

‘Never!’

‘Chip better wear knickers or…’

I turned, ran, and only stopped running when I felt lino beneath my feet and I had a solid door behind me. And that’s where I sit now, typing this while sitting on the closed lid of the toilet. At some point I might have to emerge and I might have to don something black and see through. I hope I can spare you the photographs but I can’t make any promises. Perhaps those of your with sensitive dispositions should just avoid my diary for a day or two. Just until this knicker business blows over…

Roar for Powerful Words!

A solid night’s sleep was broken by an intense few minutes around dawn when Gabby got up and fired a few warning shots across the bows of the milkman who had foolishly come whistling up the path. You might say that it was the beginning of your average week here at Chip Dale’s Diary, or, at least, we all thought it was until Ms. Baroque popped along and presented me with one of these ‘Roar for Powerful Words!’ awards. I’m humbled, as I always am when people remember the old Chipster. It more than makes up for missing my morning bowl of Alpen and having the house surrounded by Bangor’s elite SWAT unit.

With this ‘Roar for Powerful Words!’ I’m meant to say three important things about words. I’ll have a try but these bloody pesky things never quite sit where I want them. It’s also hard to write when the hostage negotiator is talking with Gabby through a bullhorn.

1. Keep things simple.

The best writing has one foot in simplicity. This is self-evident when you read great writers of the past. I’ll take my analogy from architecture. Look at any great building and at its heart you’ll find something as simple as a triangle or an arch. From these basic units of construction, the most extravagant edifice can be raised. The same is true in writing English prose. Whenever prose goes wrong, it usually goes wrong because somebody is trying to do something beyond them. There is a mistaken belief that in order to say something complex, the language has to be convoluted. Simple sentences are preferable to those that are complex. Get the basic structure of the sentence right and you can begin to adapt it to make it interesting. Get the basic structure wrong and it’s like knitting spaghetti.

2. Break the cliché.

I don’t hate clichés. In fact, I tend to love them. They get a bad press like stereotypes. There’s something long-lasting in the cliché, an essence that a culture has retained because it’s a useful means of shorthand. It’s often hard to avoid the cliché, especially when you’re writing prose. Sometimes the cliché just can’t be avoided. Some words just lie naturally next to others and can feel like a cliché even when they’re not. Yet too many clichés leave writing flat, uninspired, workmanlike. So, when writing, try to spot your clichés and deliberately then skewer them. Twist a cliché an odd way and you can often end up with very imaginative writing.

3. Listen.

Words belong to the ear. You should be guided by your ear. Some words just rise from the page and are inherently beautiful or beautiful because they’re odd and misshapen. Use a normal word in an unusual place or even create your own word that the ear almost recognises. Find interesting common words rather than exotic words that nobody will recognise.

4. Write for the reader.

I’ll cheat and add a fourth because it’s an important point yet easy to forget. Writers write to be read. If they don’t, then they probably don’t deserve a reader's precious time. Your relationship with your reader is more important than anything, including your own ego. If you are selfish enough to write something which only you understand, then don’t complain when you’re not read. If you have something important to say, put it in an interesting way. Don’t assume that everything you write will interest other people. Be selective. Be creative. Be interesting.

And I have to leave it on that note. Gabby has been given one final warning to hand over her rifle before the police start to fire tear gas. I’ve always said that I’ll never become one of those bloggers who write wearing a gas mask. What begins as a necessity will end with me strapped upside down and naked in some Battersea warehouse next to Frank Bough while being whipped by ladies dressed as frogmen. To each their own, as they say, but, thankfully, not for me.

The Taking of the Chipster 123

I awoke at noon and for the first time in about a week actually felt refreshed. I still don’t know if it’s been a cold that’s been hanging over me or just mental exhaustion after weeks of constant work, but a couple of days away from the computer seem to have done the trick. I’m not throwing my thong around with particular abandon but it does seem to sit more healthily upon my hips and I will occasionally give a spontaneous thrust as I walk around the flat.

Tomorrow I hope to be back to normal. In the meantime, let me recommend a film to you. It’s something they’ve remade once and are remaking again but I rewatched it last night and realised how great a film is The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw are two of my favourite actors yet they share only one brief scene at the end of the film. Despite this, the pair of them hold this film together in a way that no modern film would try to attempt. There's little violence, no action that's choreographed to an inch of perfection. It’s all hardbitten dialogue, a brash soundtrack fueled by testosterone, and with performances by some often under-looked but gifted character actors such as Martin Balsam and Dick O'Neill. I must have a thing for films made between 1974 and 1976. The Parallax View, All the President’s Men, and Three Days of the Condor, and Pelham make up a quartet of films I never tire of watching.

Gabby loved it too. It’s the first time she’s seen it and was greatly disappointed afterwards to discover that Bangor doesn’t have an underground train system she could at ransom for a million dollars. Can there be any higher form of praise than that? I don't think so.