Brief Thoughts Late on a Friday Afternoon #5

ITEM: The white flowers on the plant in my sister’s front garden have mostly turned brown and started to drop off.

I’m going to say it’s a seasonal occurrence.

It happens every year when she and her husband go on holiday and leave me with instructions to water the bloody thing.

ITEM: Recent searches that have brought people to this blog – “kamsutra indian live movies sex” and “gore torture pictures”.

I was slightly unnerved by the latter, so much so that I googled it myself and found that after fifteen pages “Trumpetville” hadn’t shown up, though plenty of dubious material had.

Whoever washed up here after using that search must have been either incredibly persistent or a tad too needy for comfort.

ITEM The village where I live is at the halfway point between the towns of Dereham and Watton, with buses passing through all day.

The other week I realised that the village has four bus shelters and all of them are on the ‘going to Dereham’ side of the road.

The subtext seems to be that if you want to go to Watton, as far as the parish council are concerned, you can get wet.

ITEM: A while back I watched the remake of Clash of the Titans and discovered that it was mediocre and definitely not up to my memories of the original, despite a welter of sfx.

Nonetheless I find that, some weeks later, I am still rather fond of declaring ‘Release the Kraken’ in a suitably stentorian voice at perfectly random moments, despite The Actual Girlfriend (TAG) pointing out that there are times when doing so makes me look even more ridiculous than usual.

ITEM: It amuses me, the self-justifying contortions writers sometimes go through when they want to whinge about a negative review while at the same time wishing to appear dignified and occupying the moral high ground.

In contrast, I found this nasty little squib received via FB at the weekend to be almost refreshingly honest:-

I love how you picked my overachieving story to shit on.. you’re a phony.

you piece ogf utter shite.

That’s pretty much how I feel when I read bad reviews of my work, though if I ever bother to put the feeling into a message I always delete it unsent.

There’s catharsis and there’s being an arse.

What’s remarkable in this instance is that the review in question wasn’t all that negative and it appeared over three years ago, yet the guy is still sending me billet doux about it.

ITEM: While round TAG’s the other night we were watching cookery programme Come Dine With Me and I accidentally referred to it as Come Die With Me.

Almost immediately the idea popped into my head for a new reality TV programme in which grieving families compete to stage the best funeral, with the winner getting all their expenses paid by the television company and their undertaker using the tag line ‘As seen on national TV’ in all future advertising.

Yes, it seems tasteless, but we’ve had reality TV weddings and young women have auctioned their virginity online, so I wouldn’t be surprised if their isn’t a go-getting, up and coming TV executive who hasn’t already put together a proposal.

We laugh or sneer now, but in ten years time we’ll all be watching and discussing floral tributes and hymn choices round the water cooler the next day.

ITEM: Last week I ordered a used DVD box set of Wrong Turn, Roadkill and The Hole.

Today it arrived, containing Wrong Turn, Roadkill and the DiCaprio version of Romeo and Juliet.

It feels like the universe is passing judgement on young love.