Go ahead and jump

I always thought it was a quaint old tradition, the whole "women-can-propose-marriage" thing that surrounds leap-day, 29th February. In the dim, distant and less emancipated past I suppose it might have had a place, perhaps. After all, it must have been quite useful to be able to pop the question once every four years if Mr d'Arcy was holding back.

But in the 21st century? Surely, women and men are complete equals, even though you're all from Venus and we're mainly from Domino's Pizza. If a girl wants to ask the question, just get on with it - don't faff about waiting for Mr Right to make his mind up.

But when my desk-neighbour informed us all this morning that she had proposed - successfully - to Dave, her significant other, I was delighted. Not just for her personally (although I do know an expert cake-maker) but because I think it's remarkable that concepts like this can survive in the here and now.

She'd even asked his parents for his hand in marriage beforehand. That's classy.

Dave was somewhat nonplussed, however. Apparently she'd jumped the gun - he was going to ask her to marry him when they went on holiday later next month. "What can I do now instead?" he asked.

Take a hint from someone in the tenth year of marital blitz. Sort out the jewellery part of the deal, Dave. You can't fail.

Coincidence?

You see, this is just weird.

I write a blog post entitled "A Nation in Shock". And then a day later, this happens.

Call it fate. Call it kismet. Call it synchronicity. Clearly I am a latter-day sage. Perhaps I should offer my services to the Nation.

And yes, we did feel the earthquake. I can't quite recall the finer details, but it went a little like this:

Me: "Bloody hell, did you feel that?"

Katie: "Urgh?" (Eyes closed).

Me: "I'm sure that was an earthquake. Either that, or your digestive issues are back again."

Katie: "Urgh." (Eyes still closed.)

Thrilling stuff. The rights to the TV movie are available, if anyone's interested.

A nation in shock

Our reporter writes:

News is coming in of an unexpected event in the South Birmingham area over the weekend.

Local residents have reported that fatboyfat and his long-suffering wife, Katie, arose from their slumbers and left their house on Sunday morning. Before mid-day.

No, really.

Fatboyfat - noted pie expert and wearer of a seemingly infinite range of brown t-shirts - has, along with his wife, been a finalist in the West Midlands Invitational Joint Lie-In Championship seven years running. It is said that the couple have never seen the 'AM' indicator on their alarm clock on a Sunday.

Neighbours were still coming to terms with the news today. "They'd been out the night before, too," said one. "We're not normally used to hearing them unlock the door until Monday morning when that happens. We fully remember seeing them come home from the last Pride weekend - that should be a spectator sport in its own right - and then losing a significant part of the following 48 hours."

There were unconfirmed sightings of the pair motoring through Gloucestershire, before returning after a very nice pub meal at Mappleborough Green. Normal service was resumed, by all accounts, with a lengthy nap in the afternoon.

We clearly need to get out more often.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Writer

"It was a dark and stormy night."

Henry sighed. He glanced at the screen for the second time; the seven words stared balefully back at him in return. The cursor, winking conspiratorially, attracted his attention for a moment. But no longer; scraping the chair legs back across the floorboards, Henry stood up and turned away.

A pace. Than another. Rattling the packet, he shook out a cigarette and tried to focus all his attention on the quick, fleeting flame. Silk Cut White - it had been Henry's last concession towards giving up altogether. He inhaled listlessly. He'd often pondered whether he could get more of a buzz from simply standing around outside the Trescothick Arms with his mouth open.

Had it always been this way? No. When he'd started, they hadn't been there, those words. He had no idea where they'd come from. But they were plaguing his waking moments.

Back, further back before the writing, things had been different. There was just the warehouse, then. The long hours, the fork-lift truck, the pallets. Simple concerns. Henry regarded his fingernails distractedly. Neat, clean. No manual worker, he.

The memories came back. His memories. The unexpected windfall that had allowed him to write. The courses. Practice, practice, practice. Finding his voice. The freebies he'd done to get his foot in the door. At first it had been a struggle, but over time the commissions began to come. Word slowly spread. Henry had a natural talent, he could turn his hand to most things.

You want an article on romance in the 21st century? Love to help.
A corporate brochure? Pleasure doing business with you.
Something for the kids? Child's play.

But now. But now. Three months it had been since those words started showing up at the front of his mind. Every time, he'd start, and "It was a dark and...." was there before he even knew about it. Any genre, any style.

He'd start a science-fiction screenplay, only to find out that the six-month nights on the outer moons of Saturn were unexpectedly filled with meteorological turbulence. The historic dramas all seemed to be set in the witching hour. And always raining.

He'd tried to avoid the clichés, but these days they were showing up like raisins in a fruit cake.

Damn.

Stubbing out the last half-inch of cigarette, Henry reached for the blinds and looked out at the street below. Dim pools of light under the sodium flare of the street-lamps. Dust, litter and leaves skittering along the pavement, in time with the rhythm of the rain, blown against his window.

"Oh bloody hell."

I have the power

Sometimes you just wonder if people read stuff back to themselves before publishing it.

On the BBC website today there's a story about how Ofgem, the regulator in charge of utility gas and electricity companies, is looking into potential market abuses.

And the following gem is part of the story:

The group has also questioned whether companies that supply energy, as well as producing it, have too much power.

Surely that's the whole point?

Give it away, give it away, give it away now

I knew I'd meant to do something about this:

Proposals to overhaul organ donations and boost the number of transplants in the UK by 1,200 a year have been backed by the government.

I've always been in favour of the whole idea of organ donation. Obviously, I'd like them to make sure I have indeed shuffled off the mortal coil, rung down the curtain and gone to join the choir invisibule before getting the Black & Decker out. I mean, my just having a bit of a lie down shouldn't be enough of a signal for an impromptu filleting.

I'm fussy that way.

But on the whole, I'm pro-donating. In fact, I think it's a terrible shame that they generally only get to have the unseen, funny-looking innards. I think I have so much more to offer.

I've always been quite keen on my ankles. Hardly ever used, one careful owner. They do come attached to my feet, which I suspect is par for the course. And Katie's never liked my feet - apparently they remind her of the vampires in The Lost Boys.

It freaks her out when I shout out, "Michael! Michael!" at random intervals.

My shins, they're quite respectable. For reasons I can't quite fathom, they have patches where no leg hair grows. Odd, but it opens up the opportunities for cross-gender recipients, I suppose. You've received someone else's shins, but at least you can go easy on the Immac. Always look on the bright side, I say.

My kidneys and liver? Well, they've had a pretty good work-out so far, so people might want to tread with caution. In fact, I'm almost certain that 'treading' would be counter-productive. My bile gland must be fairly under-used though, as I tend only to watch TV when under the influence of the afore-hinted alcohol.

I've got simply smashing elbows, even if I say so myself. The skin's a little wrinkly, but apparently that can be put to good use in other places. Should the need arise. Use your imagination.

And as for my larynx - people tell me I have a good telephone voice. A little Brummie, I suppose, but that never held Ozzy Osbourne back.

On second thoughts....

Pun-tastic

One of the few work-related things I do at the weekend involves reading a newspaper. There is a little more to it than that, to be honest. There's a small team of us in the office, each assigned a different weekend publication, and we check through them to see whether:

(a) anything relevant to our line of business gets covered (given that most papers have a specific section on our industry, this is pretty much a given), or
(b) our own organisation gets a mention (this happens less often).

Our first job on Monday is to meet up and decide whether any of the coverage under (a) is something we need to do something about. And if there's anything under (b), is it a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?

I bitched like mad after volunteering to do this, as I duly got assigned the Sunday Express. Yes, its politics are slightly to the right of Genghis Khan, but I knew this in advance and could apply the common sense filter to it all. It's a source of amusement, if anything. If you told Express readers that teenage hoodie-wearing gangs were the natural predators of asylum seekers, they'd implode in a cloud of logic.

No, my main disappointment was the shallowness of its reporting. A typical Sunday Express headline will feature the following elements at least once per month; house prices, Princess Diana, asylum seekers and hoodies. It's mob mentality made newsprint.

After about a month of my Monday morning moaning, they relented and gave me the Independent on Saturday instead. This is better. And yesterday I was rewarded when I looked at the Travel section, which had a feature on the countries of the Arabian peninsular headlined:

Oman For All Seasons

I love puns. This sort of thing makes my day. I love the thought that there was a sub-editor there going, "Shall I? Shall I? Can I get away with this?"

Last year I read Stuart Maconie's autobiography. Maconie is better known as a radio presenter, but he's also an accomplished writer who cut his teeth on the legendary NME. And he likes a pun. The book's called "Cider with Roadies" which is a good start, pun-wise. In it he tells a great story about Friday afternoons at the NME, when the writers would get together to come up with captions and headlines for the next week's stories.

A colleague was struggling. Bruce Springsteen had, after a long hiatus, launched two albums pretty much simultaneously. What could they use as a headline for the review? Maconie paused. Then came up with:

You Wait All Day For The Boss, Then Two Come Along At Once.

Genius.