Rethinking

Noticed this morning that two of the tabloids had a picture of Helen Mirren tucking into a burger at some post Oscar party - to prove that she is just as normal as we want her to be, or not poncey and American needing a food taster, or...well something. (I once spent the whole evening at a reception in Delhi with a photographer trying to take photos of me eating. It really did my head in thinking that there would be a photo of me in a paper with Fat White Bloke Eats Loads caption. I eventually confronted the photographer, who ran away.) I guess we do still want our celebrities to be like us here. Or at least not as out of reach as American ones. (I'm guessing Beyonce has something in her contracts about not being seen eating anything other than gold sushi of water.)

Blair's "I have not seen the film, but Dame Helen is a national treasure" line was really weak. He keeps on saying he hasn't seen stuff as an excuse not to comment. It is not good enough. I want an all-seeing, all-commenting Prime Minister. Speaking of not seeing, I didn't actually watch the Oscars, but apparently they were quite dull.

Which is also how I am feeling about househusbandnot at the moment. I am spending far too much time in the real world at the moment. I could - and won't - tell you about that real world, but it really is v boring - well not boring, just pretty pedestrian. And I am not really a good enough writer - or dreamer - to make the pedestrian that interesting (although I still think that my description of a new fridge back last year on hhn was perhaps one of the finest posts out of hhn HQ).

So gonna take a rethink on hhn for a few days. Will get back to you later this week, or Monday next week. Feel free to chat amongst yourselves.

hhn x

It Puts The Tea And The Eccles Cake In The Basket

After a quite spectacular weekend of lounging around with mrs househusbandnot at The Sanderson Hotel (where incidentally they were so disorganised they didn't charge us for our burgers), and watching movies, and swimming, and more lounging around, I was brought back to earth with a bump when mrs hhn announced last night that we should perhaps start eating supper earlier in the evenings. Like at the (other) killer's house in Silence Of The Lambs, loud alarms started blaring and red lights flashing at this suggestion, because this was mrs hhn trying to slip in a bit more Northern-ness into our nice Southern lives. She tries it on every so often when she thinks I am not looking, or relaxed. Or just goes ahead and does it.

Already we have enough tea bags in our kitchen cupboards to stem a break in the Thames Barrier. Already, I have been warned never to offer my father in law any food product that has not been cooked twice. And that birthdays and Christmases are not about family and love and friendship, but about finding the largest greeting card possible with the most specific message in it. (" To Our Daughter And Our Southern Poof Son In Law" etc.) And to pretend that I do think musicals are an okay art form. And that Border Art is nice. And that potatoes from Cheshire are things to be worshipped rather than eaten. And that everything should have a coaster underneath it. And now mrs hhn is trying to sneak in a Northern eating timetable when she thinks she can get away with it.

I was shocked at mrs hhn's blatant attack on my Southern sensibility and her attempt to have 'tea' at around five-thirty last night. But we did have a great weekend, so I don't really blame her for trying it on.

In other news, another landmark in househusbandnoting as we pass the 4,000 hits mark this morning - although, as calculated by blokewhocalculatesthesethings, the real figure is approx 10 of the same people logging in to see if anyone has responded to their comments from half an hour ago.

Blue Feet

(Bear with me on this one. It kind of pulls together at the end.)

1) Some friend of mine recently went on a 20 person cruise in The Galapagos Islands. It turned out that one of the other people on the cruise was..well, maybe the most famous actor in the world. On being told that they were off to visit blue-footed boobies on the first day of the cruise, he absolutely freaked and was saying "You are fuckin' shitting me man. Birds with blue feet. No fuckin' way man. That is too fucked up. Are they gonna look at me. Are you looking at me?"

2) I had supper recently with another very famous actor, who spent the evening interrogating everyone at the table: "So you go into an office every day of the week? And you wear a suit or jacket? And you work there all week? I can' believe it. It's just too bizarre."

So, in my rough and ready survey of two celebrities, it turns out that 100% of them have approx nought % perception of the real world, blue footed or suited or otherwise. (The Wauch btw claims to know and be loved by many celebrities, so he may like to offer his own star-fucking..sorry...particular insight into this one.)

So, how come everyone is so surprised that Britney has shaved her hair off? Deeply deeply muffled in her celebrity world, she must have about as much grip on real reality as a blue footed booby that has been dropped in a street in Manhattan. Why all the fuss? We should be surprised that it took her so long to get around to it? We should be celebrating her further lack of reality. Not complaining that she has lost it.

What's my point? I don't have one. (I was lying about this one coming together at the end.) I was just really grossed out by all those pictures of Ms Spears' hair for sale on ebay, and also a little depressed that it was the most yahooed story all this week.

I'm posting this last night, because I have a bunch of stuff to do tomorrow/today, and mrs househusbandnot is - in a deeply cool way - taking me out for my own Xmas office party lunch tomorrow/today because I complained about not getting to got to Zuma with her for hers. We are going to Zuma - where many celebs hang out - so I am going to shave my head, wear a suit, and paint my feet blue to freak them all out/make them feel at home.

Half Wolf Dream Weaver

I don't have a vast amount to report since yesterday. (Other than that commenter asking if I was gay because I have supper with women. My how we howled with laughter about that one here at hhn HQ' Keep 'em coming NOT.) And a dream I had last night that I was on a David Bowie appreciation course, and the course leader - who was that woman who ran the real wine course mrs hhn and I went on at the end of the summer - tried to eject me from the class because I said Young Americans was his best album.

My father never ever knew anyone in his dreams. Every night he would dream about strangers. I don't know what that says/said about him, other than the fact that it must have been lonely out there sometimes, constantly trying to work out who everybody was.

My mother had a recurring dream about having to do exams that she was not prepared for. For a while after she died, I had a recurring dream about having to save her from animals - snakes mostly - on a Safari. It was a really terrifying dream, but we always got out of there unhurt.

Strangely - and selfishly - I don't really have much of a take on what mrs hhn dreams about. She told me the other night she had one about me leaving her, and then coming back and wanting to be forgiven. Like a lot of people - including me - mrs hhn has the capacity to think that what she dreams about could or might or did happen, so I was in trouble for a day after that dream. Which I thought was harsh, although she gets a cold shoulder from me for a while when I dream that she has run off with Basil Brush or something. I sleep talk too. mrs hhn is still a bit freaked about me saying "Do you have any sweets Mum?" to her in the middle of the night a few nights ago.

I dream a lot about animals, and wanting to talk to them or save them or be them. I once had a dream that my three sisters wanted to drop the last surviving polar bear off the Great Wall Of China, and I had to convince them it was a bad idea. I still haven't worked out what that one was about. Something to do with responsibility I guess. Being half wolf, I am actually usually quite good at interpreting dreams if you have any that have been bothering you.

I can astral plane too. Styx and I often have races: him underwater, me hovering above ground. blokewho acts as the timekeeper and referee when there is a photo finish.

Ladies Who Supper With Me

Had supper with my three best (female) friends from university last night in...well it took me approx two hours to get there, and am still not sure where it was, although it claims to be in London.

But it was worth the journey to see them. They are all grown up with children - or about to have children - so we talked about grown up stuff like how hairy that Harry Potter actor is, how much American people suck, whether or not horses really know if you are scared of them, and people not being allowed to do their own stunts in films any more. (One of my friends is dating an actor, who was there to give us insight into the stunt thing. Apparently no-one does their own stunts anymore. Not even James Bond.) All very gentle, engaging stuff. It was like being back at university, except the food was better and we all seem to have found out who we want to be in love with. It was a deeply relaxing evening (except for the equally long journey back home).

I was wondering if it would have been the same if it had been three of my male university chums? I guess the conversation would have been a little more combative and competitive, and we would have talked less about stretchy pregnancy pants. And we would have probably drunk more, and talked about music and women in some shape or form. (I'm not going on a Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus thing here. I don't do that. I think that sort of thinking gets people looking for differences rather than similarities. It's like horoscopes, and oysters.) And we - as men - would have probably been a bit more aggressive to the actor (or actress to continue the gender bend theory), and demanded that he/she tell us stories about anyone famous they had ever worked with/argued with/had to kiss on stage. So it would have been a different evening.

Anyway, I came away from my evening with a - probably deeply inappropriate - feeling of well-being for my three female friends as mothers and mothers to be. It was just really nice to see my friends on their own, nattering about their kids and their lives, and swapping - mostly complete bollox - theories on life. (The best ones were about the fact that you could not be a good food critic if you don't drink, and that men get depressed because they have enough time on their hands to do so.) I often watch groups of people in restaurants. The men are looking at the women, the women are trying to ignore the men, the men want to fight each other, the women want to be each other. There was absolutely none of that last night. It was the sort of evening I used to watch my parents having...oh, bugger, this is about getting old isn't it.

Oh well. Had to happen at some point I guess.

A To Z And Little Chefs

After the flurry of comments about the relative worth of Danish cuisine yesterday, I thought I would share with you a few more culinary insights based on my travels around the world:

a) Italian food is deeply over-rated, and based - if you are in Italy anyway - purely on how much you fancy the restaurant owner's daughter/restaurant owner's son.
b) Chinese food is absolutely appalling in China. I went to the most famous crispy duck restaurant in Beijing, and was served a blown up Daffy Duck. My dinner companion and I spent the whole evening trying to turn him around so that he was not staring at us.
c) Unlike Indian food in India, which is amazing.
d) Scottish food is terrible. Who put the ban on seasoning up north of the border? (This with a big caveat for my Auntie Jan's oatcakes which are about as close to heaven as you can get without going to Church.)
e) Vietnam? You never really know if it is eel or snake do you?
f) Thai food? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But try it for a month. There is a limit to how much lemon grass a man can be infused/enthused by. And the sausages in Northern Thailand are stupid spicy. They made a friend of mine come out in a rash, and faint.
g) Russia? I have sat in Russian restaurants and literally not been able to eat anything that is put in front of me. Russian breakfasts are staggeringly uneatable (and I mean uneatable rather than inedible). When mrs househusbandnot was living in Russia, a friend of hers was forced to drink perfume to make sure her taste buds had not died.
h) I was once offered horse tartare with a vodka sauce in Lithuania.
i) In Ethiopia I ate the best Italian meal I have ever had, followed the next day by the nastiest meal I have ever had which was served up by my mate's housecleaner's mum who I think wanted me to marry her daughter. We had to hide our mouthfuls of goat - or hyena or something - curry in our camera bags so that Mum would not be offended. Their bread product (injira sp?) looks like dirty manhole covers and tastes like soapy duvet.
j) I've not been to Australia, but Mrs Styx says they just fuck everything up by having no class. I asked for an example. "Lobster and honey sauce", she said.
k) Actually I had a lobster pizza in the West Indies once. It was the best munchies meal I have ever had.
l) Paris? Annoyingly, the food there is pretty much 100% delicious, if served by some of the least helpful people on earth.
m) In Portugal, Styx and I tried on several occasions to order a meal that was not entirely white. Which proved difficult. They don't really do the colour thing in their food there do they?
n) Indonesia? Not been there, and only ever had Indonesian food in Amsterdam. See k.
o) Spanish food is great, although mrs hhn just sent me an astronomy website which said people with my star sign are inclined to order foie gras and then complain that it is not fresh enough, which - I am ashamed to say - I did do once in a restaurant in Madrid. Great Spanish words for things like butter and soup make the Spanish eating thing fun too.
p) I was sorry to read that they are phasing out the Little Chef motorway cafes. Despite having had to suffer the ignominy of (when I was briefly at the same school as all three of my three sisters) going there with our mother to have our end of term reports read over, whereby my sisters were variously praised for their 105 out of everything reports, and I was left in the corner booth with my banana milkshake being asked to explain why my behaviour for the term had been assessed at less than a percent, I did love them. Great breakfasts, and the staff were always young kids who had just been out back smoking skunk. (Probably goes some way to explaining why they are being closed down.)
q) Denmark? We've kind of done that yesterday, but my brother in law's meatballs after a hard afternoon of chopping his wood can't be chaffed at.
r) I didn't have a McDonalds until I was 25.
s) I lived in Belgium for a year. I put on a stone and a half, and didn't even ever get around to the pancakes or frites. French food in German proportions.
t) Greek food is great. For a while I had a 'tradition' of having my birthdays at a Greek restaurant in South Kensington, where you could eat 43 different dishes, get entirely wasted on retsina, and get pulled by the restaurant owner's daughter/son for a tenner.
u) Japan? I went there when I was quite young, and (embarrassment again) spent most of the time in the Hard Rock Cafe or whatever the equivalent was in the 80s. Vinderama knows a bar in Tokyo where you can get noodles and a blow job (while you are eating those noodles) for half of a tenner.
v) I had Brazilian food in Spain recently, but it was an evening when mrs hhn and I had a terrible row, and I thought she was going to leave me, which I could not deal with on any level, ever. So will not be actively seeking out Brazilian food again, ever.
w) Best burger? The Sanderson Hotel in London. Don't be distracted by the 20 squid cocktails. A burger and beer, and you are out of there for under 15 squid.
x) When in Suffolk, I tend to eat at Restaurant Bad. Terrible service, great drinks list, excellent company, and always fresh oysters.
y) And all the half countries like Wales and Canada and Switzerland? It's just chicken and chips and some local cheese isn't it? (A half country is one where they speak more than one language, and they have more than three law enforcement agencies on the streets.)
z) Just read a headline on the front of one of mrs hhn's cooking magazines: "Freeze-ahead Beef Ragu". Why would anyone do that?

Food And Papers

Thanks for you various thoughts on Friday about my eating habits. (Anyone who actually knows me would know that I don't like olives, but, hey, if it keeps you happy mouthing off about me...)

How I was actually eating this weekend was at one of my favourite restaurants called Lundum's in South Kensington in London. It is a family-owned Danish restaurant that does a really excellent Sunday buffet. Now I know 'family-owned', 'Danish' and 'buffet' are not three words that usually get anyone thinking good food, but I really recommend it. Very low key, very friendly, quite expensive, but a great place. It is also a favourite of mrs hhn's, so we had a late Valentine's Day thing there, talking about nothing and everything, and drinking cold Danish beer as we piled into the buffet. (The scary old posh bird who was there last time we went - and who terrorised mrs hhn by bellowing at her - was there again yesterday. I guess she eats there all the time. She was marching around trying to get everyone to do everything for her. Having hidden mrs hhn in a corner, I stood my ground by the frikadeller at the buffet until Mrs Mad had finished her shouting about wanting a fork of something. Unlike mrs hhn, I'm not scared of posh old women, so no bravery on my part. Just mild amusement at how nuts grand old dames are allowed to be if you let them get away with it.[I am scared of lots of other sorts of people, including people who work behind the deli counters in supermarkets, drunk Scottish people, sober Russians, and skinheads.])

I may have mentioned that one of my sisters lives in Denmark. She and her husband are engaged in having a new house built on the land they own, and have asked me to go out and help them at some point. I'm looking forward to this in a Harrison Ford Witness sort of way. They have a cool beginning of summer festival in Denmark when you build a fire and hang out outside for the first time since last summer. I think I will try and time it so that I go there for this festival. (They have a lot of festivals in Denmark, including trying to catch the nasty black man who tries to steal kids Xmas presents. It's a strange country.)

As usual, the Sunday papers told me nothing I didn't already know, or didn't really need to know in the first place. I am thinking that the whole Sunday papers thing is a real waste of time and money and paper. With a stack of four papers to read back at home, all I could do yesterday was to try and distract mrs hhn so I could steal her copy of Elle Decoration to look at. (I think it is partly the nature of news nowadays - immediate, short, punchy - that makes massive Sunday paper three page articles about the benefits of living in France so unpalatable. )

Anyway, back to work again today on the website, which is looking very good, although am a little frustrated that mrs hhn and her team won't give me a promotions budget. Will work on it in the coming months.

Electric Dreams

" You can't work out the simplest thing on an iPod, are baffled by the most basic features on an idiot-proof mobile phone, and can't work an e-card website. Yet you blog widely, can write HTML and you design professional websites. I wonder if this tells us something about society's current relationship to technology, or is it just that you're a very strange man?"

This from a commenter to househusbandnot yesterday. I am not going to go into whether or not I am strange right now (which I'm not btw), but the whole relationship with technology thing is interesting? Why should I know how an iPod works if I can populate a website? Why should I be supper fly with my new mobile phone just because I can blog? It is like the whole fitness thing. I can currently (at a push) swim two miles of crawl in an hour or so. But ask me to run for a bus? Or cycle up a hill? And I'm dead. Fitness is very specific, as is my capacity to understand technology.

Part of it is the way we/I/software thinks I guess. The first software we used for this website I am working on I just couldn't understand. It was always asking the wrong questions, or giving me options I did not think were relevant to what I was doing, or I was asking it for things I was not sure meant anything - or were deeply significant. There was an essence in its design I just could not read. It was like talking to someone in a different language, from a different decade, on a phone that keeps cutting out.

And unlike other languages - you learn German, you can talk to most Germans -the language of technology seems to be entirely specific, and non-transferable - from gadget to gadget or old phone to new phone, or existing knowledge to task in front or you. I assume this has a lot to do with ownership of software rights, but I also assume it is about differentiation in the market place, and a desire to be recognised - or perceived anyway - as moving things forward. Why would I want to spent a few hundred bucks on software that was not going to confuse me. If it doesn't confuse me, then its true worth - or usefulness - is probably not that life changing or enhancing. (Am I making any sense here. I am speaking in hhntml.)

So, having established - in my mind anyway - that there is no logic to technology, I am out there/here just trying to scrape things together. I did get the new digital box for the tv working last night. I am capable of getting my phone to show a picture of mrs hhn when she calls me. But I still don't feel technology is working for me. I am working to try and get it to like me, or give me an in to its mystery powers. It's still a fight, not a cuddle. As a man, living in today's technology heavy world, I am trying to get there. But technology is moving faster than I am, and there are more of them moving it forward than there are of me trying to figure it out. (I am sounding like an old fart now I know, so will stop there.)

Although, in a blog-related technology query, how come Google has decided that people who read hhn may also be interested in advertising for a site where you can meet wives who want to cheat on their husbands? (See ad box, although it does change quite often.) Where's the logic in that? I know people spend hours of every day trying to figure out how Google thinks. But I don't get this one.

Are Friends Electric?

While you were variously gazing into each others eyes, sipping wine in a local restaurant, or rowing on Valentine's Day, mrs househusbandnot was working late, and I decided to try and sort out some of my ongoing gadget needs.

There is the on-going ipod hell I am having whereby I have managed to download 2,016 songs onto my ipod but not through itunes, so the ipod is just registering them as 'other' rather than 'songs'. This is an on-going problem. And the more time I spend on it, the less accessible these missing songs seem to get. And yes I have reset the ipod settings, and yes I have moved itunes around to see if it can pick up the songs, and yes I have learned all 2,016 songs on the guitar and recorded them and stored them in a suitcase in the hall, and yes I am on the verge of flying out the States and bombing the Apple HQ.

And then there is that other hell of trying to get all your contacts from your old mobile onto your new one. "Just use the sim card," the guy in the shop said blithely. (His heart wasn't in it. I knew it wouldn't work.) Which it didn't. So I am wandering around with half my numbers on the new phone, and the other half dead on my old phone. Other new phone issues include putting the phone on speaker every time anyone calls, so I sound like I am in a wind tunnel when you call me, a button on the side of the phone which plays some Asian techno ditty by someone called Ravi every time I touch it, and - so far anyway - not having worked out how to stop the phone connecting to the Internet every time I look at it.

Elsewhere around the flat, our tv digital box thing died half way through Shameless the other night. So I need to go and buy a new one today. (I am also a little embarassed to say that I left a bad review of our existing box on a couple of sites yesterday. I know this is v geeky, but I had to vent my anger somewhere.)

I also spent a while yesterday trying to send mrs hhn an e Valentine's Card which promised that it would email her the card with a talking dog that would say anything I wanted it to. This process took approx far too long, and when the card was all set to go - with the loving message of "You are wrong, but I love you" - I was told that I was not signed up for this service.

On the you are wrong thing to mrs hhn, we had a 'debate' yesterday about whether bi-monthly meant every two weeks or every other month within the context of magazine production (I know. Pretty steamy sex talk huh?) With the secure knowledge that I have produced a lot of publications over the years, and the similarly secure knowledge that mrs hhn has produced none, I was convinced I was right on this one, which I wasn't, which sucked.

Brie Fly (ii)

According to comments to the blog yesterday (and today), love is in the air for Dirty Dave And Susie P. (I am assuming that these two are Madame B and An Other regular commenter to hhn in different names. The standard of wit from you lot just keeps on growing . Having all had a little swear, you are now - ho ho ho - pretending to be someone else. You really are making a fine contribution to digital social networking. Let me know when any of you have bought the fart cushion.)

And leadership? Someone is looking for leadership from hhn? The whole point of hhn is that I can't work out what I am doing myself, let alone provide leadership to random strangers out there. (If I was a leader, would I be writing a blog? [One of David Cameron's many misreads on how a political leader should behave was his CamBlog or ToryFeed or whatever it was called.] Leaders do. Bloggers don't. Not that Mr Cameron appears to be doing much at the moment, other than denying that he was there when it was done. I'd love to be a fly on the wall to his press people's briefing.)

Actually, have been looking a lot into the nature of blogging, and even got sent a job spec the other day that asked me to submit an example of a recent blog I had written. Thankfully, hhn is not the only blog-related activity I am engaged in, and I did have an example other than my hhns rants to send to these people. (It was equally ranty and opinionated but about things that actually affect someone - or more than a few individuals anyway - other than just me.)

Not a lot more to report this morning. Happy birthday to *** today. And happy Valentine's Day to you all. hhnx

Meaning It

As you (men?) brace yourselves with the approx 18 odd hours that you have left to get your partner/wife/girl u fancy and you know she fancies u too a Valentine's Day gift, (no pressure people, but if you fuck up you've really fucked up) I can offer another househusbandnot list:

1) When your partner/wife says that they don't care what you have planned, she is lying.
2) Go cheesy. Flowers work.
3) She is a grown up. She can vote. In theory she can join the army and kill people. Don't buy her a balloon.
4) If you are still reading this, you are probably not too late for the 10 Songs That Really Remind Us Why We Love Each Other So Much burned CD. (But remember, Nick Hornby-style pondering over songs does not actually cost any money and therefore can be read as meaning nothing too.)
5) She said she doesn't want to go out for supper because it is always a bit grim watching other couples at the tables next to you in the restaurant on Valentine's Day? She is lying.
6) If you have not bought a weekend in Paris...you have not bought a weekend in Paris. Brussels or Riga will not do as a substitute.
7) "I haven't had time to get you what I really wanted to get you, so I got you this as a token of what I really wanted to get you"? Woman response: "I am going to sleep with your boss and film it and post it on U Porn".
8) Don't buy her a soft toy, unless she is a child, in which case you should be locked up.
9) Unless you are deeply brave, or good looking, or famous, or rich, or Barry White, don't try the "I thought we could just stay in and make out this evening" line.
10) Don't believe the hype, and don't ignore it either.

I am feeling under particular - and recurring annual pressure - because I actually proposed to mrs hhn on Valentine's Day a few years ago, and always feel that in some ways I cannot better that moment - ignoring her reaction to my proposal which was an initial and casual "Of course I will marry you", followed by a glance at a jewellery offering sweating hhn and an "Oh, fuck. You really mean it don't you?"

Good luck people.

Breaking (ly) Dull News

Allies have rallied around househusbandnot after he refused to deny whether or not he blogged while at Eton College. househusbandnot, 41, was prepared to admit that there were things in his past which he regretted, but insisted that bloggers were entitled to a private past.

A number of househusbandnot commenters agreed, including Styx who said his view of him was unchanged.

The claim is made in a book serialised in The Honey Badger Gazette. The biography - househusbandnot: The Rise Of The New Blogger by Justin Timetomakeabuck and Frank Lyspeculation claims that hhn, then aged 15, blogged, but did not try to make money out of his blog so avoided being expelled like other boys at the top toffs' school. Instead, the book alleges, hhn was grounded for two weeks and given the school's traditional punishment of 12 spanks on the bottom with a packet of stale biscuits.

Speaking outside his home on Sunday morning, hhn said: "Like a lot of people I did things when I was at school that I should not have done, and that I now may regret. But I do believe that bloggers are entitled to a past that is private, and that remains private, so I won't be making any further comment. Except to make it clear that I neither endorse or refute claims that bloggers enjoy reggae, The Beta Band and Massive Attack more than non bloggers. Or that bloggers make up 75% of the purchasers of chocolate at 24 hour garages between eleven in the evening and three in the morning."

A number of other hhn commenters have spoken publicly to defend hhn and to support his stance.

Blokewhoisnotquiteasbaldastheshadowforeignsecretrary said: "I am enormously impressed with him and this makes no difference to my view of him or, I think, the view of most people in the country. He has always been very clear that he will say anything and nothing on this issue, and that your life before blogging - even if you were technically blogging - is of no consequence to your current - alleged or otherwise - status as a blogger - or not. He has always been very clear that your life before you went into blogging is a private life and it should be possible to have had that as a private life and he has always been absolutely consistent about that. I think."

(Was there really nothing else to write about in the papers yesterday?)

Poetry

styx said...
Idea for tomorrow's blog:Poetry! Really? Convince us ...

It is not a case of trying to convince you about poetry (although I am fundamentally in agreement with Martin Amis that poets are just wannabe authors but who have not learned to drive so have not seen enough to write prose rather than short little lines about flowers and frost and lost love - or something like that anyway). I just think that poetry is going to be big this year.

It hits all the right buttons. It doesn't take much time to do, or read, or review. For some reason, it has a high spot in the culture hierarchy (up there with opera which really really sucks). It can make men look seem sensitive, and women inquisitive and sexy. And you can say things like "What am I reading at the moment? Well, I am quite getting back into poetry", and you don't have to go into any details.

I asked mrs hhn last night what she thought of poetry. "Well, anyone with an interest in philology is bound to be interested in poetry, but most of it is pretentious," she said. I retreated into the stupid corner to look up philology in the dictionary.

The last time I really sat down and read some poetry was when I was asked to do a reading at a friend's wedding. It was quite fun leafing through a Faber anthology of poems. But poems are just notes aren't they? Or well written emails? Or long text messages? Or shopping lists with verbs and a few non-food related nouns? Or blogs with a lot of full carriage returns?

Which is why it is becoming popular again. ("Should I read this very long book? Or a couple of poems about dust and quiet snow?" Five minutes later: "Right that's me cultured up for the day. Hmmm, I wonder what time Location Location Location is on this evening." )

So - like I said - I don't want to try and convince anyone. Poetry just seems to fit at the moment. It's like sushi. It looks like you are trying to improve yourself. It doesn't make you fat. And you feel good after it (even if it leaves you yearning for a Pot Noodle).

The Waunch got written about a lot
Yesterday on househusbandnot
Try as he did to dislike his profile
He has admitted it did make him smile
Although he says it's no comb over (Not)

Have a poetic weekend hhn x

The Waunch

I was talking to someone today about how my friend The Waunch always signs in as Anonymous in the comments pages of hhn. Which got me thinking that we could play a game of guess The Waunch comments. But then I though not all of you know him, so you'd need a bit more on him so that you could guess what sort of comments he would send in to hhn. The Waunch:

a) Collects John Updike first editions

b) Is known as The Waunch because when he was in a band he used to crank his guitar amplifier up to 11 at any opportunity

c) Is married to Mrs The Waunch who - when they lived in Hong Kong - was regularly woken in the morning by the local traders and shopkeepers complaining that "He bad for business" because The Waunch had failed to make it the full way home after a night out on the town and had passed out in a shop front or on a trader's market stall table

d) Made me realise what a brilliant programme The Simpsons is. (This was achieved by luring me to a Scottish island that only had one ferry out of there a week, and tying me to a chair in front of the television. Hey, needs must.)

e) Is a financial journalist by day

f) Has one celebrity friend, who is possibly the biggest *&^% I have ever met in my life

g) Has been known to dress up as a policeman and confiscate people's drugs

h) Was actually one of the first people to recognise the true brilliance of me having met mrs hhn

i) Didn't technically sleep on my stag weekend

j) Has a comb over

k)Is regularly stopped by policemen who think he is a terrorist. And then he talks, and they let him go because he speaks all posh

l) Has a brother who invents cocktails (and another one who will sell them to you at eye watering prices in four or five of London's trendiest restaurants that he owns/manages)

m) Has a mobile phone that turns your voice messages into text messages

o) Often complains about the pointlessness of my hhn lists (especially the alphabetical ones)

p) Has the same first name as me

q) Regularly claims to have invented things: texting, The Darkness, stealth bombers, cider, the ukulele, post modernism etc.

r) Once owned a tailor made white suit for three quarters of a day until he spilt a bottle of red wine down it

s) Sent me this link today http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE&eurl

t) Has fallen into vague cahoots with mrs hhn about Madame B being a previous girlfriend of mine who wants to love me, but in her own special way by preserving my penis in a jar of white spirit

u) Still has a comb over

v) Was offered the opportunity to contribute to this list, but didn't deliver

w) Thinks Tragically Hip are the best band in the world
x) Is a regular - and valued - proof reader of hhn

y) Turned up at a wedding in San Diego in a wheelchair and bribed all the pretty Californian girls to wheel him around in exchange for a Vicadan

z) And (in theory anyway, depending on how he reacts to this post) is having me and mrs hhn and mrs hhn's brother over for supper on Friday (We asked if my brother in law could come at short notice, and The Waunch just sent me a text saying "He can come but only if he's not a (*&^ing veggie")

Incidentally, The Wauch just read this and his only comment was "You mispelt Vicadan you fool".

The Four Letter Word

Speaking of work - as I was yesterday in between trying to moderate some of the more puerile comments to hhn - I've been thinking about that whole liking or hating your job thing.

Madame B obviously hates her job because she spends quite a lot of office hours sending vulgar comments to hhn. mrs hhn (I think) fundamentally must like her job because she doesn't even bother reading my blog any more. (Maybe she is just busy, or she thinks the blog sucks.) Blokewho and Styx? Hmmm. There's a whole other couple of stories in relation to jobs and work. Waunch aka The Santana Fan? He told me yesterday how much he dislikes his job, and it shows in his apparent need to defend Santana in such vigorous terms. (Why else would anyone care?) Me? Despite appearances I do have a vague protestant work ethic which I only really understand when I am working and doing a good job, which can translate into paralysis as well as ethic. My mate ***? He has a natural affinity with numbers. (He can do weird stuff like tell you how many letters were in the sentence you have just said.) So he does accounts for people. And it takes him approx a third of the time that it takes ordinary non Number Freak people. But the fact that he understands numbers does not mean that he likes them. He would much rather be collecting Brian Eno artifacts, or getting someone to actually commit to producing a very very funny sitcom that he wrote last year. Bad? He has four kids, so he has to work approx 39 hours a day, 371 days a year. (And he parties as hard as he works too.) Blokewhohaslotsofjobs? Well, take a look at his name. So all a bit of a mixed bag really for the hhn regulars.

I was talking to mrs hhn about a bloke who dropped round yesterday offering a free consultation from firemen about fire safety in your house. (Basically, a fireman turns up, fucks your wife...sorry, looks around your flat and assesses any possible fire risks. Odd, but entirely logical.) This guy seemed so happy and content in his work. He was selling - or offering rather - a free cool service. And it showed in everything about him. The way he stood. The way he talked. The way he explained the process etc. And it got me thinking about anyone else I actually know or have met recently who actually seems to be enjoying their work. There is a great Irish waiter at a local restaurant. He just makes your evening in the restaurant so enjoyable. (He is also fundamentally a really good guy. I saw him running to give a woman her purse that she had dropped in the supermarket the other day. In South London that really is something.) And there was a bloke who worked in the Ozwald Boateng franchise in Selfridges who was so nice and honest and warm that he managed to convince me to drop £*,**** on a suit for my wedding. So of all the people I have seen or spoken to over the last year, that makes three who actually seem to like their jobs. (The two guys who work in our local off licence also seem to be enjoying themselves. But I think they are a little high on their own supply.)

I have friends who do cool things like make films and write books and sell art and save the world and are graphic designers etc. But only three guys out of all of us who seem fundamentally happy in what they are doing? I may be entirely wrong. The Boateng guy could hate his job. That waiter may have run away from Ireland because he killed a man and is hiding his crime under that charm. The bloke offering the fire safety thing may be nursing a heroin addiction. But they are the only three people I have seen lately who seemed satisfied with their work lot.

Where am I going with this one? Nowhere really. It was just something that got me thinking about what we do and are not doing every day.

It's About Love Today

I was going to write about my visit to this woman hygienist yesterday, and got a fair way through this description. But then I realised I was just trying to out-Amis Martin Amis on teeth stuff. So I won't focus on that visit (other than to say 1) Having an Oh So funny cartoon of a dragon telling St George he should visit the dragon's hygienist on your wall is not funny 2) If you must have lots of diploma certificates on the other walls, at least make sure they are made out to someone who is the same sex as you so they don't look like fakes 3) Clean the bl0od off the walls before the next patient darling 4) How come you hygienists do not belive in pain control? and 5) I hate you and your ways, particularly that final polish with that solution that feels and tastes like sand mixed with old pirates' dirty undies water.)

Raped, scrapped, polished and pained, I left the dental clinic and went and drank as dirty and dark and tooth staining an expresso as I could find in London, upgraded my mobile phone, and headed back home to call mrs househusbandnot for some sympathy. The rest of the day was spent on working on that website I've mentioned, trying to figure out how to get my new phone off the German language setting, and having a very bizarre discussion with mrs househusbandnot about the hair products she was required to use as a teenage synchronised swimmer. (Apparently there is some sort of uber hair spray they use to keep their hair looking like that woman from How Clean Is Your House as they cavort around - and under - the water.) Speaking of hair, also got my hair cut v short yesterday. Now looking like - and this is a mrs hhn description - like the big gayer from a boy band on their reunion tour.

Hey, so we got a response from Madame B to the questionnaire. Turns out she is called Lucy who works in marketing, who swaps digital devices for sexual favours, and is also a bit of a electro-goth rocker. Now she has a name, blokewhowasdissingheralot is feeling all contrite about having been so mean to her - an interesting physiological dynamic. I think Lucy and blokewhoserealnameis***** should go out on a date. And then someone could turn their love story into a novel, which someone else could turn into a screenplay, which Richard Curtis could turn into a movie, which might make me some money out of househusbandnot...actually, sorry I need to go back to the hygienist again.

What is a hygienist anyway? When did they add that profession to the whole dentist agenda? When I was young, there was the dentist, maybe some fish or a parrot or something to amuse the kids, and a receptionist who looked like they would really like to be doing something else. (The dentist was usually a ginger with too much nasal hair, but at least you knew once you were out of his room there was not going to be any more pain for a while.) Also, why would you become a hygienist unless you were just too stupid to be a dentist - like vets and doctors. or librarians and writers, and politicians and businessmen. Which to me is the root (be-oom be-oom) of the problem: my hygienist hates her job, so hates her patients, and takes it out on them with nasty devices that would give Hannibal Lector a hard on.

It's about love today isn't it people. Getting mrs hhn to give me some loving sympathy after my hygienist hell, love blossoming in the chat room of hhn, and the love -* or hate - your have for your job.

* A thin line

Clue? Do (Tell)

Not sure who is going to do the science on the Madame B questionnaire responses, although I am currently very much with the idea that she/he is actually a he. Too vulgar to be a bird.
(If you are joining us for the first time today, please take a few minutes out to read all the comments to hhn over the last four or five days. It basically involves Colonel Mustard aka The Waunch defending Carlos Santana against Rev Green aka Styx, who has spent many years in cahoots with Mrs Peacock aka blokewhoifihadtochoosefromthecluedoboxwouldbesmrspeacock. And there is this bird called Miss Scarlett aka Madame B. Some househusbandnot readers thought she (Mrs B) was going to be a fox, but - based on the fact she won't send photographic evidence (despite the fact that I sent her a photo of me and mrs househusbandnot in the summer) - are now thinking she might be rather more Mrs White than Miss Scarlet. Or - someone is suggesting, and I am agreeing - even a geezer. And the only one we have left in the box now is Professor Plum. And where's Vinderama aka the Candle Stick? Me? I'm hanging in the Conservatory with the Rev Green and Colonel Mustard watching Mrs Peacock vogueing.)

Anyway, I'm going to leave the Madame B questionnaire thing out there for a few more days. I want some more from you people. Also, Madame B? Be fly, and actually answer the questions dude/dude-ette. Or just send a photo.

Back in the real world, had a good weekend down in Suffolk with Mr And Mrs Bad and their x4 Badettes. Highlights included being told not to be rude about clowns because two of the kids who were over for the day on Saturday had a mother who was actually a clown. (She showed up later in clown stuff to prove the point.) A bunch of people turned up for supper on Saturday: a lawyer, artists x2 (one v drunk), someone I'd met in Ethiopia 10 years ago, her boyfriend who makes cider, a very funny journalist who spent some of the evening trying to get my surname to google me because I confessed that I recently sent an embarrassingly ranty letter to his newspaper, and a really nice bloke who introduced me to Bettye Swann some time ago. mrs hhn was way down the other end of the dinner table. At the end of supper, I went down to see how she was getting on. "No, it has to be double deckers," she was saying earnestly to the journalist. I figured they were having some serious conversation about transport in London. Turned out they were onto their third or fourth round of Is It A Biscuit Or A Chocolate Bar. Suffolk remains a deeply random place.

In other news, blokewholikesvogueing has asked me to share the following site with you, and to sign up to the petition: www.lifeisland.org

Unfortunately, I have to go to the dentist this morning to see the hygienist who really dislikes me and or the world. She is the moodiest person I have ever met - puts the s and the double l back into sullen. Makes Ian Curtis sound like Emma Bunton. Makes...right quite enough of that.

Your Comments...

In response to your various comments yesterday (in a vaguely chronological order):

1) Blokewho(etc), you are officially the campest man on the planet with your description about how you cook your aubergines.
2) 'At band camp' was a reference to that girlfriend in American Pie who say that phrase all the time. If you have not - as yet - seen the movie, don't believe the hype. It is actually very funny.
3) Rez is a great great computer game, which I was addicted to for about five months before I met mrs hhn. It is based on how viruses get around the human body (dude). Vinderama has a story about going to a Rez convention in Tokyo.
4) Was that really someone coming into the comments looking for a voucher for a snow machine? Maybe I was dreaming it.
5) Good call on the What is Madame B guessing game. Please answer the following questions (and I can only request that you are not too crude):

a) What do you think her real name is?
b) What do you think she does for a job?
c) What do you think her partner does for a job?
d) What is her favourite TV show?
e) What did she give her partner for Xmas?
f) What did he/she/it give her?
g) What was the last gig she went to?
h) Why does she keep haunting my blog?

Answers can be judged by Madame B herself. Prize is a big photo of her.

6) Thanks to whoever went to see the website I am working on, and the thoughts on it. I love it too. (And no, I am not telling you lot what it is called because you will just go and put crude messages in all the related discussion groups/comments areas.)
7) Styx loves The Edge. Styx loves The Edge. He also loves McFly and Busted. He knows ALL the words to Angels.
8) I think Styx and Mrs Styx actually met at a polo match in Hong Kong or something posh like that.
9) I am going to Suffolk tomorrow, so will report back (on men who cry at the sight of mushrooms and wear their trousers the wrong way round, as is the case in deepest Suffolk).
10) Entirely agree on Carlos Santana being overrated. ("Oh, man you don't understand. He was on acid at Woodstock." Who wasn't? Pointless twiddling on guitar.)
11) I don't get the Pine Party and Enter The Dragon references. I probably don't need to.
12) And to those of you who don't like me doing lists, you just read another one suckers. (Two actually if you include the Madame B questions.)

I'm posting this last night, because I have a lot to do tomorrow/today.
See ya hhn x