Nicknames

Can’t see the resemblance myself.

Oh dear. This is getting personal. Nicknames. There have been a few.

And we’re not talking Maccers, JoJo or your name with “-sy” appended.

But as the Loose Bloggers Consortium (see below) demands an answer, here goes.

Three spring to mind…

1. Bantam: Have you read the book Angela Ashes (or seen the film)? If so, you’ll be familiar with “stand-up, north of Ireland, Protestant hair” – the sort of hair that might have been dragged through a hedge backward – ending up like a bewitched barleystack. For some inexplicable reason, people have sometimes confused such a thatch with my own fine mane (see gravatar top right). Hence the nickname – bantam – sticky-up.

2. Irish: Paddy or Mick I’d find offensive, but somehow this didn’t bother me me. It was accurate. Not on the face of it insulting. I’m happy – proud to be so described. I liked the person who came up with it. I could imagine it as the moniker of  character bound for the East Indies on a tramp steamer imagined by Joseph Conrad.

This planet may be familar to some of you.

3. Planet: As in – “What planet are

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Phew! We’re not all doomed after all

If fear of impending global disaster is seldom far from your mind, you can take a deep breath, let it out… and relaaax. Apparently the population timebomb is a myth.

There are places my annoyances will never reach

When I compare me to the galaxy,

My troubled soul begins to see

I’m a grain of sand on the biggest beach

And there’s places my annoyances will never reach.  (Watercress – “Stars Shine On“)

OK everyone. So things did not go entirely to plan on Thursday. And by everyone I mean you, Cultural Snow. And by things I mean the UK general election. (And the BBC’s TV coverage too. And in that case for not entirely to plan read pointlessly expensive and confusing to the extent of undermining the case for the licence fee, and in the case of the online swing displays, simply wrong. If only Andrew Neil‘s boat, The Silver Sturgeon, had sprung a leak.) So calm down everyone. Including me.

And watch this…

In Basel (not Brüges)

Sam Spade investigates (Humphrey Bogart smoulders) in The Maltese Falcon, 1941.

“When I see you turn the corner, I will know the target is coming just behind,” he said, “and then I will begin shooting.” It was my first day on the job and I wanted everything spelled out clearly.

“Won’t they mind?” I asked. But my concerns were brushed aside. This was Switzerland, nobody gets excited here, except, sometimes about football.

I had been roped in to help a private detective with some surveillance.