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My 9th move in 7 years and its aftermath
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Around London with a washing machine |
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JUNE! |
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| It's just got past one of those fixed points of the summer, the solstice, and we're rapidly heading towards another one: the exit of Tim Henman from Wimbledon sans a great big golden trophy, and here I am, finally in a place of my own, albeit rented. I'm settling in, doing all the usual things like not introducing myself to the neighbours and giving up trying to get more than a gnat's spit of warm water out of the shower. |
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I have even had a go at being a proper grown-up by making a foray to Ikea, and overcome with the need to buy some furniture, I rather got carried away and started buying armchairs, shelving units, a table and chairs, and a snake rather in the same way that others might pick chocolates in the pic 'n'mix at Woolworths. To think that I now own a table. And I still own a washing machine that I don't need: my trusty Hotpoint has now had four homes, which is about the same number as Clanger has lived in (not counting the Boots in Stourbridge from where |
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he was liberated a couple of Christmases ago.
I have also bought a spectacularly useless wooden sculpted tower of elephants, to whom I am growing as attached as they are to each other. |
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my retail therapy at IKEA had some
unforeseen consequences |
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I do have to say that is rather fun creating a physical space of my own, one which is about as sane as the virtual one here.. Future plans for the site include an interactive quiz, and a picture gallery of family and friends. I am hunting around now as I speak for compromising photos of Ian and Matt,
(you know the ones I mean......but you'll soon be able to use my secure payment server to pay me off.) Look, I have to make this site pay...
And yes, Clanger should have his own page by next month.He has been feeling a little neglected.
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Clanger grants my sister a rare audience at Chez Mike #9 |
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the Leaning Tower of Elephants |
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Life, Death, and Local Government Taxation
All of human life can be found at the Enquiry Counter of Islington Council. It's true. Most of the important stages of life can be played out and recorded at my little kiosk, where a thin two-foot high plastic partition protects the public from my ministrations and my occaisional desire to strangle particularly recalcitrant Council Tax payers. In they come, to tell me about their mother in law's death; the fact that they have managed, against all odds, to persuade someone to move in with them and thus lose their single-person discount : and to beg for one last chance to not be summonsed (there are more crying wolves at my helpdesk than a very depressed American National Park).
Mostly though, they are just come up to have yet another battle in the Great War that is our lives' interaction with officialdom. I try to take a little pride in this- I don't quite tug my lapels and don a barrister's wig as I act an advocate for what many see as Beelzebub incarnate, but a little professionalism is definitely called for. However, I am not unsympathetic. Many subjects of Her Majesty's London Borough of Islington can find themselves locked in what appears to be an eternal Kafkation of interplay between different departments, and I try, in my own sweet delphic way to guide them through the maze. Some may say that the most wondrous smile is the first one of a baby, but some of the ones I have seen when I have told taxpayers that the Benefits Department is now under new management could lighten the dark side of Pluto.
I entertain my fair share of illusions as well as visitors. I am a clerical Raoul Wallenberg, the Oskar Schindler of a faceless bureacracy run rampant across humanity...suffer little taxpayers who come unto me..I am the Light,the Way, the solution to your worries about Direct Debit.......... |
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Click here to pay your Council Tax on-line |
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June's Cultural Highlights |
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I am forever calling my occasional trips to sporting events "cultural experiences." Rugby Union can appear to me as baffling as arcane rules of procedure in the House of Commons, although I do accept that it is considerably less violent. My trip was to Twickenhan with Duncan & Lynn (pictured) on May 31st (the hangover lasted until June) hopefully to see Gloucester win the Premiership in a ridiculous play-off when it had already won the league went a little awry. I won't say why. Silly game. |
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Yat-Kha are the only rock group, that I can honestly say I have ever heard of from the Republic of Tuva, now part of the Russian Federation. As Tanna-Tuva, Lenin gave it its independence, and then, as he had a habit of doing, Stalin took it away again. I can't say they were exactly the Fairport Convention of the Siberian |
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Steppe, but they were entertaining none the less with a hard thumping rock combined with throat singing. It was very odd, and whilst I wasn't exactly humming their melodies as I left , I think I was glad I went.
Click on their picture for their website, and to find out what ever happend to Tanna Tuva, click here. |
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My one trip to the theatre was to the Donmar Warehouse for a production of Caligula. Michael Sheen , in the title role started off with a Blairite assurance as his mad exisential fantasy started out, and ended up as barkingly insane as Mrs Thatcher at her zenith. Still, it gave me an insight into office politics. |
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Moldovan Mickey's Final Thought:
"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag people along....Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
Reich-Marshall Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials; |
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CLICK HERE FOR MAY'S MESSAGE |
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CLICK HERE FOR THE HOME PAGE |
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CLICK FOR QUICK MENU |
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