Make the Most

Giles Coren has run out of rant. The thing that makes it so sad is that I'm a big fan! He used to be so good at it. Sure, he's probably got a a few hundred good Mr Angry articles left in him between now and eventual oblivion, but for the most part he's all washed up! Why? Well take the article written in the Times on Saturday a week ago... Here it is.

Feet? For pity's sake! Rant against the government, rail against the weather, grumble about the economy and moan about the lawlessness, but feet? Really? OK, so maybe you're not a big afficionado or a foot fetishist. I'm not much bothered either way to tell you the truth. Like faces, some people have ugly feet and some are in the possession of more beautiful ones. Almost everyone shows their faces, so why not their feet? Get over it Giles!

Some things about feet are quite remarkable. They are the most complex joint in your body with the most bones, 26 or 28 in each, depending on how you count them. In spite of that, they bear more weight than either knee or hip joints and are less likely to go wrong? Being the furthest part of your body away from your eyes, they probably get less attention and TLC than they deserve. Cut them a little slack Giles.

A air safety expert said "[Passenger] aircraft simply don't just disappear without a trace." In a catastrophic failure at altitude, wreckage would be strewn over a large area of the sea. Minor technical failures resulting in a controlled descent would result in survivors or wreckage concentrated in a smaller area.

No. A giant, interstellar-class alien spaceship swallowed up Flight 447, cutting off radio messages before an SOS could be transmitted.

Warning! This blog is created by a brain sometimes known for the generation of bullshit. Despite stringent quality control, some cross-contamination cannot be ruled out.

As if I didn't have enough hobbies; golf, windsurfing, bonsai, cross-dressing... It's taken me a year and a half, but finally I finished this radio controlled, model destroyer.

Now, what new project can I dream up? Oh yes, laying a parquet floor in my house. Something I have never done before and am therefore well qualified to do.

It's a struggle getting the kids away from TVs and computers. Here's a success. We signed up with a (reasonably) local climbing wall. Brother-in-law was already a member and 'showed us the ropes' (ahem).

Offspring #1 above and offspring #3 starting up...

The title of a Boy George autobiography in 1995. I didn't really know what to expect out of this book. When I was in my teens, I thought Boy George was incredibly brave. He battered at the gender divide long before I was savvy enough to make sense of my own feelings.

The book has left me with mixed feelings. It is an incredibly densly packed book and comes across like a linear brain-dump. There's some honesty in there but I never lost the feeling that something was being held from me. Selfish, flamboyant, moody and at the same time, generous and loving. Complex. I do feel incredibly normal and boring now, but I certainly wouldn't swap my life with what he had/has. What really impressed me was that in spite of becoming a worldwide celebrity and losing himself in drugs (and recovering?), he never seemed to want to leave his family behind. Sure they would have felt neglected at times, but they stuck by him in tough times and he never severed the link to them completely. In spite of the madness, the family ties were strong, and in these selfish times, that has to be a special thing.