Category: Archive

…now that the laptop is back from the repair shop, and here with me in Canary Wharf, where the hotel bar has wi-fi access. As I have just confirmed. Whoop-di-doo!

Why is it that whenever life gets really interesting and blog-worthy, the time available to write about it shrinks to nearly nothing? I had this in China. And Barcelona, and Vienna, and Amsterdam, and Cologne, and all the rest of them.

It’s been an action-packed week. Mind you, I’d need a third secret-secret blog in order to write about some of its most action-packed moments. Please pause a moment, as you visualise my secretive faraway smile.

Many thanks to everyone who helped me celebrate the start of my forty-fifth year on Friday night. 48 hours later, and I’m still not entirely free of the after-effects. No pleasure without pain.

Speaking of which: as requested, K has bought me an exercise bike, in order to while away those midweek evenings in Nottingham. Totally cardiovascular! I shall have endorphins to spare!

Anyway, sliding quickly into predictability: I believe I’m up for another of those blog-award thingies.

[Checks the site, with its risqué URL that fell foul of the web censors at my new clients. Bright scarlet warning screen, to match my burning cheeks. That’ll learn me to ego-surf in snatched idle moments.]

Oh. Tant pis. Always the bridesmaid, etc. Petite‘s great, anyway. Yay for Petite. And thanks to the 25 nice people who voted Diva.

As I tap, I am surrounded by smug, braying, respectably inebriated business analysts and/or software consultants, whooping it up on expenses in London’s glamorous, thrusting, and terrifyingly soulless Canary Wharf. Misanthropy is rising. Bed is beckoning.

Apologies for the radio silence. I’ve been working behind the scenes on the proposed Post Of The Week site; the working party is in full flow, and the rest of the volunteer editorial team will be contacted in due course.

I’ve also been writing gig reviews for the Nottingham Evening Post. The first one was spiked, but the second one appeared in yesterday’s print edition: page 23, I believe. There will be more to come – but only after I get back from London.

Which is where I’ll be for the next four weeks or so – maybe a little more, maybe a little less. This is inevitably going to impact on the amount of updates to the blog, as I shan’t have much in the way of after-hours web access, and in any case I intend to be Out And About as much as possible.

(By the way: if we’ve met before, and you fancy meeting up while I’m in town, then please text or e-mail. I really don’t want to be spending any evenings holed up in the hotel on my own, if I can possibly help it.)

K’s off to Los Angeles on Tuesday, returning on Friday. Goodness, we do get about. There’s also an oblique reference to his company in today’s Observer Woman magazine, buried in an interview with an actress. See if you can spot it.

I’ll be in Horsemeat Disco this evening, down Vauxhall way, with some familiar names from the Good Old Days. Ooh, Sunday clubbing. It’s been a while.

Time to go and catch that train, then. Speak to you when I can…

(An edited version of this review originally appeared in the Nottingham Evening Post.)

Now almost three years old, The Liars Club has built a reputation for hosting some of the most cutting-edge acts around. Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party and the Scissor Sisters have all played there, on their way to major success.

Tonight was the turn of two bands with a similar take on twisted, punked-up electro-pop: Battant from London, and ADULT. from Detroit.

Following a successful tour supporting Ladytron, Battant are quickly building up an insiders’ buzz. Their greatest asset is vocalist Chloe: a waif-like ice maiden, with a steely stage presence. Comparisons with Siouxsie Sioux are inevitable, and deserved.

Greeted with whoops of recognition, the band’s stand-out track was Jump Up: a jerky, new-wavey number, evoking memories of the wonderfully batty Lene Lovich and Nina Hagen.

Headliners ADULT. – former darlings of the short-lived electroclash scene – took the same formula, and pushed it to new extremes.

With her vocals shrouded in heavy echo, it was impossible to discern what Nicola Kuperus was singing about. Instead, one searched her bizarre, witch-like performance for clues. Eerie, unsettling, slightly mocking, performing almost to herself, she wailed and chanted above the raging squall of the backing track and bass guitar, scarcely moving her lips throughout.

Unfortunately, ADULT.’s limited box of tricks was soon worn out. The audience divided. While the glowstick-waving Nathan Barley types at the front shimmied and swayed, those towards the back stood motionless and puzzled.

Sure, it’s good to be confrontational. But without any substance to back it up, it’s all too easy to wind up looking rather superficial in the process.

(An edited version of this review originally appeared in the Nottingham Evening Post.)

The last time that Computerman played Nottingham, their audience numbered just twelve. This time, despite an early start, they drew a healthy crowd of supporters, who were clearly not just there for the headliners.

Which is just as it should be, as the five-piece band was based in Nottingham, before moving to London and landing a record deal. Their current single, No More Broken Hearts, is a good representation of their live sound: fast, furious, and dramatic.

Vocals are shared between bassist Adam Pickering – a natural rock star, with a touch of the Tim Burgess about him (bet he hates that comparison) – and bespectacled guitarist Mark Sykes, whose voice was reminiscent of James Dean Bradfield from the Manics. The two singers had an endearing habit of mouthing each other’s words when they weren’t singing, as if they couldn’t wait to join in.

Computerman are back in Nottingham on February 17, playing Trent University. They deserve a bigger crowd still.

Following such a well-received support set, The Fallout Trust battled to keep the audience on-side. As time went on, the chatter at the back of the room threatened to drown them out entirely.

This was a shame, as they are accomplished musicians with a lot to offer. Singer Joe Winter gave an intense, committed performance, jerking around like a man possessed. The music was at its most interesting when it steered away from generic NME-approved rock, towards a more melodic, structured sound.

The potential is there; all they need now is the right audience.

(Because I like to run a tidy ship.)

A while back, Em³ asked:

You receive an email which claims to be from yourself, ten years in the future (and there’s some proof of the sender’s identity in the email).

Do you follow the instructions?

I’d start by experimenting with the lottery numbers. If they came up trumps, then it would be very tempting to obey the other instructions.

On the other hand, wouldn’t that take away some of the essential mystery of life? Remove that sense of an open-ended future, rich in possibilities, and what would you have left? Wouldn’t this kind of slavish obedience reduce me in some way?

Nah, bollocks to that. I’ve always veered towards the easy side of the street, and I often quite like it when choices are made for me. Provided I can trust the person making those choices, that is – and who better to trust than The Future Me?

The answer is a Yes, then.

Andre asked: If you were to run the bloggie awards – would you do it any different?

1. I would expand the “I want to be a judge” section of the voting form, adding check boxes for each of the categories, and asking would-be judges to tick the categories which they would feel happy to judge. (To a minimum of 10 categories.)

2. I would then issue bespoke long-lists to each volunteer judge, based on the categories which they had chosen. Each individual would only have to judge five categories, rather than the current ten. This would be harder to set up and administer, but I’d give myself more time to do the necessary work.

3. Before issuing the long-lists, I would check the nominees, removing duplicate URLs and any sites which didn’t match the categories. Again, this would take more time, which I would factor in.

4. I would remove the Podcast category, as a) podcasts are only tangentially related to weblog culture and b) they take too long to evaluate properly.

5. I would remove the “Best Tagline” category.

6. I would re-introduce the “Best Music Weblog” category.

7. I would introduce a “Most Original or Innovative Weblog” category, for blogs which have pushed the boundaries of the format in some way over the previous 12 months.

8. I would introduce a “Best Non-Profit Weblog” category, which would be restricted to ad-free blogs.

9. I would introduce a “Best Original Artwork” category. Photography would be excluded from this category.

10. I would introduce a “Weblog Post Of The Year” category, for the best individual posting.

11. In order to keep the number of categories to thirty, I would remove the “Best Group Weblog”, “Best Topical Weblog” and “Best Craft Weblog” categories.

12. I would sever the link between announcing the results and the SXSW Festival, thus bringing the announcement date forwards in time.

guyana-gyal asked: Do you feel that you have everything you want in life, or is there more, something else you’d like?

Although I suppose this comes with old age – indeed, I must have witnessed it many times over – I cannot yet imagine reaching a stage in life where I felt that I had everything I wanted. Isn’t this part of what keeps us going, during the active part of our lives? I’m not talking about a negative feeling of unfulfilment – of lack – but more of a positive desire for greater fulfilment.

On the other hand, if your question refers purely to material wants, then I’d say that I’m not so very far away from reaching that stage – and certainly much nearer than I was in my thirties, when my outlook was a good deal more materialistic. Simply put: shopping for pleasure no longer does it for me – unless it’s shopping for presents, which I still adore.

OK, let’s be more specific. Number One on the list would be a house with a south-facing aspect. In the whole time that we have been together, K and I have never lived anywhere which enjoys a decent amount of direct sunlight indoors. It has been our constant gripe for years.

That’s it, I’m done. No more questions!

I’ve got some time on my hands, so please fire away in the comments box. Any question, any topic. Trained operators are standing by to take your call.

By the way, I still need two judges for Post Of The Week. Please e-mail if interested.

1. Girl asks: Any nice plans for the weekend Sir Mike?

Why, indeed we have. We’re travelling to Cambridge tomorrow morning, to visit my mother, to exchange belated Christmas presents (both of us having being abroad on the day itself), and for me to receive an early birthday present (it’s a fortnight today).

I have two presents for her:

• A nice spice grinder from the David Mellor factory shop, which looks similar to a pestle and mortar, but with more of a hem-hem sculptural appeal (and can I just say, before you all faint at the price, that the factory shop offers a substantial discount). Incidentally, I wrote about the trip to the factory shop last November. Although the trip was rather overshadowed by the purchase of The Bobbly Fruit And Pillows.
• An amateur watercolour (dated 1907) of the house in which she grew up, which I bought off eBay and have had framed. This was meant to be a fantastic surprise – except that I foolishly blogged the painting, thinking that she wouldn’t see it, as she doesn’t own a computer. Of course, what I forgot about is that she has friends who own computers, and sometimes looks at her blog on those computers. Quelle twit. (One day, she’ll stumble upon this place. Once she hits that sidebar, I fear my days will be numbered. Parents: always the last to know, aren’t they?)

2. Lynne asks, with spooky synchronicity, just as I was adding a few extra sentences to my previous answer: Aren’t you a bit buggered if your mum reads this, Mike?!

Indeed I might be. But only if she pops round to a friend’s house between now and tomorrow lunchtime, asks to use their computer, works out how to use one, discovers Google, types in my name, finds this site, and reads it. I walk such a narrow tightrope.

3. Dymbel asks: How’s the f**s* ***e* coming on?

T***i***. P***r***i***i** *n* **a* **i** *o** *e ** *h*** d***l* **b***e, *** g***t ***n* ** n** *n***h ** *r** *y***f ***m **. *h* **s***, o* **u***, i* ** J*** D* **. B** *h** *h**’* t** *n***r ** *o ***y ***n**, *n* ** a***e* **i** * h*** s***t ***h ** *y ***e ***e***d** *a***n* ** h***. H***e *** t***a**. *e**, *o* **d ***.

Update: Major respect to Clare for decoding the above, and only getting four words wrong.

4. Making his first visit to my comments box since April of last year, A Reader asks (with a certain degree of thematic consistency): What’s your favourite Take That song?

First of all: welcome back to Troubled Diva, A Reader! You have been anonymously with us almost from the start, haven’t you? Loyalty: we like that in our readers.

It’s an easy and obvious one. My favourite Take That song is Back For Good, followed by Pray, followed by Could It Be Magic, followed by Relight My Fire. (“Cue Lulu!”) Roll on April 26th at the NEC…

5. The newly relocated Jack of Pandemian (née Green Fairy) asks: Interesting ways to die: would you rather be smothered in plum jam and buried up to the eyebrows in a termite nest or stretched flat and squeezed very slowly between two ginormous weights?

Strewth, do I have to choose? Is this a case of: you choose or you die?

I’d opt for the quickest method, but I can’t decide which it is. Do termites eat flesh? There’s nothing on Wikipedia which suggests that they do, so maybe I’d just be tickled while I suffocated.

Yes, rapid suffocation trumps slow squashing. I choose the jam and termites.

Also, I’ll make a better corpse: either fully intact (if a trifle sticky, but that would wash off), or else neatly bio-degraded, depending on dietary habits of said termites. I wouldn’t wish my weight-squished carcass upon any funeral director. Far too undignified.

At least I’d die with a nice taste in my mouth. Mmm, plums.

6. MissMish asks: What will you be wearing on your birthday m’dear?

Oh, do you mean my birthday that takes place exactly two weeks from today? That birthday? The one I mentioned earlier? Lovely!

My daytime wear will depend upon the dress code of my new clients, down in London’s vibrant Canary Wharf district, where I shall have been working all week. It has not yet been confirmed whether this dress code is “smart casual” or “business casual” – and yes, Virginia, there is a difference. Mainly in the trouser department. However, we can safely assume that a nice smart shirt will be a given.

As for my evening wear: what does a self-respecting middle-aged homo wear to a gay/bi/trans gothic/industrial night, without risking cries of “Mouton!” from the pierced-and-tatted throng? Last time, I stuck my glow-in-the-dark Camembert Electrique T-shirt over my vintage 1991 Paul Smith leather kecks, mainly to hide the fact that I could no longer fasten the top button of the kecks. This is not a look which I am prepared to risk a second time.

Probably the same T-shirt (as it’s my one remaining sartorial concession to “rock and roll”), teamed up with some dark jeans and my nice Prada shoes. (Five and a half years old, and they still look box-fresh. Best swanky designer buy EVER.)

7. Apropos the previous question, Siobhan asks: Ooh, and have you any fashion advice for a young-girl-about-town who wants to tag along?

Goodness. How do you dress an almost award-winning Lancastrian transvesite for an alt.gay.goth-slash-industrial “nite” in the upstairs function room of a real ale pub down the bottom of Hockley? I am quite out of my depth.

In lieu of a useful answer, can I give you a Fun Fact about the night in question? Last time I went, the organisers had laid out little Occasional Bowls on each table (white plastic, nothing fancy), each bowl containing a lollipop and a sachet of lube. Now, that’s what I call thoughtful.

8. Martin R asks: Far be it from me to question your divine status. But why “troubled”? You seem to be a pretty happy man these days!

Yes, but would Self Satisfied Diva work so well on a coffee mug? No, no, brand consistency is all.

9. Waitrose David asks: How have the fellow bloggers whom you have met in person differed from your expectations ? You don’t need to name names of course. I suppose water will be muddied if you have exchanged e-mails with them separately as well.

I’ve just been trying to locate my favourite observation on this subject, which I think was left by Gert in an old comments box, circa February 2003. (But I might be wrong.)

Anyhow, the observation went something like this. When you meet a fellow blogger for the first time, they’re never exactly as you imagined – but on the other hand, they’re only slightly different. It only takes a few moments to re-align your expectation with the reality, after which you can continue as normal.

I’d also say that, in general, you can sidestep a few of the usual tentative getting-to-know-you stages and checking points which occur on first meetings. You will often (but admittedly not always) end up feeling as if you have known each other for ages. It’s a weird but pleasant sensation – and the more often you experience it, the less weird it gets.

Have I ever met a blogger who has been nothing like I imagined they would be? I’m concentrating very hard here. Yes, I can certainly think of one. No, two.

(That’s not different-in-a-bad-way. Just different.)

As of now, there are no more outstanding questions to answer – so that’s it for this week.

(Oh dear, did we only make it to nine questions again? I guess those Shanghai stories will have to wait a while longer.)

I recommend the large size. (via)

Troubled Diva Proper is like the front room at a party, with everyone making polite – if rather strained – conversation on the couches.

Troubled Diva Xtra is like the kitchen at the same party, where all the juicy trash-talk is going on, and no-one gives a damn because they know the host so well.

(Except that there aren’t any comment boxes on Troubled Diva Xtra. At which point the analogy collapses, and I become more tempted than ever to add comment boxes to Troubled Diva Xtra, just to save the analogy. God, you think this stuff is planned?)

So.

Yes.

That’s an awfully pretty sidebar, isn’t it?

Yes, isn’t it.

…

Have you visited the archives recently?

…

…

Excuse me, I’ll be right back.

I’ve left a comment at Gordon’s place, attached to this post, where he talks of wanting to make a clear distinction between “pro” blogs and “hobbyist” blogs. The comment makes more sense in context, but I found that while writing it, my own thoughts on the subject of pro-vs-am blogging finally clarified. So here it is:

My take on it is this: we would do better to think of a “blog” as merely a description of how a website is formatted. If a website is built around reverse-chronological dated entries, it’s a blog. End of.

The problems occur when people try to load this neutral descriptive term with their own subjective interpretations of what blogging should be “all about”. There is no such thing as “the true spirit of blogging”. A blog is the end result of a number of content management systems, and that’s all.

Pro-blogs represent one subset of blogs. Personal blogs represent another. Very occasionally (eg. Dooce), the categories might overlap. But in any case, as with genres of music or literature, the category boundaries will always be blurred around the edges. Therefore, while thinking in terms of categories can be a useful shorthand at times, it’s dangerous to let that sort of thinking take over.

The problems occur when ANY group of bloggers start thinking and acting as if their own particular paradigm is “what blogging is all about”. Personal bloggers do this; pro-bloggers do this; political bloggers do this possibly most of all.

It’s a neutral descriptive term for websites with reverse-chronological dated posts. The rest is up to the blogger. Live and let live. Peace and love.

Yeah, it’s an off-the-cuff ramble, which could use a little editing, structuring and expanding. But then what am I, some sort of professional blogger?

Just under a year ago, I compiled a small list of Nottingham-based blogs of note. For reasons which may or may not become apparent, I’d like to conduct the same exercise again. So if you either write or know of a decent local blog which should be included in this list, then please let me know in the comments box.

• 1000 Shades Of Grey
• A Cloud In Trousers
• Argy Bargey
• Barnze’s Muses
• bytheseashore
• CollyLogic
• David Belbin
• Drama Queen, Fag-Hag, JAP
• EatNottingham.com
• Fear & Loathin’ on the River Soar
• MovieBuff
• Niles’s Blog
• PigPog
• Reluctant Nomad
• Rullsenberg Rules
• Skytower
• Swiss Toni’s Place
• The Bargain Basement
• Your mind and we

Isn’t it great that Meg (*) has started blogging again more frequently? Quite like old times.
Yay, Spirit of 2001! (See also next post down.)

Anyhoo, in keeping with the Spirit of 2001 theme, Meg has tagged me with a meme. Mark my words, we’ll be doing “Which work of art are you?” quizzes next. (Remember that one? That one was massive.)

Four jobs I’ve had:

• Demonstrating “Magic Plastic” balloon kits to gullible tourists, on the ground floor of Hamleys in Regent Street. (Evil stuff. Takes the polish off wooden furniture.)
• Loading crates of electrical wholesale equipment into the back of trucks, in a warehouse in Doncaster. Only got the job because my dad knew the boss, and so was roundly despised by all my co-workers. “Character building”, allegedly.
• Computer programmer for “Europe’s largest manufacturer of nightie cases“, as the people at the software house proudly told me at the time. Oh yes, all the big names: Poochie, Teddy Beddy Bear, My Little Pony (with free grooming brush), you name it. Management got free samples at Christmas. Jealous doesn’t begin to cover it.
• Club DJ, in the days before anyone gave a stuff about seamless beat-mixing. Biggest Choons: The Only Way Is Up (Yazz), Theme From S-Express (S-Express), Big Fun (Inner City), Can You Party (Royal House), Alphabet Street (Prince), Sympathy For The Devil (Laibach).

Four movies I can watch over and over:

• Actually, I never do this. But, um, boring answer: Withnail And I, which K has watched over and over.
• Groundhog Day: it goes deep.
• Breakfast At Tiffany’s: sentimental reasons.
• There’s this Falcon Studios one from about ten years ago, where they’re all farm hands… oh come on, do you think I know the titles of these things?

Four places I’ve lived:

• Doncaster (I only go back for funerals).
• West Berlin (not been back since The Wall came down).
• Loughton, Essex (99% certain I’ll never go back there again).
• Cambridge (stayed away for years, until my mother moved there).

Four TV shows I love:

• Six Feet Under: currently working my way through Series 4 on DVD – but I can only watch it when K isn’t around, because all that DEATH freaks him out.
• Shameless: now into its third series, and still right up there with the greats.
• Posh Nosh: we haven’t been so comprehensively nailed since…
• Frasier: I even liked it when the quality occasionally dipped, which is always a good sign (though Niles and Daphne should NEVER, etc etc).

Four places I’ve been to on holiday:

• Vietnam, which I wrote about at some length.
• The Azores: one of the planet’s best kept secrets.
• Gran Chuffing Canaria, with its fabulous Yumbo Centre. Crapshagtastic!
• Lowestoft Harbour. Storm-bound, in a cabin cruiser, for four miserable days, with my perpetually warring seven-strong family/step-family. We got given 50p a day for the amusement arcades, and had to get into a dinghy and row across the yacht basin, every time we wanted to step ashore. Total and utter f**king misery from start to finish, which I attempted to alleviate by listening to the John Peel show, sitting on the chemical toilet, with a mono earpiece in one ear. Yes, I was that desperate.

Four of my favorite dishes:

• The pressed meat terrines at The Druid in Birchover: like angels’ kisses, melting on the tongue.
• The monkfish at The Bowling Green in Ashbourne: fresh from the Manchester fish market, delicately fragranced in a way that I didn’t know monkfish could be (as when monkfish was trendy during the early 1990s, everyone used to slather it in too much sauce).
• The caramelised calves’ livers that were personally cooked for us by Marco Pierre White, on the day of our tenth anniversary. The Apotheosis of Posh Nosh.
• Currently, it’s Tung Pau Yuk, which I’ve enjoyed four times in the past month.

Four sites I visit daily:

• Naked Blog
• Bloglines
• Digital Spy: Big Brother
• Wikipedia

Four places I would rather be right now:

• In the cottage, on the sofa, in front of the fire, with a nice glass of wine.
• The Banyan Tree, Phuket: standing in our pool and staring into space, with a faraway smile playing across my lips.
• Hangzhou and/or Shanghai, if only it were possible to “pop across” for the weekend. China got under my skin, in a way I hadn’t expected.
• London. I wish we got to spend more time there. One day, not so very far in the future, we probably will.

Four bloggers I am tagging:
– with all due apologies if a) they’ve done it before, or b) they hate doing memes:

• Betty (Update: Done)
• Bourgeois Wife
• Chig
• Lee

(*) Anna‘s sister. Gosh it feels weird, having to explain that.

Not at all: I’ve actually been blogging more than you might think.

Everybody should go and see Frozen this weekend: an independent British film, featuring the wonderful Shirley “Moaning Myrtle out of Harry Potter” Henderson in her first leading role, which has finally secured a limited UK release (check here for screening details).

Last night, at a special preview screening, we met Ms. Henderson, who – along with producer Mark Lavender – introduced the film and answered questions about it afterwards. It was a strange experience, meeting someone in the flesh and then seeing them up on screen a couple of minutes later – and for the first couple of scenes, I wondered whether I was going to be able to suspend my disbelief.

It is to Henderson’s immense credit as an actress that, after less than five minutes, I was fully engaged with Kath, the character whom she portrays: a fishery worker from Morecambe Bay in Lancashire, with a missing-presumed-dead sister, who is determined to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding her disappearance.

Imbuing Kath with the sort of quiet, ambiguous, is-she-disturbed-or-just-different singularity of character with which she has come to be associated (I’m a long-time fan), Henderson compensates for Kath’s verbal uncommunicativeness by means of an extraordinarily subtle, intense, multi-layered performance, in which Kath’s facial expressions speak volumes on her behalf: you simply can’t tear your eyes away from her. To have constructed so rich a character from such sparsely and simply worded dialogue is an astonishing achievement, and a process which Shirley was happy to talk about during the Q&A (revealing an unexpected Scottish accent in the process).

It’s a slowly paced film – a mood-piece, beautifully shot on location in Fleetwood – and yet, despite the lack of constant forwards movement in the plot, I found myself riveted. There are mysteries to be solved, not all of which are ever fully explained (although you are given some fairly clear nudges in certain directions), and the film cooks up an intriguing brew of the real and the imaginary, the natural and the supernatural, the logical and the just plain baffling.

(Oh, and that gorgeous man who starred in the BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North And South is in it. Woof woof, readers!)

I might have been on BBC Radio Nottingham today, commenting on the film – but we can’t stream radio at work, so I’ve no way of knowing. (It was a little disconcerting, giving a gushing review of Shirley’s performance while she was standing only a few feet away, in full earshot, but I’m sure she’s used to worse.)

Frozen, ladies and gentlemen. I commend it to the group.

It’s good to see that Demian is slowly rebuilding Guild Of Ghostwriters: a hand-doodled blog which went AWOL a while ago, before being reborn on Blogspot.

It’s particularly good to see him re-posting the guest doodles which he solicited during the autumn of 2004 – and extra-specially good to see him re-post the three guest doodles which he submitted from me.

But what’s Pete Burns doing in there? (Second doodle, second row.)

Yes, we’re quite the local media couple these days. Following my “Business Diary” piece in the Nottingham Evening Post from two weeks ago, my partner K’s day-by-day account of his recent trip to Florida will appear in the same slot, in tomorrow’s (i.e. Tuesday’s) pullout Business section.

What K’s article doesn’t mention – and this is a bit of a shocker, so hold on tight – is that when his business partner G arrived back in the UK from the same trip, and opened his suitcase (which he had left unlocked for the duration of the journey, to comply with US security requirements), he discovered, sitting on the top of the publicity leaflets for the company…

…a live bullet.

Now, explain that one to me. Chilling, n’est-ce pas?

We’re trying to persuade him to contact the head of security at Virgin Atlantic – with whom he flew, Upper Class, from Orlando to London Heathrow. Because, well, that sort of thing is just not really On, wouldn’t you say?

Meanwhile, K arrived in Orlando to find that his Samsonite suitcase had been smashed open by airport security – just as his other Samsonite suitcase had been smashed open by airport security in Miami in 2004. And this despite the notice on the relevant website which says it’s OK to lock Samsonite suitcases, because US security personnel carry a full set of master keys. (Of course, that would have been far too much intellectual effort for them, when compared to the pleasures of a healthy bit of brute force.)

Are you beginning to see why we’re not awfully keen on travelling to and from the US these days?

(Oh, and word from K: he will never, ever fly with United Airlines again. Attitude Problem ain’t the half of it, as previous experiences had already indicated.)