Pepper's in charge



No apologies. Some new photos of Pepper that show how pleased she is with her life. Seeing her flop out in a small rectangle of sunlight projected onto the carpet is so Pepper. She's talkative, playful, relaxed and, as seen playing with a small packet of Post-It labels, even kittenish.




Instant karma.

United 93: that's entertainment?
I've been looking forward to the release of Paul Greengrass's United 93 ever since I first heard about it and it was called Flight 93. As a commited fan of disaster movies, I would have been excited about any film set on an imperilled plane, but this was, of course, different: the true (or at least as true as we can gather) story of what happened to the hijacked plane that didn't hit its target on September 11, 2001. Now, conspiracy theories abound, and one of the more extreme I've picked up on the internet is that there was not United 93 (I know!), but for the purposes of this film, let's imagine there was, and that it crashed into a Pennsylvanian field, killing everybody onboard, on its way to the White House. That makes for a potentially neutered action movie, like Titanic without any room for dramatic manoeuvre. But Paul Greengrass could simply not have made a better job of it.

As covered in just about every review I've read, United 93 is a new class of nailbiting cinematic experience. It's the very fact that we know they're all going to die that makes it so compelling and, at times, almost unbearable. (And it's been made clear that the relatives of those who died have given it their blessing - albeit, you'd have to assume, a very uncomfortable one.) It's only 90 minutes long, all shot on queasy hand-held camera, as is Greengrass's stock in trade (Bloody Sunday, The Bourne Supremacy), and after the first plane hits the World Trade Center - or when it chillingly disappears from the air traffic control radar "somewhere above the city" - it's in real time, which puts you right there in the thick of the moment. If you thought you'd become perhaps desensitised to those images of the planes hitting the towers, think again. In this film, although it happens in the background, or on CNN, it hits you in the guts, because you're experiencing it with air traffic and military professionals and it's still shocking. If the military are shocked, you're entitled to be. Indeed, the response to the mounting disaster accounts for just as much screen-time as the stricken passengers on UAL93. The head of the Federal Aviation Authority, Ben Sliney, who eventually shuts down US air space, with 4200 planes in it, is played by himself - a performance that's beyond performance but fits the docudrama style. At no point does Greengrass sensationalise. Even the fabled passenger rebellion is handled with confusion, and the famous line, "Let's roll," is simply heard in the general hubbub.

I spent a lot of this film with my hands over my mouth. Right from the start, when the doomed passengers, whom we never get to know, wait in the departure lounge, the feeling is one of dread. The simple, mundane details of flying - the plastic trays the food comes on, the plastic cups of water, the unwatched safety film, the little pillows against which tired commuter heads are propped - become engorged with portent. And the four hijackers, whose whispered recitations from the Koran open the film, are presented as human beings - nervous, confused, fallible but ultimately driven. When the plane is a mere 20 minutes away from its target (did the pilot really have a small clipping of the White House stuck to the steering column so he knew what to aim for?), the authority of the terrorists, gained by shouting, sticking knives into a couple of necks and waving the detonator of a bomb, is at a low ebb. Nobody would make a fictional hijack drama like this. Too messy. Too amateurish. Too difficult. And that's the film's saving grace - whether or not it seeks to make entertainment out of a non-fictional tragedy (and the trailers are pretty disrespectful, especially the gravel-voiced radio ads), the film itself is no fun whatsoever. There were two groups of potentially noisy and silly teenagers at the Wimbledon Odeon, giggling through the ads and trailers, and even they shut up once the film started.

Go and see it. But don't buy popcorn. Then have a trawl around the conspiracy sites. If there's one thing United 93 does almost editorialise, it's the impotent response of the Bush administration. The military at the command centre, shouting out manly stuff like, "Scramble Langley, Weapons!", are also seen virtually begging the office of Bush or Cheney for appropriate rules of engagement and the authority to shoot down the hijacked planes, and get nothing. The President is literally missing. Meanwhile, when two fighters are scrambled, they fly in the wrong direction. And a caption at the end states that the White House didn't know anything about the plight of UAL93 until four minutes after it had crashed. Nothing was done. Why was nothing done?

Haircut!



I'm not putting this picture in just so that you can admire the practical new summer haircut I had on Wednesday, although you can if you want. It's there to illustrate this anecdote about the perils of having your hair cut at a reasonably trendy ladies' hairdressers with disco music playing when you are a man in his very early forties. I had my hair cut by a proper old-fashioned man's barber in Brixton for about seven years and was quite happy doing so, having had it cut by a proper old-fashioned man's barber in Parsons Green while I was at college. I drifted into having it cut rather more expensively at what I still quaintly call a salon sometime in the late 90s, I think. I must admit, I enjoy the whole pampering experience. Having my hair washed by a stranger is quite theraputic, especially with the peppermint conditioner they use at Toni & Guy in Reigate, which reminds me of my tea, and I don't object to the light head massage either. For a man who leads a busy life like mine, it is a rare oasis of calm and indulgence. (I always leave a one pound tip for the young person who washes my hair and a four pound tip for the hairstylist - I'd like to know from other people if this is mean or generous. I'd hate to stand out for either in the ritualistic world of the ladies' hairdresser.)

Anyway, I usually ask for Mel or Laura at Toni & Guy, but this week I had no such luxury of choice as I only had Wednesday afternoon to play with when Lee went to play football with other comedians, and I didn't know for sure if the game was on until the end of Tuesday. The only stylist available was James, who doesn't know my hair, but I trust the general proficiency of the Toni & Guy stylist and accepted the 4.45 appointment. James, like the other male stylists in there, is in the gender minority and looks gay and modern. He might not be gay, he just wears a tight, ribbed t-shirt and is a hairdresser. It doesn't matter anyway, I'm just trying to describe the vast chasm that existed between us when he took my jacket and attentively did up the velcro and belt of my Toni & Gay smock. (Neither Mel nor Laura do it up for me. I usually do it myself.) I am a confident human being, but I felt old and unfashionable and straight in James's presence. There is something about telling a hairdresser, male or female, gay or not gay, what you would like doing to your hair that brings me out in a rash of self-consciousnes. This is the consultation part, before the wash. At a man's barber's, you also tell him what you want, but he is not about to massage peppermint into your head, and it doesn't feel quite as vain under his big sheet and without disco music playing. (My old barber used to have Cypriot radio on.) I explained to James that I wanted a lot cutting off, short and uneven enough on top to spike up, and with a soft but uneven fringe left at the front, short at the sides but not severe. I wondered if he thought, "Why does this old man care so much about the subtleties of a haircut? Unlike me, he is not going out clubbing tonight to pick up girls or boys." He probably didn't. Surely you'd have to learn not to be judgmental in a job like hairdresser?

James also washed my hair, which was good, in that I saved a pound in tips (I just left him the stylist's four pounds), but weird in that he and were going on this hair journey together. There is a great deal of trust in this arrangement. Your head is literally in his hands. There is also the pressure to chat. I like to not chat, so that I don't have to talk about my job, which is what you usually end up talking about, but at the same time, James seemed happy to say nothing as he worked and I cracked first, making some inane comment about my hair growing fast. It broke the ice though, and he ended up telling me all about trying to order a bacon and sausage sandwich from Morrisons, which I didn't quite follow, but was glad of the relaxed nature of the chat. He also complimented me as he neared the end of my cut, saying, "They're going to be asking to see your ID." I did look a lot younger with my short hair, but this could of course mean 39. I appreciated his flattery. I should have given him five pounds.

The weird part came just before the ID comment. James was trimming my sideburns and he said the phrase I have used to headline this entry. Did I want him to tidy these up? He meant my eyebrows. I have quite thick eyebrows. I try to keep them tidy myself by plucking the longest hairs out when I am feeling up to the intense pain. I have been lax on this score of late though and they did look a bit wild. When James blow-dried my hair they actually blew in the wind. He noticed this, which is why he was offering to trim them. This struck me as a bad idea, and it was then that I realised for sure that James had cut my hair once before, about a year ago, when he asked exactly the same thing and I said no then too, as I was coming up to my 40th birthday and I felt it a milestone I was not ready to pass. My dad, whose eyebrow genes I proudly carry, has a pair of Denis Healeys, and he has them trimmed by his hairdresser. They look very neat, but trimmed. I don't want mine trimmed, like a hedge. I'd rather pluck them.

The question is: does James only ask old men if they want their eyebrows tidying up? Or does he ask young men with hairy eyebrows too? I like to think of myself as a reconstructed man who's just gay enough, but it's a fine line to tread. Is it more gay to have them trimmed or to pluck? (Both methods will cause rapid regrowth, but surely cutting is worse than plucking?)

James has that de rigueur New Wave haircut all the trendy young men have that's long on top and at the back, and highlighted. At least I don't have that. Not at my age.

(The photo, by the way, was taken yesterday morning, during the recording of The Day The Music Died at Wise Buddah studios, by Jon Holmes, who actually has a much trendier haircut than mine, but then he is younger than me. The mug next to me contains boiling water. I was about to dunk a peppermint teabag into it.)

Paddy: what happened next
Paddy the kitten has been re-homed. It was a difficult decision for us, but one that had to be made. His relationship with Pepper worsened last week. She started attacking him. As we'd only got him in the first place to cheer Pepper up after Chilli, it started to feel counterproductive, especially as he was such a bundle of optimistic, friendly joy. To see his advances knocked back, literally, so often and with such repetition, was becoming painful to witness. We started to worry that Pepper's aggression was not only damaging to his spirit and joie de vivre but was actually becoming physically dangerous to him. We worried that we might come home and find him badly injured, and decided that something had to be done before a) he got too old to re-home (we all know that a ten-week-old kitten is easier to place than, say, a six-month-old young cat), and b) before Pepper left home and didn't come back, feeling usurped and unloved. Paddy's demands for lap-time of an evening, pushing Pepper out of her rightful throne without meaning to, only served to heighten her aggression. We couldn't very well confine him to his room again after showing him the freedom of the house. So we made that call.

He went to a lovely re-homing charity near us, where he was immediately among other boisterous, jolly kittens (two of them) and puppies. Much more like the house he was born into than ours. We agreed that if we kept him any longer we would get too attached and would be unable to let him go. It was hard saying goodbye, but having only had him for a couple of weeks, it was bearable for the greater good. Pepper cheered up as soon as she was convinced he wasn't coming back. We missed Paddy, but it was heartwarming to see (and hear) Pepper being her old self. And I mean her old self before Chilli. She quickly reclaimed her old stamping grounds, and her tail was back up, like a dodgem car. She moved about the house like she owned it, which she does, and always did. It sounds harsh, but our experiment had failed. We did what we did in the best of faith. We wanted to stop her from being lonely. (Even though we enjoyed Paddy, he was never a vanity project for us. We missed Chilli, and still do, but his role was not to fill a gap in our lives, but to improve the vibes of a ten-year-old cat who'd never lived alone, in cat terms.)

The tale becomes even more cautionary though, and on a different level. We gave a donation to the re-homing place, and passed on all of Paddy's paraphernalia and spare food - "posh pouches" as the lady at the charity called them! - and, having spent a happy first night there with his new, responsive pals, he was chosen by a family with young children, looking for a kitten. Paddy was re-homed in record time! This made us feel much better about the upheaval we had inadvertantly caused him. But . . . we had a call the following day from the cat charity lady that was unwelcome. The family had taken Paddy home, but he had become listless and wouldn't eat. They took him to the vet, who found an ulcer on his tongue (hence the lack of appetite). The vet panicked, worried that it might be a rare but recurrent virus, and his new family started to talk about returning him. He was put on a drip to make up for the food he wasn't eating (poor lad!) and was to be given tests for these crazy-named viruses, one of which was a cat flu. All of a sudden, it looked as if Paddy had gone downhill.

Our considered guess (and one of us is a qualified nutritionist) was that the ulcer was simply a reaction to the stress of moving house, aggravated by a change in food. We had fed him on "posh pouches", which are 70 per cent meat, and no cereal. At the re-homing place, for reasons of economy and practicality, he will have been put onto regular, cereal-heavy cat food. Not a problem if that's all he'd ever eaten, but a shock to the system after nearly all meat, sufficient to give him a reaction. (I don't eat wheat. If I do, I can guarantee I'll get a mouth ulcer. It doesn't take a professional to join the dots.) Also, and this is a real bugbear in our house, the minute he arrived at the re-homing place, he was given a worming tablet and vaccinated. Imagine all of that, combined with the dietary switch from good to bad, on the system of a tiny, ten-week-old boy. No wonder his immune system went into freefall. Obviously, it's indiscreet to say any of this to the nice re-homing lady, as she is a saint in many ways, like all who work for animal charities, and her heart is in the right place, but unless you question conventional medicine - the medicine of intervention - you might not see the potential pitfalls. He was given antibiotics as well, which destroy infections, but only in the same way that a mallet destroys grapes in a fruit salad.

Luckily, there is a happy ending, just like the chaffinch story. Paddy improved. His mouth got better. His appetite returned. No blood tests were required. The family, realising he didn't have a scary virus whose name the vet couldn't even spell (calici), kept him. He is now living - we must assume happily - with a new family, and with no grumpy older cats who whack him in the head because they don't appreciate his overtures.

There is peace again in our house. Pepper has lost the cross, narrowed-eyes look she had for the whole time Paddy was here, and she's stopped sitting in the box, looking out. She's back on the lap and her favourite chairs. She seems as happy as she was in March. This makes us happy. If there is a moral, it's don't risk bringing a new kitten into a house with an older cat unless you're sure the older cat will be able to deal with it. And think hard about vaccination. I know it's a radical stance to take, but I can't help thinking, from all the literature I've read, that introducing disease into a small body, when a small body should be building up its immune system naturally, is counterintuitive. If Paddy had stayed with us, he wouldn't have been fed wheaty food and he wouldn't have been vaccinated. Sometimes nature must take its course. (Our reason for taking this course is that both our cats were plagued by skin conditions which surfaced a day after they were vaccinated as kittens. Pepper's ears are still not right.) To really understand about vaccinations, follow the money.

Thank you for all your helpful comments about Paddy and Pepper. I hope you understand why we let him go.

"That's the best bit of play we've seen all evening."
"Only."


England 3 Hungary 1
Pre-World Cup friendly at Old Trafford, BBC1; just the ticket to get us in the mood, and a good chance to see England's form. Especially useful if you don't follow league football and never see players like Peter Crouch or Joe Cole (I don't even know who they play for!), and a nice way of getting back into recognising the ones you remember from Euro 2004. This is the beauty of being an England fan. The abject misery of the same is the way they play, and the first 40 minutes of tonight's match were a parody of the frustration inherent in this weird, non-nationalistic loyalty: they just couldn't get past Hungary's red shirts. And then, out of the blue, Michael Owen (who's really growing into his face) missed a cracking cross from Beckham and in the confusion, Steven Gerrard fell over and England were awarded a penalty they didn't deserve, which Frank Lampard had the decency to miss. But at least it woke everybody up, and the next thing we knew, after what must have been an inspirational half-time team-talk from the Swede who doesn't punch the air, Gerrard (on his 26th birthday - although he looks about 36 with that lined face of his) scored off another Beckham cross. John Terry, the defender with no surname but a pair of recently-delivered twins, took us up to 2 by rubbing his hair off the ball sufficient to knock it in. The Hungarians pulled one back while I was out of the room, probably checking MySpace but - following a couple of experimental substitutions (Gerrard and Owen off for the freakish Crouch and 17-year-old whizz kid Theo Walcott) - England nailed it with a third. This came from giant Peter Crouch, whose limbs seem to just swing around behind the rest of his body, but managed to do so behind the ball at just the right moment. Beckham got a yellow card just before the end to prove he isn't Gary Linecker.

In all, an entertaining match, despite commentator Mark Lawrenson's gloomy comment which I have used as the headline, uttered at the end of the first half. I got sick of seeing the electronic adverts for Pepsi with "NO SUGAR" (yes, but just have a look at what else it's got in it, idiots!) and some of the passing was as maddening as is traditonal, but it was good to see this Walcott boy on the pitch, and breaking a record too, as he's actually 17 and 75 days old, and Rooney was 17 and 111 days old when he made his international debut. Let's hope Sven gives him a run next Friday against Paraguay, when, let me see, yes, we're down to win. Joe Cole looks like Johnny Knoxville. Owen Hargreaves can't be serious about that hair. And Mark Lawrenson doesn't like any of the World Cup songs. He said so. John Motshon (correct spelling) said this after Terry's goal - "He's recently given birth to twins, but this was a very different kind of ... " he actually said, " ... ocassion," but he wanted to say, "a very different kind of ... birth. Through the canal of football, with a placenta of goal."

OK, into it now, Official. Match reports promised for all of England's games. These will be easy to ignore as they will have thumbnails of footballers at the top of them.

Nice recovery!



A tale with a happy ending from the wonderful world of nature. At around 7.30 yesterday evening, Julie, sitting in the living room, heard a sound and then saw something drop from above onto the patio. It was a juvenile chaffinch that had clearly flown into the upstairs window. This happens all too often, especially in the spring and summer months when the sun is out. Anyway, he was sat there, on the patio, obviously stunned. We watched him from the living room and the kitchen and he seemed to sit there for ages. He was upright, but one of his wings was outstretched, while the other was tucked in, which made us concerned that he'd damaged it in some way against the pane. It was a heart-stopping moment. We locked the cat flap, and kept watch over him, without looming, and over the next half an hour he veeeeery gradually started to look chirpier and less bamboozled. (He looked very tiny down there on the ground though.) His wing righted itself. He plumped his feathers up. He started looking around. He was just quietly getting over his shock. Eventually he flew up into the apple tree, where, one assumes, his family were. It proves that intervention is very often unecessary and wrong. Nature finds a way. We are stupid enough to invent glass and put it up in the way of innocent birds, but when they hit it and end up grounded, dazed and confused, the best thing to do is hold back, give the little chap space and wait. There is a moral in here somewhere. We think we know better. We usually don't. They do.

By the way, I borrowed the above photo from a man called Bob whose website is all about his Kent garden. I hope he doesn't object.

My World Cup Waste Of Time
ITV1 are getting into the World Cup spirit early. I'm not a big follower of football. I keep tabs on how Northampton Town are doing, mainly thanks to listener Martin Shipperley, who texts in their half-time and full-time scores to the 6 Music Chart every Saturday during the season. But I do turn out to the armchair to watch England when they are involved in the big international or European tournaments. Every two years, basically. I have no problem being a fairweather fan. England are largely useless, despite talented individuals, and following them does not bring an awful lot of pleasure, so they should be grateful that I take the time. I am excited about the World Cup nonetheless. We know the score - England will do well against Paraguay and give us all false hope, then they'll lose to Trinidad and give themselves more stress than they ought in the rest of the group matches, scraping through, only to be knocked out in the semis, on penalties. (See? I don't know much about football, but I understand England's chances all too well. That's why I am wearing this excellent cut-out Wayne Rooney mask that came free in the Sunday People.) Anyway, to business - we sacrificed substantial chunks of Saturday and Sunday to the otherwise cruelly-ignored ITV1. On Saturday, it was the World Cup final. Oh no it wasn't, it was England vs The Rest Of The World in the Soccer Aid match at Old Trafford. (Soccer Aid? Who thought of that? Who calls it Soccer?) I'd caught some of the preamble during the week, which was fairly weak, but the match was the meat and potatoes.


This was well presented by ITV. Ant and Dec made credible live sports anchors (a future career-swerve for them there perhaps?), and the game itself was treated as seriously as a real match. This turned out to be the correct approach, as the celebrities on both teams took it totally seriously too. England won, 2-1, one goal scored by Ferdinand, the other by Jonathan Wilkes, aka Robbie Williams's Official Best Mate, who looked pretty useful. The ROW team pulled one back when a slimmed-down Maradonna pootled a penalty past an otherwise commendable Jamie Theakston, who is a very tall man. (I know. Surreal isn't it?) Other non-professionals of note included Bradley Walsh, Dean Lennox-Kelly off of Shameless and, despite his years, Angus Deayton. Clearly, England had to win, or else captain Robbie Williams would have found another reason to write a self-pitying pop song and release it as a single. In all, I enjoyed this. If you want to donate some money to Unicef, do it here.

Then last night, I am almost ashamed to say I gave 90 minutes of my life not to a football match but to a documentary about a party. That's right, a feature-length documentary about some people having a drink, nibbles and a meal in a marquee in a back garden. Admittedly it was the back garden of Beckingham Palace, for this was Full Length & Fabulous, whose subtitle was corrected punctuated at most of the ad-breaks ("The Beckhams' World Cup Party") but not for one of them ("The Beckham's World Cup Party"), which was odd. Almost as if the Beckhams themselves only had to time to correct one of them. They are busy people. Especially Mrs Beckham, who seemed to be on top of all the other details of this bash, right down to the colour of the wine glasses and the fake butterflies being stapled to the fake trees ("I really like butterflies").

For the record, I have no problem with Victoria and David. They seem to at least quite like each other, and he comes across as a fairly natural, unaffected young man. She certainly has a propensity for sounding like she has no idea what people think of her (she stated with confidence on the programme that men don't fancy her but that women like her - do they though?). My objection to this documentary, and to the half-a-million-costing bash, is that I watched it.

So many rich people in expensive clothes bidding huge sums of their money at an auction for things they don't need, under the moral umbrella of charity. If it cost five hundred thousand quid to lay on, why didn't the Beckhams just give that money to charity? I'm not doubting their commitment to the cause, simply questioning the need for this Roman level of opulence for its own sake. You could say that they're keeping a lot of waiters and flower arrangers in business, but the same could be said of the Royal Family, or the Nazis. Job creation cannot be a justification on its own. You could also say, hey, they provide entertainment for ordinary people with grey lives. Yes, but what kind of entertainment? An hour and a half of having our noses rubbed in the excesses of the wealthy? Look! They can afford to stick their hand in the air and commit a hundred and fifty thousand pounds to have a meal with Puff Daddy! (This was Wayne Rooney, by the way, unless it was an ordinary member of the public wearing the mask from the Sunday People. What is he going to say when he turns up on Mr Daddy's doorstep with Coleen? "Alright, Puff? Where shall we put our cases? . . . You remember! That big party in a tent in the back garden? David and Victoria Beckham? He's a soccer player. Hey, get your hands off me, I've paid my hundred and fifty grand!")

The biggest phony of the night was Robbie Williams, who pretends he's bothered by the cameras, but would surely shrivel up and die if there weren't any to record his sincerity and self-depracation [see: comment below]. Perhaps that's why I enjoyed the football match: Robbie was just one out of 22 men on the field, and the camera sometimes wasn't on him!

Hey, 12 days to go.

OurSpace!

MySpace is a bit weird. Lots of people, mostly young, pretending to be friends with people they've never met and never will meet. It is, at best, harmless. At worst, a great big, revenue-led corporate vacuum sucking up innocent minds on the pretext of being some kind of community project. These were my views until this weekend, when the aforementioned Day The Music Died MySpace page went live. For those that haven't dipped a toe, your MySpace page has your picture on it, and some very basic information. The crux of it is that you can invite people to be your "friends" and then they can accept or reject that invitation. Since our first programme went out at 1pm on Saturday, we have had upwards of 80 friend requests. I have accepted them all, obviously, as it's a way of generating interest in the programme, which has pretty much gone out ignored for four consecutive series, unreviewed, uncontacted. This time our producer Will decided we should get out there and shout about ourselves, and so we did, and . . . it's worked!

The only downside is that I am now personally hooked on MySpace. I care whether we have any pending friend requests or not! I care that the basic mechanics of it are useless! (For instance, it asks for your age but you have to scroll down a list of possible years of birth, which only goes back to 1906, so you can't put your age as 111, which our collective age is. Also, your name appears "in meaningless double quote marks" at the top of your profile. Why? Also, and I am clever, I can't work out how to invite someone to be our friend. This is my fault, obviously, but compared to Blogger it's awfully user-hostile.) Still. WE'VE GOT 90 FRIENDS! AND THEY ARE REAL FRIENDS!

I've started one of my own, here. I really don't know why. This is my space. I control it. It has a little community of its own, with no banner advertising or hidden agendas. You don't have to be my friend. You can comment without even adding your name. I love it and I hate it. Go here if you want to be our friend. Go here if you want to be my friend.