I haven’t written anything for a while. Bad, I know, but I’ve been really busy.
Who am I kidding… you can see right through me. I’m like a pair of Russell Brand’s hermetically-sealed trousers – without the disconcerting bulge and encrusted melange of DNA. (Well, at least not today).
The reality is that I’ve been slack. Very slack. Slack in way that’s nothing like Mr Brand’s pants and rather more like his promiscuous behaviour.
Not that I think he’s improper. He does what most men, perhaps even most women, would like to do but can’t – either because of a distinct lack of game or because of a spineless acquiescence to cultural sensibilities.
Papers are filled with stories about Brand’s sexual ‘deviancy’ because it allows us to turn the table and claim he’s the one with the problem. Yet, from a loosely Darwinian perspective, Brand is a winner. More than that. He is winner of epic proportions.
Indeed if it wasn’t for contraceptive (and no doubt abortive) technology, Brand would have spawned an army of sesquipedalian cockneys large enough to conquer Western Europe.
Sesquipedalian. I love that word. It has a beautiful symmetry to it because it is an example of exactly what it describes. Whoever created it had a marvellous sense of humour.
Anyway, where was I? I was talking about Russell Brand, wasn’t I? Actually, I wasn’t really meaning to talk about Russell Brand - I just went off on a bit of a tangent. I was actually meaning to talk about football, because it’s been a while since I had a rant and since that time much has changed with the old Arsenal.
Last time I wrote about football I was in a bit of a depression about the spiralling misfortunes of the Gunners. It appeared then that Villa might establish an insurmountable lead in the race for fourth spot and that Arsenal might actually end up without a Champions League spot for the first time in over a decade, with dire implications for the club’s finances.
However, in the intervening weeks a remarkable turnaround has occurred. Some rich Arsenal form has coincided with some poor Villa form and a gap that could have stretched to eight points if Villa had held on to a 2-0 lead at home to Stoke is now 3 – in Arsenal’s favour!
There is still enough time to throw it away again but at present things are looking pretty rosy, especially with an FA Cup semi-final and a Champions League quarter-final to look forward to. Feasibly Arsenal could still end the season with two prestigious trophies and Champions League football for next season (though we would have this anyway if we were to win the CL).
The confidence and dynamism has started to flow back, even without the still injured Fabregas, Adebayor, Rosicky and the re-injured Walcott and Eduardo. The revival is so dramatic, and, indeed, so timely, that we may well curse the fact that our run of goalless draws put us just too far behind to catch up. We’re certainly not beyond catching Chelsea to nick third.
Come on lads, you can do it!
Thursday 26 March 2009
Friday 6 March 2009
Kebabs are bad for you - apparently
Scientists have revealed some startling new information. It’s being claimed as one of the breakthroughs of the decade, if not the century. Whisper it quietly, but it appears the good-old donner kebab might actually be doing us harm:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/05/kebab-takeaways-food-safety
I know, I know, it’s hard to believe, but a study carried out by the Health Protection Agency (HPA) has found that 4.7% of salads and sauces served at kebab takeaways contain “unsatisfactory” levels of bacteria, and that 0.4% contain “unacceptable or potentially hazardous” levels, meaning the mouth-watering delights were, contrary to appearance, unfit for human consumption!
I’m sure donner-philes across the nation are finding this news almost as difficult to digest as yesterday’s dinner. Can the humble kebab, a staple of al fresco dining from Grimsby to Croydon, really be a threat to public health?
Of course it is you bone heads! How many hours and thousands of pounds have been wasted in “discovering” what my mottled toilet bowl could attest after one of my ill-advised but thankfully rare moonlit drop-ins to the local germ emporium?
I don’t think it will come as a shock to anyone who has ever been inside a kebab shop that they are, more often than not, a picture book of poor hygiene.
It is not surprising in the slightest that they operate like an oversized bacterial incubator, lovingly nurturing their microscopic clientele on a feast of heat-regulated chilli sauce, “fresh” salad and fine cuts of reconstituted meat of indeterminate origin.
The problem is, people who frequent kebab shops are not the greatest exponents of good judgement at the best of times. Even without added microbes, donner kebab remains a questionable dinner choice.
The vast majority of us only succumb to the temptation when we are hungry late at night and nothing else is open and our rational faculties have been eroded by similarly ill-advised levels of alcohol.
Indeed, we never seem to heed the health warnings relating to alcohol consumption so the chances of us ditching our drunken donner or burger or fried chicken for rye bread and organic hummus is fairly close to zero.
The point of the study is clearly to initiate a clampdown on the peddlers of poor hygiene, which is no doubt a good thing; I’m just not sure it will mean that much to the people it actually affects.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/05/kebab-takeaways-food-safety
I know, I know, it’s hard to believe, but a study carried out by the Health Protection Agency (HPA) has found that 4.7% of salads and sauces served at kebab takeaways contain “unsatisfactory” levels of bacteria, and that 0.4% contain “unacceptable or potentially hazardous” levels, meaning the mouth-watering delights were, contrary to appearance, unfit for human consumption!
I’m sure donner-philes across the nation are finding this news almost as difficult to digest as yesterday’s dinner. Can the humble kebab, a staple of al fresco dining from Grimsby to Croydon, really be a threat to public health?
Of course it is you bone heads! How many hours and thousands of pounds have been wasted in “discovering” what my mottled toilet bowl could attest after one of my ill-advised but thankfully rare moonlit drop-ins to the local germ emporium?
I don’t think it will come as a shock to anyone who has ever been inside a kebab shop that they are, more often than not, a picture book of poor hygiene.
It is not surprising in the slightest that they operate like an oversized bacterial incubator, lovingly nurturing their microscopic clientele on a feast of heat-regulated chilli sauce, “fresh” salad and fine cuts of reconstituted meat of indeterminate origin.
The problem is, people who frequent kebab shops are not the greatest exponents of good judgement at the best of times. Even without added microbes, donner kebab remains a questionable dinner choice.
The vast majority of us only succumb to the temptation when we are hungry late at night and nothing else is open and our rational faculties have been eroded by similarly ill-advised levels of alcohol.
Indeed, we never seem to heed the health warnings relating to alcohol consumption so the chances of us ditching our drunken donner or burger or fried chicken for rye bread and organic hummus is fairly close to zero.
The point of the study is clearly to initiate a clampdown on the peddlers of poor hygiene, which is no doubt a good thing; I’m just not sure it will mean that much to the people it actually affects.
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