wonders of wifi

Isn't wifi amazing. Blogging on the ferry on the way to Ireland. First seven pints of Guinness already negotiated before we left Wales behind. Usual rituals under way. John is torturing himself by reading the Sunday Times Rich List. Willy is eating and drinking and socialising. I am being suave and sophisticated. If you've got it, flaunt it! Bring on the golf ... and the dancing girls. Let the games commence.

Tiger Woods

Ok so maybe I was a little harsh last night but honestly I'd just seen that latest Nike advert he's done. Sick-making. A concerned looking Eldrick (that's his real name you know, no wonder he doesn't bloody use it) appears on screen, mandatory Nike cap on head, with a voice-over of some words of his late (yes, dead) father. Utterly crass. Now he may have turned over a new leaf but if he doesn't know that this is awful he should get some new advisers.

Let us be clear, I happen to think he is the greatest golfer of all time. He is phenomenal. So what if he screws around. He's hardly the first. But he always had this carefully nurtured carapace of goodness, a sort of Zen Bhuddist bollocks. Both at the same time he managed to epitomise greatness in sport and its modern crassness.

As if to prove how remarkable he is, last night he ventured out for his first competitive game for almost half a year. And he was magnificent. Peter Alliss (not a great fan of him either since you ask) got it right in commentary - Woods has always been admired but not loved. What odds on him doing the Grand Slam this year? I'm going to Ladbrokes this afternoon.

... Is a Knob

Tiger Woods ... just that. I may return to this topic.

.... Are Brilliant

With the girls away I have been staying up late, not washing, eating irregularly and badly (by which I mean both poor nutrition and bad technique ie spillage) and listening to music whilst drinking beer. The following are brilliant:
Rilo Kiley (actually they are bloody brilliant)
City Boy (forget their only hit single the poppy 5705 and listen to the albums - now on iTunes)
MGMT (this is what I used to term 'when you're pissed music' - try it)
A confession of a guilty pleasure - Randy Edelman, but only Uptown Uptempo Woman. Cracking stuff.
Mott the Hoople.
Searching4Evidence (because the singer is big Willie's step-nephew)
Crime of the Century by Supertramp - this was our favourite 'when you're pissed music' when I was a juvenile student. Actually that may not be true because ...
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway - the last genuine Genesis album ie with Peter Gabriel on it. A double album with the requisite three sides of brilliance and a final side of wash-up. This analysis works for most good double albums in history. All sweeping generalisations are inaccurate apart from this one.
Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd but also the Scissor Sisters cover of it. Cover versions of great songs usually piss me off (Madonna - American Pie - what were you thinking?) but this one is so different it works.

And loads of other stuff. That's all folks.

Easter Project

They abandoned me. How could they do this to me? A wife and two daughters left me to stew in my own mess over the Easter weekend. Sharon and Helen buggered off to New York for retail therapy and Rachel, faced with the prospect of five days with her old man, understandably headed back to London to party with her mates. When faced with such loneliness a man needs a project and so I set myself the task of growing a beard. I have started this project several times before but never satisfactorily completed it. At precisely what stage does stubble become a proper beard? I still don't know the answer to this one because yesterday evening I shaved the mess off again. I like the first week of the process during which you think you look like Clint Eastwood in his spaghetti western days. Old women cross the road to avoid you and you feel vaguely hard. This gives way to an itchy phase during which you keep testing the softening bristles with your tongue and eventually get totally pissed off with it. I have never got much further than this, unless you count my fourth term at university (the first time round) when I think I went six weeks sporting atrocious bum-fluff. My old mate Peter (where are you now Pete - we had some good times) Mincher came down to London to stay with me (football international I expect) and told me I looked like a twat. I shaved it off. In my dotage maybe I will do the thing properly one day. A man is nothing without ambition.

Finishing with Rebecca

It sounds unbelievably pompous but it has taken me a couple of weeks to shed the skin of Maxim de Winter. If I feel like this after an extremely underdone four night run, what on earth do proper actors go through when they have finished a long run. I still go to sleep at night with my lines running through my head - why in that case couldn't I remember them when it mattered. There was a period in the build-up when I would have been delighted to be told it was all off. People say that always happens but I was quite genuine about it. I was shit scared I was going to make a complete arse of myself. As it is I achieved the anatomically unlikely feat of making a partial arse of myself. Making a buttock of oneself perhaps?