And a Chappy Chanukah to you, choney.

Merriment all around, and Mrs Pouncer has pushed off. Which aspect of Yulish horror was the last straw, one wonders? And is there an English cliche more hackneyed than "last straw"? It's a good cliche, though. When I cast off a particular aspect of my job, it really was a last straw that pushed me over the edge: it was trivial, compared to the series of bastardries that had been inflicted on me, and something snapped.

Good god, the most accurate way of describing my life is via cliche. I shall drink port. Warre's '63, I think.

Bristol fashion

This is a curious town. Recently work has been bringing me here; downtown many of the buildings are very beautiful, in a way that I lack the technical language to express, but next to them are hideous, ghastly, abominable concrete hulks from the sixties, so horrible that they've been abandoned but not, alas, demolished. I stay in an attractive modern building in an otherwise seedy area; trust me, I know seedy, having lived in the West Village in the mid 80's, in an unattractive unmodern building. The most beautiful thing is the river and the way it drapes the city, but they really need to get rid of the concrete.

Real life intrusion

A colleague has just had a book published. Well, it's his in some extended sense; it's a sort of encyclopaedia of which he is the main editor, but he's making a tremendous fuss of telling the world about it and inviting them to the launch party. This poses a problem. No, not that one, I'm not consumed with envy; it's quite the opposite, I'm thrilled: the book's terrible. Long, long-winded, yet vacuous, it's supposed to be useful to anyone, professional or amateur, who wants to find out what's going on in the subject, either in general or in specifics. But it's so bad that I can't imagine anyone learning anything from it. So: what do I say to him that does not totally reveal my true opinion? The etiquette books are silent on this point. 

Literary endeavours

Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.

Since the rise of the environmental movement, Chomsky's "green ideas dream furiously" has lost its perfection as a meaningless sentence that is correct in grammar and syntax. But this is a wonderful replacement. On top of that it is a perfect palindrome, which makes it just superlative. OK, there are other palindromes, too many and too boring to enumerate, but this one is great, a magnificent achievement, as perfect as one of Michaelangelo's sculptures or Gauss' theorems, if not on the same scale. Hats off to its creator, or creators, who, according to Google, is or are anonymous. 

How did they do it? Inspiration? Hard work? Or with a search algorithm? A really clever algorithm, if it was that, too clever to be plausible. The simplest explanation is that it is a work of art, and a sublime one.

Update: alert reader Ms Scarlet points out a dropped aspirate in the label: eroicus was indeed wrong. I shall borrow Arlington Hynes' spellcheck in future.

Updated update: and there shouldn't be an et there. As any fule kno.

My most embarrassing record

is that I was arrested sooner than anyone else (3 weeks) my first year at university. For stealing a traffic cone. So unimaginative, I cringe still.

Tough guy

"Daddy, can you make me pancakes? Please?" Huh? Never had this before. At this time of the evening (8-30, dinner was ages ago) she often wants cereal or porridge, which are easy. Pancakes are trickier, because the effing whisk devotes its contemptible existence to hiding from me. Sometimes behind the dogfood, sometimes not.

"Tell you what, I'll make you pancakes after you've finished your homework, walked your dog and practiced your clarinet."

"I've done all that, so will you make pancakes?"

["Since your negotiating position is now so lousy, why should I?"] "Oh, OK then." 

God, I'm such a wimp.

More help wanted

Mme Inkspot's birthday approaches. Yes, I do know what to get her, because she's told me: Black Orchid, by Tom Ford. (Duh, it's a perfume.) But frantic googling (is there any other kind?) reveals the existence of two sub-species: Voile de Fleur, and, well, it seems to be Not Voile de Fleur. FFS, which do I choose? Look, I'm used to parfum vs. eau de parfum vs. eau de toilette, but why must these manufacturers, sorry, parfumeurs or whatever, have to make a chap's life even harder? Especially as it's chaps who buy so much of their stuff; it's not in their interests to make us think, sod this for a game of soldiers, I'll get her a welding torch. Nor ours, come to that.

Update: further googling has contradicted the first googling: Voile de Fleur is not a sub-species of Black Orchid. Phew.

I am sure the world needed re-assurance on this point.