AND ANOTHER THING...
I am having serious problems with the Teletubbies. Reuben will stand watching them from his playpen, leaning on the top rail with his chin on his arm, grinning for upwards of 15, even 20 minutes at a time. We are able to get dressed, make beds, wash up, sit down on chairs & do nothing during his Teletubby sessions. The other morning I did all of those things & read three pages of a newspaper before he emerged blinking from TT catatonia & demanded some brief interaction with the real world.
Of course, we only have ourselves to blame. We brought this insidious narcotic into the house in the first place & we have simply stood (or sat) by while it has worked its dreadful magic. That witless banjo tune kicks off every morning; the gurgling of that wretched baby-in-the-sun follows me down the corridor to the bathroom; the sound of those scary aliens-on-helium voices mangling basic English is the aural backdrop to breakfast.
When eventually I have to enter the room in which the rituals are being enacted, my blood pressure climbs & the red mist descends. What, I ask myself out loud, could induce a grown man or woman to climb inside those nylon & sponge suits & then, under direction from someone presumably not dressed as a sea anemone, proceed to behave like a complete horse’s arse? Either they are paid salaries in six figures & work under pledges of total anonymity or they are miserable, broken souls, whose thespian ambitions have been dashed by drink, drugs or heartbreak & who are now reduced to this pitiful fate. If it’s the former then I have to assume that even their closest family have no idea what profession it is that purchased the Lear jet, the Hummer & the beachside mansion in the Seychelles. “I work for the government. Enough said”, Dad murmurs with an enigmatic smile when little Jason or Jade asks the question. If it’s the latter – well, you’ve got to stump up some compassion from somewhere. But surely to God there are limits. Wasn’t begging in the streets ever considered as a decent alternative?
Tomorrow they’ll be back. Reuben will be lounging against the side of his playpen thinking that entertainment doesn’t get much better than this. And I shall be hunched over a bowl of cereal entertaining increasingly diseased fantasies that would cause the most ardent member of the National Rifle Association to forswear forever the use of arms.
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Ex-Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has revealed in a just-published book that Tony Blair admitted to him shortly before the invasion of Iraq that he didn’t believe that Saddam Hussein did, in fact, have the capability to launch WMD within 45 minutes. If this is true then Tony Blair is a liar. And if he is a liar of that order of magnitude then his offence is impeachable.
But there is, of course, no proof nor never will be. But more disturbingly there are signs now that the falsehood outrage line has been crossed &, where only months ago there was a wave of almost unprecedented moral outrage amongst voters of every political shade in the spectrum, today there is the fast-spreading virus of utter cynicism. There appears now to be a sort of quietist acceptance of the fact that politicians will lie & lie again & that it’s a fact of life like death & taxes. There is even a bizarre dark glamour that attaches to he who can lie biggest & best & actually carry it off for a while.
Well, if Cook is right & somehow the truth emerges, Tony Blair will have to forego the Nobel Prize & settle for the Josef Goebbels Excellence in Mendacity Award instead.
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Someone close to retirement, sitting in a small, overheated office somewhere, worked this one out whilst chewing the end off his ballpoint.
There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra than Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2020, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.
A chilling thought, my middle-aged brothers & sisters…
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1:40:38 AM 
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