If you want to go anywhere in a hurry London Underground can be relied on to FUCK it up for you

Bastards.

Southern-shitty-bastards-Trains were late this morning as bloody usual. To add insult to injury I had to sit across from Ugly Man. He looks like one of The Proclaimers' less attractive brothers who has the added extra of having a gob which hangs open in a particularly gormless manner.

I averted my eyes and looked out of the window at the dinosaurs, like I do every morning. I like to look at them every morning as I sit with my newspaper and my flask of tea. One of them has a fiberglass head. A bomb blew its concrete head off during the Second World War.

So then two ugly people got on the train at the next stop and proceeded to slobber over each other for the rest of the journey. I hope they don't breed as the results would be horrendous.

Then the bloody overpriced-ram packed-shite-tube was buggered as usual and I got into work 20 minutes late. The arseholes.

I was looking forward to going to an organised walk around Crystal Palace tonight. Its the anniversary of when the Crystal Palace burned down and we had to convene at the Parade with a torch before our wander around the park. Here we would be told all about that night and hopefully also about the ghost who inhabits the train tunnel. She was one of the people killed in the train crash. She was on the little toy train which shuttled people from the station to the Crystal Palace. Story goes that they didn't bother getting the bodies out - they just filled up each end of the tunnel and left them entombed there.

Because it has been raining non-stop for about 3 days I wore my wellies to work. I wasn't the only one I can assure you. Linda wore hers and spent the day in little pumps, Lisa wore hers and spent the day wearing what I appeared to be Christmas socks and I wore the old birkenstocks that I wear around the house. My wellies are pretty special though. I think they look like SuperHero boots, P thinks they look like Spaceman boots and Ruth at work said they looked like I would be able to walk through radioactive matter in them. See:

So in order to get to this evening all about one of my Special Interests I left work BANG on time (even though I arrived late) and what do you know the Jubilee Line was fucked. It took 30 minutes to get onto the platform. They (London Underground) can't manage to design a station which is only about 10 years and specifically has to deal with thousands of people every day. Idiots. Its more congested than the crumbling old stations which are a hundred years old and only had 3 passengers a year. So I missed my train. Which meant I wouldn't have time to go home, drop my bag off (which contained my swizzy new digital SLR which arrived at work today and I wasn't going to take to the park with me), put on my thermal socks and grab my torch. In fact I wouldn't have even had time to have gone straight there. The later train I did manage to get had two more ugly people slobbering all over each other and I was also subjected to a conversation of complete drivel carried out two dweebs.

AND getting out of Crystal Palace Train Station in the evening is a nightmare. The train empties its bowels onto the platform and everyone has to walk UP 40 stairs, ALONG a walkway, DOWN 40 stairs, ALONG another walkway and UP 70 stairs (or something like that). Then there are only 2 turnstiles for a hundred people to exit from. The sooner they knock the station down the better Grade-2-Listed-or-not. The toy train station at Chigley is bigger. You know the one that goes from The Hall to the Biscuit Factory. I always found it really quite odd that the Biscuit Factory workers have a barn dance after work each night and was very disappointed when I found real life isn't like that. Although you do get a Christmas Party once a year.

So I am not going out tonight. I am gong to eat steak, drink beer and watch the tv. And if that bastard upstairs doesn't turn his tv down I am going to go up there and turn the volume down for him with the aid of my 2lb mallet I bought for the express purpose of smashing down the hideous fitted wardrobes which used to be in my bedroom.

HAA-rrrrrruph!

Birthdays Come But Once a Year

And Sock Monkey's birthday was yesterday!

In honour of the momentous occasion Sock Monkey and P took the day off work (so it wouldn't be ruined) and went out for the afternoon.

After the present presentation we went into town and had Tapas for lunch (where I managed to throw my glass of not-even-sipped-at beer all over the floor in an incident involving bread - don't ask) then we visited Sacred Made Real at the National Gallery. This is is an exhibition of Spanish painting and Sculpture from 1600-1700. Sock Monkey is very fond of religious art. And the creepier the better, that's what I say.

My favourites were the statues rather then the paintings although I did like this (points right) mainly because she reminded me of the lady at the start of a Columbia Pictures film.

I was interested to discover that the statues are actually several planks of wood which are joined together rather than one piece of solid wood. The head and hands tend to be solid and the rest is hollowed-out to make them easier to carry when they are being paraded through the town during religious festivals. The correct term for them is 'Polychrome Sculpture'. And another intriguing fact is that whilst the scultpor carved them he was absolutely forbidden to colour them in and so a painter was then brought in to finish them off so to speak. This was called 'Encarnation' which literally means 'bringing to life'.

Here are more of my favourites:

Ecce Homo by Gregorio Fernandez before 1621

(this is about as tall as me)

Dead Christ also by Gregorio Fernandez about 1625-30

(world famous and on some of those lists of Things You Must See)

Christ as the Man of Sorrows by Pedro de Mena 1673

After this we had a little bimble around the National which, I discovered, is stuffed with Religious Icon Art. This Pleased Sock Monkey as I love Icons (I have two at home) and I've only ever seen dismal old Dutch Masters in the National. A return trip is planned.

After our Religious experience we went for a steam, sauna and swim. We were therefore cleansed inside and out. Not for long though because as soon as we left the gym we had a cigarette and decided to avoid rush hour by having ONE drink then going home.

P decided that we should go to a very ornately decorated cocktail bar in Piccadilly Circus (as we happened to be walking past). Here she presented me with champagne cocktail to celebrate me being even older than I was the day before.

After we finished our champagne we decided that it was still a bit busy outside so would stay out longer but go elsewhere. So we trundelled along to Freedom Bar for more cocktails. This is where we started off that night we ended up singing karaoke in the O Bar...

So about 16 gallons of margarita later (P stuck to various champagne cocktails) we moved on to G-A-Y Bar. God knows why - we are about 25 years older than everyone else. Aren't young people ('yooths') skinny?

At approximately 10pm P announced that she absolutely had to have something to eat so we went to Balans. Sock Monkey ordered an all day breakfast but had a lot of difficulty eating it because it was making me feel a bit ikky (it wasn't the tequila or the Smirnoff Ice you understand) and so after nibbling at a bit of bacon and sampling the sausage I basically turned it into just beans on toast. I did however become most fascinated by a mushroom which looked like a piece of steak. As I was dissecting it I managed to propel my toast across the room. So that was two bread incidents in one day.

We then sat outside to enjoy the charm of Old Compton Street where we got talking to a young boy at the next table who P insisted was a Rent Boy.

Then we got a taxi home. Arrived back at Sock Monkey Mansions at midnight. When I got up this morning I didn't look like I had had a steam/sauna/swim. I appeared to have rabbit's eyes.

Tonight I'd quite like to go to bed early but I'm meeting a load of friends for dinner. Told P I was going to have a starter, a sip of water and be in bed by 8. She said "lol ok that's what you think."

A most satisfactory birthday indeed!