SPLENDID MONKEY GALLERY: Picture 20

Regular readers will be aware of the work of Splendid Monkey Gallery, in which hopeful readers send their monkeys in for Assessment and Possible Inclusion in my magnificent online monkey art collection.

I am delighted to tell you that the New Year has started on an artistic high with the following monkeys, sent by the elusive Dr Forte under the thrilling subject title "Monkeys from Suffolk".

They were accompanied by A Mysterious Note:

"I think these are both lady monkeys.

Happy New Year

Dr F"

Happy New Year indeed!

















It only remains for me to say: Congratulations, Dr Forte!


NB: If YOU have submitted a monkey that has not Made It into Splendid Monkey Gallery, please re-submit him (or her) for re-consideration. It will have been an oversight rather than a Deliberate Exclusion, of that I can assure you.

Day 180: I Cry With Happiness

Press the "Play" button on this. It's two minutes long. It is very funny. There is a monkey and Johnny Vegas, and many packets of PG Tips.



This is good too.

And this: one of the original Monkey and Johnny Vegas ads for ITV Digital, which went tits-up.



Then there's these. The genius that is "Pets.com. Because pets can't drive." Irrelevant, other than they also feature an animal puppet. Oh, and I've only just found this ad after being sad enough to look for it for a long, long time.

Day 180: I Am Reduced To Tears By The Job Centre

Regular readers will be aware of my relationship with the Job Centre. It is important (they sign a form, I get my mortgage insurance back), but not vital (I do not need my Jobseekers' Allowance). However, it is rapidly (like the parking ticket from Hackney Council) becoming a relationship that continues as a matter of principle rather than necessity.

Job Centre Plus is staffed by people who cannot get jobs elsewhere, not even in factories pulling giblets out of chickens or washing carrots. People whose brains have been removed and replaced with fudge and cotton wool, who ask me if I've filled my forms in myself and stand chatting in clumps whilst The Unemployed gather in confused mounds. People who give you differing 'advice', depending on what time of day it is; whose only answer is another form; whose last resort is a quiet acknowledgement that "it's a miracle anything ever gets done".

Bearing in mind I paid enough income tax last year to keep most of London in Jobseeker's Allowance for the next ten years, I was overjoyed to receive the following letter this morning:

Dear NWM

YOUR CLAIM FOR JOBSEEKER'S ALLOWANCE

We cannot pay you jobseeker's allowance from 15 December 2005.

We cannot pay you because you have not paid, or been credited with, enough Class 1 National Insurance Contributions.

We have used the tax years ending 5 April 2004 and 5 April 2005 to assess your claim.

We may still credit you with Class 1 National Insurance contributions if you continue to attend the Jobcentre.


I don't cry much. I weep with frustration, or when someone succeeds on Faking It, or baby elephants die on the Attenborough programmes. I cried a bit last Saturday in a good-but-scary way. But the Job Centre makes me cry once a week. Either it's an hour spent filling out the wrong form and being spoken to as if I'm a cretin, or letters that make no sense, or conversations with midgets in wigs that mean Nothing and make no difference to anything at all, or letters like this that say 'no' for reasons you didn't think could possibly BE reasons, like "You cannot cross the road because THERE ARE NO ROADS", or "You cannot go to the hairdresser because YOU DO NOT HAVE A HEAD".

Perhaps Job Centres are the most democratic places of all. The more educated you are, the more compliant, the better you fill out your forms, the more employable you are, the more carefully-photocopied stuff you provide them with, the more polite you are, the more income tax and National Insurance you've paid over the years, and the fewer times you've claimed any kind of state benefit, the less likely you are to get it if you actually do need it and the more likely they are to make you weep with rage.

I think I'm turning right wing and middle-aged. And somehow, suddenly I don't care.

Day 179: I Resolve To Do Nothing Except Embrace The Miracle Of Knowledge

I will not speak of Resolutions for they are, on the whole, a Nonsense designed to make us squeal with Guilt. Today alone I have not done the work I was supposed to do, done my tax return, or called back one of my oldest and most-loved friends. I despise myself for these things, but it is unlikely that I will ever stop leaving things until the last minute or being mildly forgetful, however much it saddens me.

However, there is always room to Learn New Things and it is this small fact that keeps me going through the long winter months. This very afternoon, for example, I have been giving some Deep Thought what I have learnt in the last week.

Crows do not have hands

Barely credible, I know, but True as the Oxford Museum of Natural History said it in a sign.














Beavers Are Endlessly Inventive

A beaver will make a dam (or Lodge) out of any material he finds. Endlessly resourceful, Beaverish Structures can be made of sugar cubes stolen from Oxford Coffee Bars, or the detritus of a cream tea consumed in the coffee shop of the Natural History Museum in London.
























Birds Suffer From Flatulence
























The Head Of Andy Warhol Is Preserved For All Eternity In The Pitt-Rivers Museum In Oxford


























Michael Ball Is Still A Bit Of A Knobber

I can't hate him, because I don't think he's essentially evil (unlike, for example, Paul McKenna PhD or Sir Cliff of the Richard), but every time I see him I remember what Knobberdom looks like.








May 2007 be the year in which I learn from experience: you can shrink the head of an artist; animals and birds do things you would not expect; Ball is a bit of a knobber; New Year Resolutions are a waste of time; strange and glorious things happen when you do not expect them; the people that you love are worth looking after. Seems straightforward enough to me.

Day 178: I Show A Pathologist Around England

Heavens to Murgatroyd! My favourite self-haircutting Canadian pathologist arrives in the England and suddenly it turns into a theme park!

I have seen things in the last five days in Real Life that hitherto only existed in the Films and in free aeroplane magazines written by Austrians.

Policemen with Pointy Hats On

What is this? Policemen wear flat caps or body armour, not pointy hats! But we have seen three policemen wearing Ye Olde England Pointy Hats in the last week. (One of them I think was twirling a truncheon, but I cannot be sure.)


The Queen

I only think of the Queen in the context of the phrase beginning "come the revolution". However, this week she has been on the television and radio almost non-stop, as well as being on all the newspapers endlessly and without cease. (She has also been on our currency, but that was to be expected.) I am frankly surprised we didn't bump into her over the weekend.

Jam

I have six jars of jam. Two of them are marmalade; one of them is French; the other three are Tiptree. This is not normal.

Tea

"It's complete nonsense, this thing about the English and tea", I say, looking in my kitchen cupboard. "It's a myth, this apparent obsession of ours." Before me I see:

PG Tips
Twinings English Breakfast
Twinings Lapsang Suchong
Sainsburys Decaf Earl Grey
Twinings Organic Peppermint
Sainsburys Jasmine Green Tea
Birt&Tang Ginger Tea.

No, we never drink tea. Ever.

A Wedding

Despite the wedding of my best friend being in Shoreditch and quite 'fashionable', my Colonial friend was able to enjoy:

- the best man making jokes about the groom being gay
- poo jokes
- sausage and mash in a box
- fish and chips in a box
- ladies in hats and Other Headware (e.g., feathers)
- drunkenness
- dancing to E.L.O.
- reference to what the groom did in the dormitory at school.

CAMRA Pamphlet

Much as I admire the work of CAMRA in keeping facial hair and Hush Puppies at the heart of British culture, it is not normal to go into a pub and find a CAMRA leaflet on the table. It is also not normal to open the leaflet at the following paragraph:

"I met Caroline and Alan at Cheltenham Royal Well bus station and caught the 10.30 Castleways 606 service to Winchcombe. The bus stops conveniently right outside the Corner Cupboard Inn. The first pint of the day was one of my favourites, Stanney Bitter. On leaving we walked down Harveys Lane to the footpath leading to Langley Hill, stopping at the top to take in the splendid views on this warm sunny late summer day ... After we finished our drinks... it was another pleasant work to Beckford Church to rendezvous with the 15.19 Midland Red service to Tewkesbury."

Country Folk

Obviously every time you drive along a lane in the English countryside you see a man wearing breeches, leaning on a shooting stick and wearing a tweed cap and waistcoat. Of course you do. Every time.

A hunt

In much the same way, every time you drive along a road in the English countryside you are nearly mown down by a woman in a top hat, a man wearing a pink coat and a child in a hacking jacket, astride enormous horses (and a pony). Then you look to the left and see many horses and riders dotted about the place, suggesting that a fox has been Found in a Copse. Then some people gallop off, and some muddy Range Rovers follow them.

A Cottage

I had chosen a Tiny Cottage in the Cotwolds for New Year claiming, as I did, that the Cotswolds would be good "because they are what foreigners think England is like". Little did I know that it would be extravagantly and cinematically English! Freezing floors, no hot water, not enough logs and ducks in a pond at the end of a garden. And an extremely comfortable bed, which is apparently a Feature of English Beds, but not one that I was aware of!

Tea at 4

One of my oldest friends happens to live in an eighteenth century converted stable across the courtyard from a sixteenth century manor house. He also happened to have, when we arrived, teacakes and scones. Which we ate for tea. With a cup of tea. Which of course the English never drink. And nor is tea a "meal" we ever have.

A black cab

We take a cab. The driver is friendly and Chatty! He chirrups in a friendly manner at the delicious Pathologist in a cock-er-nee stylee. The Pathologist understands not one word, apart from (perhaps) "guv".

A curry

It is in Tooting and Fucking Brilliant. In this, it is unlike most other curries in the England.

A Pub Lunch

On the menu are fish and chips and steak and kidney pie.

Natural History Museum(s)

The Natural History Museums of both Oxford and London contained exhibits that were older than Canada itself, including a squirrel that died 219 years ago and a stuffed badger.

In the Natural History Museum in London they had cream tea. We sat underneath William Morris tiles and I tried to explain where Cornwall and Devon were, how they argue about who invented scones with cream and jam on, and how one county says you put the jam on first and the other says you put the cream on first. Then we saw a wooden tiger attacking a man, and some lights that went up and down and made noises in a Victorian courtyard.


Now the Pathologist is gone, and England has lost its lustre. As an inevitable consequence, I am wearing my brushed cotton pyjamas, drinking dry sherry and thinking of going to bed with C S Lewis and a cup of warm milk. But first I must watch EastEnders, put my milk bottles out on the doorstep and turn off Radio 4.