Day 476: I Am Astonished By Phil Collins

Regular readers will be aware that I have excellent taste in all things (fezzes, cakes, Facebook friends, small clay pipes, cockrings, etc). I also have particularly good taste in music, which is a fact so obvious that it requires neither proof nor substantiation.

It has thefore been a very tricky couple of days, marred by the horrible realisation that I know every single lyric of each of the following songs:

That's All (Genesis)
Turn It On Again (Genesis)
In Too Deep (Genesis)
Abacab (Genesis)
Follow Me, Follow You (Genesis)*

I even know exactly how the weird timing goes in Turn It On Again. You know, the "I ... I ... get so lonely when she's not there" bit. That fact alone makes me want to vomit into my own lap with shame.

In fact, so sure am I that I know it that I shouted "he got THAT wrong, the twat!" at the performance of a Genesis tribute band in France earlier this summer. (A Genesis tribute band who were, I am happy to tell you, staying at the house of my parents; apparently Tony Banks visited the keyboard player at home and in his honour, the keyboard player baked a keyboard made of biscuits; but that's another story.)

We were driving back from Quebec's fashionable Montreal earlier with a car full of carrots when a very good radio programme came on the radio, so we listened to it and commented on what a good radio programme it was. They played a bit of Against All Odds which merely served to increase my overall concern about my lyric-memory realising, as I did, that I also knew all the lyrics to that as well.

And here's the thing. If you think Collins is a twat, or if you are a Gabriel-era Genesis lover who holds Phil Collins personally responsible for making a band that were already quite embarrassing so embarrassing that admitting you know all the lyrics to Turn It On Again pales by comparison, you should listen to the radio programme too. It is about a woman who was dumped writing a love song. Collins gives her advice. You will also discover some astonishing information about his contribution to Genesis - and may end up quite liking him! (Or at least wanting to send him a birthday card, for reasons that will become clear.)

Here is the programme. It is called This American Life. The bit I am talking about starts about 5 minutes in, and it is a bit that somehow makes knowing all the lyrics to In Too Deep vaguely alright (if you like PCP).

* Genesis is not the only appalling one in my repertoire. You would be astonished. I know I am.

Day 475: I Beg For Urgent Cake Assistance

I must make a cake! It is a cake that they eat in the Canadia. It is called Queen Elizabeth Cake or Gâteau Reine-Élizabeth, if you are a French Canadian (or French, French-Belgian, French-Swiss, from a French colony, or a pretentious twat).

I had a bit of one once, taken from the plate (or should I say 'assiette'!!) of a French-Canadian self-haircutting pathologist. I have never had a sticky date pudding, but it tasted like I would imagine sticky date pudding would taste (if sticky date pudding exists), except with sweet coconut jizz on the top.

But I digress. Soon there is a birthday, and I must make Gâteau Reine-Élizabeth for the person whose birthday it is. I have found a recipe, but following last week's events involving a recipe for spotted dick, a squirt of what is known in the Netherlands as 'slagroom' and a passing Mexican, I am reluctant to put all my birthday cake eggs in one basket and use an untested internet recipe again.

What is more, extensive research (involving 'online research' for up to and including five minutes) 'throws up' a multitude of Queen Elizabeth Cake examples, each one slightly different:

Cake 1











Cake 2












Cake 3













Cake 4













Cake 5















Cake 6











What am I to do? Which is the most accurate? More importantly, who - and you will have to supply REALLY good evidence that your recipe has a solid provenance - can give me a recipe for this accursed cake that they know FOR A FACT is a) nice; and b) works?

There is no prize for it, just the pleasing knowledge that you have made a French-Canadian research pathologist very happy, and perhaps contributed towards supplying him with enough empty-calorie energy to cut the hair that is, even now, flowing down his manly back.

In the meantime, if you neither know nor care about recipes, do us a favour and let me know which of the cakes above you would most like to stick in your hot greedy mouth.



NB: Despite evidence suggested by the weirdly camp QE2 cupcake photograph filched off of Flickr, I believe the Queen Elizabeth in whose honour the cake was created was in fact Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, the now-dead suet-faced mother of our* current dear Queen.


* that's you too, Canada!!!

Day 473: I Wonder If I Really Do Have 202 Friends

Visual Device Representing Actual Breakdown Of The 202 Friends I Now Allegedly Have, According To Facebook

(Click on it. It'll get bigger, like a Magic Tree dipped in water.)


















In Other Facebook News

Stop the status updates about your children. Now.
345 pictures of yourself?
No, I do not want to be turned into a vampire.
Dan Brown?
Yes, I will play Scrabulous with you, but I will probably cheat.
I'm trying to find a really polite way of saying "who the fuck are you?"
Did you ask permission before you tagged me?
If I log in to Facebook more than twenty times a day, am I a twat?
I like you, but ... isn't the BlackBerry thing a bit ...
Look. I can draw a giant cock on your graffiti wall!
No, we're not related.

In Further Facebook News




And Finally, Some Gnomes: Here, as reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Day 470: I Am Given A Sign

I screech to a halt and fall from the car clutching my 'camera telephone'. I am preparing to take the photograph when a middle aged couple walk past and stop.

Lady: What are you doing?
Me: Taking a photograph of the sign.
Man: Why?
Me: I find it funny.
Lady: (As if she is a French Duchess and I am a cretin) What is funny about that sign?
Me: (Uncertainly) Nothing?
Man: Nowadays people take photographs of anything at all.*
Me: Yes.
Lady: Well, have a good day.
Me: Yes. You too. Goodbye.
Man to Lady:(Walking off) I think she was foreign.






And to think that this morning, I was going to give up my web-blog forever!


* Note: the conversation was in French, for I am in Quebec. What he actually said was "n'importe quoi", which is funnier.

Day 469: I Am Very Sad

All that effort on Wednesday night for no reason at all. I dressed up as Rick Wakeman and dipped thirty mini Mars bars in Ketamine (carefully re-sealing the packet afterwards), and how many 'local kiddies' came knocking? None, that's how many. I don't know why I bother. Ungrateful little shits.