Malocchi

My company respects the many varieties of Ruthenian public holiday, and the recent four-day Feast of St Trjaxodjev gave me a chance to catch up with the recordings made by my domestic closed-circuit television security system.

The recording of our daughter Arianrhod's room solved the mystery of the whereabout of my father's Luger, and the two cameras mounted in the potting shed provided me with more information that sanity allows about No Good Boyo's morning ablutions - information that I am happy to share.

On surfacing from the remoulade of breasts and megalomania that is his subconscious, Boyo's first act is to grasp the shifting contents of his underpants - assuming gravity, decay or rodents had not already disposed of such garments.

I postponed discussion of this matter until a few moments before Boyo was about to address the Caversham Conservative Association. He seemed genuinely surprised and confused, until I recalled that this is his default reaction to anything I say.

"It's primæval behaviour," I remarked.

"Ta, love!" he beamed, proudly wresting the microphone from my hand.

This need for reassurance that one's lower depths are intact is clearly a male instinct - like lying, inept concealment, blondes and recourse to drink.

Cardinals fearful of Pio Nono's Evil Eye would shield their privates in his Papal presence, while cricketers and "rap" genre singers like Mr 50 Cent continue the practice to this day, albeit with less reticence.

During the "questions from the floor" session after his address to the local Tories, Boyo eventually agreed with my insistent inquiries as to whether he called those pallid parts his "crown jewels".

The mood of the meeting was with me when I urged him for the sake of the Monarchy to reclassify them as "state secrets".

Cinema of Cruelty I

One of Boyo's imaginary cybershades, I forget which, asked me to compile a list of twelve films of personal significance to me. There are, naturally, no such films.

I am happy, however, to share a few flickering images of cultural decay that have caused the corners of my vermillion lips or eyes to twitch on rare occasions.

1. Cold Comfort Farm

Boyo waits until I'm at peace with the world, usually after a successful morning of supervising the evacuation of one of his sheds, before suggesting that we should visit his relatives in Wales.

I keep a copy of John Schlesinger's film at hand to remind myself of why Offa's Dyke was built and is still maintained. The book may not be set in Wales, but that wrinkled little country keeps its spirit alive (see photograph above).

2. L'année dernière à Marienbad

"Tels ils marchaient dans les avoines folles,
Et la nuit seule entendit leurs paroles".

I passed the "French nonsense" section of my International Baccalaureate with an essay positing that the Resnais/Robbe-Grillet film is a meditation on Verlaine's "Colloque Sentimental".

In fact I like it because it reminds me of my childhood family holidays.



3. Gorod Zero (Zero Town)

Mechanical tyrants, random nudity, roads that lead nowhere, both rock and roll, pools of water, suicidal cooking - this late Soviet offering is a reminder of what that Bolshevik shambles was like. It is also an approximation of Boyo's idea of a decent party.




4. El ángel exterminador

In this film Buñuel approximates my idea of a decent party.



I shall suggest a few more accompaniments to a cosy night in when it occurs to me.

Very heavy, Switzerland

Boyo has annoyed some very powerful people, so Arianrhod and I are enjoying a girly Bank Holiday at home - filing nails, attaching them to the wheels of the tricycle, etc.

I glanced through the Radio Times - a publication Boyo says he subscribes to for the Radio 3 listings, much as Americans read Playboy for the John Updike interviews.

I found a preview of "Mutual Friends" another BBC "comedy drama" about the mid-life crisis of mid-Brit people - boney, grinning men and flat-faced blondes.

"How do you embrace your mid-life crisis?" asks the chirpy accompanying article.

"Reluctantly, and only after he's showered," I thought.

Then I laughed.

An Occurrence At Malmesbury Bridge

No Good Boyo was very excited when I proposed a romantic weekend break in the Cotswolds. His enthusiasm wavered on the morning of departure when I said I was coming along too, but he still managed to negotiate the M4 through his tears.

It was the turn of my heart to sink on our arrival at a rectory that had been converted into an hotel, and not only because the nearby church had not undergone a similar fate. Boyo pointed to the welcome note in our room and sniggered: "Dogs are welcome".

Just as his father believes hedgehogs can sing if you tickle their bellies, Boyo is convinced that the English invented the country hotel for the exclusive pursuit of coitus with canines. He cites fellow Celt GB Shaw to the effect that all the Englishman's pastimes bar gambling and smoking can be shared with a dog.

The result is that he spends our every weekend away in speculating on which of our guests wants, as he puts it, to "canoodle with the poodle".

I chose not to join in, and reflected instead on comments by Gadjo Dilo and Kevin Musgrove - the Brains Trust of Boyo's circle of little electro-friends - on the ephemerality of life.

In brief, Gadjo had an antiquated relative who held that the world might have ended in about 1918. Kevin opined that this may have been true, and that all of our subsequent existence is a group delusion.

This ties in with my view that Boyo and his web-fellows are merely projections one of the other. The thought that we are in fact all but the dying dream of Europa is a comfort to the Spengler Within. Bolshevism, television, congés payés - all a passing nightmare.

If enough bloggers state this "simultaneously and at the same time", as the Welsh have it, will the world awaken from its slumber and finally die?

A consoling thought to get you through many a bad night.

Im Anfang war die Tat

There's a surprisingly lucid discussion in Gadjo Dilo's Transylvanian keep about tautology.

The issue seems to be whether such verbal redundancy is a sign of ignorance or the sort of speech defect that my father used to cure with a Lada battery and a gasmask.

No Good Boyo and his compatriot Sioba Siencyn - a professional moss-gatherer, I believe - have claimed a particular school of tautology for their pixie patrimony.

These "Welshisms", as they call them during mercifully infrequent forays into English, are marked by a florid declamatory style, often involving auxesis.

Examples they have shared with me include:

a police officer on the Radio 4 "Today" programme saying that the then-flooded village of Crickhowell was "an island, an island surrounded by water";

Mervyn Johns in the film Dead of Night referring to "a nightmare of horror";

another Welsh film character at some point bewailing a "hollow mockery"; and

a Cambrian colleague of Boyo's once causing a mass choking fit in London curryhouse by mentioning a "diametrically opposed opposite".

Anyone who has found themselves suddenly overwhelmed by a Welsh social gathering will notice that repetition is a national identifier both in speech and clothing - belts worn with braces (meaning "suspenders" for my American readers - Welsh denistry is a stranger to tools other than the pick and shovel) , cardigans with jackets and, among the ladies, wigs with hats.

The question to my mind is this: are these true tautological statements, or simply the cotton-gin mechanisms of the Welsh language as applied to the sleek machinery of modern English?

Ход коня

I am a grown woman. I do not make my own clothes, I buy them. I have a haidresser, not a piece of netting. I believe all religion is pernicious, not only Christianity. In short, I do not read The Guardian newspaper. I do, however, have colleagues with an interest in shamanism who examine its entrails.

They recently extracted a review of apocalytic film scenarios and the realistic expectation of surviving them from the ironically entitled Guide section. In part, it treated the modalities of coping with an invasion by aliens, concluding that they were negligible. I appreciated the endearing tautology, and brought the findings to the attention of No Good Boyo.

Boyo is an afficionado of science fiction, as veteran readers will know only too well. Last night, in his interregnum of relative lucidity between monkey-juice refill No.3 and sleep, I summarised the findings of the Guardian article.

My hope was that he would abandon his fascination with fantasy and apply his pulpy mind to philosophy, child-husbandry and the 'cello.

Boyo scanned the article from his perch on the space hopper, and delivered the following response. (I have it verbatim as I record all our conversations at the urging of my lawyers).

"Fair enough, if they was insects or them lizards. But what if they was all like Valerie Leon out of 'Blood From the Mummy's Tomb', 'Revenge of the Pink Panther' and the 'Carry Ons'? Millions of them, eh? So they enslaves us like this English says, but what if what they wants is to feed on our seed, orally? Don't worry, I'd cope love. Ffyc knows what you birds would do though but. Ha ha Polly Toynbee funnel [remainder indistinct]."

Boyo's operatic ability to see light at the end of the existential tunnel almost warms my heart, and reminds me that the mind of the male is best not understood but simply observed for its curio value.

Courte haleine

Boyo's joy at having 14 Welsh readers with fingers narrow enough to hit a computer key at a time has set me to thinking about other indices of male inadequacy.

Music is a good measure of whether your companion for the evening stands much chance of remaining at liberty by breakfast.

Adepts of heavy metal are hopeless. The lyrics rush to rhyme before the end of the first line - "Take your daughters to the slaughter", "Thunder across the tundra" - and are invariably faibles.

Jazz is always promising. Shklovsky noted that there are few plot devices, and the same applies to melodies. The ability of beboppers to riff off the most basic standards bodes well for their imagination in other departments.

What music does No Good Boyo like? I hear you ask.

He likes brass bands.