Es Gibt Keine Alternative

A belated Valentine from Boyo, ready for my 2010 election campaign.

Un cœur simple

It is easy and rewarding to jeer at No Good Boyo, especially now that bear-rolling has been outlawed in Ukraine, but he does have some noble qualities.

One is his conviction of that everything he has ever done is a pleasure to behold, and an honour if he did it to you.

Earlier this week I finally managed to translate his college diary, with the help of the Welsh Academy's daunting dictionary and by asking Boyo what it all meant during his evening appreciation of Voskoboynykiv's latest vat of monkey juice.

I read that two of his college conquests subsequently "became" lesbians and joined convents. Now Boyo's tastes in the érotique are catholic rather than Catholic, and he has little time for the "nuns with guns" sub-genre, so we can assume that all he wrote was true.

I asked him how it felt to know that one boudoir encounter with him was enough to make two young women realise not only that they are homosexual but also that a life of prayerful chastity is the only way to regain their self-worth.

Boyo was watching John Carpenter's The Fog, a film that he maintains is a witty deconstruction of Conquista myths. But then he also thinks leprosy is caused by "too much rabbits". He paused in his viewing, focused on my shoulder and delivered himself of the opinion that:

"One night with me and they both knew no ordinary man would ever be enough. So they dyked up and went to try out some nuns. Makes sense, innit?"

I said nothing. Perhaps he felt he had been a little crass, as he added:

"It was separate nights, not both of them together. Though that would have explained where they got the idea from, mind."

A slot on Radio 4's Thought For The Day beckons.

The force that through the green fuse...

An excited but mercifully clothed No Good Boyo waved The Sunday Times at me in the afternoon.

He'd got round to reading a review of ageing actress Carrie Fisher's new book "Wishful Drinking" - a title designed not only to catch but firmly restrain his attention.

Boyo has admired Ms Fisher's work since being loaned a video tape of "The Return of the Jedi", a children's adventure film in which she sports a brass bikini and chain. As I recall he fast-forwarded to the relevant scene, watched it three times, then wrote Ms Fisher the letter that still has him debarred from entering the United States under his real name.

"Carrie done a course on electroconvulsive therapy, so I'll do the same!" he declared. "It's time I studied a science. I'll see you when I finished. Ciao for now!"

And off he went. As the daughter of an officially-sanctioned mad scientist I could only applaud his enthusiasm.

Intrigued, I flicked through the review of Ms Fisher's book. "Ah, a course of electroconvulsive therapy," I noted, reminding myself to check the back-up generator before retiring for a peaceful night.

One Step Forwards, Two Steps Back

To mark the anniversary of the dispersal of the Russian Constituent Assembly by weary but armed proletarians in 1918, No Good Boyo and I like to exchange gifts as a sign of our reciprocal respect for me.

Each year we take turns in presenting a gift to our daughter Arianrhod. Two years ago I left Boyo to his own devices, and have rued doing so with every blast on the little mite's specially-adapted Alpenhorn.

This year I suggested the distance-adoption of an animal. This would sidestep looming demands for a neglected pet of our own, and go a little way to overcome my regret at not applying for that job running donkey sanctuaries in one of the more inbred parts of England.

Imagine my delight when Boyo announced that he had adopted a Bengal tiger on Arianrhod's behalf, via the admirably unsentimental World Wildlife Fund.

With much less effort one can also imagine my reaction when Boyo wrote to the Fund asking whether for an extra "tenner" Arianrhod would have "first crack" at the said tiger when she reached "blooding age".

"A rug! A rug!" squealed my daughter on receipt of a photographic print of the beast.

The Sun may have set on the British Empire, but the occasional shadow still flits across my conservatory.

The Long March

The anarcho-syndicalist meeting had failed to convene, as usual, so I was home a little early last night.

"Yoo-hoo Boyo, it's me!" I cooed.

"Begone woman, I am at stool!" barked my beau.

I knew better than to interrupt what might be a prolonged and gruesome process, as this would only make things worse.

As I released the traps and tenderised Arianrhod's dinner, I dwelt upon the dialectical significance of what sounded like a brass band being savaged by seagulls in our bathroom.

Boyo has introduced his readers to the concept of the gosha. He failed, through the inherent contradictions of his being a man, to explain to womankind how the gosha is to be handled.

Common sense would suggest industrial gauntlets and fishing nets, but it is more a question of time than space.

Once an idea has taken root in the alkaline mulch of a gosha's mind, a woman must have the strength and patience to let it go to seed at its own pace. To try to train it into a more pleasing shape or, worse, to prune or uproot it, would drive the bravest Amazon into the apathetic rot of liberalism.

Boyo has shown little Marxisant enthusiasm for the impending downfall of Capitalism, and is busy with plans to make money. After a few canteens of Voskoboynykiv's jus de singe, he likes to "run his thoughts past me" in the hope that some might escape. I give some examples.

1. Alien-themed restaurant. Attentive readers will know that Boyo thinks all wisdom can be gleaned from repeated and drunken viewing of the films Animal House and Withnail & I. It is not so widely understood that he treats the Alien film franchise as a sort of apocrypha - not as canonical as the thoughts of imaginary frat boys and fey thespians, but nonetheless endowed with arete.

His latest idea is to deck out a restaurant like an Alien tabernacle (yes, including the minor prophets of the Alien vs Predator series), and have diners encased inside the food. They then have to eat their way out - either by climbing out of the top in the manner of the Alien "face hugger" or by burrowing out of the side like the "chest burster".

I could mention hygiene regulations. I could allude to the cost of the mountains of meat involved. I could refer to dry cleaning, as if those words meant anything to him. But I do not.

2. "Eat Like An Animal". Do you see a theme here? This brainwave predicates a television quiz show involving Lady Antonia Fraser as a contestant for reasons I don't like to speculate about.

Each victim is given a plate of food and an animal. They then have to eat the dish in the manner of the beast alongside them. The creature then "shows" them how it should be done, to the delight and edification of the audience in the studio and at home.

"This will teach the people of Britain humility before the diversity and dexterity of the Animal Kingdom," slurred Boyo over his plate of offal. "Imagine Lady Antonia or that Yasmin Alibhai-Brown trying to eat a trifle like an amœba? I can!"

I smiled brightly. I could have drawn his attention to the Food Standards Agency, the RSPCA, Harold Pinter, Heaven of Heavens and other likely opponents of his plan, but chose not to.

Boyo has other schemes, many more gauche and alarming than these. I shall pass over them in silence, knowing as I do that male indolence, grandiloquence and life-saving stupidity will overcome random enthusiasm.

Allow me to employ the techniques of multimedia to illustrate my point. I consider the Channel 4 comedy Father Ted to be a protean guide to understanding the male psyche, if such were ever to exist.

In an early episode, Father Jack Hackett is seen cavorting in some undergrowth. A policeman offers to shot him with a tranquiliser dart. Father Ted stays the Guard's hand. "No, let him go," says the clerical reactionary, "he'll make his own way back."

My thoughts exactly.

You may study the exchange at 58" on this clip:

Ansichtskartenspiel

No Good Boyo escorted myself and Arianrhod to our local commemoration of an English backyard auto-de-fé last night, at which pink-faced plumbers ate pork products as their children danced around a bonfire. It looked like any given Saturday night in the High Carpathians to me.

Boyo was intrigued to see that our neighbour's wife had broken her leg. "Does that mean you're housebound and unable to run fast?" he asked politely.

We returned home shortly afterwards for a variety of closely-linked reasons.

Boyo sought to comfort me with an offer to have the choice moments of my web blog published in book form. "The postcard format is making a comeback," he explained.

I laughed until he'd stopped crying.

November Theses

Constant reader Gyppo Byard has asked me to list six random things about myself. I regret to say that he did not ask me exclusively, but rather mentioned me in a list of his fellow cyberdrones. I will nonetheless give a response:

1. The most random thing in my life is No Good Boyo. Partner, chauffeur, unwitting food-taster and guerrilla gardener, he seems to leach logic and consequence out of everyday events.

2. I am a follower of the dialectic, but cannot match it in relentlessness. Sometimes I like to relax at our family's ruined laboratory in the Carpathians with a pile of Will Self novels on a nice warm pyre.

3. Boyo is my married name. My maiden name is one of the most widely-defaced on the cartouches of 18th Dynasty tombs

4. My father says I was conceived ("if that's the word") one heady night in celebration of the Soviet correction of the "Prague Spring" rightist deviation in both Czecho and Slovakia - a full year before that fraternal intervention occurred.

5. A border guard dog was named after me on the Uzh section of the frontier.

The circumstances that led up to this honour were the subject of my primary school essay "How Many Objective Banderites I Found Hiding in Bushes in the Closed Border Zone During My Summer Holidays With Comrade Uncle Colonel Jajcabiy", which won the Menzhinsky Prize for the under-sevens.

6. During work-experience with the People's Militia information dispersal department, I suggested expelling Esperantists from the state youth movement.

The reason I gave was that our tolerance of Esperanto was making the Socialist Bloc look like a haven for the mentally underequipped rather than a Vanguard of Progress. In fact I was rather taken with Volapük at the time - the original Schleyer version, not the infantile De Jong revision. I admired its purity.

If the organs had taken my advice, the Warsaw Pact might still be intact.

The rules suggest that I should to pass on these "meme" to six others. I shall do nothing of the kind. Instead I ask that my readers should try to think of six non-random elements to their daily lives. And meditate thereon.