Wednesday Witterings

In last night's footie, Chelsea scored a brilliant headed goal to equalise. Unfortunately, it was scored by a Liverpool player. And it happened in what, by tradition, we must call the dying seconds of the game.
It's a funny old game, Brian.

ITV commentator Clive Tyldesley really excelled himself last night with a string of old favourites from the football commentator's phrase book.
We had "no quarter asked, no quarter given."
And we had one of my old favourites: a full-back "discharging his defensive responsibilities." This means he either cleared the ball or successfully tackled someone. But commentators love circumlocution and piss-elegant language because they think it implies they are not the twats that we all know them to be.

Clive's finest moment was shouting "It's a head injury!" as a player lay on the ground clutching his bollocks.
Admittedly, that's where most footballers keep their brains but it was left to his second-string commentator, Jim Beglin, to make the correction and tell us he had "tweaked a muscle in his groin."
I don't know if that's a medically accurate diagnosis but anyway, he should be so lucky. Nobody's tweaked my groin in a long time.

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Spotted in today's Radio Times listings:
a comedy drama in the 'See Hear' strand for deaf viewers.
It carries the helpful note: "With voiceover."

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Isn't free market capitalism a wonderful thing?
The banks and building societies, having got themselves in a pickle mainly through their own greed and incompetence, are handed £50 billion of public money, with the possibility of another £50 billion to come.
This from the same politicians who are unable to provide an affordable dental service for most people, unable to provide free social care for the elderly, etc, etc, etc.
In view of this largesse, the bankers are asked to go easy on people struggling to pay their mortgages.
They tell the Government to fuck off.
Yet still the prevailing orthodoxy is that anyone who suggests there might be a better alternative to free market capitalism must have a screw loose.

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I learned from Woman's Hour last week that the music in those animated Lloyds TSB commercials is called 'Eliza Aria'. It's by a woman called Elena Kats-Chernin.

I pass this on so that those like me who are driven into a rage by this music can avoid encountering it elsewhere.
Or possibly go into music stores with a hammer down their trousers and smash up any CDs of this aural torture. Not that this blog condones illegality.

The offending piece comes from the composer's ballet music for 'Wild Swans'.
Well, my reaction to it is very similar to that of a wild swan. A swan reacting to someone attempting to abduct one of its cygnets. If anyone played it to me I would probably break their fucking arm.
It's a small miracle that my television hasn't yet gone through the window.