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mutual back-patting and knockabout fun were the order of the day in the garden behind ten downing street today. (shame nobody brought a ball, we could have had a kick-around)

those boys, eh. they are a riot. okay so nick was nick, while call me dave was david. but let’s not nick-pick. whatever

after all, this al fresco bonhommie can’t last forever, can it?

come to think of it, judging by the facial expression and grudging response of vince cable when asked later whether he was looking forward to working with call me george osborne, there’ll probably be tears before bedtime.

stand by for water pistols at dawn.

just to pass the time whilst awaiting further tranches of cabinet appointments i’ve been playing ‘spot the jock’. (scuse i, scotsman)

not that i’ve got anything (well not much) against our celtic friends but you have to wonder, particularly in these days of devolved parliaments, what they’re doing around the palace of westminster. (candidly, i’ve recently heard it suggested that they should ‘stop their ticklin’.)

anyhow, as luck would have it, at a glance, the answer thus far seems to be ‘not much’. what a refreshing change!

of course there is bound to be the odd fly-in-the-ointment (or should that be fox-in-the-chicken-run?) but i’ll live with that if you will.

don’t mind if i do: gie’s a pint o’ heavy.

but to be fair, yesterday was a bit of a treat for anybody with even a passing interest in uk politics … which really should mean all of us.

twists and turns have been the order of the past few days and yet yesterday’s denouement did not disapoint.

the way that clegg tweaked the tails of both main parties and so came away with a much easier deal than he could have expected suggests he’s not as green as he looks.

but with others of his party apparently destined for senior cabinet posts i’ve wondered all along where clegg expected to fit into the line-up. he surely wouldn’t want a none-job like deputy pm?

step up nick clegg, deputy pm! swipe me, i nearly passed my fags round! (easy boy, i said nearly)

so what does he know that i don’t? not much surely maybe as a long-time liberal he has developed a taste for warm piss? maybe he’ll even tell us? well perhaps not.

either way he has surely taken the shortest route to power in uk politics that i can call to mind. five years flat. and it’s hard not to be impressed with just that.

but as with so much in life, timing is everything and however well he’s played his hand it was pure good fortune which gave him fair a wind and his place in the pound seats.

has anybody told him the real tricky stuff starts today?

see ya later, mould breaker

the bbc news commentator yesterday outside 10 downing street, waiting for new pm, cameron to arrive observed solemnly

“a new microphone has been put in place…”

how could one resist “… has it not?”

well that’s the back of genial gordon brown then: can’t say i’m sorry.

aside from, latterly, the spasmodic spin-doctor-induced grin, his public image for the last 15 or so years has been that of an unremitting dismal johnnie. not that i’m suggesting he should have made like a stand-up, but come on give us a break. well anyway, now he has.

casting aside the tasteless baubles of power he had coveted for some forty years, he’s repaired without delay to the dark, heathen land of his fathers where i understand he plans to do good to the locals, whether they like it or not.

wonder what it’s like indoors chez gordie? bet he’s got a brown study.

well, i expect you’re all relieved to see the back of the general election; for a few months at least.

how did you enjoy the wall-to-wall tv coverage? sadly, with exit polls achieving unnerving levels of accuracy, it soon became clear that almost all the excitement of the event had come and gone in the four week run-up. shame ;-(

to make matters worse, as if there wasn’t enough hot-air around at election time, sky tv subjected us to the nauseating spectacle of adam bloater’s repellant burp-fest, this time in glorious hd. cut down on the nose bag and ditch some ballast fat boy.

(surely high-time he was replaced by the lovely ‘botto’ of whom i caught no more than a tantalising half-second glimpse in some media melee)

at the bbc we were at least spared any repetition of the now-infamous ‘surreptitious mars bar incident’ which is widely believed to have set an incurable rot into election results reporting worldwide.

we were however forced, once again to endure repeated spasms of the ludicrous jeremy vine, lurching around like some deranged stick insect with his virtual toys.

mr mugabe called the bingo. mrs banana-republic and mrs lockout made the sandwiches and we sang ‘things can only get better’, which they probably won’t in a hurry, if ever.

miss bugger-off-home-now accompanied, one-handed on the harmonium and a good time was had by all.

looking forward to october’s return match already.

catch you later couch-potater :-0

okay let’s choose our words carefully here.

damning video footage hit tv screens today which purported to show baby-faced scottish snooker genius john higgins negotiating his price for losing four frames of snooker in forthcoming games.

the revelations, published by britain’s news of the world paper, if proven to be true, whilst not exactly mould-breaking in the history of snooker would surely have career-ending implications for the genial “wizard of wishaw”.

let’s hope that these deeply unsavoury allegations are proved on thorough investigation to be unfounded.

indeed higgins, snooker’s world-ranked number one and 2009 world champion and his manager pat mooney who was also present at the meeting with ukranian “businessmen” where the alleged frame-fixing deal was recorded have issued strong and it has to be said not entirely implausible denials of any wrongdoing.

in a nutshell, they feared for their personal safety. who could blame them?

still the whole thing neither looks or smells good to me but let’s remember that at this time these are no more than untested allegations.

nonetheless, the question remains: why were they there in the first place?

as polling day in the general election gets closer the unnattractive notion of a so-called ‘hung parliament’ looms ever bigger in the rear-view mirror.

of course, most users of the interweb will be blissfully-unfamiliar with the concept. (in the uk we have not endured anything of this kind since the depressing, so-called ‘lib-lab pact’ of the late 70′s).

for the benefit of those lucky enough not to have been around to witness it, this tragic passage of politics amounted to little more than a fractious and unholy alliance with the clapped-out, unreconstructed socialist donkeys of james callaghan’s labour party clinging desperately to power at the hands of the long-marginalised liberals, under david steel.

so what kind of parliament or indeed government would likely emerge if no party wins an overall majority next week?

well, much against their hopes and preferences, no matter who wins most seats, no liberal democrat will be occupying number 10 downing street.

and yet, the other senior departments of state having been progessively stripped of importance over recent years, it seems the only cabinet position worth fighting over would be that of chancellor, in this situation surely the prime target of the admittedly over-rated vince cable.

but could or would his party-leader countenance such an appointment while he himself was consigned to some bit-part? hardly.

so some hard-bargaining is on the cards before long: and no doubt some hard words.

if only i could be a fly on the wall; or some sap would forget to take his microphone off. sadly, he won’t be there to assist.

the striker cuts through our defence,
what’s happened to their common-sense.
if only we had played a sweeper
it’s goodnight if he beats the keeper

who’s number one, but now looks bigger,
close-up, a bloody scary figure.
“to hell with getting smacked again,
i’ll take a dive and get a ‘pen’.”

he trails a leg, he waves a bit,
then falls down like a sack of shit.
see how he writhes, and looks distressed,
how sad! the ref is unimpressed.

just waves him up, and gives a warning.
(the linesman can’t stop himself yawning)
and still he’s asking for the ‘pen’
“i’ll likely never walk again!”

and though he pleads for the award,
the arbiter is getting bored.

oh no, a card is coming out,
he’s gob-smacked! what’s all that about?
the stand arises in ovation,
he’s been sent off for simulation.

not before time muppet. and don’t come back neither.

whilst chatting with some canadian visitors recently, talk turned to the subject of a famous wrapper. (what’s that about then?)

well, for the avoidance of doubt i should say that our subject was christo, the legendary installation artist, and self-styled wrapper of buildings and such, like the reichstag, or the pont neuf, as distinct from other bullshitters like eminem, jay-z et al, rappers of unsavoury lyrics.

speaking of bullshit, the main point of discussion was, perhaps surprisingly, neither the obvious, how could such a seemingly ordinary individual repeatedly separate enough otherwise apparently sane bystanders from their cash as to be able to fund his habit of wrapping random structures in improbably dismal fabrics, nor, for whom, apart from himself he thought his ludicrous stunts were providing amusement, but rather the prosaic question, what was our hero’s nationality?

needless to say, despite my feeling that the answer was ‘austrian’, i deferred to wiser counsels that the celebrated textilier was undoubtedly of the french persuasion. (every day’s a schoolday

imagine then, if you will, my jubilation (alright then, my mild amusement) when later, whilst visiting wikipedia, the fountain of all knowledge, on unrelated business, i grasped the opportunity for a quick, speculative poke around the christo department where i learned that the great man was in fact born in bulgaria! (ya know, where the wheat comes from. just kidding)

and further that, following an extended period of statelessness he misguidedly applied for, and was granted american citizenship.

so it would appear that his only obvious connection with the land of the frog was that he went there and made a bit of a mess!

so he can’t be all bad then

à bientôt mes petits choux-fleurs.