Copping Out

Iggle, you're nicked

You know when you become so despairing that you want to weep openly while beating at the windscreen of the car?  That. Yup, that. And this time it’s over the absurd police reaction of arresting the Twitter troll who said of Olympic diver Tom Daley "You let your dad down i hope you know that (sic)".

Ok. Someone needs to explain this to me.  No really, because I haven’t got a fucking clue what’s going on. You see, when I went to bed last night I was living in the UK yet at some time in the night my entire house was airlifted across the globe and put down in communist China. So when I woke up this morning I found that someone had made a distasteful comment and been arrested for it. I know, I can hardly believe it either. 

Ok, so what this idiot said was nasty, ignorant and deeply hurtful. It was also....er, hold on... no, that’s it. That’s all. He was a twat and he spoke his twatty mind and astoundingly, got arrested for it.

Either way on the basis of this I’m well n truly screwed. If I’m not doing porridge by a week next Wednesday you’ll have every right to ask why because if haven’t offended somebody during the course of my blog it’ll be a miracle worthy of Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea. You want distasteful comments? Then you’ve come to the right place. I’ve offended parents, shoppers, drivers, celebs, politicians, children, the elderly, the police and even my own mater and pater. It’s a miracle that the prison at Guantanamo Bay doesn’t have a wing named after me.

Put it this way. Take every distasteful remark I’ve made on this blog and award it one week in the pokey. That makes...one fuck of a long time behind bars. And no, I’ve never made a racist remark or said anything remotely discriminatory (well, unless you include discrimination against the global population of bell ends) but that no longer seems to matter. It’s now enough of a crime to just upset someone.

So what am I supposed to do in this new police state of ours? Start raving into my pillow rather than the blogosphere? Start suppressing that part of me that controls independent thought? Or perhaps fall into line and just accept what I am told because that’s what good citizens do? Well, I’m afraid I’m not prepared to do any of those things so the South Wales Constabulary had better cancel overtime because, if this is the way we’re going, it’s going to get pretty fucking busy around here.

One good thing has come from this though and that’s the speed of the police response. That alone has made me skip. Because when we recently called the police to report a crime it took them a fortnight to get to us (I am not kidding) because, they said, they couldn’t find our house. Oh, and there was that time recently when two other occifers found themselves in our garden because they’d “got lost”. Oooops, and I’m forgetting when we reported a crime and were told that it couldn’t be recorded unless we physically went to the police station first.

So, in the light of this trolling business, let the new vigilance of the police offer us hope that from here on in real crimes will be resolved swiftly and eagerly. Swap the words ‘causing offence’ with ‘car crime’ and use the term ‘on the street’ rather than ‘online’ and, Christ knows, we might start getting somewhere. Until then, get out your orange jumpsuits. Guantanamo, here we come.

Book Worms

One feed's worth

Whoa there! I'm reading Sue Townsend's The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year and it's like seeing the inside of my own head. Eva Beaver, the protagonist, sums up motherhood so pithily that if I ever had to give birth again I'd want her to be my midwife. At one point in the book she says of her twins, "I was thrilled to have two babies in my arms, but - and you'll think this is awful - after twenty minutes or so I wanted to get back to my book".

Jesus, do I know what Eva Beaver means. For the first three months of Kraken Junior's life she was a living, breathing book stand. Oh come on, I didn't know what else I was supposed to do with her. She may have been attached to a tit or a bottle at the time but she earned her keep by letting me rest Jane Ayre on her slowly fusing skull. If you shave her hair off you'll find a ridge, the width of a book spine, roughly near her crown.

Problem is that babies are boring. Really fucking boring. And I'm sorry but I don't subscribe to the Mothercare manifesto of gazing lovingly at my child for hours on end as a form of entertainment. Yes, babies are occasionally amusing and yes they do keep you busy but no, they are not a hobby or an intellectual pursuit. In fact, the first time I breastfed KJ I naively assumed it'd be a full hour of employment. Fuck me, was I wrong. It was ten minutes of wrestling my bleeding nip into her gob followed by 45 minutes of wanting to fill my own pupils with building sand at the boredom of it all. 

Books saved my rapidly curling bacon. In fact books provided the only real intellectual stimulant for the first six months of KJ's life because KJ as sure as fuck didn't provide it. Oh she provided drum-loads of mucus, shit blacker than an oil slick, vomit like yoghurt and an inspired reason for becoming deranged with sleeplessness but intellectual stimulation? No. I can’t say that was even a remote offering. 

Even now that she’s nearly five there are times when I demand that she shuts up for just five minutes, long enough to let me get to the end of any given chapter. Believe me, the merriment of Twinkle Twinkle wears thin after it’s been sung on a loop for four fucking years.

So thank Christ for the product of Sue Townsend’s fevered imagination. Eva Beaver has just entered my list of heroines at the number one spot. Babies? Books? Guess which one I’ll be having next.

Bag Lady

Got anything bigger?

Dear Jesus, the drudgery of motherhood. The sheer drudgery. And you know what the symbol of that drudgery is? The change bag. The bag that every fucking mother on the planet has to lug about in case their offspring performs anything from shitting and puking to raging boredom. Why, when you find yourself knocked up, does nobody tell you that from birth onwards you'll be contractually obliged to carry a bag so large that it'd make sherpas weep into their own frostbite?
When Kraken Junior was a squalling sprogette I took to carrying a bag that, up until that point, I had used as a weekender. God, how I hated that fucking sack. Not just because it was heavier than an elephant's leg and fitted with a small outlet of Mothercare but because it was my first (and only, if I have anything to do with it) ball and chain. So vast was it that strangers actually laughed and joked about whether I was going on holiday, all while I smiled benignly and secretly wished them a slow and painful death. I muttered endlessly about dousing it in petrol and lobbing its burning form into the nearest playground.
Why in the fuck do we have to lug about so much shit when we have babies? I can honestly say that I backpacked through the Himalayas and the Costa Rican rainforests with less stuff than I when I just took Kraken Junior to buy a loaf of Hovis. You don't see women in Nigeria wrestling with small suitcases as well as their infants do you? And you never see the Inuits stuffing dead shoulder-seals with fistfuls of nappies, bibs, wetwipes and other associated tat. Why? Because they seem to have a grip on mothering in the same way we Westerners seem to have a grip on producing shit sit coms. 
It's a control thing I reckon. Having a child rips control from your hands a if it were the last vol-au-vent at an obesity celebration. Stuffing the nearest suitcase with Sudocreme and dummies makes you feel as if you've wrested back said control. The kid shits? Got it. The kid sobs? It's covered. The kid shows an aptitude for astrophysics? There's a map of the universe in here somewhere...
Personally speaking, there are two things that would never, ever make me spawn again. The ripping sound emanating from my vagina is one. The splitting seams on the change bag is the other. And yes, they are remarkably, agonisingly and messily similar. As are the obscenities I've spluttered at each. Vag? Bag? Bag? Vag? Believe me, I never want to see either again.

Pots of Toss

Know where you can stick that finger?

People can be such wankers, don't you think? Yes, wankers. And why am I telling you this? Because I am sick to shit of the theory, most oft-spouted at parents, that if they find any aspect of parenting so tough that they grumble about it then they should never have had kids in the first place.
What in the giddy pits of fuck does this even mean? At its best it's an opinion for the hard of thinking. At its worst it's an opinion worthy of the Third Reich. Put it this way, it's the sort of opinion that's banged out by either the Dail Mail or the Jeremy Vine Show. Like I say, the hard of thinking or the Third Reich. Or even hard of thinking members of the Third Reich. Yeah, yeah, that's more like it.
First, what in the fuck is wrong with making a major, life changing decision and then finding that aspects of it that are harder than you thought they'd be? Suddenly parents are supposed to be tele-frigging-pathic, not just making decisions to spawn but also seeing forty years into the future. Picture it now: "You know, I'd love to have a child but seeing as I'll be fucking livid with said child at 3.15pm on Monday 23 June 2026 I don't think I'll bother." 
More than that, what exactly is wrong with the people who make the "Then you shouldn't have..." statements? Fuck me, how joyful it must be to be so perfect that you'd never found the consequences of a decision difficult, surprising or plain old disappointing. Based on their clearly supreme powers of reasoning it's fair to assume that these arseholes also have perfect careers, relationships, hobbies and even shitting routines. So you know that job they took back in 2005? They have never ever had a single grumble about it. Not one. Otherwise, if they have, then they shouldn't have taken the job should they?
And finally, as they say, what in the frig is with this vow of silence that parents are supposed to keep? Because according to the 'shouldn't have' knob ends, once you've chosen the child-rearing path you must never, ever speak of the pains, gripes and upsets that you experience along the way. Even though every day of childrearing includes at least one moment of distress, such incidents must be tucked away like dirty secrets, just in case complete strangers find them distasteful. Heaven forfend that you should have a perfectly human reaction to getting three hours sleep, a cleavage full of vomit and an hour of last minute algebra homework. 
You know, I like to think that people who trot out the 'shouldn't have' line are the most pathetic creatures of all. They really do not have a clue, do they? Not only do they wrongly assume superiority over the rest of the humankind but they have the reasoning abilities of rotting owl pellets. They've clearly never lived either, obvious from their distressingly simplistic view of what it takes to live that life. If you've never made a bad decision then you've probably never made a decision and that results in one big bowl of fuck all. 
Expect me to prefer that to a life of highs, lows and surprises? Then I'm sure the Daily Mail or Jeremy Vine would love to hear about it.

Baring All

Never a good look

You know that basic thing you do before you leave the house? Checking yourself in the mirror? Well, I'll be fucked if I haven't discovered that there's a whole sea of people out there who never, ever do it. Yup, thanks to Kraken Junior's rather fabulous US cousins I've become hooked on www.peopleofwalmart.com, a site so stuffed with the hideous personal grooming of Walmart shoppers that it will actually make you dry retch to death.
Walmart, of course, is the US equivalent and owner of Asda. Thank fuck, though, the pics on this website makes Asda look like the Harrods food hall. If I had to come into contact with this or this while pawing through the carrots I'd probably sick up my own lungs. 
What makes people think it's OK to go out looking like this? Jesus Christ, I wouldn't dress like these guys if I was on my own personal island and had access to the world's supply of flammable materials. And where do these zombies of the fashion wasteland actually buy their clothes? Seriously, there are items of clothing on this website that not only have I never, ever seen in a shop but I wouldn't know where to find them even if I wanted to. It's like Helen Keller's Spring/ Summer collection although collection of what exactly is impossible to fathom.
Look, I'm no Kate Moss but, fuck me, I do like to tuck in my flabby bits when I leave the house. I also like to make sure that there are no ferrets nesting in my hair or that my tits are sufficiently hoisted to avoid toe stubbage. 
Alas, though, thanks to peopleofwalmart.com it's become apparent that even these basics are a step too far for the US Midwest and deep South. Check out the location of each pic and you'll find that there's a stunning regularity of the same states, page after page. It's as if the likes of Texas and Iowa have suffered a collective mental haemorrhage, one that obliterated their sense of taste and their personal dignity. When, in 21st Century America, naked, sagging arse cheeks are a staple of supermarket shopping you can see why they've retained the gun laws. 
My biggest fear, though, is that Asda shoppers pick up on the trend for scuffing their own flab rolls along aisle 16. Admittedly, some of them already have but if it gets to the stage where every fucker is doing it I'll start begging for guns to be available too. 
So for fuck's sake make sure you check yourself in the mirror before you leave the house. You don't just owe it to yourself. You owe it to the rest of the world.

Want Sprinkles On That?

Toy town lives on

Now, I'm cool with rap music. In fact I'm rather partial to some of it. But there is one aspect of the genre that makes me want to beat people to death with a sack of 50 Cent's toes. It's an insidious danger and one that's thrusting a gleaming dagger into the foaming liver of British culture: the trend for the UK's yoofs to refer to the local constabulary as 'feds'. 
Feds. F.E.D.S. As in the American slang for police, FBI or any other doughnut-scoffers. There are so many things wrong with this use of the word that my eyes actually bleed when I try to list them. 
Have the nation's yoofs any idea how utterly fucking gimpy they sound when they refer to their local bobby as a 'fed'? Yeah, gangsta rap is laced with references to the 'feds' but that's because the likes of Jay-Z, Snoop, 50 Cent and Soulja Boy are American and banging on about life in the scabby arse end of New Yoik. Which means that when some pizza-faced teenager with a computer tan and bum fluff prattles on about 'feds' in the arse end of Dagenham they just sound like twats.
Look, idiots, you live in the U-fucking-K. The police are not 'feds'. They are the police, the fuzz, the pigs, the bobbies, the local constabulary, if you will. If you want to live the 'dream' of rapper-style life, perhaps you could get a one way ticket to LA, join the Crips and be bullet-riddled by the time you're 25. Something, though, tells me that just like US gangsta rap not always translating to the UK, neither would a pigeon-chested yoof from Nelson Mandela House in Clapham translate to where existence really is rap come to life.
And while I'm at it, you get the same boggling result when you see said yoofs rapping on Channel AKA, the music channel of choice if you enjoy the company of guns and hos. One minute your witnessing Soulja Boy prattling his arse off in a LA ghetto and the next you're watching Nigel rapping outside his local Cost Cutter. And no, Nige, oversized trackie bottoms and a nick in your eyebrow from your mother's leg razor really don't cut it. Believe me, if they did you wouldn't look like a tit.
So if these toy town gangstas want to be taken seriously then perhaps they should start to own their experiences rather than trying to crowbar them into the lyrics of a Jay-Z effort. And that means ditching the 'feds' reference and writing raps about cans of Strongbow and arsing about on the park swings instead. That is unless toy toy gangstering really is the next big thing.

The Queen is Dead

Being a tit

When is Madonna going to piss off and leave us all alone? If there's any chance that we could make that some time in the next ten minutes I'd be just about chuffed to fuck. My problem? Her desperation to remain relevant. And when I say desperation, she stinks of the stuff so much she's like a decommissioned fishing trawler.
Just what is it with her nightly waggling of guns and tits on her MDNA tour? I've thought long and hard about what her message could be but, sorry, outside of her wanting to look like a drunken nutbag stumbling out of Castle Bingo at midnight I'm at a complete loss.
Funny thing is that when other turns do this stuff I really don't give a shit. Yet when Madge does it I get the urge to beat her to death with a cone shaped bra. I reckon it's because, for me, everything she does appears to be so utterly calculated that it destroys the value of her actions. I mean, do you think for a moment that she dug the guns out of Rocco's toy box and whipped out her tit on a whim? Jesus, no. I reckon those additions to her schtick followed an arduous meeting where Madge and various execs shook their noggins until they came up with what they thought would make her look cutting edge. Then they built spreadsheets, graphs and pie charts to decide at what point this stuff should be used in her show. And that's not to say that such gigs aren't planned to death. But only Madonna could take an apparently random act and suck the spontaneity from it until it's as random as the outcome of 2+2.
And another problem with Madge's latest attempt at relevancy is that it's just, well, so dull. Guns? It's been done. Tits? Madge, love, you drained that well back in the 90s. Suddenly, rather than being cutting edge Madge looks as if she's on the trailing edge. Whether Madge likes it or not Gaga hasn't just nipped at her heels, she's chewed off her feet and pissed on the stumps. And yeah, there's room for two in this game, but not when one of them - Madge - looks so panic stricken.
So, if Madge wants to liven up her MDNA tour by whipping out sparkly piglets rather than guns, I'd love it. And if she swapped her bap flashing for dressing as the Eiffel Tower then I'd be all admiration. Until then, I'm just going to remain deflated and disappointed that Her Madgesty, the queen of all she surveys, finally came to this.

F is For...

Quite

The definition of frustration: teaching a four year old to write. Jesus Christ, it's like teaching a squid to read Ulysses. Now, Kraken Junior wants to know how to write. This as sure as shit isn't my idea. Yet I've agreed to sit down with a biro that's being wielded like a nuclear weapon.
But, fuck me, this whole endeavour is the agonising equivalent of sticking darning needles through my nipples. I just do not have the patience. So I sit at the table, endlessly muttering things like "a line with a dot on the top" and "like a u with a curly tail" all while digging my nails so deeply into my palms that I'm developing stigmata.
It's frigging killing me. Kraken Junior needs to master the entire English language within the next, I dunno, three weeks if she wants to survive the next eighty years. 
For example, this evening KJ wanted to write cards to her nursery-based cohorts. I agreed to this foolhardiness which resulted in me growling over missives which I'd have happily set alight.
Have you any idea how many times I said, "T! T!. For God's sake it's the letter T! It's a line up and a line across! T! Tuh-eeee!"? And have you any idea how many times KJ said, "I know! I know!" before writing the letter S? 
Fuckety-fuck and back again. And I know that there are women out there who endlessly have time to sit with their kids to help them leap such developmental hurdles but bollocks to that. I'm not that kind of muvva. Instead I'd happily pack KJ off to learn this stuff, having her returned when, and only when, I no longer have to explain how Ds are backwards Bs. 
And just think. She's four. So I have at least another 12 years of her staring at her homework like a bewildered bus station drunk. Oh, the fun we'll have. Her screaming, me screaming, the police being called...and all over some poxy set of equations that, if you squint at them long enough, read 'gin&tonic, gin&tonic'. Believe me, I couldn't do this stuff thirty years ago. I'm pretty fucking sure that age, a breakdown and medication haven't enhanced my abilities. 
So if there's anyone out there who'd like to take over the domestic teaching duties - except for Gary Glitter - feel free to let me know. I've got an ambitious little four year old and, somehow, I'm expected to survive it.

Fishy Business

If only it was this exciting

Bugger me if this last weekend didn't present me with the most freakish sight. Perusing the TV listings for the weekend I discovered that Sky Sports 2 was broadcasting Fish O Mania, five and a half hours of live - yes, live - fishing. On Saturday. And on Sunday. 
I'm almost at a loss for words but, fearing a revolt from you kraken-followers, I'll cobble one or two together. Would you mind if the first word I used was...
...Fuck. Me. It's hard to imagine what a total of 11 hours of live fishing coverage must look like but let's just say that Dulux could probably sponsor it as a less exciting alternative to watching magnolia emulsion dry in a downstairs toilet. 
Who in the frig settles down for a weekend of live fishing coverage on the telly? Thing is, if you like fishing get the frig out there and do it yourself. It's hardly one of those inaccessible sports that we can only experience from the sofa, is it? It's not the fucking bobsled. Or the Tour de France. It's fishing. F.I.S.H.I.N.G. It's sitting on a river bank with a rod, a bag of maggots and an arse even number than an Eskimo's.
Course, I'm blogging here about a show I didn't even watch. I couldn't bring myself to do it. I should have, though, because now I am obsessing over what the fuck Sky found to fill 11 watery hours. Unless it was the drama of fishermen being swallowed whole by line-caught sharks I'm at a loss. Perhaps it went something like this:


Opening Credits
Cut to commentator
Commentator nudged awake
Cut to riverbank
Close up of water
Action shot of maggots
Cut to competitor
Competitor nudged awake
Commentator says "Big rod"
Cut to water
Action shot of grass
Competitor starts snoring
Cut to sleeping maggots
Action shot of twitching rod
Commentator says "For fuck's sake"
Closing credits


So that's 11 full hours of fuck all that I've saved you there. Don't say that I never give you anything.

Meh

Ever so slightly crushed

You know, I can't be arsed to find out who said that life was a series of crushing disappointments but, by Christ, whoever it was was talking about my day. Yesterday. Sunday 15 July 2012. Now, hard as this may be to believe, I like to think the best of everything and everyone. That's why I'm such an arsy kraken, because I then feel continually let down by the idiocy of those around me.
Anyway, here is today's series of disappointments, each one yet another kick in my knackersack of optimism. 
1. Went to the Little Welsh Nibble which was advertised as a festival of food. We arrived to find that it consisted of a sole Italian trying to sear fish on a primus stove in a draughty fucking tent.
2. We ordered lunch and were told by the feckless cashier that she was crap at using the sole tool of her trade, the cash machine. And lo! this came to pass when she fucked up our order and lunch arrived later than a pregnant woman's period.
3. Upon asking the 'festival' (ha!) receptionist why there wasn't more to said 'festival' (ha!) we received a miserly shrug and the suggestion that we read the flyer. For fuck's sake...
4. We then went to Sainsbury's for coffee n cake and the disinterested staff turned us away because they'd stopped serving a full two minutes earlier. Two. Minutes.
5. So we went to Sainsbury's cake counter instead. And waited. And waited. And waited. Until someone came to serve us, running from wherever they were having a craft fag/ shit beforehand.
6. I asked for a slice of carrot cake. Fuck me if what I got, out of the eight slices on offer, was the thinnest, poxiest, gammiest slice of cake this side of an anorexics' convention.
7. Upon leaving Sainsbury's we asked the 'Here to help you!' woman when the cafe opened. You know what she told us, this font of supermarket knowledge? That she didn't know. She didn't fucking know.
8. Finbally got home to find that t'interweb didn't work unless I sat in a particular bloody chair by a particular bloody window at a particular bloody angle. 
So you know who I feel like right now? Charlton Heston at the end of The Planet of the Apes. Except instead of screaming at the crumpled Statue of Liberty I'm screaming at the piss poor examples of humanity surrounding me. "God damn you all to hell!" Disappointed? You don't say.

Carcrap

Something for the lucky laydee?

Today, lucky kraken-lovers, I thought you'd like to hear about my car-buying experiences. I know, I know, you can thank me when you see me. Anyway, my little kraken family and I bought a car this weekend, and while it was eventful only because it was piss easy, it did remind me of the utter fucking horrors of my previous 41 years.
You know, being a car buying woman is the equivalent of Gary Glitter managing an outlet of Mothercare: for some reason it horrifies people. Whenever I have stepped onto a garage forecourt with a pocket full of cash I'm either laughingly regarded as a girl who mistook the showroom for a shoe shop or I'm spoken to as if I'm Helen Keller. Invariably the experience includes being accosted by a man with a Burtons suit and a gob full of transparent sales talk, the sort these guys don't expect you to see through for the simple reason that you have periods. If I'm there alone I'm spoken to as if I'm planning to leap from a ledge. If I'm with a man I don't get spoken to at all, even if I'm asking the questions, or I become the lucky recipient of quips about car colours and whether the pram will fit in the boot. Fuckers.
I did, though, come face to face with the devil incarnate when I wandered into Newport's Carcraft a few years ago and I'm as sure as shit that this would never have happened to a bloke. After buying a car for exactly the amount I wanted to spend - my haggling was a thing of tear-inducing beauty - I was ushered into a little room where the sales guy (with the obligatory lurid tie) tried to coerce me into buying a warranty. Course, he was dealing with The Kraken and, by Christ, The Kraken said no. 
This, though, wasn't good enough for the fat fuck because he kept on and on and on about it, each time getting more and more puce-faced. In fact, with each of my refusals to buy his warranty he became more bananas until he was standing over his desk, slapping it with his hands and yelling at me. Yes, yelling. And moi? I just sat there smiling, watching his commission slipping away from his greasy grasp. It was at this point that he raged from the room, quite possibly to succumb to a stroke, only for an older, calmer sales guy to try his luck on me. This greaser had a little more sense, realising that I'd dug my hooves in so hard he'd need the tow truck to get me out. Minutes later I was released back into the wild, giving the infuriated salesman a jaunty wave as I went. As I said, this was in Carcraft in Newport. Avoid the fuckers like it's a plague-infested black rat.
Anyway, would this have happened to a man I wonder? Fuck no. Which is why went we want car-shopping this weekend I was expecting bloodstains on the forecourt. Because after 41 years of being treated like an imbecile when it comes to distributor caps I'm pretty much up to here with the patronising banter and condescending chat. 
Thankfully for this weekend though, I'm now the owner of a car without having paid with my dignity. Yup, it was cash only and, you know, for the first time ever, I don't feel the need for ram raiding.

What Progress?

Laughing all the way to the Dark Ages

Know what? There aren't words grim enough to explain how much I despise the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2. I despise it in the way I'd despise my house being raided by burgling perverts dressed as cats. The show touts itself as a two hour discussion of topical news items but the reality is that it's ignorant chatter for the hard of thinking. If it was piped into a creche it'd make babies farts sound more informed.
Today I caught enough of the show to hear that not only was Vine discussing the Higgs Boson discovery at CERN but he was actively encouraging listeners to denounce this boggling scientific feat as a load of old cock made up by 'boffins' (his word). In fact, from what I have heard of this segment I suspect that when said show was over Vine threw on his mammoth-fur coat and nipped outside for a little light rock chucking at the yellow ball in the sky.
I'm at a loss as to how the words come out of this guy's mouth without his heart stopping at the sheer mortification of sharing a body with his brain. In fact today I heard him ask a professor of physics why he's been wasting his time at CERN when he could have been inventing a mobile phone battery that never runs out. Oh fuckety fuck and fuck again. I really did hear that didn't I? I mean, it's not the terrible result of me having had a massive stroke? 
Someone seriously needs to stop this man before he drags the intellectual standards of the nation through the core of the earth. Having gone through the joy of hearing the news from CERN this morning I am now going through the despair of realising that some people are genuinely disinterested in the one thing that separates us from three-toed sloths. But then again, that's Tunbridge Wells for you.
So burgling perverts dressed a cats? You know, on second thoughts I'd welcome them. At least they'd have some modicum of imagination and that's gotta be one step forward from Vine and his white-van witterings.

Gender Bending

Still not good enough for
the Daily Mail

Foaming, yet beloved, kraken-lovers I have a treat for you. Today I'm bleating my brand of bleat from an altogether different class of soap box, the wimmin's website The Vagenda.
As ever I'm kicking around the Daily Mail for the delightful way in which it's gaily reduced the talented and ball-busting Beyonce to an ill-performing chinwagger and tinkly male sidekick at the recent BET awards. Oh shame on you Bay, for not giggling behind your fan at the sheer joy of bagging a husband. Shame on you.
Anyway, goggle at the whole vile DM malarchy - and my unending fury at the patronising fuckers - right here.

Afternoon Delight

Not that kind of dogging

Ew, ew, ew and ew again. Other people can be so abso-fucking-lutely vile. And do you want to know why I'm barking this fevered generalisation? Because my little kraken family and I have just been for an afternoon walk in a glorious Forestry Commission, er, forest and the only wildlife we saw were - get this - doggers. 
Yeah. Ew. Doggers. Not exactly what I thought we'd find behind the rustling undergrowth at 2pm on any given Sunday. It's a popular spot for families too, as proven by the sculpture trails, kiddie treats and the many haggard parents forcing their squalling offspring into delighting in the outdoors. Problem was that local skanks and lurkers had gathered for their own brand of afternoon delight too.
I knew something was afoot - or possibly acock - when we got back to the car park and found a large selection of single men hanging about like extras from Dawn of the Dead. So furtive looking were they that it took mere minutes to work out what was going on and, by fuck, it wasn't the traditional meaning of Sunday stuffing. So as Kraken Junior and numerous other nippers frolicked amongst the dragon and owl carvings that had been laid on by the FC, the place became increasingly cluttered by the other type of wood-lover. One quick rummage on Google later and all was revealed, much like the perverts poking about behind the beech trees.
How utterly bloody grim. Look, if you want to roll around in badger shit with a stranger's unwashed dick you go for it. I'm sure that's great fun if you're happy to play Russian roulette with some form of pox. I'd just appreciate it, though, if you didn't do it in a family play area bang in the middle of a Sunday when I'm trying to lure my kid into the fresh fucking air.
By all accounts the FC is doing its best to put an end to this sort of fetid rummaging by encouraging in families, cyclists, horse-riders and anyone else with sturdy footwear. And had I been knocking about in the forest at 10pm this lurid behaviour would only have made me laugh (let's just say the men's desperation stank even more than the shit dolloped on the near bridleway). But come on. Dogging amongst families? Couldn't these guys have respect for something other than their laden knackersacks and either find somewhere else to prowl or have a stout wank in the comfort of their own shower trays? 
So thanks, local pervs, for making our lovely Sunday foray really enjoyable. Not only have I been left with a foul taste in my mouth - just like you but for different reasons, I'm happy to add - but that's one more unsafe place for KJ to visit. 
Wankers, the lot of you and no, that wasn't a fucking request.