It's navy blue, it's crimson lake...It takes the cake and no mistake...For goodness' sake take a look at those Blakes...

Are people who hate Xmas Santa-claustrophobic? Jeebus, can you believe we've rounded the Yuletide horn already? How time flies...

The Season of the Mooch kicked off to a great start this week with me winning tickets on the Perfect Commute Home. It was a promotional thingy for some Czech beer company who rented out a ferry and took us on a leisurely 3 hour cruise along the Thames from Canary Wharf to Putney Bridge and put on free booze and bbq. Below decks there was putting and Wii and massage action but who cares about that when you're up on the open deck sitting in the late afternoon sun drinking free Czech beer and eating bbq prawns and fillet stake by the trough-full. It was one of those magical activities that combines three of my favourite things: sloth, beer and mooching. And anything you do is immediately made more sophisticated and classy when you do it on a boat, even shouting drunken slurs and flashing your turgid dude at tourists as you sail under London's many bridges. Heh heh...turgid...

London can be a very proper and stuffy and "up itself" kind of town, but if you keep your eyes peeled every now and then you get treated to some fleetingly wonderful flashes of whimsy. I've taken to riding on the top deck of buses, mainly so I can sit in the front seat and pretend I'm driving (no one ever sits next to the dude who's going "brrmm! rawwwrrrr! beep beep! eeerrrrrkkk!") but also because it affords you a view of the city that you don't get at ground level. There's a rather creative (and seemingly demented) individual in my neck of the woods who fashions these bizarre creations out of potatoes studded with toothpicks and cotton buds and painted in nauseating kaleidascopic swirls of flouroscent paint, which they then throw on top of bus shelters to slowly rot and decay. I have no idea what sort of statement they're trying to make or who the intended audience is (the psychadelic mutant hedgehog apreciation society?) but I love them anyway. And you have to admire the tenacity and persistence of the artist as these things (sometimes two or three) are on top of EVERY bus shelter in my neighbourhood, perhaps 50 or more, and are replenished on a monthly basis. Perhaps not as quirky as the Tuberculosis festival but, then, unlikely to give you a horrible respitory disease. All it takes is a little bit of randomness and mystery to brighten one's day...

On Saturday American Girlflen and I went along to the British Motor Show. There was all manner of vehicular priaprism on display but that shit doesn't impress me...I'm only in it for the concept cars. It's remarkable to see what car manufacturers are abe to come up with when their imaginations are unfettered, particularly when you compare it to the inane carbage they produce for the consumer market. Hyundai and Kia are prime examples: I wouldn't vomit on any of their cars, let alone buy one, but the concept vehicles they had on display were kick arse. Mind you, there were still plenty of nicey pricey cars to see: Ferraris and Lambos and Zondas, oh my! They supposedly had a Bugatti Veyron there but I never saw it. What I did see was the brand new Ford Focus RS, the latest version of my beloved XR5, and hoo doggies is that car hot. I believe the appropriate automotive adjective is "PHWOAR!" They picked a particularly cacky shade of green for the paint job and the spoked alloys are way lamer than the previous snowflake design, but it's still an awesome car. Check out the numerous photos (and pass the dutchy) on the left-hand side...

On Sunday we went to see The Dark Knight, which I was cautiously excited about, but thank the baby Jeebus, it was awesome! It's all about Our Heath, of course, and he does a brilliant job, all creepy and psychotic, everything that Jack Nicholson could have been but wasn't. My only criticism is that the timing of the ending seemed all wrong with the Two-Face bit tacked on...after all the frenetic crazy Joker action it kind of wheezed to an end like an asthmatic with an armload of heavy shopping. And the scary Batman voice is a little bit cheesy...like he's chiding his Batpuppy for peeing on the Batrug. I was impressed with Heathy, what a way to go out. He did a super job...I was gonna say "a killer job" but I think it's still too soon for puns, don't you?

I had a day off the other week and was out riding in Hackney. I've taken to checking out more of the local area as Sweaty Betty allows me to venture further afield than I normally would on foot. The traffic was horrendous, worse than usual, and backed up for almost 5 or 10 miles. As I got closer to the thick of it, it appeared the police had taped off a major intersection which forced me to get off and walk along the footpath (and don't the pedestrians just love that!). But as I cleared the intersection and prepared to remount, I saw they'd taped off another four or five intersections...almost the entire length of the street. Normally they only do that when there's been a serious car crash but I couldn't see any wrecks or debris or anything. If they'd cleared the cars away then why keep the street blocked off? Cops were posted at each subsequent intersection, and every now and then there were cardboard boxes and plastic skylight domes placed at various intervals on the road. Had there been some sort of storm damage, I thought? Hardly warrants closing down a huge stretch of road, just clean it up already. Clearly there was no threat from structural damage as pedestrians were free to move about along the pavement on either side of the road. As I got to Hackney hospital I saw an orange and yellow two-man tent pitched next to a bus shelter and suddenly it became horribly clear. I'd seen a similar tent on the tele only the night before on the news: police forensics set them up at crime scenes to protect sensitive evidence or to cover a body. It appeared that some local lad had been stabbed further up the street and the boxes and domes were covering up splatters of his blood as he ran along the street. He made it all the way to the steps of Hackney Hospital before he collapsed, judging by the vast amount of blood that neither the tent nor the numerous cardboard boxes strewn about were able to completely conceal. It covered an area of perhaps 3 or 4 metres in diameter and was traced through with swirls and smears as though one or a number of people had writhed or slid about, like some demented abstractionist finger painting. It's disconcerting to see someone else's blood, particularly in large quantities, because it never looks quite real...it seems too dark and syrupy...but somehow you know exactly what it is. All I could think as I stared at the place where this kid's life literaly flowed away was that this was no place to die. Put aside the irony of dying on the steps of a hospital, but to die here of all places in the dirt and the glass and the rubbish and the dog shit and the fossilised chewing gum and the empty Stella cans. Who was this kid? Did he live? Surely no one can lose that much blood and survive. Did he die alone? Was he afraid? Was someone holding his hand and telling him it was gonna be ok? Or did the taunts of his attackers usher him into the Great Whatever? There are few constants in life, other than it is short and random and cruel...all of which can be succinctly semaphored by a congealed bloodstain on the footpath. We can choose where we live but we can't choose where we die.

Speaking of knife crime, how's the chick getting stabbed down at Charny shops? Go Charny!