what's that all about?

We saw Elektra the other night and, without beating about the bush, it was excellent. I was gripped by the action and Jennifer Garner added emotional depth to the character. I was a little bit surprised that I had enjoyed it so much because all the reviews that I have read about it, said that it was crap. In fact, one review I read even went so far as to say that the fight scenes were rubbish, a kiss of death, if ever there was one, for an action movie. It has dawned on me that I have hugely enjoyed three action movies over the last few years where a woman was the heroine, and all three of them received terrible reviews from critics when they were released. If I didn't know better I'd think that maybe there was some kind of conspiracy to prevent any woman, who isn't Sigourney Weaver, from ever succeeding in action movies.

the most useless gift...

...must be Versace butt plug. We couldn't find one of those, but Mr McMuffin found a vastly reduced (in price) Versace wine bottle stopper for Mr McMuffin Jnr's birthday present. It's not particularly useful or beautiful, but it will be loved for its sheer stupid extravagance, I'm sure.

Mr McMuffin, Gypsy Tart and Rock Cake have all gone to see Sin City tonight and I have stayed behind as I can't seem to keep my eyes open after half past nine these days and I don't wish to pay for an uncomfortable sleep in a cinema, when I could be in my bed. I must confess that I wasn't really keen on seeing this film anyway, but then these are usually the films I end up enjoying. We rented The Woodsman the other day and I was prepared to dislike it, but ended up thinking it was a bloody good film with some great performances. Gosh, I'm so intuitive.

sin city

I've just been to see Sin City. It was probably the best film that I have seen this year, with the possible exception of Kill Bill. It looked fantastic, ethereal black and white, with splashes of bloody colour. Robert Rodriguez, the director, with a little help from Quentin Tarantino, has managed to create an instant cult classic. When I booked the tickets, I was warned that the film contained scenes of bloody violence which in no way prepared me for the torture, murder and general mayhem of the film. Oh, and there was a lot of blood. Boy, was there a lot of blood. There was red blood and white blood and, on one occasion, even yellow blood. There were also a couple of real turn-your-head-away scenes too. But, I think that what I took away from the film was that it was all about love. Everything that happens in the film happens for love.

The whole cast were great but Bruce Willis and, for me the biggest surprise of the film, Mickey Rourke, stood out. I didn't even recognise Mickey Rourke until he had been on screen for about 5 minutes. His character, Marv, was a wonderful almost indestructible death machine, that smashed and tortured and killed his way through to the truth. Elijah Wood also deserves a special mention as one of the few actors I have seen so effectively kill any possibility of ever being typecast, and that was without even uttering a single word. Creepy is not the word.

I'm going to go again. What else can I say? This film is breathtakingly beautiful. You've gotta see it.

PS Oh, alright, I admit it, it is a boys film, what with it's hookers in leather and garters carrying machine guns kind of plot, but it's a glorious boys film.

i'll sleep when i'm dead

This is one of the worst films I have seen in ages and I cannot believe that Clive Owen, Charlotte Rampling et al read the script and thought it was a good idea to get involved. I was going to explain why, but I can't be bothered, it was really that bad. Best avoided like herpes.

a sad day

Poor little Slinky is at the vet's, preparing for surgery tomorrow. He is going to have his right eye removed, as the evil black cat punctured his eyeball when it attacked him. We have just come back from seeing the Slink and he is most pissed off that he has been locked in a cage like an animal, or a prisoner at Guantamano Bay. It was very sad and I have been unable to talk about him at work today without sobbing like baby.

This has been an eventful couple of months, with a lot of bad and some good things going on. I hope things settle down a bit, to the boring that we know and love. I hope that Slinky adjusts very quickly to only having one eye and we can persuade him to wear a cute little eye patch and a pirate hat.

he returns

I am cuddling Slinky as I type and he is purring away very loudly and enthusiastically. I know he's been given painkilling drugs and might just be off his little head, but his ability to just get on with the business of eating, drinking and cuddling is inspirational. He's a courageous little soul and we're glad to have him back.

Thank you for all your well wishes and we'll get the pictures of him in full pirate costume soon, we'll go to Bob's outfitters for the eye patch.

ol' one eye...

I thought you might like to see a picture of the once beautiful, but now slightly world worn, Slinky. He's making a fantastic recovery, and seems almost back to his old self. This photo was taken while he perched in one of his favourite places. He likes to sit in front of the computer between me and the keyboard. I can't quite work out what he is trying to tell me.

I can't believe that we only just became his official owner and he is broke already. Taking him to the vet has cost a small fortune, which surprised me a bit. They charged a lot of money to take out his eye. I could understand it better if they had given him something, say an extra eye in the back of his head, which would probably be quite useful to a cat. At least Slinky could be sure that he would be able to spot the EBC sneaking up on him. I remember having a conversation with Mrs McMuffin not so long ago about the mad money that people spend on their pets. I told her that under no circumstances was I going to spend lots of money on a bloody cat, but when it came down to it, I didn't even think about it. I just wanted him to be well. Funny that. Maybe that's how it works for all those other people too.

slinky says...

He's just too cool to be dressing up as a pirate. So no eye patch and pirate hat for him.

what a week...

My second week in the new job has finally come to an end. The job is great. I'm really enjoying being in a well organised team and local authority. My energies are being taken up with the work rather than trying to create some kind of structure around me, all the while defending my boundaries. However, my body has finally succumbed to the stress of the last few weeks, and no sooner had my stressed nose healed than I became deaf in both ears. I could hardly hear a thing. It has been exhausting trying to hear people talk. It's amazing how many people mumble, and no matter how many times I tell people that I can't hear they very quickly slip back into mumbling amongst themselves. I have to say that Mrs McMuffin has been one of the worst culprits. She has decided that I am having a go at her every time I tell her to speak up. I attended a meeting last week, and she was there too, which was a little bit strange. I'm not used to having meetings with my wife, especially ones where she is more senior than me. Anyway, it was quite a big meeting, and out of all the people there, she was the one that I had the most trouble hearing. I have also discovered something interesting. Black women, African Caribbean and African, often seem to have relatively deep voices, which makes them all the harder to hear. I'm off to the doctor in an hour to have my ears cleared. I can't wait. I've got the new Foo Fighters album to listen to this evening. I've been saving it until I could hear it in all it's glory. Hope it's a good one. I really must do a bit of tidying up now. I've spent the whole afternoon playing around on this machine. Mrs McMuffin will kill me if she gets home and finds the kitchen in a mess.

hello, i'm the devil and there's a deep blue sea over there, what's your choice?

I was reading the excellent Spanglemonkey tonight and found the article about the Canadian health system fascinating as I had no idea that it was actually illegal to seek private medical treatment. I completely agree with this law if the system provides timely care to patients (which sadly it appears not to) and would extend this ban on private services to education too. Health and education are too important to allow some people to get first dibs because they have money and not because they are in greater need. I have been saying this since I was about 14 and thought I'd carry on saying it until I was at least 94.

I have never actually had any private medical treatment and never planned to, until I found out from my doctor today that I cannot get a recommended early diagnostic test on the NHS in my area and would need to pay another NHS hospital to test me, or go to a private clinic. Now I don't have anything really very wrong with me, but this test would pick up any problems at an early stage and allow for less intrusive treatment, or would just reassure me that things were ok. It costs about £90, much less than Slinky's vet bill, but prohibitively expensive if you were in receipt of state benefits.

I have to say that there was no real dilemma for me, I'm having the test. And this is why I hate a two tier health system, because if I really need to, I will take advantage and who likes knowing they're a big fat hypocrite who junks their principles at the first sign of trouble?

iron & wine

There is just so much American music that it is sometimes hard to keep up. We watched In Good Company last night. It was a very nice little film, and it had a lovely soundtrack. There were a couple of tracks by Iron & Wine that really stood out. I'd never heard of them (him) before, but in only a few hours, I was the proud owner of everything he's ever recorded. Ain't the internet grand? Oh, by the way, I even paid for some of the tracks. Sam Beam, the man behind Iron & Wine, writes all the songs, sings and plays all the instruments. He makes some very beautiful music. The lyrics are worth paying attention to. He has some kind of southern gothic, lost his faith, kind of thing going on. I think he's excellent, and you should check him out. Here's one of his songs:

Jesus The Mexican Boy

Jesus the Mexican boy
born in a truck on the fourth of July
gave me a card with a lady naked on the back
Barefoot at night on the road
Fireworks blooming above in the sky
I never knew I was given the best one from the deck

He never wanted nothing I remember
Maybe a broken bottle if I had two
Hanging behind his holy even temper
Hiding the more unholy things I do

Jesus the Mexican boy
Gave me a ride on the back of his bike
Out to the fair though I welched on a $5 bet
Drunk on Calliope songs
We met a home-wrecking carnival girl
He's never asked for a favor or the money yet

Jesus the Mexican boy
Born in a truck on the 4th of July
I fell in love with his sister unrepentantly
Fearing he wouldn't approve
We made a lie that was feeble at best
Boarded a train bound for Vegas and married secretly

I never gave him nothing I remember
Maybe a broken bottle if I had two
Hanging behind his holy even temper
Hiding the more unholy things I do

Jesus the Mexican boy
Wearing a long desert trip on his tie
Lo and behold he was standing under the welcome sign
Naked the Judas in me
Fell by the tracks but he lifted me high
Kissing my head like a brother and never asking why

a well deserved break

Well, us McMuffins are away on holiday for a week in lovely Funchal, early tomorrow. We seem to have everything organised, we just need to pack. As I am the kind of woman who always comes home with unworn items of clothing, I am determined to travel light (with the obvious exception of books).

We've made plans with Rock Cake to look after Slinky and take him to his vet appointments. Slink's pretty much healed and already adapting to having one eye, so we feel happy to leave him now. Horrible as it sounds, I'm glad it all happened last week and not this week, or one of us would have had to stay behind and I bet it would have been me.

Anyway, have fun and I'm sure Mr McMuffin will update regularly. He just loves that little internet cafe in town.

here i am...

We managed to get to sunny Madeira after a tortuous journey.  The queue to check in just seemed to go on forever and we didn´t have any time to do our last minute shopping.  Then, to top it all, the flight was delayed because some fool didn´t turn up, and they had to unload their bags.  Oh, and I saw water dripping from the casing of the TV monitor, which couldn´t have been a good thing. 

Madeira is lovely, of course.  The house is magnificent.  Built in the 1930´s, it´s huge and just filled with period touches.  Bakelite switches, shiny wooden floors, poor plumbing and a strange smell.  It also has a beautiful, huge, veranda.  It is fantastic and I want it.

The only problem is that the house is quite hard to find and it is in a street with an impossibly foreign name.  We had to write it down on a piece of paper to show taxi drivers, and even then they always have to go away and consult their colleagues.  We have to get a taxi home every night because the house is at the top of a very long, steep, hill.  In fact everything in Madeira is at the end of a long, steep, hill.  That´s probably why I always lose weight when I come here.

Mr Rock Cake is going to join us tomorrow.  I´m not sure he has been tempted by the relaxing atmosphere or the chance that he might be able to go diving.  We went out on the sea yesterday to see dolphins.  I was a little bit sceptical about our chances, after all the ocean is a big place.  We must have seen hundreds of the things, all swooping and hollering like teenage hooligans around our boat.  They are truly graceful creatures, and there is nothing cuter than watching the little babies keeping pace with their parents as they leap out of the water.  One of the boats mates put paid to the myth that dolphins are friendly creatures with an affinity for human beings.  I was so glad that I wasn´t the stupid person who asked the question about how well they get on with people.  The boy sneered, "only in the movies."  he reminded us that dolphins are wild animals and not particularly friendly, especially if they have babies.  There went my fantasies of communing with dolphins.

We´ve had a little bit of illness in our group.  Ms Ginger Cake managed to get sick the day before we left and has only just got over it.  Now Ms Victoria Sponge is sick.  The poor thing took to her bed yesterday afternoon and no one has seen her since (of course we have looked in on her). 

When I left the house about 30 minutes ago, they were all still in bed.  I took the opportunity to ged to escape the hurly burly of group living to spend a little time by myself here in this cute little internet cafe that I´ve found as I wandered around.  I´m sitting here smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee while listening to Iron & Wine on my iPod.  It´s bliss.  I ´forgot´to take my mobile phone with me, so no one knows where I am.  I suppose I am going to have to make contact with them soon, although I probably could quite easily spend the day by myself.  We´re all getting on really well and I´m enjoying the company, but I am beginning to get movie withdrawal symptoms and I just want to go to the cinema by myself.  Oh, I suppose I might take Mrs McMuffin with me.

I better get going.  I can hear the sunshine and food calling to me.

PS: I know I´ve said this before, but I just love my Mac.  I decided to put a link to the house that we are staying in.  I syncronised my bookmarks on this PC here in Madeira with my bookmarks on my machine at home in the UK and took the link from there.  Now, that is fantastic!

return of the natives

Yes, we're back in dear old Blighty and I am quite pleased to be home. Not that it wasn't lovely to be away, but I have been missing Slinky and looking forward to having a bit more personal space (as I'm more than sure the others have too).

a cure?

I have been looking through our Madeira pictures and there are some very lovely ones, which I shall get Mr McMuffin to post, as I still can't remember how to do it without him yelling over my shoulder. I have the day off today to try and get things back to normal and have been aided in my ambition to wash and dry everything by the glorious weather back home. Apparently it got up to about 35 C on Sunday, so I'm glad it's cooled a bit since then (all the way down to 33 C, according to my car).

Slinky had his stitches removed today and behaved himself very well with the vet. I was a bit worried that we would miss the appointment, as he stayed at our lovely neighbour's house last night, but in he trooped at 8.30am. I think he was making some kind of point about being left behind when we went on holiday, as our nice neighbour says that she only usually sees him about once a month for about five minutes and all he does then is go in and inspect her and the house, have a little wail and then leave.

So, anyway, the point of this post was to tell you all how brave I was about flying (and incidentally going in the cable car up to Monte). It was the strangest thing for me as I have been a poor flyer since I was ten and to be anxious rather than terrified was a completely novel experience. I even wished I had a window seat, rather than cursing the gits who leave the blind up and force me to catch glimpses of sky or tiny specks of land. What's more I didn't even use the prescription for diazepam that my GP gave me. I know, it's just not natural, fear of flying is such a part of me that I'm beginning to suspect that I have been replaced by a pod person, particularly as I began to consider long haul as within my grasp. Strange days indeed.

the first of many...

i forgot to mention...

That the house we rented in Madeira had a very creative owner. She very kindly hung her paintings on every wall in every room of the house before she left to go live in another country. I thought you might like to see them. It has been incredibly difficult to choose just a few of these paintings, but I have been able to narrow it down to just these three. Although I did become quite partial to her erotic ladies in the bedrooms too, but I forgot to take a picture of them.

Picture 1 Picture 2 Picture 3

flop

Mr McMuffin tells me that our hit rate has dropped and we need to start writing some interesting stuff again. I say good riddance to bad rubbish and our reader knows that we are consistent and reliable in our dullness and there never was a golden time of exciting blogging. Anyway, it's Mr McMuffin who is dull, I have a sparkling wit and am lightly vivacious. It's also too flipping hot to do anything except lie as flat as possible and consume lots of liquids.

I have also coined a new name for Slinky. From now on he will be affectionately referred to by his gangster name of Slink the Wink.

dolphins in madeira

It was practically impossible to take any decent photos of the dolphins, but I snapped away like mad and a couple came out quite nice. I like this one. It was a bit strange seeing dolphins in the sea this close. I have only ever seen them before on TV or from a distance in the sea. Of course, I don't really count my visit to Seaworld. I must admit that they reminded me a bit of dogs, always sticking their noses in things, and always on the look out for a bit of fun. I was able to take a little movie of these beautiful creatures playing around our boat, so here are Dolphins in Madeira, which sounds like a rather tasty dish.

By the way, this is Mrs McMuffin sneaking in to wish Mr McMuffin a very happy birthday, despite him turning up his nose at my fabulous birthday plans. What's wrong with an evening countryside picnic?

happy birthday...

...to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday dear Mr McMuffin. Happy birthday to me. And many mooooooore.

i made her cry

When we were in Madeira we booked a table at a nice restuarant on Saturday night. This is the fourth year that Madeira has celebrated the Atlantic Festival. I'm not sure what it's all about but they have a massive, and I mean massive, spectacular, fireworks display every Saturday night during June. Last year the display was sponsored by Australia. This year it was Japan's turn. We decided to book at table at the same place we went to last year. I don't know if you remember but it was the place that found Mrs McMuffin's purse after she lost it. Last year the food was great and we had a lovely evening. This year the food was absolutely the worst I have had anywhere. We sat for over an hour before our starters arrived. I had mussels. They served up those massive foreign green lip things which they probably bought frozen from the local supermarket, and then they overcooked them until they were like tastless leather. Ms Gypsy Tart had limpets, which had been fresh at some point because they were still gritty. These they managed to turn into leather too. I can't remember what the others had, only that it was all crap. We waited another hour for our main course to arrive. To add insult to injury we watched people arrive after us eating their meals. We managed to drink three bottles of wine with hardly any food, and we were all getting a little bit drunk. Me, I was just getting angrier and angrier. I finally couldn't stand it anymore, and I called the waitress over to complain. She was deeply apologetic, telling me that the food would be with us soon. I asked her what she was going to do about this mess. She told me that I would have some lovely food. We went through this a couple of times. Then she told me that the poor service hurt her because we were very special to her. I gave up at this point and gave the universal sign for hard cash, at which point she started to cry. She said that we would have lovely food and then rushed off towards the kitchen.

During all of this Mrs McMuffin was having a paroxysm beside me. She is very Welsh and English at times like this, which can be terrible combination. She hates to complain, and she hates me to make a fuss about anything in public. So, we hissed at each other through clenched teeth for a few minutes. You could have cut the atmosphere around our table with a knife. I could see that other people were turning to watch us. Fortunately I was a little bit too drunk to give a toss. The rest of our party just sat in silence, slowing getting drunker and drunker, even Ms Ginger Cake, who hardly drinks at all.

When our main meal arrived I picked at it for a second, but I just couldn't bear the idea of paying for that meal, so I made my excuses and left leaving the rest of them to decide what they wanted to do. I like to think that I did this with a considerable degree of grace.

I watched the lovely fireworks sitting at a nearby cafe drinking coffee, all by myself. A lovely end to the evening. Turned out later that eveyone agreed with me about the meal, and they all wanted to leave, but couldn't quite bring themselves to cause a fuss. At times like this it's hard to believe that in the not too distant past most of the world was frightened of the British. Little did all those countries that we took over, just because we could, realise that all they had to do was put us in a position where we had to make a fuss or complain about something.

why?

You are probably wondering why I am sitting here on my birthday writing post after post. Well it 7.20pm and I still haven't heard anything from Mrs McMuffin. I am hoping that she is preparing a lovely surprise for me, but I don't know if I can wait much longer. I'm sitting here getting slightly drunk, and I'm starving. Where is she?

I've just had a visit from Ms Ginger Cake, I'm sure she's in on this too, who just popped in to give me a present. It's lovely. A big chrome ice crusher. Very, very pretty. I just wish I had some ice to crush. I think it will definitely be a margarita weekend now.

roast potatoes

Are we the only people to have discovered the joys, and I don't use that word lightly, of frozen roast potatoes? I bought a bag a few weeks ago just to see what they were like. They are fantastic. Crisp on the outside and lovely and fluffy on the inside. The best bit is that they are done in about 30 minutes. We have now introduced Mr Rock Cake, a roast potato aficionado if ever there was one, and he has become hopelessly addicted to them. Last night, it was Ms Ginger Cake's turn. She was so easy to convert. I imagine that her shopping trolley will be filled with frozen roast potatoes this weekend. The only problem that I can see with them is that the list of ingredients, which insists that they are made with real potato, states there is only 88% potato in them. I am a little scared to think about what could be in that lost 12%. It's probably best not to think about it too much. Do yourself a favour, try them.

I know, I know, of course they're not as good as real potatoes cooked in goose fat, but they are still very good.

this is my last post tonight...

Just thought I'd say that. That's all.

been a while (down our street once more)

You'll never guess why we haven't been blogging over the last couple of days. No really, you won't. We were just eating a slice of Mr McMuffin's birthday cake when we had a phone call from Julia Roberts inviting us over for dinner. Well I had to tell her we'd already eaten and we weren't going to babysit the twins again, so that they could have an evening at Pizza Hut (they have such pedestrian tastes), when Julia surprised us by suggesting that we all go to a Mongolian barbeque restaurant. Well, I don't rate them, but she wanted to give it a go. We invited Jen and Gypsy Tart, but they were drunk and slagging off men again, so we didn't press the matter.

So, Mr McMuffin and I ate a small bowl each and Julia and Dan tucked away so much food I thought they were going to go Mr Creosote on me. Fortunately they didn't explode, but the pressure seemed to be released by constant farting. It was disgusting and we were on the verge on leaving them to stink the place up on their own, when we realised that they were both quite ill. We rushed them to hospital and they were in all weekend, so Mr McMuffin and I had to look after the little ones.

Well I take my hat off to Julia. I was exhausted after two days and I have no idea how she does it day after day in that little two up, two down terrace they live in. I'll be a bit more sympathetic to her babysitting requests now and the next time some showbiz mag slags her off, I'll tell them where to stick their nasty lies.

closer

We just watched Closer. I had no idea that Julia Roberts was a photographer. She took some really nice pictures. It's amazing how talented some people are.

dear mr b*u*s*h

I don't know why you and your friends are having so many problems understanding this:

Osama Bin Laden was not a friend of Saddam Hussein and did not plan any attacks with him. Saddam was a very unpopular man all over the world. Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction lying around Iraq. Invading Iraq has no logical connection to the events of 9/11, other than to show the world that the US government is keen on embroiling itself in another useless war and likes to have idiot patsies who will go along with this.

If you would like me to explain this to you in more detail, then please give me a ring and arrange a time to come over. I know you don't have my phone number and I am ex directory, but I'm sure you can get someone to track it down. Wish you could find that Osama though.

note to self

No matter what the temptation, please try to avoid any overtly political blogging as it often offends people who really like Mr Bush and support the war in (against?) Iraq. While generally you have not counted these people among your friends, you realise that you should not limit your circle to those who agree with you on important issues. Remember that you can tolerate dissent, some of your best friends do not admire the work of Charlie Sheen, while you know that he is not wooden and unable to act his way out of a paper bag, but a sensitive actor who gives the appearance of not really acting at all, but in the style of Anthony Hopkins inhabits the part. Remember you can learn from the US right wing, their use of language to demonise is second to none and as a compliment to our lovely commenter who took time to write a well thought out and lengthy response, you will try and incorporate the words terror master into ordinary conversation.