"Argos, the laminated book of dreams" a neat description from comedian Bill Bailey got me thinking about what books people have at their bed side.

Mine pile up in a teetering tower and can stay like that without being touched. At other times I might dip into different ones.

Right now I'm reading Sophie Hannah's "Little Face". But my leaning tower of reading includes:

Colin Tudge - a book on trees
Ruth Rendell - the water's lovely
Maggie O'Farrel - after you'd gone
Mark Haddon - the curious incident of the dog in the night time
Charlotte Perkins Gillman - the yellow wallpaper
Michael Faber - under the skin
and an all you need to know book on mushroom hunting

Whether I read them or not misses the point, in my case they are my comfort and support. And are there just-in-case. Some of my favourite books, I will store in the loft and read again when I've completely forgotten the plot. Suffice to say it was good at the time.

Some of my most memorable books would include Donna Tartt - A secret history; Andrea Ashworth - Once in a house on fire; Alan Hollinghurst - The swimmingpool library; Zoe Heller - notes on a scandal and Louise Welsh - the cutting room.

For now, the content of the Argos catalogue will hopefully send me to sleep but not before I've ticked the box on my betting sleep to order dreamy, dreamy, nighty-night snooze with my pixie-size pen....

Damn! It's out of stock!

Step 1: Select tea pig
Step 2: Pour boiling water over it
Step 3: Bear down with teaspoon
Step 4: Sip with caution.
Step 5: Throw away

Will tea pigs feature on QI
As a question posed by Steven Fry
Or left to languish
Will tea pigs die, or simply fly...............
away.

Well the tennis is boring and the sun has gone to bed and I'm passing the time until something reasonably entertaining comes via the box. And I may be waiting some time.

And tea pigs?
No thanks.
Just stick to bags.
Unless of course you enjoy drinking tea like a dubious character from a PG Wodehouse novel.

Tea Pigs - I've seen and drank it all now!

Wait till Homer Simpson hears about this. Spider pig is redundant

Luis Aragones - 69 years old, proves that there is life after 65. An active and rewarding one at that.

Sadly when premier league footballers barely get outta bed for less than £130,000 per week, here is man with passion and experience. Will we ever have an English footie manager capable of half of that determination to succeed? I doubt it.

I've never really forgiven Steve McClaren and we've yet to see Fabio Capello's form. I'm somewhat relieved that we never had the commitment nor the flair to qualify. Watching teams like Holland, Turkey, Russia, Germany and of course Spain, we are better of nursing our pints and watching the pundits at home.

Viva Espana.

For those of you with a delicate disposition, a dislike of foul language or a belief in the power of emotional blackmail, look away now.

......"A CHAIN LETTER FROM BILLY CONNELLY

Hello, my name is Billy and I suffer from guilt for not forwarding 50 billion fucking chain letters sent to me by people who actually believe, if you send them on, a poor six-year-old girl in Scotland with a breast on her forehead will be able to raise enough money to have it removed before her redneck parents sell her to a travelling freak show.

And, do you honestly believe that Bill Gates is going to give $1000 to you, and everyone to whom you send 'his' email?

How stupid are we?

Ooooh, looky here! If I scroll down this page and make a wish, I'll get laid by a model I just happen to run into the next day!

What a bunch of bullshit.

Maybe the evil chain letter leprechauns will come into my house and sodomise me in my sleep for not continuing a chain letter that was started by St Peter in 5AD and brought to this country by midget pilgrim stowaways on the Endeavour.

Fuck 'em!!

If you're going to forward something, at least send me something mildly amusing.

I've seen all the 'send this to 10 of your closest friends, and this poor, wretched excuse for a human being will somehow receive a nickel from some omniscient being' forwards about 90 times. I don't fucking care.

Show a little intelligence and think about what you're actually contributing to by sending out these forwards. Chances are, it's our own unpopularity.

The point being?

If you get some chain letter that's threatening to leave you shagless or luckless for the rest of your life, delete it.

If it's funny, send it on.

Don't piss people off by making them feel guilty about a leper in Botswana with no teeth who has been tied to the arse of a dead elephant for 27 years and whose only salvation is the 5 cents per letter he'll receive if you forward this email.

Now forward this to everyone you know. Otherwise, tomorrow morning your underwear will turn carnivorous and will consume your genitals.

Have a nice day.

Billy Connolly"

The thwock and plock coupled with the grunts and "aahs".......

It surely has to be a first for tennis at Wimbledon as I don't believe rain has stopped play - YET! Strawberries in polystyrene cups at £2.50 a shot. Timorous Tim commentating.

Gawd how I love John Mac! A tempestous tennis temperament in his time and not a bad commentator either. Whilst others might fawn about the atmosphere that is uniquely Wimbledon and all that bish-bash-bosh, he puts forth with a firm opinion. As one faceless commentator wombled on about, how next year the roof on centre court will be in operation, and how (drone, drone) what a wonderful experience that will be the first time the roof is used to enable uninterrupted play!! For heaven's sake, it was the heaven pouring forth what caused unrest. Pity the professional tennis player having to play at Wimbledon. The inane Mexican wave games, the cagoules and Cliff Richard sing-alongas. It's not an amateur theatre production or Sue Barker's Circus. It's souped-up, serves and war-cry rallies.

And John Mac, well he issued forth with: "well let's be honest buddy, tennis is a game best played when NOT interrupted. It's about time Wimbledon had a roof!"

And I shall take my own strawberries when I go.

"There ain't no....." and would it matter if there wuz?

Is perhaps not the most erudite lyric sung by a screeching Elton sound-alike but the nostalgia it evoked, as I remember how I played this Scissor Sisters album to death a couple of years ago. If you have ever been guilty of brain-washing mates with songs, or albums the you'll know what I mean. They hate it and you in equal measures and are possibly scarred for life.

Was "tits on the radio" a hit? Was it played on the radio? Or had all members of the tit family migrated when this album was released or just gone shopping with Gok Wan?

The credit crunch sounds like a distant relative of those unappealing chocolate fingers called Bueno Kinder. Yes, those associated with the equally unsurprisingly, undesirable Kinder Surprise eggs. This confectionery has caused me many a slumberless night.

Apart from tasting like toasted cotton wool, on a bed of fine sandpaper, coated with sweetened, dark-brown, liquid, boot polish, why do they exist?

Yes obviously people must like them but why?

I think this sort of gubbins must be responsible for the hysteria over obesity in children.

That coupled with the incredulous fact that oranges are no longer selling as well as they once used to.

Why?

Well oranges (not the only fruit, I know) are tedious to peel these days, therefore they are spurned in favour of the clementine or tangerine or satsuma. As to why anyone would want to peel a Japanese, heavyweight, wrestler in a thong is a mystery to me....but then the popularity of Kinder confectionery remains a mystery so.......(tails off bored with own theorising)

In other news I saw "Gone, baby gone", Ben Aflecks directorial debut, and I can say it is definitely worth seeing.

The Beach Boys meet Brigitte Bardots.

It doesn't get better than this.

On a sunny day too - BONUS!

And this 'un....

For once I thought I shall live dangerously and blog online after the witching hour. What does that mean exactly? Is it after midnight? Do witches go to bed then? Well here I am with not a soul (I can't find it, courtesy of Rubes messy washing machine) to play with.

Everyone has gone to the moon/bed/petrol-siphoning with a jerry can?

There's a strange noise coming from next-door. Sounds squeaky: fancy window cleaning with a chamois at this time of night!!

.......THE NEXT MORNING.....

Did I dream that somebody put crisps in a washing machine? Must have done. (Opens windows to let out the stale baccy smoke and throws a Judy Garland song sheet in the big, black, nasty, darth vader lookee-likey bin).

Let the force be somewhere over the rainbow indeed!

As we are all unremittingly reminded about the bleakness of the economy in crisis - nay meltdown even, I read with knock-me-down incredulity that MPs are claiming for iPods (yes iPods) as part of the necessary accoutrements of their position.

Excuse me? Where the fuck do these people get off? May I suggest the next geo-political bus-stop called Zimbabwe perhaps......

A good beating to death would do them all the world of good. "Have YOU had an accident at work?........Call claims direct."

I instinctively feel that it's just plain wrong to model knitwear accompanied by a subdued gorilla called Pauline.

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was an emboldened step towards the invention of the two-piece, boxy, skirt-suit.

And the knitting-needle is an invention of a mother.

The longest day eh? The longest day of dreary, wet, insipid, wishy-washy daylight hours falls today.

Well hello, June 21st 2008 you can pack up your indolent daylight hours and stroll on.......stroll over to the southern hemisphere which incidentally is where you are heading from this day forth. It wasn't worth the mark in the calendar mate! And don't think about blaming it on the gulf stream or El Ninja or El Cid or whatever the long-term, free-range, get-out clause is for this appalling, dreary waste of daylight hours.

Oh yes.......if you are thinking about raining again can you at least do that properly? Or have you been following the indecisive example set by Gordon-the-inflated-Moron?

POST SCRIPT: So long glummer solstice..........it's dark here in London now and I blame Ken Livingstone. He dumped the daylight in with the congestion charging.

Cobblers?

Is it possible to wear a hole through a pair of flip-flops?

Kirsty MacColl once famously sang.....

I once met a man with a sense of adventure
He was dressed to thrill wherever he went
He said "Let's make love on a mountain top
Under the stars on a big hard rock"
I said "In these shoes?
I don't think so"

I'm more likely to say........"in this weather"?

Where oh where is the summer?

Normally I start with a glass of cranberry and a black coffee in the morning. But today was different. I blame the bad weather. Is it raining per chance where you are? There was a glass of Ernst and Julio rose wine by the bed on awakening. Should I fiddle with a funnel? No that is not another way of describing Cherie's contraception contraption. I mean should I attempt decanting it back into the bottle?

Sod it! Life's too short. It was still chilled. And most refreshing. Perhaps we should all consider low alcohol fruit juice for our morning get-up-and-get-going.

Well Magner's do a lite cider equivalent. But remember drink responsibly in the morning. And when all else fails tell everyone it's a cranberry spritzer!

Finally seen it!

Sex and all those frothy frocks. Belts featured more than coitus but that was no bad thing. The belts were mainly black and covered in studs. Donated by a delightful Couturier called Gimps and Gangbangs!

Mr Big was dark and brooding, a regular latter day Mr Rochester I'll wager. Smith was a hunky Adonis. So what's not to like? A pox on the critics for panning SATC. It was fairy tale eye candy - get over yourselves!!!

And surely no more likely to stretch the boundaries of credibility than Harrison Ford playing Indy-baby. Besides how come his hat never flies off in those action crammed sequences. At least in SATC we know without a doubt that the girls never walk in those shoes............

I said "WALK"

There has been much mutterings about the Jake and Dinos Chapman exhibition featuring the banality of evil in the young Adolf Hitler's nursery daubings. Apparently a fifteen-year-old/odd Adolf would paint twee flowers in pots and send them as postcards to his friends.

Poor Bill and Ben and poor Weeeeeeeeeed. Which if I'm not mistaken was a much maligned Sunflower. And weed's not that bad either.

Well I can report that Adolf is alive and well and living as an avatar in the sestiere San Polo, Venice.

Standing in a remarkable vino shop in San Polo (can't help the name dropping) we pondered the merits of vino Italia. When in doubt bastardise the language with a rolling "vino palazzo rossi por favore and don't spare the horses Mussolini!" This will never leave the shop-owner in any doubt that you are a rich touristico with more money than Gucci maketh. And to our surprise and brief momentary lapse of disgust, the man produced a bottle of wine with a proud and dramatico flourish, Hilter adorning the label.

The name?

Junta's Creek

Bunker lot. 39