Water Theory...

One of my favourite pictures is The Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai.

It's part of a set of 36 pictures that Hokusai created as woodcuts depicting different views of Mount Fuji. But Fuji isn't really the central component of many of these pictures. It's often in the background or to one of the sides and the focus of the pictures tends to be events unfolding a long way away from the mountain, like the fishermen battling the power of the wave in the Great Wave or the tea house at Koishikawa the morning after a snowfall.

The Great Wave, however, remains my favourite out of this set as it's not only utterly beautiful but the image of water as a potent force inexorably driving forward is something I find utterly compelling. I love the idea that all waves start as small and often insignificant things but grow and gather force the further they travel along a certain path.

One of the key philosophies in hapkido is Yew or water theory. It basically states that water is usually considered something soft but water always find a way around or through even the hardest rock by constantly driving against it and finding a weak point then wearing it down. Water can also be something that is both incredibly powerful or incredibly soothing and it can also be totally formless and adapt to its circumstances.

The Great Wave is a constant reminder of these things and whenever I get near grading the Great Wave always appears as a screen saver on my machine at work and at home. I'm grading on Sunday and well ready as my head is pretty much where it needs to be.

Knob gags will be back next week...

Pussy News...

The new kitten, Willow, is starting to have the run of From Beer To Paternity Towers after been cooped up in the living room for the past few months while various builders have been working in the house.

The downside of this is that she and our other cat, Buffy, are now starting to run into each other several times a day and they're sort of working out how to handle each other amid the snarling and hissing.

Buffy, of course, is a lethal killer and regularly brings us 'presents' of the small, furry and bloody variety at 4am in the morning, prompting the Missus to turn into the housemaid from Tom And Jerry cartoons as she shrieks for help while standing on the bed.

Willow is also showing signs of following in Buffy's footsteps as a mouse recently escaped from Buffy and ran through the gap under the living room door a few weeks ago. The poor mouse obviously thought it had made it to freedom. Then it ran into Willow and she made short work of it.

To encourage this disposition the Missus has recently bought three toy mice which Willow now chases and savages around the kitchen. Last night she also climbed into our bed and decided a certain part of my anatomy was also fair game, meaning it's padded boxer shorts in bed from now on.

Anyway... the upshot is I now have two female cats in the house, all of who can sometimes be affectionate but have clearly decided that brutal violence is a much more entertaining option.

Can't imagine where they got that from...

Sally Morgan: Star Psychic...

The world may be heading towards financial meltdown and the omens for a speedy recovery may not be good, but ITV can always be relied upon to cheer up a discontented nation... or alternatively heap yet more schlock and misery on an unsuspecting public with its latest attempt at creating a she's-one-of-us, real-life, salt-of-the-earth D-List telly star like that old thing off Driving School.

Welcome to the world of Sally Morgan: Star Psychic...

The basic premise of the show is that celebrity psychic Morgan, a bubbly, fiftysomething with a body shape like an enlarged Ewok, meets and greets various celebs and other punters for the 'first time' and displays her pyschic gifts to all and sundry by delving into their pasts to reveal astonishing facts and helping guide their futures.

Interestingly the show opens by claiming that Morgan was a trusted confidant and psychic reader for the late Princess Di, like that alone means we should implicitly trust and believe in her. But once you delve beyond the surface of that little fact it's not exactly a ringing endorsement as our Sally didn't have any visions of a car crashing in a Paris subway to help protect her star client.

In the main body of the show Sally uses her psychic gift to astonish and bewilder various D-List celebrities (the Cheeky Girls, a couple of Page 3 stunnas, that bird off the Scottish Widow adverts, Jennie Falconer), before she then gets to grips with members of the public.

Some of the former celeb-bilge is bizarre because Morgan throws so many keywords and guesses out that when one of the celebs latches onto something it's like the Red Sea has opened. It's miracle time! The fact that Morgan is all enthusiastic machine-gun delivery and touchy-feely with people is also quite a clever ruse as viewers accept her as a chatty old girl who always talks a lot so they conveniently forget the bits of guess work and loaded phrases leading up to the miracle moment that were wide of the mark or ignored. And conveniently viewers don't see the bits that were edited out either.

But it's in the latter non-celeb section where it gets quite intriguing because it ventures into the arena of emotional pornography where vulnerable and needy members of the public lay themselves open to be hoodwinked by more fishing and digging until one of the guesses gets lucky.
'I'm seeing man... He's very close to you... Have you had a man who's passed over to the other side? He's very proud of you...'
'Yes. My dad/brother/uncle/brother* passed away...'
'Did he have a favourite coat?'
'Yes...'
'It was a dark coat, wasn't it?'

Sadly some of it is quite clever and I must confess I don't know how she does all of it.

For example she knew pretty early on that one the Page 3 girls was pregnant but a decent cold reader would have spotted the hands on the stomach in a protective guard immediately. It's also well chronicled how other psychics use intricate networks of information so they can prep up on psychic tourists who've visited other psychics before and it wouldn't take a genius to figure out how facts about 'surprise' guests could be leaked ahead of schedules through a helpful TV production bodkin.

Remember: just because you can't see the strings it doesn't mean there aren't any.

As far as I could tell Morgan is a coldreader par excellence in the guise of Blanche from Coronation Street voiced by the cast of Loose Women. All of the cast of Loose Women.

But in essence it's end-of-the-pier and bottom-of-the-barrel stuff which has none of the style or presentation of Derren Brown and, even more dangerously, purports to be the real thing rather than trickery whose method is exposed at the end.

It's shocking that ITV puts this bilge on TV. If they want to do something genuinely interesting in this area then bring Phillips in and subject her to proper scientifically controlled conditions with people she can't previously research or cold read and not publicity-hungry celebs who are booked months in advance.

Sadly, of course, that wouldn't be interesting or good telly. But then again neither is this – unless you're Morgan, of course, whose business (£1.50 per minute with one of her hand-picked team of psychics or £30 for 20 minutes via credit card) is probably booming as more needy and gullible folk flock to her website...

Making The Grade...

I grade for my black stripe at hapkido in 11 days and I'm a tad nervous.

It's been a year of niggling and nasty injuries and my recent bout of flu totally knocked me on my arse so I'm still not operating at full strength. Even worse the sort of training sessions that I'd normally fly through are currently turning into a bit of a grueling ordeal.

My body feels like the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek when it's under attack from the Kingons and the shields are struggling to hold up and Scotty is shouting 'She cannae take it, captain!' from the engine room.

Apart from my current stamina issues I also need to tighten up my stances. And I need to run through everything else I've learnt over the past five years. But that's all I need to worry about.

Oh... apart from learning the Korean words for the techniques I'll be tested on. Still, nobody said it was going to be easy...

Other Woman Who Loves Other Women News...

I am grading for the belt before black in just over two weeks and as I've had bits and bobs of time off injured and ill over the past four months I am trying to get back up to speed so I don't make a total arse out of myself.

Fortunately the OWWLOW (Other Woman Who Loves Other Women) passed the same grading last year so I spent an hour going through stuff with her this evening. She's a very good martial artist and as she's also a dancer she looks incredibly graceful when she's moving. She's also an utter athlete and it makes me realise I still have a tendency to be a bit of a brawler rather than a nimble-footed ninja-in-training whenever I take some time to watch her.

But if I'm going to spend an hour getting hot and sweaty in a room with a woman who's not my wife then I'm glad it's her. And I also love the fact that she give me advice like 'You need to spread your legs a bit wider' without smirking.

Well, without smirking too much...

Going Victorian...

My need for amusing facial hair has resurfaced so my sideburns are back.

My brother-in-law thinks I look like cannibal butcher Hilary Briss from the League Of Gentlemen while the Boy is convinced I've gone all Victorian and am trying to emulate Sherlock Holmes.

Consequently any time I mention anything to the Boy it suddenly turns into a gag about something Victorian or detective-related. For example:
'What school did you go to?' asks the Boy?
'Goole Grammar School...'
'Are you sure you didn't go to an elementary, my dear Watson, an elementary...'

The odds on me paying for his very expensive 18th birthday present are getting longer by the day...

Pussy News...

The new kitten Willow is getting bigger and has taken to sleeping in a wooden bowl on a table in the living room.

I commented on this and suggested Willow was maybe a little bit mental.
'She'll fit right in living in this household then,' replied the wife.

Probably a fair point...

All Heart...

I am in hapkido class and really going for it and feeling fabulous then suddenly I have horrible chest pains.

My heart feels like it's about to burst out of my chest so I stop and sit down for about 15 minutes until I can gingerly move without pain. It is quite scary. My body hasn't rebelled like this before. Ever. Even in my feral drinking, smoking and carousing years...

So I eventually feel able to move without pain and I slowly make my way home and explain what happened to the Missus and the Boy in and in their usual sharing, caring way they demonstrate their love and concern.
'Can you shut up as we're watching TV?'
'And I'm trying to eat pizza...'

The next day I phone NHS Direct and they suggest I visit my local doctor. One phone call later and I'm booked in to visit my doctor the same morning and he checks me out and sends me off to a hospital in Paddington for an ECG. I get to Paddington and get the ECG done within five minutes of arriving at the hospital then I head back to my local doctor's surgery where I manage to book an appointment for later that evening and I give him my ECG results and I get the all-clear.

So two appointments with my local doctor and one hospital visit in one day. The NHS are doing great work.

My body, however, has clearly had enough and three days later I succumb to the flu. And it's proper flu as well. Bugger...

Goth News...

Me and the Missus are visiting Barry Stir, an old friend who is in the legal profession.

He lives in Nottingham and when he's not donning a wig and gowns to be in court he's a concert-going Goth with a penchant for the Sisters of Mercy and Killing Joke. So when we're out and about and and he's taking us to his fave pubs we inevitably end up in the goth/rock pub in town.

It's a place of wonder and I want to stay there for ever and take pictures of all the weird and wonderful people on display. I tell the Missus these are my people and this could very well be my new spiritual home.

She tells me I am a nearly fortysomething man wearing jeans and a jacket and in no way look like one of them. I try to explain that the tribe of Goth is about internal as well as external attributes but she doesn't listen and talks to Barry Stir instead.

The next day we are out and about in town and we chance upon the two Goth/punk/S&M shops in Nottingham – and the Missus wants to go in. Result! So I encourage this and she gets into a discussion about tribal-style earrings with the woman who owns the shop. Even better, she buys some of them and toys with the idea of buying more.

The Missus is slowly turning Goth from the ears out...

Other Woman News...

The Other Woman has broken her arm in two places when she landed awkwardly during a falling drill that involves jumping over people then going into a breakfall.

It was a freak accident and there were operations involved and she subsequently has a heavily bandaged and swollen arm that now has steel plates in it to knit the bones back together. Ouch...

But with a Halloween party coming up she's decided not to let her swollen arm get her down or stop her planned festivities. In fact she's decided to utilise the fact that one of her arms is twice the size of the other one and go to her Halloween party as... Hellboy.

I think she's a genius. Well, a genius who's about to coated in red body paint...

Rambo...

I have to confess I love Sylvester Stallone. I genuinely think he's a very clever bloke and I still think First Blood and Rocky are pretty good films so I was rather pleased when the Rambo DVD arrived through our letterbox.

The plot of Rambo is hardly Chekhovian: former Vietnam vet John Rambo is now a boatman who's hired to take several religious do-gooders into Burma where they hope to dish out Bibles and provide some medical care. But they're captured by nasty Burmese army types and he has to return to rescue them with a bunch of mercenaries.

It's pretty standard Rambo fayre but at just over 80 minutes there's not too much time for character development. There is shedloads of bloody violence, though, as everyone's favourite former Green Beret cuts his way through swathes of nasty Burmese soldiers and saves the day.

The Missus watched the movie with me and she claimed it was the worst film she'd ever seen. I argued, however, that it was a telling critique of US foreign policy and the morality of the peace movement because the only way anything got done was through violence and warfare – even though it fundamentally didn't change anything (apart from Rambo himself, who returns home to his family in America).

I said I saw this latter development in particular as another analogy of what US foreign policy should be and that the US should follow Rambo's idea and get out of troubled areas and head home to sort out their own problems first.

The Missus told me I was an idiot. I, however, think I may be a foreign policy expert-in-waiting.

Picture Perfect...

One of my work colleagues showed me a mobile phone picture of the baby she's currently carrying.

You could tell it was a baby's face in the womb and it was quite cute in a black-and-white baby-in-the-womb kind of way.

She didn't seem too happy, however, when I asked how she got the phone in situ to take the photo. Girls, eh...

Hot Stuff!

I am out with the Missus and we are having a curry with the Other Woman, the Other Woman's Real Fella and the Other Woman Who Loves Other Women.

The conversation is pretty convivial, the food is good and all is going well – until the discussion gets onto Leon and I happen to mention that I thought Natalie Portman was very attractive in the film. There is a moment of silence then the Other Woman's Fella points out that she was about 13 when that movie was filmed and suddenly the entire table looks at me as though I should be on some type of register.

I try to defend myself by explaining the film is not just about the central character played by Jean Reno but also about the sexual awakening and maturing of a young girl heading towards womanhood but it doesn't work. I may as well have been Peter Sutcliffe or Fred West for the rest of the evening...

The next day I am at a county pool match and I relate the discussion to my county team-mate the Web Guru And Antique Cue Expert and he ponders the situation and gives his opinion.
'There are people that it's OK to like in your head but you should never talk to anyone about them...'

That's probably very good advice. Or maybe he thinks I'm some type of pervert too...

Wise Words...

'You've got to take pleasure in small things because there aren't enough big things in life to make you truly happy.'

I thought this was a truly fantastic quote and is a philosophy very close to my own. Then I realised Nigella Lawson had said it and, sadly, I'm not too keen on Mrs Curvy-Food-Is-Sex-Cook-Who's-Shacked-Up-With-The-Architect-Of-Bringing-Thatcher-To-Power.

So if anyone asks I'm going to pretend it was William Blake. Or Hitler...

Bruce Almighty...

The Missus has a potential new entry on her allowed list and she's even considering removing Johnny Depp to make room for him.

So who is this sexual behemoth? Well, actually, it's Bruce Parry.

For those who've never come across the delightful Mr Parry, he's an adventurer whose current series, Bruce Parry’s Amazon, sees him travel up the Amazon River to explore this region and meet the tribes and people who work there.

It's a truly fabulous series and in the episodes I've seen he's already made himself violently vomit for several mornings in order to purge his body in the same way that the tribe he's visiting do. On top of this he's also imbibed hallucinogenic potions, joined a criminal gang making cocaine in the jungle and joined a small family logging firm chopping down part of a rainforest.

But the thing that makes this such a must-see show is the fact that Parry is such a fabulous presenter who's genuinely open to new experiences and really enthusiastic when it comes to finding out about the people and their lives as he journeys down the river. No po-faced Western ideas of superiority here... only genuine interest and genuine compassion.

He's wonderful and the show is fab. And he's also a former Royal Marines Physical Training Instructor so he can probably bonk for bloody hours too. Consequently I may have to increase my exercise regime to compete with my wife's newest addition to the allowed list – unless, of course, Parry has a go at crocodile wrestling in the next episode and comes a cropper.

Sadly I love myself so I'd probably mourn too and also lament the fact the wife can't shag him. He's that bloody nice...

Happy Anniversary...

Last week I celebrated five years of martial arts training at hapkido and with it came a bit of a breakthrough as far as my mental approach was concerned.

For much of this year I've had no grading to prepare for so I've been watching other people spar during class and paying attention to what they were doing and working out how I could counter it. In fact in my head I'd turned sparring into something of a competition and worked out how I could get inside and utilise my slowly evolving boxing skills.

Then the penny finally dropped on Thursday and I realised if I want to pass my next grading then I should really be focusing on myself and polishing my skills and not worrying about any other bugger's.

On the plus side, however, I have nicked a couple of nifty fighting techniques from other martial arts to act as defences/weapons in sparring so it's not been a total waste of time. One is a Muay Thai kick called a 'teep' which involves kicking the thigh of an opponent's kicking leg, while the other is a double elbow strike borrowed from a Cambodian martial art called Bogatar.

But I now need to stop worrying about that and get my arse into gear as it's eight weeks and counting until I grade for my black stripe, which is the belt before black. And it could be a tough few months to get up to speed...

Martial Lore...

I attended an intensive hapkido course this weekend.

The Other Woman and the Other Woman Who Loves Other Women were there too and I can honestly say that, after two days of kicking and punching and throwing and joint-locking and wrestling and ground-fighting, my body has never ached so much from any form of exercise...

The weekend basically happened because the chief instructor from the main academy was over from the US for a week as she's good friends with our instructor and so they ran an intensive weekend-course-cum-bootcamp for a group of academy students.

And it was spectacularly fab with really good teaching and lots of eager students learning new techniques or refining old ones. It was particularly good from a personal point of view because it provided an injection of enthusiasm when I needed it most and it reminded me that, even though I still have much to learn and refine, I can actually do some of this stuff. In fact I'm even half-decent at some of it.

I could make black belt yet. Maybe...

On Cue...

As a long-time pool and snooker player I have always had a bit of an interest in old snooker cues and the various Riley tombstone cues, so named because the Riley badges on the butts are shaped like a tombstone, are something I've always thought were quite beautiful.

And now I am the proud owner of my first antique Riley cue. The downside of this, however, is I've now decided I want to own one of each of the Riley tombstone cues, of which there are five or six different ones so I now have a new collecting mania.

Sadly the Missus has decreed we need the bathroom doing so I have to find money for this just as I'm finding a new hobby that may require additional funds too.

So antique snooker cues or new bathroom? It's a tough call. Fortunately there is always the excellent website www.thecuecollector.com where I can window-shop if all else fails...

Potty Mouth...

We are eating dinner and the Boy is discussing the film Taken and saying it has had awful reviews so I try to defend its lead actor.
'That's a shame as I quite like Liam Neeson. He was great in The Big Man and Schindler's List'
'I've never seen The Big Man but I'm probably going to watch Schindler's List tonight...' says the Boy.
'Have you never seen it?'
'No.'
'I thought you'd have seen it...'
'Why?'
'Well it's quite an important movie. Spielberg gets serious sort of thing...'
'Well I'm watching it tonight.'

I smirk and remember a gag.
'A friend of mine told me to watch Schindler's List many years ago but he warned me that I'd need a box of tissues. So I bought some tissues but there was nothing to have a...'

The Missus intervenes.
'For God's sake! Do not crack jokes about wanking to Schinder's List at the dinner table.'

I get the sort of look she reserves for spare room offences. So I hold my tongue and comfort myself with the thought that in an alternative reality my wife is Jane Austen and I have gained immortality as one of her books ends with the line...

'Because, dear reader, I married the cloth-headed, potty-mouthed fucking idiot...'

Progress...

A friend of mine works at Asda Magazine and I was asking her if she recalls the advert where shoppers walked around the store and, after paying for their groceries, slapped the pocket on their backsides to show that it had more change in it after shopping there rather than shopping at any other rival store.

I think it was voiced by Molly Sugden and I pointed out that such an act may now seem old hat and vaguely sexist but it was in the 1970s when slapping a young woman's arse was deemed a reasonable thing to show on TV.

These days, of course, such actions are frowned upon and the advent of feminism has put something of a halt to this sort of behaviour. Especially if men are also involved. And especially if the arse-slapping is not requested or sought.

In fact these days it's called 'sexual harassment'. And they call it progress, eh?