Au secours!

I nearly died the other day. No, it's true – I could so easily have perished in the adventure that I'm about to recount. But I didn't die, thankfully, and I'm still here to tell the tale.

I had gone to bed early on Sunday evening (as usual), but was then rudely woken at about 12:30 a.m. by some seemingly angry shouting in the corridor. I thought it was just the usual drunken revelry (we do get some riff-raff in this apartment building, unfortunately), but then I became concerned when the shouts starting getting more and more urgent and then, to my utter surprise, someone started up what I thought was a motorbike in the corridor right outside my apartment door. I wasn't thinking clearly (because I'd gone to bed drunk) and thought that there must be some kind of gang warfare going on. I imagined that someone had brought a motorbike up in the lift and was now trying to intimidate someone else by aggressively revving it outside their apartment (my apartment, it seemed). What in hell was going on? Then I heard wood splintering violently and realized that someone was taking an axe to one of the doors. I was terrified, assuming that whatever was happening, I would be the next victim. I was frightened even to look through the peep-hole in my door, lest I should see something I didn't want to see. Then, to my horror, someone started hammering on my door. Even though I knew I should call the police, I couldn't think straight and was just running round my flat, naked, wondering what next I should do.

The hammering on my door stopped, and it was at that point when I heard the familiar crackle of two-way radios. It gradually dawned on me that something official was going on outside and so gingerly, I opened my door. I was confronted by a very handsome young fireman who informed me that there was a fire in the flat next door, number 5. He explained that the 'motorbike' was a generator brought in to try to clear the air (I then realized that there was black smoke everywhere, including in my apartment). Checking that I was okay, he advised me to leave my windows open, and carried on along the corridor. I went back to bed, and to sleep, but could barely descend into slumber because of the noise of continued shouting and crashing and of course, the prolonged thumping of the generator. When I arose just a couple of hours later, I was surprised (although not entirely un-amused) to find that my hands and face were blackened with the pernicious smoke!

I don't know how the fire started next door. I don't even know who lives there – I never see them, or hear them. The nice girls who lived there before moved out some time ago (without telling me) and I thought for a time that the flat was empty. But I met the girls one day and they said that someone had moved in the day after they had left, so there must be someone there. I saw a pair of jeans on the balcony one day, which were gone the next day, so I presumed there must be someone in residence.

When I was thinking about this incident the next day, I realized how lucky I'd been really. If nobody had called the fire brigade (and I presume it was my silent and mysterious neighbours who did), the fire could have spread to my apartment and the thick smoke could have simply killed me in my sleep. How strange is that? I might have died without even knowing what was coming! Just another example of how lucky I continue to be, eh? Great news!

Now you see it...

Well, here's a strange thing. Take a look at the picture on the right. What do you see? You probably see what I saw – it's a TV satellite dish, cleverly painted to blend in with its surroundings. But why would you think someone (anyone) should do this? Well it's obvious, of course – the owners of this particular dish, reluctant to despoil their bijous residence with such a chav-like eyesore as a common-or-garden satellite dish, have disguised it so that the elegant lines of their home are not besmirched.

Well you'd be wrong. What you see is a clever ruse employed by some (unidentified) intrepid Chinese person in an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the authorities. You see, satellite dishes are banned in China in order to prevent Chinese people from watching foreign TV channels. You know what the Beijing mandarins are like – they are shit scared that their people might see how the other half lives, and so might start grumbling that their own lives aren't quite so much fun. And so, as naive as the Bolsheviks used to be in believing that they can keep their population in a box, they attempt to prevent wanton images from bringing temptation. "If you don't want to know how the western world lives, look away now.

Although digital set-top boxes are available and gaining some popularity in China, they don't allow access to those channels unauthorised by the government. So, the only way to watch foreign TV is to get yourself a satellite dish. As many Chinese people are more interested in MTV than CNN, getting a satellite dish really is the only answer - it's not terribly difficult to get hold of one, even though most sites that market the goods are banned in China, but the main problem is keeping it hidden once you've got one. If your dish is discovered by the authorities, the firemen will come round as quickly as if they'd received a call from a kitten up a tree, to destroy it. So, methods such as those you see in the picture are used in an attempt to fool the authorities – and it's quite artistic, don't you think?

This has given me an idea. I need to disguise my fly-zapper because the pesky creatures have already sent word out to the fly population that I've entered (at last) the killing phase. I only have to reach for the device and the disease-ridden occupants of my apartment take note and immediately go into hiding. I'm not sure how they can sense the impending danger, when in reality they ought to be thinking that I'm only about to practise my tennis serve, but they seem to have sussed what the contraption is for, and immediately scarper. So, my plan now is to paint my zapper to resemble a rotting piece of meat perhaps, or maybe a huge dog turd, and then all I will have to do is stand still, holding it aloft, and they'll come running. Crackle, zap – job done!

Lord of the Flies

Okay, so some of you will be bleating on about how wrong it is to kill any sentient creature deliberately, including flies. You’ll say that I’m invoking bad karma and that I can’t possibly reach enlightenment by behaving in this way. Well, I doubt if someone like me was ever heading for enlightenment anyway, but in case you are thinking that I wouldn’t deserve it if I were trying, just think of this: Since I began my quest to utilize my new electronic zapper to its full potential, the statistics make for very unhappy reading. In a period of just three hours, I killed forty of the blighters. I then left for work, and when I returned home that evening, I killed another twenty in the space of about fifteen minutes. So, in a period of less than four hours I killed a total of sixty – yes that’s right, six-zero – of these disease-carrying, vomit-releasing, shit-spreading, leg-rubbing vermin.

Whilst I confess to feeling slightly heady at the magnitude of such apparently cold-hearted slaughter, I nevertheless assert (to all of you objectors out there) that it simply isn’t right that someone should have sixty flies inside his apartment, all at the same time. It’s not healthy, and it’s not pleasant. For two-and-a-half years I’ve tried my very best to avoid causing these odious creatures any harm, and yet now I feel that for some malicious reason, they’re just taking the piss. Something had to change; something had to be done.

Believe me, it isn’t all fun and dancing anyway. I don’t actually enjoy doing this, and sweeping up the dozens of corpses afterwards is just revolting. But really, sometimes a worm has to turn. I've been taken for a mug by these bastards for far too long, so now it's time to fight back. I'm not proud of this, but sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. And that's all there is to it....

God, Carruthers - the flies!

I'm so excited. You see, I've spent years trying to avoid killing flies because the Buddhists tell us that it is wrong to do so. Flies feature largely my life here, as it happens. I live in an apartment with an elevated terrace that faces the roof of a derelict building. The vista from my doors has a kind of Mary Poppins charm to it – you know, the scene where Dick van Dyke pops his head out of a chim-ernee, and a brush pops out of another – but there is a drawback to this delightful scene. Hundreds of pigeons (the other bane of my life) live in this roof, and presumably they die there too. Rotting pigeon carcasses attract flies – as do (no doubt) the piles of crap and piss that mix together in one magical potion to form the mountains of guano that must lie underneath the roof. So, when I open my balcony doors, my apartment is immediately invaded by dozens of small, common flies that circle the room in a kind of languid display not dissimilar to that of the stacked aircraft above Heathrow airport.

Hereto, I have opted to ignore these parasites until such time as I am due to leave the house, or go to bed. I then normally begin the laborious task of evicting them through the balcony doors. This involves waving cloths and papers in their direction and hoping that they will take the hint and depart. It's maddeningly frustrating – as fast as I can shoo half a dozen of them out into the world through one door, another half a dozen (or perhaps the same ones) come in through another. Even the ones I do manage to coax towards the threshold, sometime do an about-turn and stubbornly refuse to leave. This ridiculous activity consumes hours of my time.

I've tried subtle tactics too. I strung a fluttering line of Tibetan prayer flags across the doors in an attempt to confuse and distract them, hoping that the blur of colour would render the interior of my apartment as somewhere to be avoided. Not so, they gleefully dance past the flags as easily as the Red Baron would evade the British ack-ack over the skies of southern Britain.

I bought a lavender plant and positioned it by the terrace door in the belief that this particular plant is to flies what garlic is to vampires, or kryptonite to Superman. All that happened was that a great fat pigeon – presumably an ally of the flies – jumped on it and trampled it to a flattened piece of scrub.

I then bought an oil burner and began regularly to light candles under lavender oil so as to permeate the atmosphere with what I hoped would be a poisonous aroma. They swerve past this with a contemptuous glance and head off to the centre of the room where they find, presumably, safer air. I shoved some infusion sticks into a jar of lavender-smelling fluid, and the next thing I saw was a cheeky blighter actually perched on top of one of the sticks, energetically rubbing his legs together.

Well, now the pussy-footing is over. The Buddhists can go to hell (as so might I) and, inspired by the bravery of the arm-swatting Barack Obama, I have decided instead to kill the flies. To this end, I have purchased an electric fly-swatter in the shape of a tennis racket. I first saw this device demonstrated in a shop in Venice in June, and the effortless way in which the negoziante was despatching the invaders with each instant sharp crackle, impressed me.

So, I am now armed and ready. I wait here in sweet pleasure, knowing that I will no longer be troubled by this odious marauding mob, and that I will rid myself of its presence with no more effort than practising my back-swing. Yay – bring it on!

Who Do You Think You Are?

Watching this week's Who Do You Think You Are? on BBC1 last night, I was both astonished and impressed by Kim Cattrall's quest to find her grandfather who disappeared from her mother's life and who abandoned his three daughters (one of whom is Kim's mother) in order to run away to America. Kim – surely a megastar in view of the popularity of TV's Sex And The City – approached her search with humility and innocence, and was clearly in awe of the ordinary lives she encountered amongst her family along the way. The disappointment she faced when she uncovered the truth about what an absolute bastard her grandfather turned out to be, was genuinely moving.

This reminded me of a similar quest that was undertaken by my Great Aunt Dolores (she who was run down by a lorry yet survived, and who later took up playing the xylophone). She'd long since claimed to be the love-child of Coco Chanel and one day she set out to prove it. We had many happy and convivial times doing the research, I can tell you. However, one day she took me to Paris's famous Lapin Agile – a bar at the heart of artistic Montmartre where the clientele at one time consisted of a whole range of questionable characters including pimps, eccentrics, simple down-and-outers, the usual contingent of local anarchists, students from the Quatière Latin, as well as a good sprinkling of well-heeled bourgeois, intellectuals and artists, all out on the lark. Home from home for Dolores, I should think. Anyway, she claimed to have been conceived in a back room of the bar when Coco – worse for wear on absinthe – was supposed to have engaged in a brief dalliance with some Gaulois-wielding lothario or other. I'm quite surprised that my Great Aunt didn't insist on claiming that the aforesaid lothario was Picasso, or Salvador Dali or some such similar celebrity.

Anyway, the day we entered the bar there were few patrons who could be described as either bourgeois or artistic. The tables were mainly occupied by fat American tourists and geeky, blinking Japanese students and of course, there wasn't a Gaulois in sight. There was a rather surly-looking young waiter cleaning glasses behind the counter, and when Dolores chose to poke him in the stomach with her ivory-topped cane and demand to be shown the upstairs rooms, he understandably took exception. In the police station, later, she attempted to explain (in her appalling French) that the whole incident had been a mistake, and that she'd really intended to ask directions to les toilettes. When she insisted that the policeman should telephone Omar Sharif (someone else she claimed to have known) for verification of her identity, the officer in question clearly arrived at the conclusion that he was dealing with one of those famous 'English Eccentrics', and let us go.

As he shoved us out of the police station in a rather ignominious fashion, Great Aunt Dolores turned to him and – having abandoned her attempts to speak the lingo by this point – shouted in her most imperious voice: "Young man! Who do you think you are?"

The way he spat at her was a classic of cinematic dismissal. Quality.

Shaken Not Stirred

I'm reading Alan Bennett's Writing Home just now. It's a collection of his musings and diaries and other bits. It's fairly interesting throughout, and in some places it's utterly captivating – especially when he's writing about the insights and preoccupations that caused him to write some of the screenplays he has written. It's all told with his trademark lugubrious wit, of course – and there are so many of his famous bon mots that it's easy to see how he has retained his position as one of our most popular dramatists over the years. I was reading this morning about some chap or other whom Bennett had encountered in the British Embassy in Washington – he describes this fella as "entirely charming, affable, and able to hold his liquor". What an anachronistic description is that, of someone? It's a phrase one used to hear in the 1960s and seeing it in print for the first time in years, it brought me to a halt.

It immediately conjured up an image of a man in a dark suit and a thin tie – a solid man; someone who is both worldly and dependable. It's not a quality in a man that one looks for any longer. Correction: it's not an attribute that would any longer inspire admiration in other men. There's something quintessentially masculine and old-fashioned – in the James Bond sense – about a man being able to "hold his liquor". Nowadays, it seems that a man is more often to be admired for getting as drunk as he possibly can and for behaving disgracefully. If the inhabitants of central Nottingham are anything to go by, a man is these days a "man" provided that he can deposit the contents of his bladder and his kebab-filled stomach in the same shop doorway, and still go back for more.

I'm finding it quite difficult these days to "hold my liquor". It seems that after only a couple of drinks, my reason seems to start wavering and I find it hard to hold a discussion on anything sensible. For example, I'd love to chew the fat with someone on subjects such as participatory economics - as an alternative to capitalism - but just two pints of lager renders me incapable of distinguishing between libertarian socialism (on the one hand) and the desperate need to roll naked in the sack with someone (on the other).

Maybe it's all an illusion anyway, and maybe these men who appear to be able to hold their drink, don't actually drink very much at all. The clever man it is who can give the appearance of necking Martini after Martini – and encouraging his associates to do the same – yet who is surreptitiously sipping only half as much as his partners. This reminds me somewhat of the smartass as school who would advocate idleness and delinquency – on the pretext that a displayed diligence was "uncool" - and yet who was secretly swotting like a maniac so that his subsequent high grades would appear to be nothing more than effortless aptitude. Sneaky.

So, perhaps the man who can "hold his liquor" is not James Bond after all, but Lord Snooty.

Welcome Home!

Well, I've had some great news today. My friend Hicham Yezza has won his case against this ridiculous government and will not now face deportation! I only heard this news this evening, on the way home from work. I was driving in the blinding rain (god, it was awful) and there was so much noise I could hardly hear Musab announce the news to me over the hands-free. I'm so excited that Hich has finally managed to convince the authorities that their case against him was nothing more than a mealy-mouthed, face-saving, vindictive attempt at persecution.

Hich has been languishing in gaol for months, just because the jumped-up judiciary couldn't bear to admit that they'd made a mistake. They kept him in a series of prisons as far away as possible from his home in Nottingham because, as they said: "Mr Yezza is an illegal immigrant with no family or friends in this country, therefore it doesn't matter where he is incarcerated." This is all ballast! Hich has lived and worked in Nottingham for thirteen years – paying his taxes and National Insurance like the rest of us – and has a huge network of friends and colleagues who all care for him and who would all have liked him to be nearer. This is cynical, spiteful and cruel behaviour on the part of our glorious Home Office. It was just nasty, and not something any of us should feel proud of.

But now, hopefully, his ordeal is over and very soon he'll be coming home. Now there is going to be a big party to which I think we should invite Jack Straw and Alan Johnson and put them in the stocks and throw tomatoes at them. Frozen ones.

I had a wonderful experience yesterday. I was talking to a group of archaeologists when one of them suddenly whipped out a hand axe that had originally been crafted by a Neanderthal Man something like 200,000 years ago. It was quite remarkable to hold something that was actually man-made, yet that old. But the interesting thing was to learn that Neanderthal Man - having existed on this planet for roughly 190,000 years – then somehow co-existed with us (what the anthropologists call 'the Moderns') for around 10,000 years before dying out. How odd is that? I hadn't realized that we – the 'Moderns' – hadn't evolved from the Neanderthals. It was a revelation to me that we are a totally different species, and that for 10,000 or so years, we were neighbours! I wonder if one of us ever popped next door to borrow a cup of sugar?

Ooh, Coco!

I've been to see a film today – Anne Fontaine's Coco Avant Chanel starring the ubiquitous Audrey Tautou and the outstanding Benôit Poelvoorde. I already knew the story of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel's life – I read a biography about her many years ago (it's a pity I can't remember who wrote it, because it was fabulous and I'm sure it's long out of print), and so I was reasonably familiar with the film's plot.

Strangely though, for the first half hour of the film I didn't think there was going to BE any plot. Although it looked exquisite, and the photography was in places stunning, I wasn't convinced that the director wasn't just using this merely as a vehicle for an exhibition of Tatou's famous pout. That pout was irritatingly omnipresent and I was beginning to wonder whether we would ever move forwards from it. However, the film improves beyond the high cheekbones and gamin-like features of its star, and reveals to us something about Chanel's unique qualities of self-determination and steadfast vision. It was unfortunate that the dénouement of the film was approached with such laboured and obvious prediction – having read the book, I knew what was coming, but even if I hadn't it wouldn't have been hard to spot the somewhat gauche clues in the dialogue. I won't spoil it by giving it away here. Nevertheless, it was all visually gorgeous and in the main, terrifically well-acted. Poelvoorde deserves an Oscar in my view, but if the film receives one at all, it will undoubtedly be awarded to the camera's sweetheart, Tautou. That pout has a lot to answer for.

On another subject, I overheard a conversation in the corridor the other day. First woman: "So we were getting to a state where, well, I said that we were fast approaching a crisis". Second woman (nodding sagely): "So you needed some crisis management then?" Second woman (looking vindicated): "Oh, absolutely." Talk about stating the bleeding obvious.