Shortest Ever Hair

I'VE BEEN (INTERMITTENTLY) AT MY HAIR with a pair of nail scissors all weekend; and the result ~ my shortest hair for 20 years! All the long bits, the crap bits, the straggles are gone!The remaining crop's uniform just-over-1" long and deliberately styleless. No dreadful parting anywhere to be seen. It stands up readily ~ electroshock mad professor-style with a hint of fledgling birdie chick chic.

Because it was cut with nail scissors, you can still see where it was chopped off in clumps. A look I was hoping to achieve.

THE RAZOR-BLADED EXPECTORATIONS of last week's non-piggery-influenced Common Cold are cruising smoothly to oblivion. My last cold post ~ you know the one exclaiming something like "Better Already!" ~ was, I now confess, a little over-enthusiastic. The fiery worst was over, but my airpipes were and still are cobwebbed in choking, membranous rattling phlegm. I have coughing fits an ancient pensioner would be proud of.

But it's not a rattling old peabag cough ~ and that's the point. Nothing coughs up. I just feel like five thousand grains of half-buried itching-rice are semi-dislodged by my hackings. Yet still: nothing ever comes up.

Here's Britain's "socialist" National Health Service (o yeah what a commie idea ~ not to demand a dying man's credit card before he's out of the ambulance! ) ... Pandemic Flu Service site. Do have a non-public hysteria whipping peek.

I read that last sentence back and read it wrong. But I won't tell you what I read. You can read that into it yourself...

ANYWAY I FEEL we're in the 21st Century now. man: I really feel it. WH Smith, Britain's biggest stationers, no longer sell bottled writing ink!

So now-a-days you get 6 or 8 Parker cartridges ~ containing about a bottletop full of ink ~ for £2.60 (I ask you!) ~ which is far more than a 2 fluid oz" (is that 56 mls?) bottle of Quink ever cost me.

Not to be deterred, I'm Harrods-bound ~ Harrods being my favourite shop in the world: the food halls in particular are amazing. And their downstairs stationer's dept. sells every brand and colour of writing ink imaginable. Last time I got Montblanc (click and see), which comes in a shoe-shaped container; the "heel" being reserved for a pen-shaped filling-reservoir while the toes house the swilling year's supply of ink...



Montblanc's Mickey Mouse-style Meisterstück is theee fountain-pen of choice for treaty-signing world leaders. Tradition being that upon signing, statesmen swap "Stücks" as a nod to international harmony. (Then swap straight back as soon as the eyes of the world's media are off them ~ Meisterstücke cost $800-$1000 or more depending on whether you go for gold-nibbed or platinum...

HAVING SAID ALL THIS I'm in an emotional fight for survival (again!). My mood is down on the floor. (Perhaps Harrods might sell something to lift it. But I doubt it. Their heroin dept. closed down in the 1920s ...

PS Gledwood Volume 2 got 355 hits yesterday!

I can barely believe it. Perhaps my hit-counter is wrong ...

Just who from..? I'd love to know ...

Cajun Chicken & A Real Ink Pen

I MISSED MORRISONS' special deal roast chicken legs yesterday lunchtime so I bought two raw drumsticks from the butchers by the MSG-chipshop (they have some secret recipe thing going on and I suspect MSG in the frying oil is surely it). These drumsticks were so enormous they looked like they'd come from a turkey. If not a swan. Anyway, rather than bang them in the oven 200C for 40 mins plain, I did a home-rapid-marinade consisting of Schwarz Cajun Seasoning in Value rapeseed oil Rapeseed's normally 10p a litre cheaper than sunflower or soya, is homegrown and lower in baddie-fats than either of the other two. Anyway I was quite liberal with the spicing and slavered on at least a flat teaspoonload on the two megalegs. These went in for the appointed time, after which I turned off the oven and let them cook inside as it cooled. Imagine my disappointment when, a full hour later, I knifed one open only to find a suspiciously pink interior. Unwilling to touch chicken that's even slightly underdone (and it would have been slightly undercooked if at all) I sliced the chicken off the bones, spread it out on the plate and oven-cooked for a further quarter hour.

This time, if anything, it was over done! But the cajun spicing and the skin came out amazingly crackly and gorgeous.

I will have to try this recipe again. for next time I have another lot of spices hardcore marinating in my cupboard (or should I slam it in the fridge?)

I was thinking of mixing this amazing cajun seasoning ~ which is quite similar to tikka masala, if you know that ~ in with flour to do home-made KFC. Can you do KFC in the oven? I don't really want to deep-fry because of the fire risk.

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Sorry about yesterday's post. I was so down and tired and empty nothing came to mind. bar what I'd seen on the previous night's Big Brother...

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I FOUND a fountain pen on the street outside a public toilet. A real live fountain pen! Yes: it was running around on its little legs, then stopped, peered up at me with sad eyes and implored, "Please help me find my owner. Pretty please!"

And it is quite pretty and girlie. Covered in rainbow stripes and stars. But it's made by Parker and they're the best (after the Swiss brand Lamy). Lamy nibs write as smoothly as if broken in 10 years ago ~ right from the day of purchase.

When I was younger (and pretentious enough) I wrote in real ink all the time. I was thinking, maybe I ought to take up that habit again. It might inspire me to pen a mighty work of Great Literature..(!)... (Or something)...

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AMY WINEHOUSE has been found not guilty of common assault after she gave a black eye to a "burlesque dancer" (stripper) who "shoved a camera" in her face without even asking...

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And how was your day?

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Illustrations: top ~ my chicken legs came out just like this. And I roasted them in a thing that looked exactly the same... Yellow pen by Lamy. Best fountain pens in the world. Amy Winehouse... looked far more sober than this at court today...