Bye bye penis

Is it normal for a child to say 'bye bye' to his penis every time you put a nappy on him?

Child development - no so much terrible two as meddling moaners

I only managed a couple of episodes of The Wire, but this quote sums up the phase Boo is going through at the moment. 'There you go. Givin' a fuck when it ain't your turn to give a fuck.' Falling into this category are: his insistence that I must not wear socks, his demands that Ben replace the lightbulb with one which we know to have blown and his belief that he should be allowed to dictate the bedtimes of everyone in the house.
His interest in his own jobs - eating, allowing us to attend to his personal care and sleeping - is minimal. He needs constant reminders to chew when his mouth is full of food, so wrapped up can he be in sticking his nose into things that are simply none of his concern. He can be endlessly fascinated by a sequin on the other side of the room, whilst simultaneously being incapable of maintaining focus on a mouthful of water for long enough to swallow it without incident. Fortunately, he's cute which is all that's stopping us from incarcerating him.

Unclean (not for the faint-hearted or weak of stomach)

After nearly nine months of genetically indefensible good luck, the small one has been ill.  It started as conjunctivitis a month ago, was found to be a viral ear infection which mutated into an upper respiratory tract infection but the last week it has become something more disturbing.  By which I mean not that it is any more serious in medical terms, just that the infection is now manifesting itself in the form of extreme clinginess (which is in itself quite sweet given that he has only just begun to acknowledge us as his favourite or at least most recognisable people) and a cough which is occasionally so violent it causes him to vomit copiously and with surprising force.

Having volunteered to bring the wailing boy downstairs to allow the Boy Wonder to enjoy the first shift of sleep, I am now typing this one-handed, at a glacially slow pace from my late-night post on the sofa which is festooned with towels, sheets, muslins and tea-towels in a desperate attempt to protect our soft furnishings from the liberal covering of Calpol streaked sick to which they would otherwise be subjected.  Our kitchen is awash (not too tired for puns - never too tired for puns) with laundry.  A small baby is capable of producing enough vomit in one sitting to necessitate changing the clothes of two adults, one child and a king sized bed, so there have been days when I have done more loads of laundry than I've had hours of sleep. However, the worst thing about it is that our usually cheerful and contented progeny has been transformed into a wailing, wilting little bundle of tiredness and dismay and that's making the tiredness feel even more desperate.

(As it turned out, this was the beginning of a long and frustrating process whereby the small one was ill, developed anaemia and had to be referred to the hospital, developed lactose intolerance and generally didn't do much in the way of sleeping for months on end. Fortunately, it was all over eventually and he is now the slightly over-zealous picture of rude health!)

Moving House

We are, theoretically at least, in the process of moving. In reality this means that we have half packed our stuff into boxes and then had to ring a solicitor at least once a day only to be told that we might get to move some 8 weeks after the original date we were given.
However, I am still excited about the move. Not only is the new house much bigger, so hopefully all our stuff will actually fit in it, unlike our current house. But one of the more secret reasons for my excitement is the fact that going to the loo should be a lot less stressful in the new house.
Our current house has one toilet, which is in the bathroom. This means that if one of us wants to use said toilet, have a bath or shower or rearrange our towel collection, then everybody else (really only the Boy Wonder and I as the small boy still just poos wherever he is and expects us to clean it up) has to wait until they are done before they can use the facilities. This means that occasionally a cry goes up the stairs beseeching the incumbent to hurry along, and when we have people to stay there can be up to five adults, usually hung over, all politely vying for time in the smallest room.
In our  new house, however, we have a grand total of three toilets. I cannot wait for this. The pressure of maintaining adequate toilet roll stock in 200% more toilets will be more than made up for by the fact that we will not only enjoy the convenience of a downstairs loo (which will hopefully be worth its weight in gold when toilet training begins) but also a en-suite loo as well as one in the main bathroom. Let joy be unconfined, we will all be able to wee at once someday, and if that's not living the dream then I don't know what is.

Things I've become good at since becoming a parent

1. Judging quantities of liquid - there's nothing like having to measure out 200ml of water for the steriliser to hone your powers of estimating how much liquid is in any given container. 

 2. Estimating microwave cooking times for small quantities of food - if you've ever picked irredeemably shrivelled vegetables out of a pot, you will know that it really doesn't take that long to cook two carrot batons and a solitary piece of parsnip on full power. 

3. Knowing the sodium content of non-salty foodstuffs such as pasta - as you begin weaning, you are frequently told that allowing your child to eat too much sodium is worse than not feeding them at all, so you become obsessed with how much sodium is in almost everything you eat. Shortly after this, you realise that the process of weaning is really an extended period of making food which your child waves around in the air briefly, smears into their hair and then throws on the floor and you could probably give them salt sticks without needing to worry (although sod's law would dictate that a salt stick would be the only food that they would finish first time). 

4. Expanding the list of times/places/circumstances in which I think it appropriate to sleep - when micro boy was first born, every time he fell asleep the Boy Wonder and I were simultaneously terrified that he would wake up and terrified that he would fail to wake up. Thus, when he was asleep, we found ways to sleep around him so that we would be on hand to prevent anything untoward occurring to him whilst asleep, or to us through sleep deprivation. 

 As time went on and we were persuaded that he could probably be poured into his own bed most of the time, and our bed when absolutely necessary, it became less important that we adapted our sleeping pattern to suit his, but nonetheless there have been occasions when I have slept in ways that I could never have predicted. 

These include: in the front seat of my car in the car park of a garden centre; in an MRI machine while I was supposed to be doing special types of breathing; during root canal work; during a heart procedure for which I was specifically told to stay awake(!);  . The overriding inspiration for all of these is twofold: any sleep is better than no sleep and the average level of sleep enjoyed by the two adults in the house can never rise above the level of 'slightly less relaxed than that of the baby'. 

5. Time management - it used to be the case that the Boy Wonder and I could be late for an event at 8pm having done nothing all day other than loll around in our pyjamas, eat breakfast at around 3pm and relax. Now, however, we can be just as late for an 8pm even having been up since 7am, taken micro Boy out for breakfast, visited relatives for lunch, had naps all round, completed up to five showers between the three of us and packed a nappy bag with everything that we could possibly need whilst out with a small baby. 

6. Doing things with one hand - being trapped under a sleeping child with my right hand in a supporting position has led my left-handed typing skills to improve immensely, and today I managed to manoeuvre a trolley around Tesco one-handed whilst trying to placate an inexplicably sad baby (unless it was just a normal response to finding oneself in Tesco of a Thursday afternoon). Cooking, washing, pouring drinks, sterilising and dressing have all proved possible one handed - the only thing I consistently cannot do unless I have both hands free is tie my hair back, but I'm working on it. 

7. Identifying a floorboard which is likely to creak - there is nothing like trying to sneak out of a room where a baby is sleeping to concentrate the mind on remembering which of the floorboards on the way out of the bedroom will make the most surprisingly loud noise as you try to beat a silent retreat.

Dancing in this hole

We took the Blob to the dentist this week. He is pretty good about cleaning his teeth and seems to have grown all the necessary stuff in his mouth, but we wanted to get into good habits with him so I booked him an appointment just to get the ball rolling.

We did a lot of preparatory talk about how fun dentists were and how the dentist really wanted to count his teeth, so we would just pop in so he could have a quick look (although the Blob insisted that he had 'eight or nine' teeth, he was happy to have someone else confirm this).

Armed with a bag full of distractions, we settled into the waiting room where the Blob proceeded to be adorable all over the place, reading books, doing as he was told and grinning widely at the receptionists.

Then he wanted to explore, so we let him roam a little, as there was nobody else in the room at the time, and he found his way into the very small hallway that separated the main door from the interior one.

I could hear a bit of shuffling going on, so I asked him what he was doing. He poked his head around the door and said 'Just dancing in this hole!' with such a look of glee on his face that I couldn't help but laugh indulgently.

Then his name was called, he stopped dancing and followed us meekly to the room with the actual dentists in it. At which point, he realised that this was a medical-ish setting and began to freak out in a way that only a toddler can. I managed to contain him on my lap, and although my best attempts at distracting him with the kindle were powerless in the face of his fear/fury, he did nonetheless, accidentally shout in such a way that allowed the dentist to have a quick look around his mouth and confirm that he had, in fact, got twenty teeth.

The assistant gave him a sticker, I gave him a cuddle, and we all trooped out again with the words 'see you in a year's time' floating out behind us. By the time we got home the Blob was thrilled at his dentist trip and had acquired four new sticks to 'bangininin onananana big green drum' within our garden (it's not a drum - it's a table). Everyone's a winner - roll on next year.

Things that only happen on TV

People don't know who's calling their mobiles

Nobody says goodbye when they've been on the phone

People never finish a drink or meal
Falling over whilst putting on trousers
Ordering 'a pint' and not being asked 'of what?'
Sniffing the clothes of a person you miss
Hugging someone whilst looking traumatised over their shoulder
Hearing something dramatic over a baby monitor

Chefs on TV

Why do they take themselves so seriously? And more to the point, why do other people go along with it instead of laughing at them?

Kiss code

Although the kiss has long been recognised as a sign of affection, in our house it serves a dual function in that the Boy Wonder and I use it to test whether the other is awake. If we aren't looking at each other, don't want to wake the other or just want to test whether our suspicions are correct, we will blow a little kiss to see if it is reciprocated. Admittedly I do this much more than the Boy Wonder as he is usually the first to go to sleep, but it has become a kind of recognised water testing device between the two of us that I find strangely comforting.

Jackson Pollock

Having spent a fun few minutes playing with this I have realised that one of the hardest things about this style of art is knowing when to stop. Perhaps that's why he's hailed as a genius whilst I'm merely a paint splattering idiot who inevitably ends up with a rather upsetting mess.

Giving everyone else the finger

On Sunday night, in a fit of pointless pernicketyness, I decided I couldn't bear to look at the unfastened catch on the Boy Wonder's guitar case, so I did it up myself. Instead of moving it to a more accessible position, I went rogue and approached it left handed as it lay propped on a stool, the result being that I have what would have been a blood blister, had I not managed to actually puncture the skin, in the middle of the fingertip on my left middle finger. It's one of those injuries which, whilst hardly likely to be fatal, is a lot more painful than you would expect, largely because I am so used to not having a flap of bruised skin there that I just use that part of my finger willy nilly with nary a thought to the consequences.

Another unfortunate consequence is that in my efforts to avoid further damaging said finger, I am conducting all my daily business (that's not a euphemism - I am technically doing business!) with my middle finger cocked at a jaunty angle, giving the impression that I am flipping the world a rather feeble and half hearted bird, which of course is usually more of a mental state than a physical one. Combined with my icky ring finger on my right hand I vaguely resemble a broken marionette whose finger strings have become entangled, rendering both hands odd looking and marginally more useless than normal.

Most sane or most in denial?

I've noticed that off all the blogs I read, most of the writers have a therapist, or if not an active relationship with one, at least a diagnosis of some kind which suggests that their mental health is a cause for concern occasionally. Partly I suspect that this is due to the fact that many of them live in the US, which does seem to have a more open and honest approach to the treatment of mental health problems unlike the UK where we still have to be convinced that it's not just attention seeking and fecklessness that causes us to falter under the pressure of our increasingly unwieldy expectations. But partly I suspect that there is something about the introspectiveness of assessing the way you think that either appeals to writers or leads those who otherwise would not write to contemplate capturing their thoughts in an attempt to record the processes through which their minds slink when they are left to their own devices.

I am, perhaps shortsightedly, not under the care of a mental health professional and don't feel the need for any more introspection that this blog affords me - an outlet for my thoughts, obsessions and petty annoyances that doesn't really require any outside input or feedback. Occasionally I will attack the Boy Wonder with a topic of frustration and, if he fails to deliver the response I require, I will fill in his part of the conversation as though that in any way provides an endorsement for my rantings. To his credit, he usually goes along with this charade, obligingly parroting back the lines I feed him with an admirably attempted facsimile of outrage, and fortunately this seems to suffice, for the time being, to keep my brain happy.

A Christmas challenge

The unseasonably hot end-of-September weather has seen my thoughts turn inexplicably to Christmas, and I have decided to issue myself a Christmas challenge: to embrace this year's festivities in the hope that I will actually recapture some of the magic that I used to feel as a child in the run up to the big day. That's not to say that I want in any way to take on the rigidly manic approach that my Mum has to the festive season, with an 800 piece Christmas themed dinner service and perfectly coordinated decorations which are displayed around their house in regimented order every year. But perhaps it wouldn't kill me to get out our tiny wooden Christmas tree before the 24th December, maybe even dust off the rest of our minuscule collection of decorations as well and consider doing the festive food shop in a less manic and world-hating way than has become my own personal Christmas tradition. It's a shame that the Boy Wonder and I don't really like any of the traditional festive fare such as mince pies and Christmas pudding which do admittedly make it smell like Christmas, but given that I won't be able to drink anyway, I might concede to the 'wasting' of some red wine by allowing him to mull some wine.

Party Gifts

Having been to the Gift's housewarming party this weekend, and spending the evening as the sole sober person amongst a horde of drunken youth, I have had a truly eye opening experience. Not only is the Gift a lot more ebullient when with this group of friends, but they also have some peculiar proclivities themselves. Rarely have I been encouraged to tie a clock round my neck with a tape measure just to annoy someone, but the very idea produced cheers of encouragement when undertaken with a clock which is surprisingly dear to the Gift's heart, despite the fact that it neither belongs to him, nor actually works.

I was pleased to discover that his most peculiar friend (who spent a good deal of time telling disinterested people about ways in which he claimed to be able to kill them) ended his involvement in the evening when he blew into a scented candle, spattering wax into his own face, and then passed out on the floor in the Gift's bedroom.

Despite not being drunk, I still managed to get involved in a discussion about who would make the ideal combination of porn actors in the unlikely event that the shooting of such a film should break out at the party, and promised to buy one of the attendees a bike for Christmas, thus proving a point made in an earlier post that alcohol isn't necessary for me to behave inappropriately.

I was also privy to this gem of a conversation between the Gift and one of his paler mates about the Boy Wonder and I:

Pat 'You must have seen him topless!'

The Gift 'I told you - they're not those kind of friends.'

All in all, a good time was had by all, and by being sober enough to drive the Boy Wonder and I home at around 3am we were able to avoid the point where Pat pissed in one of the girls' handbags and the sordid carrying ons which took place on the 70's style sofa later that night.

Drunk me vs sober me

Due to the recent requirement for me to give up drinking, I have been spending a lot of time around drunk people whilst sober. This has lead to the surprising discovery (although perhaps only surprising to me) that, apart from the obvious physical effects, I am about the same when drunk as when sober. Although I am aware that I do not enjoy being out of control when drunk and try to avoid getting 'falling over' intoxicated, I kind of assumed that there would be some lessening of my inhibitions when under the influence of alcohol, however it turns out that I was incorrect. I can't quite work out whether I am generally just predisposed to telling inappropriate stories regardless of whether I've been drinking, or whether my dislike of excessive drunkenness (for no more uptight reasons than that I throw up really - I realise it sounds a little like I'm some kind of temperance fanatic) means that I just have a similar approach to sharing no matter how much I've drunk. I can't work out whether that's admirable or stupid, but it's certainly an eye opener.

Me vs the Boy Wonder

Apropos of not a lot, this evening I just happened to ask the Boy Wonder if he would like to be more like me. This was not designed to be a trick question, but the speed and fervour with which he delivered his answer ('no' in case you couldn't guess) and the fact that I wouldn't even hesitate to say that I would like to be more like him made me wonder whether it would be better if we were both more like me or more like him, so I have decided to score us both according to some arbitrarily chosen criteria in the hopes of proving one of us right.

1. Innate gender-specific abilities

The Boy Wonder is blessed with a sort of elemental knowledge about things like cars, guns, planes and other traditional boy stuff, whereas I fail spectacularly on the girl-stuff front. I have only one handbag, didn't know eyeliner existed until I was about 13 and don't even like cake, therefore failing on many scores at being a girl. I do like kittens and puppies, but allergies to both make that a fairly tragic state of affairs involving red eyes and rather too much snot to be anything approaching cute.

2. Social Awkwardness

Whilst I am currently the owner of an unwanted fringe (on which more, perhaps, another time), an odd 'friendship' with the eastern European guy who sells the Big Issue outside our local Budgens and a weird village magazine delivery round due to my inability to extricate myself from awkward situations, the Boy Wonder is admirably able to sail through life without ever seeming to torture himself with the idea that he is secretly offending people who will hate him more and more with every encounter until their seething resentment causes them to break into our house and lick every item in the cutlery drawer.

3. Ability to Deal with Bugs

This is where I triumph, largely due to the Boy Wonder's hilarious and irrational fear of moths. For reasons which may well be due to some deep psychological trauma from which his memory is protecting him, he believes that moths will bite him in the face and transmit some kind of moth based disease from which he will never recover. He is also scared of cockroaches to the extent that he once declared the sighting of four cockroaches to be an 'infestation' and made me run the gauntlet of an unfamiliar side passage in the pitch dark to activate a security light which would send them scuttling back underneath the house we were living in. He claims to be 'fine' with a selection of other creepy crawlies, but rarely passes up an opportunity to get me to deal with them whilst lurking on the periphery of the room offering encouragement and keeping a safe distance. Perhaps the one downside of my awesome abilities when it comes to bugs is the fact that gardening becomes almost impossible when I have to stop and rescue every insect which might be injured during the process.

4.Ability to Exist Without External Stimulation

Sometimes the Boy Wonder will just sit and stare at a wall, thinking about nothing. I, on the other hand, require almost limitless entertainment, finding that just watching television for example is nowhere near enough for me to remain focussed without another task in hand (such as writing this post). This has some benefits in as much as I can get a lot done when I'm on form, but also some negative side effects such as my hatred of showering on the grounds that washing is nowhere near fun enough to make listening to the radio an acceptable alternative form of distraction. I should point out, I still shower once a day, I just put it off and whine about it until I absolutely have to do it, making me sound like I actively want to be a hobo with things living in my hair, whereas I actually quite like being clean but would prefer to achieve that effect whilst reading a good book.

5. Ability to Fill in Forms and Deal with Admin Tasks that Keep Our Household Running

I recently completed the application process for a new credit card, including a secondary one for the Boy Wonder. All he had to do was sign and date a form to confirm that he was aware of this. I took my eye off him for around a second, which was apparently long enough for him to sign in the wrong box and then dither uncertainly as to where to write the date. He once declared the process of buying a house as 'easy' on the grounds that his main contribution to the whole affair was pretending to read the masses of paperwork which came our way, before saying 'it looks fine to me' and writing his name wherever he thought looked most likely.

6. Ability Not to Die in Normally Non-Deadly Situations

The Boy Wonder totally kicks my arse on this one - not only has he rarely even been hospitalised, but his body apparently understands that nuts are a good source of protein and can make a delicious snack. My body on the other hand, seems to be under the impression that nuts are a threat to my wellbeing on such a scale that it's worth killing me to keep their marauding ways at bay. Not only that, but apparently it has now decided that penicillin, a drug specifically designed to treat illness, falls into the same category and warrants a similar sort of nuclear stand-off whereby it races to kill itself before the penicillin can. All this despite the fact that for the last 31 years (up to and including the last 8 weeks) it has recognised the healing properties of said antibiotics and it has only been in the last week that it's taken it's near psychotic stance on the matter.

7. Apoplectic Rage

I can barely go a day without descending into apoplectic rage about one thing or another. Recent examples include: a woman on 'Wanted Down Under' who was considering moving to Australia with her husband of four years and leaving her 14 year old daughter back in England; the book I read by Moon Unit Zappa and the reviews about it on Amazon; the fact that all store bought pesto has nuts that I can't see in it (c.f point 6); misleading use of statistics in contexts that are supposed to be educational.

The Boy Wonder works himself into a rage about things that can really easily be avoided: me saying that I have a tapeworm; people leaving the ends of their guitar strings hanging out of the tuners instead of trimming them neatly; me saying 'oui' like a French trucker when he asks me a question; the fact that our guttering keeps springing leaks and depositing water into the air bricks which ventilate the area under our house.

8. Being Ticklish

The Boy Wonder is ridiculously and entertainingly ticklish, meaning he can be completely incapacitated by a light poke to the side. I, however, quite like being tickled and am therefore impervious to retaliations, meaning that I would hold up better under interrogation by a pervy clown or feather duster, which I suppose is some sort of skill.

9. Light Footedness

Living with the Boy Wonder is like having a herd of elephants stampeding around the house, and even when he's trying to be quiet he manages to make everything in the entire house shake as though we live at the joining of tectonic plates beneath the earth's surface.

10. The Ability to Accurately Ascertain My Level of Drunkenness

In recent times, the Boy Wonder has been responsible for the following when under the influence of alcohol: three stops for sandwiches and ice cream on the way home at 3am, drunken limping and the subsequent denial thereof, pretending to be a toad (albeit a fairly poor impression which fooled nobody), and consistently telling me he's 'not that drunk' despite being clearly quite drunk. I, on the other hand, seem to tend more towards believing that I'm a lot more drunk than I am even when I am actually still in control of most of my faculties.

Totting up the results of this supremely unscientific analysis it appears that unless one of us proves to be a dab hand at the arbitrary assigning of value to any of the criteria above, it has proved a wildly inconclusive yet somewhat entertaining exercise.

Giving myself the finger

For reasons best known to itself, the ring finger on my right hand (is it still called that even when there is no designated ring for it?) is in the throes of a rash and has been for around 8 months now. Despite accounting for less than 1% of my total skin tally (probably - I am buggered if I'm actually going to work it out) the 5cm x 1cm stretch of skin between fingernail and second knuckle is currently the focus of 99% of my angst. A part of my brain is constantly devoted to coming up with new ways to scratch this patch of skin, most of which involve going to town with inappropriately rough objects ranging from the ragged edge of the cuff of my sweatshirt to the dish scourer. Another part of my brain is on 24 hour alert for the feeling which indicates that I have undertaken an activity which has caused the cracked skin on said finger to open up and sting like hell requiring the application of some form of unguent cream to make normal life possible. Interestingly, it doesn't seem to matter what I use for this process as the overall effect is the same whether I root around for long enough to find the specially formulated cream designed specifically to treat topical eczema break outs of exactly this kind or just use the Skittles flavoured lip-smacker that I already have in my hand.

There is also a seething, resentful part of my brain that is always thinking about how peculiar it is to just have this one small patch of rebellious skin which seems impervious both to the marvels of modern medicine and to the violent anger which is constantly bubbling under the surface of my otherwise cool, calm and non scabby exterior. I know I should be grateful - there have been times in my life when both my legs have been covered in eczema from ankle to knee and I have been unable to sleep, walk or think straight for the torture of trying not to scratch. But that always responded well to the merest suggestion of high strength steroids, rather than steadfastly refusing to even countenance the idea of vague improvement despite my lavishing vast amounts of attention on it like my finger. Now I'm sitting here dabbing at what appears to be tears oozing out of my finger, and wondering whether it might be simpler just to have the damn thing amputated. Pretty sure one of the others would take over though - that's just the kind of bloody minded, bloody fingered thing that happens in the world of my skin.

The Glee Project

I have never watched an episode of Glee, and don't really have any desire to, but apparently not content with just one programme dedicated to jazz hands and lipstick, there is now a show called 'The Glee Project' being advertised relentlessly on Sky. From the outset I was annoyed because the first ad featured a woman proclaiming something unlikely about 'the phenomenom' of Glee, but the more recent version seems to be advertising a show which is essentially about making teenagers cry. For whatever crack-pot psychological reason the show's makers have constructed between themselves, this week's episode seems to be an exercise designed purely to make these kids break down for the cameras. I'm not saying that they don't deserve it (after all, anyone putting themselves in the firing line for this kind of show should be well aware of what they are letting themselves in for) but forcing a girl to stand at the bottom of an escalator wearing a sign saying 'Anorexic' seems to be a woefully poor way of dealing with a teenager's eating disorder, whether that be real or perceived.

Presumably the makers of the show will claim that the exercise will make the participants stronger (although how a fat person wearing a sign saying fat is in any way enlightening is beyond me - some of the contestants are quite obviously wearing their 'weaknesses' on their sleeves), but whether they have actually considered the fact that surely being able to sing and act is more important than any perceived benefits of taunting them with their own insecurities until they burst into tears is another matter. It does seem as though this task is not far short of confirming their beliefs that their perceptions of themselves are something to be ashamed of and for others to judge them upon - the perfect way to nurture youngsters through their difficult teenage years.

Beyonce's Dressage

We've just been watching the coverage of Beyonce at Glastonbury, and I was surprised at how much she and her backing dancers looked like they were doing some weird kind of human dressage. Perhaps it was the combination of impractical shoes and potentially crotch revealing leotards that made them wary of taking steps that were too large, but whatever their reasons the overall effect was pretty peculiar. I was, however, impressed at her knee sliding action which, contrary to my personal experience, didn't seem to end up in scabby blisters and bruised kneecaps.

Miller Band

We were just surprised by an old episode of Have I Got News for You (I'm assuming Wimbledon is to blame for no other reason than that it's been buggering up the Diagnosis Murder/Murder She Wrote slot all week) which made many references to the Milliband brothers. This re-ignited the fury I felt at the time about the lack of Steve Miller Band jokes in reference to the Labour party leadership election. Admittedly, there is the occasional half-hearted reference to their other brother Steve, and I wasn't expecting long built-up references to any of his lesser known songs, but I was disappointed that nobody took it any further, despite the fact that the world of politics is the perfect backdrop to a line about space cowboys and the pompatus of love.