The Tomato's Guide to Personal Grooming

In honour of the finest culinary dish that these hands ever have fiddled with, the lucious Red Choice brings to you, and you alone, her own womb-like signature style secrets. Are you ready (de de duh) to be reborn? Discover the inner tomato that lives within your blackened soul with this truly loving and hateful advice.

Tip #1: Keep it tarty.

Tip #2: Hitch up your short skirt of pastry puff, barely held together with the merest saliva-string of finest egg "egg" yolk, and wave your best clicking hand with as much gratuitous attitude as you can muster. Only then must you snap your lady fingers, but once you have embarked on this most fragrant of gambits, do not stop. You must keep up your flagrant clicking, without pausing for lunch, until your hands are no more than wizened, ketchup-stained stumps.

Tip #3: Go to your furthest Waitrose, for you are a right classy bird, and hang around, or loiter, if you prefer, in the gleaming aisle of vegetables, even though you are but a fruit. Invite a solo Thyme to the party, but make sure she leaves her evil, life-partner Rosemary trapped in her spurning-wheel of shame. Expose those seeds. Some may say, keep 'em guessing, but that is not the tomato way.

Tip #4: Do not venture far from the antiseptic safety of the vegetarians, or you may be ambushed by the hoards of steak-loving, cracked, black peppers, awaiting around the acorner, aready to apounce. If they have their way, you will be left with naught but a a lady-beard of basil and a pair of comfortable, tweed-trimmed clogs.

Take tasty heed, and your dinner parties need never end with an inconvenient police raid, donkey ride or gypsy autopsy ever again.


Currently listening: Everything Is Possible by Os Mutantes

That's the Most Ridiculous Reaction to an Umbrella I've Ever Seen

I have come to the conclusion that I am allergic to clean. Ever since I got back from the glorious mud extravaganza that was Beautiful Days (Ha!) my nose seems to have entered itself into a Cheryl Baker endorsed sneezing competition & my floating, disembodied head is drowning in a sea of liquid cotton wool. Maybe it was the excessive amount of otters that inveigled their way down my craving gullet; or the crunchy, post-midnight, tiny tea's; or possibly the crisp on the outside, bleeding on the inside, "Sausage Time!" sausages; perhaps it was the sight of KT Tunstall's eye-hating trousers; could it have been the stomach-tightening absence of curried mackerel; or just the ubiquitous, cider-coloured, poo-flavoured, shin-deep, thigh-toning, bastard mud?

Whatever the cause of my current malaise, none of the above prevented me from enjoying a plum filled Boney M tribute act, called, unimaginatively enough, "Boney M" or the sight of my mother, I can only hope, humorously, hitting on my mates (one rouge-tinted member, especially). I even managed to stubbornly and resolutely appreciate the mesmerising genius of Willy Mason, while all around were slowly succumbing to boredom.

Once the truly frightening Terror Trumps game was out of the way, a whole world of fun with a capital 'M' was opened up to us. We experienced the Irish, dinner-time drunkenness of Kila, the Welsh tea-time stonedness of Mark Howard Marks and, of course, the English, night-time what-have-you-gotness of The Levs. We tittered along to the strange Gogol Bordello roadie that couldn't help but shout "Eh! Eh! Khallo!" fifteen times into every available microphone, and we all perfected our intricate dance routines to the mammoth Bellowhead: Charlie vogued, Si bogled as if to Aswad, Jennie jigged in an alliterative style and Andy swayed as if his life depended on it.

Oh how we laughed at the naughty man that tried to dump his remaining illicit substances on us on the last night at the Bimble Inn, as David tried to smooth talk a couple of wayward Levellers groopies without his unpurchased Miss Piggy hat until jammy crumpets could no longer be resisted. As if that wasn't enough, earlier that night I caught an exciting glimpse of Seth Lakeman's finely toned ears, as I was on my way for a wee, with Bill Bailey's greatest hits still ringing in my own flabby, aural appendages.

The weekend reached it's moist climax on Monday morning with a torrent of sludge-enhancing rain, culminating in us being rescued from our heavily weighed down and fast sinking Fiat by a very nice sadist and his large bondage chain, which he used to tie us to his sexy, leather Tractor. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go and evacuate the rest of the Devonian, refried beans from my bowels. It is, indeed, Sausage Time!

This blog was brought to you by the words: 'Taxi', 'Ahoy', 'Eh-Eh-Khallo' and by the letter 'M' for MUD.


Currently listening: Super Taranta! by Gogol Bordello

The Month of Mouth

What I did on my holidays by Jonathan H Smith, aged 32 and 4 days.

On Monday I got up and did work and then went to Devon, it was Sidmouth there, and then on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday we done folk and then crab and then clotted cream and then homity pie and then it was wet and then sunny and then cold and then hot and then not and then we had a paddle and a piddle and a fiddle and then we went home. The end, with bells on.

In other words: it was my birthday on Sunday, not sure if I've mentioned that yet. So in an attempt to spread the joy into neighbouring counties, using my powers of air fiddle and new found prowess at Charlie-sponsored ukulele fingering, a brace of family members & I embarked on a trip to the Devon-renowned Sidmouth Folk Week. Along with nearly a week of Big Bro, I inadvertently missed the ever present 'West Dorset, Nearly Dead, Lady-accordion Group'; although I was ambushed by the 'Get Your Balalaika's Out For The Lads String Combo'. No amount of hiding behind sundials could get their hideous twanging out of my face.

We managed to catch a snatch of Eliza Carthy & her Ratcatchers through a gash in her tent, but were denied access to its spacious interior, where there was Otter. The next day we foiled their dastardly plans to exclude us by using our tickets of gleaming paper to enter the drunken Scots Bernard Blackisms of Lau; but they upped their game by the evening by conveniently selling out of all of their bits of magic paper for Irish supremacists, Altan, so we had to catch a another snatch through the tented gash (my new favourite phrase).

Earlier in the day we had to contend with a gang of presumptuous Germans, who weren't fooling me with their faux West Country accents, stealing all the sun loungers. Yes there was sun! My skin is now glowing a glorious shade of Judith Charmers to match my new trouser shorts.

My next attempt to *insert my new favourite phrase here* of Eliza Carthy & Friends was foiled by the fiendish Rugby team, who hoisted the venue up above their nasty shoulders and proceeded to play hide & seek with it behind the church. By the time I had covered my eyes (no peeking) and counted to a hundred, the room was full; though a few dubious 'friends' bluffed their way into her inner sanctum.

More news from Sidmouth:

• Madame Gliddon is still not dead. For it was she who procured for me the forbidden nectar of Princess Leia toys in my youth, so I could chew their feet off.
  
• The MSC Napoli, grounded off Branscombe beach, is bewitched I tell you. It has miraculously reproduced asexually, and is now in two halves, one of which has mysterious shape changing abilities.
• John Kirkpatrick has a lot of friends, but the large man in front, who thought Miss Carthy was a bit bassy, found his playing slightly dated (a sixty year old making FOLK MUSIC, surely not) and had his fingers in his ears throughout the second half.
• The lunchtime Ceilidhs at the Anchor Inn are much more fun to watch than to participate in, partly because you can drink copious amounts of Otter without spilling it and partly so you can marvel at the sight of the know-it-all old woman in the white shirt getting it spectacularly wrong whilst being berated by the caller for being an arse.
• The crabs decided to take revenge on us for eating most of their family by despatching their tiniest member to nip my mum on the toe, causing whole milliseconds of agony and regret.

Currently listening: Stiffs Lovers Holymen Thieves by Tim Van Eyken

Belgium

'10' 'facts' about '32'

• Belgium is the 32nd most hated continent in the Eastern hemisphere.
• The length in imperial feet of the amputated left toes of all the members of the Bulgarian State Premiership football teams laid end to end is 32.
• If the Logan's Run laws had not been repealed in 1932 then I would have already been dead for two of Jenny Agutter's years.
• There are 32 planets in the known universe that all revolve around a small nameless village in Herefordshire, holding hands in groups of three, with their colourful rucksacks. All except Saturn, which has decided to form a breakaway republic with its partner, Robin.
• 32 is the UK's most legally surprising number, and has an eye for the laydeez.
  
• Until last month's cheese mountain disaster, there were only 32 species of Gary.
• Basingstoke, unlike the rest of the world that makes do with two, has 32 official genders.
• The average adult male has up to 32 surplus nipples.
• In episode 32 of Hollyoaks all the 'hot girls' were replaced by root vegetables and nobody noticed the difference.
• 32 is the only number that makes Carol 'Carol' Vorderman run screaming from the set of Countdown in terror and wee.
• The number 32 is mathematically more than the number 0.00032, but takes up less space. Spooky.

I am now nearly of the age that Jesus H was at when he got himself all nailed, before escaping with a squirrel named Bunty on their magical, flying skateboard, in order to befuddle the plans of the rampant, Martian Naughty-Dooers. And that is why the lyrics of popular hit-parade conqueror 'Jerusalem' are so weird: "And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England’s mountains green?"

The answer is NO! No, of course not. Even if he had bothered to come to a non-existent-in-them-days England, he would've been on his flying skateboard, therefore no feet anywhere near our pleasant land, green or otherwise. Surely everyone knows that according to 'Jon's fourth epistle to the Trepidations' England was not vexed by the evil of the Naughty-Dooers from Mars, and thus visited and rescued by Jesus & Bunty, until 1967, but by then everyone was too busy itching along to 'The Laughing Gnome' by David Bowie to care.

Happy birthday to me.


Currently listening: An End Has A Start by Editors

Augustus V

Ow ow ow! I have faced many perils since yesterday's pre-birthday birthday party, including a seven pill obstacle course ending with a fizzy tummy roll, a topless army of pounding head djembefolas with their incessant banging brain beats and a kind of geriatric treasure hunt featuring a septuagenarian Anneka Rice in a wrinkly jumpsuit with a wizened Wincey Willis living in her ear canal.

The above portents mean it must truly be August, the most august of months, but also the youngest. It was created in 1975 by Emperor Augustus Barnett out of the previously discarded remains of 1969 that were lost in a fug of drugs haze at the bottom of one of Lord John Lennon's violent windowsills whilst he was supping on a kumquat daiquiri. On the fifth of this new month, or the nearest pub night to it, it was decreed that the chosen few should receive pressies of not less than the value of 'a lot of money' and to be no smaller than the equivalent of five llama thumbs. And so, it was so. And they saw it was good. And they all lived happily ever after and shit.


Currently listening: Without Feathers by The Stills