MISCELLANY

I have some suggestions to make on the subject of keeping kids occupied during car journeys. The first is car hub cap spotting. One point if it's alive, that is, with the logo of the manufacturer pointing upwards. Two points if it's dead, with its attachment clips pointing skywards. Another is spotting bottles of pee. Have you noticed this strange phenomenon of bottled pee? I believe that some male drivers keep empty plastic water bottles in their vehicles so that they don't have to stop to take a leak. They pee in the bottle and then, with a strange sort of delicacy screw the top back on and throw it out of the window so that it lies on the verge until time works its gradual process of degradation and ultimate disintegration. I think it is probably a lorry driver thing and as prevalent amongst foreign drivers as British because there is a fairly equal distribution of bottles of pee on either side of the road. If you have two children in the back then one looks to the left and the other to the right; points are scored in the usual way. How can one be sure it is pee and not just some discarded soft drink? You can tell. There is no soft drink that looks quite like pee. Plenty that probably taste like it, no doubt. Kids love this game because it is so naughty.

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British journalists develop collective phraseologies that are intended to show that they are out there in front of the pack. ‘How - something or other - is that?’ is one of the ways they use to make tired old ideas and tired old writing appear youthful and up to the minute. ‘I’ve started writing a blog – how sad is that?’ There was a time when no self-respecting journo would fail to include a reference to someone 'getting their kit off' (it means to undress, if you've wondered). Once the kit was off one could then make reference to someone's 'tackle'. Then there was the use of the terminal 'not' as in, 'I came up with a truly original idea today. Not'. And do you remember 'but, hey' as in 'I got my kit off, but hey, why not?’. The latest is 'fess up'; this evening on BBC Radio 4's Front Row a young male film critic told us that he had to 'fess up' when all he was doing was admitting something - as in 'I must admit ...'

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Along with many others, I suspect, I find the name of the clothing company FCUK offensive. In the small town where I live I saw a girl of about thirteen wearing a tee shirt that said, right across her little flat chest, 'Too Busy To FCUK'. Damn her parents for being stupid enough to let her wear it. I often listen to ‘Thought For Today’ within the Radio 4 Today programme. This morning the speaker, a vicar, said that he had seen on sale tee shirts for young girls bearing slogans that he would not be allowed to repeat on radio. It verges on child abuse does it not?

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It's hard to know what to do when charged with showing visitors London. They can find out about all the obvious places through books and magazines so one needs something that is completely unpublicised that will come as a surprise. I always take my visitors to the window of the antiquarian bookshop Jarndyce at 42, Great Russell Street. This is the place to go if you want to buy Dickens first editions but they also display in their window a collection of quaintly titled books. Here are some of the titles (not for sale, by the way, they are there simply to delight you). Not one was originally intended as a joke. 'Invisible Dick', 'The Boy Fancier', 'True Screws Limited', 'Shag', 'Gay Agony', 'Fellow Fags', 'Fine Weather Dick', 'The Girl of Big Horn County', 'Pleasant Work for Busy Fingers', 'Flashes from the Welsh Pulpit'. They are listed in the book, Bizarre Books, by Russell Ash and Brian Lake, price £6.99 and available from Jarndyce.