"Write me a Diary," commanded the Diary Editor. "I've nothing to write about," I said. "My mind is a seething mass of disjointed and inconsequential thoughts and sensations." "Then write me a disjointed, inconsequential Diary," the Diary Editor said."You asked for it," Godfrey Fitzsimons said.
Why I loathe and despise radio phone-ins:
Go ahead, caller, you're on the air.
Yes, I'm a first-time caller, so I'm a little nervous!
No need to be nervous. What's your point?
Yes, what I wanted to say was blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah bl . . .Oh, by the way, good morning.
Yes, good morning. Go ahead.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah bl. . .or, actually, it's good afternoon, isn't it? It's after 12 o'clock.
Yes, yes, good afternoon, good afternoon. Make your point, please.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah bl. . . Hello?
YES, I'M LISTENING!!!
And so on, ad infinitum.
Last trump: I was in Amsterdam recently and had a tourist experience that had nothing to do with canals or the Van Gogh Museum or the Anne Frank house or even the red-light district. I was mooching along, whistling Walking Shoes under my breath, when my eye was caught by a plaque on the wall of a modest hotel.
Probably one of those Somebody Famous Lived Here things. But no, it turned out to be Somebody Famous Died Here. Chet Baker, in fact, the jazz trumpet-player who, in 1988, being doped to the gills, fell from an upper floor of the hotel and, tragically and ludicrously, was killed.
An odd event to commemorate on an engraved tablet on a wall. I squinted up and tried to guess which window it had been and wondered how many guests requested the Baker Room.
Ad nauseam: I'm sure we all agree that this newspaper has an excellent TV Critic. But I've taken the liberty of appointing myself TV Commercials Critic.
For instance, have you seen that one for hot tubs which are, it says, "ideal for Ireland". What can this possibly mean? Filled with piping-hot Guinness? Shamrock floating on the surface like water-lilies? The taps marked "Hot" and "Cold" in the first official language? We need to know these things.
Then there's one of those interminable ads on Sky News for CDs. Early on, the voiceover emphasises that this CD set is NOT AVAILABLE IN ANY STORE, so phone this number. But at the end of the commercial the voice says: "Take home The Power Of Love . . ." Hello? Take it home from where? Not the store, you already told us that. The only people who could take it home would be that rural minority who collect their own mail from the local post office. That's not a big customer base.
And have you noticed that the sales slogan of Philips, the electrical people, is "Let's make things better"? To which the obvious rejoinder is: "Why, have you not been making them very well up to now?" Beware the double meaning, Mr Philips. Remember Richard M. Nixon and his "When the going gets tough, the tough get going". How we laughed!
My paused content: The TV in the room (not in the Chet Baker hotel) had one of those interactive screens with information about hotel services, messages, pay TV, movies and so on. One option was called "My paused content". It sounded like the title of an Eric Rohmer film or something, and I was almost afraid to proceed. But taking my courage and zapper in hand, I clicked on it.
"You have not yet paused any content," the screen told me. Well, talk about relief! But I have been agonising over it ever since. Was I remiss in my pausing? Should I feel discontent at not having any content? I know it's cheap to make mock of other languages from a narrow Anglophone point of view, but, hell, it's fun.
It has long been a source of pleasure to me, for example, that the Danish for bookshop is boghandel, and now I can add the Dutch for whipped cream (slagroom) and for fire-hose (brandslang). At which the imagination goes delightfully racing. Do Dutch slags in that room of theirs often resort to brand slang? ("That Schimmelpenninck, I'll Gouda him in the Bols.")
And finally: As we all needs must, I have been thinking about my latter end and, most vital of all, which tunes the jazz band should play. New Orleans style, that is, mournful on the way to the cemetery and joyful on the way back. On the way there, I think Jelly Roll Morton's Sidewalk Blues, and Louis Armstrong's West End Blues. (Start practising that opening cadenza now, Mr Lead Trumpet. No, not you, Chet. Rest in peace.) And on the way back South Rampart Street Parade and That's A-Plenty, while the good people of Glasnevin and Phibsboro skip merrily alongside.
There, that's done. It's always wise to settle your important affairs in good time.
But what I'm really looking forward to is the reading of my will, an event I expect to view from a distance. It will consist of just one sentence: "Sorry, folks, I found a way of taking it with me."
Was this disjointed and inconsequential enough, Mr Diary Editor? I can do worse.