In a 50-50 deal, he keeps the hyphen

Back from a typical British Bank Holiday Monday – it pis*ed down with rain non-stop for 36 hours, and we went to Ikea in the sensible estate car with the children. Anyone who describes themselves as having a ‘GSOH’ should be required to spend an hour in the Ikea canteen at lunchtime.

The best thing by far was the sight of a disapproving-looking BCBG lady of a certain age (the sort who detests everyone who shops at places like Ikea, despite doing so herself) walking with two cups of boiling tea across the middle of the children’s play area, and stopping to glare and tut angrily at each of the four dozen children who came within 10 feet of her. Not sure how she failed to spot the very large sign reading ‘Children’s Play Area.’

Still, Mrs Chimp got lots of new house stuff, the children managed to blag a Barnslig Flodhäst and a Korall Sköldpadda between them, and as for me, I actually quite enjoyed my lukewarm meatballs in strange beige sauce and adding a " ’ " with a green felt-tip to a toy originally marked “My Dolls Bed.”

Last entry for a while due to impending house move (it will somehow take BT, the Great Satan of UK telecoms, three weeks to re-connect broadband). I'm even more gloomy than usual about the imminent stamp duty bill of more than £27,000, which, being a dull accountant, I’ve worked out will cost one whole year of (very large) mortgage repayments to repay. More depressing still is the cost over the life of the mortgage - £50 fecking grand (including interest) or a fiver a day every single day until 2032, by which time I’ll be knocking on 60 years old. It gives me a warm feeling inside to know that I’ll still be paying Gordon Brown’s bloody tax bill long after he’s enjoyed a long taxpayer-subsidised retirement and turned up his toes.

For those of you who think that the ‘Golden Triangle’ is something to do with blonde girls and waxing, think again. Surprised to see that my own alma mater is included in this list.

Look out Blighty, Wholefoods Market, the yankee-doodle-yuppie-foodie-nirvana, is coming to London. I’ve never been there and therefore shouldn’t judge. That said, all the guff on the website about how green they are is somewhat undermined by the massive number of large trucks parked in front of the store in picture on the homepage. (##STOP PRESS - THEY'VE CHANGED THE PHOTO SINCE LAST FRIDAY - THE TRUCKS HAVE MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARED##)

Have you read the latest Cameronian nonsense about trading permits for 'social bads'? Setting aside (if you can) the use of 'bad' as a noun, can you imagine yet another office in Central London filled with expensive people government employees earnestly establishing the relative value of each ‘bad’? How many jam doughnuts equate to driving a car? Is taking the lift instead of walking better or worse than watching reality TV? How many M&S sea bass fillets ‘from the azure waters of Greece’ would be as ‘bad’ a ‘bad’ as a Jaffa Cake? Only the man in Whitehall knows.

The few remaining Poles that aren’t living in London are embroiled in a very important debate – are the Teletubbies promoting an inappropriate alternative lifestyle choice? If it’s found to be true, expect the Teletubbies, Right Said Fred and Peter Tatchell to get pulped by a bunch of nationalists in camouflage t-shirts and thrown into prison, leaving the nationalists to run riot in Teletubbyland.

And finally, for you dismal scientists out there, The Economist’s screen saver is back!

Macro paradigms, or epoch-making overall constellations

Today’s entry is dedicated to the aggressive fiftysomething lady on the rush hour train out of London on Friday night, who grabbed my brother in law’s seat, stole my newspaper, then spent the duration of the journey eating an offensively strong egg sandwich and yelling down her phone at her poor son in his boarding school … whilst sitting in the ‘Quiet Coach’.

Mark my words, friends, the tyranny of the nearly-retired is upon us. Because they don’t work much, they have plenty of time to vote for the party that promises them a massive pension built from the sweat off our backs. We’ll be working until the age of 90 so that this last generation of state-sponsored layabouts can do the same at 60. And they eat egg sandwiches. Horrific.

Speaking of suspicious smells, did anyone else notice something strange about the BA price-fixing story last week? Notwithstanding BA’s name very deservedly being dragged through the mud yet again, we all seem to have forgotten that it requires two parties to tango around competition rules. Step forward Virgin Atlantic, who acted in an equally dastardly manner, but went to the Feds and shopped their old enemy. A new variant on the ole prisoner’s dilemma.

Wonder if Richard Branson is now living anonymously under witness protection? Somehow I doubt it.

Next time an aüslander bitches about black snot and London pollution in general, you’d do well to remind them that in terms of CO2 emissions, our fine city is in fact “dangerously like some hippie commune”. Perhaps Ken should do his bit about the wretched Low Emission Zone and put a sock in it for once.

Speaking of Transport for London, I would like to take the opportunity to declare a jihad against the City Hall muppet who came up with the idea of reducing the number of lanes by 50% on the Embankment just before Chelsea Bridge. This has had the admirable effect of turning a 30 second breeze into a 25 minute perpetual traffic jam. Always a pleasure when the chimplets are getting restless in the back of the sensible estate car.

Did you know that the English version of the Japanese ‘karoshi’ is ‘work-life balance’?

Of the four transactions currently tracking on my radar, two of them have a profusion of people with the same first names. Transaction A has four Tims, whereas Transaction B has three Anthonys. Not sure that this is significant. Or indeed interesting.