So It's Come To This, A Clipshow...

Well, not quite maybe, but something fairly similar. I've been on holiday this week - 'on holiday' as in not at work, rather than away enduring a package holiday in Alicante or the Algarve. We've been out of the house and away somewhere most days, whether it be to the beach, the kids' fun park or MacDonald's (shame on us) although on Monday I temporarily took leave of my senses and abandoned my principles by tidying out the shed.

And so now, what was the equivalent of a skip with a door and a roof, has become a compact and bijou outbuilding to Curnow Towers. As a matter of fact, for reasons best known to the local Council (and possibly this may account in part for why the Council Tax bills have shot up this year) our shed is double-glazed with a snazzy uPVC window. Of course the effect is rather lessened by the large gap between the corrugated ceiling and the brick wall... The shed now only contains a solid ex-kitchen work unit (handmade by Mrs Curnow, I'll have you know, at her woodwork evening classes back in the 20th Century - boy those sure were crazy times!), two sides from what was once our daughter's cot (when you have as many animals as we do, you learn never to throw away anything which could be used as bars), and a defunct dishwasher.

This last item was actually given to us by our neighbours on the day we moved in - not as an incredibly OTT housewarming present, I hasten to add, but because they were throwing it out to get a new one. There's nothing wrong with it (probably) as our neighbours don't replace things because they need to, just because they can. We've been here five years and the two boys must have gone through at least half a dozen bikes each in that time. But before I start to wander into 'moaning about the neighbours' territory (which under the terms of our marriage contract is quite clearly Mrs Curnow's area of responsibility) let me steer myself back onto the subject in hand which was... erm. Oh yes, the dishwasher. Well anyway, being an old-fashioned sort of guy I don't hold with dishwashers, and despite all the evidence and expert testimony to the contrary I just cannot believe that they can possibly get things clean, and consequently said dishwasher has remained in the corner of our shed for half a decade. I did briefly toy with the idea of putting it on eBay, on the not unreasonable grounds that some people will buy anything, but I'm not sure what to do about the postage.

But anyway, and since it has belatedly dawned on me that the dishwasher was not, in fact, the subject at hand, let me turn back to my title, which this week has been brazenly, and with no thought for the laws of copyright, stolen from an episode of "The Simpsons". Having been on holiday, it has taken me very little time to adjust to not working (tidying of sheds notwithstanding). Indeed yesterday it took us all day to get up, get dressed, do a bit of food shopping, have a cup of coffee and change the library books, and it was more or less then that it dawned on me that I would be hard pressed to produce a column this week, since it would involve my getting "off my ass" as it were. Before I go on, by the way, I must just go back to the cup of coffee I mentioned us having above. Despite our nearest town being a very traditional Devon market town with two greengrocers, two butchers and a cattle market, it also has a coffee shop in the style of "Frasier" - personally I have no idea what the difference is between a Latte, a Mocha Latte, a Cappucino or an Espresso, but it appeals to the, well to the snob in me to go in there and pick one at random.

So given that my natural tendency towards coma-like indolence (or for the Who fans out there, given that my "general dedication to bodily inertia that quite defies description") has been given free rein this week, I present this column solely as a sort of update to some earlier pieces. You can look on it as remastering for DVD, or a Directors Cut, or simply an excuse for me not to have to think of anything new to write about. Or even better, you could stop reading right now and check out something much more rewarding elsewhen on this site. If you don't yet know who Alan is, or you haven't seen Ricky Tomlinson's cameo role in Ant Cox's "Growing Up..." then now's your chance!

You have been warned!

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory I can't have been the only person to see ITV's programme about the film last Christmas, when they reunited the child stars. Amongst such surprises as Mike TV now being bald, Augustus Gloop still being big (actually that isn't a surprise is it?), and most of all Charlie looking like he comes from Bavaria, I finally discovered where the film was, er, filmed. It turns out that despite my certainty that some of it was clearly filmed in England, it was shot in Munich. I should love to relate that Munich was chosen precisely because it has this ambiguous architecture and style, so that it could represent 'anywhere' in Europe... but the depressingly real reason is that they filmed there because it was cheap.

Would You Do It For A Scooby Snack The second live-action film (that's "Scooby Doo 2 - Monsters Unleashed" as my daughter likes to remind me) is released on DVD on 23rd August, and that from that date on I shall doubtless be made to watch it on a daily basis. It might also be worth mentioning one more time that Linda 'Shoulders' Cardellini appears in a red leather catsuit. Only briefly, alas, but then isn't that precisely what the pause button was invented for?

The Children's Own Programme... Further to my observation that my Dad has an uncanny resemblance to Li H'Sen Chang, can I just point out that the object pictured here is currently located in his garage. Lacquered bronze or fused molecules? You decide.

As for my brother, he's getting quite excited about the new series. He recently joined the Outpost Gallifrey message board, having been an occasional BBC Boarder before that, and was delighted to be able to add an avatar to his posts there. After some tweaking with the picture size, he finally opted for Tommy Lee Jones as Woodrow McCall in "Lonesome Dove", one of his favourite Westerns. The wind was somewhat taken out of his sails by my wife asking why he had Kenny Rogers for an avatar...

Finally, and much more recently the very day after I despatched Memories... into the ether (and incidentally, it was only a little later that I realised I had already used this as a title, although thankfully there is ... to distinguish the two) we were at my Mum and Dad's house. Long-time readers, or those traumatised by the talk of my pants a few weeks ago, will recognise Curnow Towers Senior as the source of an anecdote or two, and this visit was no exception. As is often the case, I can't now remember the context in which this came up, but we somehow got to talking about the Chapel outings we used to (be made to) go to as children. According to my Mum, on one such occasion we took Auntie Lillian with us, wedged into the back seat between me and my brother.

Anyway, apparently we arrived at the location for the outing (which was essentially a combination of picnic and nature ramble for those of you keen to picture the thing). We were the first ones there, so we waited in the car, more or less stuck out in the middle of a field. And according to my Mum after a while my brother (who would have been maybe 11 or 12 at the time) observed that, "This field is full of cowshit!"

I'm not surprised that the ensuing mortification has fixed that moment indelibly in my Mum's memory; but I'm amazed that I don't remember it at all. Even more surprising is that I don't think my brother remembers it either - I haven't actually asked him, but I'm confident that if he did remember we would have been regaled with 'the cowshit anecdote' several times over the years...

Well it's back to work on Monday, so I think it's safe to say it will be business as usual next week (by which I mean that after a week at work I'm bound to have something to moan about).