24 out of 100..... A fail mark in any book.

For the past week I have been tortured by the screaming, shouting hysterical wailing of one Jack Bauer. Iyawo in her wisdom picked up the latest series of 24 on DVD and it has been hell. Not only is our friend Jack, for me, the worst secret service agent ever, what with being the magnet for all the world's evils but he surely must be living in some sort of groundhog day nightmare. I think this is series 7 and for me there was no difference between this and Series 2, 3, 4, 5 and er 6. See terrorists plan to destroy America, see Jack come to the rescue, see lots of people that have any connection with Jack whatsoever get killed, see Jack being in almost constant danger but he manages to walk through glass, survive bullets, bombs, chemical poisoning and all the other atrocities these "terrorists" throw his way.

I tell you this stuff was riveting in Series 1, mildly amusing in 2, interesting in 3 or whichever series had the black President (a definite precursor for Obama I feel as the actor carried off the role with such dignity and charisma) but by now I am actually on the terrorist's side. I keep hoping that the next explosion, bullet, radio chemical will put paid to Jack but no, like a bad coin he keeps turning up saying the same things, doing the same things, chasing the same ghosts. From the various snatches of this latest series I caught, between giving Iyawo filthy looks and what not, it seemed at one point that he had one day to live. Imagine my surprise when Iyawo came out of her coma after a marathon watching session to tell me that the prat had survived and not only that but the "terrorists" had also captured his daughter (who had made some of the episodes in the other series watchable, cough) so that there would definitely be another series. No Jack please no. You have failed. Go to the back of the class.

Speaking of losers, my condolences go to the supporters of Man U. Delusional as they are and filled with false pride by the Scotsman. The air was slowly, painfully and embarrassingly let out of their balloon over 90 minutes in Rome. As a former footballer and still avid and passionate follower of the sport I cannot begin to tell you how magical it was watching that game. It was like a film. Several times I muttered to myself - this is like a practice match. The sheer domination of the game by Barca was so absolute after the first ten minutes of Ronaldo that I assumed that there was some sub plot wherein Ferguson would do something and then they would go on and win. However, God, in his infinite wisdom saved me from having to suffer the smug Scots's git after match press conference wherein he would blow smoke up his own bottom (a difficult task but he manages to do it consistently). Be quiet Sir Alex. You too have failed miserably.

For me however, the key thing was, and is, the difference between Messi and Ronaldo. On the one hand we have a perma tanned prima donna (the crooked teeth and greasy spotty face are now a thing of the past) who swans around as if he is owed everything and on the other hand you have a small pale genius who glides about the pitch without much fuss doing serious and maximum damage. The second goal from Messi will be played over and over in sport's highlights for years and demonstrates that one can be just as effective in one's work, believe in one's ability and be confident in one's self without having to always shout it from the rooftops.

Someone please tell Mr Bauer as he prepares Season 8 or is it 80?

Smoking the green shoots of recovery.....

House prices are up. No they are down. The price of land in Lekki has fallen. No it has gone through the roof. The worst is over. No there is still more to come. UK Ministers are claiming 40p chocolate bars on expenses. Nigerian ministers are sharing $60m amongst themselves (we always have to show off don't we?). BA suffers its greatest annual loss (serves them right). BT lays off another 10,000 people. Zain jettisons 300 in Nigeria.

All these headlines and still when I look around in Lagos I do not see a single sign of this so called Cadbury's crunch. Where is it? Or are we exempt from the words "Global credit crisis?". The number of new cars continues to grow. I have seen at least half a dozen of the new and even more ugly BMW X6 in the last week not to talk about new Merc 4x4s and the latest big boys toy - the Tundra - a car bigger than some places I have lived in. So where is it? Where are the signs of cutting back? Planes are still full. Parties a plenty. So what's going on? Are we fooling ourselves or the world? Are we thumbing our noses at them from the privacy of our beach front villas? Credit crunch? Oh please squire. How distasteful. Not a topic for polite company old chap.

My landlord is looking to sell one of his houses for N100m . He has not even finished building and the buyers are already jostling. And this is not a mansion o. Just a small, well built and finished four bed house on a small plot. He looks at me with some pity when I ask if he is not asking too much. He is probably thinking to himself. Look at this JJC. This didirin. N100m is weekend money for some big boys o. These guys have the credit crunch for supper and wash it down with Moet.

So is it me? Or are some people really smoking the green shoots of recovery?

Totally unrelated to the credit crunch (but in line with smoking green shoots ) is this photo of African first ladies. Cameroon must be a much livelier place than I had gleaned from my short visit there last year. As for our own first lady - kudos for decency and decorum.

Good people. Great nation. Lazy sod!

Well its been a long time
sorry I've kept you
without the updates you're used to
without fabu and gisting
I just went awol and missing
I apologise for my absence
too much travel to make sense.

Wow. A day is a long time in blogsville. I can only imagine how long a month must feel like. There has been so much happening that I don't even know where to start. I am discombobulated. disoriented and just dis.

Where to start? Today is the best place I suppose ,and the clearest. At my age things start to disappear from the memory banks sooner rather than later. The birthdays and other important events I have forgotten this month alone!! Anyway.

There are things happening on our estate that give cause for concern. Firstly, earlier this year they fixed the main road by which I mean you can actually drive on it without requiring a new exhaust; shocks; tires or liver. Then out of the blue just yesterday I was informed that all the streetlights had been switched on and were working! All the way from the gate to the bottom end. It was like a promenade apparently. This is fantastic news as two days ago I almost ran over a cow that was lying in the middle of the road chewing it's cud. No seriously. It was just lying there like "bros, how's things?. Yes I know I am lying in the middle of the road, just chilling but besides that what's jumping?. Me? Get run over? In this Lagos? Na lie. I pity the 4X4".

I am concerned about these developments- the street repairs, light fixing, new gate and heightened security because in Nigeria they have a way of building you up to the highest high then just when you think you can see and smell heaven they drop you down without a parachute.

I am holding my breath. The minute clean water starts coming out of our taps and we get more that five to six hours of electricity I am out of here. I won't let these people kill me o.

Tomorrow - I think some people have been smoking the green shoots of recovery.

Hot Chocolate

I sit and stare as your steam rises

I watch your foam trickle down

With fumbling fingers I trace its path

and bring your sweet taste to my mouth

I dip my thumb into your cream

I stir the froth and feel your heat

that bubbles like molten lava

from a volcano, underneath.

I bring your cup up to my lips

I run my tongue around your rim

I ease aside your creamy defenses

and dip my tongue into your warm embrace

I sip your nectar with slow precision

I marvel at your heavy richness

a connoisseur sampling a new found taste

finding it so much to my liking

I end with cream around my face.

Much later as you lay, exhausted,

your taste still lingers in my mouth

my tongue still throbbing from its exertions

tingling from your heated responses

I run it slowly around my lips

all the while wondering how long

I must wait to savour

(for you have now made me a junkie)

your sweet nectar and flavour.

Hot Chocolate.

I am so underwhelmed.......

Last night when I was sitting there minding my own business jeje jeje and praying for Arsenal to beat Hull so we could meet them at Wembley (prefer Arsenal to Hull o. Those Hull boys are too goal hungry for my own liking) when my phone buzzed and I received the following text message. FGN - Nigeria . Good people, great nation. I immediately scanned my phonebook for any Man u supporter with those initials but to no avail. See I thought that since I had sent condolence texts to every Man U supporter I know over their weekend destruction by Liverpool it could have been one of them sending me a text back as a piss take. No luck there. And then I thought maybe it was one of my work colleagues in the UK who had received another one of those 419 mails they are so very happy to discuss with me in great detail every time I happen to be in our HQ. Again no luck. Oh well. Back to the game.

Call me slow sha but after some time it then occured to me that hold on a minute, you didirin, FGN stands for Federal Government of Nigeria. Of course you can understand my slowness after all I am not in the habit of getting mails from the highest levels of the Executive arm. After all I am only a lowly tax paying, law abiding citizen not seeking government contracts or political office. Why in the hell would they want to acknowledge my existence?

So the Minister of Communications and Information is erm communicating with me. She is announcing the winner of the re branding Nigeria exercise. And this is it. Good people. great nation. Wow. Great. But now to more important things. How many yards does William Gallas have to be offside for the linesman to notice him and disallow his goal? I mean how can you miss a six foot black man standing all by himself in front of goal? It is not obvious that he is offside and the goal should be disallowed?

So it was that I lay awake at night tossing and turning with my stomach churning about this turn of events. I mean can you Adam and Eve it (believe) it? How could this happen in this day and age. Great nation. Good people. This is the best that we could do? I mean is this the right time to be rebranding Nigeria anyway? Do you not rebrand when you have introduced a change of some sort (ideally positive) into the old brand. Lets check the facts:

Have any corrupt Governors been tried and jailed recently. No
Has the GDP of the country changed dramatically? No
Has the Naira gained in value? No
Has the living standard of the man on the street been improved? No
Has health care, education, communication, security improved? No
Has the new Minister really thought this through?. No
Has broadband penetration, which falls under the Ministry of Comms improved enough to allow a majority of Nigeria's citizen be able to join the Global village? No
Is this really the best place for the Ministry to be focused in light of a recent one month strike by Nitel that crippled all International comms services into Nigeria due to non payment of their wages for 8 months? No

Hmmm. So basically what we are saying is that things are still as they are but we will call them a new name? Like changing from NEPA to PHCN? We will slap new paint on a derelict house? We will put new seat covers on an abandoned car? And this rebranding exercise will only cost $150m to execute? Bargain (but there is no money ot pay Nitel workers?). For that sort of price we should do it every month.

As for Arsenal. Maybe we could rebrand them as Arse. Has a certain ring to it don't you think? Actually we could use that term for the Nigeria rebranding as well.

I'm so tired of fXXXing all morning and afternoon.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not one to swear as I know my readers are a delicate sort and any sort of profanity will send them rushing for the smelling salts. The less frequent readers who read the title of this post and expected some treatise about my athletic sexual life will also be somewhat disappointed as this post is not about that at all (obviously that would require a book in itself. A small tome. Something along the lines of War and Peace.)

No dear reader this post is about the amount of fxxxing that has been going on on my TV over the past few days. I mean I had first noticed this last year but since I don't spend my time in front of the TV in the daytime it has sort of slipped my attention until now. Over the past few days, working from home and having the box on for background company has been a revelation. Actually too much was revealed.

There has been language that is normally only reserved for after the watershed (9pm) in the Uk and as a matter of fact is not allowed on mainstream commercial channels at all in the US. For good reason. It is called decency. One programme was being broadcast at the exact time as the youngest troublemakers were returning from school and I imagine if, as is their habit , they had settled themselves comfortably in front of the tube to unwind they would have had a few choice things to say to us that evening at story time. And even more awkward questions.

There was frequent use of the F word, the A word, the T word and even more graphic presentations of said words. All this in broad daylight. I mean do we not have a regulator in this country? What does the Minister for Info. & Comms. actually make of this? Should this sort of thing be allowed? What happens during the kids holidays when they are home all day and will probably stumble across these programmes? These are movie channels that one day are showing a children's film and the next an "adult" one. Should DSTV's licence not be reviewed with a view to setting some standards? I am not sure but are they allowed to show these programmes at these times in South Africa?

The most bizarre thing about all this is that whilst all this effing and blinding is going on freely, any mention of the word God is bleeped out! What kind of world are we living in?

Oh Please Mr Momodu.. Give me a break!!

There are a few key words that immediately set my teeth on edge. Long time readers of my blog will know that these include but are not limited to Madonna, Tom Cruise, Lagos traffic and British Airways. This list is by no means exhaustive and as I get older and more crotchety I continually add to it. Today the honour falls to Mr Momodu – the publisher of Ovation Magazine.
For those not familiar with this glossy it is a celebration of everything shiny and bright in Nigeria (and now several other undeserving countries). Now despite the opening paragraph above I also adopt a live and let live attitude. (Wait now. Stop laughing). Don’t invade my space and I will surely stay out of yours. However over the past two weeks Mr Momodu via his column on the back pages of the This Day newspapers on Sunday has been pontificating about what is wrong with Nigeria and has therefore stepped into my space.

This week’s article was about the large number of VIPs we now have in our midst who go so far as to take their bodyguards everywhere with them. Even into Church where said bodyguard blocks the view of the regular, normal members of the congregation!! Mr Momodu questions why this is necessary when even the US President is often seen delivering speeches without some guard casting a shadow over him. Last week's article was no better.

So what’s my beef? Well, I refer back to said Ovation magazine as published by Mr Momodu which celebrated and continues to celebrate the “achievements” of some of the most dubious and odious characters in this country. As a matter of fact as far back as three years ago I started referring to the “Ovation lifestyle” meaning people who with no discernible means of income would be photographed in their huge mansions displaying the usual gold plated tat or lounging casually against a Rolls Royce or some other material indicator of their “arrival”.

I particularly remember the birthday party for a particular Anambra State godfather’s child whom I believe was turning two. If I recall correctly there was a full edition dedicated to this “celebration” including glitzy photos of the aforementioned mansion, Roller and other candied yams. Now as far as I am aware I have never read a single business journal here or abroad wherein the name of Mr Rivers State was mentioned as a great industrialist being that he invented this, manufactured that or produced the other. The fact that his elder brother was at that time sitting at the kitchen table with our then President speaks volumes.

So how can the publisher of a magazine who is happy to take money from all and sundry to appear in his rag then pontificate about said flotsam and jetsam if they start to believe the hype and act accordingly? Has he not himself legitimised their actions? Is he not sending the message that regardless of where and how you get your money that it does not matter? Is he not celebrating the very vices which he now denounces? Is this not what is called talking out of both sides of your mouth?

And the most galling bit of all is that having helped to create the monsters that regularly appear glossily in his glossy Mr Momodu sensibly decamped to the safety and relative calm of Ghana from whence he pontificates only popping into Nigeria to celebrate another occasion with another "big boy or girl".