At Shig's Digs

I was halfway there already for work on Friday when I set out to spend the evening with one of the most loyal and good-natured people I have the pleasure of knowing. Big up to Shig! We won't talk about the rookie error I made en route that took me 20 miles to correct. I swear lots of useful stuff (i.e. British driving directions) got auto-deleted from my brain to make room for new stuff while I was in America.

It took us a good ten minutes before we menked out - a sign of good manners, if nothing else. I arrived in time for the Doctor Who segment of the B.B.C.'s annual charity fund-raising telethon. When I searched for discussion about it two days later, I got lousy results. Best was a page on THE premier site for news about the show that I'd call THE premier site for discussion about the show too if only its message boards were taking new registrations or I'd registered earlier because I was psychic and knew I'd be in the mood for geeking out online one Sunday in November.

So let's see how many people I can lure here from Google: David Tennant Children In Need special Billie Piper regeneration Wogan Eccleston new scene run Christmas Invasion 3.5 minutes Russell writer not Shakespeare hopping canon Barcelona hair length ultimately disappointing. Click on the current number of "joyous proclamation(s)" below on the right and leave a comment if you found this page using a search engine.

Did you know, windscreen wipers [winshield wipers] are now known in cockney rhyming slang as "Billies"?

We went to an excellent microbrewery just steps from where he lives. Shig took the seat facing the cricket and I took the one facing the bar. We forgot to eat anything for most of the night, enabling us to verbally set the world to rights in just about every respect.



One egg, caper and anchovy and one thiiiick pepperoni pizza later, we were back at his place unitentionally mixing the visuals of Rome with the sound of Mwng by the Super Furry Animals, which is sung entirely in Welsh. Somehow we got to talking about Cop Land but he hadn't seen it so I explained the premise: brain damaged veteran policeman Sylvester Stallone works the suburb where all the big city's cops live; he has to keep order among people who consider themselves to be above the law. Shig said it reminded him of the place a friend of his used to live where, at night, one street would be full of ice cream vans. The fridges in all the vehicles were connected to houses for electricity so you had to step between cables on the pavement when you walked there! But who would sell ice cream in that neighbourhood? How do you up-sell to the children of men whose entire existence is ice cream?!

In a café the following morning we sat next to twin brothers with the same dress sense, the same amount of stubble and they styled their hair the same trendy way too. When there was an excuse to talk to them I had to ask if they were related because it was messing with my hungover head. But, you know me. I'll talk to anyone.

It's always good to see Shig.