When you're in a crowd, people sometimes wish to get by. When this occurs, one usually lets them by.

When some people are let by, they will place a hand on one's shoulder or around one's side as they sidle past, the hand slipping off almost sensuously as they move away.

Am I the only one who despises this? And the people that do it? It's as if the touching is a friendly gesture, and by extension, the person doing the touching is a friend. When this happens to me, I feel like conducting some form of unreasoning outburst, yelling, "Excuse me! What the fuck do you think you're doing? Why is your hand slipping against the side of my midriff as you go past? Are you molesting me? I find your nerve and presumption in thinking you have permission to fondle me in such an over-familiar manner an affront to acceptable standards of social behaviour and notions of personal space and body integrity. Please would you fuck off, you poisonous and fundamentally worthless wankface?"

All they need to do is get by without touching you in such a familiar way. I'm not against touching, don't get me wrong. And when someone's trying to get by in a crowded place, I appreciate there is going to be some inevitable 'brushing'. But to deliberately embellish this with a 'friendly' hand on the side of one's torso or trunk is, in my mind, tantamount to frotteurism (formerly known as frottage). Frotteurism is where someone rubs against a non-consenting person in a crowd to get sexual pleasure from it. Its related condition is toucherism, which I personally think is a brilliantly literal word for it. I'm not saying that people who do midriff-handling in crowds are necessarily frotteurs, but it's not far off.

As an aside, the etymology of those words is great. Frotteurism comes from the French verb frotter meaning 'to rub'. The word frotteur is the French noun literally meaning 'rubber' or 'one who rubs'. Interestingly, frottage now refers to consensual rubbing as part of normal sexual activity. I wonder if the French were particularly into this rubbing business, seeing as they supplied the words to describe it.

That concludes this lesson on the linguistics of deviant sexual practices.

This whole tirade has been against hand-on-side inappropriateness performed by males. Of course, if a woman I want to sleep with did it, I'd be over the moon.

NB: As far as my illness goes, it's virtually cleared up now. Tonsils back in working order. I've never appreciated the act of swallowing quite so much as I do now.

While I'm here, I'll do another entry. Might have missed the boat on the whole 'rant against 4x4's' thing, but I don't care.

First... adverts for 4x4 cars.

"Because everyday life is 4x4," says one. What the hell does that mean? In one scene, a baby wees on a bloke. So, what, a baby pisses on you, and that somehow relates to a 4x4, does it?

I know it's trying to say that everyday life is a challenge, and you need something dependable and powerful, perhaps, to help you get through it, but this still doesn't relate to a bloody 4x4 car.

Another advert has this 'adventurer' driving round a big desert, where it's very dry and harsh. "You wouldn't want to get stuck out here without any water," she says. That's fucking rich. She's driving a polluting 4x4 around, adding to global warming, which will make the desert even drier and less hospitable than before. Stupid bitch.

And then she blows up a quarry. Why, exactly? What is the point of that? To end the advert with a bang? Is that it? This woman arses about driving her 4x4 up sand dunes, having an adventure, and then detonates several tons of explosives. And this relates to people in the UK driving 4x4's round cities and down A roads, does it?

If you get a 4x4, it's seeming to say, you too are adventurous and might get to blow something up. Other 4x4 adverts try and do the same thing, equating the oversized, polluting mecha-beasts with cross-country expeditions and exhilirating action-filled journies. If anyone falls for this tenuous, overblown, idiotic link, thinking their lifestyle will become more exciting, then they should be shot with a very big gun indeed and branded a knobhead, in that order.

What's wrong with normals cars, I ask.

"Well," a 4x4 fan might say, "if you're in an accident, you might get hurt if you're in a normal-sized car."

"Yes," I might respond, "but I'd be relatively okay if the other vehicle wasn't a hulking great 4x-fucking-4!"

("Or a bus or lorry or van, but then if one of these hits you at any great speed, you're buggered anyway," I might add as a caveat.)

And you don't really need a 4x4 to carry stuff around in, do you? If your families that big, get a bigger car, not a 4x4. If you need to ferry around lots of things, get a car with a big boot. Besides, I question the need to carry so much stuff around, anyway, to the extent that you think you need a 4x4. If you move lots of stuff about, get a fucking van, you're obviously in the distribution or courier business, or are so daft you think you need to take everything and the kitchen sink on your travels. If you have lots of children, put a lid on it, for God's sake, and either stop conceiving the little shits or organise a minibus.

And stop taking little Oscar or Josh to school in your roadhogging vehicle, it's a waste of space and petrol. And don't call your kid Oscar, either. It's embarrassing for all concerned and simply unnecessary.

What's with this word 'moreish'?

You hear it on adverts when some self-indulgent prick is eating something we're meant to believe is decadent (nutty cornflakes, or 'healthy but tasty' lumps of fucking pastry). They consume said comestible, whatever it may be, in paroxysms of ecstacy, closing their stupid eyes or moaning like a particularly adept prostitute, and announce, "Oh, they're deliciously moreish." Or the announcer will say, smugly, "New fucking Healthy Buns - devilishly more-ish."

Fuck. Off.

This is so unbelievably wanky that the word 'wanky' falls a very long way of short in adequately expressing it. I hate the word and I hate adverts that use it. Oh, and people in general who use it.

I did some research in preparation for this entry, in case I found that 'moreish' was in fact a proper word. I'd always thought it had been invented by some ad agency. I could clearly picture an absolute shit of a copywriter, in his gadget-filled, modern, glass-walled office, 'riffing' with some other contemptible colleagues, trying to think up a word for the Healthy Buns ad campaign. I mean, the audacity of it, even, to think they have the right to actually make up a new word. Who do they think they are?! Are they thinking, "Yah, I'm a copywrider, I have no respect for the English language, so I'll just invent a stupid-sounding word (yah?) thereby introducing a word that was never needed in the first place, okay?"

The only people who are allowed to make up new words are clever people, like professors. And although some people in ad agencies could be thought of as clever, they're actually not, they're just cocky smartarses.

So, I imagined this copywriter just making up a new word in an offhand, cavalier way, wearing glasses with 'trendy media type' chunky black frames, and a shaved head atop a thin, gawky neck, garbed in the latest dull 'earthy' colours from Gap, showing himself off to be one of the biggest wankers ever to sully the planet.

I had a look in my dictionary and thesaurus, and the word wasn't there, which pleased me. I looked online, at Wiktionary, and it wasn't there. To make sure I wasn't missing it by accident, I tried alternative spellings and hyphenations. Then I looked on askoxford.com (the online version of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary), and much to my chagrin, it was there!

moreish

• adjective Brit. informal so pleasant to eat that one wants more.

For God's sake!

Researching further, I discovered the etymology of the word. It had originated in the 18th century. (That's all the etymology I found, but it was enough.) So this means some wanker in the 18th century made it up instead. Probably some gout-riddled, red-faced, boil-afflicted blusterpot from the upper classes, eating dinner in a grand country house, who was brought something like a platter of roast hedgehogs, and upon finishing the first prickly hors d'oeuvre, was heard to commen to his companion, "Zounds, sirrah, Lord Opulence, but these hogs of the hedge are the most moreish sweetmeats in all Creation, blast yer eyes, fie, anon, et cetera, et cetera."

Well, however it happened, I'm sure someone I would hate made it up. And so that doesn't detract from my original point that it's a shit word. Lazy. Instead of thinking of the right word, someone just made up a new one, like Americans who invented the word 'hellacious' to describe somewhere that's like hell. Just say 'like hell' or 'nightmarish' or something, don't just make up a whole new bloody word, for Dr Johnson's sake!

Instead of 'moreish', the coiner of it could have said 'scrumptious', 'tasty' or even 'addictive'. But noooo, they decided to create a new word.

Oh well, no use worrying about it now.

Lots of people have probably said this before, right, but I think there should be a fucking maximum validity period for things you do wrong, after which no one can bring it up or get annoyed about it.

I mean it's fucking ridiculous. You do something stupid, and at the time you pay for it. Someone (usually a woman) expresses her outrage at your insensitive or brainless actions, and you're made to feel bad about it. At the time. Which is the important bit. But then that's that. Done and dusted. You've served your time, so to speak, and now it's over. It needn't be brought up again.

But oh no. It doesn't fucking work like that, does it? If you refer to the transgression in some way, maybe by accident or necessity, or you're having an argument with the person you transgressed against, and they bring it up, you get all the shit associated with the incident, all over again! That's not fair! You've paid for your error, you shouldn't have to go through the same crap you went through when you first did it. It's not as if you've just done it again, although that's exactly what it feels like. You haven't done anything, but the incident is resur-fucking-rected as though you just repeated it. Like you didn't learn anything the first time round and you've just maliciously done it again! I mean, for God's sake! Is that unreasonable or what?!

So, there should be a maximum validity period for anything wrong you do - a Best Before date, like you get on loaves or eggs. For minor transgressions, the Best Before date would be the date on which the transgression was committed! It simply isn't on to bring something up at a later date which wasn't a big deal, and batter you over the head with it.

For cock-ups of medium severity, two weeks hence should be the Best Before date. And for those unfortunate episodes with a severity of severe, I think I'm being generous in allowing two months. After these Best Before dates, the incident cannot be referred to or resurrected ever again, as if it just happened again.

The only catch I can see with this is: who would determine the severity? The trangressor, or the transgressee? I think it should be an agreed rating, thrashed out by the parties involved, although I can see problems with this. The person who is offended will naturally want to up the severity in order to gain the maximum validity period, while the offender will want to minimise it. I think an independent adjudicator should therefore be brought in to strike a happy balance, otherwise the whole brilliant system will break down. Who this person is could pose problems of its own. An innocent bystander, perhaps? What if there were no witnesses? Maybe the incident could be taken to a court, where the severity would be set by a judge, or maybe a judge and jury, with counsel for the prosecution and defence. This could be costly and time-consuming, and cause undue stress and suffering, but I still think it's a good idea.

(You might have guessed an incident was recently resurrected for me, hence the bitter rant.)

Something bad happened a few days ago.

I use a piece of music software developed by a well-known computer company who identify themselves with a particular species of fruit. I recently downloaded and installed the latest version of their music software. This was probably a mistake. This is because I am quite anal when it comes to putting information into music files. I like songs to be arranged in the correct order in the correct album, and have the correct artist assigned to it as well. If I know the composer I'll add that too. And the genre. And it has to be put in the right genre, otherwise where would we be? We'd have Oasis in the classical genre and Tchaikovsky under West Coast hip-hop. And that would be anarchy, I'm sure you'll agree.

So I got the new version of the music software, and my anus fairly leapt to the fore, eager to start pissing about with the music file information. This is because the fruity computer company, in all its wisdom, decided to let you get the album artwork for songs you have in your library.

Well... my anus became so anal it was just about the most anal anus in all of Toy Town. I set about gathering the album artwork for all the 500 or so albums I have, eager to reach a state of completion. I actually felt pressure to do so. I was almost desperate to get every single album an image of some kind. I spent hours doing this, and I still haven't got everything, though I can just about live with it.

But on top of this, my anality was piqued by the new types of information one can enter. It used to be you could designate the artist of a particular album. But now you can set the album artist as well. This is for things like cover albums, where the original artist didn't actually produce an album of their own work. Or for classical albums, where you might want to put the composer as the artist, but the conductor and orchestra for the album artist.

I must be strong. If I start re-doing all the artists, I'm going to be there forever, feeling desperate anal pressure (if you'll pardon the expression) to complete the task as quickly and accurately as possible, so my music collection is organised correctly. If there's one thing I hate, it's a half-finished change to my music collection. Once I start, I just want to get it done. My idea of music data hell is where I start changing the artists and album artists, and then I get a few done but can't continue. It'd pray on my mind all the time, until I could return to the job.

Don't the people at the fruity computer company understand this?! They're making anals like me suffer undue stress with their lovely, easy-to-use, richly-featured software, which makes it simple to add lots of lovely information to your music files! I can't take it, I think I need to see a doctor or something. Oh yes, I have been. But for tonsilitis, not analitis.

And the sad thing - the really really sad thing - is I have a digital music player from the selfsame fruity computer company, and it isn't even one of those that displays the album artwork. I'm basically gathering all this artwork... for no reason. Just to make the music library on my computer look nice, let alone my digital music player. For God's sake! What have I become?! Some kind of automaton that just loves filling in music file information, while at the same time hating it because it's not finished yet, it's not finished yet! I wonder if this is a form of insanity!

And don't even get me started on the new feature in the music software for 'gapless albums', i.e. those albums that are meant to play continuously without pauses between tracks, like a DJ mix album or summat. I must stay away from that too, 'cos once I get started, it's sianara. And I think there are albums that are gapless, but which don't play gaplessly at the moment. I could easily be sucked into that aspect of the whole music file abyss as well. Oh, won't somebody help me, please!

Got tonsilitis, still, but I'm not going to go on about it this time!

But forgetting about that, I just saw a programme on Channel 4 about setting up your own business. It was a juice bar in Brighton selling fruit smoothies and soups and that. So I had my own idea for a unique business venture.

It's called Bananas. It's a shop that sells nothing but bananas. Please see the accompanying mock-up picture of how my shop would look.

And they wouldn't even be nice bananas. They'd all be a bit manky. And I'd train my staff to give steely looks at any clever dick who came in asking for apples or strawberries. I'd get them to say, "This is Bananas. We only sell bananas." And then the offending person would be ejected from the premises.

The staff would all be dressed as bananas.

This business idea is flawless. There's loads of people like bananas, and so by only stocking bananas, we provide for banana-lovers (or bananaphiles, if you will) without wasting money on other products like apples that bananaphiles might not like.

And to cater for those who like apples, I will open a new shop called Apples, which is modelled very closely on the Bananas concept. It's a surefire hit.

Hello.

I am still ill. Although now, I know what the illness is! Finally! Tonsilitis! The hospital diagnosed it today. Which means the doctor who first tried to see what was wrong didn't know an awful lot about tonsils, it would seem.

But I digress. I need to fill you in on what happened since my last post, during The Dark Days.

I'll tell you how dark The Dark Days were. Well dark. So lightless and bleak I didn't even have the will to turn on my computer and type shite into this blog. That's how bad it was.

I was nasally congested, that was one thing that I endured. I was so congested that when I breathed, I sounded like a excited bulldog whose had its sinuses filled with jelly. Sniffing and gurgling and coughing and snorting like God knows what. I imagine that when I'm asleep I might make the odd snotting snoring noise, only I was doing those noises when awake! It was rank. A breakthrough came on Saturday, however, when I was blowing my nose thoroughly. (By the way, I think I must have blown my nose a million and two times in the past fortnight!) I was both enthralled and sickened to see a most horrific bogey staring up at me from the tissue when I'd finished, almost like a living thing. It looked solid and large enough to have sufficient self-possession and intelligence to look sorry for living up my nose for however long it'd been there. I admonished it for its presumption that it could have resided in me nasally for so long, unbidden, and then I disposed of it.

I also had a fever, which tended to stay in the high area, where I didn't sweat, but just felt pleasantly warm all the time. I liked that. I could live with that forever (barring my body melting). It's only when you start to feel cold and sweat that it stops being pleasant, and I found it only went this way when I took paracetamol. So I stopped taking it, thinking that I was supposed to be feel better when I took the stuff, not worse. I continued taking the antibiotics the doctor had given me, but these turned out to be ineffective anyway.

Because of my congestion, and dry mouth, and generally feeling crap, I couldn't sleep. I give myself one last blow, as it were, then settle down for a kip, then wake up 20 minutes later. I wouldn't be sure why I'd woken up, but I'd blow my nose again, having a bit of a drink, and then go to sleep again, to wake up 10 minutes later. This happened, continually (or thereabouts) for 3 whole days. Needless to say, I was very tired and frustrated by the end of this. I won't bother trying to convey just how tired and frustrated I was, because it's beyond the expressive capabilities of the English language to do so.

I wasn't eating a lot (a few cornflakes one day, a bowl of soup two days after that, more cornflakes two days later), and maybe this and my fever helped my delirium to develop nicely. When trying to sleep, I'd grab a few minutes and then my brain would start going in circles about one thing or another. Each night was different, so on Tuesday I might want to go through random words and try and remember how Ricky Gervais had defined them, and on Wednesday I might sit bolt upright upon waking and remain there for a few minutes before doing anything else, and on Thursday try and manage the operations of different groups of spies who had to work amidst the enemy and so couldn't blow their cover even if another group of spies working in their midst uncovered exciting intelligence. God knows where this shit came from, but I had to think about in a kind of mental loop for the whole night. Most tiresome.

I also thought there was someone else there sometimes, strange as it may sound. I'd sit down and go off into a trance and I'd be accompanied by someone, though I don't know who, so let's call him Mr Delerium. I can't remember what he said, and I couldn't see him - it was like having a conversation with someone, but even though you were in the conversation, it seemed very far away. Odd.

So those were The Dark Days. Now I'm out again. Hooray! Went to the doctor's this morning to see what the hell's up with my feeble body, and the doctor (a different one to last week) sent me straight to Casualty at Leeds General Infirmary, where I was attended to amazingly quickly, being rushed up the ENT department where they diagnosed the tonsilitis and gave my loads of drugs to take. Brilliant!

So today I had not one but two jam doughnuts. After all, on my new medication it says take the pills before meals, so I'll take the pills and then scoff a doughnut.

(Shit, I've started sweating again. The old fever's going into the cold, sweaty phase.)

NB: This blog won't always be about suffering and disease. :)

Got an headache, still, and viruses playing silly buggers in my cells. Got some antibiotics from the doctors. I think the doctor I saw yesterday was both the best and worst doctor I've ever met.

I say this because I told him I'd had this cold/flu/whatever for a week and it wasn't going away. He said, "Do you want some antibiotics?" I found this a bit weird - he was the doctor, he should be telling me I need antibiotics, not asking me if I want some. It's like he was asking, in a chummy kind of way, "Fancy some antibiotics, mate?"

I said yes. Then I said I needed a doctor's note for work, and he asked how long for, 5 days, 10, days, more? This was brilliant. I could have quite easily said 15 days, and he would have done a note for that long, and I would have been perfectly entitled to stay off that long. But in the end, to be sensible, I said 5 days.

I'm sick of sweating, me, though. It makes the bed uncomfortably moist, and I have to keep drinking stuff, fluids and that. I'm not arsed about fluids. I can take them or leave them, but now because of this stupid ailment, I have to keep rehydrating my stupid self in case my body dries up. What a chore. I've got a sore throat through all the swallowing. I think it's best if I get an IV drip containing nice fluids so I haven't got to bother supping 'em through my mouth. I reckon if you drink too much through your mouth you can wash away the oils and mucus your mouth and throat need to stay healthy. I can already feel my gullet is a bit sandpapery, it's not good.

If I don't get better soon I don't know what I'll do. Maybe the doctor will let me have morphine.

I'm still ill. I was going to go to the doctor's yesterday, but because I've moved, they don't deal with me anymore. Well, thank you very much. What I got instead was a phone call from a nice Scottish doctor, Dr Wallace, who told me it sounded like I had a viral infection which would last 5-10 days. What a bummer. I'd already had it 4 days at that point, so I have 1-6 days left.

Well, now it's the day after, and I have 0-5 days left. But it's not gone yet, so it must be closer to the 5 end of the scale than the 0 end.

Which sucks.

I'm doing a shopping lost for if my housemate takes me to Tesco, as he can drive and I can't. I've included Battenberg, but I'm sure there must be other things I could add. Lucozade, I think - that's what you're supposed to have when you're poorly, it's got glucose and all that, which obviously must have anti-viral properties.

While I'm on the subject of anti-viral properties, I bought these tissues which claim to be anti-viral. They say that once you blow your nose into them, then 99.9% of any viruses that end up on the hanky will die in 15 minutes. And because of this they say the tissues are anti-viral. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would have assumed that if a load of cold and flu viruses are put on a paper hanky, they aren't going to live long anyway, and so you could say any tissue is anti-viral. This could be inaccurate, of course, so please don't sue me, tissue-makers!

Oh yes, I've added salad to the shopping list, to make it healthy. And paracetamol.

I'd better be better tomorrow, I've got a thing to go to. A classical concert in a park with Spitfires flying around above the crowd. Should be good, only it won't be if I'm sweating feverishly and my head aches. I fucking hate cold and flu viruses, they don't give a shit about any-bloody-body except themselves. "Oooh, look at me," you might find a virus saying, "I think I'll just invade this human's cells and commandeer their DNA to replicate copies of myself, thereby destroying the host cell but ensuring my own reproduction. Never mind that the human in question wishes to appreciate the sounds of a classical orchestra in pleasant surroundings while sitting at a foldaway picnic table eating expensive ham on nice bread. I'll just continue to destroy his cells in a selfish bid to survive, and hang his musical desires. God, I really am just a piece of scum, I can't even be arsed being a proper fucking life form, I just waltz up to the nearest proper life form and nick its DNA and replication abilities for my own nefarious ends, because I'm basically just a semi-alive viral cunt. I don't even care if, due to my attack on his body, his immune system causes his body temperature to fluctuate, resulting in fever, and his levels of muscus rise in order to provide a medium in which unwanted foreign bodies can be desposited and sneezed out, and that when a particularly rousing phrase of music is about to reach its triumphant climax, he sneezes loudly, thereby ruining the moment for himself and everyone around him."

That's the kind of thing a cold or flu virus might think, were it capable of such cognitive powers. If it could even be arsed to be a proper life form.

Wankers.

Oh, and some Muller Rice and smoothies might be nice too.

Here's the inaugural posting for the Mainly Low Brow blog. (Oooh, italics... nice.) I've called it Mainly Low Brow as I predict the content will mainly be running along those lines.

I should say I'm only doing this because I'm a bit bored, 'cos I'm ill. I got a viral infection. I got this in London. I don't know what it is about the place, I always seem to get a fucking disease when I'm there (first swear word of the blog there). In the past three visits I've contracted 'ill' twice. Maybe it's the Tube with all those viruses and that floating about, waiting to pounce up the nose of an unprotected Northerner (I'm a Northerner, me, you see, from Yorkshire, England). There must be an ecosystem of London viruses that don't bother the Londoners, but can get past the immune systems of non-Londonders. It's like when Europeans brought smallpox to Africa or summat, only on a dramatically smaller scale and with much less of a genocidal effect.

And I lived in London for six years, so it didn't take long for my antibodies to forget about the Cockney germs. I don't know... tsk... I must have a crap immune system. I think I might have CIDS (Crap Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Fortunately I might have a cure - which would be use my asthma inhaler more (that weedy affliction) and improve my diet. My diet mainly consists of the following food groups:

• Pasta
• Lloyd Grossman pasta sauces
• Fruit smoothies
• BLT (from the nice girls at the sandwich/coffee van that comes round the office at 10:45-11:05)
• Crisps
• Microwave steamfresh veg

Even to me, this sounds deficient in many of the minerals and nutrients an adult male needs to maintain a healthy body. Maybe if I add burgers to it, it'll be alright. Burgers come with salad, don't they?

As I'm ill (massively ill - fever, headaches, small cough, the works) I will make this a short postiing.