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Tuesday 11th December 2007

A new development at the swimming pool. Evil Richard Branston has had his minions stick a large picture of a beach scene (complete with sand, sea, large boulders and blue sky) over the large window at one end of the pool. Before this looked out over the car park of the hotel behind, but now apparently as you swim that way you are looking at some idyllic island paradise. Presumably this is to calm the swimmer and make them, for a few minutes, forget they are in stinky Hammersmith, and perhaps prompt similar reveries to the ones I experienced swimming in Zanzibar.
It doesn't work.
Having a picture of a tropical beach in front of me doesn't fool me into thinking I am on a tropical beach. If anything it makes me realise even more strongly that I am, in fact, in Hammersmith, and not in Zanzibar or Necker Island or wherever the picture is. It is actually depressing to have a photographic representation of a beach stuck onto a window than it was to look at the car park. At least before I could look out at the people in the car park, looking all cold and working and busy and think to myself, well at least I am better off than them. I am swimming in a partially heated pool, whilst they are out in Hammersmith in the cold. Now I can't see them and am left wishing I was in the cool, blue waters in front of me, rather than the chloriney, tepid waters of Virgin Active.
In any case the illusion is ruined by the fact that they have left a large strip of window at the top without a beach scene on it (presumably to let some light in) and so even if for a second I believed I was somewhere nice I can still see the tops of the concrete Hammersmith buildings and the grey British sky and planes flying off taking people who are not me to some enchanting foreign destination. I can see the sky, yet not the dull, cold people of Hammershit. It is the worst of all possible combinations. It is all rather depressing and I think probably all a plan of evil Richard Branston to make us all feel worse about ourselves, so he can feel happier about what he has. I think he is probably watching us all on close circuit TV, probably sitting on the very beach we are looking at and he is laughing at us with his Richard Branston face, knowing that he is better than us. I hate Richard Branston.
Still it could be worse. At least I haven't bitten a tramp in the ear. TV star bites tramp's ear is not an Evening Standard billboard I ever expected to read. And biting a tramp's ear until it bleeds is surely a Pyhrric victory. "I showed him, with my mouth full of tramp ear blood!" Apparently Davies didn't know he was a tramp, which makes the whole ear-biting thing a lot more understandable. At least when I had a fight I just did the decent thing and punched the bloke in the testicles (after having ascertained he had both a home and a job) - what's this ear biting about? Was he fighting him or trying to get off with him? Or some insane mixture of both. Grief and booze can do strange things to a person. But as strange as biting a tramp's ear til it bleeds?
Still the homeless man's rather pathetic complaint that a week later he still can't sleep on that side of his head is a little bit desperate. Or is it meant to say something about society in general. We aren't concerned that a man has to sleep in doorways at -6 degrees, but if we then also discover that he has no choice as to which ear he presses to the cold ground because of the drunken exploits of a TV star then suddenly we're meant to be sympathetic. He's lucky to have been bitten by a TV star, most people just ignore tramps, at least Alan Davies was trying to make a difference. At least he showed him some affection. And he didn't care that he was a tramp, he just bit him in the ear til he bled, like he would with any normal person who had dared to call him by the name of his TV character, rather than his actual name. In a way, Alan Davies is a hero here and he's certainly made me think of how difficult it is for homeless people with ear injuries. Can I suggest the government invests in special ear pillows that can be rushed out to these people in case they are ever bitten by TV stars? You might think the money should be spent on keeping people off the streets in the cold, but I say, one step at a time, my friends.
Today, unusually, I wrote a blog for the New Statesman that wasn't directly or largely copied from here. So if you want to read a story of my comical romantic endeavours, have a look at this. Sometimes my life seems bleak, but then I think, at least I've never bitten a tramp in the ear and it doesn't seem so bad. I just have to hope that Alan Davies doesn't take to walking around with a massive photo of a tropical beach around him at all times and thus I will have no-one to feel superior to. Though if he did that, no-one would call him Jonathon.

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