Ave, Caesar, bowlituri te salutant.

What's on my mind? Well, I'm trying to find my status update interface and it seems to have gone on a shamble off screen. Anyways, what I was intending to write was something like this: if you have happen to be in a hotel bar, it's much improved by the simple addition of a Peter Bäck .

In Leeds today, for seven and a half hours (yes, I timed it) for, well, this not-exactly-unexpected event. Regular readers, those precious few of you, will know this is a prospect that never fills me with joy. A few snippets for you then...

Rachel walks through Leeds station concourse, hair uncharacteristically over her face in a manner that will only occur to her later as rather symbolic. She smiles wryly as her iPod serves up Gene, Sleep Well Tonight, containing the line "We'll leave this lay-by, this excuse for a town".

It takes less than 30 seconds for my Uncle to say something racist.
Uncle: So, how's life in the Big Smoke?
Me: It's all fine, fine.
Uncle: Do you still speak English down there, or what?
I respond along the lines of yes, it's just like anywhere else. Then, realising that could mean anything in his head, I tell the story of Lewisham and the BNP Mayoral candidate, quoting some of the choicer aspects of that News Shopper article and pointing out how it's all malicious lies. But from the appalling Jamaican accent showcased later, prompted by a spot on Sky Travel, I can only assume my arguments went in one ear and met nothing to stop them on the way out.

Overheard at the bar: "well, they put them in houses, but they want to keep their Gypsy ways..." which immediately made me think of Bill Bailey on QI, recounting the James Bond moment when two women settle a fight over a man "the Gypsy way". I don't think that's what this conversation was about, though.

At least I wasn't present, this time, when someone asked my Dad whether he wanted grandchildren some day (point of order: I am an only child); however, the asker did relay the conversation back to me a bit later, including their incredulity at Dad's response that he "can't think of anything worse". I love my Dad.

The usual conversations about my living in London, though they are now - after ten years - slightly more resigned to the idea that I may actually be happy here, and not considering moving back. It must be lovely to have that sense of warmth for the place you spend your formative years and not have to go searching for it. However, I would like to take all these people and stand them on Waterloo Bridge at night, and then ask them how they could possibly think I would ever leave.

And the vicar looked like Kevin Eldon. Which was disturbing on a number of levels.

On a note of vanity, I did at least get to discover that out of all family members of roughly my generation, I'm ageing the best of anyone. Like, by quite some way.

(Oh, and there's some other stuff that convinces me one branch of the family is turning into an episode of Shameless, but that's really not for here.)

is hoping to introduce Daniel to the Mavericks at the superbowl party tonight.

is now mostly made of beef.

MIGHT have got a little an a thematically distracted.

BNP to enter candidate in mayoral elections

says the News Shopper. Oh, how brilliant. This'll be a fun few months here in Lewisham.

A British National Party mayoral candidate will target Muslim and Nigerian voters at this year's Lewisham elections, it has been claimed.

Target? Target how? Target for the "generous grants to those of foreign descent resident here who wish to leave permanently"? Target for a kicking? I can't think of another way the BNP would target Muslim and Nigerian voters.

Robert Bailey, the BNP's London organiser, shed some light on this.

"It's going to be difficult. The Labour Party think they've got the ethnic vote sewn up - that's why they imported all these people and gave them passports."

Apparently Labour have been scouring Africa for centre-leftists and, yes, importing them. A bit like slavery, but with enfranchisement. And I tell you what, they were planning ahead, what with it taking a minimum of five years residency before you can apply for citizenship and therefore to be eligible to vote, and five years ago the Tories were dead in the water. Five years ago they had Michael Howard. That's the kind of foresight we could have done with on many other policy issues.

I'm still not sure how this counts as targeting Muslim and Nigerian voters though. Unless 'targeting' actually means 'insulting'.

"But a lot of people who follow Islam won't be following Labour because of their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They can't rely on the Nigerian Christian vote because of their support for abortion

I won't be voting Labour because of Iraq and Afghanistan. (Well, there's lots of reasons why I won't be voting Labour.) Hey BNP, why aren't you targeting me?

and championing of gay rights above what's right and normal."

Quite. We wouldn't want to champion anything above what's right and normal.

I am, however, having difficulty following the causal link from 'Muslims and Nigerians won't vote Labour' to 'we can convince them to vote BNP'. Unless Lewisham's entire ethnic minority population has a massive self-esteem problem.

"Lewisham has a traditional white working-class background and in recent years it's come under attack by Labour-inspired immigration policies which have made the white working-class a minority."

No it hasn't. 2001 Lewisham census data: two-thirds of the population are white, less than 25% are black, Caribbean or African, with the rest of the population split among Asian / Indian, Chinese, Turkish, Vietnamese...

If it's the white working class that's under threat, you'd do better to look at middle class wankers like me, moving in and buying up all the housing. My neighbours don't seem to mind me, though.

"Lewisham is symptomatic of a lot of London boroughs where you'd be hard-pressed to find an indigenous face in the high street and hear people speaking English."

No you're not.

"Lewisham, in many respects because of Labour's open-door policy of mass immigration, looks more like the capital of some far-flung country than a borough in London."

No it doesn't.

We'd appreciate the weather though.

I'm still at a loss over how the BNP thinks the Nigerian Christians and alienated British Muslims are going to vote for them when, in the next breath, the BNP announces they're all a load of bastards polluting the streets of the borough.

Sorry, I'm making the fatal mistake of expecting sense and logic out of the BNP, aren't I? Rookie mistake.

Of course, Andrew Milton probably has it right when he says that standing in the Mayoral race will get the BNP far more publicity, for less money, than putting up individual parliamentary candidates and councillors across the area. Ah. Rookie mistake #2.

why's Facebook look weird?

Pete is now mostly made of Chicken Fried Steak.

work is ruining me.

wants you to rub his belly.