26.06.2006 - 8:08 p.m.

Imagine with me, if you will, a crate of lemons. They could be fresh or maybe a little bit mouldering, and that each lemon is rammed to the gunwales with lemmings of a microscopic variety (they do exist but are rarely seen, which is why they weren't included my last armchair safari), lemmings in lemons. And that this crate of lemming'd up lemons are in Leinster or maybe the middle east, Lebanon perhaps. mmmm lebanese lemming'd lemons.

Does anyone remember the shmoo, or to be more precise the new shmoo, to be fair, if you�re less than thirty years old you�ve no chance of remembering, it came out in the US in �79 but made it over here a few years later. That maleable crime busting fun putty. Ah the heady days of yoof, we forgave the bad animation and suspect storylines just to see the little blighter turn into something useful or exciting. How they all managed to squeeze into that three wheeler, which was considerably smaller than the mystery machine is still a, well a mystery.

Bless him, he looked weird, but when you were in a tight spot, a shmoo was what you needed

I got a couple of Dangermouse videos for xmas a few years ago and the excitement of receiving a piece of my past was then tainted by the realisation that the animation is awful and clearly done on the cheap, it's only the banter between Terry Scott and David Jason that rescues it and that's pretty sparse too. The high production values of japanese anime and manga has set a standard that i now expect in everything, no-one could produce a Dangermouse type cartoon now, 'cos they'd be laughed out of the ratings. But even Dangermouse was better than european animation like Dogtanian and the Muskahounds, which i really hated (but watched anyway), although Inspector Gadget wasn't bad.

Hanging on the front of our local Audi dealership is a giant banner stating "Browsers welcome" but you just try to take a bovine specimen into the showroom and suddenly it's all "security" and "get that cow out of here" i point out that it's not a cow it's a bull, and we've just been chucked out of a china shop with similar levels of prejudice, and maybe in their hurried attempts to seem less highbrow and to get more proles in to sell them expensive hire/purchase agreements they should check more closely the grammar that they use to advertise with.

I'll be taking a goat back next week, goats are smaller than bulls so i might get away with it.

Back in dream time again and apart from fighting vampires (which was really scary) i had my first Star Wars dream ever, result. We ( me, j and her boy ) lived in a cloud city type place and i had a guide / friend who was with me. I wanted to get back to earth only for him to point out that earth is in a galaxy far far away, although it struck me that how would he know about earth if it was in another galaxy ? but i didn't dwell on it. As an alternative he said he would take us to an earth like planet where we could settle and he did. So then, with all our stuff stacked up in boxes and gear everywhere i started to get moving stress (which is understandable) and not only that but my big bag of herb had a split in it and was spilling over the floor.

We finally got to the earth like planet, which looked a lot like Endor (which admittedly looks a lot like Oregon) and i was demonstrating my knowledge of tree biology to my guide who knew nothing about trees and was rightly impressed, and the best bit was i got to fell a tree with a light sabre (which is loads easier than a chainsaw), with some perfect cuts, the tree came down. I've mentioned about felling and lightsabres while on the course last year and it was nice to actually be able to do it (well it felt like doing it and that's what counts)

Now i'm back home and no longer in brighton, my consumption of god's green produce has fallen drastically, mainly because i don't have the opportunity to do it, what with the continued presence of children and in-laws. I don't really miss it (except after a week or so and then my dreams mostly involve trying to find a quiet spot where i can have a smoke and always being frustrated) and i still get to have the odd one every week or so, the upside is that it no longer supresses my dream time, so i'm getting the full colour and contiguous night time extravaganza's i lurve so much, without the fractured and disjointedness that comes from sleeping on a full set of thc tanks. Sleeping is once again the best part of the day, hurrah

(apart from the quality time with J, obviously)