Tag: George Clooney

Attack of the Clones

Beards are back.  I don’t mean the little goatees of the early Noughties or the close-cut five o-clock shadow of yesteryear. This time they’re big, really big. We’re talking twisted whiskers of ZZ Top proportions. Sales of razor blades and shaving foam have dropped through the floor causing consternation in the boardrooms of Gillette and Wilkinson Sword. You can hardly turn on the TV without a Bin Laden lookie-likey looking back. Everyone’s at it. A case in point is the comedian, Alex Horne. He’s gone from clean-cut to shag pile, ageing 10 years overnight. Of course the truth is I’m jealous. My own facial growth has always been a tad patchy and a bit wispy, more Catweazle than Clooney. Back in the Village People day, the Frisco look was the only show in town – plunging check shirts, tight Levi 501s, chest rugs and bushy Tom Selleck tashes. Everyone looked butch, as long as they didn’t move and didn’t speak. And clones only danced with clones. Pretty little things like me didn’t get a look in. No fuzz, no way. These days all the old clones still breathing have morphed into ‘bears.’ Essentially, this just means they’ve gone to fat.

Alex Horne

Carry On Doctor

Carry On Doctor

Longer-term pansyfans may recall that I started having a bit of bother walking distances while we were in Turkey. The cardiologist at the local private hospital in Bodrum diagnosed Periodic Limb Movement Disorder. Apparently, I was running a marathon every night in my sleep making my little lallies tired during the day. I was prescribed a cocktail of blood thinners guaranteed to bring on early onset impotence and an anti-twitching drug usually used to treat Parkinson’s. My condition didn’t improve and so, now we’re back in Blighty, I had the whole business checked out at the StentNorfolk and Norwich University Hospital. I’m afraid the original diagnosis was a bit off target. A CT angiogram revealed that I have arterial blockages in both my groin and right thigh which won’t get better without surgery. A double stent will unblock my dodgy groin but the problem in my thigh requires an arterial bypass. My consultant looks like Dr Green from ER. It’s a shame I’m not under George Clooney.

Continued in Carry on Nurse.

Bodrum Life

Bodrum’s radical urban overhaul is almost complete save for a few rough edges that will be completed next year (or sometime never). I took afternoon liquid refreshments at Bodrum’s organic deli, a great place from where to people watch. Their natural fare is even more delicious during happy hour when a glass of white costs only 4 lira a shot. The tubby waiter with precision hairdo, George Clooney eyes and Russell Crowe features serviced me silently with charm and grace.

I watched Bodrum life pass by in all its ambling majesty. The strolling likely lads with their grand gelled tresses and baffling stares promenaded along the promenade, stopping to check their reflections in the porthole mirrors of Helva Bar. I watched the Helva bar boys wash down the floors in anticipation of a profitable night’s innings from the urban elite and the Ukrainian prostitutes who silently ply their trade among them. A rainbow of cars cruised by from Nissan tanks to clapped-out Fiats. Happy-clappy kids played hide and seek in the play school playground opposite. Sunny Cabaret was provided by Bodrum’s resident drunk (I thought that was me), who frothed at the mouth, toyed with the traffic, harangued unsuspecting tourists and talked to the street animals like a modern day Dr Doolittle. I staggered home to the tune of the Hi-De-Hi public address system and another power cut in the full knowledge that our Turkish expedition would soon come to an end. To quote Old Blue Eyes, “Regrets, I have a few.”

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