Xmas comes earlier and earlier . . .

I know it doesn't feel or look like it out of the window but it is still six months to Christmas but . . .

Spotted in Mayfair in early July. I eventually figured out it was the Marks & Spencer's buyer (or something) preview but still . . . they didn't have to have a snowman on public display. They could have been a bit more discreet.

Did you see that snowman move between the two pictures? I think you did.

To cheer you up and away from the bad side of Xmas in July, here is the good side . . . mambo, animation, reindeer, Billy May, what's not to like?

More Wiggo words 

Following our swhero (does that even make sense?) to the finish line in Paris . . .

July 11, 2012 Shit

'I'm not just some shit rider who has just come from nowhere.' An explanation of why he was rejecting, yet again, online suggestions that he was half-cyclist, half-chemistry set.

Next That Xmas thing I said I'd post . . .

Fucking cycling

Football aside, the only other sport that holds my attention for more than a moment is the Tour de France. Not road race cycling. Just the Tour de France. Enough is enough.

Watching the tour this year — and more importantly, reading the press conference reports — I have decided that I could apply a swearing algorithm to this sporting contest, too.

It's a different one, though. Rather than using it as a way of comparing two matched competitors, I am using it to assess just one competitor — British rider Bradley Wiggins.*

Mr Wiggins — Wiggo, I think, to the racing fancy — is leading the field as the race reaches the halfway point. He is outperforming every other English rider who has ever ridden the Tour.

He also gives great interview. Almost invariably, his replies feature swearing. Not just any swearing either but inventive stuff — nothing fancy or strikingly original, mostly drawn from the classic English repertoire, but still fun and expressive. It expresses the richness of the man expressing it. He is honest, forthright, direct, as far from the inanity of most footballers as you could hope for.

(He also has the most fantastic sideburns/sideboards. Bugger's grips, in the parlance.)

So, to start with anyway, I will be keeping you up-to-date with Wiggo's swears.

Here are some to be going on with . . .

1. July 8, 2012 Fucking wankers, shit, arses

Invited to offer his opinion on people who claimed that bike racing was still more a matter of chemistry than talent or effort, he replied: ‘Honestly they’re just fucking wankers. I can’t be doing with people like that. It justifies their own bone idleness . . .because they can’t ever imagine applying themselves to anything in their lives. And it’s easy for them to sit under a pseudonym on Twitter and write that kind of shit rather than get off their arses and apply themselves and work hard at something and achieve something.'

2. July 10, 2012 Shit fight

Asked about his chances of winning the Tour, he replied: 'We expect this to be a shit-fight for the next couple of weeks. That's how we've prepared for it and that's what cycling's about."

3. July 7, 2012 Ass-wipe, cunt  

So . . . as the leader of the Tour has to do a press conference every day, I look forward to more Wiggo words. Let's hope his swearing talent powers him all the way to the finish in les Champs-Elysee and that he becomes Britain's first victor in the race. As the French would say, putain!

* Side point. Isn't that the most wonderful of names? Bradley Wiggins. It sounds like a name from the Simpsons, one dreamed up by Matt Groening to tease the English. 

Next Christmas 2012, my first sighting