Another Bloody Relaunch

Apologies, folks, for the outrageously wide gap between blog posts of late.  As usual, my biscuit-tin of excuses is emptier than a pre-referendum bribe, but I’ve never let lack of decent material stop me in the past, so here goes.

In the immediate aftermath of the festive fortnight, as I cowered under the duvet, my head whistling with Paracetamol and my mouth like a ferret’s latrine, I could surely be forgiven for pulling a sickie, couldn’t I?  Then, when I next awoke, we were smack in the fallout zone of a weather bomb, with a howling gale scattering the contents of my bin all over the street, so there was clearly enough embarrassing rubbish flying around without me creating more.  Two days later, the carnage in Paris rendered my snappy one-liners about pygmy politicians judderingly irrelevant, even if I tried to pass them off as cutting-edge satire.

One week on, however, it’s hard to see how I can get away with pleading emotional damage caused by Cadbury’s desecration of the Creme Egg, so enough is enough.  There’s a General Election just down the road (or autobahn if you’re Tory), politicians are busy showing off the megaphones and la-la-can’t-hear-you ear muffs they got from Santa, and the air’s so thick with dunderheidedness you could slice off chunks of it for loft insulation. A cornucopia of delights for an aspiring humorist.

Anyhow, you don’t get nominated for “Funniest Blog” in the Bella Caledonia awards if you constantly fail to show up for work.  Accordingly, I didn’t, although I remain optimistic that someone with D, U and G in his name will win this year. But I’m buggered if I’m going to give the competition such an easy ride in 2015. That means it’s time for Another Bloody Relaunch.

I’ve been inspired in this effort by the parallel relaunch of the new darling of the Scottish political scene, the Blessed Jim Murphy, who’s managed to teleport out of his moribund Westminster career by discovering a love of Scottish politics hitherto invisible to the naked eye.  As a result, despite having previously achieved little of significance in his entire sojourn on Planet Earth, apart from costing the taxpayer more for his higher “education” than any other university dropout in history, Jim’s now become the fawning media’s go-to guy for headline-hogging political quackery.

His indyref strategy of aggressively shouting gibberish at random passers-by, which at the time seemed like a cry for help from Social Services, has unexpectedly proved to be a career masterstroke. I’ve already stuck my Caps Lock down with Blu-Tack and, if I can learn to crank out stuff even half as unhinged as he was spouting, I’ll be on the fast track to literary stardom.

I’ve also been impressed by Jim’s willingness to pursue insanely ambitious goals, such as retaining all 41 Labour seats in Scotland in May despite unanimous polling evidence that it’s as likely as a herd of rampaging wildebeest winning Strictly.  Of course, it’s possible that he’s had a tip-off from John McTernan, who’s already seen the postal voting results.  But the heck with it: if he can set that sort of target without peeing himself with laughter, then I’ll expect a Nobel Prize for Literature by return post just as soon as I publish my new book about flower arranging.

I have plenty of Post-It Notes and crayons, so emulating Jim’s policy development techniques should be no problem.  The central thrust seems to be “1,000 more of everything than the other lot, no matter what”, which if the SNP responds in kind may make it impossible to visit the shops without being stalked by half-a-dozen nurses trying to take your blood pressure.  In that spirit, I promise readers that each year I’ll publish 1,000 more seven-syllable words than Lallands Peat Worrier, 1,000 more scatological references than Wee Ginger Dug and 1,000 more scathing put-downs than Rev Stu.  My parodies will be 1,000 times subtler than BBC Scotlandshire’s, so I won’t even need to write any jokes and everyone will think they came straight from the pen, or the arse if I’m being scatological, of Blair McDougall.

Dressing to impress could be a problem for me, since I don’t possess a Scotland top like Jim’s, although I daresay I could rig up a giant neon arrow to point at me saying “PATRIOT”.  And if my body’s a temple, it’s one devoted less to the sharp-elbowed cult of James Francis Murphy than to the worship of beer, crisps and carefully-managed flatulence.  If I ever went jogging, it wouldn’t be along the Clyde towpath in front of a bank of slavering paparazzi;  it’d be around the perimeter of Perth Royal Infirmary, in case the crash team needed to haul me in for emergency resuscitation.  But, hey, nobody’s perfect.

So here I am, inviting you to hang on my every word once again.  If there’s anything you haven’t liked about my blog in the past, remember:  just like Jim, I can change.  All you have to do is undergo the standard Men In Black memory wipe to forget my flagrantly contradictory past.  As long as it’s within the law or I’m unlikely to get caught, I can pretend to be anything you want me to be. Socialist, capitalist, nationalist, unionist, onanist… it’s all the same to me.

And, of course, if the foregoing turns out to be a total pack of lies and the whole thing falls pathetically apart, I’ll deny I ever said any of it.

See you soon!  Honest….