More Sad Times

This past week has been a sad time for Orlando. As many of you know, his dear mum passed away peacefully on Friday 10 November. He is in London right now for the funeral, and I am holding the fort here at home.

If you see him, give him a hug from me.

Roy Webb MBE 1945 - 2006

A great friend, a trusted mentor, a bon vivant

and a sharply-dressed gent

It is a year, almost to the day, since I last saw Roy. It was my last day at London Ambulance Service. Not trusting even our CEO do to the job, Roy delayed one of his early chemo sessions to give the official farewell speech at my leaving do in the boardroom.

As usual, he held the audience in the palm of his hand while he spoke off the cuff, regaling us with tall tales, most of which had Roy in the starring role. He loved the limelight and he was a natural showman. He would have loved the big fuss being made of him today.

At work Roy was no less of a superstar. When Roy said he was passionate about patients, you believed him. He broke all the rules over the years, in the name of better patient care. He often exasperated the rest of us who followed along behind, tidying up after him, and doing the necessary paperwork. But you could never question his motives.He knew more about excellent patient care than anyone, and was known all over London for it. Once we did a survey of hospitals whose contracts we had lost, and asked what they missed about the LAS. One hospital simply replied “Roy Webb”. To many in south-west London, Roy Webb was the LAS.

Last July, we had a managers’ away day which conveniently coincided with Roy’s 60th birthday. Roy turned up in his new Porsche, baseball cap at a rakish angle, grinning from ear to ear. He looked every inch the man who had decided to grow old disgracefully. Roy continued to be the star of the show that evening at a formal dinner in his honour, complete with champagne and birthday cake. Naturally, he lapped up all the attention, and was one of the last to bed.

Two days later was the 7th of July, the London bombings. Roy was the lynchpin of the PTS response. He spent all day running up and down to Gold Control in the boardroom, offering PTS up for anything he thought we could do, then relaying it to us for execution. He was personally responsible for the broad role PTS played on the day, volunteering our ambulances to rescue stranded schoolchildren and elderly people, to get HQ staff home at night and to ferry equipment all over London. He was the one who suggested putting PTS ambulances alongside A&E in the response cells we set up.

He worked over 14 hours straight that day, finally leaving for home at almost eleven o’clock at night. It was for these actions, and many more like them, that Roy was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List.

Here he is with Sue on the day.

Outside work, he was a great friend. Most of all I will remember Roy’s tremendous support when my own father died: Roy was in constant contact, sending me daily, sometimes hourly, text messages, helping to get me through the tough days.

I will always remember Roy’s infectious laugh – he somehow managed to sound roguish and sheepish at the same time.

I will also remember Roy Webb, the Michael Caine impersonator – recently Roy chose a Mini as his new car just so he could pretend he was starring in a remake of The Italian Job. His favourite line was “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” and he worked it into every conversation. He even took a photo of it at Buckingham Palace the day he got his MBE.

I will remember Roy as the ultimate sharp-dressed gentleman, his taste in clothing getting more and more expensive and exquisite as the years progressed. He wasn't above doing what it took to hide the baldness, though.

But most of all I will remember Roy’s resolutely upbeat and optimistic take on life. He wrote to me a few months ago telling me how he was getting on. He quoted his doctor who had said “Roy, you know I can’t make you better” to which Roy’s response was “But you can make me better than today”.

The Roy Webb Appreciation Society has a worldwide membership. Sue’s daughter Jo, who also lives here in Melbourne, will be lighting a candle for Roy round about now, to commemorate his life. As for the rest of us here who knew and loved Roy, we will be marking the occasion exactly as Roy would have wished. We have booked a table at an expensive restaurant. We will get all dressed up in our designer gear. We will order a ridiculously expensive bottle of red wine. And as the sun sets across the bay, we will raise our glasses and toast the most wonderful bloke in the world.

Goodbye, mate – we will miss you.

Food & Drink I Miss

Food & drink I miss about Ireland

Decent sausages
Decent brown bread
Smoked cod from the chipper
Tayto and King crisps
Corned beef
Red lemonade
Liga!
Irish cheddar cheese
Decent apple tart (preferably made by my mother)
Decent fruit scones
Bernard’s meatballs and spaghetti


Food & drink I miss about England

Egg mayonnaise ready-made from the supermarket
Kettle Chips sea salt and back pepper
Walkers roast chicken or prawn cocktail crisps
Diet ginger beer
Diet ANYTHING (it’s not that easy to find unless it’s Diet Coke)
Moet & Chandon champagne at UK prices
Diet tonic water for my gin!
Proper toasted bacon sandwich from a proper London caff
Decent hummus from the supermarket (with the number of Greeks here wouldn’t you think it would be everywhere?)
Spotted dick and custard
Clotted cream
Real Cornish pasties
Suzanne’s mushrooms on toast


Food & drink I miss about Europe

BANANAS (when we get them here we don’t have to worry about Fair Trade bananas – they are all Aussie-grown – but at $15 a kilo I don’t think so)
Kit Kats (haven’t had one here but Orlando says they are not the same chocolate as European ones)
Spanish manchego cheese (you can get it here but it is more expensive than bananas)
Spanish Vina Albali or Pata Negra red wine


Australian food & drink I Love!

Cherry Ripe chocolate bars
Fat-free semi-sundried tomatoes
Shark from the chip shop
Red Rock Deli lime & black pepper crisps
Fresh healthy food for lunch anywhere (I work in the equivalent of Blanchardstown or Watford and can get gluten-free fat-free dairy-free anything at my local caff)
Proper fruit toast (the one with more fruit than bread)
Lemon lime and bitters
Decaf coffee and soy milk EVERYWHERE!
All the Australian wine they keep for themselves and don’t export

Culture Shock Update

Language

The equivalent Aussie terminology for "like O'Connell Street/Piccadilly" is "as busy as Bourke Street Mall". Of course, as soon as Aly and Mena pointed this out to me, I remembered it.

Another great phrase I heard in a meeting today (I had to stop the meeting to ask the context!) was "get a guernsey". The bloke was talking about something being put onto an "urgent" list by a government department, and said we wouldn't know until later in the month whether it got a guernsey.

What the...?

Apparently, it comes from getting a place on the footy team, i.e. you are definitely on the team so they give you the guernsey (jersey/shirt) but you still don't know if you will get to play in the game.

Love it.


Car Maintenance

Another thing I have noticed is the water in the car for washing the windscreen. Back in Ireland or England you have to remember to top up the washer water fairly frequently, especially in winter. There is nothing worse than driving through winter rain in bad traffic with mud flying everywhere, and running out of water for the washer.

We have been here almost exactly nine months, and bought a car two weeks after we arrived. I have not topped up the washer water once. The car was serviced one time and maybe the man topped it up then, but one would expect the reservoir to empty a lot more than that. It just doesn't really rain a lot here, and when it does, it doesn't seem to turn into a mudbath.

I mean, I haven't washed the (white) car all winter and I reckon it will be a month or two before it really needs cleaning.


Internet

Broadband internet here is less than 10% the speed of Europe. It's almost quaint waiting for pages to load. That means for every minute it takes you in the UK or Ireland to download something, it takes almost two hours here. Perhaps not so quaint.
Think of me here trying to update these very pages...

Culture Shock

Most people here think that moving to Aus is not such a big change to living in the UK. But, as I explained to my friend Aly the other night, in some ways moving to Australia is more of a culture shock than visiting India or China. Just because The Bill and Neighbours are on TV, the food looks the same and everybody speaks English, many aspects of ordinary life are completely new or sometimes completely impenetrable to foreigners. Here are some examples of what I mean.

Food

Yes, the food is similar. We have fish’n’ chips, meat pies and pasties, takeaway pizza, sausages on the barbie. So far, nothing spectacularly different. But on top of that there are so many new things. Melbourne is a gastronome’s paradise: there is even a permanent newspaper segment called Epicure dedicated to all things gourmet.

There is an infinite number of places to have breakfast in Melbourne, even out in the suburbs. Whilst now and again we miss the honest fare of a good London-Greek caff or a full Irish breakfast (aah, how I miss Irish sausages and decent brown bread), even close to work I can sample divine French toast, fruit-laden raisin breads, omelettes, eggs benedict, home-made muesli, porridge with banana, and of course good coffee.

Melburnians take their coffee extremely seriously. Not for them a Starbucks at every corner: the local cafes and even train stations serve the very best espressos, macchiatos and café lattes. Starbucks is here, but tolerated rather than revered.

Good delis and markets are never far away. Footscray Market is our local, dominated by Vietnamese and Chinese food but boasting the very best fishmongers and butchers not to mention fresh fruit and vegetables. It is mentioned in Rick Stein’s “Food Heroes” book as an excellent source of fresh produce. Victoria, Prahran and South Melbourne Markets are just as good, with famous dim sims at one (larger versions of Chinese dumplings) and a great organic produce section at another.

Melbourne also has a burgeoning Slow Food culture too. The state of Victoria alone has five Slow Food convivia, and coming up soon is A Taste of Slow, two full weeks of quality food and wine, with a focus on seasonal, regional and traditional foods and boutique wineries.

Wine

We live surrounded by vineyards. It is heaven to live in a country where wine is a locally-produced item. Nowadays, even buying a South Australian wine seems pointless when there are so many Victorian wineries I haven’t tried yet. My personal favourite is Candlebark Hill up in the Grampians, in Hanging Rock country (about an hour’s drive from here). But the Yarra Valley and the Mornington Peninsula are no more than an hour’s drive from home, and we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of these regions or Geographic Indications, the Australian version of “appellations controllées”.

Grape varieties I have never heard of are enthusiasically embraced by boutique wineries. Petit Verdot, Arneis and are wines I could select by the glassthe other night in a small wine bar. Even grape clones are heralded as varieties in their own right: for example the MV6 pinot noir clone so beloved of the Hurley vineyard on the Mornington Peninsula. However I don’t think I will ever be able to bring myself to order a glass of “cab sav”, preferring to give cabernet sauvingnon its full title always, despite not being understood by many waiters.

All in all, food and wine here in Australia is so different in many aspects as to be a completely new experience. I cannot think of one way in which our lives have not been enriched by this aspect of Australian life.

Traffic

No matter what traffic jams we experience here, nothing is as bad as Dublin on a bad day or London on any day. Dreadful traffic here constitutes a ten minute delay. Anything worse is headline news on TV that night. Most of the time at weekends we don’t even bother switching on the car stereo as we are hardly in the car long enough on any journey to bother.

Australians do love their cars, though. I admitted the other day to not having washed our car for over four months: I was confronted with a wall of incomprehension by colleagues who religiously valet their cars every weekend, usually driving to the local car wash where they pay to have somebody else do it while they have a real coffee while they wait (see Food and Wine above).

Personalised number plates are ubiquitous. People of every age soup up their normal suburban hatchbacks and saloons: under-car purple neon lighting, blacked-out windows, huge decals, “sports” exhausts (meaning specially designed to be noisy) adorn the vehicles of forty-comething blokes who should know better. There is no age limit to burning people off at traffic lights or doing spectacular U-turns on dual carriageways. It is a nation of boy racers (and that’s only the shielas).

Language

The old adage about England and America being two countries divided by a common laguage could also be said about England and Australia. Yes, they speak English here, and mostly it is understandable, especially when you get used to the so-called “high-rise terminals” – the ubquitous interrogative tone that make every Australian sentence sound like a question?

People really do use G’day as a greeting, and the phrase “fair dinkum” is commonly used, even by politicians in speeches. But it takes a while to understand words such as sook ( a softy or sulk), rapt (delighted), bogan (somebody who is perceived as being an unfashionable "lower-class" person, typically of British Isles ancestry and living in deprived urban areas), and shonky (dubious, underhanded).

Once you have figured out that shortening any word and ending it with an “o” will make you sound like a local, you’ve made it:

Ambo paramedic
Arvo afternoon
Servo petrol station
Reffo refugee
Rego vehicle registration
Milko milkman

One also has to learn where Woop Woop or the Back of Bourke is (very far away), how to handle a stickybeak (tell them to mind their own business) and find the alternative local phrase to”It’s like Piccadilly/O’Connell Street” when trying to emphasise how busy somewhere is (still looking for that one). One of my favourite alternative local metaphors – the same as a few sandwiches short of a picnic – is “kangaroos loose in the top paddocks”.

On the other hand, if you use a phrase familiar in England or Ireland like “starter for ten” or “I amn’t” or “it was great crack” you are also likely to get mystified looks as if one was speaking a foreign language (which of course one is).

Clothes

It’s Melbourne. Seventy percent of all clothing is black. Get used to it.

Sick Leave

Being well used to EU regulations it never dawned on me that you would have to earn your sick leave. Over here you accumulate sick days at a rate of around one day per month worked. Down side is that many people use them like an extension of their annual leave.

TV and Celebrities

Celebrity TV shows and gossip magazines are totally lost on me. We have no idea who these people are. There are famous people doing TV and billboard ads for stuff like All Bran and Nurofen but we didn’t realise they were famous people – we thought they were just actors. There is a “Fifty Years of TV” exhibition on in the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Everybody is talking about it. It might be nostalgia to Australians, but it is impenetrable to us.

We don’t know who the famous people in Torvill & Dean’s Dancing on Ice are (is that a show in the UK too???). Celebrity Big Brother will no doubt also be lost on us. We have no idea who the ex-Big Brother housemates are (although a friend of the family is going out with one).

Popular Music

We have not found any radio station we can listen to on a regular basis as we recognise about 20% of the music (and that’s stuff we would switch off anyway). Spicks and Specks is the Aussie version of Never Mind the Buzzcocks: because we don’t recognise either the famous contestants or the songs they are being quizzed on.

We were in the city on New Year’s Eve and the big midnight fireworks display was accompanied by what sounded to us like random anonymous heavy rock music. We were baffled until somebody told us much later that it had actually been a medley of some of the most famous and best-loved Australian hit songs of recent years.

Wildlife

Everything in the country is trying to kill you. Crocodiles, jellyfish, man-eating sharks, baby-eating dingoes, not to mention the six species of stinging tree, five of the world’s seven most deadly snakes and the nine most poisonous spiders in the world.

Spiders come as big as you like. I have discovered that the three most frightening words in the English language are as follows:

Bird Eating Spider

A friend of ours once saw one. He mistook it for a crab. The female of the species can grow to about 60mm (2.5 inches), and that’s just the diameter of its body.

Funny enough, the smaller the spider, the more deadly it is. Mena tells me that Huntsman spiders (typically 2 inches in diameter) are not really scary as they are more like small furry creatures than spiders. Apparently, it is the tiny redback under the toilet seat I should be more worried about. Now, why did she think any of that would comfort me?

Two Minutes' Silence

We're still not afraid.

But we will always remember.

Roy Webb gets an MBE

Message from His Majesty Roy Webb MBE:

"Thank you all so much for making this special day possible. Clearly I could not have achieved such high recognition without an environment in which to flourish and the huge support of colleagues both within and outside the LAS.

I had loads to say to Her Majesty about my passion for the LAS and the huge disadvantages suffered by people with surnames ending in “W” like Windsor (I was the very last to be awarded) but protocol insists that the meeting is at an end when the Queen offers her hand, which came, in my view, far too early for me but in retrospect just about on cue I guess.

My brother was until recently a senior officer in the London Fire Brigade and our careers have run in parallel. Over those years he dealt with every major incident in London from a plane crash through all the rail disasters and quite properly received recognition from the Queen some 3 years ago. The LAS attended all those incidents but rarely got a mention about our vital role. I found this very irritating.

In consequence therefore, I had the pleasure, last night of speaking (electronically, I am not that brave) to my brother, Robert Webb QFSM and saying “ya boo sucks to you” as one is allowed under protocol to ones elder sibling with a lesser award.

Thanks again guys (a non gender specific term of affection)."

Traffic and Culture

The State Opening of Parliament may look good on the Six O'Clock News, with snippets of the Queen in her carriage, and Black Rod banging on the door of the Commons, but if you happen to work nearby it is a real nightmare. I got caught in the traffic that morning - I counted more than 10 ambassadors en route in their diplomatic Mercedes - and it took me almost three hours to do the 13 mile trip to work. Remind me next year to take the day off...

The rest of the day really made up for it though. Sue and I met after work on a crowded Shaftesbury Avenue, and went to see famous Latin American novelist Carlos Fuentes being interviewed in the Gielgud Theatre. It was part of the Orange Word festival, which brings famous writers to London each year for discussion and interview. Check out www.orangeword.co.uk.

He was fascinating to listen to - an erudite, philosopical, charming old-world gentleman who had interesting opinions on everything from world literature to world politics, from Mexican history to the art of writing.

Afterwards we had a drink in a great over-the-top cocktail bar on the edge of Soho which was all pink glitter and gothic art. Dinner was eaten in Chinatown, at the Wong Kei where the waiters are all rude to you (they only smile at me!). Then we wandered past Piccadilly Circus and spent an hour or two browsing the books in the big Waterstones which is open till 10pm.

When we got kicked out at closing time we headed back towards Green Park tube at a leisurely pace, passing the Ritz with all its Tinseltown lighting, and Fortum and Mason's Christmas window display. I know it is supposed to be worth a visit every year to see their windows, but this year I thought the baroque-looking smiling and grimacing faces framing the tableaux were a bit scary really!

Home through the (thankfully light) night-time traffic, with Tony Blackburn on Jazz FM playing the Stylistics, Dionne Warwick and other great classic soul. After such an inauspicious start it turned out to be a great day to live in London!

Summer Solstice 2004

In true British style, Midsummer's Day has started out quite chilly thank you very much. At least one person I know had the central heating on last night, and I certainly had the car heater on full this morning.

But Stonehenge didn't let us down. Despite a heavy dew and clouds obscuring the sun, dawn rose majestically over the ancient rocks. More than 21,000 people assembled to see the sun rise on summer solstice morning.

A Christening and a Reunion

One weekend in June I travelled down to my old home town Maidstone in Kent, for the christening of the third offspring of my old friends Denis and Lizzie. Denis and I were in University College Dublin together, along with the rest of the core group – Joe Dalton, Brian Costello, Paul Curran, Michael Ward, Conor Byrne, and Colin McDonnell, with Manu Pillai joining the gang halfway through.

Denis, Brian and I worked together in Maidstone for several years, and they both got nabbed by local women. Brian still lives there with his wife Alison and their kids Ryan and Kara (in a great big posh house I might add). Denis, on the other hand, convinced Lizzie to move back to the wilds of the Donegal Gaeltacht with him, where they live with their three children, Sam, Eilis and bay Róise.

So Roise was christened in Maidstone on the family’s way to France on holiday. A lovely ceremony was held in the church where Biran and Ali got married about 100 years ago. Brian (god help us all) was godfather to this poor unsuspecting child. Afterwards we all met up in a local church hall to eat food, drink wine and catch up.Turns out there is a rash of ceremonies happening this year.

Paul Curran gets married to the lovely Carmel in a couple of weeks in Wicklow (photos to follow I promise). And Colin McDonnell has been snared by a beautiful Galway woman, we hear, and the nuptials are occurring in October. Looks like 2004 is turning into a great year for a reunion and a few beers!

Like Father.....

Like Sons!!!! Personally I think it is scary how Brian and Denis (above) have passed on their genes to sons Ryan and Sam

I managed to herd the Costello clan to gether for one nice photo but failed to do so for the five wild Ferrys.

If you are reading this and are thinking of your old school or college mates, pick up the phone (or click on your mouse) and get in touch now. You’ll never guess what they’ve been up to…

A Night at the Opera

This week I had my very first – and then second – trip to the Opera. We booked to see the Barber of Seville followed by the Marriage of Figaro, both in the old Savoy Theatre. The theatre itself is beautiful, and it was the very first public building in the world to be completely lit by electric light more than 100 years ago.

We had great seats and I really enjoyed both performances. The first was done in a modern setting whilst the second was performed in full period costume. It was remarkable how similar both operas are given that they were written by two different composers, and as they were both sung in English (sorry purists!) it meant I had half a chance of figuring out what was going on! A wonderful experience, though, and I will definitely go again.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Not sure what my compatriots will be doing on Wednesday… well, that’s not strictly true. They will get up, go to the St. Patrick’s Day parade in whatever Irish city they live in, have a few pints and enjoy the day off work.

We in London have to satisfy ourselves with a parade the Sunday before (missed it myself) and a full day’s work.

With the size of the Irish diaspora, it should be a national holiday in all the nations of the world!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Beannachtaí na Féile Phádraig oraibh go léir!!!

Barry Lategan

Walking back to my office from a meeting today, I stopped at my car to pick up my laptop. A middle-aged man was standing outside our car park with a camera in his hand, considering the wall of the parking lot with some interest. As I walked past, he smiled and said he was glad I had come out, as he needed a bit of elegance for his shot.

We got talking and he explained that he was a photographer, and that whilst travelling in Egypt recently had stumbled on the idea of advertising boards and other hoardings being the artistic backdrop of city life. The wall of our car park had been pasted with a light blue paper, which had been painted with graffiti images of people – an artistic effort rather than an act of vandalism, we assumed.

We waited a moment until a good-looking young girl walked past with some coffees in her hand, and the gentleman took his shot. He showed me the image in his digital camera, shielding the view screen for me with his scarf. The composite image of the girl striding past this unusual backdrop was indeed striking. This man was indeed a photographer and a good one at that.

He asked me if I was Irish (the accent is always a giveaway) and said that Seamus Heaney had just inspired him to notice place names, as he had been listening to him on a radio programme earlier talking about Irish place names. We chatted about this, and I said that Irish names mean nothing to others but to the Irish they are really significant and often beautifully descriptive.

The gentleman pointed out the name of the street we were standing on - Valentine Place - and how the name conjured up such a different image in one's mind to the one he had just captured.

As I made to leave, he tipped his hat to me in an old-fashioned but genuinely natural manner. He extended his had to shake mine as he introduced himself as Barry Lategan, a photographer who took the very first pictures of a young model called Twiggy. I walked back to my office thinking how amazing this part of London is with all its theatres and art houses so close by. Just by wandering about at lunchtime I have bumped into Sir Ian McKellan and now a famous London photographer.

Don’t you just love this city?

Walking in Oxfordshire

We had a day in the country on Saturday. Despite the cold, we wrapped up warm and headed off into deepest darkest Oxfordshire to See Some Nature. Orlando is a city man at the best of times, so he still looked somewhat urban in attire as we parked the car in Wallingford and wandered off to find the footpath along the Thames.

We walked for almost three hours beside one of the loveliest stretches of river, with lots of wild birds to watch, and the sprouting buds on the weeping willows promising springtime coming soon. We saw bullrushes and wild daffodils, watched Oxford University rowing teams doing their stuff in the water, got followed by a bunch of hungry-looking ducks and drakes, and got covered in mud for our sins. Fantastic.

As we drove up the motorway towards Banbury we were knocked out by an amazing sunset that literally painted the sky red as a huge sun dropped beneath the horizon.

A couple of visits to cosy country pubs completed our day, which was a welcome change from London City.

TV Shows

One of the great things about living in London is that you can get to see TV programmes getting made. What a great way to spend an evening, and the tickets are always free!A few weeks ago we went to see an episode of the satirical comedy Bremner, Bird and Fortune being made in Wembley near where we live. It was my first time at a TV show recording, and the main thing I remember is that THE STUDIO WAS FREEZING COLD!!! Really entertaining, though. We got to see sketches at their full unedited length, and Rory Bremner was pretty funny between takes too.

Last Thursday night Orlando and I had tickets to see the recording of Tonight with Jonathan Ross (which goes out on a Friday night on the BBC). This was being recorded in the venerable halls of BBC Shepherd’s Bush. Three other shows were being done at the same time, so we shared the waiting room with the audience of Parkinson, Watch with Monkey and some other show we had never heard of called I’d Do Anything. One of the audience for that last show was wearing his underpants over his trousers, so it was pretty clear what he would do…

Anyway, we got great seats right in the front row, directly opposite the host’s desk and the guests’ sofa. Or so we thought. Once things got going two huge cameras and a stills photographers completely blocked our view of most of what was going on… but we got tantalising glimpses of the first guests – John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten) and Liza Tarbuck.

Luckily when the big star guests appeared there were two of them, and the cameras changed position, giving us (well me) a perfect view of that stars of the new Starsky and Hutch movie, Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller! They were sitting no more than 20 feet from me! The weird thing was that most of the time Owen Wilson was staring directly at me. I understood that he was probably looking directly into the camera and tried not to get freaked out, but I have to say I spent most of the time feeling a little shy!

Funny thing was, when we saw the show on TV the following night it turned out that Owen Wilson was actually staring beyond the camera for the whole show. Which means ….. that he had actually been looking at me all the time!!! Oh my god, Owen Wilson was staring at me the whole time, probably thinking “I’m a big movie star and that woman with the furry coat on keeps looking at Ben Stiller all the time. What’s wrong with me???!!!”

Anyway, Owen, if you are online and reading this (hey, why wouldn’t he be?) I’m sorry. Even with that funny nose you are still quite cute, and I was a big fan of David Soul’s when I was a kid anyway, so I’m sorry if I gave you a complex on Thursday night.