Down with the Sandwich of Death !

Fact : Crossing the road is a dangerous activity. Figures show that people who cross roads are statistically more likely to be hit by cars than people who cower a safe distance back from the kerb their entire lives.

Fact : people who breathe lungfuls of air have a higher cancer risk than those who take shallow breaths in an oxygen tent.

Fact : Making children, having fun and meeting people all expose you to risk. Better to shut yourself in your plastic bubble and watch Ant 'n' Dec repeats in the dark.

And heaven help (according to these people) those of us with outrageous rock 'n' roll lifestyles who tackle hard-core extreme risk, like eating bacon.

Yes, bacon. The same nagging tone that scolds people for indulging in promiscuous, unprotected, unbiblical sex with bi-sexual drug-addicts is being used to talk us out of eating yummy, crispy pig-bits.

As a self-confessed Guardian-reader and one-time Vegetarian, I ought to be all in favour. But there are two things you need to know about Stan :-

(a) I hate, loathe and detest people telling me how to live my life

(b) I blooming love bacon.

The question I have is this : "What's next after bacon ?" If we give in and switch to organic tofu rolls, what will they go after next ? Cuddling ? Smiling ?

Fact : "the highest known risk factor in relation to breast cancer is age, with 80 per cent of cases occurring in women over the age of 50." Don't get old, ladies. It's bad for you ...

Fact : One day I am going to die of something. This will come after a very full life, crammed with joy, risk and discovery.

If I could have a choice, I would like to go as a direct result of exhaustion arising from my beating the living carp out some whining, passive-aggressive, flaccid, milksop control-freak who tried to spoil my joy. Hopefully, this will happen when I am 150 years old. With a freshly-eaten bacon butty (white bread, red sauce) in my tummy.

A Pain in the L5S1

After a certain age, learning is usually as a result of something going wrong. You learn about cars when yours develops a mysterious puddle in the footwell, and you learn about your body when stuff starts dropping off.

The results of my MRI scan are in, and while my lower spine is in many ways a picture of loveliness, it seems age has withered it rather.

A spinal disc is a complicated beast that does two jobs: it flexibly connects two vertebrae together and it acts a shock-absorber.

It looks like a doughnut ("mmmm ... doughnut ...") with a jelly-like substance in the middle ("mmmm ... jelly in the middle ...")

With age, one of my low-down discs known as L5-S1 ("the lumbosacral joint" to its friends) has lost water. This dried-out disc has compressed, which has resulted in the jelly squidging out of the doughnut, causing havoc with my sciatic nerve.

You wonder whether there's any way of rubbing some moisturising cream into the disc. This would "reduce the signs of ageing" "because I'm worth it".

It seems it's a Clan Stan design fault because Father Stan is a fellow sufferer.

Feels good to know what the problem is, especially since it definitely isn't one of the really nasty spinal problems it could have been.

Quick : finish with joke :-

There's a rumour that Tampax will be the new sponsors of Bolton Wanderers. It's appropriate, because the club is going through a really bad period.

Aux gogues la vie

Hands up those of you who can't sleep because you have a play by Samuel Beckett stuck on a loop in your mind ?

Just me then.

Last Saturday I went to see "Fragments" , a set of short Beckett theatre pieces which included "Rockaby", a minimalist solo piece for one prematurely-aged woman and a chair.

I had never seen the piece performed before, but I had read and enjoyed it in the "Complete Dramatic Works" and at first I was pretty irritated by the performance.

You see, Beckett was pretty clear in his stage notes as to how the play should be performed. For a start, the vast majority of the dialogue should be played from a recording, with the actress responding in voice only a little. Even the exact shape of the rocking chair was spelled out. It was also specified that this carefully described chair should be rocked by an unseen mechanical means with no assistance from the actress.

These instructions were followed at the performance to the letter, except that no recordings were used and the chair was not a rocker, just a straight-back chair which the actress rocked herself throughout.

Look, the thing about minimalism is that everything unimportant has been taken out by the author, leaving only what they believe is crucial behind. So when Beckett says something, he thought it was important dammit, so don't mess with it. Dammit.

So, with all this screaming going on in my head, the piece was halfway through before I fully appreciated Kathryn Hunter's performance. Damn, she can act. Beckett's dialogue is sparse so the actress needs to fill in with her eyes, her bearing and her tone. Kathryn Hunter gripped the audience - even managing to drown out my inner pedant.

It's all about death and perception and the perception of death and the death of perception, so best try something else if you're looking for levity. But it is one of the best short plays there is, and Peter Brook (the director) should blooming well stop trying to "improve" it.

No Change

Hats off to the Criminal Masterminds who decided to try to pass £28 billion in half-million-pound-notes (i.e 75% of the face value of all sterling notes in circulation).

It was a nice touch that the people they tried to con were the Bank of England, who you would expect would know a thing or two about how the notes ought to look.

The Bank of England, in fact, would know that there never was a £500,000 note.

Their £1,000 notes weren't much better, and strangely enough, these are a more serious issue than the big guys, because it's not considered "forgery" if the thing copied never existed. Isn't the law funny ?

Music that makes you feel the World is working out just fine

I bought Corinne Bailey Rae's eponymous album at the Virgin Records store at the Trafford Centre. I first tried at HMV and failed to find it filed under either "C", "B" or "R" in any one of the "Rock & Pop", "Urban" or "Jazz & Blues" sections.

Maybe they had a "Music that makes you feel the World is working out just fine" section - if so, that's where I would have found it.

What a voice ! Her phrasing and all-round musicality is astounding and she backs it up with a soulful voice that sounds vulnerable without being in any way frail. I was stunned to find she was from Leeds - I would have sworn she was from Roberta Flack's American South.

You don't have to rely on my ropy descriptive skills - go to her website which has a taster.