ALIGHTED on Anna Baddeley's agile Omnivore e-mag, my attention having been drawn by Uncle Simon plugging it in his Democracy blog. Which is what uncles are for.

Stalker Perve Alert: I love - nay, insist on - seeing what people look like. First thing in a chatroom is 'perve' everyone else.

I'm not sure if Niece Baddèle is the actual editrice of Omners but she takes a very nice photo.

And yes, a sprightly little mag, if a leetle confusing to find my way around - or at least to retrace my steps - but that's my fading eyes because, yes, there is a link back home but it's in teensy 4pt.

CHOP CHOP ~ Very clever 'hatchet job' page and well-chosen hatchetees.

ADAM MARS-JONES ~ So that's what AM-J looks like: 12 years in London publishing press hackery, sending him review copies, meaning to badger him at press junkets ... never knew what he looked like.

Seeing his face in sprightly Omnivore was a bit like the shark in Jaws rearing first time from the foam.

And do you know? That looks very much like Adamo in Ms Badders' FB photo. Gad, these literary old goats to get around, I mean, landing a bit part in a hottie's profile pic?

I'm reading the latest Jim Lynch and he features a Baddeleyesque chickadee temptress who catches the eye of an oldie.

He's warned,

"She's the perfect age ... old enough to know how to make you look like hell, young enough to think she's justified."

Oh. Em. Gee. Doesnt that just nail us courtlier gents bang to rights?

I mean, truth up chaps - a knock-out babe like Anna Banana chooses to illustrate her FaceBookery with a foto that includes you?

Dude! I would be forever finding excuses to make folks Google her just so jealous fellow geriatrics could go

"Bloody hell! But that's you there! WTF are YOU doing in the same photo?" (Preen smirk snigger)

But Cor what a corker. (or however people speak these days)

Orgiastic obsession ~ stratified pinkness ~ splayed ~ shuddering ..

I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to be able to type those words and then scurry for cover behind Ms Baddeley's skirt tails.

They're from the Omnivorous review of 'Hot off the Press: The Quiddity of Will Self' by Sam Mills, which I found a bit confusing.

Quothed the reviewer,

"He might be a friend of Will Self but Nicholas Royle in The Guardian didn’t think Sam Mill’s cock and bull tale The Quiddity of Will Self went too close to the bone(r)"

Did think it went too close? Didn't think it went close enough? And is it Mill or Mills?

No matter, all forgiven for doing a Bron Waugh 'Bad Sex' job on the cocky Will:

"So, imagine my surprise as I plunged deeper and deeper into Sam Mills’s extraordinary odyssey of orgiastic obsession to encounter lines such as “My cock soared Selfwards”, “Her left hand, splayed across the final pages of Great Apes, pressed it against her stratified pinkness … her climax shuddering up, up, up to Will …” and “I sweep into his cock, feel myself fly as it rears up like a rollercoaster.”

The cock, it almost goes without saying, is Self’s."

ROWDY BRATS ~ Moving on from the C word ~ and there's no convincing segue I can think of - this just in from Uncle Simon and I speed to post it in the hopes it brews discontent between Dreaming Spires and Prospero's Cell.

KIFISSIA HOTEL, ATHENS, 1997

See SB's comment:

"Anna's on the right

Far brighter than me.

First from Oxford, could have been a don to the sound of bells ...

And she goes into publishing.

Such a waste - pout sulk stamp of foot.

CH note ~ Actually, I can save you some angst there because it's not really publishing, is it, not like we knew it?

Nay, lad, in our day it'd be up before we went to bed, lick Linotype clean, walk 20 miles to printers, edit jacket proofs (50 lashes for each typo), walk 20 miles back, hide behind arras from visiting author who 'just happened to be in the area' ... etc.

No worries, Uncle Si, some handsome bearded lit crit will ooze into view and that'll be it.