Jings!

When I have nothing better to do, or at least don't have the inclination to do anything better, I can occasionally be seen browsing the children's section of a bookshop. As an aspiring children's author myself, it reassures me to see some of the rubbish that gets published these days - makes me more confident that some of my own rubbish could still find its way into print eventually.

The only drawback to this confidence-building exercise is that occasionally I stumble across a piece of work so brilliant that I could never in a month of Sundays hope to produce anything like it. And then I get all depressed again. One such book, which I came across today, is "The Giggler Treatment", by Roddy Doyle. It's sheer genius from start to finish. It features, among other things, a seagull which hates fish and if it had its way would round them all up and dump them in the sea, a character called Billie Jean Fleetwood-Mack, a man who's in a bad mood because his sandwiches and flask of chicken soup at lunchtime were robbed by a vulture, a short cut from his house to the train station via the Sahara Desert, the river Nile and the Eiffel Tower, and a chapter written by the dog in which, without advancing the plot at all, he describes the difficulty of using the computer without his owner noticing, and mentions that his girlfriend Lassie recently moved to Galway and he thinks he misses her more than she misses him.

"Measure a mouse's eyelash. Not down. Across. That was how far Mister Mack's shoe was from the poo. And his rescuers were in Egypt! In North Africa! They'd never make it on time."

The whole book, in fact, takes place in the time it takes for Mister Mack's foot to descend towards the dog poo. He's wearing new and very stiff trousers, so it takes longer than you'd expect. Seriously, this book reaches heights of excellence that I could never hope to aspire to, even in all the months of Sundays I've got in store for the next year.

In other news, I also bought the new Oor Wullie book yesterday. I'm more of a Broons fan, but I still get the bi-annual Wullie collection too, and this bi-year I did laugh out loud at least a couple of times, so I think I've got my money's worth as well as keeping up with tradition.

And speaking of traditions, I seem to be making one of critically analysing each new Coco Pops advert I see, but I can't help it - this latest one raises deep issues that need to be explored.

It's an advert for Coco Rocks, actually, the horrid-looking crunchy-and-soft-choc cereal that Coco Monkey and his gang also advertise. In it, the villainous Croc steals the Coco Rocks and expresses the intention of scientifically analysing them to discover the secret of what makes them so delicious. Coco observes that "all will be lost" if he does crack the secret, but doesn't elaborate on exactly why. What, exactly, would be the consequences of Croc learning the secret? All I can think would come of it would be that Croc would be able to make his own Coco Rocks without needing to steal them (he can afford the lab equipment and gorilla henchmen, so you'd think he'd be able to buy his own, but perhaps he's barred from the local jungle supermarket), and surely that would be better for everyone except the Kellogg's cereal corporation.

At worst, his plan could be to market his own Coco Rocks clones and make a fortune. And although this would maybe be unethical, I think that frankly Kellogg's could use some competition to their monopoly in this market. Coco Monkey's urging of consumers to help him thwart Croc's plan smacks of brainwashing innocent children into tools of corporate propaganda. I think it's disgraceful, and should be stopped. I've lost all respect for Coco. And Ozmelda Ostrich can forget about me asking her out on another date.