Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Testy - I'm out of Latin tenses.

2008-10-04T19:52:00.000Z

Hmm, seems that sending HTML adds some divider that messes up the
sidebar/main body divider. But editing that out in the post wipes out
the post headline/email subject and negates the whole logging into
Blogger at work thing which is why I'm playing round with remote
blogging.

Anyway, as <a href="http://dickrolling.com/liketheastleystuffbutNSFW/">this</a>
won't work (I think) try reading http://www.lipsum.com/ until I get
this sorted.

Oh hell, I just Googled the above term. I've never before thought
something could bring new /de/meaning to something else. Er, yeah, not
being able to add formatting is going to be odd.

Although now I at least know what SJP in Compliance likes.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs37NSLy3z4

Fraggles apparently.

Whatever became of Christina 'Aggleinlira?

But as I've wandered off into the realm of those rock Christmas lights
things that presumably have to be booked ahead with the local Dinorwig
I'd better stop Youtubing before I find myself wanting to fast forward
a couple of months. Unless I can cure it by watching the Russian ice
tunnel thing. Or by realising that in terms of wearable shoes I'm down
to Converse or proper shoes neither of which are snow slush friendly.

Oh, I've just twigged where the riff in Abd al Malik's Gibraltar comes
from. I tried to use that as the ringtone on my phone but for some
reason it's far quieter than the standards so I don't hear it. That
and I only tend to run to the bus most of time.

Anyhoo,

PS. The image is just to see what Blogger does with it.

PPS. The title only makes sense if I haven't wiped the title from the
previous one, which I have, because this blog has no titles, except if
email forces Blogger to add one, which is then overwritten if any
edits are made, like that to dedivide the template mangling post.

2008-10-04T09:16:00.002Z

Oh underscore! Drat. Anyway, this is what happens if one uses HTML in an email. And yes, if it works, I did just use Comic Sans; GMail doesn't do Helvetica. Maybe I need to use gmail.ch. Anyone know how to add images into the text in GMail? It's not something I've ever done as I'm a plain boy.<a href="http://www.thenumberyouhavedialledhasnotbeenrecognised.com">trial manual link</a>.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyhoo/2301288850/"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3231/2301288850_ae51c5f35a_m.jpg" width="240" height="161" alt="DSC_1469 - Is this thing on?" title="Is this thing on? Click for source." align=right hspace=5></a> That was a trial image. But no I've no idea what to say. Lorem Ipsum is a folk band from Suffolk.

Anyway, apologies for the delayed blogging of late (there are drafts, but no time and strangely I'm not all that keen on using Blogger from a work computer), although I am saying this when I am about to disappear for a while (perhaps, hopefully).

Incidentally did you know Hotmail does not show DNS failures? It is DNS, right?

Um... I'm bloggically unfit. So better stop.

Anyhoo,

Testo Testas Testat

2008-10-04T08:58:00.001Z

You know I'm not sure this blog-via-email thing is working.

[GM - Plain text]

2008-08-02T08:34:00.000Z

Things I've learnt so far.

Never give a carrot to a beggar. Well, the stupid sod did try to scrounge money for 'food' from me when I was sitting a park eating reduced carrots for lunch because I'd refused to pay that much for a sandwich. One would think that if someone is obviously unwilling to spend money on themselves then the likelihood of generosity to others may not be great, so maybe carrot eating isn't a strong enough indicator of miserliness.

Who did the BBC's Olympic theming? Because it seems suspiciously like Monkey, via the Gorillaz. Possibly because... research is good yo.

I quite like Happy Hour cocktails on a Friday. Cuban drinks and English indie rocks.

Salesmen's brains melt easily. If I can conceive it then the it by definition cannot be unthinkable (ok, it was my boss's idea and I thought it was bit impractical, but worth a try).

It could be quite bad idea to set up my boss with a friend. Although there's only one way to find out.

The Highways Agency is unadventurous.

I never dial 9, and so presumably infuriate reception no end with my multitudinous fleeting calls.

Printing instead of saving is easy to do.

Alt-tabbing between CAD and Googlemaps can only end in tears; bloody inconsistent mouse controls.

I persist in using Firefox shortcuts in work's IE, despite them not working.

Entering a phone number into Excel will not connect you.

Oystercards do not open either Chubb or mortice locks.

Oh and apparently a move that could be construed as a rugby tackle is seemingly not all that acceptable in softball (rounders with a bigger bat and ball). I maintain it wasn't a proper tackle, simply cushioning the blow and that he had both feet on the base thereby blocking me getting one on (and making himself potentially unstable). Anyway, I was merely following the example of our illustrious mayor, the Dulux of Oaf. Or possibly acting under influence of Pimms (I don't do out, except when I didn't know the rules). But I stayed in, so seem to have got away with it.

Innocent is not so. Bloody mock twee 'village fete' forcing us to play in the long grass (and endure their sound-checks).

And we (er, what was her blogname? Think one was Jetty, so I'll stick with that) think that there ought to be awards for the worse internet sex scene as portrayed in a film simply because we'd just seen Closer. I know it was out years ago, but neither of us had seen it, and, er, neither are likely to again. It's one of those films that leaves one wondering not only which character one is meant to emphasise with, except by the end of it I was left wondering whether I was supposed to be remotely interested in any of the characters. Tedious and ill-judged. Although possibly thinking it was going to be a romantic comedy may have made me approach it from the wrong angle. Basically all the characters could do with watching Brief Encounter (I know in the play there is no ambiguity as to what occurs, but the Closer clan need a dose of for-the-best).

Which reminds me that Vernon God Little is slightly shorter than I wanted it to be. Not only were there occasional words at the end that were light-casty, so needing a bit more explanation than they provide (instead of wondering if they really just said that), but it managed to finish two stops into the commute on my birthday. And so as there were no cute guys within eyeshot and only intentionally-depressing irrelevances upside-down in other people's papers, I resorted to re-reading the last chapter and finding that yes, it does still say that, and so not quite getting part of it again. Although I think I've just got it now. Possibly this ties in with finally having learnt to call it by the actual title rather than as Vernon Little God.

Or possibly not.

That is all, except for the mass of things I've forgotten.

Anyhoo,

2008-07-16T20:49:00.003Z

Things:
- The RFH stock a Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own tea-towel. The container with similarly branded rolling pins presumably went over the side somewhere in the Western Approaches.
- Beddingfield music leads to interesting scenarios. Specifically the cute guy on the checkout singing along (since when do they have music in Sainsbury's?) to "These words" and so calling out to me "I love you, I love you, I love you", possibly unintentionally.
- Discoballs/mirrorballs/glitterballs rock. There's one that catches the morning sun on the way to the Tube and so bounces joy all over M&S.
- I'm still not having much joy with moving anywhere, hence only getting to... I was going to write 'blog', but it's not just blogging, it's Flickring, GWLing, Facebooking, emailing and general internetting once in an oddly brown moon (ok, I haven't seen the moon for weeks, although it could just be the Daleks hauling things out of place, but the last time I saw it was through the London filter).
- Oh sugarbowls, which is not a hideously twee (incidentally, someone at work addresses the entire company as cherubs when emailing; it has yet to be confirmed if this person is a part of the seraphim) way of swearing. Simply it reflects breakage (not by me) and replacement, which I planned (the latter, not the... you get the idea. And what do we think of this London brought to you by IKEA tube map sponsorship thing?) meticulously, having discovered the only things I liked that vaguely matched were £40 (well, if I will think "Oh, I like that" in Heal's) so instead opting for a mini Le Creuset (or however it's spelt; the big, heavy, orange ones that'll be what the Armageddon-surviving cockroaches shelter in) casserole on the grounds that it is both far cheaper and slightly different (yes, I know probably not that different but John Lewis's - and yes I was having a hideously-consumerist-aspirational-or-perhaps-stolidly-middle-class-perk-me-up day; I may not have anywhere to put it, or me, but I can still recognise a good vase - doesn't really offer much in the way of left-field-ness [or perhaps silly-mid-off-ness]), only to not buy one yet and then discover that she-who-is-worrying-about-money had ordered one from that kindly Mr Lewis with ten minutes of the other one breaking (but then she is the only one who uses it).
- Sundry other things forgotten of late. But it's late (i.e. two hours after I got home) so I must to bed.

Anyhoo,

2008-07-13T09:19:00.002Z

What is the etiquette concerning the repeated bumping into of somebody who is not your flatmate only because they applied an equal opportunities policy, but who you only know through house-hunting? Especially when they mention that their really great home turns out to have an oven that is so keen not waste energy that it uses none, that the drains don't and that they've found more than their first cockroach. It's quite hard not to smile while thinking that getting bumped so that the oft bumped-into could have her menstrual cycle fall in with someone else's perhaps wasn't so terribly bad. In the end I went with "But other than that?"

I'm not sure if I got away with it.

And in other news I really must stop wandering into the only Fopp in the city (I know it's an HMV in indy clothing, but it's still cheaper than HMV [except for The Devil Wears Prada, which is £4 in Fopp, £3 in HMV, and don't ask me why I noticed] and sells books). I'd previously missed Penguin reinventing their wheel (possibly because I don't do RRP), so have come away with a purple, a pink and a blue, but only because I'd read all the oranges I'd heard of*, all for £3 each, which is what charity shops seem to think they ought to charge for any old book these days, and not all that much more than a Ladybird book (universal inflationary indicator in pocket money calculations).

* Largely because my brother has non-unified copies of them, as he does of the purple as I've just discovered. Blast. But then I was carrying at the time a copy of Freakonomics and realised the classic edition won't let me cause consternation on the Tube by accidentally covering the next-line-down "onomics" bit, thereby letting all those to my left read the "freak" and strain to find out what the rest is (yes, madam, it is noticeable, and you could just ask, but then I didn't ask when I saw someone reading a Cryllic book with a title something like "Coda Da Vinci", which is quite hard to read upside-down in strange characters, and also rather disappointing when one eventually cracks the code).

Anyway, back to phoning completely random people with the faint hope that at least one might prove sane (i.e. I've forgotten all the other stuff that might have gone in).

Anyhoo,

2008-07-02T22:51:00.000Z

I've already done the "I'd make a very good pet" bit, haven't I? Still applies as still not solved. Hey ho.

So house or flat or maisonette or apartment or pied-à-terre or mansion hunting has been fun. There are a curiously large number of owners and sharers who seem to think that non-smoking refers to the central heating, and so the smouldering ashtray wrought ingeniously from a Corona bottle is an irrelevance. Another wasn't smoking at the time but simply had scorch marks on the wall round the coin slot for the washing machine, which was shared with the two other flats in the building. And is it a good sign if the flatmate who shows signs of not quite having finished the nervous breakdown explains that the letting agent is really cool because she'll even pay people back for the mousetraps? And then suddenly somewhere fairly reasonable comes along (with a couple of quirks) and there's much bonhomie, then promises I'll hear by so-and-so, and encouraging emails explaining they'll make a decision soon, and then... well, I'm still waiting. So basically, the small, tatty, carcinogenic and infested want me, and the large, decent, carcinogenic-only-from-the-new-carpets and not yet infested don't.

Hence still looking. I think I can probably find a room fairly easily, but it'd be somewhere I hated living, which might not make the whole living thing too great. I need to get on with ringing and emailing, but at the moment it's all a bit why-don't-they-like-me?

Oh and if you've ever had a bad day of habitation-hunting, do not find yourself buying chocolate in Soho simply to convince yourself that all is right with the world (ok, wandering the streets of Soho was to remind me why I'm doing this, the chocolate was because I'd been wandering too many streets that day and the magical power of apples had been overwhelmed). Because breaking into a bar amid the rubble of Berwick Street means you'll be constantly wary of the oddities passing by begging for some while trying to work out what you can give without encouraging further requests yet still leaving a decent amount and since when were they only five blocks wide? At which point some scrawny wastrel with hungry eyes and a piercing that glows against the fake tan like a jewel in an Ethiope's beer will approach and ask if I'm looking for a woman. Turns out that Fruit and Nut may contain nuts and so may hurt quite a lot when traversing the nasal cavity. It also turns out that some solicitors (well, what else does one call her?) take the emission of almonds from the nostrils as a sign that she should ask if I'm looking for a man instead. I'm not sure if the tears were of amusement at the situation (you think I have to pay for sex? Ye gods, I obviously needed the chocolate more than I thought if I look like that) or just of pain from my literal brown-nosing. And yet having reduced me to tears (and giggles) she carries on offering really great prices. Eventually she accepts my 'no thank you' and wanders off to... best not to think about it.

So remember, kids, this is what happens if one shops in Somerfield.

What else am I to mention? Art stuff: Cy Twombly at the Tate has one decent room which is all one work, and the rest of it can be largely skipped, being beigely predictable. I've done the Street and Studio here, haven't I? Did I do the RA's SumEx? *Checks* Oh, apparently I've written about neither. Um, SumEx same as ever, so getting ever less awe-inspiring each year, though still worth going because being an art jumble sale there's always something to be found. S&S is photography so an instant yes. If you have time sit through the club videos at the end; very much an exercise in people-watching and not all of it on screen. But makes for dismal, terrifying and pitiful viewing, and yet there's an 'and yet'.

Hmm, the problem with not blogging is then I find myself unable to remember what happened and when it did (and if I didn't take an EXIF-tagged photograph I really have no idea when it was). Who knew technology displaces human functions? Which reminds me, just finished Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance; good if troublesome and I'm still not sure if the ending I saw coming early on is a good or a bad ending, and I suppose seeking to define it as such is probably comment on the insidious nature of the beast illustrated within it. So now back to the Bond books. Oh, also read The Honeywell File as it was flung at me. An amusing quick read, slightly tedious in parts, and very much of its time, yet possibly still largely applicable.

And yes, I will get round setting all those hidden uploads on Flickr to public (or whatever release suits) at some point, just as soon as I finish naming them all.

Think that's how for now.

Anyhoo,

2008-06-24T16:58:00.002Z

In the argot of the internauts, can I has...?

For more details see the linked Flickr page.

In other news, hopefully unrelated unless I find myself really desperate and with a contract for a house in some Bloomsbury Square before me (Kensington is too far out of the way for me), extrapolating a life from a printout of someone's bank account found in the gutter outside turns out to be quite fun. So far we've figured out that they work for Sainsbury's, bank with Barclays, shop in Sainsbury's, transfer money between their personal and joint Barclays accounts but discover they've moved it the wrong way so send double the amount back and otherwise have a very dull life. We can't work out why they get paid interest in dollars though, when all other numbers are in GBP.

Oh and if any wants a spare sort code, perhaps with an account number attached, along with the name of the account holder then just email.

Back to the other thing, if you know of somewhere or anyone or whatever then email.

Anyhoo,

2008-06-12T21:10:00.000Z

One advantage of staying in a household with a distantly/imminently impending wedding is the ability to be stuck for reading materials in the loo and so chance upon a copy of Martha Stewart Weddings: full of things one would never think of.

Favourite so far is the suggestion to have mini ring doughnuts hooplaed around the spoons served in the coffee. Firstly serving anything with an implement already in it is a little odd - when was the last time a restaurant impaled your knife and fork in the mashed potato like a scale model for some plaza art, or possibly evil Edna meeting the fate of the Wicked Witch of the West? Secondly, what's wrong with the coffee that it needs stirring, or are they presuming that all will be adding sugar or taking it white? Thirdly, the spoons are now irksomely sticky and greasy thereby turning the reception into a greasy spoon affair. Fourthly, there'll be retrieving sunken doughnut chaos within minutes. Fifthly, to slide the ring off the possibly phallic finger of handle in a rather inappropriate or only too appropriate gesture depending on one's default state of mind given the slipping on of a ring earlier (and is using one's hands to remove food from cutlery not just perverse?), or to attempt dental piñata-age as the traditional kebab method meets gravity and a lack of friction all while dripping coffee all over the namechecking napkins? Sixthly, coffee and doughnuts at a wedding - this the Simpson-Wiggum ceremony? Seventhly, ring doughnuts are an abomination in the eyes of the Lord (oh, and me) as the whole point of them is the cunning required to contain the jam (or find it depending on supermarket).

So I'm left wondering how much further through this trove of unknown unknowns I'll have to flick before I find the suggestion that guests should be seated according to the dominant colour of their outfit (hey, it works for DVDs).

No wonder the woman has problems getting her tax returns in on time as she probably spends her entire life sewing pomegranate arils to the edge of a leather picture frame before gluegunning fertilised quail eggs jauntily in the corners.

So in other news I've been flitting back and forth a bit, as Flickr probably attests. This has included finding myself crying in Regent's Park with about three other tearjerked all visible. Helpfully two women with burbling prams of joy decided to treat each maudlinist as a mark and so tack merrily about them. Such rubbing-it-in kindness. More on this story later. If I remember.

According to last.fm Madonna and Muse are joint first in my all-time listening ranking. Turns out that oddly if I find myself mostly using computers without last.fm on, or using one of those quaint hi-fi stereo wireless thingies (complete with audio cassette magnetism-sound conversion facilities), the music listened to through those doesn't get logged. Hence Madonna's sudden surge is purely a response to being becalmed in a sea of guitars for a fortnight, thanks to a borrowed music collection that is in the words of Travis on their nearly-bought first album, so the one before they became popular, tied to the nineties.

Admittedly I may be too as I've just worked out what grates during that 4 minutes of tedium thing; the syllables 'Craig David' would fit all too well in it. Whatever became of... heck, I can even be bothered to think of a disparaging description of him, that's how little I rate him.

Anyway, this slightly odd, disjointed thing is precisely what it appears: a half written post with notes tacked on the end that then were swiftly expanded. Guess who found the paragraph of notes that failed to get expanded to three of prose somewhere deep in his dissertation. I think that's what comes of trying to read it. I haven't read it before*. It was too painful. And a tad too long. I suppose it was about 10,000 over the upper guideline (if I don't call it a limit it wasn't a limit, right?).

* I meant after handing it in, but I really can't remember reading it before the deadline. Possibly this is where I went wrong. Although I did proofread it, just evidently not well enough on an hour-and-a-half of sleep a night for as long as I could then remember, which admittedly may not have been all that long as everything got a bit confusing after a while, including not being sure if I was awake or had just dreamed getting up at four again. Turns out I need sleep; whodathunkit?

Oh, and for future reference, when in a situation where one hopes to impress, in which the tome has been discussed, and having been informed at the end by the impressee that he would like to read a copy sometime, do not reply "Oh God, no, don't do that; it's dire". I like to think his expression showed he was impressed with my honesty and objectivity. I also still wonder what had made the other people in the park cry.

Anyhoo,

PS. There's only one decent dress in the thing and I don't mean the thing I had to get bound at seven in the morning in Hammersmith, although that could probably benefit from an un-meringue or two.

PPS. The SIL has asked my mother along to help choose the dress. Ignoring whatever nefarious power games underlie this, the thought is far, far too amusing, although it would probably be prudent of me not to explain why. And why are prudent and prurient so similar? That prepenultimate sentence gets a little strange when dyslexia strikes.

2008-06-02T18:44:00.000Z

(36+30+28+27+29+29+28+27+27+28+29+27+29+31+30)/15=29

Or in other words, or actually just in words, that is the average age of people I'm friends with on Facebook (technically the average of people who include their full birthdays on FB and covering all birthdays in 2008, so the average admitted age by the end of 2008).

I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing. It means compared to my friends I'm young, but then I'm fairly sure someone once said that key to being youthful is having young friends. And yes this is prompted by the twin occurrences of Mr Fact's birthday being the same as a cousin's (really must buy a card to go with that High School Musical CD I've apparently bought in conjunction with my brother [yes, my family go in for volunteering each other]) and Mr Noname making such a dreadful fuss about being old despite not being all that old (well, by fuss I mean he keeps bringing it up in a protesthing-too-much way).

Although all this comes from the perspective from someone who consistently has to remember which year it is, then which half, and so work out his age from the figures rather than simply knowing. Hence I wasn't being totally disingenuous when Mr Noname posited a couple of ages as mine and I replied "something like that". But then several of the higher numbers above I would put as somewhere below average, and even below me, simply because my conception of those ages does not tally with the people who seemingly are them.

Can you tell all this is being typed waiting for someone to ring back and that I really have very little to say and not much more of an idea how I'm going to say it? Instead all I have is a curious fellow peering out at me from the screen (it's not a disco day).

And for some reason Flickr seems to be half broken - anything that pops-up or drops-down doesn't.

Hmm.

Anyhoo,

2008-05-30T22:40:00.000Z

Oh excellent. A car just went past with bass thumping the dust out of the carpets, causing all fluids to pretend they were in Jurassic Park and the door on the box round the electricity meter to drift open. But best of all going out to shut it again let me see that the same had happened to all the meter panels in the road. Grossly antisocial but somehow amusing.
---
By the way, typing scribble.blogspot when you mean scribblenow.blogspot has confusing consequences.
---
I'm slightly bewildered. Other people seem to like the whole accidentally bereft of hair thing (well, most of them), even without the mitigation story deployed before them. Most odd. But also it's currently at the Grand Old Duke of York stage, so neither the applauded version or the default version presently exists. And I know that for various inadequate reasons I'm defaulting, so this new found praise is newly lost too.
---
I know how to party like it's 1959. Friday night. In London. Alone. Not going out because of the whole alone thing. So in a slightly too cold flat debating whether to bed, to History Boys or to Die Hard 4. I think the last, because I don't want to give up completely, although it's now later than when I first pondered this, the internet being the potentially changing thing it is, and because I've seen The History Boys and yet would get cross if I feel asleep in front of it, whereas yippee-kai-shush won't matter so much. I could always stop it at the drooping stage and watch the rest tomorrow. I've done this before with films and it's quite a good way of making you think about them, possibly by having to remember what you weren't really watching halfway through, rather than after the end.
---
Is it acceptable to make jokes about a friend's volunteering of her whom (er, that should be womb) which means that to minimise the number of pregnancies she ought to have the gay friend's baby using an egg from the friend with cancer again (despite wondering if the chemotherapy has actually made the canceree unable to bear children rather than unable to conceive them (or conceive healthy children) and what immune problems might occur to limit surrogacy - the information comes to me through a tortuous, unintentional and not necessarily sober route)? And there's a small part of me that wonders why if the ever-more-booked has offered her services to this other guy that she hasn't offered them to me. I mean, what's he ever done that I haven't? Apart from earn polite-, and best for my sanity,-not-to-ask amounts through exploitation of his very own Lake Erie of confidence (yes, I did pick the shallow one) and somehow contrive to be in the Pink List? Admittedly the cornucopia probably ruled out any combination with me for fear the hair would have the genetic potential to smother the Earth, thus greatly increasing global warming through insulative means and by albedo (although Mr Pink is of a similar inspired-by-briars phenotype).
---
And yes that was the sound of me not quite being sure what to do with sundry less than optimal situations, which are all largely too lengthy to go into this late, too complicated to explain easily and too unsuitable for public consumption.
---
Oh and I saw the man without a name again, who once more managed to be far less hectoring (that my brain saying The History Boys?) than I sometimes imagine (or possibly remember). There probably ought to be more but at the moment the most prominent thought associated with being rained out of St James's Park was managing to just avoid asking for a hot chocolate to "eat in" through lapsing into incomprehensibility (you can tell I'm tired, it's when all the follies come out). That and saying "Bye darling" in rush-hour Victoria to him just to see his reaction (I was going for Brief Encounter and couldn't think of any way of working a Raleigh or a turbly into the conversation; I also couldn't apparently work out that if "bye" is a contraction that it might be short for something).
---
It's now too late for Die Hard 4 and I'm no less tired so I think I may change my mind.

Night all.

Anyhoo,

2008-05-19T22:32:00.002Z

Put it like this, the lime flavoured vodka I reached swiggingly for a few minutes ago to judge by my reaction to sighting some art head in the corner that was "oh dear God" and further such thoughts on viewing the ethno-mosaic vase with tartan ribbon trim on the other side of the room must have gone to my head.

The reason I reached for the never diminished vodka - I helped both owners move more than once and recognise the unchanging bottles hence they either won't notice the drop in level, will assume it's evaporation or possibly natural atrophy of under-used spirits or I can top it up with water and both never be found out and generously make it taste nicer - was because I got here at ten to nine, moved the car to non-residents parking half-a-borough away at about nine, having spent the usual time getting through the inner front door (Dan & Cue will recognise this door, hunger having lashed it fast to their courgette tinged memories), then wandered back and happened to loiter outside the Beethoven-the-one-from-Clockwork-Orange wipe-clean fluorescent-lit tube station just to, you know, see what the current residents look like. And then between about ten and quarter past eleven I was trying to get in the aforementioned door, was cursing the freeholder replacing the front windows with something that can withstand an AA card (my pockets contained flat keys - useless for original function as well as impromptu ones, house keys - half-ditto, car-keys - too valuable to be risked, a mobile phone - lacking anyone useful to ring, a wallet with not much money in it and nothing suitable for unscrewing the plate round the jammed lock, an A-Z and couple of bits of seaglass. No cuddly toy unfortunately). There was a brief break to bewilder a friend of my brother and resident of the same general area to check if they had functioning spare keys. Predictably the idea has been mooted but remains pending. So instead I revert to an equal mix of trying to break the door down, trying to break the will of the lock down, trying to break through mangled European mobile networks long enough to get my brother's or future sister-in-law's (headline on magazine to my left "82 rings"; that is one heck of a lot of breached promises) phone to actually ring, wondering how easily I can break the meshed glass transom window (if the putty had been on the hall side that would have been my way in half an hour earlier) and breaking down myself.

By some fluke of electrons the SIL's phone rang in thoroughly peculiar way, and an odd sounding voice answered it. It was after about a minute of me explaining too much that I realised that the Penelopes (I can't spell the proper name and the checker thinks I mean "Openness") might not be on GMT let alone BST, and so the incomprehensibility of the voice might not be solely attributable to her Scotland-is-a-different-country (in much the same way as the past is) accent. That'll do their jet-lag good.

Our own private Hermes chose that moment to visit Hades and so I sighed to crossed legs on the floor, waiting for her to ring back when she puts the words I'd been saying into the sentences they were contained in. And then I begin to wonder if she'd just rolled over and gone back to sleep, thereby impaling my brother with an errant elbow, when a text bongs into being. It is magical for using the method contained therein it takes me less than five minutes to get in, which is a personal best for that door.

And so the vodka, and putting the milk in the fridge, and having my father ring while typing the reply (how does one spell "practice" on predictive text because I kept not) thus allowing my phone to effortlessly erase my barbed apology, thence to blogging and staying up too late (but if it's an hour-and-a-half earlier, as it would be if the spare key worked like the other keys, it's not that late).

Anyway, I've sort of lost where this was going, think the vodka's worn off and am not sure whether to attend to hunger, tiredness or coldness first, so better stop.

Yours with steel-scented callouses,

Anyhoo,

2008-05-16T12:00:00.001Z

The News Quiz, 6.30 this evening, Radio 4, or for a week thereafter on the website. It will be quite funny, although less funny than it was because there were some fairly non-BBC words in there along with a smidge of slander and some mass-ew jokes. Housepoints for the person who spots my brother's laugh, assuming both that it makes it past the edit and that the sound engineer hadn't just turned the microphones over us off thanks to the gang from Newcastle behind us (presumably Newcastle, Texas from the amount of a-whoopin' an' a-hollerin' an' a-whistlin' an' gen'ry makin' like a Springer ordi-onse).

From it I learnt things I didn't need to know, nor particularly wish to know, about Tony Blair's cum-face, a novel use for a scatter cushion, that a Toksvig relation had a bloodshot glass eye, that the people running the country didn't quite get round to working out what happens if one stops using protection, and sundry other things including that some comedians have a nervous tic. I also learnt that SDP-socialists (but only because she can't vote for the communists due to there being none left) don't tend to laugh at jokes about Chicester District Council. Nor any other jokes. Oh well. At least I'm not the one who brought her.

Anyway, think that's it. Seeing the radio is fun. So listen. As I probably shan't be doing because I'll be stuck on a dual carriageway somewhere. But that's what podcasts are for.

Anyhoo,

2008-05-13T18:25:00.000Z

Music 1 - The Hallelujah Chorus

Thanks to the over-Facebookage of a friend, I came across an archive of nigh on every version of Hallelujah recorded (except of course the one I was trying to find). And being someone who was looking for something without a name, I ploughed through all of them. Initially I had a column for good and another for ditch/skip. The latter had three entries before I ditched the system itself - Regina Spektor, Gavin Regan and the immortal words "Don't get Bob Dylan", both as a command and a statement. The Goods are Cale, Lang, Wainwright, Buckley, someone called ~~Alain Crane~~ Allison Crowe [I writes real good], although I've also written Shakira next to the name so I'm not sure it's in the right column, and finally the Dresden Dolls (relistening I'm not so sure).

Sundry other comments written live:
- Ha emphasised grates. Just don't do it kids, unless you're doing a proper Hebrew phlegmatic syllable.
- Beirut version disappointing.
- David Bazan sounds like he has to pause to check his fingers are in the right place for each chord. Major tendency to improvise last few hallelujahs. Just not good.
- Susana and the Magic Orchestra = just awful. Stretching a slow song into whale song before attempting to provide air traffic control for bats. Atmosphere nicked from Sigur Ros.
- Noam Pelled = phlegm except on 'hallelujah'.
- U2 cover as ever committing sacrilege. Worth listening to to prove that seeing the world through ever present sunglasses really does make one dimmer. Fantastically awful.
- Tony Lucca = how rude are some people? In-the-face-of-adversity sympathy points should go here.
- Arooj Aftab = just stood out somehow. Could have a higher default volume, regardless grabbed attention.
- John Jerome = Two voices.
- K's Choice = halfway to Evanescence version?
- Damien Rice is a god and my saviour. Not because he's any good, but simply by the use of a segue requiring a different song to be heard before his take on Hallelujah. Hours of Cohen covers tend to get a bit numbing.

Oh joy, thanks to editing (ok, resurrecting) this much later than it was written means I get the joy of trying assess music (via sole remaining Europarl headphone) against the background of my neighbour's son singing the falsetto parts of The Darkness (I suspect the effect is worsened by their new windows bouncing the music in my direction rather than at the ground as before). Wunderbar. I would retaliate and wang Madonna's latest offering on full blast, but that would be cruel, inhumane, tasteless, damaging to my little computer speakers (never having rigged up the connection with the proper radio) and rather boring for me. Now he's playing something I don't recognise, but sounds a bit like Shania Twain. And singing badly along, the four letter word that is three black pegs in response to Twain. Whistling along to Cheer Up Sleepy Jean is making me reconsider Madonnaing his arse, except damn the man just skipped to The Killers back when they were good. And he does have girlfriends who could pass for boyfriends.

Anyway, moving on, or reverting, or whatevering. Being me and so waiting to gain a perusal only copy of Madonna and the Chocolate Factory until after it was realised (how does the Ogre Queer do it?) I've only just heard Hard Candy. Firstly does the title mean the Madge who wasn't in Neighbours (where does NDN get his music? We don't even have a Morrisons near here. But seemingly that was one dance track too far as he's stopped now) has abandoned all pretence of being an English which is two parts Joan Collins to one Dick Van Dyke? And secondly, will the next album be called Salt-Water Taffy And Other Soft American Confectionery?

So on with the comments as listened.
Hard Candy - Her sugar is raw apparently, which leads me to the inevitable suggestion that she try E45. Or using something less splinter prone than Brighton Rock to start with. Unless there's some Candy=Candida suggestion I've overlooked.

4 Minutes - of not quite a countdown, because they had four minutes at the start but they've wasted most of that telling us they've only got four minutes. Does this know mean Madonna, with Messrs Timberlake and Timberland (or should that be Madonna and the Lumberjacks?), is shortly to go the way of the So Solid Crew albeit over a longer time-frame? This should be fun.

Bizarrely (bugger, NDN is back with the Arctic Monkeys) this manages to link in with an odd email I had until the title "fodder for jokes/reason for concern". If that's not a description of most emails sent to the blog email address, well this sentence is going to be left without a cliché. Basically someone claiming to be a writer for Scientific American in much the same way as I am a freelancer for Google (well, they own Blogger don't they, and I'm published by Blogger, so...) wants me to write about the Large Hadron Collider (or possibly Lausanne Hockey Club; he doesn't specify what LHC stands for). He has a theory encapsulated in a PDF I didn't open which does something with bugbears, a largely harmless species with grossly overdeveloped lungs that allow them to suck bedbugs from the beds they lie in.

Er basically, he thinks I should be anti the LHC because it might bring about the end of the world. He also seems to think that bewildering blog posts about homosexuality causing the end of the world (or not depending if the LHC pips the fire, brimstone and marabou thing [if only country music were predicted to cause the end of the world - we'd be consumed by fire and rhinestone]) are likely to encourage me. So there's either a rabid spammer or someone sensible grossly misjudging his audience trying to get bloggers to protest in order to stop the Large Hadron Collider (BTW, typos in that name rock).

Unfortunately I what little I remember from reading about such things is that there's nothing much stopping an all consuming black hole from popping into existence somewhere near Chipping Sodbury anyway, that the chance of making a little Big Bang manage to destroy the Earth is fairly low and even if that were to happen, what would we know about it? The only problem would be if it were a really slow working black hole, that gradually eroded the world, allowing people beyond its influence to know it was there but do nothing about it (but I'm not sure such things exist). A terminal world probably wouldn't be much fun. Unless one happens to time it right to see Mr Timberlake's clothes go for a Burton (do you think that's where he gets the cardigans?), but not yet his body, although I don't think it works like that, and isn't there something about the light not escaping, so the Timberlandscape would never be seen. Unlike in the entrails heavy video for 4 Minutes, which features MTV friendly flaying.

So I think I'm on the side of would it matter if the world, with us on it, vanished? Possibly not quite what this guy was looking for. Should you wish to join the debate find your way to the sciam blogs site and search for "has an udd in" minus some of the spaces. As someone else commented on about the only Google for the guy "The sound you just heard was the joke, on a geosynchronous orbit, passing over that person."

So having failed to devote hours to deciphering what he's on about, I can only concluded that trying to convince people of anything by flinging names of what could be projects, theories or people into a context-less welter of words is only going to get one as far as trying. An easily accessed précis, synopsis or "previously in the war against experimentation" post might increase his chances of getting anyone to listen somewhat. PDFs are bad, unsolicited emailed links to unsized purportedly PDF files unthinkable.

In NDN-news, oh God, Robbie Williams. Better possibly than hearing Rowan Williams but not by much. And if only the NDN would sing in time and not form the world's flattest chorus-line on his own two thirds of the way into the next line. Er... is that... er... Belinda Carlisle? Has this guy hacked my networked folder of dodgy music? He does know other people must be able to hear this, right? Now it's the Jackson Five. I would query if he was born on the Sabbath day, but he's just gone onto some Westlife ballad; he has no shame.

Back to the good, or not, music. Give it 2 me not only loses points for needless txtspk but leaves one wondering whose coffee was being stirred, whether the person stirring it was going to drink it or seeing if it goes off-white like Marmite (Johnny Ball's daughter said it happens so it must be true), whether Madonna has people to stir these things for her or whether she was stirring as part of her handmaiden duties required to get any producers with whatever they're calling street-cred these days to work with her. Maybe it's like giving triangle duty to the cackhanded kid, although whether that's Oh-Lordy-Trouble-So-High* or Rococo, or even Our Lady of Persistence herself, on the spoon and chipped mug, is hard to ascertain, as is whether it's being played clockwise, perpendicular to the handle or pentanglelly. The pondering of which is all rather more interesting than whatever it was that prompted such thoughts.

* Other acceptable [mis]hearings are:
- Oh Lordy, troublesome times
- Oh Lordy, trouble sometimes
- Oh Lordy, treble so high
- Oh Lordy, bubblegum trials
- Ol' Lawn Day, trombonist cries
- Our Lady Troublesome High (an specialist academy for singers who can't really but at least that stops the Alien-like disembowelling of films from the inside).

Next up on the half-illegible notes is Heartbeat, with the quote "See my woody get down, get up, get down"; sometimes one fervently hopes that one misheard as the alternative is trying to backformate a plausible derivation for the phrase. I'll merrily mull over the beveration prowess of the clan McDonnagh, but this I don't really want to understand.

Oh and it sounds like a mobile is sitting on top of the speaker, chittering away.

Soon afterwards comes She's Not Me with the immortal line "She started dressing like me and talking like me it freaked me out". Because as we all know Madonna is steadfast, as immutable as her forehead, and so forth. It gets better with "She started dying her hair and wearing the same perfume as me, She started reading my books and stealing my looks and lingerie." Yep, she, meaning Madonna rather than this cat's mother character, tried to rhyme me with lingerie. Except she doesn't. It's a weird hybrid vowel that switches from -ee to -ay as it goes along. It's almost as if she wrote the lyrics, then had someone correct her pronunciation, so used the new-to-her version in the old lines, thereby inflicting a jackknifing rhyme all who make the mistake of listening to the words. If this troubles you simply head-dub ling-ger-ree into the gap; then all you'll have to worry about is whether lingery is one's ability to loiter or lingerie that doesn't come off very quickly, due either to too many hooks and triangle-player fumblings or the froideur born of a ill-judged reveal.

I can't help feeling that the hand-claps come straight from a Harvester ad.

Incredible - "It thrilled me" is how I feel about it; not the words but intonation used on them. And towards the end it just becomes "celebrate the good times, come one" but clunkier and with annoying oohs (hmm, are my frequent oohs equally as annoying?). Although having checked, I suspect it'll just be me thinking that.

Spanish Lesson - Would you trust this woman to teach you a new language?

Voices, from the nineties, at least in the beginning. And then the tune gets going and you're left trying to remember the original words. Or to put it in as per the song: Distant echoes|from another tune|start to creep|in your brain.

And that appears to be it. If a song didn't get mentioned above then I probably couldn't find anything to say about it. One begins to suspect that Ms Andchild has been taking listens from, er, good typo, that should be taking lessons from Paris Hilton. How else does one explain the utter lacklustrery?

Think that's enough musicery for now. Except for this just to balance things out a bit.

Anyhoo,

PS. Debbie Harry raps better.

PPS. Quite liking Yoav at mo.

2008-04-30T18:33:00.002Z

I try to avoid posting evidence of most of the stuff I'm really bad at. Don't you?

Ouch. By which I mean no. Possibly because I tend to think I'm really bad at everything, so editing to my standards would leave nothing (which is not acceptable either). I don't think he was intending it to be cruel (going by his blog, which admittedly is a tad self-selected, he does scathing frequently but very rarely cruelty), but that's simply how I initially interpreted it. And all because I wanted to play snap with some graffiti.

I'm not sure how one goes about presenting the best possible image. Or rather I think I know, but rarely follow my own guidelines, thereby allowing others to latch onto the bits that wouldn't have made it through the filter and proclaim them good, thus confusing me greatly. The popular stuff is not what I would choose. Which either means I'm an idiot or everyone else is, neither conclusion being one I want to believe in.

So while I'm pondering that I'd better stop as I have little else to tell (read: an awful lot, just much of it benthic to the high tide mark of these new-found standards) except that I'm trying to work out if I've just been ceded veto rights on who gets to be an usher (not that I known what they do, other than be told that it should be perfectly obvious the questioned is neither, although I've no idea what I'm meant to be doing either). I'm off to find a ping-pong ball and a vat of Indian ink.

La vie est bewildering.

Anyhoo,

2008-04-02T17:45:00.003Z

You know, I think I've found the flaw in Last.fm; I know it's there. Choosing music while aware that it may be used against me is odd. It doesn't help that very early on I left the entire Radiohead back-catalogue on shuffle while I wasn't around and so have been anti-Radioheading ever since. Hence trying to listen to music I don't normally listen to and worryingly slightly that it might claim that my top three artists are Abba, the Pet Shop Boys and Madonna (not because it's bad music, although some is played because it's so Camembert, but simply because it's so much of a cliché, and I like my clichés deliberate). So last week's result is headed by a band whose CD I lost for years, hence very rarely listen to.

[position|(previous)|name|plays]
1 Cast 13
1 (9) Rootjoose 13
3 The Hoosiers 12
3 (3) Rufus Wainwright 12
5 British Sea Power 11
5 Savage Garden 11
5 Hard-Fi 11
8 Röyksopp 10
9 Supergrass 8
10 Counting Crows 7

This completely misses the Daft Punk fest that was shortly topped of with Moloko. So now this week's stats are going to look all... unguitarry.

Last.fm also falls down on recording the number of tracks played, without indicating total duration, so 'an album' can create very different results. Hence the universal popularity of Moby.

But then my listening methods probably aren't typical for Last.fm. I have albums and a misc folder, the latter with whatever isn't any other folder (usually). So one-hit-wonders sit in misc, and the decent stuff gets played album by album, rather than skipping to the singles. So the recurring tracks tend to be OHWs or other oddities (having the same name for different tracks helps - see Roy Budd - Dialogue), rather than my favouritestever song. It doesn't help I'm too lazy to set up a highlights playlist and too puritan to skip through and album for the good bits (with the exception of the best of Morcheeba which I may as well delete; hitting 6 frequently is not a good sign).

Better be it for now. One day one of these posts won't be about last.fm.

Anyhoo,

2008-04-01T00:07:00.004Z

Edit: Ok, bored now. The following is not true. But you'd probably have assumed that from the outset with any post today, right?

I'm beginning to wonder what I've let myself in for. I've had someone lurking around making subtle inquiries. Asked if me I might be, er, you know, interested in alternative experiences with perhaps someone like a Brito-Flemish firm by the name of Scallop (can you tell who it is yet?). Sent me a form to fill in, purely on a non-committal basis. Replied that they're very interested, when can I come in for 'chat' and when would I be free generally? A few rounds of "we're not saying this but" later and it seems they want me. Only after a brief introductory period they don't want me here but somewhere over there. Way over there. Ok, so there and a few other places. Apparently they need someone to make sure assorted other-enders get the whole Beyond Petroleum (er, sorry wrong comp) thing and they think I'm ideal for the corporate navel-gazing involved to check this. So how's that for a coinkydink? Given that the Redacted (um, it doesn't count as insulting if it's the result of dyslexia [edit: er, that unpicked enough, or do you need more?]) is already shellacked in situ.

Except I'm not sure what to do. I tend to be a bit illegal round there. And they tend to be a bit shooty (when did I turn into Penelope Wilton?). And I know I found GA's grandmother's tales over gravlax of picking bullets from the bookshelves in most southern Mediterranean cities to be amusing, but I'm not sure I could stand knowingly endangering books. I'm fully aware I ticked the galaxy-far-far-away box, but I was rather expecting the suggested outcome to be in the same universe. One that doesn't have men hopping with vengeful fury as they wave an Adisdas flip-flop in the air whenever something displeases them (the arrogance of the American state of Denmark, someone mentioning Agent Smith's previous roles, a ill-considered t-shirt proclaiming "Yo, get with the Enlightenment", a man wearing a colour that doesn't look like mouldy plaster, that type of thing).

Yes, I am basing this on whatever one sees in the news, but whenever a place is not in the news one sort of assumes that the inhabitants must be sane after all, only for them to spring up in livid protests with banners demanding The Patsy Stone Will Be Madings For To Glorious Burn In Hull Verily (what does Mr Pbuh say about the use of Babelfish and that of copy editors or lack thereof? How much of that was machine translation and how much local goldplating by people keen to show off the words they saw once in The Gallant Motorist's Guide the Punjab?), except for when they're happy, when they declare war on God and bounce round cloudseeding ineffectually from the back of indestructible Toyotas. Either that or they think they can hit an American plane. Have they any idea how dangerous that is? Have they never heard of seatbelts?

Er, maybe more research is needed. So what do you say? Should I stay or should I go the way of the shellfish?

Answers on a postcard, inside an envelope lest the postcard be damned for the thoughts of those seeing it, to... the usual place.

Anyhoo,

PS. In next week's show we'll be examining the inherent confirmation of prejudices demonstrated by a black man touring America to beg for change.

PPS. In a fortnight: Is Kylie overrated?

Well, that's everyone annoyed now.

PPPS. I've just worked out how to solve the tendency for riots to spontaneously combust across a great swathe of the world: shoe laces.

2008-03-25T18:48:00.001Z

Unexploited web-address typo of the week: laft.fm, a site to record trends in listening to Radio 4 comedies. Number one this week: The Now Show. Number two despite not currently being on: The News Quiz. Joint number three: Quote Unquote and that lawns-grow-quicker gardening quiz.

But instead of exploring the curiosities of the Radio 4 schedule (hmm, how about a live version of the Moral Maze mixed with Michael Buerk's last job, 999 [911 for the US franchise, 112 when it has French subtitles]? This week, a pregnant illegal immigrant has fallen in a flooded abandoned quarry and is currently unconscious floating face down following a series of unfortunate incidents worthy of Casualty. How long do you think aid should be refused? Should she rescued but not receive medical treatment? Should Radio 4 be airing programmes created with 5-Live embryos? What is the price of fish?) I have few tips gleaned from the great river of life (don't ask what percentage of water is post-treatment).

When dragooned into swimming and so wearing swimming trunks under jeans when walking to the pool do try to think about the return journey in advance.

Commando.

In the snow.

Way to go.

I'd put pants in the bag and then changed bags because I didn't need to take all that stuff.

And swimming while watching snow flurry round the chimneys and spires of London at the end of the pool is slightly strange (but vaguely reminiscent of a indoor pool which grew dimmer whenever a ferry went past).

When coerced into playing Cluedo for the first time do try to remember where bits of information came from and so not waste a go by managing to get one's brother to show one the hall card again when trying to work out if he had Professor Plum.

When volunteered into playing Cluedo for the first time do try to remember not to ask after one's go, in the library with the revolver and suitable suspect, what one should do if one thinks one knows the answer as this may encourage one's charming brother to promptly call for Mrs White, one's character, in some inconvenient room. Still won.

Hang on, does one have to work back to the scene of the crime or can one just call it? Oh well, bit moot by now.

When pressganged into a slightly awkward conversation with one's brother do try to make sure that he's not about ask one to be his best man rather than any of the other do-we-have-to topics that nearly come tumbling out instead.

When doing 366* do try to consider future conversations which may result from it, especially if one has forgotten that both one's brother and the co both know about the account and the aforementioned woman actually Flickrs (not in the shonky Torchwood effect way) and thus might be likely to notice random shots of entire thighs and might wish to talk about it, even if it's only the title of the Rushdie book. And I still don't know if they know about this and if so if they've read it.

* I was 'encouraged' into doing that too.

Oh and Em (not the Em with the Ess) I didn't change the blue-eyed comment; parents are forgetful things, as possibly are you. And as are mine. Bloody pointless, long, forgetting that I pay to listen to it voicemail messages listing all the things in the freezer, their various states of decomposition and resulting consistency and texture. "Freezer bust" would have done it. It's not like I needed to know instantly or could do anything about it.

Back to the Smarties thing, my brother's possibly related comment (not directly related because he can't remember, or claims not to), albeit spoken as I spiral-peeled a clingily reluctant mandarin, that "that is so [Any]", followed by explaining that I "choose something difficult to do and do it" as well as "not just doing something but doing it in a way that satisfies on several other levels" (not the most accurate of quotes possibly, but gisty; taking notes while my brother speaks would odd, which is why I did it in a later conversation).

I wasn't sure whether I needed to point out that his obsessive removal of every bit of pith was so Bro.

Wow. I think we've just about managed to get through a day without any snow or hail. Bizarre.

And speaking of notes of fraternal wisdom, writen completely sans context on one page is the immortal line: "Always resort to the truth if you get stuck."

Quite.

Anyhoo,

2008-03-20T19:35:00.001Z

Quirks of EU enlargement number 27: the girl in Waitrose has to read the coins to find out what they are.

Which is roughly related to discussions on the subject of Smarties. Having noted packs proclaiming the return of blue Smarties (an aberration originally, which then they corrected because everyone thought they caused cancer, and now strangely the Smurf Smarties are back) I found myself not only able to remember all the old colours, but their groupings by order of eating. Annoyingly I can't remember the exact order of consumption nor what each one represented.

The original order runs dark brown, light brown (although they're equal), then mauve, green and pink (the green used to vary in colour so if it was a good green it'd go after the pink, but a washed out one goes before), then yellow, orange, and finally red, although at one point I reversed this because I always had yellow things and my brother red, and then they started making the orange ones intentionally taste of orange, rather than doing so faintly/psychosomatically (I still maintain they did a bit), which confused everything.

But the aspect that's crying out to be remembered is what they all were. Each colour meant some abstract idea which would be conferred on the person eating it. But I can only remember one of them was courage. I think it was orange, although I remember trying to argue that yellow was courage, something my brother overruled (I'm glad he had a greater irony-meter than I did, or possibly had seen the right Back to the Future film [which probably would have come out after this symbolism scheme was concocted. Oh well. He knew what the American yellow meant]). Red might have been wisdom. One of the others was speed. I have a hunch we may have been drawing inspiration from my brother's comics.

One aspect of eating Smarties like this was that we could never deny it; we always used to get caught red-handed, because we ate the reds last so the colour had most chance to run (and showed more than orange or yellow).

And do you know what else I've remembered? Raisins in boxes. And my mother refilling them (and occasionally getting cross because I'd damaged the box or lost it) with raisins that were drier and didn't taste as nice.

Next I'll be remembering the sting of hail on exposed knees (bizarrely I have no memory of wearing school uniform shorts in winter to the horror of my mother's class [she taught at a nearby school so I'd go over and creep into her classroom to sit in a corner until their home-time. Apparently my bright red legs tended to attract attention], but I also have no memory of being one of the two boys to do this beyond the first year of first school the other being Thingy Dobury-Watsit from the nice-but-bright family).

Other memories of the period were the times-tables tapes, which were a whole lot less fun than the Watergate Tapes or the one with Granny's Garden on it (red broomstick or green broomstick? And that sodding bun-eating dragon). What others were there? Carousel (argh, not that pink-and-yellow music), Frogger (so much fun), Spyhunter (do-do, do-do, do-do, dilla-lal... we-wow! For hours. And much of the time I was watching my brother play), Aviator (fly through the mountains! The joys of wireframe) and the one my mother wrote in BASIC which turned the BBC into a keyboard (and not the red-buttoned qwerty type). Oh, what's the one with the... thing and the thing and the snow? 2d, one of the levels had skiing.

And what's it say about us that the number of tapes for the computer we had is probably the same as the number of audio tapes we owned (and guess who was never brave enough to put a data cassette into an audio player, having been told it makes the player blow up. I'm not sure the much later ban on me touching the CD player has been lifted yet [oh the joy of putting it on 'shuffle all', which used to leave thirty seconds of clunking and whirring as it skipped between tracks on different CDs]).

There were two yellow Classics for Children tapes, one with Peter and the Wolf on, and I can't remember what was on which tape. Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra was on one, but I the name stands out more the music, and Carnival of the Animals was also around somewhere. The Nutcracker might have been the fourth thing. But I always thought the duck was stupid. We also had a best of the sixties tape which was rarely played and something by the Beatles that had Yellow Submarine, Hard Day's Night and whichever one features the line "Lady Madonna, children at your feet, wonder how you manage to make ends meet" on, so I'm guessing a best-of. And then my brother had Pet Shop Boys tapes (he still had them when I tried playing them somewhere on the M25 to discover the intervening years and fluctuating humidity had remixed them), but they weren't allowed to be played in the car. Actually the very few tapes around probably reflect how often they got played; only ever in the car and only then on long journeys. And this is before visiting people hundreds of miles away could be done in a day. So basically we had music about as often as we had white bread, so only in school holidays (how my mother convinced us that white bread was a treat and therefore we were to demand nothing more exotic I have no idea. I think it'd be best just to stick with "well played").

And suddenly the experience of what happens when one eats a whole pack of Refreshers while bored in the back seat of a car in a traffic jam somewhere on the Ringwood Road returns. But I can't remember which car it was. It was red, but that doesn't narrow it down (ok, it does, because unlike Smarties my parents' cars have been since me yellow-I-don't-remember, yellow-I-do-that-was-actually-more-a-mustard, red-now-mine-open-door-wind-down-window-close-door-foot-on-wheel-to-do-Dukes-of-Hazzard, red-tank-with-optional-grey-trim-deployed-Hansel-and-Gretel-ly-on-concrete-bit-of-M3, green-even-worse-tank-that-ran-aground-often, too-pink-to-be-red-fun-to-drive-convertible and green-that-actually-moves-and-is-smaller-than-I-think-it-is. The brands involved in alphabetic order are Ford, Renault, Skoda, Subaru, Vauxhall and VW; I'll leave it up to you to work out which one was leprous). Could be the car I'm still driving (the one that was on the front page of the Telegraph thanks to some hippy roadhogs) as I don't remember anything falling off the car when I plunged out towards the lawnmower shop so it can't have been the other red (in the older car/my car one at least had to unscrew the knobs for the locks before they'd come off in your hand). My mother was cross, mostly because we'd just lost three places in the queue.

My car is also the one my mother drove into both banks of a lane behind the So-and-so's, because it was the dead end serving the first school and people had jammed themselves in the wider bit normally used for turning. Suddenly she didn't want nine-eights-are playing any more. We went home with soil on both ends and an intact fern sitting on the flared bit beneath the front bumper, where the trim's been hanging down ever since.

Which roughly brings me to the point. I have a car once more. Woohoo! And it has all the glass it ought to have. Woohoohoo! And I thought asking if the replacement replacement screen had been tested might be thought tactless so didn't ask. Noohoo? But they put my rear windscreen wiper back on after I'd paid and they hadn't been paid to do it, so Woohoo once more (it'd been sitting in the passenger footwell). Now all I need to do is work out if trying to take the traces of Duck tape glue off the paint will do more harm than good. And wait to reclaim my space. And sweep up the remains of broken glass I'd left until it became apparent that the car wasn't about to get scrapped (I've yet to work out how much is too much to spend. The Autoglass quote came very near, hence going local).

And now I'm worried something's going to happen to my nice car because it's parked where the neighbours complain (is the forty-five downhill into a sharp blind bend ending in a junction in a very residential 30-limit the dangerous bit or is it me parking legally on a straight thus encouraging the tobogganists to do the same on the wrong side of the road [actually three feet further over in most cases] the dangerous part?).

I think I might just go and check on it.

Anyhoo,

2008-03-19T17:36:00.001Z

Grr. For those who haven't been playing attention (ok, this a copy-and-paste from email and I can't be bothered to edit thoroughly for the blog audience or to take into account previous posts. Anyway, playing attention isn't something some of you do) ages ago a recycling bin went through the back windscreen of my car. Finding a replacement that didn't cost more than the car took a while. Eventually found a local place willing to do it moderately cheaply (in plain not tinted glass, but by this stage and age of car it doesn't matter). Having fitted it I foolishly drove it home in a wet rush hour - lots of clutch control - which meant I got to use the heated rearscreen (it had largely burnt out on the old one). And so I discovered one of the bars on a brand new screen didn't work. Not best pleased.

Rang the glaziers the next day, who said they'd have it back in for testing and if it was faulty they'd claim a new one under the manufacturer's warranty. Got told the testing only took 2-3 minutes, but once they'd found the fault they'd take the glass out ready to drop the new one straight in. So it went in on Friday, so it could be tested and reordered on the Saturday. Then on Monday they rang to say they couldn't start it (someone else took the call and got the place to jump start it - if I'd spoken to them I could have found out which of the many not starting noises it was making and so what was wrong [corrective action by decreasing initial noise: 1. Use the choke, Luke. 2. Wipe distributor contacts. 3. Charge battery/jump start. 4. Wiggle starter motor wires and bang on side for good measure. 5. Flick key back and forth a few times). So I thought we'd be rung when the new one had gone in. They rang yesterday to say they couldn't test it as it hadn't been cold enough overnight for condensation to form.

Big pause while I realised that not only was the new one not about to go in, but it hadn't even been ordered yet, because the fault hadn't been confirmed. Bigger pause while I worked out that the 2-3 minutes testing consists of waiting for nature to provide the condensation. I'd assumed when he said he needed to check the circuits that he had some gadget for measuring magnetic induction (because you can't do it by
drawing current or applying your own as it's wired in parallel so would provide a constant positive result unless one put the probe right on the break). So when he said quick, I hadn't realised it was tied to the diurnal cycle and then only if weather permits. His testing consists of seeing if it works, but he didn't apparently think of
putting a mug of coffee in the boot with damp paper or a towel on the outside or even just putting the whole kettle in the boot. Not best pleased once more.

Cue appearing there at lunch time armed with a plant-mister and kitchen towel. A couple of minute's work and we found it was the seventh bar down that was dud. So now all they need to do is ring the suppliers, argue their way through the warranty claims part, get a new one sent out, exchange it for the faulty one, replace it, then ring me and tell me to come and collect my car, all hopefully before the weekend, which he'd forgotten was Easter, with Bank Holidays and closed for the duration-ness.

So it's just as well the car-based plan for the weekend and assorted other plans fell through anyway. Having a car is far more useful than I think it is when I'm feeling guilty for not using it. But it, or rather things associated with it, can be quite frustrating at times.

And in other news my mother wishes to know why the postcard she sent me while on holiday (thanks for yours, Ry) has a postmark of four days ago (and another of five days ago, and a third, illegibly smudged, which might have come from a neighbouring letter), despite her being in this country for the past few weeks. It seems to have spent forty days wandering the wilderness of the Sinai desert.

Anyhoo,

2008-03-14T19:32:00.002Z

Golly isn't 30 fast?

Well, it is when second's a novelty. So I have a car once again. I just made the mistake of picking it up when the garage closed, so had the joy of trying to find the least congested route back. Joining a dual carriageway at a rate of one cat's eye every other minute is not the most enjoyable way to pass time, although I did get to perfect my act-as-though-they-were-letting-me-in technique (there's something to be said for driving a car far cheaper to repair the other party's). Admittedly the traffic porridge in the rain did mean I got to test the demister on my new rearscreen. And so find one bar in the middle doesn't work while still on the same road as the garage, but be too penned in by others to be able to turn back and know they were closing as I left.

So I have a car again. But have to take it back to that garage for them to test and confirm that brand new and pristine wasn't and so claim a new one under the manufacturer's warranty (quite glad I didn't have to do my repair, replace or refund ultimatum. And when did the DTI disappear to be replaced by the Bureau for Error [at least, that's what I assume BERR means]?). So basically once more I don't have a car. Just when I'd got excited about having a usable one again.

Hey, and I believe the usual accompaniment is ho.

Anyhoo,

2008-03-09T18:52:00.002Z

This week I learnt that Last.fm is fragile. And that doing a little checking before ranting might be a good idea. But I still say showing last activity times to the nearest minute is absurd when preceded by hours and days.

But instead of attempting to resurrect that post in the light of new found knowledge (oh, the live-stream bit can be masked) I'll simply skip to something less arduous. Just to counter the young-with-it-ness of Last.fm (who kid I? I'm longtailling it) I have to admit to recently managing to find absolutely nothing attractive or wearable in H&M. I know they're really into the 80s-retro thing at the moment, but somehow they've turned into M&S during the infamous grey year. The only colours in the place that don't look like they've been plucked from a lahar are purple and lime green. Considering I used to own a polo shirt which featured both colours heavily back when they were last fashionable I won't be repeating that mistake. Having wandered round I can only protest that the eighties weren't that bad. The only thing which vaguely tempted me (other than a £2.99 t-shirt, but they had no whites left and I have all the other wearable colours) was a red-based checked shirt, which I didn't buy because not only is it channelling Brokeback Mountain somewhat belatedly, but largely because I used to have a shirt in the same check when I was three. And I've never been convinced by buttoned-in-place permanently rolled-up sleeves. If I wanted to wear inflatable armbands to emphasise the skinniness or my arms I would (hmm, maybe the world's actually my very own Ashes-to-Ashes imagined reality, hence a shop full of ill-disguised childhood memories. Swimming lessons obviously come quite near Swedish clothing chain in my brain's index).

So having been exposed to the disturbing thought that I may be too old for the shop where the clothing actually fits me (it could just be they skimp on material), I then ran away down the road to the haven of the sensible. It would appear that my Tiffany's - the place where nothing bad could ever happen - is John Lewis, where the only flaws are the bewildering appearance of a Waitrose where no Waitrose has been before and that the Cavendish Square stairs have three floors of female loos to one male. Oh, and a dismal male clothing section, but one goes there for cards and curtains not cardigans.

Other Londonings have included the Duchamp, Man Ray and Picaba thing at Tate Modern and the Tate Britain's Peter Doig (however that's pronounced; one can get a gorgeous smile at the helpdesk if one unintentionally happens to call him Peter Doigt while asking the way). Both good. Watch the video outside the Doig; it helps and explains why they all felt so photographic. In lieu of the heaving From Russia I did a quick flit round the miscellany of the RA's free rooms (same name as the V&A courtyard; can't spell it) which currently includes the works of an architect called Shaw, who seems to have made a certain county what it is today. The Sluggard's still best thing in there.

And then south to meet friends under a tented grill on Lilac Hill. I supposed putting a patio heater under the plastic-and-canvas-walled awning is probably less wasteful than having one exposed on a patio, but I can't help thinking that there must be a more effective way of doing things (although possibly that might entail planning permission). So if you see my ears and neck peeling you know why. Oh and do try to make sure you aren't going to end up splitting the bill if one of the party both earns an obscene about and if feeling miserable about everything (there's the sister who came off the pill with woefully predictable results which entail a feckless fellow who evidently isn't fuckless, the grandmother - the one who I helped smuggle out of a home - back in the home, but with the carer she needed out of the home [don't ask; this is more unfathomable than someone not figuring out that copulation might lead to procreation], no doubt a few other family things she declined to discuss and work wanting their money's worth). You know that wine rule of thumb about never-full glasses, the one that thinks about half or maybe two-thirds on a really bad day is about right? The friend not only managed to serve herself and only herself with the house white (there's being morose and there's being antisocial), but was only saved from puddling and the resultant quaffing by the meniscus. Which then launched a reservoir race among the rest of the table, with me being far too good-natured (or possibly just well-brought-up) to either join in or swig straight from the bottle.

So know-no-bounds conversation ensued, which probably makes it just as well the small boy who'd taken intent interest in one of our party was trapped inside the windows of the restaurant and had to satisfy himself with peekaboo round a spindly mullion. And then after much waiting to pay the bill (why do I never dare to follow through with my inevitable suggestion that if you make it to the exit without someone appearing then they obviously aren't that keen on collecting the money and so the meal's on the house?) we adjourned via an off-licence (with much opprobrium deluged upon me for suggesting I'd just eke something out, which was thought to be not in keeping with the spirit of a Saturday night [well, if you lot hadn't just bankrupted me with your multitude of drinks and nigh-on most expensive thing on the menu meals. And yes, I had already worked out how much the discrepancy was before we'd left the restaurant]) back to the friend's. Whereupon we argued over music, mocked the friend for still using both Internet Explorer and Hotmail, then I broke ranks and flat rules because I was trying not scream at her over her stupidity - just because you've already had cancer is not a valid reason to take up smoking; chemotherapy does not inoculate - and she later retaliated by proclaiming, just after I'd described the blue on the end of a row of houses in a shot on her wall as duck-egg, "God, you must be gay". Knowing words, knowing the name for things, is not really an indicator of homosexuality. What should I have said instead? That it was a dense eau-de-nil (which somehow in my mind is much paler and much bluer than Wikitionary claims it to be. I always thought it was a slightly light inky ecru [another YMBG word? Who cares; it's good for Scrabble]).

And speaking of YMBGs, a funny thing happened on the way back from the forum. I'd just got off the train at the frankly unimaginative place, when slowed by the sheep (the bleats were very public school) gathering by gate, I noticed a couple behind the carriage window opposite clearly attempting to discover if dental enamel can spark fire as well as flints. Then I thought that for an emo he's quite cute, and so is, er, he. It's a sight that's fairly rare beyond sticky corners of darkened rooms in London, let alone in the valley of the thoroughly blinkered. PDAs if they happen at all here tend to be among the artfully scruffy and beBarboured to the clack of great-aunt pearls and gurgles from off-road pushchairs. And even those draw stern and scornful looks from those who know where they can still get twinsets.

In this town the nearest one normally gets to any such thing is the laying on of hands by a certain shop proprietor and knowing eye contact from the only man in the High Street wearing a hat along with mustard cords and matching scarf (there was apparently a gay bar marooned by an inner ring round in the nearest bigger settlement, but the brewery decided line-dancing was a bigger market). The joys of being a small-town boy. How's it go? Run away, run away, run away?

I am of course neglecting to mention to the rather frumpy girls clearing enjoying the entertainment on the other side of the table. No idea if they fit the description of fag hags (I thought they all either had to look like someone's mother or a drag queen, or for some unfortunate children, both. I'm also suddenly wondering if the quaffing friend above is one. In fairness most of her coterie were friends before the gayness struck, and she does have straight male friends (however odd) and flatmate, who wasn't quite sure if I was joking when it was pointed out that unlike other combinations within the party we'd never been together and I added the single word 'yet'; granted this was in the same conversation as pondering whether incest is still incest if no inbreeding can ensue, so it might not have been wholly serious) or if they were the respective girlfriends daring their drunk boyfriends to break all taboos and do the most outrageous thing conceivable (here it's not such much the love that dare not speak its name but the affliction that dare not). Obviously I'm assuming they were an irrelevance rather than attempting irreverence.

Oh, and a general tip. Don't fall over the white painted step near the Hayward Gallery. It hurts, the paving where your hands skid out in support will be left noticeably cleaner and your big toe may never forgive you, at least until the internal water table drops.

Anyhoo,

2008-02-25T19:25:00.002Z

This week I've been mostly listening to Beirut. No, not Radio Lebanon. Instead Rufus Wainwright mixed with Belle and Sebastian (with a small dose of Amelie soundtrack), but from Albuquerque. Having said that I just stuck a RW track in the middle of a Beirut album to see how seamless the blend was and the usually overblown, grandiloquent and oft too flamboyant suddenly sounded quite inhibited and comparatively ascetic.

So possibly not for everyone. But I like it, although I liked that Embrace album that usually is slated for being inconsiderately orchestral for a drums and guitars band.

Anyway, this is just me staking claim as a friend on Facebook fanned them, only that was months after I first heard about them, so I'm trying to claw back the appearance of groundbreaking (yes, I know this way leads to people claiming to have seen the Beatles despite being born in the same year as me, but I was there first, damn it). Admittedly I'm not sure why I'm seeking to be in competition with someone who is so fantastically cool that people tried studying her to crib ideas and realised that the effortlessness in all spheres conforms to a strict formula and she's only beguilingly charming when she wants something. But then she did provide quite a lot of entertainment that time she clicked 'remember me' on a shared computer. Taking a break from some literature trawl I was rather surprised to find out that a certain guy felt that way about me, although some of the references eluded me and the attached REM duet was a bit odd. But then I saw the time he'd sent it and assumed that either he was very tired and emotional or he intended it for someone else. Clicking next brought up a similar fealty, yet was from someone I'd never met but knew to be charming girl's fiancé. Oh, hang on...

A swift application of "mark as unread" and suddenly my mistake and hers disappeared. As did all pretence of decency. So if he's... and he's also... oh, um, er. Very charming girl. So that's why I'm not sure competing with her is worth it. And turns out that saving the REM track to the desktop and leaving it there might have been a little tactless, but judging by the concerted silence of the rumour mongers when aforementioned parties were around I'd guess I wasn't the only one to forget I hadn't logged-in yet.

Hmm, and once again a passing reference (did I not blog it at the time?) becomes most of the post.

So decent taste in men she may have, if poor use of such taste, but she does have reasonable taste in music.

Hmm, how curious. When adding a link for Beirut-the-band I search last.fm not Google or Wikipedia. And when asked for examples of X in London I resorted to Flickr first (I wanted extant not theoretical). Does this mean unalloyed Googledom is over?

Anyhoo,

2008-02-18T12:00:00.001Z

People aren't very quick on the uptake. See if you are.

This view might be more helpful in part.

Anyhoo,