King of Scurf

Things to do at the Top of a Mountain

2012-01-08T17:33:00.000Z

Some of my favourite books are about exploration. If I were to name three particular favourites they would be (in no particular order)...

The Dig Tree by Sarah Murgatroyd - the hapless first attempt to cross the Australian continent
Barrow's Boys by Fergus Fleming - under utilised British naval officers being sent to discover hitherto unmapped parts of the globe
The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes - more colonisation than exploration but a magnificent and definitive book about the early settlement of Australia

One of the duties of early explorers, as they mapped out the territories they discovered was to come up with names for prominent landmarks, mountains, islands, rivers etc. This was an essential part of early exploration. Initially they would start their journey by naming places after famous people or perhaps the sponsors of the expedition.

Boothia Felix (now the Boothia Peninsula), an enormous barren wasteland in the Canadian Arctic was named after Felix Booth, a wealthy industrialist who made his money from distilling gin and was a patron of the expedition that discovered it.

Mount Everest was named after a prominent surveyor of India. It is generally thought that George Everest never actually saw the mountain that was named after him. Nowadays we don't even pronounce it correctly. He was insistent the first syllable of his name was pronounced Eve (as in Adam and Eve).

When explorers ran out of names of famous people they would start naming things after themselves or members of their family. The Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica is named after Sir James Clark Ross who discovered it. Yes, he named it after himself.

On long expeditions and with many new discoveries, explorers often ran out of names of people to use or simply became bored and they just named things after the first thing that came into their mind. This is the reason why in Australia you have a mountain range called The Snowy Mountains and deserts called the Great Sandy Desert and the Little Sandy Desert. In the US you have the Clearwater river and the Snake river. All these names show that whilst early explorers may have been hardy and intrepid, they probably didn't have a good thesaurus to hand.

When things got really desperate they would name places after events that had occured at those places. This explains places like Cape Tribulation where Captain James Cook ran his ship onto a reef and briefly believed his expedition would end.

Going away from the exploration theme, on a more local level, places that are simply associated with a particular person or feature of the area would be named appropriately. Drill down onto any Google map and you will find any number of places called Ray's Creek, Ned's Point, Pleasant Valley or something similar.

Individual streets in cities would be named after the trade or activity most commonly practiced in that area. Gropec*nt Lane was a frequently used name to describe the part of a town or city where prostitution was common.

Today I was watching one of those TV shows about the emergency services. This particular programme was centred around a hospital in Melbourne. One incident involved a teenager who had been injured whilst out walking in the local mountains. The area was inaccessible to vehicles and the rescue helicopter had to be used. I did a double take the first time they mentioned the place where she had to be rescued from. They mentioned the place several times again as the dramatic helicopter rescue took place.

What was the name of the place where this girl had befallen her unfortunate accident?

Mount Buggery. What on earth do you think happened there to provoke it to be so named?

If you think that's amusing, look at the photo caption on the Wikipedia page and see what the adjacent mountain is called.

Hang On To Your Hope

2012-01-06T21:38:00.000Z

It seems fashionable to think the world is going to hell and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. I don't share that opinion although I do tend to look at the news now and again and wonder what the hell is going on.

Even if you consider yourself reasonably optimistic, I sometimes wonder whether the idea that it's all a bit pointless gets into you and has a consequent effect on your behaviour. I know within me there's a hardened lump of cynicism/pessimism but I try to fight it off and, in my mind anyway, I think the optimistic side usually wins.

What I am increasingly guilty of is not getting anything significant done. Sure, I can deal with the day to day stuff or the stuff that simply has to be done but there's nothing long term in my plans. I'll put something off because I won't see the benefit of it for a few weeks/months/years and then, what do you know, that time has passed and I wish I'd done that thing because I know now I'd be reaping whatever reward I was due for my farsightedness.

Am I like this because deep down inside I'm troubled by the thought that it's all a bit pointless or is it just apathy and laziness? I suspect there's a fair amount of the latter and also regrettably, sometimes a little of the former.

I think some of it also has to do with comfort and security (and/or possibly insecurity). When you're young and hungry you go out and grab things - you've got nothing to lose. You have to do this because opportunities don't tend to come offering themselves to you. As you get older and more secure you don't need to go out and fight so much. You've bagged the big stuff - a home, a partner, kids, a steady job, financial security and whatever else floats your boat. You then consolidate. You hunker down.

If you haven't got one of those things (and I have a few gaps in that particular list) you tend to be more philosophical about it and it stops becoming something you hope will one day define you and the reverse happens. You end up being defined by its absence rather than its presence.

Just stumbling across the following letter was what triggered the above thoughts. It's from the writer E. B. White and his response to a correspondent asking for his thoughts on the future of humankind - that's a big subject to ask anyone but it's a simple (always the best), thoughtful and considered response.

What it says to me is if you do think the world is going to hell, then find a modest task that you know has something more than just an immediate objective and remind yourself whenever you do it that by doing this small thing, you're planning for the future. In this case, winding up a clock that will then run for a week is a "....contribution to order and steadfastness".

As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man's curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

Sincerely,

(Signed, 'E. B. White')

The above is courtesy of the always interesting Letters of Note.

2011 - So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish

2011-12-31T13:54:00.001Z

So it has come to that time of the year when we all try to simultaneously look forward and backwards - something that normally only owls and those reptiles with swivelly eyes can do.

I won't say it's been a good or bad year because barring complete disasters, all years have their highs and lows. Through nothing more than a fluke of nature I am fortunate enough to be living in a peaceful part of the world where life is good and disaster rarely, if ever, strikes. We are lucky enough to have little to worry about except what we can brew up in our strangely doom-laden imaginations. The solipsism of many affluent, healthy and comfortable Westerners continues to bemuse me. Take a look at the rest of the world sometime and stop feeling so bloody sorry for yourself.

I've had one experience in 2011 I hope I never to have to repeat. The slow, painful decline and death through illness of a close friend provoked emotions in me I had never experienced before. I have never wept at someone's bedside. I think I had come to terms with the inevitability of his death but I simply could not cope with watching someone I had known for so long in such desperate and hopeless circumstances. Knowing I could do nothing to help him was unbearable. He was the model of courage in adversity. I was hopeless.

On a lighter (and suddenly rather tactless) note, men like compiling 'top 20' lists and I am no exception. Here is my entirely arbitrary selection of top things from 2011 which I will think up as I go along....

Best Blog
A dead heat between nursemyra at The Gimcrack Hospital, Terra Shield at Raconteur-esque Scribblings and Saby at Booby Rants!. I fear we may have almost lost Saby to the Twittersphere (which I rarely visit) but her intermittent posts combining simmering rage and sparkling wit are always a pleasure to see.

An honourable mention goes to Gia at Mayor Gia who has the rare skill of being able to write brilliantly funny dialogue and combine it with great illustrations. Let's hope the zombie sluts don't get to her too soon.

Best TV Show
The Killing. With a little practice I may soon be able to swear fluently in Danish. Interesting to discover that the Danish for "f*cked up" is "furkerdairurrppp". Who'd have thought it.

Best Dessert
Galette des Rois. I made this for my family at Christmas. It's French and much more complicated than the recipe suggests. I was relieved to see it turned out looking mostly like the illustration and tasted pretty damned good as well. Follow the suggestion and add pear segments pre-fried in butter. Kudos to me in the kitchen.

Best Car
My old Audi A4 which clocked up 250,000 miles (402,000 Km) this year and shows no sign of failing me. I will replace you in the Spring....but I say that every year.

Best Pop Video
Last Friday Night by Katy Perry. It's actually probably the only pop video I've watched this year. I really like the energy, vibrancy, colour and humour in this video. You can't help but smile all the way through it. Katy Perry is hot as well - with and without glasses.

Best Consumer Product
The Canon EOS 60D digital SLR - mainly because I've just bought one. Expect blogposts in 2012 to have significantly more picture content.

Best Internet Retailer
I won't tell you their name but they sent me two Canon EOS 60D cameras and have billed me for only one. I 'phoned them up and told them of their mistake but they have so far failed to collect the second one. Where do I stand on this? Does it become mine after a certain amount of time?

Best Weather
The UK being buried in snow for a significant part of December 2010 and January 2011. Who can be so miserable as to not like snow? Where is your inner child?

Best Holiday
A week in Scotland. More correctly, it was my only real holiday this year. Must improve on this in 2012.

Best Friends
It might still possibly be the people I went to school with even though we are now scattered acrosss the globe. We met up over Christmas and regressed to being teenagers again (albeit teenagers who could spend freely and rather too over-indulgently at the bar). No oneupmanship. No envy. No baggage. We were just pleased to see each other healthy and happy.

Best Pub
The Grange Arms, Hornby, North Yorkshire. Where I invariably meet my best friends when our paths occasionally collide. Good beer is important, good company is essential.

Best You Tube Video
This guy. Ha ha ha ha ha. Ho ho ho ho ho. La la la la la. Love the wig, the waves, the gestures...makes me want to live in seventies Soviet Russia.

Best Comeuppance
The ongoing evisceration of the UK tabloid press and their vulgar, voyeuristic, prurient, intrusive, judgemental, insensitive, manipulative, degrading and thankfully (finally proven), illegal reporting methods.

That's fourteen tops by my count - more than enough. Must go out and make something of the day. It's the last one we'll get in 2011 - if you hadn't noticed. Suggestions on other 'tops' are welcome if you'd like me to add to the list. Or how about some of your own?

I wish you and all your loved ones a happy, abundant and trouble-free 2012.

The Bud is Back Meme

2011-12-22T22:47:00.001Z

Thanks for the following meme go to Terra Shield at Raconteur-esque Scribblings who in turn found it at Sunday Stealings. I rather rashly said Iwould complete it myself even though I suspect I have precious little to tell.Who knows? Here goes...

1. Why did you sign up for writing your blog?

Blogging was in the news and I'd been following a few blogs. I was mildlyenvious at how well other people wrote and wondered if I could write anythingworthwhile myself. I'm still wondering.

2. Why did you choose your blog's name? What does it mean?

It's a track from a Bonzo Dog Band compilation album which I was enjoyingon the evening I signed up to Blogger. I have no particular liking (ordisliking) for the track. I was just looking for an anonymous name. I have noaspirations to royalty...or scurf.

I've just looked for a defintion of scurf and I've found out one of its meanings is dandruff - blooarrgghh. I never knew this definition until today. Up until now the only defintion for scurf I knew was the tiny slivers and scraps of metal you get when using drills and similar metalworking tools.

3. Do you ever had another blog?

"Do you ever had.." No, this is as good as it gets.

4. What do you do online when you're not on your blog?

Surf aimlessly. Read other people's blogs. Read news. Nothing interactive.

5. How about when you're not on the computer?

Work in IT for a gigantic US software company (no, not that one). I sit at acomputer all day so I guess, strictly speaking, this answer does not reallyapply.

Read paper books. I'm not an e-reader but I'm not averse to the idea either - see later comment about being a late adopter. I primarily read non-fiction.

Socialise - the usual stuff - drinking, eating with friends etc. Definitely not aclubber.

6. What do you wish people who readyour blog knew about you?

Truly, the thought has never crossed my mind. As an individual, I hope they think I'm balanced, considered, mildly inquisitive and hopefully they think I have a sense of humour. I am mostly at ease with my online persona and I don't seek to create an online image other than what people might infer from what I write.

Ithink more about the people who read my blog because I really rather like thetiny group of people who are kind enough to read and comment.

7. What is your favorite community in the blogosphere?

The thought of being part of an online 'community' doesn't really appeal.The only online community I am part of is the rather loose group of bloggers Iinteract with.

8. What is your philosophy on your blog layout?

It's a bog-standard Blogger template. Very few adornments orpersonalisation. If somebody said it was difficult to read (font too smalletc.) then I'd do something about it.

9. Tell me about your picture you use to represent you on your blog.

An evening on a beach in Peru from a memorable overlanding holiday I took.

10. Pick 3 random blogs from your blogroll and tell us about them.

I don’t really use or review my blogroll that often (must tidy it up). I follow quite a few blogs throughGoogle Reader but I only comment regularly on a few of them. You know who you are I hope.

11. What features do you think your blog should have that it doesn'tcurrently?

Frequency and more interesting content.

12. What do you consider the 10 most "telling" interests that wewould infer from your blog persona?

I spend too much time on YouTube. I don’t by the way.

I watch too much TV. I probably do by the way.

I like films.

My work often bores me. If it didn’t I’d probably talk about it more.

I would like to travel more.

I like to cook.

I have a motorcycle. A Honda ST1300 Pan European.

I lack direction.

Procratination (yup, me as well Terra). Not exactly an "interest" though.

13. Do you have any unique interests that you have never shared before?What are they?

I play golf very badly. I enjoy the game but I am somewhat uncomfortablewith way it sometimes presents itself to the wider world. It has an air ofaloofness and elitism (in the UK) with which I do not wish to be associated.

14. The best thing about blogging is all of the friends that you make,Beside from those folks, do you think your blog has fans?

My blog has a few followers who are kind enough to comment on my rathererratic posts. I am very fond of them.

15. What's your current obsession? What about it captures your imagination?

This evening my new camera arrived. A Canon EOS 60D - I’ve finally gonedigital. That will keep me occupied for a while. I work in technology but I’mnever an early adopter. I’m still on my first mobile ‘phone. I’m not atechnophobe but I’m not in thrall to technology either. I appreciate mechanicalthings more than digital / electronics things.

16. What are you glad you did but haven't really had a chance to postabout?

I have no idea.

17. How many people that first became a blog friend, have you met face toface?

I have never met anyone through blogging.

18. What don't you talk about here, either because it's too personal orbecause you don't have the energy?

Being eternally single.

My poor social skills.

19. What's a question that you'd love to answer?

I’m very uncomfortable talking about myself. The anonymity of a blog helpsbut it doesn’t make it easy. I’ve tried writing ‘personal’ blogposts but I veryrarely complete them as the honesty embarrasses me.But feel free to ask and I'll really try.

20. Have you ever lost a blogging friendship and regretted it?

No.

21. Have you ever lost a blogging friendship and thought, “Was thatoverdue!”

No.

Tsunami

2011-12-22T20:13:00.001Z

I will write a proper blogpost soon...I promise.

But for now, have a look at this...

Miss Fat and Beautfiul

2011-12-16T17:41:00.000Z

Did he REALLY call her "Britain's most glamourous fatty"?

Fifty Unexplainable Black & White Photos

2011-12-08T19:16:00.001Z

The title says it all.

Fifty Unexplainable Black & White Photos

Nursemyra - I challenge you to create one of your amusing narratives to make a coherent story that links them all.

For me, 12, 15 and 24 in particular seem to defy any sort of rational - or even irrational - explanation.

I think 44 may be trying to reproduce a famous Doppler Effect experiment.

Taekwondo

2011-12-05T19:45:00.001Z

Way back at the start of the year I applied to be a volunteer at the 2012London Olympics. This weekend I attended a test event - one of many that's beengoing on across London for some time. On Friday I attended an introduction/training day and on Saturday andSunday I was a volunteer at the 'London Prepares' Taekwondo International Invitational

I knew almost nothing about taekwondo until this weekend. In the UK it’s verymuch a minority sport. On Friday evening I did some basic research on the rulesso I would not spend the next two days being completely clueless because what Idid know about taekwondo was that it is not a sport that is easily accessibleto the casual observer.

Taekwondo is a martial art and is the national sport of Korea. Bouts areshort - typically only ten or so minutes including stoppages. There are threetwo minute rounds with a one minute break between rounds. Participants scorepoints by hitting their opponents in the head or torso using their feet orusing punches to the body. Participantswear headguards and also leg and body protectors. There are sensors in the bodyprotectors which automatically record a 'score' if a blow of sufficient forceis made on the opponents body. Strikes to the head are scored by observingjudges.

The skill is in the technique involved to make a scoring move. In thatrespect it is similar to Olympic boxing where the emphasis is also on techniqueand skill. It is not like professional boxing where the objective is to batteryour opponent with the intention of knocking them out. In taekwondo injuriesare relatively rare and knockouts almost non-existent. It’s not bloodthirsty but the action is fast and explosive.

It's a very regimented sport full of very formal gestures and acts. Theparticipants bow to their coach before stepping on to the field of play.Opponents bow to each other before commencing a bout and again at the end.Match officials bow to each other before discussing a ruling. Respect for theofficials and your opponent is acutely observed. In two days of competition Inever saw a decision questioned by a participant however they do operate anextremely formal appeal process where the coach can request a video review of acontended point. This appeal process of course involves a lot of bowing.

A particularly generous gesture during one particular bout involved aparticipant being injured and unable to complete the bout. His opponent liftedhim up and carried him off the field of play and back to his coach where he wasthen stretchered from the arena.

I was incredibly lucky in the volunteer role I was allocated. I couldeasily have been placed in a role where I was not even in the main arena. WhatI actually ended up doing was being one of four video camera operatorspositioned at the four corners of the competitive area. We had to operate thecameras which recorded the bout. If a scoring move was appealed by the coachduring the bout, our footage was reviewed by the judges to check whether theappeal was valid and if so, the score would be adjusted. This is as close asyou can get to the action without actually being a referee or contender.

Taekwondo has both male and female categories. In this event (and I assumeothers like it) the women had an equal number of bouts as the men and theircompetition was every bit as enthralling, hotly contested and enthusiasticallysupported as the men's. This does not appear to be one of those sports wherethe women's version is seen as sub-standard to the men's. Isn’t that how itshould be.

I’ve never been inclined towards any sort of sport like this and I dislikeboxing intensely. I’ve always assumed martial arts are just for people who likehitting other people but I’ve become a bit of a taekwondo fan. It’s technical,disciplined and very skillful – my kind of sport – remember, I like cricket.

The only thing that got to me was seeing the female competitors – young andattractive – arriving at the start of their bout looking all fresh faced andenthusiastic. Some ten minutes later a good few of them left exhausted,bewildered and dishevelled having just been kicked about the head several timesby some steely-eyed Korean whirling dervish. My chivalrous side (if I have one)made me want to console them and remonstrate with the Korean and explain to herit was really not acceptable to strike a woman under any circumstances.

Pants on Fire

2011-12-01T00:12:00.001Z

I was sitting on the loo the other day - sorry to introduce you so abruptly to that idea but I can't think of a less direct way to start this blogpost - and just as I was finishing, I leaned forward to put my magazine down (please don't start - guys always read on the loo). As I did so I looked down and saw the little label tag in the back of my underwear. A small tag but the print on it was in bold red capitals so I noticed. The tag said very clearly and unambiguously KEEP AWAY FROM FIRE.

I assumed initially it was some sort of drying guideline but then I started thinking. Isn't that a rather redundant statement to put in underwear these days? I'm not aware of anybody who still dries their clothes with the use of some sort of naked flame. At a pinch some people may use a gas fire but a gas fire is not really the raw inferno that I think is implied by the above warning. In fact I'm struggling to recall any time I or anyone I know has used any sort of open fire to dry clothes. Has anybody out there ever had their clothes catch fire using ANY drying process? As a child I once slightly melted a welly which got left too close to my grandparent's living room fire but that's the only time I can recall.

Perhaps, I thought, it's a warning not to stand too near a fire whilst wearing this underwear. I can't imagine what sort of grisly scenario the manufacturers are imagining but other warnings (such as the intense and painful heat) would tell you that you had spent too long next to an open fire long before your underwear caught alight.

This is 100% cotton underwear - not an especially easy substance to set fire to as far as In know. In the seventies with the strange popularity of synthetic fabrics dominating the market I could imagine clothing being more flammable than it is today - sometimes I think solely through the static it could accumulate but I still don't think it was that easy to get (and importantly stay) alight.

Perhaps - and this is the only conclusion I can draw - it's a general warning to KEEP AWAY FROM FIRE and in fact has nothing to do with the properties of this particular brand of cotton underwear.

Ken Russell

2011-11-28T18:30:00.001Z

The film director Ken Russell died over the weekend at the age of 84. His death in the UK has been rather upstaged by the death of a footballer. Events in and around football sadly have the ability to upstage other news events - they are frequently given far more prominence than they deserve. Whilst the footballer was a talented and, by all accounts, good man who died young in what sadly would appear to be a rather desperate state of mind, his lasting legacy will be little compared to that of Ken Russell.

Ken Russell made difficult films. Sometimes very difficult films. They would thoroughly test the viewers' patience - woebetide those who ventured into a cinema not knowing they were about to be visually assaulted. His films could be beautiful but they could equally be graphically shocking but whatever they did, they would almost always leave an impression. His most commercially successful films were probably Women in Love, The Boyfriend and Tommy.

In interview, his opinions were always forthright, unpredictable but always imaginative and with a hint of mischief. But he always delivered those opinions with a charm and a wit and a twinkle in his eye. You could not dislike Ken Russell even if you hated his work, and trust me, many people did. He was invariably more watchable than many of his films.

I remember him being interviewed on TV when he must have been well into his seventies. Dressed colourfully, the way no portly septugenarian would normally be, with his trademark shock of white hair, he ranged over numerous topics. It was apparent he was completely unshockable and still felt he had plenty more to deliver if only he could get the finance together and be allowed to realise another piece of outrageous but possibly impenetrable cinema.

He was talented and original and a true eccentric but you know what - I can't think of a single one of his films I particularly like but I what I do know is that nobody will make films like them ever again.

This is a nice tribute...

The Percontation Point

2011-11-25T20:48:00.001Z

There have always been grammar fanatics who rant and rave about poor punctuation. A popular book out here a few years ago called Eats, Shoots and Leaves (The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation) seemed to reignite the debate. I didn't buy the book as I suspected it was only really preaching to the converted - people who wanted to be reassured that that they were already right. I might be wrong but that was the impression I got.

I try to get my punctuation right but only because I like to get it right (it's a nerdy challenge mostly) and I also think - certainly in business - presentation is just as important as content. Your message is wasted if your intended audience thinks "I'm not reading this crap - the guy can't even spell/punctuate correctly." This also applies to emails - I don't really like receiving slovenly written emails and I flinch if I reread one of my own and spot a mistake in it. I worry my intended readers will switch off as soon as they see the error. I may be out of touch on this. Many people say it is an informal medium and presentation is unimportant.

The view today in education it seems is that only content is important and poor spelling or punctuation can be ignored if the message is good. I don't buy this because when I was at school, our work, however good the content was, could be downgraded to being utterly worthless due to grammatical or spelling errors. You really did learn by your mistakes.

Anyway, this isn't really my point. All the above was just preamble. What I was wondering today when I read something was, should a rhetorical question have a question mark?**

"This car stinks doesn't it." or "This car stinks doesn't it?"

"You don't say." or "You don't say?"

"How much longer are we going to have to wait in this bloody queue." or "How much longer are we going to have to wait in this bloody queue?"

Not the best examples I grant you but anyway, a little brief research and I find this rhetorical question mark question has already been asked - 430 years ago to be precise.

In the 1580s* Henry Denham proposed the percontation point. A rhetorical question should be suffixed with a reversed question mark. The idea soon fell out of favour. I really rather like it and wish it could return.

* 1580s somehow looks better as 1580's but there's no reason for the apostrophe.

** Personally speaking, in the absence of the return of the percontation point, I think rhetorical questions should be left without a question mark.

*** A prize (yet to be decided) to the person who can find a spelling/punctuation error in the above blogpost.

The Killing II

2011-11-20T11:47:00.001Z

The Killing II has begun - the first two episodes of the new series aired last night on the consistently good BBC4 channel.

It looks every bit as good as the first series. Sarah Lund is back, looking as moody and tortured as ever complete with her chunky woollen garments and complicated private life. She's been teamed with a new co-detective called Strange which makes for some intermittently confusing subtitles - when answering the 'phone he announces "Strange here."

Blix, the granite faced police chief whose narrowed eyes never give anything away contines to deliver a wonderfully minimalist acting performance.

A new set of shifty politicians continue to double cross each other at every opportunity.

It is SO good.

http://kingofscurf.blogspot.com/2011/02/forbrydelsen-aka-killing.html

The Final Countdown

2011-11-14T00:18:00.001Z

For all the talk of catastrophe and crisis and meltdown it is difficult to do anything other than look a little wryly at the current problems within the Eurozone (the seventeen countries that have adopted the Euro as their currency) and the consequences for the European Union (the larger body of twenty seven countries) as a whole. The situation is, in most part, out of our hands and any amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth and protesting will have little or no effect.

The EU was initally formed in 1958 and has since then steadily grown by adding new member states and increasing its powers within those states. What was initally intended to be a group of nations which would relax trade laws and movement of peoples between each other in order to reduce bureaucracy has grown into an organisation that's ultimate objective is, loosely speaking, The United States of Europe. Some may disagree with that statement but it is the nature of bodies such as this that their role, functions, responsibilities and powers must always increase.

I am, loosely speaking, pro European. Trade barriers have always seemed to encourage apathy within the country that imposed them because they just created inefficient domestic monopolies. Trade barriers between adjoining countries also invariably just causes resentment and wherever possible, people do their best to find a way around them. Restricting the movement of people between countries that share enormous borders has always been difficult and created foolish constructs such as the Berlin Wall. Some sort of European integration has always made a lot of sense.

Problems have arisen because European governments (and it has to be said, the USA as well), borrowed money throughout a period which they told their people was an unprecedented boom. Even in the good times, many countries could not sell more than they bought but credit was cheap and easy to get and, as long as "growth" continued, the debts could be serviced. People were encouraged to borrow using the relentlessly increasing value of their homes as collateral, to buy (mostly imported) consumer goods and luxuries which fuelled the "boom" even more. In the case of Greece, a lot of money went into creating a massive and well-rewarded public sector. Those public sector employees who could retire on generous pensions in their fifties knew who to vote for. Their votes had been bought.

When it all started to unravel, politicians were happy when most of the blame was laid on the bankers as it conveniently deflected any blame from them, but it's become increasingly apparent politicians were responsible for many problems wherein some countries massively mismanaged their finances believing the good times would never end. The loose morals and sharp practice of the banking industry may have triggered the crisis but it was the already weak financial position and poor anticipation of governments to plan for such an eventuality which exacerbated the situation.

Individual countries have seen the fragility of their economic models thrown into sharp relief. In the UK we have increasingly relied on a service based economy - that means we don't really make anything any more. Call it a knowledge based economy if you want - we hope to rely on being smarter than other countries, selling them our services and intelligence rather than our manufacturing output and then with the income we raise, buying a significant amount of our manufactured goods, food and energy from countries who can produce them more cheaply than we can. In the case of the UK, a major part of that service based economy has been banking and financial services and despite political rhetoric that demonises bankers, the harsh reality is that we need them here and if we want them to stay we will have to provide a climate in which they believe they can thrive.

The Eurozone crisis has called into question not only the validity of the Euro but also the long term viability of the EU. It was never anticipated that countries within the EU would mismanage themselves in such a profligate and foolish manner that they could not sustain themself or service the debts they accumulated. EU economic integration may have had a rulebook that said that certain economic conditions must be met by its member states but it did not anticipate that countries might simply break the rules.

It has been said that The EU has been responsible for maintaining peace in Europe for that last fifty or so years. That is a depressing thought and one which I simply do not buy. Some European countries were operating under dictatorships or military rule well into the seventies and the rest of Europe chose not to intervene. If that were to happen in an EU country now then the EU would probably want to get involved in a very physical and robust manner. As Europeans, we like to think we have been instrumental in helping to create an outbreak of democracy in some countries in the Middle East but the EU seems to see no contradiction in manipulating the ousting of the elected leaders of Greece and Italy and imposing unelected technocrats to hopefully sort out their problems.

The problem is also that questioning the intentions or future of the EU or the Euro is seen by some senior European politicians as unacceptable. Belief in the EU by some individuals has reached the fervour of the religious fundamentalist - to them it is above criticism. So much of their intellectual capital is invested in the great European project that their futures are inexorably tied to it. Any failure of the EU or the Euro would almost certainly hasten their downfall and they are therefore obliged to unflinchingly believe the solution to Europe's problem is only more integration and not less. The EU's ability to railroad elections in its favour show that it does not like its authority to be questioned.

Every day a new development changes the game. Bailout plans seem to last no more than a few weeks before they have to be rewritten and the bailout fund increased by more unimaginable sums. These bailout funds do not actually represent real money that the member states of the EU have to spend. It also has to be borrowed; we were hoping last week the Chinese would step in and underwrite it. They didn't.

It really is simply a matter of wait and see. How interesting.

Great Restaurant Reviews

2011-11-13T21:04:00.001Z

I first saw the following critique of a restaurant in one of my favourite autobiographies - Freud Ego by Clement Freud (now priced I see on Amazon at a modest £175 and I have a signed copy!) I have since seen the review somewhere else but I can't quite remember where.

Here goes with the shortest, pithiest and without doubt funniest, restaurant review I have ever read.

"If the soup had been as warm as the champagne, the champagne as old as the chicken, and the chicken as plump as the waitress, then it would have been adequate."

Big Bad Wolf

2011-10-27T09:43:00.000+01:00

I really do not know what to say...

BIG BAD WOLF duck sauce from caviar on Vimeo.

Lost Horizon

2011-10-15T22:36:00.001+01:00

"Sometime in the future, you shall have the pleasure of meeting her..."

The clip that follows is from a 1973 film called Lost Horizon. It's about a group of Europeans whose plane crashes in the Himalayas and the survivors are rescued by the people of The Valley of the Blue Moon - some sort of weird clothing based cult as far as I can see. The film features three future Oscar winners, at least one other Oscar nominee and a Burt Bacharach soundtrack. What more could you want?

I especially enjoy the dancing at about 1:40 by a chap who appears to have just walked in on the set, dressed casually in a pink shirt and natty flares. I reckon with about five minutes of practice I could dance as well as that.

The film also features one of the greatest chat-up lines in movie history....

Him:Are you an American?
Her:No, Mongolian.
Him:You'll have to teach me the language some time.

(Sir) John Gielgud, Peter Finch and George Kennedy (the aformentioned Oscar winners), what on Earth were you thinking of?

But you know what...this song is peculiarly addictive...I think I want to see more of this film.

Now, sit back and enjoy, go full screen (double click on the clip) and volume right up please....

The Real Genius of Steve Jobs

2011-10-07T23:37:00.000+01:00

Here's one of the more ill-thought out statements to have been uttered in the last few days following the sad death of Steve Jobs.

"....it's hard to imagine a worlds(sic) without iPods, Pads, Phones etc etc."

No it's not. It is extremely easy to imagine a world without Apple products. You just have to visit the huge swathes of the planet where people don't spend their time salivating, slack-jawed at the window of their local Apple store. Only someone deeply embedded within their mostly self-imagined world of Apple would make such an indulgent statement. Some individuals (like our friend above) may be unable to imagine a world without their iPhone but billions of other people have no such problem. Most of the people of the world have to rely on the technology that is available to them at a price that they can afford.

When I have had a chance to use Apple products I've liked them. They are beguiling in their simplicity and elegance and that is their charm and their brilliance, but after that I didn't really feel they offered me significantly more than I could get from other products or at least, not sufficiently to justify the price tag. There's also the uncomfortable feeling that you're buying your way into some sort of clique. Whenever two Apple users meet, their conversation rather easily seems to turn to their gadgets and they are unlikely to emerge and re-enter normal society until they're separated from each other. I really don't want to run the risk of getting drawn into that sort of a conversation - maybe that's just me.

To go back to our friend's original statement, it is actually hard to imagine a world without computers, without telephones, but Steve Jobs did not invent either of these (despite what some people have claimed in recent days). He made exquisitely beautiful, tactile products with elegant interfaces that exploited those inventions. This was his genius and I hope he left enough of his psychological DNA in Apple that they continue to make them and thrive.

There should always a place in the world for people who can make something that is more than just brutally functional and Steve Jobs brilliantly proved that, but if Apple products were removed from the world today, telephony and computing would continue without so much as a hiccup because the brute horsepower that really runs those systems does not rely on Apple technology to perform.

Hot Hot Hot

2011-09-30T20:52:00.004+01:00

Only in the UK could they seriously write in a news report that "...temperatures soared over 21 degrees (70f)"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/8798983/Passengers-use-bottled-water-to-get-overheated-train-started.html

It reminds me of a UK newspaper headline that Alistair Cooke used to enjoy telling Americans...

"73 DEGREES AND NO RELIEF IN SIGHT"

That'll be just under 23 degrees C then.

Anarchy in the Ukelele

2011-09-25T13:24:00.004+01:00

I went to see The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain last night.

It would be easy to dismiss them as a novelty act but they are far from it. These are real and talented musicians who obviously love their instruments. It's interesting to see that the ukelele comes in several forms (soprano, tenor, concert and others) and one of which, it has to be said, sounds and looks remarkably like an acoustic guitar disguising an electric bass which they called a bass ukelele.

They create brilliant and complex arrangements of mostly well known tunes, add some humour, some singing, some good old British eccentricity and just put on a great show.

I've never heard a better cover version of Anarchy in the UK by The Sex Pistols, as rearranged for eight ukeleles (or possibly seven ukeleles and an electric bass). They also did Life on Mars by David Bowie, Teenage Dirtbag, Le Freak by Chic, Pinball Wizard, Teenage Kicks, Smells like Teen Spirit, as well as some classical rearrangements. They did one piece by Saint-Saëns which was quite beautiful but I cannot find it online.

They've been going for 26 years and have toured the world so, as I said, this is no novelty act. One of the pleasures of watching them is the thirty or so seconds at the start of each piece where you just can't quite place the tune they're about to play and then the audience somehow collectively recognises it and everyone in the room smiles and laughs.

Check out their version of the spaghetti western classic, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, complete with vocal harmonising, which they also performed last night. Listen all the way through and trust me, you will be singing along by the end of it.

More Herculean than Olympian

2011-09-17T09:59:00.006+01:00

As London gears up for the Olympics - still almost a year to go yet it is more hyped than a syringe full of Mexican jumping beans - I heard this morning on the radio about a marathon competitor in the 1904 St. Louis Olympics.

Andarín (Felix) Carvajal was a postman from Cuba who lived his entire life in poverty despite being a celebrated amateur runner.

In order to get to the Olympics he begged on the streets of Havana for the price of his passage to New Orleans arriving there six months before the start of the games. Despite never having left his native country before, and speaking no English, he spent the next six months walking, running and hitchhiking the 600 miles (1000 kilometres) to St. Louis, sleeping rough along the way, labouring for money and living off fruit from the trees and whatever else he could find.

Arriving at the starting line and despite the 35 degree heat because of the 2:30pm start time, he was dressed in woollen trousers, a linen shirt, street shoes and a felt beret. There was brief delay where he was convinced to cut off most of the legs and sleeves to his clothing and the race began. It was run in brutally hot weather, over dusty roads, with horses and automobiles clearing the way and creating dust clouds. “He won the sympathy of the crowd in the stadium and raised his hat each time he passed the stand,” the St. Louis Republic reported.

As the race began, he took the lead but finally, overcome with hunger having not eaten for forty hours, he stopped to eat some apples from a tree which gave him a strong stomach ache. He still managed to recover and finally finished the race in fourth place. Hailed by the international press for his determination and amiable manner, he returned to Cuba a hero and resumed his mail route. He never appeared in international competition again.

Now that is the Olympian spirit.

Where I Live

2011-09-11T19:06:00.004+01:00

I live in a little patch of North London called Crouch End. You can tell I like it because I use the affectionate term "patch" to describe it. This is what people in London do.

It's a quirky (there I go again with those terms of affection) little area which, because it lacks a tube station, means it's unheard of by many people in the rest of London.

Over the years the area has had a few brushes with fame. Stephen King wrote a short story called Crouch End after visiting a friend who lived locally portraying the area as a portal to some sort of demonic underworld. It was later dramatised for television.

We've had a few famous residents over the years and continue to retain a small smattering of mostly domestic celebrities.

One of my favourite ex-residents is Ho Chi Minh who was said to live here in the early 20th century during his time working in a London hotel. I'm not sure how much of his future political outlook was gained from his time here - not a great deal I suspect.

A locally famous and possibly apocryphal story concerns Bob Dylan. Bob, whilst on tour in the UK (Bob is always on tour) decides one day to go and visit his good friend Dave Stewart who had a recording studio in the area for many years. Bob gets into a taxi and tells the taxi driver to take him to an address on Crouch Hill but the taxi driver inadvertently takes him to an address on the similarly named Crouch End Hill. Bob knocks at the door and asks the woman who answers if Dave is at home. Coincidentally, a person called Dave (who is a big Bob Dylan fan) lives at the house but Bob is informed by the woman that Dave is not at home right now but he's welcome to come in and wait until Dave gets home. The woman is unaware of Bob's legendary and global stature and just assumes this is a friend of her son who has called by. Dave duly returns home and is informed by his mum that Bob Dylan is waiting for him in the front room and is currently having a cup of tea and a biscuit.

Hitch-22

2011-09-10T11:57:00.004+01:00

I'm currently reading Hitch-22 - the autobiography of Christopher Hitchens. It's rather a heavy read at times but he's a serious man and an acute observer. The cons of ploughing through sections about student politics of the left are far outweighed by the pros of his other observations.

I'm just reading about his time as a budding journalist on London newspapers of the early seventies. The British press has been making the news as opposed to reporting it for some time here in the UK. The scandal of the UK wing of the Murdoch media empire hacking into the voicemail messages of absolutely anyone they could in an attempt to trawl up a story is well documented.

A particulary sordid aspect of this activity was that whilst those journalists were melodramatically reporting stories about child murder victims in their newspapers, they appeared to be simultaneously doing their utmost to hack into those same victims' mobile phone messages in at attempt to spice up their storyline.

Christopher Hitchens writes about the contempt and indifference of many journalists to the plight of people in stricken circumstances (this was over thirty years ago) and observes how compassion or sympathy for victims was rarely allowed to get in the way of a good story.

When visiting the homes of distressed families, journalists would travel in pairs. When invited in and courteously offered a cup of tea, one journalist would join the family member in the kitchen to "help" whilst the other journalist would rifle through the family possessions or try to steal photographs of the victim.

The unofficial motto of the foreign correspondents' desk, when travelling abroad to visit war-torn or other riven societies was "Anyone here that's been raped and speaks English?" Plus ca change it seems.

Evolution

2011-08-20T00:06:00.003+01:00

There are three very common accusations that are repeatedly levelled against the theory of evolution. They're all fundamentally flawed accusations but they are used constantly in an attempt to discredit the theory. Two of the criticisms are even, strictly speaking correct, but that does not make them credible criticisms - it is simply a misunderstanding of terminology. The three accusations are as follows

It's just survival of the fittest
We're all descended from monkeys
It's only a theory

It's Just Survival of the Fittest

Survival of the fittest is a phrase that now tends to be avoided in science because it has become so widely misunderstood. It is most commonly interpreted as kill or be killed. The logical but flawed conclusion of kill or be killed is that if you are able to kill and live off another species then ultimately you will wipe that species out - that is most commonly understood to describe survival of the fittest.

Survival of the fittest however has a more nuanced definition than that. Survival of the fittest means the ability of a species to survive despite the existence of its predators. It is the ability to reproduce in sufficient numbers that you cannot be wiped out.

Consider the ant and the anteater. The anteater by definition, eat ants. It has done so for millions of years but it has so far failed to wipe out the ant population and in fact, the demise of the ant population would very quickly result in the corresponding demise of the anteater population. The anteater has no interest in eating all the ants in the world so there are none left and the ant has developed the ability to reproduce in sufficient numbers that it can continue to survive, despite relentlessly being eaten by anteaters. This makes the ant fit for survival and an excellent illustration of the phrase survival of the fittest. The ant is a very fit creature. As a species, it'll probably outlive us all.

We're All Descended from Monkeys

We're not. The theory of evolution states that we, and monkeys, share a common ancestor. It does not state that we are descended from a species that exists alongside us nor does it claim to know what that common ancestor is. That would be ridiculous.

The common ancestor the theory states we share has long since departed the planet and we have no idea what form it might have taken (we're probably talking primordial soup here) but there are sufficient similarities between us and other species to conclude that, despite our lack of absolute knowledge about that ancestor, we can still almost certainly conclude it was shared.

It's Only a Theory

Yes, that's correct. It is only a theory. But to dismiss it as simply being a set of ideas which have somehow gained a fashionable following which is what people are implying with this criticism is wrong. It fails to acknowledge the correct scientific definition of a theory.

A scientific theory is an idea which is constantly tested and whilst it may never be proven to be fact gains creedence over time the more it is tested with additional data. Many theories are accepted as fact despite science continuing to describe them as theories because science does not allow something to be described as fact unless it can be definitively and unquestionably proven as such. Theories simply become more credible as more and more data is pumped through them and the theory continues to hold up. It may however never be possible to prove a theory is fact because you may never have access to all the data.

Consider the following example. I choose to measure the height of all adult members of my family. The heights of these people are facts. I could, based on these facts, develop a theory that the average height of any adult person is five feet and six inches. That would be a poor theory (not enough data) but a theory nonetheless. I would need a lot more data to make it a plausible theory.

If I then measured all the people in my street I might refine my theory and state that the average height of any given adult person is five feet and five inches. I still could not describe this average height as a fact but I've just made it a more reliable theory. I could then measure all the people in London and I might still have the theory that the average height of any given person is five feet and five inches. The theory is looking better and better.

I could spend the rest of my life measuring people and come up with an incredibly accurate figure for the average height of any given person. That average figure would eventually reach a point where regardless of how much more data I fed into it, it would barely change. You might then be able to say this average figure is a fact, but in absolute scientific terms it would still be only a theory.

For my theory to be accepted as fact I would need to absolutely know the height of all people. I would need all the data. The theory of evolution has had a lot of data fed into it and continues to hold up but yes, it's still only a theory but after all this time and all this data, it's a bloody good one.

The Last Week in London

2011-08-12T19:23:00.005+01:00

Well, it's been an interesting week. When the city you live in gets the kind of global news coverage that has recently been reserved for Cairo, Tripoli and Damascus the temptation is to comment and perhaps try to moderate the excesses of the global - and worse still, local - media. This is my modest attempt at some sort of perspective.

I'll try to avoid commenting on events elsewhere in the country which despite being related (in a copycat manner) to the events in London were in places I do not know well and therefore it would be inappropriate to comment.

The first thing to point out is we do not have a revolution on our hands which is how I believe events were portrayed in certain parts of the media around the world. What we had was certainly a civil disturbance on a significant scale that was initially and very tenuously motivated by the police shooting an individual in the course of his arrest. He had a loaded and functioning weapon which was not fired. Other details of this event are still unclear. It may be worth mentioning that UK police are not routinely armed. As far as I am aware, police only arm themselves if they expect to attend a scene where they believe they will encounter armed resistance.

London is a big city. Very big. What you saw on your tv screens were major and significant disturbances but these were generally contained within small pockets of the city as a whole. Within these areas a small but critical mass of individuals managed to outnumber the police to the point where they could pretty much roam with impunity and do whatsoever they pleased facing little or no resistance. This manifested itself in gangs of mostly teenagers and young men - but also women, attacking innocent bystanders, looting shops and setting fire to buildings and vehicles.

The looting of shops was comprehensive with small independent local businesses targetted as well as major multinational chain stores. Local people attacked their own area. There was no anti-capitalism angle to this looting. Shops were looted solely if they were expected to have goods of value within them. The prime targets were electrical goods, alcohol, tobacco and clothing. In one area, apparently the only shop to remain undamaged was a bookstore - go figure.

The initial media response was to attribute this behaviour to the inevitable tensions that build up in the deprived and non-affluent areas of a city that generally portrays itself to the outside world as overtly prosperous. Some people tried to defend the actions of those involved suggesting that they were a deprived underclass who had been excluded by society as a whole and were simply expressing their justifiable anger at their inability to share in the prosperity of London.

What quickly became apparent however was that whilst the earlier shooting may have been a trigger to riot, the subsequents looting and other criminal acts were the realisation of the mob that in sufficient numbers, the police could be easily outnumbered and therefore they could do as they pleased. Once word got around that it was open season on the local high street others joined in the looting. Whilst I suspect the majority of people involved were simply making the most of an opportunity to steal from shops without any police intervention, it was also apparent that certain sections of the group were also taking the opportunity to commit acts of violence and intimidation on any innocent individual that passed before them. This was and is the most worrying aspect of recent events. Violence directed at the police or state, whilst distasteful is I suppose understandable. Violence against innocent bystanders is not.

At time of writing this there have been about 1,600 arrests relating to these events. These people are currently being fast-tracked through the court system and prosecuted. What is becoming apparent is that whilst many are habitual offenders a small proportion are from a section of society that you would not normally expect to see before the magistrates. So far this has included a member of the teaching staff at a primary school, a graphical designer, an organic chef (who apparently decided to trash a budget chain restaurant), privately educated university graduates and bizarrely, a ballerina.

Most of the theft commited during these disturbances was opportunistic. The realisation by individuals that given the opportunity to steal and not be confronted doing it, a large number of people decided this was an acceptable thing to do. Underpinning this was a more sinister core of individuals who were intent on committing acts of violence and firestarting for the same reason - they were unchallenged.

There were five murders. As far as I can tell this was murder for the sake of it (if such a phrase makes sense). Innocent people going about their business finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This is not over. There will be more events like this, perhaps not on the same scale, but they will definitely happen. A certain section of society realised this week how easy it is to organise and commit co-ordinated acts of mob crime. For every individual that was caught and prosecuted there will be ten people who got away with it and right now the people who got away with will have a new idea to ponder - crime, for the moment, pays. As I sit at home right now, 7:30pm on a Friday evening, I can hear police sirens in the distance.

These were not race riots. These were not anti-capital riots. There was no political justification. They were however - and this is a surprise to no-one except apparently politicians - a realisation that a large number of people in this city seem to have little or no hesitation in commiting crime simply if they think they can get away with it. It was mostly however motivated by that most basic of human failings - greed.

Propaganda

2011-08-02T20:14:00.005+01:00

Don’t you just love German synth pop. They have taken something - pop music - that should be trivial and flighty and fun and turned it into some sort of existential angst. Only some po-faced Germans would try putting an Edgar Allan Poe poem to music. The German film director Fritz Lang was also an influence. Heavy. But you know what? They somehow managed to pull it off (sorry, this clip is rather long but I think, worth it).

I remember this band from the 80s when earnest music like this was seen as a cut above the rest - up on the intellectual high ground that Duran Duran and their like could not even dream to inhabit. New Order were up there as well. I also remember being extremely intrigued as a very young man by Claudia Brucken and also, but not quite as much by Susanne Freytag. Claudia could do things with a German accent that I didn't think possible - she could make it sound deeply sexy.

As a band, they burned briefly but brightly. Critically acclaimed, they rather imploded, managing to fall apart for more reasons than any other band I can recall - disagreements over performing live, artistic differences, personal differences, bad contracts with their record company, personal relationships that caused resentment among the band and many other reasons. The initial lineup lasted little more than 18 months.

Twenty five years on and looking back at some of their output, I still think their music stands up today, far better than most of what was produced in the eighties. I think/hope they had a sense of humour - they appeared to have a lot of fun making the video below. I dearly hope they weren't trying to make some sort of deep meaningful statement with it because that would almost certainly ruin my enjoyment.

Faster, Harder, Louder, Stronger...

2011-07-29T21:30:00.005+01:00

It's not unusual for modern records to be based around a sample taken from an earlier song. This isn't altogether a bad thing. The original artiste gets a nice royalty and perhaps an unexpected boost to their pension and the new artiste gets a catchy little ditty on which to hang their own tune. It's a collaboration of sorts and the original artiste will usually have the right of veto if they do not approve of their original riff being exploited inappropriately. All good, nothing bad.

Of course sampling is most commonly used in more recent styles of music - techno, house, hip-hop, ambient, rap and the like. These style generally have a quicker tempo than the styles they are borrowing from. The result is invariably that the sample has to be adapted in order to fit the modern style.

When you spot a sample in a modern record you may recognise it but it's often interesting to go back to what is often the rather obscure original and you'll invariably find it's not quite how you remember it. The new artiste will have played around with it - added a backbeat, bumped up the tempo and other digital trickery. There's nothing new or particularly wrong with that either. You might recognise and think you remember the actual riff but on re-hearing the original you'll be surprised how different it actually was at the time.

I was reminded of this when listening to the following tunes. The first clip is from the new song, and the second clip is the original track that was sampled.

The original song stood up on its own quite well at the time but now sounds positively funereal - it actually sounds like it's been slowed down. It sounds wrong. If you go back to the first song you quickly realise that no-one could play the horn section at the speed it's now being reproduced but it sounds right.

Do we do everything so much faster these days? I guess we do. Let's slow it all down a bit.

Judgement

2011-07-08T23:55:00.004+01:00

You would have thought one of the most important attributes of a politician is to have good judgement. The ability to intuitively smell a rat. An instinct to know right from wrong. The perception however seems increasingly to be that your judgement isn't really that important. All that you actually need is good PR.

Our prime minister - an ex PR man himself - employed as his director of communications the former editor of the News of the World - a Sunday newspaper with a notorious reputation for juicy and salacious tittle-tattle. It didn't acquire the nickname The News of the Screws by accident. Yet the prime minister obviously thought a former editor who could flog 2-3 million copies a week of this paper would have his finger on the national pulse.

Yes, he probably did know how to tickle the nation's fancy. But you only had to take a brief look at the newspaper he was producing each week to see that he was obviously a specialist in engaging the national interest by stimulating what goes on below their waistline as opposed to trying to engage with whatever goes on above their shirt collar. Aim low is what a man like this will tell you.

Given the choice between being seen canvassing the opinion of an intellectual academic or alternatively finding out what the latest nineteen year old pop starlet thinks, politicians increasingly want to be seen discussing matters with the singing poppet because, they will be told, it will guarantee they get that all-important male 14-55 demographic to sit up and pay attention. This is what hiring the former editor of a tits, gossip and sports tabloid will tell you.

Yes, it goes without saying that 90% of men's attention will almost instantly be diverted by the appearance of a good-looking young woman but that doesn't automatically mean we'll all instantly disconnect if we're presented with a slighly more intellectually rigourous scenario.

Tabloid editors know what sells and the brief they get from their bosses is to sell more of it and do whatever you can to get those sales. As the News of the World scandal rumbles on and politicians from across the political spectrum desperately try to work out how to redefine their relationship with the popular press whilst simultaneously trying to retain its support, we can only hope it leads to an outbreak of discussing important matters on their merits and not solely on whether it can conveniently be presented alongside a nice pair of tits.

Bargain Hunt

2011-06-21T19:45:00.004+01:00

I occasionally work from home. I'm lucky that I can choose two offices to go to if I want to go in but sometimes the prospect of rush hour public transport into Central London or a 90 mile round trip in the car don't appeal and I just stay at home.

I conscientiously take a lunch break at about midday and there's really not much you can practically do in that time so I have something simple to eat and stick the TV on for some mind-numbing daytime entertainment.

I usually land up watching a programme called Bargain Hunt. It's a simple premise and stock daytime TV fodder. Two teams of two people are given a modest sum of money and have to find three items at a local "antique fair". They are assigned an expert adviser to help them and the items purchased are then sold at auction and the winner is the team that can make the best return on their purchases. The show is overseen by another expert - a gap-toothed, aging dandy called Tim who has a terrible penchant for shapeless floppy hats worn at a jaunty angle. I'm sure the format is repeated the world over.

The subtext of the programme is that somewhere out there will be a lost masterpiece just waiting to be discovered. The expert carefully assesses the prospective purchases and uses a glossary of stock phrases to describe the items and suggest their value and potential for profit. The implication is almost always that the items on sale have some value and desirability.

But this is television and we all know that what you see on television rarely reflects reality. "Antique fair" is a terrible misnomer for a start. Usually the wares look no more-appealing than the contents of a house clearance because that's mostly what they are. The expert will study an item and perhaps declare it to be "collectible" or use some other somewhat evasive description. The implication is invariably that the value of the item is greater than its functional worth.

Of course, all items are nominally worthless as is anything in this world. We all think our car is worth £2000 until we discover we can only find someone prepared to give us £500 for it at which point it becomes worth exactly £500. Unless an item has some sort of base value - gold or other precious metals can always be melted down - their only value is actually what you can convince somebody else it is worth and, harder still, get them to part with their cash for it.

I am pretty sure these antique fairs are simply a relentless churn of the same items being endlessly resold, each purchaser hoping to make a profit from the next buyer they hope to find. There are far too many snuff boxes, walking sticks, tea caddies, gruesome items of usually chipped or cracked pottery and other gewgaws to believe there are serious collectors out there. "Collectors" are simply buyers waiting to find somebody prepared to pay more than they paid and hopefully to make an occasional killing.

Contestants rarely make a profit. It's innocent enough fun but it's also touchingly detached from reality. Having watched quite a few episodes I now present my interpretation of what the expert rather flatteringly tends to say about the items discovered and what I suspect they actually mean.

It's decorative: It's useless

It's quirky: It's worthless

It's charming: It's useless and worthless

It's unusual: Some people actually like this junk

It has a functional charm: It's ugly

It's an artisan piece: It's badly made

It's organic: It's very badly made

It's from the Arts and Crafts movement: It's dull and badly made

It's colourful: It's vulgar

It requires careful restoration: It's broken

It's desirable: I actualy managed to flog one of these a few months back

It's collectible: some idiot thinks it's worth something

It's difficult to date: It's a reproduction

Any more suggestions?

Happy Trails...

2011-06-18T00:08:00.003+01:00

It's funny where a Wikipedia trail can take you.

I've just been watching a film called Coogan's Bluff released in 1968. Not a very good film but it has late sixties New York as its backdrop and although I don't know New York particularly well, I know it looks sort of different today.

The closing scene of the film involves a large twin-rotor passenger helicopter taking off from the roof of the Pan Am building. The shot pans away dramatically as the helicopter takes off to show the New York cityscape. I was interested to see if this passenger service still operated.

First I googled the Pan Am building which took me to the Wikipedia page for the building. From there I discovered the helicopter passenger service only ran for a little over two years ending in early 1968 so the film was probably made in 1967. The service briefly resumed in 1977 but was ended after a particularly gruesome accident where the helicopter landing gear collapsed during landing and a helicopter rotor broke away and flew into a group of waiting passengers killing four people. Debris falling from the roof killed a pedestrian in the street fifty nine storeys below.

One of the people killed was a film director called Michael Findlay who along with his wife Roberta Findlay, directed and produced numerous sexploitation movies. They have been described as "the most notorious filmmakers in the annals of sexploitation".

Coogan's Bluff is mentioned on the Pan Am Building Wikipedia page as one of several film to feature the skyscraper. One of the actresses in the film is called Susan Clark. She was born in Sarnia in Canada - a place I've only ever heard of once before as the hometown of a girl called Kelly who I met on a group holiday in South America that I took in 1998. She was lovely. Her catchphrase was "better living through chemistry".

Kelly seemed to have arrrived in South America with most of the contents of her local pharmacy in her luggage. We laughed at her and her apparent dependence on all this medication but after a month of fairly vigourous travelling through Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia we had all taken advantage of something from her medicine chest. "Better living through chemistry" became a catchphrase of that holiday as also did the habit of inventing different names for each other which was started by two New Zealand vets who were also on the holiday who always called each other Ken. Their real names were Sarah and Michelle. They were very funny girls and I think of them whenever I hear the name Ken. I always hear it in my mind in a broad New Zealand accent - "Kin".

Coogan's Bluff also stars Lee J. Cobb. An actor I remember for two particular roles. He was the racist bigot in 12 Angry Men and he was also in The Virginian - a western TV series that was shown on British televison in the sixties and seventies. Good wholesome family viewing.

The Virginian was played by an actor called James Drury - a name that has always stuck in my mind because I think I watched a lot of episodes of The Virginian as a small child and his name was very prominently featured in the opening titles as if he was BIG STAR. At the time I thought he must be the most famous man in America. I don't recall seeing him in anything else but he appears to have had a reasonable acting career and also worked in the oil and gas business. He has a son who is a keyboard player who worked with The Eagles and is currently with Whitesnake - a band that has had many, many, many lineup changes over the years.

Whitesnake was one of my favourite bands as a teenager. It was founded by David Coverdale who became something of a poodle rocker in the 80s - I went off them then. I always like the more rock/blues-influenced early albums. David Coverdale was born in Saltburn which is a small Victorian seaside resort in the north of England a few miles from where I grew up.

Sullivan Ballou

2011-05-13T23:13:00.002+01:00

I remember watching The American Civil War documentary the first time it appeared on UK TV and it's been good enough to reappear occasionally over the years as well as being available on DVD (see it if for some reason it has passed you by in the last 21 years). I never fail to watch an episode if it appears in the schedules.

Beautifully narrated, comprehensive, and full of first hand accounts of events it's still one of the finest and most moving pieces of television I've ever seen.

Today, on the radio, I was reminded of one particular excerpt from the series. It's a farewell letter from a volunteer major to his wife days before he was due to go into battle. You run out of words to describe it but it's touching, eloquent, heartfelt and heartbreaking. Doubtless there were many other letters like it (maybe even finer ones) that did not survive but you can only work with what is left and this is, I'm sure, about as appropriate and relevant as any. Spare yourself three minutes and listen to it but please do not be put off by the silly 30 second intro.

That TV series also introduced me to some great voices. I keep thinking about doing a blog post about great voices but I can never think of a way to present it without just showing a bunch of YouTube links which is just lazy. This series heavily featured Shelby Foote and Garrison Keillor.

If the message is important or you hope people will listen, you need to deliver it through the right medium; I sometime think people forget that. A good speaking voice has given hope to many a lost cause and it perhaps correspondingly has also given excessive creedence to bad ones - but there you go, some you win, some you lose.

Less is More

2011-04-20T20:13:00.003+01:00

At this time of year the UK enters its annual sweet spot of public holidays. Most countries spread their public holidays throughout the year. In the UK we're a little top-heavy and squish most of them into the first half of the year.

This year we have four days off in a period of seven working days. Woo and indeed hoo. First we have Easter Friday and Easter Monday, then at the end of next week we have another Friday off for the royal wedding (neither I nor the BBC it seems can decide if it's Royal Wedding or royal wedding) and then the following Monday is just a regular bank holiday. We have another day off at the end of May. That makes for two four-day weeks with a three-day week between them and another four-day week a few weeks later.

We have only one public holiday from the end of May until Christmas - a barren time for the wage slave.

Forward thinking types have planned ahead for this and apparently two million of us are fleeing the country in the next week - many I suspect wishing to be out of the country for the wedding.

I tend to favour understated decoration. Less is more. Below is Regent Street in Central London. One of the most elegant streets in the country; a fact confirmed by its premium price and location on the Monopoly board. Do you think they've gone a bit too far and turned it into what looks like a cheap souvenir shop?

I'd Like to Officially Apologise for....umm...Everything :)

2011-04-07T21:33:00.004+01:00

In recent years there seems to have developed a fashion for national governments to apologise for acts committed by their country throughout history. The descendents of the perpetrators of an injustice apologising to the descendents of those against whom the injustice was perpetrated.

The British have a long history of imperialism and many events in our history we should probably rightly not feel proud of. But I'm not sure of the significance of these apologies or what they are meant to achieve.

The latest of these involve the Prime Minister David Cameron accepting Britain's responsibility for "many of the world's problems" and in this particular case the poor job we did in 1947 in the partitioning of India and Pakistan. As the article points out, in recent years we've also apologised for famine in Ireland in the 19th century, our participation in the slave trade and to children that were shipped to Australia during the middle half of the 20th century. The comment in the article “This is typical of the UK’s schizophrenic relationship with former colonies where it is both proud and embarrassed about its past." I think is very accurate.

Where India/Pakistan and Australia are concerned I see the significance as there are still many people alive who were wronged and to whom an apology will be relevant but I don't detect in these often very cautiously worded apologies that they have anything more than soundbite relevance. There's an element of political grandstanding to them that suggests to me that the politician offering the apology just feels a little judicious faux contrition about events long gone by will ease the passage of the more immediate objective they might currently be trying to achieve.

There is also the way that we attempt to project 21st century morality onto people and the way they acted sometimes hundreds of years ago. Many people find it difficult enough to compare their own outlook on the world with that of their parents or grandparents so how we can project back the way we think now onto people hundreds of years ago bemuses me.

I'm not sure I'm the right person to judge this situation. I'm the product of an education that taught us that the British brought a lot of good to the world by their activities and whilst I'm not dumb enough to accept that is completely true I don't think everything we did was universally bad either. As far as I can tell, children today are taught a rather different version of history to the one I learnt. I have, in recent years become increasingly uncomfortable about the way we always seem to be front and centre and first at getting involved in events currently taking place around the world. There is still a strange mindset in this country that believes British diplomacy - either verbal or on the end of a terrifying piece of military hardware - is more even-handed than most other countries are capable of administering which I think is a dreadful arrogance.

You can't rewrite history and you also cannot with any accuracy work out how the world would have turned out were certain events not to have taken place. The world, for better or for worse, is the way it is now and apologising for events gone by is not going to change them nor is it going to change the current circumstances that those events created.

Are there whole nations and peoples still out there harbouring resentment about events from history? If there are, I'm not sure an apology is going to help that nor will it give them the "closure" that we are so often told they crave when one of these apologies is offered or sought.

I'm not saying we are blameless, I'm simply not sure these mealy-mouthed reversals that it now seems fashionable to hand out will achieve anything and the more that it happens will inevitably mean that each apology is a little more devalued than the previous one.

The world is not perfect now but it is better than it was then (whenever "then" was). We should think to the future and how to improve that and stop thinking we can change history by apologising for it.

Peppermint, Camomile or Raspberry...

2011-04-05T23:52:00.004+01:00

Why are some hotels such unsatisfying places to stay? They have the novelty and excitement of being somewhere else in the world which instantly endears me to them but generally their claim to make you feel at home makes me feel exactly the opposite. They manage to create the most unhomelike experience you can possibly imagine. They offer things that I never get at home (because I don't care for them) and all the creature comforts I do want from home, they manage to reproduce in a strangely unsatisfying manner.

Let's start with the basics. Hotel beds. Who still uses sheets and blankets at home? Not me. And nobody I know does either. My mum was a bit of a radical back in the early 70s when she introduced duvets to the family home but since then they've become the norm in just about every home I know. But hotels still persist in giving you a bed made up with sheets and blankets. The first thing I do to a hotel bed is pull the whole thing apart so the covers do only that - cover me. I don't enjoy being clamped into a bed with sheets and blankets strapped across me as tight as a drumskin.

The TV. Why are the batteries in the hotel TV remote controls always just about one millivolt short of being completely flat? I suppose people pilfer the batteries if they're any good...I have no idea but hotel TV remotes never work quite right. Hotel TV channels? Who actually watches CNN when they're not imprisoned in a hotel room? Nobody I know does. When was the last time somebody asked you over the watercooler if you saw that show on CNN last night? Yet it's piped into every hotel room in the world as far as I can tell, churning out their 30 minute looping diatribe of flypast news reporting. The only pleasure is watching news from your home country being misreported or misinterpreted by the reporter. Movie channels? The best you can hope (?) for is the latest Adam Sandler vehicle and some generic globalised soft porn.

Tea and coffee-making facilities in every room boasts the literature. Yes, that'll be a tiny limescale-encrusted kettle with a lid that’s impossible to open and when it is open you can’t get it under the tap in the bathroom so you have to fill it via the bathtub. It will take 10 minutes to boil half a pint of water. They then supply you with a few sachets of lo-grade instant coffee or bloody Liptons Yellow Label teabags. If my home ran on a 200 dollar a day budget then it would have a NASA designed kettle and the finest coffee I could buy. My home runs on about 10% of that budget and I don't have to scrimp on the coffee or the peripheral electrical appliances.

The bathroom. Have you ever tried to take a shower and use a hotel supplied bar of soap? There are two types. They're either the size and shape of a large pebble or alternatively appear to be modelled on slightly chunky credit card. Both are deeply unsatisfactory if your preference is still to use a bar of soap to wash - which mine is. Give me a large family bar of soap and I’ll use it for the duration of my stay so you don’t have to replace it every day and it doesn’t need to be made by a goddamn Parisenne parfumerie. I’ll probably bring my own shampoo (no jokes about what a bald guy needs shampoo for, I just still happen to use it). I cannot comment on hotel hair driers as I have no need of them but I know many women that do pass comment on them and it is rarely complimentary.

The breakfast. Don't try and present me with what you claim to be an authentic English breakfast if you have never actually seen an English breakfast, and trust me, most hotel chefs around the world have never seen a proper English breakfast. British cuisine may have a pisspoor reputation but an English breakfast, properly done, is a life affirming joy. Fat juicy pork sausages, proper cured bacon, eggs (fried, scrambled, or joy of joy, poached) and real HP sauce. Eggs should be prepared on demand - you cannot keep eggs prepared in the above manner and keep them in some sort of warming device – their condition deteriorates rapidly in such an environment.

If you’re really going to go for it an English breakfast can also include mushrooms, fried tomatoes, kidneys and black pudding (personally I think black pudding is disgusting but it’s an essential colour in the English breakfast spectrum). Beans are eaten at teatime when you come home from school and are served on toast – not at breakfast. And Mr. Hotelier, if you really want to go authentic English at breakfast time then how about a kipper or some kedgeree? Delicious.

Hotel toasters? They are usually the size of a small filing cabinet and look like they cost a fortune yet seem unable to do much more than heat, or at best, slightly discolour the bread.

Coffee? The world has become addicted to weak milky coffee. Thanks Starbucks ya bastards. I like coffee that stings my eyeballs when I drink it. You can’t get it any more unless you’re in Paris, Brussels or Rome. Tea? We English are admittedly a bit quirky about our tea but tea the world over should be prepared with boiling water. Yes, BOILING. You can’t make tea with water below 95 degrees. Most hotels seem to consider anything exceeding about 60 degrees qualifies as “boiling”. Breakfast tea should be black Assam. If I ask for tea I don’t expect the response to be “Peppermint, camomile or raspberry sir?” These are not even teas – they are infusions and should be given their correct nomenclature. And stop calling me sir as well - I don't get that at home either.

The truth is of course that not even hotels in England will attempt a breakfast spread like the above. Some top hotels will make a decent stab at it though. I think the full-on, heart attack on a plate English breakfast died out in Edwardian country houses some time before the First World War started.

I would actually prefer a local breakfast when abroad. When in Rome ‘n’ all that.

I love to travel – business or pleasure. I actually don’t mind staying in hotels mainly because they are not home and that means I’m somewhere else in the world – hopefully somewhere fun and interesting. What I resent is hotels telling me that they are like my home when I find it hard to believe that they are like anyone’s home. They should market themselves as not being like my home and I would like them even more.

News P*rn

2011-03-21T21:07:00.003Z

I used to keep up with current events. I still do but I’m getting more and more disillusioned with the way in which it is presented. It’s becoming harder and harder to distinguish facts from rhetoric and separate detail from speculation.

News used to be reported as facts. A sombre individual sat behind a desk and read out a concise and crisply edited statement of events. An expert correspondent might be drafted in to give an opinion. A location report might also be included; again, presented with the emphasis on the facts.

Now with rolling 24 hour news channels you need more than facts. You have to sustain a drama as well. Even when nothing is happening you have to give the impression something is happening, or is about to happen.

This has reached its nadir in Japan where the distressing scale of human suffering should be enough to confine any self-respecting presenter to simply report facts and observe events. But no, it’s not enough. I’ve seen some reports where the broadcaster seems to be positively salivating at the prospect of a nuclear meltdown. There now seems almost tangible disappointment in their reports that the situation may be coming under control. They all know that “Disaster averted” is nowhere near such a good headline as “DISASTER!!!!” Some reporting has bordered on the grotesque, such is the voyeuristic and salacious manner in which it is delivered. Ocasionally a scientist will be brought in, ostensibly to add technical detail, but they're rarely given a chance to answer anything more than "When's it all going to BLOW UP?"

Not even the studio-bound newsreader is expected to just read the news. They now put emphasis and intonation into the reports that make them sound like they’re reading a bedtime ghost story to a ten year old rather than simply reporting the news. Whilst the words may be impartial, the presentation style tends to quickly expose the political or editorial opinions of the TV station or newsreader.

I don’t want my news as melodrama or simply used as a vehicle for the presenter’s ego. I want it as facts. Is that too much to ask?

In The Dark All Cats Are Grey...

2011-02-24T16:51:00.002Z

Eight reasons for taking an older woman as a mistress...according to Benjamin Franklin.

1. Because as they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better stor’d with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreable.

2. Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility. They learn to do a 1000 Services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all Friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman.

3. Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produc’d may be attended with much Inconvenience.

4. Because thro’ more Experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. The Commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Affair should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclin’d to excuse an old Woman who would kindly take care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health and Fortune among mercenary Prostitutes.

5. Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.

6. Because the Sin is less. The debauching a Virgin may be her Ruin, and make her for Life unhappy.

7. Because the Compunction is less. The having made a young Girl miserable may give you frequent bitter Reflections; none of which can attend the making an old Woman happy.

8. They are so grateful!!

The full transcript of the above can be found here - a website I thoroughly recommend.

Forbrydelsen, aka The Killing

2011-02-21T21:06:00.003Z

If you want to lose a weekend - in the way I have just done - then can I suggest there is no better way to lose it than by watching the first 10 episodes of Forbrydelsen (UK title - The Killing) which is running on the slighlty off-radar BBC4 arts channel here. I had to watch ten episodes in a row (thank god for catch up TV) to get up to present events and I have the next 10 episodes to look forward to - a double episode every Saturday night.

A colleague alerted me to this Danish serial which follows, one day per episode, the 20 days following a murder inquiry into the death of a teenage girl. I guess it borrows from 24 (which I've never watched) but it's the most dramatic piece of television I've seen in ages. It's dark, brooding and absolutely gripping.

Every one of the characters is brilliantly formed and developed as the series progresses. I really can't choose a standout performance but, if pressed, it would be Theis, the tortured father of the murder victim and played by Bjarne Henriksen. The central character, Sarah Lund, played by Sofie Gråbøl is also pretty good.

If, by some remarkable fluke, you have seen this series then please do not comment on how it might end as I'm determined not to Google this and find out what happens although the anticipation is almost unbearable.

And no, the subtitles do not detract from the drama although I suppose you might get more from it as a native Danish speaker although it'd be hard to see how as it's pretty much perfect already.

Fried Ego

2011-01-01T22:31:00.003Z

An earlier comment provoked me to think a little harder about something I said but I'm going to stand by my original opinion which is approximately thus - are we the person we think we are or are we the person people perceive us to be?

I'm sure this is an idea that's been kicked around by many people smarter than me but it occurred to me a long time ago, mostly I guess through personal experience.

I think we all imagine ourselves to be a little misunderstood. People are rarely as confident and self-assured as they might appear. Whilst I tend to avoid moments of solipsism which I mostly find to be rather self-indulgent, it is human nature that we tend to look inward rather than the reverse. We believe we have a fairly good grasp of the kind of person we are yet we are confused sometimes by the way people react to things we say or do. The only real conclusion to be drawn from that is that despite the impression we think we give off, we appear to be giving off a different version of ourself to others.

I can't think of particularly good examples but we're all familiar with the bulllying and aggressive businessman who's rather too keen to profess to actually be a pussycat who hates confrontation. Whatever he may think, people see a bully and act accordingly. He might actually enjoy the reputation and may seek even to encourage it but he's also anxious to suggest there is another side to him.

You might also find yourself in conversation with a relative stranger and they make a statement from which they are obviously seeking or expecting your approval and you think to yourself, at what point did I suggest I might be sympathitic to the point of view being presented to me?

The outcome of all this is that despite who you think you are, people react pretty much exclusively to their interpretation of how they see you. I contend, if your life is defined by your interactions with others - and this is the world that we live in - then other people's impression of you is far more significant than your own impression of yourself. The outcome of this is that you are defined in the world by the opinions of others and not by your own.

I don't want this to sound like I spend my nights tormented that I'm constantly misunderstood but I do sometimes wonder why people react in a certain way. Yes, we all have preconceptions and there are many experiments to show that our preconceptions can easily override evidence that utterly contradicts those preconceptions yet we continue to believe our preconceived idea to be the right one. That is more about opinions than impressions.

So, if you follow my rather random thoughts there, I think we are primarily the person that people see us as, and not really the person we see ourselves as. The hard truth is that whatever you think of yourself, people do not react to that, they react to what they think of you. And although there is also - depending on individual circumstances - a higher or lesser element of self-determination in our lives, the reality is you can't usually get through it without others and they will see you as they find you, not how you find yourself.

Once in a while, you find a person who can clarify your thoughts even better than you can and they actually understand you better than you understand yourself. As a young man in my twenties I was exquistely analysed and dismantled by an ex-girlfriend. She read me like a damn book. It made me think about how I am perceived and how subtle the process of being misunderstood can be. The relationship foundered but I told her then, and subsequently - very gratefully - that nobody ever did that to me and I was I hope a better person for what she did. I don't know if it ever helped me in the future - only others can be the judge of that.

A la Recherche...

2010-12-20T21:56:00.003Z

It has long vexed me that if you chip away at the hard, flinty exterior of my heart you are are only likely to encounter a hard, flinty interior. I know this because this is what people tell me.

People don't change and so perhaps I should accept this is the way that I am - because that's the way people see me - I don't think I'm as impenetrable as that but you are the person that people see you as, not how you see yourself.

So at this time of year - or whatever time of year you find appropriate - I urge you to embrace those that you love because people fade away without you noticing. It's a slow process which is why you don't see it happening. Sometimes it's only when you look back that you notice they're gone and what was unsaid will now forever remain that way.

Nuff said - have a wonderful Christmas. Remember those who have touched you and try to reciprocate in some small way. It will be noticed. I embrace you all and wish you all that wish for.

Ashes to Ashes

2010-11-24T14:59:00.003Z

English is a wonderful language. If a word has not been invented in English to express something and a perfectly good foreign equivalent already exists, then we just pilfer that word and assimilate it into the language. So far Finnish has only contributed one word to the English language but I'm sure they will come up with more. It's "sauna" by the way.

Two of my favourite imported words are hubris and schadenfreude.

Hubris - this is generally described as the comeuppance experienced following a display of misguided confidence. The "unsinkable" Titanic is a good example of hubris (although not for the poor souls who died upon it).

Schadenfreude is a cruel (but often satisfying emotion) and is the ability to take pleasure in the misfortune of others. I don't think it's intended as a vindictively cruel word - you would not, I think, experience schadenfreude seeing someone endure unnecessary pain however you might experience it upon seeing a particularly irritating colleague caught outside in the office car park in a torrential rainstorm whilst you are watching from a position of warmth and comfort. You might even be in a position to help them....but choose not to.

On the eve of an Ashes series against Australia these words may well soon be seeing plenty of use.

There is a worrying excess of confidence regarding the prospects of the English. We've not won The Ashes in Australia in 23 years. This is no walk in the park. You do not beat the Australians in their own back yard. They are a great team and could easily duff us up.

This is a pre-emptive post to announce that despite the confidence of the English team, the English press and various TV pundits, I am not expecting anything but the toughest of scraps from the Australians. I would expect nothing less and I am confident they will deliver.

Here's to a great series.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about - it's cricket.

Winter's Bone

2010-10-29T09:02:00.003+01:00

Before 2010 is over, go and see this film and I promise you it will be the best you see this year.

A proper film. It has a real plot, and so doesn't need millions of dollars worth of special effects to disguise the lack of one. It has real actors who are completely, and in many cases, terrifyingly plausible - not the usual bunch of cute twentysomethings that pass for a movie cast these days. Just see it.

The Unbearable Shitness of Everything

2010-10-14T20:13:00.004+01:00

I have been very quiet lately. Apart from passing comment on my favourite blogs (you know who you are and your good humour has kept me sane - thank you) or a couple of one-line blogposts I've done very little to show my presence on here or anywhere. I've never been a particularly regular or frequent poster on this blog but I've tried to keep it going as I always think I might have something useful to say just around the corner.

The reason? My ability to concentrate on anything for more than about one minute has been completely destroyed. I've been a lifelong smoker and a month ago I stopped. I'd been building up to it in the preceding month and finally stopped for good on 13th September. I stopped about six years ago for about three months and somehow managed to start again. It was time to try again. I've had a few brief relapses in the last month but to all intents and purposes, and relative to the amount I smoked before, I've stopped.

Has anyone out there ever tried to give up smoking? It's fucking horrible. You spend every waking moment with a gnawing empty feeling in every part of your body. Add to this a constant headache (occasionally throbbing), relentless hunger, irritation, mood swings, disturbed sleep patterns, inability to concentrate and host of other crap.

Do you know what it's like to think, every two to three minutes of your waking day, of something you'd like to do, and then have to tell yourself that you cannot do it. I reckon I think about having a cigarette, and then denying myself that cigarette, several hundred times a day.

I've never been a heavy smoker but I've always been a regular smoker. I've been lucky I suppose. Smoking has never appeared to have any effect on my health. Yes I know, the consequences of smoking creep up on you slowly without you noticing but god it was good.

I enjoyed smoking. It allowed me to slow down, to pause for thought, and moments of quiet reflection are not, on the whole, a bad thing. Just because I enjoyed a smoke at the same time was just my way of getting through the day. I often think the world would be a better place if people had a compulsory 10 minute break from whatever thay are doing every few hours.

I absolutely understand people who dislike smoking. I completely accept a smoking ban in pubs, restaurants offices etc. I find it perfectly understandable that my smoking might be distateful to other people. Smoking doesn't make sense and I know it, but it's a personal choice and I choose (chose?) to do it.

What are the plus points of not smoking? They are precious few and hard to find. I get no pleasure from people complimenting me on how well I have done in the last month as quitting has not made me feel any better in ANY WAY AT ALL. I don't really respond to the "Well done" type of motivation any more than people telling me I shouldn't smoke motivated me to want to stop in the first place. I find all that a little irritating which is rather ungrateful of me but that's how my mind works on some things. I like to reach decisions on my own terms and not because of what other people expect of me.

Healthwise, for the most part I feel exactly the same except for one thing - I have gained 10kg in the last six weeks and I now look like Jabba The Hut. That's actually quite an achievement I suppose but not something I want to repeat over the next six weeks. I get no satisfaction from having stopped because I know having a cigarette would make me feel so good RIGHT NOW. Yes, RIGHT NOW.

I am getting nothing done at work. Either I have a compassionate employer who notices I'm somewhat off the pace recently and is giving me the benefit of the doubt...or I never did anything of use there and my whole career so far has been a sham. Which is worse? I really don't know.

So that's why I've been quiet. I'll try and get back into this but when you can't keep your mind on the same thing for more than a minute it's bloody difficult.

In Touch With My Feminine Side...

2010-10-07T18:49:00.002+01:00

A recent post at Really Quite Useful led me to urlai.com which is a website which will analyse your blog and tell you the age and gender it believes the blogger to be and a general analysis of the blog...

"kingofscurf.blogspot.com is probably written by a female somewhere between 26-35 years old. The writing style is personal and happy most of the time."

Malaysian Food in London

2010-09-23T15:59:00.005+01:00

And I can't go...dammit...love dat Malaysian food...

http://blog.city-eating.com/2010/08/trafalgar-square-to-host-malaysian-night-market.html

Giddy Heights

2010-09-16T19:32:00.002+01:00

Is a hard hat any use at all in this situation?

Sunday Morning Baking

2010-08-15T13:14:00.003+01:00

I just made a bakewell tart (no, that's not a euphemism). I think it looks rather good.

Quitting in Style

2010-08-11T17:53:00.007+01:00

This is a great way to quit your job...

Such a shame it turned out to be a hoax...

2010-07-16T12:15:00.002+01:00

I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Who do you write like? Find out here.

French Films

2010-07-14T19:58:00.003+01:00

I'd heard a few informal recommendations for a film. It's a French film and I'm a sucker for French films. I don't know who said it but it's a great quote "Hollywood makes movies, but only the French make films." I like to flatter myself I can speak a bit of French and it's fun to watch great films and also to congratulate myself occasionally when I can match the subtitles to the dialogue.

What these informal recommendations failed to point out to me was the one major thing in a film that would be likely to stop me watching it. The entire film is sung. Every. Single. Word.

So I settled down to watch it last night and pretty quickly realised I was in musical territory. But the singing didn't stop although it's not a musical in the normal sense of the word. But they just kept on singing. Every. Single. Word. I stuck with it.

And you know what? I loved it. I've never watched such a vibrantly coloured film. Every single shot seems to be immaculately constructed to stimulate the eye. Even the mundane is made to look gorgeous. It's minimal yet so rich. The dialogue is sparse but leaves you wanting so much more and imagining so much more. The plot is simple and perhaps even implausible but that doesn't matter.

Everyone is beautiful, particularly the women who are all exquisite beyond description. Catherine Deneuve is always beautiful but I'd never even heard of Ellen Farner and she seems to have disappeared without trace. How can somebody not have a Wikipedia page?

And it's got a stunning Michel Legrand (Windmills of Your Mind) soundtrack that just works on every level with the film.

The film? It's called The Umbrellas of Cherbourg / Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. The clip below is the closing scene. How can a simple petrol station be beautiful? I'll just say the two people in the second half of the clip (2 mins. to end) are, even by saying very little of any substance, perhaps regretting a greater relationship that circumstances dictated they were never to have. Watch it full screen. It's a feast for the eyes.

What Woman Could Resist...?

2010-07-01T14:52:00.001+01:00

Mmmmm take my hand
Come with me baby to Love Land
Let me show you how sweet it could be
Sharing love with me

Living in London

2010-06-23T21:52:00.003+01:00

I had to return a rental car to Central London at 10am on Sunday morning. I don't often find myself in Central London on a Sunday morning at this time of day and it seemed foolish just to go home so I thought I'd make the most of it and go for a bit of a walk.

You may think it's unusual that I live in London and say that I don't often find myself in this position but this is the reality for most Londoners. They tend to go into the centre for work and maybe go out once or twice in the evening after work but tend to avoid the place at weekends, and especially in the Summer.

The main reason for this is London is full of tourists at the weekend so the actual residents tend to stay at home or are content to go somewhere closer to home to find their fun. It's not that we dislike tourists but there is the distinct feeling that, when thrown into this collective polyglot maelstrom you rapidly become part of it and end up feeling, rather uncomfortably, like a visitor in your own house which has been strangely taken over by foreigners.

It's funny that most Londoners, when they have vistors from abroad or from out of town, are at a loss with what to do with them. Vistors arrive, goggle-eyed and anxious to see the sights but their hosts can think of nothing more uninvigorating than visiting tourist attractions in their own city.

It's a constant source of amazement to Londoners why anyone would want to visit Madame Tussauds or the Tower of London. Sure we'll take you on The London Eye and take you to our favourite pub and maybe even a visit to the theatre but likely as not, we'll send you out of the house in the morning with a tube map and a prepaid Oyster Card and tell you to go off and find your own entertainment and be home in time for tea.

This, I admit, is a poor state of affairs. We live in one of the world's greatest cities yet feel like strangers there at the weekend.

What did I end up doing on Sunday morning? Well, I walked along Oxford Street - the shops were closed at that time on a Sunday morning. I wandered down a few side streets I was unfamiliar with - London is big and there are plenty of these. I then went down Regent Street to Piccadilly Circus, then into Leicester Square which was already crowded and then down towards Trafalgar Square where I dived into the National Portrait Gallery which I have never visited in all the time I've lived here.

The National Portrait Gallery is crammed with about 500 years worth of mostly paintings and a few photographs of variously, royalty, aristocracy, military heroes and assorted other great and good characters who have made contributions to the nation. Explorers, scientists, writers etc. You get the idea. Whilst the various realisations were interesting enough and I learnt a great deal reading the condensed history of each picture I have to report that this nation is founded on a spectacularly unattractive gene pool. The men looked invariably portly, humourless and brutish and the few women portrayed were variously bug-eyed, doe-eyed or cross-eyed. I actually find cross-eyed women incredibly attractive but I'm prepared to admit I may be unique in this particular peccadillo.

I spent a good two hours in there and despite the slightly negative sounding above paragraph I rather enjoyed it. I actually behaved like a tourist, enjoyed the paintings (not so much the 20th century stuff) and believe I blended in quite nicely with all the other visitors, none of whom were from London. I then went walking again - Trafalgar Square, The Strand, Covent Garden, Charing Cross Road before hopping on a bus to go home as I was getting hungry.

I wonder if this feeling of mild alienation in your own city is common to urban dwellers all over the world or is it unique to London. I'd be interested to know. Whatever happens, next time I have visitors I promise to make more of an effort.

Holidays

2010-06-10T22:03:00.003+01:00

I'm braw scunnered wi' London so I'm awa' tae Scotland fir th' next ten days.

Fare thee well. Back soon.

Fantastic Service

2010-06-07T18:52:00.002+01:00

I'm impressed.

My wonderful dentist (I must blog one day about her wonderfulness sometime) recently referred me to a hospital specialist to investigate a tiny lesion in my mouth that would not go away. The hospital consultant duly inspected it, pronounced it a minor and treatable condition and said she would send me a letter in a few days time with a fuller diagnosis pending a few tests they had to run. The comprehensive and well written diagnosis duly arrived a few days later explaining I needed a prescription which I would have to collect from my GP (family doctor).

I dropped off the letter at the GP's surgery a few days ago and duly collected the prescription this afternoon and took it to my local pharmacy which is actually a major chain store with a branch in every town in the country. They told me they did not have the medicine in stock but they'd order it and I could collect it a few days later.

The pharmacy just 'phoned me (I didn't even know they had my number) to say the product I needed was no longer available. My mind raced ahead at this point and I thought to myself I'd probably have to go back to the pharmacy, collect the unfilled prescription, then take it back to the doctor, I'd probably have to make an appointment, the doctor would then have to sort out another prescription and then I'd have to go back to the pharmacy to have the new prescription filled. Tiresome but you kind of expect this sort of thing.

Not so. The nice lady pharmacist said she had already 'phoned my doctor and they had agreed an alternative treatment. The pharmacist would personally go to my doctor tomorrow, collect the new prescription on my behalf and I would just need to go back to the pharmacy any time after midday tomorrow to collect the treatment.

Isn't this a fantastic level of service and all for the state-regulated cost of my prescription of £7.20 (about $10 US)?

It has restored my faith in our much-maligned state-run health system and also given me a nice feeling about the good people at Boots as well.

South Africa 2010

2010-06-06T21:12:00.004+01:00

Well, we're one week away from the mildly interesting but on the whole, mostly risible spectacle that is the football World Cup. There will be some good, possibly wonderful football - I really hope so. There will certainly also be a lot of average or poor football as well. I'm mostly indifferent to the game but can appreciate the skill and pleasure it can bring. However off the pitch - and very often on - the situation is becoming faintly ridiculous and often rather unpleasant.

Teams rarely lose gracefully. Very few coaches will state in the post-match interview that they were beaten by a better opposition. They will usually complain that the referee made a bad decision or that an opposing player cheated to score a crucial goal. Being a bad loser is rarely considered unsporting. It is expected.

It's a cliche that football can bring out the best in people. A little bit of patriotism is good but this can easily descend into jingoism, xenophobia and simmering, ill-informed resentment.

England have a few teams we traditionally consider our greatest rivals. The French are traditionally disliked, often for no other reason I can fathom other than they are French. We consider we saved them in two World Wars (singlehandedly you might believe if you read some of the rhetoric written in the popular press) and some people seem to expect them to therefore simply roll over and let us win. Some will claim a lack of fighting spirit is an inherently flawed trait of the French national character. This is in direct contradiction to the fact that France is the number one holiday destination for the English and for the three years and eleven months out of every four years that do not involve a World Cup we secretly admire the French for their nonchalance, indifference to authority and spectacularly good food and wine.

We consider Germany our greatest rival. Germans are invariably portrayed as unemotional automatons who play the game with ruthless efficiency. We consider that having beaten them in two World Wars (singlehandedly again) that it is our right to beat them at football. Interestingly, Germany are indifferent to matches against the English and usually somewhat surprised by the degree of emotion the English invest in a fixture against them. Their true rivals are the Dutch.

Argentina are particularly disliked. A war with Argentina (are you noticing a theme here?) in 1982 in which we drove a mostly poorly-equipped and demoralised conscript army out of The Falkland Islands means we now consider the Argentinian people and players mere pawns, manipulated by an inherently corrupt state. They are not and we are the fools for ever imagining this to be true. We played Argentina in 1986 and as a nation, we still resent a goal scored by one of their players in which he illegally manhandled the ball into our goal. This goal is replayed on television whenever Argentina is mentioned even if the subject is not football as if we want to imply that foul play is endemic in the Argentinian psyche. If one of our players had done the same thing to Argentina he would have been feted as a national hero. We lost again to Argentina in 1998. David Beckham was personally blamed for the defeat when he was sent off for retaliating against a foul on him. It was a harsh sending off resulting in some particularly nasty behaviour directed at the referee, the Argentinians and also Beckham whose effigy was hanged in public. To his credit, Beckham came back the following season and went on to become a hero for club and country and for that he should be admired. He could easily have just walked away but he was determined to prove he was a stronger man than many would wish to portray him.

Invaribly, because the press whip up an emotional and sometimes worryingly jingoistic fury, whenever we meet any of the above teams we lose against them. Anger and barely concealed hatred get the better of everybody and whilst passion and emotion are important in football, an excess of these usually produces poor football and the wrong result. We lose significant matches because of the ridiculous national pride we invest in them and rarely win them because we believe we can play better football.

By far the most ridiculous and contrived spectacle you will see in this World Cup is the sight of grown men weeping at the outcome of a fixture. If a team is defeated having reached a significant stage (usually any match beyond half way through the competition) their players will be expected to weep openly on the pitch after the final whistle blows. The supporters expect this or they will consider the players did not care enough about the outcome. The players oblige because fundamentally they are performers, it is expected of them, and they know a few crocodile tears now will enhance their reputation on their return.

The cameras will also scour the terraces for evidences of weeping supporters. Ever since the death of Diana, melodramatic and over-emotional displays of collective grief have become commonplace. Since genuinely distressing events are thankfully rare, major football matches are now used as a barometer of the national mood. Invariably politicians get involved as well.

This time the English team has an Italian coach. He seems a mostly unflappable, enormously sensible and pragmatic individual. His monosyllabic post-match pronouncements are beautifully concise, mostly due to his poor English vocabularly. This is refreshing in a game that is ridiculoulsy over-analysed. I hope, despite his limited lexicon, that he motivates the team to believe they're playing a game of football and not out there to prove anything other than that. This has been the downfall of previous English born coaches who believed football to be a metaphor for national pride and not just about simple, good, honest sporting endeavour.

I hope England do well in the World Cup. I hope we win. But it's only 22 men running around on a field playing a game. Nothing more, nothing less. It's about time a few people realised that.

Cricket is far more important.

Body Perspectives

2010-06-01T20:47:00.004+01:00

"Ever wondered why a man can look at an advert featuring a six-pack and laugh, while a woman might look at a photograph of female perfection and fall to pieces?" A mildly interesting opening line to an intriguing article about the different perspective men and women have on body images.

The basic premise is that women are constantly bombarded with pictures and magazine articles telling them how they can have the perfect body. This makes them vulnerable and insecure because they know they will probably never attain that body. It's not enough that their partner may love them them just way they are. In fact, being told "I love you just the way you are" whilst intended as a compliment from the man could easily be taken as an insult by the woman.

A man is in a more fortunate position knowing that although he may never look like Brad Pitt, his body is merely a machine. If he gets fat and out of shape then that can be fixed by exercise and that's as good as it'll get. He'll still not look like Brad Pitt but he's looking as good as he'll ever look. There's no pressure to achieve the unattainable.

It's a sad state of affairs and although I was aware of the above contradiction I'd never really thought about. Perhaps we haven't really moved on that much in the last thirty years. Society still places unreasonable expectations on women - probably even more now than ever, and men still get the easy ride.

It's rather more depressing to read some of the misogynistic views in the Comments section suggesting that women who are susceptible to this are shallow or stupid or lazy.

Read the whole article here but I don't suggest you bother with the 200+ comments - the ones I read didn't really add much value.

Election Retrospective Blogpost Part Three (The Last One)

2010-05-29T19:21:00.007+01:00

"No overall majority" is the correct definition of the outcome I believe. A hung parliament had been discussed in the run up to election day and now we had one. Despite it being on the cards, the political commentators and pundits seemed ill-prepared for this and there were numerous people expressing varying opinions about what would happen next.

"Constitutional Experts" were consulted. This is kind of ironic because we don't actually have a constitution. We have a series of agreements, rules and statutes that are referred to at times like this and are often officially described as the "unwritten" constitution.

Some said the Conservatives had won the most seats and were the defacto winners and Cameron had to be the next prime minister. Others said another election would be required as a minority government cannot function effectively. Others said Gordon Brown had to walk the plank immediately as his position was untenable.

The actuality that was finally agreed was that Gordon Brown had to remain as prime minister and Labour remain as the goverment as nobody else was in a position to take the job and somebody had to stay and do it until a solution was found. This irked many people who were hoping to see Gordon Brown unceremoniously frogmarched out of 10 Downing Street as soon as possible despite it being correct that he should for the moment stay. They vociferously shouted that he was hanging on by his fingernails and was in denial by refusing to accept that winning less seats than another party actually constituted a defeat.

Cameron and the Conservatives, as the party with most seats would have the first shot at forming a government. This could take one of two forms. They either had to create a formal coalition with one or more other parties that would give them a majority of seats or they had to gain at least a formal agreement (officially called "confidence and supply") from one or other parties that they would support the Conservatives in votes in the House of Commons. This would allow them to operate an effective majority. If neither form of agreement could be gained then they could not form a goverment because all the other parties could (and probably would) always vote against them meaning they were a lame duck and a goverment, only in name. If no coalition or agreement could be made then The Labour Party, having gained the second highest number of seats, would try to make a similar arrangement that gave them a majority.

A coalition formed with The Labour Party taking the lead seemed to confuse a lot of people (myself included). How could a party that had not gained the most number of seats get together with other losing parties and be allowed to form a government? This rapidly became known in the media as the "coalition of the losers". However strange it seemed to people, this would be a legitimate government.

Simply by historical reputation alone the Conservatives are on their own in parliament. Almost all other parties of any size feel ideologically opposed to them. They are not natural coalition partners to anyone. The mathematically obvious arrangement they could make would be with the Liberal Democrats who although they had had a bad election had sufficients seats to give the Conservatives what they wanted. The Liberal Democrats however were formed by a merger of The Liberal Party and The Social Democrat Party. The Social Democrats were formed in the 80s by a splinter group of disilliusioned Labour politicians. Not natural bedfellows to the Conservatives at all. If the Liberal Democrats were to align with any other party it would ideologically be with The Labour Party.

Whilst the above is true, the reality is that our major political parties are much more closely clustered around the centre of the political spectrum than ever before. The Labour Party throughout Thatcher's period in office had made themselves unelectable through a combination of infighting and ill-conceived policies. Throughout Tony Blair's period in office the Conservatives had done pretty much the same thing and both parties, having realised this, had subsequently moved towards the centre ground. The centre ground was always held by the Liberal Democrats who I might uncharitably suggest gained a lot of their votes by just not being Conservative or Labour.

The weekend following the election saw a period of intense discussions and political dealings. These were centered around the initially unlikely possibility of some sort of arrangement between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Many people believed that even if the Liberal Democrat leadership could thrash out a deal with the Conservatives, their membership would find any sort of arrangement with them unacceptable.

The Liberal Democrats were also furtively but legitimately double-dealing with Labour and seeing what their options were if a deal could be made there. One of the Liberal Democrats non-negotiable conditions of any sort of arrangement with Labour was that it must not involve Gordon Brown as leader and ongoing prime minister. He was therefore required to announce his resignation as leader of the Labour Party in order to allow discussions to progress. The problem with making a deal with Labour was that the sums still did not add up. Even if they had an agreement they still would not have a majority unless they could could also gain the support of all the minor parties as well. The minor parties comprised of Scottish Nationalists, Welsh Nationalist and the parties representing Northern Ireland. You may be interested to know that there are a group of MPs representing some Northern Ireland constituencies who refuse to attend the House of Commons as their political objective is to unite with the Republic of Ireland. They therefore refuse to pledge allegiance to the Queeen and because of this, cannot take their seats in parliament. Even if they could have been lured into a coalition, their support could not be relied upon as they have never been seen in parliament. Getting this incredibly broad coalition to agree on anything would be almost impossible, and politically, probably highly unstable.

The outcome of the above wranglings was a full-on Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government. On initial assessment, The Liberal Democrats seem to have been the winners. They gained a poor third place in the election yet appear to have gained considerable political influence in the new government. It is also however speculated that if the coalition fails The Liberal Democrats will have the most to lose as people will believe they made the deal only to gain power and in the process abandoned their political integrity. It is thought that a small but influential hard core of both Conservative and Liberal Democrats parties are deeply uncomfortable with the coalition and may actively seek to undermine and destabilise it. The phrase "won't last till Christmas" is freqently bandied around.

It's often been said that the coalition we have is the worst possible outcome because nobody voted for this sort of compromise government. It's true to say that nobody voted for a coalition because coalitions do not appear on the ballot paper but I personally believe that, as with most of our elections, relatively few people vote for a party because they believe unconditionally with everything that party says. They generally vote for the party with the most number of policies that they agree with, or for the party that has the least number of policies that they disagree with. Politicians hate to think any vote for them is anything less than a ringing endorsement of everything they believe in but you only have look at potential voters interviewed on TV to realise that very few are blindly affiliated to one party alone. Many people vote for the party that they least object to or they vote for a party simly because it is not one of the other major parties. If all the people who voted believed passionately in the party that they voted for then party membership would be considerably higher than it is. Only a small minority of the population is actually a paying member of any political party. In that respect, I think many people find some sort of coalition acceptable as long as it acts in the country's best interest which is really all that you ask from a government in the first place.

My normal, intermittent, and non-political blogging will return shortly. Thank you for listening.

Election Retrospective Blogpost Part Two

2010-05-25T20:55:00.002+01:00

Come election day the pollsters were predicting a hung parliament. Well hung. This will require some explanation - stop sniggering at the back.

A General Election elects the Members of Parliament (MPs) for the House of Commons based in Westminster, London. The election is held across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which make up the United Kingdom. The House of Commons has approximately 650 MPs each one representing a constituency - a particular area of the UK. The winner of the most votes in each constituency wins a "seat" in the House of Commons.

There is a second unelected house called the House of Lords. Historically the House of Lords was supposed to be made up of made up of individuals who although unelected were expected to be sufficiently wise as to always operate in the country's best interest and act as a counterweight against the possible excesses of a rogue House of Commons. This has always been a controversial state of affairs and House of Lords reform is always a subject under discussion. Currently the House of Lords contains a mix of individuals nominated by the major political parties via the prime minister and the monarch( life peers), twenty six senior bishops (the Lords Spiritual) and a small number of hereditary peers (family connections). Yes, you heard me right, God has a say in our political process and also if an ancient ancestor of yours went into battle for the monarch and pleased him/her that may well entitle you through birthright to have a say in running the country. Controversial in a modern democracy I'm sure you would agree. Members of the House of Lords can be appointed to government posts and many are definitely politically aligned. Although life peers are chosen from across the political spectrum, as a whole The House of Lords is generally considered more inclined in favour of the Conservatives. But let's get back to the election.

In the UK we operate an electoral system called First Past the Post. This is actually a slightly misleading name but in the way of many things in the UK - we've always called it that so why change?

First Past the Post means the candidate with the most votes wins the seat. When the winner is declared, all votes for any of the losing candidates are effectively dead and lost. We don't do proportional representation (PR) which allows for the seats allocated in parliament to more closely represent the percentage of votes received nationally by each party. A system of PR has always been resisted by the Labour and Conservative parties as it has the potential to create a fractured parliament of minor parties. First Past the Post almost always creates an outright winner and this should make for a stable government. We don't want to end up like Italy which changes its government more often than the average Pom changes his grundies. The mathematicians amongst you will realise that under this system it is entirely possible that a political party could win a disproportionately higher percentage of seats relative to the percentage of votes they received as whole across the country. This happens. It also means that a smaller party who may gain perhaps five or ten percent of votes across the country wins no seats at all. The smaller parties consider this unfair and I can see their point. We have a long tradition of minor political parties and independent eccentrics trying their hand at getting elected. Even if they were to gain only 1% of votes across the country, PR would give them a small place in parliament but First Past the Post effectively shuts them all out.

At 10pm the polling stations closed and the exit poll was announced. The exit poll is the first indicator of how the election may pan out. On election day the media are only allowed to report on the barest of details concerning the events of the day. No politicians are interviewed and media speculation on the outcome is not permitted. A bit of a news blackout really which is a relief for the poor voter who's seen nothing but this for the previous month or so. The main news story reported on election day this year was actually about the leader of one of the minor political parties who was lucky not to get himself killed in a light aircraft accident - election day news reporting is rarely this exciting. The exit poll predicted a hung parliament.

To properly win an election a party must gain a majority. This does not simply mean they must win more seats than the second placed party. A majority means winning more seats than all other parties put together. First Past the Post makes this more probable than any system of PR. If a party wins more seats than anyone else but does not win a majority then this is a hung parliament and the shenanigans begin.

Come Friday morning we had a hung parliament. The Conservatives had won 306 seats, Labour 258, Liberal Democrats 57 and other parties gained 21. Politicians hate hung parliaments. Politics in the UK for the last 18 months or so have been dominated by two things. The failing economy and the way our MPs have claimed their expenses. As an electorate we had managed to upset almost all politicians in all parties. We had just reason to be proud of ourselves for delivering this ambiguous message to the political class who, because of the scandal over their expenses were viewed as little better than money-grubbing opportunists who seemed to think that charging for porn movies, garden landscaping, non-existent mortgages and state of the art plasma TVs were legitimate occupational expenses that should be financed for them by the taxpayer.

Trying to create a working government from this election outcome would mean the politicians would have to scrap it out like ferrets in a sack.

Final instalment later this week - if you want me to.

Election Retrospective Blogpost Part One

2010-05-24T21:03:00.003+01:00

I have a strange desire to relate an account of the recent General Election here in the UK. It seems to have piqued the interest of people around the world and unusually as voters, even we were quite interested in it this time.

For the first time in 13 years we've had a change of government. Prior to the 13 years of Labour we had 18 years of Conservative government. This actually says less about our ability to form stable long-term governments and more about the inability of non-governing parties to form an effective oppostion to an incumbent government. Invariably whilst out of power, opposition parties spent more time fighting within themselves rather than trying to form an effective alternative to the current ruling party.

This time the country was ripe for change. Gordon Brown coveted the job of prime minister all the time Tony Blair was in the role. When he was finally handed the job on a plate 3 years ago he proceeded, in the most part, to cock it up big style. Convinced that he would and could impose his vision he was unable to cope with people being underwhelmed by his plans. His stewardship was marked by ill-judged, knee-jerk reactions to events or indecisiveness at critical moments. Despairing at his falling ratings he succumbed to the PR people who tried to teach him how to smile and appear engaging and approachable. These were characteristics he himself admitted he had never possessed and believed were trivial and irrelevant to a man of substance such as he. When he tried it, small children hid behind the sofa in fear. Adults laughed out loud in derision. He was encouraged by his handlers to pontificate on the outcome of popular televison game shows and talent contests. His unfamiliarity with these subjects was painfully apparent.

The low-point of Gordon Brown's election campaign was meeting a woman who proudly declared she was a staunch supporter of his party but raised some reasonable questions about his policies during the brief opportunity she had to meet him. He reassured her of his resolute intentions and that he alone was the man best able to represent her in the years to come. Immediately out of earshot he described her to one of his advisers as a bigot. He had however forgotten he was still wearing a TV microphone and his "bigot" remark was replayed relentlessly throughout the rest of the campaign.

The Conservative opposition went into the campaign looking to capitalise on recent record ratings. A few months earlier the polls had predicted a landslide victory for their party. Despite having the most money to spend they ran a confusing and unremarkable campaign and their initial popularity steadily ebbed away. The Conservative leader David Cameron's privileged upbringing was constantly used against him calling into question his ability to relate to the lifestyle and needs of the ordinary voter.

Stuck in the middle were The Liberal Democrats. Perennial bronze medallists in every election campaign within living memory, they suddenly and unexpectedly became popular in the polls. Many people believed this popularity was simply down to them being neither Labour nor Conservative. The Liberal Democrats woke up on election day morning convinced that although they would not gain outright victory they were going to sweep up like never before and become the genuine third force in British politics that they considered their birthright.

OK dear readers - if you're still with me (and if you are, I take my hat off to you), I'll stop for now. I've set the scene. Later this week I'll describe how our electoral system works and how the above events panned out on election day. Betcha can't wait.

Real Weather

2010-05-19T20:07:00.002+01:00

Ever seen a swimming pool boil? If you can't watch it all, then at least watch the period between 1 and 2 minutes.

I hope they didn't leave the car out.

Please Don't Touch the Old Women

2010-05-18T19:21:00.002+01:00

Us Limeys never like to miss an opportunity to have a pop at the Americans. Personally speaking, all the Americans I've ever met have been charming and courteous and we'd do better to look to our own behaviour. The way the British behave abroad and their contempt for foreigners is a subject of constant embarrassment. As a body politic, the Americans are sometimes a little worrying but as individuals I have never had any reason to complain.

One of our favourite illustrations of American naivety concerns the film The Madness of King George III. It is frequently said that this was renamed for the American market as simply The Madness of King George lest those silly Americans would think it was a sequel and not worth seeing as they had missed out on part I and II. This is of course an urban myth but illustrates the level of our humour sometimes.

Renaming of films is an interesting subject and I recently came across a list of film titles which were renamed for (generally speaking) non native English speaking countries.

Here's a list of a few of them with the country in which the new title was used which I got from this month's edition of the fantastic Word magazine. See how many you can guess and then scroll down to see how you get on. I'll start you off with a few easy ones...

The Teeth of the Sea (France)
Is There a Pilot on the Plane? (France)
Night in the Cramped Forest (Taiwan)
Two Crazy Guys and a Lot of Curves (Spain)
The Sparrow Becomes the Empress (China)
Six Naked Pigs (China)
Shooting Towards Tomorrow (Japan)
Please Don't Touch the Old Women (Italy)
The Eighth Passenger (various countries)
Breaking the Ice (Spain)
Mummy, I Missed the Plane (France)
The Hitman is not as Cold as he Thought (China)

I bet you cheated. Here are the original titles....assuming they weren't renamed for the British market of course...

Jaws
Airplane
The Blair Witch Project
The Dukes of Hazzard
Pretty Woman
The Full Monty
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Producers
Alien
Happy Feet
Home Alone
Leon

Iron Man III

2010-05-12T08:14:00.003+01:00

They don't make 'em like they used us.....ground breaking special effects and bangin' choons...

Voting

2010-05-06T18:49:00.005+01:00

I've just been to exercise my democratic right, do my civic duty, or whatever other euphemism you like to use for the act of voting in an election.

I assume in the rest of the world it operates in mostly the same way. Schools, village halls and other public places are given over for the day and a little gang of people move into the building to administer the voting process. Here, I vote in the local primary school. It's always nice to go in there and see the world downsized by 75% so tables only come up to knee height and everything is conveniently to hand about 50cm off the ground. It's like I imagine it would be to visit Lilliput. Lovely.

We have notoriously poor levels of turnout for our elections. Many put this down to simple apathy and indifference to politicians and their dubious credentials. I think it's more likely that because of the system we operate here, if you are in a so called "safe seat" it's very likely you know who's going to win and therefore, if you're contemplating voting for anyone other than the likely local winner, there's actually not much point in turning up. In some constituencies it is often said that a tactically shaved monkey wearing the right coloured rosette will get elected. This I suspect keeps a good few people away from the whole malarkey.

But I think the government is missing an opportunity here. Betting. Why, when you place your vote can't you have a flutter on the outcome as well? Polling stations seem to be abundantly staffed with mostly bored looking people. I'll have a fiver on the nose on the LibDem candidate and a £2.50 each way punt on Labour. This way, even though I might be voting for a certain loser (that'll be my free bet), I might still win a few bob on the outcome. The odds may be pretty short in some places but it'll be like the Grand National. Everyone will have a go and everyone could be a winner. The turnout will be up and the incoming government will get a few quid out of the process - and looking at our current state of our economy, they're gonna need it.

Because it's like the Grand National when even the most ill informed punter will want to waste their money you will get a fair number of people voting for probable losers. Little old ladies will bet on "that nice man with a pink hanky in his breast pocket". Astrologically challenged nitwits will perhaps bet on number four on the list "cos Mars is in my orbit this month and it's fourth closet to the Sun...man" and so forth. This improves the odds for the hardened gamblers who are betting on winners and also should improve the returns to the government. Turnout would rocket up to 90% in a trice I reckon.

In some parts of the world voting is compulsory. Here you don't have to if you don't want to. In the one the part of the world where I do know you don't have a choice, the entire country is populated with habitual gamblers anyway.

British Pathé

2010-05-04T19:02:00.003+01:00

I'm not a big surfer (of the web or the aquatic variety). With the former I like to think I don't have the time and tend to think I should be doing something more worthwhile and with regard to the latter, I am geographically and climatically disadvantaged.

I have a few websites I visit regularly - news and journalism sites, my favourite blogs, inevitably wikipedia and youtube and a few others. However, a website really has to grab me in order to make me consider making any sort of long term commitment.

Via a link in a blog I found over the weekend I landed on the British Pathé archive. I'm completely hooked. Pathé was originally a French company that came up with the idea of cinema newsreels. These were short films reporting a summary of the week's news or perhaps just something interesting to report from around the world. These were shown before the main cinema feature film and each newsreel was preceded by the distinctive Pathé rooster crowing.

The original link I was directed to is simply of a housewife visiting various shops and going about her daily business in an unremarkable area of north London in 1948. It's three years after the end of the Second World War so food rationing is still in place. The interesting thing to me is that it is my part of north London and the street she lives in (Crescent Road) adjoins the road where I currently live. I can see now somebody walking around the same streets that I walk around now, but 62 years ago. The street layout is exactly the same now as it was then. The Town Hall is unchanged. Incredibly, the fishmonger is still a fishmonger. I don't suppose it's of much interest to most people but here it is.

Housewife's Story

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I tried a few other searches and found some footage from 1938 of the village I grew up in, 240 miles from London.

Gypsy Farm Fair - Yarm - Yorks

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The fair still visits Yarm every year although it's now a fun fair with no horse-trading but I remember us being told at school about the original purpose and history of Yarm Fair but until now I'd only ever seen a few old photographs.

The archive spans the globe. I encourage you to try a few searches, maybe where you live, or a subject that interests you and I'm sure you'll find something to watch. The archive is comprehensive so there is some really weird and eclectic (and yes, sometimes plain boring) stuff in there but the good stuff is absoutely gripping. The quality is often poor and sound often missing but to me, that just proves they've saved everything which is what a proper archive should be. It should be comprehensive and not selective. I've lost a lot of hours in here this weekend.

Legs II

2010-05-02T11:11:00.002+01:00

D'oh! It's obvious isn't it. This is the reason for the unusual leg activity described in my previous post....

Legs

2010-04-30T19:25:00.003+01:00

We Brits love a bit of tradition and eccentricity. With an election coming up next week we like to put the candidates through their paces. Over the centuries a few tests have been devised for prospective prime ministers, some to test their ability to deal with a crisis and others to simply provide entertainment for the masses to sustain us through the relentless boredom of a political campaign.

In order to level the playing field they are obliged to tramp around the country for a month making mealy-mouthed promises and insulting the intelligence of their prospective voters. Most politicians can straddle this particular hurdle with ease. One of the other tests is that they must witheringly dismiss the views of one of their core voters but try and do it without the aforementioned voter actually finding out. Gordon Brown failed this test absymally earlier this week

The reason for one of the more entertaining tests has long been forgotten and quite why we have retained it is lost on me but it was on TV last night. Each prospective candidate must prove to the electorate that he/she can stand on one leg for a period of five minutes.

Here you go....

Poor show by Cameron on the left there but they're allowed a minute or two to prepare for this test and Cameron appears to be looking for divine inspiration before starting his legathon. I'll try to publish more illustrations of our arcane democratic process over the next few days.

Volcanic Ash Cloud - Breaking News

2010-04-19T19:04:00.002+01:00

The crisis deepens. The novelty of the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud is starting to wear thin with the chattering classes. UK reserves of Rwandan mangetout are running dangerously low. Cut flower supplies have been failing to get through. Kiwifruit have achieved a mythical status that was once only afforded to bananas during the second World War. There is talk of panic-buying but when people realise they can only panic-buy homegrown potatoes which they have absolutely no idea what to do with the frisson rather soon wears off.

The government has invoked the Dunkirk spirit and dispatched the Royal Navy to the continent in order to collect stranded holidaymakers who although happy to holiday in a country, as soon as they discover they can't get home start comparing the place to Beirut in the 1980s.

Whitney Houston, currently midway through an apparently career-destroying world tour was reduced to travelling on a ferry to get to Ireland in order to unravel her reputation even further. Oh the bravery.

Perspective

2010-04-15T20:02:00.003+01:00

Right now in the UK all aircraft are grounded until 7am tomorrow morning. That's everything. All UK airspace is closed. Nothing is flying in or out of UK airports. Nobody can even fly over us. I think this is rather cool.

Way up above the UK and a little to the left, out in the Atlantic Ocean is Iceland. One of their volcanoes went off and has sent up an ash cloud which is currently passing over the UK. Down here at ground level it's no big deal. As I came down the A40 this evening on my bike I got a whiff of what seemed like damp fireworks. I don't know if that was the ash cloud or whether there was something else going on. It is apparently way above us at about 11km up where the planes fly. Down here we have blue skies and a pleasant evening.

We're kind of lucky in the UK. We have a temperate climate, no volcanoes, and the ground is thankfully not prone to opening up or shaking unexpectedly as it does in so many other parts of the world. We don't get cyclones, hurricanes, monsoons or typhoons. We don't get landslides on the scale we see in other parts of the world. On the whole, nothing much happens. If it wasn't for the Gulf Stream which brings warm air and warmish water to our shores we'd have the same climate as Moscow which as you may know, is no fun at all.

Quirky little anomalies like today however are always an opportunity for the media to go into overdrive. Typically, if the temperature varies more than five degrees away from the norm for the time of year - which is frankly the best we can hope for in terms of excitement - newsrooms clear their schedules and reporters are sent across the land to inform us in the minutest detail of exactly what is (usually not) happenning.

What I like about events like this is that it shows us that the planet still runs us, we don't run the planet. We are simply passengers, mere specs of nothing, here for no significant amount of time and subject to the whims of far greater natural forces which, at a moment's notice can stop us in our tracks. We flatteringly call ourselves custodians of the planet but we're really nothing more than janitors with an overinflated opinion of ourselves.

Last night as I went to bed we were unaware of this impending event. This morning, a mere six hours later and the country is apparently in turmoil. It isn't by the way. By lunchtime tomorrow things will be back to normal and people will be back to complaining about the price of petrol and what colour to paint the garden shed

Our politicians and scientists would have us believe we can influence the behaviour of this giant lump of rock we live on as it careers through the cosmos. We can't. The best we can do is respect it, appreciate it, enjoy it and look after it as best we can, leaving it as tidily as we found it when we arrived and just hope, that while we're here, it doesn't do anything too nasty to us. And if it does, then it's nothing personal, it's called nature and we're simply a tiny little part of it.

As a species, we really need to get things into perspective.

And who the hell....?

2010-04-06T20:57:00.004+01:00

I work for a very large multinational corporation. I sit on a comfortable chair at a well sized desk in agreeable offices located in a business park on the outskirts of a moderately large town to the west of London.

We are well looked after. I think our employers appreciate we need a pleasant and comfortable environment in order to work and they are good enough to provide it. I work with pleasant, courteous and friendly people and I do my best to reciprocate their good nature. All in all, I can't complain and so I do my best not to. On the whole, we're a good crowd. We don't socialise together much but the office chit chat is stimulating and the place is refreshingly free of nutters, weirdos, creeps, lechers and the other types of ne'er-do-wells you often encounter in life. All good, nothing bad, I hear you say. This is true.

So what's my problem? What I cannot understand as I look around this large building of such a congruous group of people is which of them are unable to use a toilet in a competent and hygienic manner? When I have to make the ineveitable visit to the facilities I'm invariably pretty disgusted by what I find.

There is obviously a minority - but certainly more than just a few - who seem to have not yet mastered how to leave a cubicle in a condition just bearable enough for another person to use. Who the fuck are they?

There is of course the inevitable evidence of someone not being able to hit the toilet and managing to piss on the floor. Don't invite me round your place for dinner thanks. And of couse there's the usual skid marks. Why can't you use the bog brush provided and clear up the mess you leave? And who the hell thinks it's ok to leave a turd floating in the pan for the next person to have to confront? Don't you check after you've flushed that everything's gone? And who the hell feels the need to throw what looks like an entire roll of toilet paper down the toilet and not even bother to flush at all? Is this how you behave at home?

That's not all. I regularly visit the toilet to find somebody has broken the seat. I don't just mean that the seat has come off the pan, I mean the seat is actually broken....in pieces. This is a substantial piece of heavy duty hard plastic that you'd have to hit against something considerably harder (like a fucking brick wall or something) to break. But somebody regularly manages this. Seriously, you'd have to go in there with a big pair of boots and really kick off to cause this sort of damage. Who are you?

I've even gone in there and found discarded packs of half eaten sandwiches on the floor by the toilet. Who the hell feels the need to multi-task so much that they have combined having a eye-wateringly stinky crap with eating their lunch?

A year or two back, we were all asked to nominate, by secret ballot, people in the company who we felt made a real contribution to the organisation. Who do you think won? It was the woman who twice a day went around our campus of buildings and cleaned the toilets. She's not even a direct employee of the company but works for the cleaning contractors - goddamn it she certainly earned that bottle of cheap champagne. I can only think that there are a lot of people with a guilty conscience who voted for her.

Is everybody's workplace like this or is this just a British phenomenon?

I apologise for the overuse of the phrase "And who the hell" in this piece.

Just Walkin' the Dog

2010-03-27T15:20:00.005Z

The other day I said on someone's blog we lived in a less prurient and judgemental world. But as usual, once you make a statement like that, you're hauled up pretty short and fast when you find someone proving you wrong. On such matters of pith and moment the world turns.

Here in the UK there is a fashionable minor pastime of the slightly sexually adventurous called dogging. Dogging, and the exponents of the art, known as doggers, enjoy visiting local areas of natural beauty and indulging in sexual assignations with, generally speaking, whoever else might come along. No money exchanges hands. These are people live for the thrill of the moment. Video cameras are often involved to heighten the dramatic interest. Some people just come along to watch. It has been suggested in the popular press that a few minor celebrities are known to indulge in this particular hobby which doubtless adds a small frisson of excitement for the participants. It's all done by consenting adults and who am I (or anybody else) to judge.

Well, apparently a local council in the north of England feel they are in a position to judge. When the councillors discovered that a local area of woodland was being used for dogging they decided something must be done. You can just imagine the thought processes of petty local bureaucrats. They see something they don't like (it's usually not illegal but often frowned upon) and they will do anything they can to stop it.

In this case they decided the best thing to do was to cut down 6,000 trees. Yes, that's right. SIX THOUSAND trees. They were asked to justify their actions. As far as I can see from their responses, the exposure (as it were) of the doggers was a just a secondary reason for this drastic course of action (yeah right). The trees they say, were old, and in danger of falling down (What? 6,000 of them? At the same time?). They can be replaced with nicer trees. The Health and Safety people have been satisfied. Motorists can now drive safe in the knowledge that the trees alongside the road will not all suddenly fall down upon them.

It's amazing what lengths, even in these cash-strapped times, people are prepared to go to stop a few people having a quick knee-trembler in the bushes. It' s equally amazing and rather regrettable that these people are elected to an office which gives them a mandate to behave in this way but as they so often say, you get the politicians (ever silly little local village ones) that you deserve.

The two local coucillors quoted seem to share the same surname and I think, in small town politics, it's reasonable to assume they're Mr and Mrs. I bet they they don't go a-dogging on a Saturday night.

Darwen is a small, and as far as I can remember, rather dreary little place. Dogging is probably what passes for a pretty good night out in those parts. Unless you elect the type of local councillors who think it's their business to decide how a few of you should spend your valuable spare time.

Spring Has Sprung

2010-03-16T18:46:00.002Z

THe UK has finally lurched out of the longest spell of winter weather that most of us have known.

I finally got out on my bike at the weekend for the first time in about three months and today used it for the first time this year to go to work. Normally I'd expect to get out about once a fortnight through the winter months.

Now I don't claim to be an all weather motorcyclist - I don't feel I need to prove I can ride a bike through a blizzard or a thunderstorm - trust me, I've done it and it's not much fun.

My journey to work is about 45 miles (70km) and I start early so I'm out the door usually at about 6:30am. This means, as far as I'm concerned, that the weather has to be at least bearable at that time of day. This morning it was about 3 degrees and had crept up to about 5 degrees by the time I got to the office. If you're moving through air this cold at any significant speed the wind chill factor is pretty cold so you still need to wrap up and even if you do, after an hour or so the cold is starting to get into your bones.

The payoff of course is the ride home at 5pm when it was about 10-12 degrees. Clear, electric blue skies and a light chill on the air. This, I think, is about right for biking. You can still wear the proper kit and not overheat but you don't get too cold either. I'm entering that part of the year when the daily commute is something to look forward to.

Happy days.

Struck

2010-02-25T18:37:00.006Z

I'm not often moved by art - well not art of the paint and brush variety anyway - but as the doors opened and I stepped off the tube train this evening, right in front of me was a poster advertising an exhibition that's just opened at The National Gallery highlighting the work of Paul Delaroche.

The poster featured a close up zoom of what is obviously the major work featured in the exhibition. As soon as I saw the picture and the name Lady Jane Grey I knew what was being depicted. I've tried to reproduce the zoom in the jpg below.

For those of you not quite up to speed with your 16th century Eng. Hist., Lady Jane Grey was our shortest reigning monarch. She was on the throne, depending on how you interpret the dates, for between nine and thirteen days before being beheaded and that's all most people generally know about her.

Given that one is drawn to the eyes in any portrait work, seeing a painting where the main subject is blindfolded would, you instinctively think, detract from the effect but in this piece it absolutely is the effect.

Lady Jane Grey was it appears, something of a patsy. Her card was marked the moment the machinations of state got to work and decided she was to become queen at the age of only 16 or perhaps 17. Intelligent, elegant and sophisticated at a time when none of these attributes were particularly required, she appears to have been sanguine to her fate although you could look at the above picture for hours and wonder at what her state of mind might have been. Yes, you can say that there may be a great deal of artistic licence going on here but in the absence of photography 400 years ago, artistic licence was the order of the day. As was tradition, she was obliged to pay the executioner who then asked her forgiveness which she gave.

I am moved.

Where's the Remote?

2010-02-19T18:31:00.003Z

There are films you instinctively want to dislike before even seeing them. In fact, you often actively avoid them - they have all the warning signs that tell you they will be a Bad Thing. Inevitably these films creep up on you when your guard is down and you end up watching them. And you know, some of them ain't so bad. In some cases, good even. So I've tried to name a few of them that surprised me. It's an extremely subjective and judgemental list but it's my time I'm wasting here so I don't expect a hard time if you don't agree with me. It's my party and I'll blah blah blah if I want to.

In my case, they tend to fit into a few key categories.

Romcoms. If you actually don't want to dislike them then your inner snob will certainly tell you that you're far too clever to enjoy this kind of lo-brow papp. The law of media osmosis means inevitably you end up seeing most of them and dammit, I suppose there are a few out there that are not so bad.

Disney. Bleahh.

Issue films. Films you know are just itching to lecture and patronise you about some worthy subject. They tend to be issue-driven rather plot-driven, and seem to exist solely to crassly misinform you about some mighty subject such as....I dunno...war, cancer, mental illness, political suppression etc. You get the idea. What happens is, instead of you learning something about the subject, a few facts (and quite a few complete falsehoods) are wrapped around a cheesy melodrama and clunking dialogue and the film solely exists to sledgehammer you with somebody's highly personalised view of events.

Star vehicles. That is, films that seem solely to exist because they've got a notoriously two-dimensional actor who for some reason always brings home the bacon at the box office. Adam Sandler. Eddie Murphy. Steve Martin's entire body of work for the last 20 years. Etc.

Add to the above all Christmas movies, all made for TV movies, and all movies that are spinoffs from TV shows.

I'm a bloke. I like making top ten lists and stuff like that. Just remember, these are NOT my favourite films so I'm not some dolt who has some sort of oatmeal based substitute for brains. These are films that have just appeared in front of me and I frankly couldn't be bothered to switch channels or read a book so I just let them float past and was surprised that I really rather enjoyed them. None of them are great films in any sense of the word but they're all films that caught me on the hop and I'd probably waste a few hours watching again. And they're all better than the bloody Shawshank Redemption.

In no particular order and not with a great deal of forethought, here goes.....

Starship Troopers
I saw this in Ecuador for the first time. Rotten acting, plot and dialogue but I don't think this film was pretending to have those in the first place so no point in attacking it it because it doesn't. Mindless and entertaining fun. There are a lot of politicians out there who I suspect would be happy to run the world along similar lines.

Tin Cup
A Kevin Costner, golf-themed movie. It's got Don Johnson as well. What more is there to hate? Entertaining stuff.

LA Story
Steve Martin. I really don't know where to put him. He has made some truly awful films, and then been allowed to make a sequel that was even worse. There are sufficient people out there who will go and see him just because he's Steve Martin. This means he can sustain not only his own career but an entire segment of the movie industry dedicated to turning out really, really bad films. LA Story doesn't fit that rule. Utterly ridicules the LA media/celebrity lifestyle and the people who inhabit it.

Nobody's Fool
I'm not sure this film fits my rules because it's got Paul Newman in it and I'll watch him in anything. But what's Paul Newman doing in a film with Bruce Willis and Melanie Wassername? He must be just padding out his retirement. I'll try and pretend it doesn't exist in his greater body of work cos I know I'm going to be disappointed. With any luck it'll sink without trace and be conveniently forgotten. No, I had to watch it in the end cos it's got Newman in it. Phew, so relieved to discover it's actually very good.

Mercy Mission: The Rescue of Flight 771
The title says it all doesn't it? "Mercy Mission" - no subtlety there at all. It's a made for TV movie as well. A bad start on two counts at least. Mawkishly sentimental in parts but it'll keep you on the edge of your seat right up to the end. And it'll make you get out your atlas and try and find Pago Pago.

Bridget Jones's Diary
How can an American do a plausible English accent? Damn - extremely well as it turns out. Not only was the accent good - it was exactly correct for the social circles in which she moved. And like most actual Londoners, she was portrayed living in a poky little flat and not the spaciously converted warehouse/ballroom that most films would have us believe is the average city dwelling.

And Renee Zellweger is sexy as hell. She apparently gained 25 pounds in preparation for the role - which as far as I'm concerned made her just about perfect. Without those 25 pounds she loses every ounce of that sexiness.

Bad Santa
A Christmas movie. The worst possible premise on which to base a film. Has there ever been a good one? It's a Wonderful Life is ok I suppose but you just know it's going to have a happy ending so what's the point?

What you really want to believe is that underneath every in-store Santa, there is an incontinent, foul-mouthed, degenerate, drunken thief. Who likes to beat up little people. This film delivers.

Cool Runnings
Not got a lot going for it has it.....a Disney feature (as oppposed to animation) so it's on shaky ground already and carries the dreaded warning "based on a true story". You know this usually means it'll bear little or no resemblance to the original events and the Americans will always emerge as the heroic rescuers. Because of the Disney connection, it'll probably be sentimental, riddled with cliches and clownish overacted performances.

Actually it wasn't. The Jamaican characters portrayed were not complete stereotypes. John Candy turns in a proper acting performance and it's a couple of hours of light entertainment with a reasonable nod to the original events.

JFK
Oh jeez, Oliver Stone having a go at the establishment....again. I'm tired of being told I'm being lied to but through the medium of feature films. If I want a documentary I'll watch a documentary. I don't want my factual events shot through the prism of someone with a massive chip on their shoulder. We're gonna be in for a real telling-off here aren't we.

Well actually, just watch the movie and forget real events have been fictionalised, dramatised and over-exaggerated. It's got some cracking performances from a bunch of people. Joe Pesci, Tommy Lee Jones, John Candy (again), Donald Sutherland, Gary Oldman and others.

There are probably more but I can't think of them right now.

Olympics

2010-02-15T23:24:00.003Z

Let's face it - the Summer Olympics get all the coverage but the Winter Olympics have got all the action.

The Summer Olympics seem to be all about endeavour, fortitude and honest toil.....simple stuff like who can run faster, jump higher, or chuck various Grecian household objects the furthest. It's all in the highest Corinthian spirit but frankly I find it all a bit dull. I've been known to switch channels midway through a 200m race cos I got bored.

Compare this with the Winter Olympics which is just balls out speed and raw terror. Downhill ski racing....have you any idea how steep that hill is that they ski down? They go flat out for about 2 minutes on the absolute ragged edge of adherence where they could crash at about 80mph at pretty much every single turn they make. You don't get that sort of thing in the 1500m.

The Summer Games have got nothing on the luge, skeleton and bobsleigh racing. This is genuinely deadly stuff as was sadly seen recently. The fearlessness required to fling yourself down a solid ice downhill track at close to 100mph on nothing more than a tea tray is incredible.

How about speed skating? Not only is it exciting, it's actually quite beautiful to watch. Can you imagine watching the 400m where the runners were in danger of being flung sideways off the running track at 40 mph? Now that would liven up the athletics a bit wouldn't it.

The downside? Figure skating. You can't really call it a sport if you get points for artistic impression now can you?

Infinity

2010-02-12T23:35:00.002Z

There's just been a great show on TV about infinity. Basically, a bunch of mathematicians trying to explain infinity; well perhaps not explaining it, but simply trying to understand it.

Try and think of a number. The biggest number you can possibly imagine. However big you imagine that number is, you can always add one to it. The potential size of this number is therefore infinite. It follows that you therefore cannot actually express infinity as a number. This is why they use that symbol of a figure 8 on its side. You cannot express it as a real number so you have to express it as a symbol.

If you accept the above concept of infinity as an infinite number then even though it is a number you cannot express because it is infinitely large then you can still use it in calculations.

Imagine you have a hotel of infinite size and therefore it has an infinite number of rooms. If it has an infinite number of rooms, then it can always accommodate another guest. But where do you put the guest when he or she arrives? Simple. The person in room one moves into room two, the person who was in room two moves into room three, the person who was in room three moves into room four and so on, ad infinitum. The new guest is therefore able to walk straight into room one. This therefore produces the formula

Infinity + 1 = infinity

Clever eh.

But what happens if an infinite number of guests arrive and wish to be accommodated in the infinite hotel? Simple again. This time, the person in room one moves into room two, the person in room two moves into room four. The person in room three goes to room six, the person in room four goes to room eight etc. Each person therefore just moves into the room number which is two times their original room number. If you double any number you always get an even number therefore all your odd numbered rooms will become free to accommodate the infinite number of guests that have just arrived. This therefore produces the formula

Infinity + infinity = infinity

I love this stuff.

Our mathematician friends then moved into cosmology which is where the concept of infinity becomes really mind-bending. First you accept that space is infinite. You then take the concept of Earth and our own known universe being a finite object. Given that our known universe is a finite object and given that our known universe is simply a very large (but finite) number of molecules arranged in a particular order, then in the infinity of space, sooner or later another set of molecules will arrange themselves in the same way and create another universe just like ours.

I don't mean a universe just a bit like ours, I mean a universe that is EXACTLY like ours. It will also contain you and me - identical copies of you and me. Because, in an infinite space with the possibility of an infinite number of things happening, that means an infinite number of the same things happening will happen an infinite number of times. If you accept the infinity of space, you therefore have to accept there are an infinite number of universes out there that are totally identical to the one we live in now. It's mathematically provable.

Heavy man.

One of our mathematician friends then got out a piece of paper and calculated how far away from us it is likely that our closest identical known universe is. He could do this......on a piece of paper.....in about 30 seconds.....and the maths involved was not that complicated - the numbers were quite big though.

I apologise in advance to any mathematicians or cosmologists reading this who want to disagree with some of the finer detail of what I just said but I think I've got the spirit of it right.

The programme is here - I hope you can see it wherever you are. It's a little dry to start with but then it gets very interesting.

Guilty Pleasures

2010-02-06T18:15:00.003Z

It's a terrible indulgence to be sitting at home on Saturday and see a film in the TV guide that's three and half hours long and think, sod it, I'm going to watch this. When the film in question is Ryan's Daughter then it's not such a difficult decision.

This film's got everything, murder, betrayal, infidelity, revolution, nationalism and love and hate of course, all set in a remote Irish village during the First World War. Some of the scenery, particularly the beach and a storm scene are also stunning.

It's also got some great performances from Sarah Miles, Trevor Howard, Leo McKern, and even the famously wooden Robert Mitchum turns in a fair performance as he wrassles to get himself on the plausible side of a pretty poor Irish accent - not as bad as Tom Cruise in Far and Away but close.

The marquee performance has to be from John Mills as the village idiot. One of the great actors of his generation, he turns in an incredible performance and throughout he does not speak a single word or utter a sound.

Being a stiff upper lip, British sort of chap, I am of course immune to the emotional content of any film. Those occasions during the watching of the film when there seemed to be some moistness in the corner of my eye were simply a trick the light. I'm sure you understand.

Crossed Lines

2010-02-01T19:02:00.003Z

Sitting quietly at home the other day my mobile phone rang. It was my ex girlfriend who would instantly lose her ex status if she would only come around to my line of thinking. I'm still crazy about her. She is not English. She speaks very good English albeit with an East European accent and a few grammatical slip-ups now and again. The line was poor - we were speaking mobile to mobile across a distance of about 500 miles. The conversation went roughly as follows...

She: "Hello, it's me. How are you?"
Me: ""Bune, multumesc. Ce faci?" I learnt a little Romanian during my time with her.
She "Haha, you're funny sometimes."
Me: "Awww thanks. Where are you?"
She "I'm in the bath." She's phoned me from the bath before.
Me "Grrr....I wish you hadn't told me that."
She: "Why?"
Me: Because now I will spend the rest of this conversation imagining you in the bath."
She "Why would you do that? You're weird."
Me "No I'm not. You know I'm still crazy about you and now you phone me while you're in the bath and expect me to act normally and not have my imagination run wild."
She "You are definitely weird."
Me "OK, if you say so. What's all that noise in the background?"
She "Oh, it's just some people."
Me "What people? Where?"
She "They're here with me. In the bath."
Me "What? There are people with you in the bath? I can hear children as well."
She "Yes, there are lots of children here."
Me "What? Are the children in the bath with you?"
She "Yes"
Me Whose children?"
She "I don't know. They're just some kids. They're very noisy aren't they. Sorry."
Me "What? You're in the bath with lots of people and also somebody's kids but you don't actually know whose kids?"
She "Yes. Why are you asking me these strange questions?"
Me "They're not strange questions. You're in the bath....with a bunch of complete strangers....and some kids as well."
She "Yes. So?"
Me "What? Eh?"

The conversation continued along this thread for a minute or two more.......remember the line was extremely poor. I finally worked out what was going on.

Try rereading the above conversation substituting "on the bus" whenever she says "in the bath". To her, it is more logical to say "in the bus" rather than "on the bus" and I just misheard this as "in the bath".

Weather

2010-01-25T18:55:00.004Z

Blogging about the weather is pretty low hanging fruit but sometimes, when your mind is as atrophied as mine you go for the easy stuff and hope it might trigger some more interesting thoughts out.

Anyway, the UK has just emerged from the longest spell of cold weather and snow that most people can probably remember. This is especially the case in the south east of England where on the few occasions snow falls, it usually fades away within 48 hours. This time it stuck around for two or three weeks.

A consequence of the relative rareness of these events is that we don't really have the machinery in place to deal with a prolonged bout of weather like this. When we get a bit of snow, public transport tends to be unavailable for a day or two, but eventually the roads get salted and things get back to normal pretty quickly. There is the usual clamour from people saying we should be able to cope and why don't we have the resources to deal with things like this? Critics generally then suggest that in somewhere like Canada or Switzerland they get nothing but snow for three months a year and their buses don't stop running.

Of course that is exactly the point. If the UK had a climate like Canada or Switzerland, we would invest in snow ploughs and put spiky tyres on our cars for three months of the year but if you only get a bit of snow once a year, maybe not at all, there's no point in investing millions of pounds in lots of expensive machinery. You just take the hit, deal with a day or two of inconvenience and things get back to normal.

So, you would think that when people were caught out in the recent bad weather, the authorities who were unable to clear the roads and asked the hapless general public to be patient, would be sympathetic to those inconvenienced by it. But no. What happened was many people were out on their cars when the bad weather struck, the locals councils were unprepared or under-resourced to deal with the problem and people ended up having to abandon their cars as the roads were too dangerous or they simply could not move. Many roads were inaccessible for days, maybe weeks because the local council would not clear them as they concentrated on clearing more major routes or they were preserving their resources in case the bad weather lasted for even longer than was initially feared.

What then happened was that the same authorities who were contracted to clear the roads - and did not - in a decidedly unsympathetic manner, chose to fine the people whose cars had been abandoned.

Sometimes you just can't fuckin' win can you!

Kitchens

2010-01-05T22:14:00.003Z

Isn't it nice when a plan finally comes together.

I've always enjoyed cooking but I'm also a touch obsessive-compulsive about my environment and I've always had to make do with less than perfect cooking conditions. Just under two years ago I finally got round to replacing my entire kitchen. This was part of a larger refurbishment of my entire flat which is still ongoing but pretty much complete. The kitchen was always going to be the room I did first. It makes sense because I live in a flat with only one entrance and the kitchen is not accessed via any other room therefore would not be disturbed by any subsequent work. I also did it first because my existing kitchen was the room I disliked the most in my flat - hard to believe if you'd seen my bathroom (which you never will cos that's now also also been replaced). And also because the kitchen is always my favourite room in any dwelling.

I know I'm not going to do this very often so I wasn't going to do it cheaply and regret any decision later. There's nothing worse than tolerating something you don't really like and trying to console yourself that it was cheap but knowing, deep down inside, that if you'd spent a little more money you would have had exactly what you really wanted instead of second best. If you like something you soon forget how much you paid and you'll always get a nice warm feeling every time you use it in the years to come.

I won't go into too many details but some of the decisions I will never regret are -

solid wood kitchen units with soft-close doors/drawers
a double recessed sink
a fancy mixer tap that will never drip (German engineering)
a double oven (conventional and fan)
a five burner hob with a huge wok burner in the middle
lots of very powerful lighting
4.5 metres of solid granite worktops (the best bit by far)

Now I could really start cooking. But having done all this and seeking out all those interesting recipes I wanted to prepare, I found I still wasn't quite as ready to rock as I thought. I needed more stuff. I had to build up that background of core ingredients that a good kitchen should always have in stock. Herbs, spices, dried fruits, six different types of flour (plain, self-raising, strong bread, corn, semolina and whole wheat if you're interested), other dried goods (rice, pasta, oats, yeast), assorted condiments, various tinned essentials. Also I'd been making do with a crummy selection of pots and pans which I've steadily been updating as and when a recipe demanded it (French cast iron Le Creuset casseroles are my favourites here). I got a rice cooker, a hand blender, a good lemon/lime zester.

In short, after nearly two years I'm confident of not only being able to try any recipe I like the look of, I'm also now reasonably confident my kitchen is perfectly tooled up to prepare and present it. The only thing I tend to need to buy are the fresh ingredients and to keep that background selection of essential ingredients stocked up.

I've also still managed to hang on to items I've known with all my life. I acquired a few things from my grandparents house so I'm still using the same cutlery I used as a child. A good mixing bowl will never go out of date and I still use the same one I remember my grandmother using to make cakes. I also got their entire twelve piece dinner service plus quite a lot of silverware they received as a wedding presents in 1936 which I admit I don't actually use but I have it in reserve should I ever entertain twelve people.

Sorted.

I know a good cook can make excellent food on a one-burner camping stove in the middle of a field during a torrential rainstorm (probably at night as well) but I'm not that good. I need the reassurance of the environment being just right as well.

Think of a recipe and I'll try and cook it and send you a picture. You won't get to taste cos I'll have already eaten it by then.

The Right Stuff

2010-01-03T13:08:00.004Z

I'm re-reading an excellent book at the moment called Barrow's Boys I won't go into explaining the name but suffice it to say it's about the efforts of the British to explore the as yet unmapped regions of the globe in the early 19th century. This was mainly focused on North Africa and finding the path and source of the Niger river and also the search for the fabled North-West Passage across the top of Canada in an attempt to find a navigable link between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Various explorers were despatched, and the book is an account of their efforts. Some achieved their goals. Most did not. Quite a few died horribly, mostly through disease. Some went so convinced they knew exactly what they were doing they dismissed previous explorers accounts of their journey and consequently repeated mistakes already made by others and thereby met their doom.

One of my favourites is a chap called Gordon Laing. Arrogant, and quite possibly mad, and if not, then certainly deluded, he set out from Tripoli in order to find the path of the Niger. At one point his party was set upon by Tuareg bandits upon whose lands he had encroached without paying the appropriate protection money. His camel train and entourage were routed and he was left for dead in the desert. He did however manage to pick himself up and continue his journey - strapped to the back of a camel - and describes his injuries thus:

"To begin from the top: I have five sabre cuts on the crown of the head and three on the left temple, all fractures from which much bone has come away; one on my left cheek which fractured the jaw bone and has divided the ear, forming a very unsightly wound; one over the right temple and a dreadful gash on the back of the neck, which slightly grazed the windpipe; a musket ball in the hip, which made its way through my back, slightly grazing the backbone; five sabre cuts on my right arm and hand, three of the fingers broken, the hand cut three-fourths across, and the wrist bones cut through; three cuts on the left arm, the bone of which has been broken but which is again uniting; one slight wound on the right leg and two with one dreadful gash on the left, to say nothing of a cut across the fingers of my left hand, now healed up."

On arrival at his destination he caught the plague and spent nine days "so ill with fever that it was presumed, expected and hoped that I would die." As he lay in his deathbed he was also robbed of pretty much everything he owned. Considering the injuries he describes to his hands it was amazing he could actually write but he does manage to add, at the end of the above account "I am nevertheless doing well." and he pressed on to become the first European to reach Timbuctoo.

He stayed in Timbuctoo for just over five weeks and then set off north, possibly heading for Morocco where he again met more Tuareg bandits. This time they succeeded in killing him. He was throttled by two men hauling on either end of a turban that had been wrapped around his neck. They then cut off his head and left him for the vultures. The only survivor of his party was a servant who had feigned death and then made his way back to Timbuctoo to explain what had happened.

Gordon Laing's journey is one of the more gruesome but certainly not the most unusual account described in the book. It's fantastic.

On Blogging

2009-12-13T16:34:00.001Z

I blog for work, I blog for play; I really don't have anything to say.

Please someone, somewhere, inspire me.

Get On My Horse

2009-11-05T20:14:00.000Z

There's something very funny about this....

http://www.getonmyhorse.com/

Have We Really Sunk So Low?

2009-10-20T21:24:00.003+01:00

Here in the UK we have a TV show called The X Factor - find the link yourself, frankly I can't be arsed to do it even this small favour. I'm sure there are similar variants of the same thing on TV all over the world. It purports to give aspiring young talent a chance to make it in the big time by giving them an audition with influential people in the music industry. In reality, it's just a chance for deluded wannabes to be humiliated on national television. It's only a matter of time before this results in some heartbroken youngster committing suicide over the disappointment and embarrassment of being made to look stupid on national TV. Hilarious eh!

The initial audition requires that the young hopeful sing live in front of the judges, unaccompanied by any musical backing. If anything is going to show up a less than perfect singing voice, it's this. But they keep on coming up, and they keep on getting knocked down. It's voyeuristic, manipulative and degrading.

Last week, one of the judges, Cheryl Cole, actually performed herself on the show. This was a performance of her first solo single. As she was a judge, already a very successful singer in a group, and now in the fortunate position of being able to pass judgement on other aspiring young talent, you'd expect her to make an effort and put on a show., What did she do? She mimed along to a backing track of course. The outcome? You'd have thought she'd have been roundly booed for an act of risible hypocrisy. Anything but. Her fellow judges lauded her performance, her bravery and whatever other egregious waffle they could heap upon her.

Vorsprung Durch Technik

2009-10-19T19:41:00.004+01:00

Round about this time of year I get a small frisson of excitement mixed with mild trepidation. My car has its annual test (we call it the MoT which stand for Ministry of Transport).

My car is 13 years old, it's done 230,000 miles (that's 370,000 km). It has a few dents and scrapes but I've had this car from new and I know each and every scratch. I didn't personally inflict all the damage - it's been bumped anonymously in various supermarket car parks over the years, or somebody has kindly just inflicted a scratch on it just for fun but the car still runs and carries its scars with pride.

Last Thursday, it passed the test. I once thought of getting rid of it. 100,000 miles seemed a good point but it burst through the 100K barrier without so much as a squeak.

Let's see how far it'll actually go I thought, fully expecting some major problem to inevitably appear. 150,000 miles ticked over and still it kept running. Maybe I can get 200,000 out of it I thought and kept on going. My next target is 250,000. That'll mean it's gone round the world ten times. Watch this space - 250K will roll over sometime in the Spring of 2011.

All hail Herman, the mighty Audi A4. All this time and I don't actually have a nice photo to show you.

Plumbing

2009-10-04T19:11:00.003+01:00

Trying to fix your own plumbing is one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard. In the history of dumb ideas, it’s right up there with trying to cut your own hair. The other evening I tried to fix my own plumbing.

It all began when I had friends over on Sunday night. One of them came back from the bathroom and asked me if I realised one of my radiators was leaking. I checked and they were right. A very slow, but nonetheless visible drip.........drip…........drip from the pipe going into the bathroom radiator. Bollocks! I wedged a few sheets of toilet paper underneath it and left it like that. The next morning the toilet paper had absorbed the night's drippage. It was a tiny leak. No real drama.

But things like this torment me. I imagine I can hear it, like a ticking clock in a silent room can seem almost deafening, I was thinking about this drip….....drip….....drip. By the middle of the week I could bear it no more.

That evening, I stopped off at the DIY store and bought a nice big new adjustable spanner as the one I had was just not quite big enough. This is cool because I like buying tools. Rather cleverly, I also bought a roll of PTFE tape which you wind around the threads of a joint and it helps to make a watertight seal. Clever eh! I was pretty sure I would only need a little turn on the nut with my shiny new spanner and I would tighten the joint and fix the leak but I bought the tape as an added precaution.

First I turned off the boiler and turned off the water supply. I then ran all the taps to take any water out of the system. Then, with my sexy new tool I tightened the lower nut connecting the copper pipe to the radiator valve. No longer was there a drip……….drip………drip. Now I had a drip drip drip drip drip drip. Bollocks again.

I would have to undo the joint, put some PTFE tape around the thread and reconnect the pipe and that would fix the leak. I closed off the radiator valve and undid the nut and pushed the pipe down to move it clear. A jet of water came straight out the pipe and went a full half metre into the air…..FFFFUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKK. I shoved the spurting pipe back into position. It was not leaking any more. It was now gently pouring out of the loosened joint. I ran to the kitchen, grabbed any receptacle I could find (a few old pans), ran to the cupboard and grabbed some big towels and went back to my slowly filling bathroom to mop us some of the water. By repeatedly lifting the pipe out of position and catching the spurting water in the pan I managed to perform an improvised draining of my heating system. When each pan was full I put my thumb over the pipe to stop the flow. As the edges of the pipe were razor sharp, I managed to cut my thumb quite impressively.

Finally it was empty. I put some tape around the joint, reconnected it and tightened the nut. Drip drip drip drip drip. On closer inspection it now also appeared to be leaking from the joint above the valve. I would have to fix this as well. With my shiny new spanner, I now undid the upper joint as well. As this was above the radiator valve I had earlier shut off, as soon as I undid this new nut all the water in the radiator also came out. More pans. More improvised draining. I put some more tape around this joint and reconnected it. The drip had stopped. No surprise really because there was no longer any bloody water in the system to drip out.

I tuned on the water supply, turned on the boiler and turned on the taps. I still had water. Phew. I then bled the air out of the radiators to check my handiwork. Drip drip drip drip drip. I checked the boiler and now the digital display was flashing to indicate there was no pressure in the system. Oh for God’s sake! I carefully (yeah right) read the boiler manual which may as well have been written in Chinese for all that I understood in it. So, having started with a small manageable leak, I now had a much less manageable leak, a busted boiler and a gashed thumb. It was also 10pm.

I will continue this later……after I've given myself a cool new haircut.

Decimalisation

2009-09-23T20:22:00.002+01:00

I think I’ve worked out where the British capacity for mental arithmetic met it’s demise. It wasn't, as you might think, when the pocket calculator came along. Nor was it when they stopped teaching real maths in school because it was too hard. No, the rot set in back in 1971 when we converted our currency to decimal.

Before then we had a wonderful system based on pounds, shillings, pennies and ha'pennies. There were two ha'pennies in a penny. Twelve pennies in a shilling. Twenty shillings in a pound. Or, if you wish, two hundred and forty pennies in a pound. Oh, and you also had a guinea which was twenty one shillings. Expensive items like cars and fridges and fancy clothes were often priced in guineas. Some places still use guineas today but it's somehow lost its romanticism now as it's £1.05. You also had weird coins like the half crown which was two shillings and sixpence and a thrupenny bit which was three pence. I'm too young to remember farthings which were worth a quarter of a penny.

To work in this currency, you had to be able to add up in base 12 and base 20. If you bought two items, one costing seven shillings and sixpence and the other costing four shillings and eightpence it would add up to twelve shillings and two pence (or tuppence). This was expressed in writing as 7/6 + 4/8 = 12/2. Verbally, 7/6 was expressed simply as "seven and six".

When you reached twenty shillings (20/-), you got a pound. But that didn't neccesarily mean that you expressed the pound in notation. Some people just kept adding up the shillings so one pound seventeen shillings and sixpence would often be written as 37/6 but could also be £1/17/6.

Added to this, certain denominations had nicknames, so a shilling was usually called a bob. A two shilling coin was called a florin. A sixpence coin was called a tanner. A quid was, and still is, a pound.

I was eight years old when they got rid of this system yet I can remember being able to easily add up sums of money using this system. It came completely naturally to me as it was ingrained in the culture, like language. Lots of people of my generation and of course my parent's generation can do the same but present this system to a teenager today and they're bewildered.

When we converted to a decimal currency, all the old coins were retained and new ones introduced alongside. So an old sixpence was now worth 2.5 new pence. An old shilling was worth 5 new pence. A half crown was worth 12.5 new pence. Working with two sets of coins in my small pockets was easy as well. This was money - it was important you didn't make mistakes so you learnt it fast!

Mental arithmetic was and still is easy. It was at least another five years before even the simplest pocket calculator was available and these were too expensive for most people to afford anyway. I remember the anger expressed by many people who said that introducing a decimal system would be too confusing. It would simply be a way for shopkeepers and the government to put up prices without people noticing.

If you want a numerate society, I suggest reintroducing the above system. A fiendishly complex currency is a great way of learning how to add up quickly in your head.

Happy days.

Hitler and the Bunnies

2009-09-03T12:28:00.002+01:00

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8234018.stm

At his living room table, 92-year-old Rochus Misch shows me some of his old photo albums. Private pictures he had taken more than 60 years ago. There are colour images of Mr Misch in an SS uniform at Adolf Hitler's home in the Alps, snapshots of Hitler staring at rabbits, and photos of Hitler's mistress and future wife Eva Braun.

"....snapshots of Hitler staring at rabbits" ?????

Having read this, I see Hitler is a completely different light.

Wasted Potential

2009-09-02T13:18:00.001+01:00

Gordon Brown's talents are wasted. Here we have a man with undoubted potential. A man who has a singular but great skill. A skill and ability that he has so terribly failed to exploit. At a press conference today he exhorted the young people before him to make the most of their lives. And yet Gordon Brown has failed to do that single act for himself.

Somewhere, on an industrial estate, perhaps in a quiet corner of northern England, or maybe even in his own beloved Scotland, there is a goods warehouse, and down at the back of that warehouse is a little office, and in that little office is a small, but functional computer (no internet connection). This computer handles the stock control for the warehouse. It makes sure everything that comes in and goes out of the warehouse is recorded. Right now, this neglected but functionally perfect little machine needs someone to enter important information.

Someone, with the essential backroom skills ideally suited to a mundane job in a micro-society of one. It requires no interpersonal skills, marginal real intelligence but a rudimentary and single-minded application. This person needs little or no understanding of what is going on around him. Someone who, cannot be distracted by, or susceptible to changing events around him. Someone perhaps who is so embedded in his own little world he cannot really understand or analyse anything beyond him and his beloved computer. Somebody who just hunches over that computer for eight hours a day obsessively and diligently recording the comings and goings of this little world. Someone so lacking the tiniest iota of imagination that most of the time he is simply unaware of anyone or anything around him. Gordon Brown is that man.

The fact that he has been cruelly thrust into running one of the major world economies is a terrible waste of his potential. Daily he is required to understand and deal with major events in a fast-moving and politically turbulent world and daily he shows us how ill-equipped he is, on almost every level, to carry out this task. A great and possibly tragic loss to a small warehouse somewhere in the north of England (or possibly Scotland).

Joke of the Week

2009-08-28T19:05:00.001+01:00

From the mighty P J O'Rourke, a humourous anecdote about the old USSR....

An old guy's wife tells him to go to the butcher shop and get some meat. He goes to the butcher shop and stands in line for hours.
Finally the butcher says, "We're out of meat."
The old guy blows his top. He yells, "I am a worker! I am a proletarian! I am a veteran of the Great Patriotic War! I have fought for socialism all my life, and now you tell me you're out of meat! What kind of a system is this?! You are fools! You are thieves! . . . "
A big man in a trench coat comes up to the old guy and says, "Comrade, Comrade, not so loud. In the old days you know what they would do if you said such things." The big man in the trench coat makes a pistol motion with his hand.
He says to the old guy, "Calm down and go home." The old guy shrugs and leaves.
He comes back empty-handed, and his wife says, "What's the matter, are they out of meat?"
"Worse than that," says the old guy, "they're out of bullets."

I thank you.

The Emasculation of the British Male

2009-08-27T15:40:00.002+01:00

Let's face it. The average British male is fast becoming a pretty poor example of the species.

Two news items today illustrate this. The first is the number of men who choose to stay at home with mum. A remarkable 29% of British men aged between 20 and 34 still live at home. Presumably so they can get their dinner every night and their underwear ironed. BRITISH MEN!!!! These are men (and I use the word with its loosest interpretation) bred from the same stock of fearless nutcases that colonised the world a few centuries back. Members of the same gene pool who stuck it to Hitler for six long years (like my Grandad). Men who thought nothing of jumping on a ship and trying to sail off the edge of the world, and failing that, seeing what they could rob and plunder along the way.

Nobbut a few generations ago, young men were turfed out of the house the day they turned 18 and sent to live in some windswept military barracks in some of the most godforsaken spots of this tiny island we inhabit. The weak stock were ritually humiliated by the military personnel during the day and then buggered senseless by their comrades at night. If that didn't make a man of you then nothing would. It was called National Service. If that particular lifestyle wasn't to your liking and you found yourself the object of affection or disapprobriation of whoever you met, you chose one of the many nights when the weather was truly filthy, went outside, took a walk and died miserably in a ditch from hypothermia. Thus the strong survived and we continued to produce generations of sexually confused but hard-as-nails menfolk.

The other news item is the relentlessly falling intellect of the current crop of male students. Don't be misled by the headline. These numbskulls are only showing an improvement in exams compared to the girls because of the elimination of coursework from their studies. Coursework is of course simply a cipher which actually means "copying it from the internet". In the past they were obviously too thick to carry out even this simple task. This was thus removed from the syllabus in order that they stood a statistically equal chance as the girls of randomly guessing which boxes to tick in what constitutes examinations these days.

I despair.

NB: I did not do National Service and left home shortly after my 17th birthday.

Feral Parents

2009-08-03T22:06:00.002+01:00

I've just spent the weekend at my Mum's. An unplanned weekend. She phoned me earlier in the week and I said I'd cancel whatever I had on and be there by Friday. Sounds bad doesn't it? It wasn't - don't worry.

I had to go up there (it's a 500 mile round trip so 8 hours of driving) to help her find a new car. She's 71 and needs a car to get around. A nice little hatchback runabout you might think so she can get down the shops a couple of days a week and go see the granddaughter now and again. No, it's not quite as simple as that.

This is the second time in two years I've had to rush up there at short notice and perform this particular duty. What had actually happened was she had written off ("totalled" to use the American terminology) her current car. She did exactly the same thing last time. So, in the last two years my Mum has demolished two cars in quite spectacular accidents. This is the kind of driving record your average teenager would be proud of. The kind of thing that would drive parents to distraction. Except I now find it happening to me in reverse.

These are no ordinary cars. For the last 30 years she has driven only Saabs. Big, sturdy, high-performance Swedish cars that the advertising campaigns would have us believe are designed by the same people who make a particularly intimidating and supersonic fighter jet for the Swedish Air Force. My mum likes this. She seems to fancy that driving a car modelled on a fighter aircraft lends her a certain quirky kudos amongst her increasingly elderly chums. It makes her feel she's not quite ready for the scrapheap. This is OK by me - keeps her young at heart and all that.

But two write-offs in two years? It's time she calmed it down a bit you would think. I was relieved to find when I got there she had been given a seven year old diesel powered Ford Mondeo. The kind of car it's difficult to tell is moving even when it's going flat out in top gear. This would reign here in I thought. She would be suitably contrite after managing to destroy two substantial Saabs in the last two years. Not a bit of it. She hated it. Despite it's practical attributes, she could not see past the fact it would not do 90mph (approaching 150 kph) down the motorway and blast everything else off the road as she screamed "Eat my dust losers!". She's 71 - did I mention that?

She'd already been perusing the car ads in the papers and was eyeing up locally available Saabs. She'd also been wondering whether a 4x4 would make a change. She lives in the North of England and a 4x4 is handy in the winter sometimes. Various other high performance cars were on her prospective shopping list. Audis, Mercs, Volvos....you get the idea. Of course, her budget wasn't quite up to her desires (isn't that always the case) and I had to point out with her budget, any car she could find on her list at that price would be likely to have had a long and probably interesting history. So it was down to me to find her something that ticked all her boxes on her wish list, but that would allow me to also sleep at night.

To cut a long story short, I had to show her the kind of car she wanted, for the money she had, to finally make here realise she couldn't afford one with anything appproaching decent provenance. I then had to find her something she would consider an acceptable compromise. Her specification was roughly as follows:-

acceleration of a scalded cat
build characteristics of a chieftan tank
fuel economy of a Vespa scooter
carrying capacity of an Antonov cargo plane
reliability but simplicity of an AK47
cheap
cool

A pretty unachievable wish list. We went round the local dealers. She sat in various cars, test drove a few of them. All failed to reach her demanding specification. They were all either too small, too large, too slow, too expensive, the wrong colour, too noisy, too quiet, too old, too boring, You name it - they failed the test.

I finally found her a car. It doesn't fit her spec. but it's close. It's quick, roomy, reliable, and almost within budget. It probably won't impress her friends and it won't be much good in the snow but despite her mumblings about a 4x4, she's never actually had one so I knew that wasn't her top priority. Two litre engine, six speed gearbox (she refuses to drive automatics), lots of gadgets (it's the top spec. in the 2.0) should do 90mph with ease. One of these - hope she likes it. Bloody parents.

Pig Flu - The Truth

2009-07-23T18:34:00.003+01:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8163930.stm

100,000 people my arse!

30,000 will be the usual rampant hypochondriacs who latch on to every passing ailment and decide they've got it.

30,000 are people who fancy a few days off work so have called in sick cos they "....feel a bit under the weather and, best be safe, what with all this swine flu going around eh."

30,000 want the drugs, so have found out the symptoms and called in to pretend they've got it so they can get the drugs before anyone else.

10,000 might actually have something wrong with them.

Of course, the government is delighted to have a crisis on their hands that is not actually of their own making so will be desperate to make things look as dreadful as possible so they can be seen to be trying to do something about it. The problem with this exponential rate of apparent cases is, with the government in full-on exaggeration mode the whole population of the country could be dead in a couple of weeks and then what will they do?

As usual, The Daily Mash absolutely nails it.

Come to think of it, I don't feel too good myself.....what's that hotline number?

Five Minutes Thirty Four Seconds

2009-06-13T23:37:00.002+01:00

I've got 5,953 songs occupying 31.72GB of disk space in my iTunes player. If I was so inclined, it would take me 16 days, 7 hours and 12 minutes to listen to them all.....but I would probably die of sleep deprivation before I finished. As a sort of random exercise, here are all the songs that are exactly five minutes and thirty four seconds in duration:

Aztec Camera - Stray
Lisa Knapp - Blacksmith
Black Grape - Little Bob
Terri Naomi - Flesh for Bones
Aretha Franklin - Bridge Over Troubled Water
King Creosote - My Favourite Girl
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band - Give My Compliments to the Chef
Hootie and the Blowfish - When I'm Lonely
Myrrhman - Talk Talk

Go on, if you're out there, give me a duration and I'll give you another list. Or send me yours.

Dumped

2009-06-13T18:27:00.001+01:00

Dumped.

Football and God

2009-06-10T21:52:00.004+01:00

It may be apocryphal but David Beckham, legendary English footballer and all round nice guy was once credited with making the following statement about his son Brooklyn "I definitely want Brooklyn to be christened, but I don't know into what religion yet."

Cue jokes about footballers not being terribly bright etc. but frankly I don't particularly care if they're smart or not. We don't expect our academics to be good footballers so why should we expect our footballers to be intellectuals? "Jeez, that Stephen Fry's a clever bugger but have you ever seen him take a penalty?" My point exactly. So, on the whole, I think we should leave our footballers to concentrate on putting the ball in the onion bag and we should leave the reciprocation of pi and the quantum physics to the people who are so inclined to such matters. We, the punters, are only really interested in the end result - plenty of goals and the answer to the meaning of life - and we don't much care how our footballers and boffins get there, simply that they do.

But I think Mr. Beckham raises an interesting point. People are not born religious. Religion is a man-made concept. It is now, in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Beckham, apparently simply something of a lifestyle choice. A person may live in a society that is pre-disposed to affiliate itself with one particular religion and it may be somewhat inevitable that in the absence of any other belief system, that is the religion a person gets drawn into, but if that same person, before gaining an understanding of their local predominant religion is taken elsewhere, they may adopt an entirely different set of beliefs from a different society. We're not born and naturally inclined to adopt a particular religion, any more than we are born intuitively French and with an appreciation of good coffee just because we were born in France.

Religion was initially a means of getting a naïve population into believing that, for example, if nobody could reasonably explain where the sun and the stars came from, then the only logical explanation was that someone must have put them there and they had better be careful not to upset that person. Diss the big man up there and he'll be looking for vengeance. This suited religious leaders who could claim they had a hotline to the Gods and could ease your passage through life if you showed them enough respect. A cosy existence if you could get enough people to buy into it.

Nowadays we can pretty much explain why the sun comes over the hill every day and that leaves religion in a tight spot. Every day it seems, one of their core values is explained away by the scientists as simply an inevitability of the passage of time and a lot of atoms pinging around in interesting but pretty random ways. It also means that some of the more new-age, out-there religions have to come up with new ideas to draw in the customers. Cue the Scientologists and Kabbalah crowd, eager to fill the vacuum created by an increasingly cynical congregation. Better still if you can get a few celebrities on board because celebrities are now the new icons. If you can get a few of them to buy into your ideas then, with luck, they'll bring their fanbase with them. The whole Hare Krishna movement was famously given a huge kickstart in the sixties through the patronage of The Beatles.

Where am I going with this piece? I don't really know. You may have gathered that I'm not a religious person but I'm vexed by the idea that,although I know we're not born and naturally inclined to a particular religion, we may be somehow genetically wired to want something like religion in our lives. Not because the alternative of nothing is unbearable but, hopefully perhaps, because we like abstract ideas. Let's face it, we're all a little bit superstitious about something, even if we declare absolute atheism.

Faith is, by definition, belief in something for which you have no proof. I'm happy to say I'm not interested in any of it and don't have that genetic wiring (if it in fact exists) but I'm frankly amazed by the number of people that are.

Gravy Suckers

2009-06-02T21:01:00.000+01:00

As our government steadily but inevitably implodes upon itself the whole scandal about MP's expenses prompts a few questions.

The thing that has irked the population more than anything I suspect is that not a single MP has managed to come up with a decent defence of their expense claims. There have been two common defences. The first is to claim it was a simple oversight or accounting error. This would be plausible in a few cases but when this lack of attention to detail is exhibited by just about every MP, you start to think this is simply a collective excuse that they're all trotting out. If we were to believe they all made the same simple accounting errors then this displays a collective incompetence on a grand scale that simply illustrates they're incapable of the most simple of tasks and don't deserve to be employed in any position of authority.

The second defence/excuse is to say that it was "within the rules." This is patently untrue because the rules states that expenses should be incurred as part of being an MP. Having your garden landscaped which has been a frequent expense claim is not an occupational expense of being an MP however lax you make the rules.

The other excuse is to claim they're terribly overworked and equally terribly underpaid as they only take a annual salary of about £64,000. Based on average salaries, this places them in the top 9% of earners in the UK. This argument simply doesn't stand up to even the simplest of analysis. If I were an MP and felt as woefully underpaid, overworked and unappreciated as this lot do then I'd probably give it up and go and find another job where my brilliance was appreciated but this lot, despite claiming that they lead such a financially perilous existence seem strangely determined to hang on to their jobs. The reality is a great many of them could not hope to draw a wage like this (plus expenses) in the private sector as most of them have precious little experience of working in the real world.

None of them have been prepared to admit that being an MP is a pretty cushy existence. You get to run a small business with a turnover of around £250,000 per year that is pretty much immune from the scrutiny of the taxman. You can employ members of your own family in nominal jobs. You have various ways of collecting large sums of money from the public purse without having to provide any proof of actually how that money is spent. There is an extremely generous pension scheme that is unheard of in the private sector and if you do lose your job (effectively sacked because your electorate don't think you're up to it) there is a generous redundancy package.

MPs also like to proselytise about how much work they do and how essential their duties are. The reality is that over the last month, while Parliament has been mired in this scandal, precious little real work has been done. Most MPs are avoiding their constituents and the media like the plague for fear of being asked awkward questions. Party leaders have spent all their time defending the actions of their MPs or in the case of Gordon Brown, feigning interest in the health of reality show contestants in a desperate attempt to appear in touch with the public.

It's been a gravy train for too long and MPs have the gravy boat wedged firmly in their mouths and they'll keep sucking it for as long as they can get away with it.

Travels

2009-04-28T20:38:00.012+01:00

So far this year I have been to Romania three times. I have been to Luxembourg twice (including excursions to Germany and Belgium). Next weekend I'm going to Paris and I will be back in Luxembourg again before the end of the month.

Isn't it nice to have someone in your life. Killer on the cash flow situation though.

This is Bran in Romania.

And this is me looking quite relaxed in a photo for the first time in years.

And this is Luxembourg city.....yes, the middle of the city does look like this.

Insensitivity

2009-04-28T20:36:00.001+01:00

There's something uniquely insensitive about a government that decides to deliberately fly a very large passenger jet at low level around the New York skyline for half an hour.

It becomes increasingly hard to understand the individual who came up with this idea thought it would also be a good idea to have the jet tailed by a fighter plane.

Let's add stupidity to insensitivity by mentioning that they failed to tell anyone (not even the Mayor of New York) that they planned to do this.

I've yet to decide if Barack Obama will be the saviour of the western world, but if he has people beneath him who come up with ideas like this then that's going to make his job a helluva lot more difficult.

Apparently they thought it would be a nice idea to get pictures of Air Force One flying past the Statue of Liberty.

Putting on a Show

2009-04-01T19:38:00.003+01:00

Here in London we have the G20 Summit going on. Whilst the mob in the street bays for the blood of bankers and politicians, inside the champagne is quaffed and behind closed doors, the dirty deals are done. Queenie has been wheeled out to gladhand the politicians and Prince Phillip will be kept at arm's length so he doesn't commit any of his usual gaffes. Gordon will trot out a selection of hoary old speeches, riddled with meaningless cliches carefully designed to express nothing and hopefully give the impression he likes everyone. Not true of course; Gordon hates everyone because they fail to recognise his genius, but that's another story.

London is determined to put on a show. We like to think we can do this sort of thing. But amidst the royalty and the pageantry there's one thing that is particularly in evidence as I watch the news tonight - the ultimate expression of extravagance and opulence. You see it everywhere, it will be at every reception, every meeting and at every photo-op and the people who organise these sort of things would consider themselves lesser mortals, perhaps even failures, if it were not included, for it is height of decadence. No top-dollar event is complete without it yet I've always thought it faintly risible.

Yes, it the The Red Carpet. If you really want to impress someone and show them how much effort you've gone to, nothing works better than carpeting a bit of the street. This lets people know you have serious cash to flash. TV reporters will always point it out when they report on these occasions. "The red carpet has been rolled out...." they mutter ominously in order to signify the great import of the event being played out. An appropriately dressed maid will be seen earlier in the day diligently vacuuming aforementioned length of cheap nylon carpet that has been laid carefully to lead from the doorway to the kerb. Forget about the millions you've wasted on fancy venues, menus, flunkies and all the other paraphernalia. What's really important is that visiting nobs will be able to step from their car and not sully their footwear by inadvertently having to, God forbid, tread on an uncovered piece of street.

Putting on this event will have cost millions but people will consider it incomplete without a $50 swatch of cheap red rug in the street.

Flowers

2009-03-12T20:01:00.003Z

It's nice to visit a country where flowers are loved and enjoyed. India is one such country. Flowers are everywhere. Even in the poorest marketplace in the poorest part of town, someone will be selling flowers, garlands, or something to tie in your hair. Romania is another such society. Having been there during Valentine's weekend I saw lots of women of all ages carrying flowers. How nice that this isn't just a young lover's thing. I was in Romania again last weekend. This time it was the tail end of celebrating Mărţişor - on the first of March women (usually young and single women I believe) receive a small gift of a jewel or a flower tied to a red and white string. Also that week was March 8th - International Women's Day - again more flowers are given. So that's three out of four weekends where women will receive some sort of floral based gift. Nice!

But here's the unusual thing. Women in Romania carry their flowers upside-down, that is, with the heads of the flowers facing down, and I mean right down, by their sides, arms straight down so the heads of the flowers are often barely above ground level. If you haven't seen this before, your initial thought is that perhaps the woman is somewhat nonplussed by the floral gift she has received and is therefore just looking for a convenient bin in which to chuck the bouquet. I asked about this and was told that it's actually considered a better way to carry flowers. Carrying them pointing upwards would run the risk of damaging the flowers, the heads may break off, or they could be crushed in a crowd. Held straight down, the flowers run the least risk of being damaged. On consideration, this seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation but it is still somewhat disconcerting (to a Western European like me) to see flowers being carried in what seems a rather contemptuous way.