Music
A Wintery Pause
Oct 31st
The Bleak Midwinter
Sliding, Scraping & Staying Home
It’s a funny thing, winter. Certainly in Plymouth it is anyway. It happens about once every five years and just like it did last January, it completely screws things up for a week or so. The snow falls unexpectedly to a depth of about an inch and no-one knows what the hell to do. You switch on local TV news to see kids sliding down the merest hint of a hill on a dustbin lid, a poor driver trying and failing to drive his car up an icy incline and worst of all, a local reporter has been driven to the middle of nowhere to show us the scarf he got for Christmas and to indicate with a sweep of his arm what chaos awaits you outside.
Commuter Chaos!
Important-looking officials impart the most pointless instruction in the world “stay at home unless your journey is absolutely necessary” and everyone ignores them for fear of having no milk in their tea, no fag in their mouth and possibly the kids at home all day. Seriously, how would you classify a journey as “not absolutely necessary”? Certainly, no employer is going to let you off a days work because someone on the radio told you stay at home. What usually happens is that you chip your car out of the frost and drive gingerly away. You sit forward enough for your nose to touch the windscreen and you grip the steering wheel in the hope that the harder you do so, the more grip the tyres are going to have on the road. It doesn’t help of course. You are almost certain to start sliding sideways the moment you touch the brakes and if there’s one thing worse than a high speed accident, its an incredibly slow one that you can do nothing about. Nevertheless, your employer still expects you get there and its once you are there that your problems really begin. If it has stopped actually snowing by the time you get to work, it will start again not long after you arrive. You and your employer will then do little work anyway and instead stare at the window and the slow-falling flakes of chaos. You will be hoping to be sent home soon and they are hoping that it will stop and that they won’t have to send you home soon, whilst simultaneously hoping they CAN send you home thus enabling them to go home as well. Ahh, the stress of management…
At some point, you are allowed home and more horror awaits. Annoying people in 4X4 monstrosities seize the moment to smug you to death. Most of the year we scorn their selfish choice of oil burning machine, but for today at least they can be comfortable and safe. Their unnecessary blight on the ecological landscape still bruises the planet for 350 days of the year but for now they can be warmed by their own superiority and our palpable jealousy. If you look closely, they have probably given a lift to a few non-drivers and saved them from slipping and sliding their way home in the bitter cold. They will no doubt find time to stare at you as they drive away, their judgemental, bobble-hatted gaze futher burning into your angered heart.
By now, you may be wondering why I am talking about this on Halloween. Well, it was a bit frosty on Monday morning and I was caught unawares. The car warmed up eventually and the windows cleared, thanks mostly to the drippy remnants of last year’s de-icer and the edge of my bank card. On the way home, I bought two cans of de-icer and once home, I topped up the anti-freeze.
The next day, the temperature soared by about 5 degrees and nothing but warm morning drizzle has greeted me since.
You are welcome. I like to think of the first moments of Winter panic as a kind of public service.
TV
Upside-down Eyes!!
A recent phenomenon is the autumn TV surge. In recent years, SKY has started showing US TV series only a few days after they broadcast in the States. Due to my hours of work (evenings), I have to SKY+ all of these programs and watch them later. For some reason, I end up saving these for the weekends and starting on Saturday night, I have to methodically watch each of the 11 programmes. I make it sound like torture, when it is actually the opposite, but there is something about seeing all those recorded programmes lined up that fills me with dread. It happens every week and then, around May, the series all finish and there’s nothing on. I could quite easily leave all these programmes and watch them at anytime. The SKY+ box kindly stacks them all up in little folders but I MUST watch them and watch them NOW.
I haven’t even mentioned the programmes that actually go out live on Saturday night, namely Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor. I usually watch these on Monday morning and fast-forward through them – especially Cher and her upside-down eyes, funny mouth and hugely annoying leg twitch.
Radio
I have no desire to return to the angry young blogger that I became in the first part of the year but I must allow myself a little bit of release now and again. All this week and for a lot of the preceeding few months, the broadcasters on Radio 2 have been endlessly plugging this year’s “Electric Proms”.
Electric Proms
Quite what separates this annual event from every other live performance they broadcast, I am not quite sure, but this hasn’t stopped them elevating it to the status of an indisputable religious miracle. This is annoying enough but not the whole story. What really gets my goat is the way they talk about it like we could all go if we wanted to. Let me explain. Only 7 million of of us live in London. Let’s be generous and say that maybe 10 million people live close enough to go without too much inconvenience. The remaining 50 million are a bit stuck, even if they wanted to go. This doesn’t seem to stop our favourite radio station pretending that this wonderous event is for all of us. They do the same with productions in the West End. Its “our theatre” and “the nation’s theatre”. No it isn’t. Shut up. It’s for people who live in London and not for those who live 100s of miles away.
As a side gripe, it also seems that it is for BBC staff too. A quick glance at Twitter or a quick listen to the station’s output the next day made it clear that an event so exclusive that tickets were given away in a telephone lottery, was attended by any DJ who wanted to go and quite a few hangers on as well. Not good at all.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am still proud of the BBC. I listen to Radio 2 and Radio 4 every single day and they are both wonderful. I just wish they would stop talking about Neil Diamond, Robert Plant (all hail) and Elton John like they represent the second coming. They are good musicians, all very good at their “jobs” but that’s about it. Get a grip people.
School
I didn’t have much to blog about this week regarding school or writing. It did occur to me that, in two weeks time, I will be back in Dover for Old Boys Weekend and it’s the first such visit that has taken place during a blogging phase. I can’t let this pass without doing something appropriate so I am going to do some sort of blog from there. I am not sure exactly what to do but I’ll think of something. I do have a dictaphone and I do know people who like to talk a lot so that might be one directon to go in. My travelling companions probably just swallowed something hard and jagged but I promise they are safe.
I am going to take some more photos certainly and I have compiled a list of things to check up on. I have been writing about things that took place 30 years ago and 400 miles away for ages. It will be cool to actually check the memories out.
L8r
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Trip, Gravelands, PC & Hole
May 7th
Trip
Look out, I’m back again. No longer got nuddin’. I think it’s safe to say that today I have summin’ at least. In a departure from the normal policy of just reading my old blog posts (admit it bloggers, you do it too), I am going to quite literally add to the number of words in the world.
It’s been a busy old time of late. Last weekend, I went to watch the Army V Navy rugby game at Twickenham with all my friends. That sentence hardly does it justice but I thought I’d get the meat out of the way first. The train tickets arrived in the post a few weeks ago with a mysterious set of instructions. On Friday 2nd May, I jumped on a train for the first time in years and headed for Reading. All I knew was that I would be meeting one of the conspirators and that it would definately not be Sean, as I had spoken to him on the phone earlier and he had been given a different set of instructions. I climbed out at Reading after a moment of blind panic concerning an automatically locking door and an almost 40 year old blogger, only to spot Bruce Whitton. Now several hundred of you will have no idea who that is. He is a big cheese in my school Old Boy network and I had not seen him in over a year. Unfortunately, I was only 99% sure it was him and in that terribly british manner, chose not to shout across the station. I now know it was indeed Bruce. Bugger.
Anyway, what to do with myself? Do I wait for the crowds to clear and let my contact find me or do I go hunting until someone recognises me? I tried the former to no avail and headed up the ramp for the exit. At the top of said ramp stood Sean. One of several moments of confusion and mild dishonesty that would greet me over the next few days.
We drove to what turned out to be Farnborough and the home of big and tall Stan. After some very nice (diabetic friendly) food it was off the the pub and a few hours of intense political debate with Mark, Stan’s brother. At about this point, the joy of not drinking was hammered home. Diet Coke sits on you alright until the 2 or 3 pint. After this, you enter a clarity of thought outside your normal frame of experience. Combine this with the lack of energy caused by low blood sugar and you find yourself very, very, very sober. I am beginning to get used to it but as your increasingly slurry, chums slowly slide under the table, its quite difficult (actually pointless) to explain things to them. Diet Coke no.4 is quite literally the last thing on earth you want. What I did want, and quite desperately it has to be said, was some cheese on toast and a cup of tea. Luckily, it was almost evening pill time and time to head back to Stan’s gaff.
You must realise at this point, I was none the wiser as to how the rest of the weekend would play out. I was going to bed without knowing one thing about Saturday.
Saturday came just a few long hours later and time for another wonderful Stan breakfast. Now at this point, I notice that both Sean and Stan are wearing DYRMS OBA rugby shirts.
Clue one.
Then to Farnborough railway station and a short hop (well, a train ride actually) to Clapham Junction. Here I was thrust head first into The Slug & Pellet, whereupon I met some more friends, old and new. Helen (Hx) & mummy Hx, Heidi (HHx) & Si and Amy. There was much taking of photos and hugging. Unfortunately, it was too soon after breakfast so they ate while I had a Diet Coke. Out came the Army V Navy tickets and the secret was out of the bag. I had never been to Twickenham before and it was a really kind idea of theirs to take me.
The game was no classic but once you are sat down listening to the crowd, it doesn’t matter. It was cool and now I have done it.
Thanks guys.
Gravelands
Whilst staying at Stan’s place. I heard this. Now I have a copy and it is the weirdest, strangest thing I have head in ages. It is also a work of genius. I have also ordered a copy of the previous album.
Lazily, I nicked the following review from Amazon…
“The King is James Brown, an Irish postman. He was discovered singing Elvis songs at a karaoke bar. A record producer had the idea to record the Nirvana song “Come As You Are” with an Elvis impersonator, and he was struck by how much Brown sounded like Elvis. Yes, he actually does sound a lot like Elvis. Anyway, after they recorded the Nirvana song, they decided to record a whole album of songs by dead rockers. Yes, it’s an album of songs by dead people sung by an Elvis impersonator. Somewhat surprisingly, the songs are played “straight”. The songs aren’t played for laughs at all. They are somewhat interesting for the most part, with “Come As You Are” being the best of the lot. If that sounds like something you would be interested in, here it is.”
PC
As of this precise moment. This PC is all mine. It’s taken 4 years but I now own it all. What surprises me the most is that it still flys along. Ok, I stuffed it full of memory, almost 2 terabytes of hard disk space and a 512mb Graphics card over the last few years but this morning I played Crysis with all the settings set to medium. The PC savvy amongst you will realise the impressiveness of this. Others can rot in luddite hell.
Hole
I was going to blog about this alone but having typed for an hour or so, my gloom has lifted. A weird, indefinable gloom. I hope it wasn’t too apparant over the weekend but I tend to swerve from happy to not happy quite distinctly lately. Yesterday I was a bit glum and today I am not. Who knows why?
Oh and its hot. I hate that.
x
Popularity: 2% [?]
Balance, Half, Tankard, Yazoo & Common Room
Jan 26th
Balance
Work was so up and down this week that most of the time I was borderline schizophrenic.
We released a major update of our latest product to slavering hordes on Monday and as we should have predicted, not much happened. As is often the case with software, most effort is not apparent to anyone except those who take the time to be interested in code and similar sexiness. Due to a design decision made long before I hopped aboard the project, updates are a long and tediously repetitious thing, but luckily I did this bit last time. This time round, it was left to me to constantly interrupt my industrious colleague with witty banalities. There was nothing I could do about it. It was his turn and that was that. It all went well though and we solved a huge number of problems. By Tuesday night it was obvious that the long awaited (by a huge few) version 7.0a was a success.
On Wednesday, I made a mistake I have made often before and sent an Email to someone important without thinking it through first and the reply really took the wind out of my sails. I tried to console myself with the sort of cheery and contemplative nonsense I dispense towards my colleague when he feels the same way but alas, I was not in the mood to believe myself. Things picked up on Thursday when I lined up two of Neil’s famous training workshops for the coming week. Time once more to slap on a funny wig, glowing red nose and huge shoes. Figuratively anyway.
My imminent students are just fortunate I couldn’t fit a little car with exploding doors into the lift.
Training a group of people who are having time off from something far less fun is always rewarding anyway. My school friends who remember how much we ‘enjoyed’ fire-fighting instructional films because it meant we didn’t have to spend a few hours running through muddy farm fields will appreciate where I am coming from on this.
Friday was spent working on my Powerpoint presentation for the aforementioned training. Spending two hours on one particular slide may seem excessive, but that 30 second part of the session will be a corker, trust me. Honk. Honk.
Half
Slimming World again this week. As you can see by the graph on the bottom right, I only lost ½ pound this week, but it is still heading downwards. I am fairly sure why I didn’t lose much last week so all I have to do is not do that again and all should be well. My sister Jo joined last week and she managed to lost 6 pounds in her first week, all thanks (she says) to my very filling sausage and bean casserole. The whole group were scribbling the recipe down so this Thursday should be fun when the reviews come in.
Tankard.
A long overdue acknowledgement of a kind gesture. This here tankard, now all cleaned up and almost shiny, belonged to David Brooshooft (forever Billy to several thousand chaps spread the world over) and lived at a seldom mentioned public house in Guston frequented by his goodself and many other Duke of York’s masters. Last November, on Old Boys Weekend, sadly in my absence, a meeting of minds and generosity between Stan, Sean, Dave Shott, Pete Sampson, Pete Smythe, Dave Harris, the landlord of the pub and others of whom I am not aware resulted in a decision that led to the tankard ending up in my possession. Despite a heavy cleaning, I am not sure that I will ever be drinking from it but that doesn’t matter. The only time I ever really drink is in November with my old school chums and I would be too scared that I would lose it.
To own something like this is a huge (and slightly surreal) privelage. Bill Brooshooft had a big influence on my early life and I will treasure it as I treasure the friendship of those who were involved in the process that ended with it arriving at my house.
Yazoo.
This is almost too cool to be true. Yazoo – Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet – are to reform and tour in June this year. They split in 1983 after just two albums, possibly because they heard how I played them to death and felt that the walls of Wolseley House at The Duke of York’s had been exposed to more than enough happy synthpop. 25 years later, I still play them to death (at the moment actually), so to some of us they never went away. Oddly, despite the time-shifting, nostalgia-ruining nature of the IPod, I still completely associate their music with our 4th Year common room.
What a birthday year this is going to be…
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