Nick Nack Blog Attack

Airport Week - Landing Positions

2011-10-20T20:00:00.000+01:00

And so we cap off a week of laziness with a small snifter of new material. Airport steward was definitely one of the more unusual temp jobs I had; one that was also equal parts amusing, tedious and infuriating. The repetitive nature of the shifts was unavoidable - you were there to ask people the same question over and over again and, by nature of that, to have the same arguments over and over again about what you could keep. That said, the arguments were the exception to the norm. The norm being a sort of mental resigned shrug that is oh so typically British.

It's a mindset that says a multitude of things:- resignation at the way things are; a weary acceptance that we don;t have the power to change the ways are in this sort of situation; a determination to just get through it so that the real part can begin and a mild shared irritation at the shuffling of the queue. If any job exposed me to the English at their most Englishy, it was frisking people for contraband before they joined a queue.

It also highlighted the way in our minds work with regards to authority. A bright yellow jacket combined with a walkie talkie and suddenly I went from Mouth-Breathing Temp to The Man Who Knew Things - even amongst the people who knew I was just another Mouth-Breathing like the rest of them. What was even weirder was that, the more that people deferred to me, the more I felt like maybe I did know stuff (even though I wasn't allowed to talk into the walkie talkie thus rendering it into just a walkie).

It was an interesting week of a different type of temping (paid well for temp work, too) but I'm glad it was only brief. Much longer and the sheen of novelty would have worn off and the tarnish of repetitive tedium would have set in.

Airport Week - Cruising At 30,000 Feet

2011-10-19T20:00:00.000+01:00

Don't worry, this theme week's very nearly over...

And lo, it came to pass on the fifth day in the mighty Second Terminal of Heath Row, just west of the city of Lon-Don, that the humble boy's true inner purpose was revealed to him and he was entrusted with the holy talisman of great shamanic power.

They called it the W'Alkie T'Alkie and it was his to wield.

Truly were its powers great. The boy, humble no more and afforded the newfound deference of his peers, discovered a whole new world. He was kept informed by the mystical means of the W'Alkie T'Alkie as to the great Word of Law - the Check-In Desk Opening Times. For it is written in the worshipful Security Briefing that no "passenger" shall be allowed to "check-in" before the desk is open.

And so he roamed the halls and caverns of the Second Terminal, dispensing this wisdom to those who followed the Way of the Yellow Jerkin. And they looked upon their MayFly Sheets and saw that it was good.

That was not all the power that the lad received through the wonder of the W'Alkie T'Alkie. Also, was he able to determine the timing of the breaks and soon his arrival was muchly anticipated amongst the Yellow Jerkined Ones for he provided that elusive object known as "Break Cover". And there was much rejoicing.

However, all too soon, the lad's time as wielder of the otherwordly device drew to a close and he was forced to relinquish his magic talky box. Thus was the mantle passed to those who dwelt in the Shift of the Afternoon. But, the freshly re-humbled boy knew, that tomorrow when the Shift of the Morning came around again, his star would once again be on the ascendance.....

Airport Week - Departure Lounge

2011-10-18T20:20:00.000+01:00

Our week of reposts continues with this post from five years ago when I was airport stewarding single-type man...

Darkness. Outside, all is black. An alarm sounds. 4 a.m. It can mean only one thing:- it's time to get up for work. Regular ablutions are stumbled through in a sleepy stupor. Clothes are hastily assembled about the person, laces tied in a fumble-fingered fashion and, after an abortive trip to the door sans keys, finally, I emerge blinking into...more darkness.

5 a.m. Not yet light. The essential wrongness of leaving the house sober at 5 a.m. on a Sunday instead of returning with a head and bladder dented by alcohol leaves me wondering for a moment if I've somehow slipped sideways into a parallel universe. But then I realise that, in a parallel universe, I'd have long flowing locks and a nudey chin so the likelihood is slim.

The roads are quiet and the ammoniac tang of last night's urine hangs about the Actonian streets. No one about except me, the cats, a few Saturday night stragglers and the cab drivers. For a brief time, Acton is mine for the taking. I decide to give it back...

6 a.m. Work has begun. The fluttering of tickets, the squeak of airport trolley wheels, the checking of "MayFly" sheets, the squeezing of bags into security-approved sizes. This is Day Three in the Big Heathrow Terminal and none of the temp housemates have gone mad yet. It's becoming regular, routine, usual, humdrum, mundane.

In fact, the day begins to assume a rhythm and changes into... not work but a chant...

No lighters

No liquids

One bag per person

No make-up

No toiletries

Must fit that gauge

No fluids

No lipsticks

Mobiles are OK

No toothpaste

No lip balm

But iPods go through

No Coke cans

No matches

(Safety ones excepted)

No Zippos

No chapsticks

They will turn you back

I'm only saying this for your benefit, sir

You don't want to have to queue up twice

Airport Week - Check-In

2011-10-17T21:10:00.001+01:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote about about jobs what I did have way back in the day. In a rare bout of laziness, I'm going to treat you* to a few days worth of reposts about the time I spent as an airport steward five years ago.

A bit of context:- At the time, I was between jobs and taking any temp jobs that I could find to bring in a bit of cash. Fortunately for me, the airports were drafting in as much manpower as they could due to the fact that someone had attempted to smuggle in a bomb in their shoe. It was in this time of heightened security that the following posts were written.

Let the trip back in time commence...

So yesterday** I had a new working experience. I reported to the Control Room at Terminal 2 of Heathrow Airport, was issued with a high visibility jerkin that was yellow of colour and proceeded to be an ill-informed guide during this time of heightened security for around 8 hours. They didn't even search me on the way in. I told them I was here to work and they let me wander around the secure offices. I could have been anyone. In fact, I am anyone.

Ever wondered why people in those yellow waistcoats at airports seem to not only be uncertain but also pretty much know less about the airport than you? Well, that'll be because the likelihood is that they're a temp worker who's been drafted in for the day, given a relatively detail-free fifteen minute briefing on what they're supposed to be telling people and then plonked down at the nearest available access point. I'll be honest, I felt somewhat on the silly side at times. I mean, if you're standing around in a highly visible fluorescent item of clothing and people tend to (quite naturally) assume you have some knowledge of your surrounding environs. Imagine their dismay when their query is greeted by the opening gambit of "Erm..." closely followed by the closing move of "I have no idea".

Still, despite my ignorance of the basic structure and functions of Heathrow Terminal 2, it was a good laugh. I meet a fair few other people in the same boat as me (struggling unemployed types signed up to loads of agencies who've only been offered this as gainful work so far) and we did get paid for mostly standing and chatting to each other. It wasn't as busy as you'd have thought and most people have been watching the news over the last week so have got a reasonable idea what to expect.

So, as no other work has been forthcoming so far, I am venturing back there to don the Waistcoat of Doom once again for eight hours a day for the next three days. The only real downside is that my start time is 6 a.m. There's a 6 o'clock in the morning now? When did that get put in?***

* And by "treat", I of couse mean "spend some time building up new material by giving you rewarmed old toot in the meantime".

**Yesterday five years ago.

*** How little did I know that my current job would make me intimately familiar with 6 a.m. starts on some days and 11 p.m. finishes on others.

Intergalactic Tomato Rustlers

2011-10-12T20:00:00.001+01:00

Tomatoes. The revolting and potentially deadly fruit which disguises itself as a vegetable*.I have a complex relationship with this particular foodstuff; as an ingredient in bolognese, chilli, pizza, etc., I'm fine with it (as long as it's purely a base and is suitably overpowered by other flavours) and I like ketchup and tomato soup (which, let's face it, don't really taste like actual tomatoes). It's just the pure unadulterated nude versions which turn my stomach so. With that in mind, when the homegrown ones began to disappear from my great aunt's garden when I was just a wee nipper, I wasn't overly upset.

Auntie Nora (sister to Nurse Gladys) lived a couple of roads over from Nana so we usually popped over to visit quite a bit when we were staying over at Nana's. She lived in a ground floor flat and had a garden out the back which was raised. I was never entirely sure why - it may have had something to do with the fact that she lived on quite a steep hill but that may be wrong. You had to walk up a little flight of steps in order to get to it - a fact which caused Nana (a natural born worrier) to regularly fear for our lives.

On one particular visit, Auntie Nora mentioned that some of her tomatoes, which were just ripening, had gone missing in the night. Now, the more down to earth and level headed among you would naturally suggest that some form of wildlife had engaged in some nocturnal pilfering.** However, being a youth of not very advanced age and possessing a mind of a science fictional nature, to me there could only be one plausible explanation:- aliens. It made perfect sense. Who would else would arrive undetected at night, commit fruit-based theft and leave no trace behind? It was the only explanation that fit the facts.

OK, so I never really got as far as to establish motive - I'm still a bit vague as to why anyone would travel the vast interstellar reaches of space just to half-inch a couple of tomatoes - but that was but a minor detail. Auntie Nora and Nana, keen to encourage youthful imagination, gamely played along, throwing in a few more details about odd lights in the sky and strange noises in the night (we'd exposed Nana to enough old sci fi films and episodes of Doctor Who by now; she knew the drill). Also, they probably also had an eye on the fact that this would provide them with "Remember the time that you thought aliens stole my tomatoes" style anecdotes. Which it did.

As much as I was excited at the prospect of aliens, the most important thing to me was that the tomatoes were gone. This meant I avoided having to turn down the chance to try the homegrown toms and causing any offence. Bullet dodged. Or should that be ray gun dodged?

In Other News:- This is my 400th post on this here blog. I toyed with the idea of of doing something needlessly celebratory and desperately attention seeking but couldn't be bothered so settled instead for a slight wisp of a post about some fruit. That probably sums up the blog quite succinctly right there.

* Statement based purely on personal opinion and may not be actual scientific fact.

** Hmm, maybe it was the squirrels again. At the moment, I wouldn't put anything past the little buggers.

Squirrel-A-Go-Go

2011-10-11T20:00:00.001+01:00

I thought I was done with the whole squirrel thing but it seems that I've opened a can of nuts (ah ha ha) and the little blighters won't quit. Not content with cropping up in a short story I was reading about a town in which phantoms are a fact of daily life* as a a background, scene-setting detail, they then proceeded to turn up in a podcast in the form of an allegorical story about the incompatibility of a squirrel dating a chipmunk (what can I say? I like an odd mix of reading and listening material). The final step was to be provided later that day...

My Grandad (he of the formerly truck-driving variety) turned 88** at the weekend so I'd bought him a present and was popping round to visit. He's notoriously difficult to buy presents for - he pretty much doesn't want anything anymore and responds with a standard "What did you bother getting me that for?" to any gift he's presented with. Feigning gratitude is not his strong point. All this has altered in the last few years, however, with the introduction of a present that he actually uses - Ma and Pa bought him a DVD player. Once he'd worked out how to get past the menu, he was away. Having strong and fond memories of watching many old comedies with him as a nipper, I've known precisely what to get for him and the Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy, W.C. Fields and Harold Lloyd DVDs have all been watched.

So armed with a selection of Tommy Cooper DVDs in hand, I approached Grandad's maisonette. Only to find, bold as brass on the path in front of me.... yep, a squirrel. Which stands there. And doesn't move. And fixes me with a beady squirrely eye. I stand, surprised at the sudden arrival of a bushy-tailed nut-botherer after having spent a couple of days writing about them. To the casual observer, this may well have appeared to be an odd sort of Mexican stand-off.

Eventually, I twitched and he bolted, the moment broken. The grandfather was presented with his prezzie and seemed pleased with it (well, he said that Tommy Cooper was one of the all time greats which is as close to "That's great, thanks" as you're gonna get) and, upon departing, I was presented with the reason for my rodenty confrontation. You see, Grandad has a bird table upon which he likes to leave out treats for the local avian types. The treats he currently had out on offer? Yep, it was the old traditional monkey nuts and the tree-bound furry fellas were unable to resist like the nut junkies that they are. As we stood outside discussing this, the squirrel beadily eyeballed us from the safety of a branch in a nearby tree.

So, hopefully, this brings to an end my week of squirrel-based association. Although you never can tell when the furry little thieves are lurking nearby, watching and twitching and twitching and watching...

* Phantoms by Steven Millhauser

** As he points out, that's Two Fat Ladies in old bingo calling terms...

Clack Clack Clack Ding

2011-10-09T15:18:00.004+01:00

It had its own hardshell case, the base of which it was permanently attached to, and a handle so that you could carry it around like a misshapen briefcase. It was a child-friendly size but still had serious heft and weight to it (which meant that you weren't going to carry it around very far). It sat in the bedroom and, despite being loved, it was infrequently used. It was my junior typewriter and the sound it made was music to my ears.

Of course, the digital age is a wonderful thing with its ability to instantly provide those wordy sentence type of things to an at least mildly curious audience. There was something, satisfying, however, about the force of effort needed to push the little letters towards the ink-filled ribbon and spear that little inky character down on to the unsuspecting paper. The machine had its little quirks too that were equal parts endearing and frustrating. When you pressed the "j" key, it would usually bring up the "k" as well and the two would then engage in a race to see who made it to the inky ribbon first. The "s" key was ever so slightly misaligned so always appeared on the page just a tiny fraction lower than the other letters. This was more than made up for by the noise of the thing.

The clack of the keys as the letters whizzed up and down, the ding of the bell as you reached the end of the line, the whir of the roller as you pulled a sheet of paper out. All these things made you feel like an old-fashioned reporter in an old-fashioned film who's just about to yell out "Stop the presses!"

As with many a childhood gift which is the result of much pestering on the child's part, it wasn't used anywhere as much as it should have been (which I'm sure drove the parents mad after they'd shelled out for the thing). In my slight defence, I suffered then from something which still affects me now - fear of a blank page. The will to write is strong but, when faced with the prospect of actually committing ink to page / screen, sometimes the blank page comes out on top.

Underused it may have been but my typewriter was still cherished. As much as my trusty and much-used pen and notebooks are these days.

...Ain't Payin' Any Rent

2011-10-08T13:49:00.003+01:00

There was a time when The Brother was living back at Chez Ma and Pa (this has happened from time to time over the years for both of us for varying reasons). Having gone out and lived in his own place under his own rules, he was finding it difficult to readjust to life back in the familial seat. At the time he was the bass player in a band called Motel Hero and this provided him with the ideal outlet to express how he felt about the family home.

If you go to this link* and press play, you will be rewarded with 49 seconds of musicy goodness with a squirrelly feel.

And so the squirrel in the loft lived on immortalised in song. Oddly enough, having decided to write about squirrels over the last day or so, I seem to have been followed by them everywhere...

Whilst listening to a podcast, I was surprised at the synchronicity of the host mentioning one of the contributor's books, "Squirrel Meets Chipmunk". The synchronicity wave continued to crest on the train as I got up to leave and overheard a man on the phone saying, "No, you have to open and close the door really quickly otherwise the squirrel will get in." Finally, the wave of squirrelly synchronicity crashed upon the beach when I was later shown this link.

Squirrels. They're everywhere. Mind your nuts.

*Hey, anyone remember that site? It used to be all the rage, back in the day.

Squirrel In The Loft...

2011-10-07T17:30:00.003+01:00

Night. All is dark and quiet.* I am lying in bed and sleep is beckoning as I drift in that strange crossover country between memory and dream (did I really have a conversation about cannibalisitic penguins?). Suddenly, a noise. A skittering, scritching noise. Where? Above me. Scratching and rustling. Sleep has fled and in its place is a miraculous feeling towards the squirrel in the loft.

I don't remember exactly when he moved in. There was no formal invitation and there was certainly no contract. All I knew was that he was exactly the sort of housemate that nobody desired. "But how could you resent the cuddly, fluffy squirrel when you so desperately wanted a pet one as a youth," I hear you ask. All I can say is that I am a fickle creature and that if you take up residence above my bedroom with what appears to be the sole purpose of making scratching noises, don;t expect me to be your biggest fan.

This wasn't enough for our sciuridaen interloper, oh no. For, you see, the loft of the house that is ma and Pa's is a veritable treasure trove of stuff and things, toys and games, photos and mementos, books and magazines, nick nacks and gewgaws. There is somewhat of a tendency towards hoarding in the house (not in a crazy piles of newspapers or jars of urine way, mind you) and the loft is stocked to the rafters. All of which was the icing on the lofty cake for Mr Squirrel.

It was upon a routine "clear out the loft but actually keep pretty much all of it just move it around a bit" mission the we discovered the nibbled remains of many possessions. This necessitated the implementation of the Big Blue Plastic Boxes for storage and the squirrels epicurean vandalism was partly thwarted.

A few years back, the loft was redecorated and a new lining installed. After that, the lofty shenanigans pretty much ceased and the local squirrels took to perching on the edge of the roof and shouting angrily instead (oh well, you can't have everything). The legend of the squirrels would always live on in song, however...

* Some poetic licence is being used her as Ma and Pa's house is one street away from a train station so floodlights and night freight trains do not strictly speaking make dark and quiet.

Squirrel In The Park

2011-10-05T19:49:00.003+01:00

They are small. They are furry. And they'll go for your nuts (warning - there's always a strong possibility that this could turn out to be the first in a series of genitalia-based "jokes"). I'm talking, of course, about squirrels. Twitchy of nose, fleet of foot and bushy of tail. As a child, I desperately wanted to own one as a pet. Fortunately, I had sensible parents who explained to me that squirrels were best left where they were. Equally fortunately, I had a member of the family on side who liked to get up close and personal with nature.

Grandad (Pop's Pop) has always been a nature lover. Handily lying about the kitchen could be spotted the odd old crust of bread ready to feed any local birds who stopped off in the front garden for a quick snack. Nowadays, he has the full bird table with special bird feed and everything so that he can observe the comings and goings of the neighbourhood feathered folks. I was never that much of a twitcher* myself. No, the important thing to me was the bag of monkey nuts that were kept on standby in the glove compartment of Grandad's car.

You see, we lived but a short ride away from Greenwich Park and, in amongst the section of the park where the deer could be found to roam, lived a large selection of squirrels. Yeah, not so unusual. I know. Park, trees, green spaces, squirrels. And there wasn't anything particularly exceptional about them. Except maybe for their superhuman levels of cheekiness.

Due to the regular stream of people style visitors, the furry little menaces had become so immune to the presence of people that the human form had become just another obstacle to hurdle in the acquisition of food. This was what The Brother and I loved. The game went like this:- retrieve monkey nut from Grandad. Stand next to tree. Hold said monkey nut betwixt thumb and forefinger. Wait for squirrel to climb you like a tree in order to acquire the nut. Try not to giggle or scream depending on level of squirrel claw tickling or accidental claw gouging. Repeat until either we or the squirrels got bored first (it was normally the squirrels).

To this day, the sight of a bag of monkey nuts causes a wave of squirrel-based nostalgia. At Chez Ma and Pa, however, relations with the squirrels were to take a decidedly frosty turn in later years...

*Bird watcher to you non-ornithological types.

(Not) Bigger On The Inside

2011-10-03T22:00:00.000+01:00

The early Eighties. Star Wars was an acceptable form of worship, the acquisition of sweets was a prime motivator and attending primary school was all the rage amongst my friends and I. Being a small child person type of thing, I had straightforward ambitions. I wanted medical science to advance to the point that I could be safely transformed into a tyrannosaurus rex*, I wanted to write books** and I wanted the ability to travel throughout all of time and space***. Through the power of an extremely splendid playset and a healthy dollop of imagination, I came pretty close on the last one.

I must admit that I can't specifically remember when I got it - whether it was a birthday or a Christmas present - but what I do remember is that I loved it. It was blue, it was about four and a half feet tall, it was box-like and it had had a control panel painted underneath a scanner (plastic window) on the inside (which, unfortunately due to the way that the laws of physics currently work, was not bigger than the outside). It was a TARDIS playhouse and it was all mine.

It was a thing of elegant simplicity. You snapped together the plastic frame, inflated the mock light on the top of the cover, pulled said cover over the newly constructed frame and, once inside through the police box's tent-style doors, the whole of space and time was yours to explore.

It kept me amused for hours, did my TARDIS tent (well, what else would a young Doctor Who obsessive need?). It didn't even have to "go" anywhere; sometimes I'd be perfectly happy just sitting in it. Sadly, unlike the "real" thing, it was not immune pot the ravages of time and two factors ended its run. Firstly, I grew too big for it and secondly the outer cover ripped and some of the pieces of the frame went missing.

So, like may things at Ma and Pa's that were once cherished, it was consigned to the loft where it probably remains to this day. I wonder if I could fix the old girl up and take her out for a spin?

* Actually, that would still be pretty cool.

** This one still stands, obviously.

*** Maybe my wants aren't so radically different these days after all..

The Shape Of Things To Come

2011-09-30T20:00:00.000+01:00

Nothingness. An endless, empty expanse which stretched out bare before his eyes. Dim shapes occasionally seemed to loom up into view, only to disappear again as soon as focus was trained upon them. He strained to try and make some shape or form out of the half-congealed masses which lurked in front of him but no order could he bring to the chaos. All of which is to say that I've got a nice long list of potential blog ideas which are all steadfastly refusing to be beaten into some sort of wordy narrative-ish form. The swines.

Quite some time ago, I gave a you a little teaser of things to come; most of which have been and passed and a couple of which are still percolating away and will emerge in the fullness of time (you didn't think I'd forgotten about "Bulgarian near-death experiences", did you?). In a similar way to before, here are some potential titles which may or may not come to pass as full-blown blogs (and which or may not remain as the titles - the author reserves the right to do whatever he bloody well likes at any time):-

- Clack Clack Clack Ding

- The Night Of The Fractured Nose

- Intergalactic Tomato Rustlers

- To Live And Die In Carlisle

- (Not) Bigger On The Inside

and a few more besides, including maybe a week or so devoted to the behind the scenes story of a low budget feature film...

Oh, also, I may well cheat a bit over the next few days and repost a set of blogs about my time as airport security at Heathrow (in keeping with the whole jobs vibe of the moment). What? They're from five years ago on a different site - you'll still be getting your money's worth (yes, free, that's right)...

I Think Maybe They Do Sell Fridges - Part The Last

2011-09-29T13:30:00.000+01:00

Occasionally, a father would bring the kids out on his own for the joy of bonding over the shoe shopping experience but their time with us was normally as mercifully brief as possible:- "Do you have anything that fits? We'll take it." (This wasn't necessarily a smart move on their part as more often than not they'd be back for a refund / exchange once the mother saw the hideous / wildly inappropriate / cheaply made footwear that had been purchased.) On the whole, though, the vast majority of our customers were women (when accompanied by partners, they seemed to be the ones in charge) and it was from this mostly pleasant majority that the troublesome minority would spring.

That minority had fixed in their mind exactly what they hoped to achieve and what they wanted was this - a mythical, durable, expanding shoe that would somehow last and fit for the child's entire school career and they weren't going to be leaving the shop until they'd tried on every possible shoe in the hopes of finding it. The phrase that would fill me with dread was "Can we just try it one size larger?" followed by repeated enquiries as to what I thought (with my actual opinion being ignored) and attempts to bully me into using the words "It's OK" so that they could buy an ill-fitting shoe and tell themselves their conscience was clear and "the bad man in the shop" told them to buy it while their poor child stumbled about with bleeding feet. Fortunately, this being children's shoes, we didn't get commission for sales (the fit was important, not the sale) so if they kept ignoring me, it was no skin off my nose if they went and bullied a shop assistant somewhere else.

I get that kids are an expensive business and you don't want to keep buying them expensive shoes every couple of months but a) kids do grow (no avoiding that bit) and b) don't ask for someone's advice then ignore it by bullishly trying to nag them into agreeing with you so you can save a couple of quid with a clean conscience. Also, if you really want to save a couple of quid, go to your local shoe shop and don't go shopping at an expensive Oxford Street store.

At least we had an endlessly looping video of The Lion King to keep the kids entertained while their mothers jammed every type of shoe into the shop onto their leaden feet. I did, however, become concerned when people started pointing out that I was unconsciously talking along with the script. And don't be alarmed if I suddenly start checking whether your shoes fit properly if "Hakuna Matata" starts to play....

I Think Maybe They Do Sell Fridges - Part The First

2011-09-27T21:18:00.003+01:00

The first proper job I ever had (don't worry, this isn't going to go all Derek and Clive) was at a reasonably famous department store located towards the Marble Arch end of Oxford Street in That There London. This was way back in my gap year between school and university (before The Days Of The Temp) in which the intention was to build up a bit of cash for university. A friend who lived down the road was working in said shop and, being in need of help, drafted me and her sister (also a friend who'd been in my class a couple of times at school) to help out. So good was I in this role that I made the transition from part time to full time.

And this wondrous role in a reasonably famous department store, I hear you ask, what was it? It was the vital and important role of... children's shoe fitter. Yep, you read that right. I used to fit shoes for children as a living.

I had to be trained for it, you know. Oh yes, they don't just any Tom, Dick or Baldy wander in off the street and start crippling the young. No, they send you on one-day course to show you how to use the big machine with the moving bars that you put your foot into, how to use the manual gauges that you have to slide up and down yourself in case of technological failure and also how to tell you're not permanently injuring someone whose bones are still growing. They give you a cheap looking "Your Name Here" style certificate at the end of the day and everything. I'm a Start-Rite certified shoe fitter. That's not something you'll find on every CV, you know.

The one thing that most people say when I mention The Shoe Fitting Days is, "Oh, the children, I bet they were a nightmare." And, yes, I suppose the odd one or two were complete and utter shitbags (as is the way with children and the bigger people they later turn out to be) but, for the most part, they were OK. Generally, they were bored out of their tiny little minds and filled with a hatred for the shopping of the shoes; an attitude with which I can sympathise to this day. No, the kids were mostly alright. At the risk of alienating some of my audience, it was the mothers which caused the grief...

To Be Continued

Dust, Noise And Grit

2011-09-21T21:31:00.001+01:00

In the late Nineties, as the world teetered on the cusp of becoming a predominantly digital place, filing seemed to be a big thing for most companies. Paper was sprouting all over the place and no one knew what to do with it. Or, more accurately, no one wanted to spend time sorting it and shuffling it from one place to another. In this world of endless paperwork to be filed, only one person could help and that person was... The Temp.

I seemed to spend a lot of my temp-based involved in the marshaling of paper-based objects. And data inputting. Oh my yes, plenty but plenty of data inputting. I remember working for a governmental department and being one of two temps hired to sort through the many, many hundreds of applications for legal work experience then entering their details into the system if they met certain (extremely high) standards. So good was I at this menial work that I was kept on for longer to pass contracts around for signature, duplicate them and file them. A university education at work, there.

This was by no means my worst filing experience - on the contrary, it was a very pleasant office to work in. No, my least favourite filing experience was in a set of portacabins within a building site for a set of new offices near Bank.

My mission, which I had already foolishly accepted, was to file all the on-site architectural plans in order of revision. Pretty simple, you may think. Well, you may think wrong as these things were updated seemingly every hour in varying colours and codes. Not only that but they were also huge - it was like constantly filing posters. Except that they were really boring posters.

Added to this were two more elements - the dust and the noise. The dust was everywhere and coated everything. I spent the whole day feeling gritty. To top it off, at certain times of day, the whole place reverberated to the sound of pneumatic drills. It was a lot like working inside a tin can while someone banged it with a stick.

I lasted the best part of a week and a half before making my excuses and leaving. Apparently, there was a pretty high turnover on this assignment. I was more than happy to keep that high rate ticking over.

Hi, This Is Nick Speaking, How Can I Help You?

2011-09-20T20:37:00.002+01:00

Call centres. Hate 'em or hate 'em, you can't escape 'em. They seem to be one of the many necessary evils of this modern world what we do live in. Well, maybe they're not that necessary but I doubt that they're going anywhere anytime soon. This was a fortunate thing for me in the late Nineties as, fresh out of university and still sporting a little bit of hair, I found myself donning the headset and taking the abuse that a call centre operative gets.

There's something uniquely dehumanising about working in a call centre. You put on the magic (and fetching) headset, you log into the phone system and you cease being that individual person and start being defined by statistics. The amount of time you're logged in, the times you take fro breaks, the calls you clear per hour, the number of sales leads you pass across. These are the things that define you - not your likes or abilities but whether you maintain the stats, keep the numbers up, don't let them drop. Add to that the fact that you're just supposed to absorb all the bile and vitriol that is poured your way (with a healthy soupcon of "regular crazy and demanding caller" thrown in for good measure) and you begin to feel less like a person and more like some call-processing human emotional sponge.

All of which is not to say that the people who work there are inhuman. Not at all. They were people all right - a fair number of them graduates like me who needed to get that cash coming in and start paying off those student overdrafts (and the call centre temp jobs paid good money - high burnout rate). We did our time, plowed through our calls and got very drunk whenever we could (frequently, as I recall).

I worked there for six months as a temp, kept my head down, did my job and was offered a permanent position. I said yes initially, thinking that this was my way on to the career path. Then one day, a moment of clarity - I looked around at the people who'd been on the phones for years or those who'd made their way into the sales team and then stayed there for years and thought, "No, this isn't the life for me."

So I made my excuses, left and launched myself back into the wonderful world of temporary employment...

The Time, The Place - Part The Last

2011-09-19T20:00:00.000+01:00

It is about eight years after I was last in the Trafalgar Tavern. My friend Rich and his brother Rob have finished shooting their first (nearly) feature length film Eightball, in which I play the unintentionally camp villain (well, look, I was going for menacing but it;s a very fine line...). Having self-financed the film itself, they decided to hire out a venue for a screening which they will also be paying for. The nicest venue they can find in their price range? Yep, it's the Tavern.

This event I remember very clearly - it was a packed house (standing at the back even) and an appreciative audience. This may well have had something to do with the fact that pretty much everyone in the audience either knew or was related to someone in the film but still a good time was had by all.

Skip forward again to a couple of years ago. Bro and Soon-To-Be-Mrs-Bro were searching for venues for their upcoming nuptials. Yes, you know exactly where this is going so I'll just skip to the end - the Trafalgar was once again called into service as the venue for the ceremony, meal and reception (which saved a lot of faffing about). Due to your truly being on best man duties, however, the enforced sobriety that I went through prior to speech (which involved handouts of embarrassing pictures - always a winner) was counterbalanced by extreme drunkenness from the very instant the speech was concluded and thus my memories are once again befogged (although I am reliably informed that I was the life and soul of the party and did not leave the dance floor for the entire night which explains the extreme aching of the leg the next day).

One venue, showing up in three different capacities at various points in my life, completely unplanned on my part. Dance floor, cinema and registry office. I wonder what'll it be when it undoubtedly turns up again in five to six years time...

The Time, The Place - Part The First

2011-09-18T20:29:00.002+01:00

There are familiar faces that crop up throughout your life - sometimes expectedly, oftentimes not so much - but sometimes there are places which seem to keep randomly recurring at key moments. One such place for me is the Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich.

Being the home of the National Maritime Museum (as well as the place where they make time before shipping it out to the rest of the world), Greenwich is fairly well populated with pubs featuring words like Nelson, Trafalgar, Hardy, Cutty Sark, Gypsy Moth and so on in their names. The Trafalgar is one such old drinking establishment, a lovely old place situated on the river. It's a pleasant if unremarkable pub downstairs but it is upon venturing upstairs that you discover the huge and rather stately function rooms. It is to these rooms that I have been drawn at selected times in my life...

First on the list was my unofficial sixth form ball at the age of eighteen. The school had, naturally, organised an official leavers ball but no one really relishes the idea of school-approved and sanctioned fun so one of the boys in my year took it upon himself to go off and organise a ball of his won. This was my first time at the Trafalgar function rooms but, I have to admit, my actual memory of the event is somewhat hazy - mainly due to the fact that I would have been very, very drunk.

I didn't really think about the place much again but, around eight years later, I was to find myself once again standing in those rooms but for a very different reason...

To Be Concluded

Wage Monkey - Part The Last

2011-09-14T20:00:00.004+01:00

When I arrived at the Oval, the usual selection of current, former and future criminals were there to make up my friendly, neighbourhood co-workers. This bit wasn't much of a surprise, though, and I wasn't expecting a day of witty repartee and general jocularity so I can't really complain about that.

We were assigned our areas to watch and sent on our merry way. Our mission - to just sort of stand there and either stop people going were they weren't supposed to or point them in the direction they needed to go. I was given a section of the stands to watch over and told to go forth and watch.

It was pretty much at this point, when I'd got myself in my allocated standing position, that the worst thing possible for a cricket match happened - it started to rain. For those of you not in the know, cricket is one of those sports which is prevented by rain (don't worry, I won't be blinding you with cricket facts, sport and I are very much uneasy bedfellows). Splendid , I thought, rain stops play, we all go home and I get my flat fee of £30 for doing nothing. Oh ho ho, thought the universe, you not getting off that lightly, Sunny Jim.

You see if the rain is heavy enough to stop play but not heavy enough to give the ground a thorough soaking then everyone will just hang around on the off chance that it could all kick off. And lo and behold, it rained consistently but not too heavily throughout the day whilst showing occasional signs of clearing up without actually doing so and so the Powers That Be decided to hang around all day on the off chance that it could kick off. The upshot of this being that I had to stand outside all day. In the rain. Staring at empty stands. And empty grass. In case there was cricket. Which I find boring anyway.

It was the soggiest and most miserable of working days during my career asa a temp. The day dragged on interminably with no stimulation for my bored little brain and no respite from the glorious summer weather. They made us work the whole day and, by the end, I was cold, damp and downcast. This was the final nail in the coffin of my glittering career as a temp steward. Some of my fellow knuckle-draggers seemed to enjoy getting paid for standing around all day doing nothing but get rained on but the mind-popping tedium of it all wasn't for me. I handed in my high visibility jerkin and bade farewell to the stewarding world.

Little did I know that the future would hold such glittering temp roles as call centre operative, airport security and cinema receipt sorter....

Wage Monkey - Part The Second

2011-09-13T20:00:00.001+01:00

It quickly became clear that the majority of the blokes I was to be stewarding with (and they were all men at this particular event) were of a criminal persuasion. They'd either recently been released, were currently inside and seemed to be participating in some of community service programme or were yet to be apprehended for criminal activities that they were currently indulging in. Only a couple of people there seemed to be fellow students like myself. The rest were the sort of people who listed "beating up students" as one of their hobbies (which actually reminds me of a trip to Carlisle but that's a story for another time). To say that I felt a little bit of a fish out of water would be something of an understatement.

The day itself was fine - reasonably boring and with little in the way of banter with my agency colleagues - if a little on the low paid side. Still, I'd got through it, it hadn't taxed me and I'd made a fairly small amount of cash. I reckoned it was worth going back for more so I signed up for a day of stewarding the cricket at the Oval. This is where I went wrong.

From what I can remember, it was something like a ten hour shift and, for this, they played a flat rate of about £30. oh yes, a handsome wage for a handsome day's work. We had to be there for a briefing at about 8 in the morning - which meant that I couldn't get cheap travel and had to pay around £7 to get there. Having been mini-bussed previously, I had not realised this was the case and had not factored this in before signing up. Suddenly my earnings for the day were down to about £2.30 per hour. This did not bode well..

To Be Concluded

Wage Monkey - Part The First

2011-09-12T20:00:00.001+01:00

Temp jobs have a special category of contempt reserved for them. Unless the temp job in question is covering someone on leave, the sort of work involved in the average piece of low paid contract work is generally a) so menial that it would be a positive affront to include those duties in a regular persons role and b) so mind- meltingly simple that you could shave a monkey and get said shaved simian to do it. I have, as have most of us at one point or another, been that monkey.

The most memorably depressing day of temping that I ever spent was as a cricket steward at the Oval. I won't name the company - admittedly mainly because their name is lost in the dim and distant haze of my alcohol-numbed student memory - but they specialised in staffing for events from a catering and security / stewarding point of view. It was in the twilight of my university days and I needed a bit of additional cash to see me through. My flatmates were working for the agency in question and doing silver service and bar work at events. I thought I'd get in on a bit of that action and signed myself up.

Sadly, my complete lack of catering experience meant that I wouldn't be landing any of those plum silver service gigs. No, I was only qualified for stewarding which was basically pointing at things that were further away and standing around in a high visibility jacket. My three years as a children's shoe fitter at Selfridges cut no ice here. Well, fair enough, I thought, a job's a job and money's money and various other tautologies.

I signed on for a day of stewarding at the races - can't remember which race course. It had horses at it, that's about the best I can do. We had to arrive early at the agency offices to be mini-bussed to the event and it was there that I met the people I was to be shackled with for the rest of the day. If hell is other people, I was in for a fiery day indeed...

To Be Continued

She's A Boy

2011-09-11T11:40:00.004+01:00

I was round at Chez Ma and Pa's the other night, working a late shift, when the phone rang. It was Gorgeous Girlfriend.

"Darth Vader's a boy!"

This statement left me completely surprised. As a self-confessed Star Wars fan (who has talked about the Wars extensively on this here blog), my reaction may well seem a little odd to you. As it happens, she was not referring to the character once known as Anakin Skywalker who grows up to become a Dark Lord of the Sith and slaughterer of Jedi. No. We're both well aware that he's a boy / hideously scarred cyborg-type thing.

No, she was in fact referring to our reasonably recently acquired black kitten who we had previously assumed to be a girl (and derived much amusement from then naming Darth Vader). Gorgeous Girlfriend had been sat with the kitten that day, happily tickling Vader's tummy when, Vader obviously being slightly happier with the tummy tickling than expected, out had popped Vader's old chap (well, we've all been there). Upon closer inspection, it was quite clear that there were a healthy pair of testicles located just underneath too. The knackers must have been a recently descended development as not only had we failed to notice them but the vet didn't notice them either when we took Vader for the standard set of injections.

So it turns out that she's a boy and I'm still getting used to describing her as him. I'm just hoping that he carries on being a cat and it doesn't turn out that we've got a bit of a funny-looking dog...

A Little Bit Off The Front - Part The Last

2011-09-09T20:00:00.001+01:00

A short interval of time had passed. I was standing before the mirror with my hair-based masterwork revealed to me in all its glory. Except that glory was entirely the wrong word as my fringe was a diagonal, crenellated mess. It looked somewhat like someone had given me a fringe by cutting around a selection of seashells. I had utterly destroyed my hairstyle and made myself look like a mental patient. I was, in short, an idiot and the evidence of my idiocy was there for all to see. There was only one thing left to do:- some quick panicking followed by a dose of crying, ultimately culminating in slinking sheepishly downstairs to tell Ma and Pa what I'd done.

The folks mainly came down on the side of anger but there was also a healthy dose of amusement at the prize chump I'd made of myself. I did, after all, look like a right tit. It was shortly before bedtime so finding somewhere for an emergency haircut was out of the question. With a glint in his eye, my father stepped forward to solve the situation in his own inimitable way.

Dad is a D.I.Y. enthusiast and likes to have a specific tool, preferably power-driven, to provide a convenient solution to any potential household problem. The Problem Of His Eldest Son's Mangled Fringe was no exception. He'd sort this out, it would be all right and all he would need would be his trusty electric shaver with clipper attachment.

A short time later and Pops had finished his work. The angle of fringiness had been reduced from around 45 degrees to about 15 degrees and the amount of fringe was virtually non-existent. In short, I still looked like an idiot who had cut his own fringe as I now had a moptop haircut with a missing front piece.

There was a punishment for my stupid desecration of my own hair and that was to spend the following day at school with my mental patient barnet; a haircut was out of the question until after school had finished. The other children at school, being the kind generous souls that they were, teased me all day long. I spent as much time as possible with my hand clamped to my forehead and avoided every break time by skulking around in our upstairs classroom like some junior Quasimodo while my tormenters danced outside the windows. Suitable punishment indeed for I was never again tempted to cut my own hair with a pair of nail scissors. Or any scissors really.

There was one upside to the whole affair - my hair had to be cut so short that the moptop hairdo never returned. In retrospect, though, just asking Mum and Dad for a different haircut would probably have been less traumatic / moronic.

A Little Bit Off The Front - Part The Second

2011-09-08T20:00:00.002+01:00

The bathroom contained plenty of mirrors so I was all right on that front. Just the one vital ingredient missing then - some scissors. Cupboard doors were opened, shelves rooted through and only one pair of scissors was discovered - Ma's nail scissors. Fair enough, they would have to do.

Not too much of a problem, you may be thinking. Well, let me give you a bit more detail about them. Two blades and two loopy bits to put your fingers through in order to operate them - so far, so standard. However, these were those particular types of nail scissors with curved blades. Yes, you're probably getting an inkling where this is going. Run with that inkling. While you're at it, if you could also nip back and clue in my eight or nine year old self, that would be spiffing as that fella didn't see a single thing wrong with them.

Scissors grasped in hand and and hair secured between two fingers (like what the proper hair cutting people do), the first cut was made. And all I had done was manage to cut a noticeable semi-circular section out of fringe. At this point, I started to feel the creeping fear that something was going horribly wrong here as, one cut in, it didn't seem to be turning out the way that I had hoped. I had committed myself, though, and at this point if I'd just shown Mum and Dad the curved result of my cack-handed barber skills, the shouting would have begun. No, I could still fix this, it was only the first cut; if I just kept going, it was bound to all turn out alright, wasn't it? Wasn't it?

No, it wasn't.

To Be Continued

A Little Bit Off The Front - Part The First

2011-09-07T20:00:00.002+01:00

Today's ramblings concern an object of myth and legend; an item which some claim to have knowledge of but whose existence has faded into memory with the inevitable passage of time. Once it proudly displayed itself to the world but today, it is a thing of rumour. I am talking about my fringe.

As I sit before you (not literally, of course, I've no idea where you are... unless, that is, you happen to be reading this quite near to me, in which case, give us a wave), it is hard to imagine that that vast tractless expanse of gleaming forehead was once held at bay by a bordering fence of hair. That is very much the case, though, for I was not always shiny of pate.

As a youth, I had a full head of thick hair which, as it continued to grow at a reasonable rate, needed frequent cutting (from what I understand, this is still standard operating procedure for hair). Mother was, is and ever shall be a Beatles fan and so, as a consequence, the hairstyle of choice that the Brother and I were subjected to was a sort of bowlish, 60s-style, moptop-like affair (cheerfully provided by our neighbour Lin down the road). This being the 1980s, however, our haircuts were naturally around twenty years out of date and we were duly ridiculed for them by the kind and generous souls who were our schoolmates (school children being one of the most evil creatures to walk the earth).

After our umpteenth trim into this same old hairdo, I decided that I'd had enough. My hair was starting to get long again and I wanted something different, something new and I knew just the person to do it - me. I'd seen Lin cutting our hair and it looked pretty easy - she just sort of snipped at it a bit and hey presto, freshly cut hair. I was pretty sure that I could manage that. All I needed was a pair of scissors and a mirror. To the bathroom...

To Be Continued

MacBook Girl, Greasy Guy And The Make-Up Lady

2011-09-06T20:00:00.001+01:00

It's true, I don't want to speak to or engage in any sorty of communication with my fellow commuters but that doesn't mean that I'm totally oblivious to them. I know they're there, naturally, especially the ones who engage in an unspoken war of minor shifting in order to gain more ground on the double seat. I'm starting to recognise familiar faces, though; people like me who get on not just the same train but the same carriage every day of the week.

There's Oversized MacBook Girl, for example. She seems to have purchased the device with the main specification being that it's three times too large for her lap. She generally spends the entire thirty five minute frantically tapping away at her emails, whilst threatening to annex the lap of the person seated next to her (which has been me on occasion and has caused me to... well, betray no reaction whatsoever and try harder to focus on my book while trying to ignore her frantic tapping and the fact that I'm in danger of becoming a lap extension; it's the English way).

A stop or two further on, Greasy Hair Guy gets on. He has slightly thinning hair on top which he has slicked to within an inch of life and clumps together in thin slimy fronds at the top of his forehead. This combined with his small, beady eyes gives him the look of a man who hobbies include touching himself at inappropriate times and mole-strangling. He may well be a perfectly lovely bloke but he really needs to drop the creepy serial killer look.

Make-Up Lady is next and she spends the entire journey re-applying her make-up in a slow methodical fashion while staring into a ridiculously small hand mirror. I say "reapply" as it doesn't look as if she forgotten to put her make-up on before she left the house when she starts working away at her face. She reminds me of the two girls on one of the floors below at the office who spend their breaks busying away with hair straighteners in one of the meeting rooms (maybe hair needs that much constant attention - I don't know, it's a foreign country to me).

These are my fellow commuters then and I feel like, in some small way, I'm beginning to know them. Just don't any of you talk to me. I'm reading my book.

Back Once Again

2011-09-05T20:00:00.001+01:00

Ah, two weeks of relaxing and recharging. Holidays are indeed a thing of wonder and beauty and wondrous beauty and beautiful wonder and so on and so forth. Then it turns out that you're back home again and suddenly you have to readjust to all these little habits you comfortably got out of, like:-

1. Walking. I've barely walked anywhere for the last two weeks. My daily commute involves three to four miles walking every day (partly out of choice to avoid tubes and buses). My "commute" over the last fortnight involved bed to sofa, sofa to sun lounger, sun lounger to pool, pool to sun lounger, sun lounger to sofa and sofa to bed, sometimes in different variations but always with a protracted period of being pretty much horizontal in between any of these journeys. It was a tough life but someone had to do it.

2. Mainly Reading On Commutes. I got through around ten or eleven books while we were away - near enough a book a day. Brilliant. And the previously mentioned new Electronic Book Reading Device was utilised non-stop. So long, large-chunk-of-the-luggage-allowance-taken-up-by-books. Hello, portable-e-library.

3. Not Drinking Beer At Any Time You Feel Like. What's that? Heading towards midday, you say? Yep, it's definitely past time for a beer. And then maybe time for another after that. We'll play it by ear from there.

4. Wearing Clothes. I've barely worn more than a pair of swimming trunks for a fortnight. Socks? What are these constrictive foot prisons I must wear? Oh, shoes, too? Cover up my man-boobs and beer belly, you say? Fascist!

So, all in all, good to be back, really. When's my next holiday? Oh.

Letter To My Newly Arrived Nephew

2011-09-04T20:31:00.004+01:00

Dear Evan,

Hello, it's Uncle Nick again. Yep, head-wrong-way-up uncle, that's right. Just a quick one, really, to say welcome to the world. The bad news is that you don't get to go back in to that comfy, snug little room you've had all to yourself for the last nine months and you do have to stay in this bright place with all the big blobby things looming at you where you have to use your lungs and do breathing and stuff. Yeah, sorry about that.

The good news is that you've got a big old family that will love you and protect and care for you and, in all likelihood, spoil you absolutely rotten. Trust me, That Nephew Fella, this is a pretty damn good option.

We haven't actually met yet as I inconsiderately booked my holiday before I knew you were going to be born. I know, it's disgraceful uncling behaviour. Don't worry, I know when your birthday is now so you'll at least get a birthday card by Christmas from now onwards.

I'll be meeting you very soon. Try not to be too scared by the beard; the shiny glittering glasses and shiny, glittering head should keep you entranced, though, so focus on those.

Loads of love,

Uncle Baldy

Bye Bye, Paper? - Part The Second

2011-08-25T13:30:00.000+01:00

If we're talking brand names here, it's the probably the one you're thinking of. Yep, the one that begins with a K and rhymes with spindle. I'm not trying to plug a particular brand, though, it's more about the concept.

As I've mentioned before, I'm a techy gadgety type with a hint of an inner Luddite. I'm always keen on the latest televisual technology but my mobile phone is a couple of years old and just makes calls and sends texts*. I've been these here inter-witterings for about six years now but a lot of them are still initially composed via the time-honoured method of ink via a nib onto the page. I always thought I'd be a "you can prise my papery book from my cold dead hands" type but it would appear not to be so.

Partly it's the convenience; there's nothing worse as a reading commuter than reaching the end of your book when you're only on the journey in and not having a fresh one to hand. Mainly, though, it's the fact that it's easy to use and clear to read; it feels like reading a book and it doesn't strain the eyes (any more so than excessive reading of a book would do).

Yes, there are of course drawbacks when compared to a normal book - books don't need to be charged for one and aren't generally subject to hardware failure (unless you drop them in the bath)- but the advantages are considerable. My current holiday luggage allowance, for example, will be considerably lighter without the ten or eleven books crammed in there.

Does this mean that I hath abjured the sight of regular books? Oh dear me, no. I'll still read plenty of papery books - I've just found another way to consume them. There's room in my life (and my rucksack) for a lightweight portable library. Just need to remember to keep it charged...

* I'm sure that I'll undergo a sudden smartphone conversion at some point. It's just that I'm big fingered and clumsy and don't find them easy to control.

Bye Bye, Paper? - Part The First

2011-08-24T13:30:00.000+01:00

I'm a reader. This is not really much in the way of a confession, I know - almost like saying "I am male" or "I have no hair". I have been of the reading persuasion. I honestly cannot remember a time when I didn't read books. I will admit that my reading tastes aren't often highly literary - you'll find me happily reading a Doctor Who tie-in novel as much as anything else and my tastes definitely run to the science fictional and fantastical side - but I am reading in one form or another.

In fact, being of a reading disposition meant that I always had a use for that little pocket inside my school blazer (yep, that's private education for you); it was a handy little book-sized nook always about my person. Although I'm sure my mother wasn't overly happy at the pocket stretching that took place as the size of book read began to increase.

The book pocket continued into my working and commuting life - any inside jacket pocket always contained a book (unless it was particularly large, then it had to be carried in the bag). This made my commuting life feel a bit more constructive, more useful. Sure, I had to spend hours each week crammed into a stinky moving sweatbox but at least I was getting through a few books. Oh, I'm sure I could have started up conversations with the other commuters around me but that would, of course, have singled me out as some of arch mentalist. Besides, I don't really really want to (mornings especially; I'd rather not say a word until I've been awake for at least 90 minutes).

Aside from the obvious booky appeal of getting swept away by someone else's imagination, there's the whole tactile experience of reading, too. The heft of the book, that papery texture, the musty old smell of a second-hand or particularly old book. All part and parcel of the reading experience. So imagine my surprise when I found myself wholeheartedly embracing my brand new ebook reader...

To Be Continued

Stirring Deeds On Heath And Field

2011-08-22T13:30:00.000+01:00

To those of you reading this who know me personally, the following sentence will come as no surprise whatsoever:- sport and I are quite happy to be mutually exclusive concepts. Coming from a family of devout football worshippers (the only acknowledged religion in the household), this has made me somewhat the black sheep of the clan. There are the occasional sporting-style pastimes that slip their way through - I'm partial to a bit of ten-pin bowling, snooker's not too bad and darts is, of course, the sport of kings (basically, anything that can be played while drinking a pint) - but, for the most part, the stirring deeds on heath and field* have always left me cold.

My desire for sport and I to be left to take our own separate paths was not always respected, however, and we were shackled together in unhappy union for three torturous months many, many moons ago, back in the dim and distant days of school. For you see, my school of the private persuasion and, while paying lip service to that old Christianity thing, their true worship was reserved for the holy altar of sport. Oh sure, they wanted the academic achievements, too, but if you were weren't interested in sport, you were generally held to be some sort of deviant.

The school's sport of choice, however, was rugby and this was posing them something of a problem. For, even among the sportlier boys, rugger was not the game of choice. Most of them wanted to play football. The school fielded three teams per year - A, B and C team - plus subs so, in order to make up the numbers it needed, it resorted to that tried and tested technique - threats. Potential recruits of a reluctant nature were presented with a choice - once you had deemed worthy of a place on the team, you joined the team or spent your Saturday mornings in detention (a traditional "rock/hard place" style arrangement). Not wanting to go down the detention route, I opted for the choice which brought pain and filth whilst suffering unpleasant weather conditions. I'm still baffled as to why I didn't just do the time to this day...

I wasn't picked for any real ability and definitely not enthusiasm. I was big and broad, therefore I was a prop. At no point, either, did it feel like the rules were ever particularly explained to me. It was assumed that all boys knew everything about sports so, you know, just get on with it. To this day, I'm still not really sure what on earth anyone's doing on the pitch (or why they'd even want to be there).

I perfected a technique which kept me as much out of the action as possible. Scrums I couldn't do much about but, the rest of the time, I mostly ran aimlessly around the pitch whilst trying to keep as much distance between me and the ball as possible. I thought it was reasonably surreptitious but, according to the parents who cane along to spectate when possible, it was more on the side of blatantly obvious.

After three months of this, I was the fittest that I've ever been (before or since) but utterly miserable. I hated the sport, I hated the training and I hated spending my Saturday mornings doing something I didn't understand and covered in mud. So I girded myself and went up to the rugby master** to tell him enough was enough and I was quitting the team. I expected to have a fight on my hands and maybe the threat of Saturday detention. He simply looked at me and said OK. He'd obviously realised as well that I was both hopeless and uninterested.

And so, sport and I went our separate ways. Our time together was brief but unpleasant and neither of us has been in hurry to rekindle that relationship. I'm fine with that. We tried it, it didn't work. And books welcomed me back with open pages...

* An actual line from our school song which also included the line "...and a cheer" to be followed by the assembled masses following it with a loud "Hurrah!" to the embarrassment of all involved.

** Pfft, I say "rugby master" - he was, in fact the groundskeeper and the parent of a couple of fellow students who, in reference to my surname, thought it amusing to call me "Captain" every single time (seriously, he laughed as if he'd just thought it up. Every. Single. Time.)

Radio Silence

2011-08-19T22:00:00.000+01:00

I shall be away form this here blogging place for a couple of weeks on a much needed holiday. I've left you a couple of little posts to tide you over for a bit but don't be offended if I don't reply to any comments for a while. It's not that I don't care, it's just that I'll be busy sunning myself by the pool and drinking many beers. You understand, don't you? Yes, I thought you would.

So, you'll have a couple of bits to keep you going over the next week then it'll all go quiet and then, before you now it, I'll be back with all-new inanity to bombard you with. These are indeed glorious times that we live in.

See you on the other side!

The Familiarity Of Strangers

2011-08-18T13:30:00.001+01:00

I'm the sort of person who likes to keep certain portions of his life functional. If you're providing a service to me then, yes, naturally, I'll expect a certain amount of mutual politeness on both our parts but we're not going to end up lifelong friends and drinking partners. Case in point being a recent trip to the shops...

With an upcoming escape to the sun very much imminent (I am counting down the days), an expedition to buy some clothing and clothing-type items was a necessity. Note the choice of words - necessity. Clothes shopping is not a thing of joy, being a traditional male of the blokey variety. That's not to say that I abhor all forms of shopping - set me down in a shop selling gadgety items, DVDs, books, comics or anything of the like and I can happily browse for hours. Clothes? It's a functional thing - I need to wear them so i need to buy them. Don't expect me to enjoy it.

So, I find my Popular High Street Clothing Retailer of choice and perform my usual smash-and-grab shopping technique ("Yep, that looks like something I would wear. My size? Job done.") I hasten to add at this point that "smash-and-grab" is a figure of speech and I will not shortly be appearing in a court near you for looting (as around 3,000 Londoners have done in the last week). Purchases chosen, it's time to head for the till and conclude the whole clothes shopping experience as swiftly as possible. No queue, splendid.

The chap beckons me over and he is unnecessarily cheerful but hey, whatever gets you through the day. He opens with a "did you find everything you were looking for today" gambit and I counter with a firmly non-conversational affirmative. This is insufficient, however, for a man obviously determined to be chatty.

"Just picking up some stuff or going away somewhere?" he enquires, reviewing my selection of quite clearly holiday-based purchases.

"Going away for a couple of weeks." Again, my technique is to be polite but closed off in my statements.

"Oh, anywhere nice?" He still wants a conversation.

"Just to Spain." I'm not looking for a conversation. Can I just pay and conclude my shopping experience?

"Oh, nice. With mates, by yourself or with your partner?"

His determination would be admirable if it weren't for the fact that I don't want to stand around chit-chatting with him. We're not mates, I'm not going to be inviting him down the pub for a swift pint and, if (from a purely cynical point of view) his pleasantness is some way of eliciting rewards from me, well, he's still out of luck because he works in a clothes shop and I'm certainly not tipping him.

Look, I get that he has a presumably tedious job that needs enlivening but that's what your colleagues are for. Respect your customers inner curmudgeon, take their cash and just get it over with, I say.

I'm going to have to buy some more shoes soon. I can feel the dread rising already...

A Few Years Ago In A Cinema Not Too Far Away - Part The Last

2011-08-13T13:30:00.000+01:00

I was going great guns, writing down names and feeling pretty damn good about myself when suddenly a face popped up and I knew it but I could not name it. Instead of just forgetting about it and moving on, my brain fixated. This was it, I was stuck and I sat with there with the pen hovering above the page as all the other faces rapidly drained out of my mind. That one face was still stuck there as the time ran out. I knew it was all over, I could just tell and, yes, the final tally came back and I had achieved third place.

(Oddly, enough, I can't remember who the character was that I got stuck on. You'd think that it would be burned on my memory as The Character Who Lost Me The Comp but nope. Not a clue. Can't remember it at all.)

Still, once of the rest quiz played out, I took comfort in the fact that I would never have reached first place anyway - I just didn't know the answer to the winning question. My viewing with George Lucas was just not to be. Once I realised that I had no chance of winning, I was actually pretty pleased that I'd ended up third. Sure, it would have been rather splendid to step onto the red carpet for the premiere but the marathon screening of all six films sounded like much more fun. And indeed it was...

It was a long old Star Wars-y day. It started at around 7:30 in the morning and didn't finish until around 22:30. We were back to Leicester Square for the screenings and, upon our arrival, discovered that it had been completely Star Wars-ified. Huge Star Wars character banners were festooned everywhere with a large screen in the middle of the Square showing Star Wars clips set to music, all dominated by a full-size replica X-Wing surrounded by Stormtroopers.

Upon closer inspection, we noticed that one of said Stormtroopers was of a smaller stature than the others; a fact of which he was fully aware. "Go on, say it," came the resigned voice from beneath the helmet as a fanboy, who thought himself an original wit, began to eye the trooper up. "Aren't you a little short for a Stormtrooper?" came the expected remark. And thus had a day of extreme geekery begun.

The films were being shown in production order (i.e. original trilogy first followed by the prequels) so that the day culminated in a screening of Episode III at the same time as the premiere across the Square. The cunning plan to make sure that people went along to all six and didn't just rock up for the new one was that you had to get your ticket stickered as you went in for each film - only those with a full ticket got to see Ep III.

The organisers had another cunning plan to ensure that everyone stayed awake for all six films - free Red Bull. I don't know if you've ever spent a whole day drinking can after can of highly caffeinated energy drink but I can't say that I would wholeheartedly recommend it as a lifestyle choice. As someone who doesn't drink tea or coffee, that much chemically charged caffeine drink was beginning to do strange things to me. By the time Episode III rolled around, my eyeballs were vibrating so fast, I could see into other dimensions.

There was another reason for excitability at this point - we were about to receive an intro by the producer and a couple of the stars who arrived flanked by a phalanx of Stormtroopers and a bloke in Darth Vader outfit. Excitement turned into full-blown caffeinated hysteria, however, when an audience of indoctrinated Star Wars fans who'd spent 11 hours watching the films and drinking Red bull were presented with the beardy Force-master himself, Mr George Lucas, who popped over from the main premiere to give us a few words (and to tell us we were seeing it first because he was doing this before his intro to the main premiere - result!)

So, it may have not have been the private screening but I did go to a premiere of a Star Wars film with George Lucas there. Alright, I didn't get jetted off to Skywalker Ranch but it was a unique event and a pretty fine culmination of a lifelong Star Wars obsession. Now I just need to find a way to start getting myself invited to exclusive Doctor Who screenings...

A Few Years Ago In A Cinema Not Too Far Away - Part The Third

2011-08-12T13:30:00.001+01:00

I will admit to some measure of nervousness beginning to set in at this point. I am, as we are all aware, a geek of truly tragic proportions but the thought of having my Star Wars knowledge tested was causing conflicting emotions. On the one hand, would it be fairly mortifying if I were to appear on TV and fail to live up to my self-professed Star Wars geekiness? Or would it be worse if my knowledge of the Force was so mind-numbingly arcane that I was crowned king of the anoraks?

I wasn't overly worried about the second option, really - I know a lot about the Wars but it's not the be-all and end-all for me (my geeky net casts far and wide) so there were likely to be a fair few people out there more steeped in the Force than I. To that end, I drafted in my mate Rich (co-film-making conspirator and fellow Force-atic) to be my Star Wars coach - he was also going to be the second person I was allowed to take with me on the day for, if I won the main prize, I was to be whisked off there and then for the flight to the States. He devised a rigorous Star Wars trivia boot camp to put me through in order to be fighting fit for the big day. Imagine, if you will, a Rocky-style training montage but with a lot more questions about Boba Fett.

The big day arrived and we descended upon Leicester Square, home of the MTv studios (at the time). We were ushered in and greeted by the presenter of the show, Alex Zane. He was very charming and was kind enough to say that he though my video was the best (I'm sure he was polite enough to say this to the other two contestants as well).

The show itself, I have to say, passed in a bit of a blur. Live television is a hectic, adrenaline-filled thing - at the times when you're not just sitting around and waiting, that is. We brought into the green room (which, naturally, wasn't green) and had the set-up for the quiz explained to us. The first round was one of those "we'll show you a load of pictures and you need to write down as many character names as you can remember in 30 seconds" type rounds. The one with the lowest number of right answers in that round would get the third place prize and the remaining two would go head-to-head in a quiz to determine first and second place.

It was time. We were brought on to slightly bemused cheers and applause and positioned for the cameras. I muttered something nondescript about being "quite nervy" when questioned and instantly wished I'd have a pithy Wildean bon mot to throw out there. What a compelling screen presence I was. Before I really had time to think about it, however, the game was afoot and an array of pictures was thrown to us. Montage over, we were given our thirty seconds to write down our answers... and I froze.

To Be Concluded

A Few Years Ago In A Cinema Not Too Far Away - Part The Second

2011-08-11T13:30:00.001+01:00

The challenge:- come up with a 30 second Star Wars film in two days. So what to do? Time being short, polished and slick were obviously right out the window. Which was fortunate because, let's face it, polished and slick have never been my bag, baby. This meant it had to be something which made a virtue of its low-fi nature. The time factor also meant that it was going to be tricky to draft in any help so it had to be something I could do Han Solo (oh, come on, allow me at least one Star Wars based poorly pun).

Thirty seconds is not a lot of time in which to convey a narrative so how could I tell much of a story in said time? Hmmm, maybe that was it. Maybe that was the challenge. Recreate the original Star Wars film in 30 seconds. of course, so obvious, it was genius. However, I didn't have a cast, sets or costumes. Pah, minor setbacks and I laugh in the face of adversity and tweak the nose of tricky situations. Actually, once I sat and thought about it, I did have a cast, all ready in their costumes. Not only that but I also had a full set of props, just waiting to be used. All that was required was a trip to the attic at Chez Ma and Pa...

See, as has previously been mentioned, Ma has somewhat of a hoarding tendency and a propensity to keep stuff as "it might come in handy" or "you just might want it one day". In this instance, she was bang on the money as, boxed up and stored away in the loft, was the complete set of Star Wars toys that Bro and I had played with as nipper-type small people. Figures and vehicles and playsets, oh my. Once that realisation has set in, the only thing left was to film. Camera in hand, toys at the ready and hastily crayoned in backgrounds hastily crayoned in, Star Wars In 36 Seconds (OK, so I went slightly over and the 36 seconds doesn't include titles) was born....

Filmed, edited, burned to DVD and submitted, all that remained was to wait and see if the fickle finger of fate had selected me. And lo, the good people of the TRL programme at MTV did look upon my film and deemed that it was good. And there was much rejoicing.

It wasn't all in the bag yet though. Oh dear me, no. I was one of three lucky finalists who would be competing live on TRL for the splendid prizes on offer. Oh yes, indeed. Our particular prize would be determined by an on-air set of quizzes based upon our Star Wars knowledge. A geek-off. A battle of the nerds. And all of this to take place on live TV....

To Be Continuumed...

A Few Years Ago In A Cinema Not Too Far Away - Part The First

2011-08-10T13:30:00.001+01:00

I once came within a hair's breadth* of sitting in a private screening room with the chief Force-monger himself, to watch Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith about a week before it came out. This may seem like a somewhat extravagant claim but it is very much the truth.

"How is this possible, oh bald narrator of ours?" I hear you etc., etc. Well, I'm glad you did etc., etc. as that's exactly what you're going to get so any other line of questioning would only have lead to disappointment on your part. And I don't like to think that I'm leaving you bloggily unfulfilled.

Our saga begins back in the early days of 2005 as hype for the release of the last ever Star Wars was building. Admittedly, after some measure of disappointment at the first couple of sequels, I was quite as excited as I once would have been but I'm nothing if not George Lucas' little bitch so I was till keen to see it.A fact of which my brother's flatmate of the time was perfectly aware. At that time, he was working as a cameraman on a daily show for MTV UK called TRL. The show was running a competition and he felt that it would tick my boxes in two particular ways. Firstly, the prizes were Star Wars-related. The main winner would be flown out to Skywalker Ranch in California for a private screening of the film hosted by Mr Lucas (with second place getting a pair of tickets to the red carpet in Leicester Square, again with an appearance from Herr Lucas and third place getting a couple of tickets to a marathon screening of all six films on the same day as the premiere).

The second reason it was right up my alley? The method of entry. In order to be eligible for the competition, you had to submit a thirty second Star Wars film what you had made yourself. All well and good but, this being a comp on a satellite channel with no small amount of effort being required to enter, they weren't exactly inundated with entries. If I could whip something up before the deadline for entry expired within the next two days, I was in with a good chance of being considered. Well, i like a good film-based challenge so the game was on...

To Be Furthered

* This is an expression, naturally, and should not taken literally.

Affectionately Bitey

2011-08-09T13:21:00.002+01:00

Does a name define who you are? If you choose a name that is light and fluffy, will its bearer be filled with sugar and spice and all that is nice? If you choose a name that is an iconic representation of evil, will its bearer lay about those around it with a mischievous sense of malevolence?

Early. It is early. Light has sprawled its lazy way across the sky but all right thinking people still have no intention of cracking their eyelids just yet. Time of day is of no importance to her, though, not to this miniature hunter, this silken predator.

She waits. When it is a necessity, she can bide her time. She waits. For the sign, that little signal. Patience is not her forte but, if need be, she will wait.

A small stirring. A disturbance. An interruption in the deep-breathing, snoring pattern of sleep. This is it. This is The Time. Her prey is not yet conscious but neither is he fully asleep any longer. The waiting is over. She readies herself, she sets herself and then she pounces...

And, to confound expectations, she is the personification of affection. She is loving and sweet and so cute that it is impossible to turn her away. To do so would be mean and spiteful and so her attentions, which would be preferable at a decent time of day, are tolerated with an equal mixture of affection and frustration.

Until she decides that it's time to play and bites me on the hand. Then she's right on the floor.

Maybe we shouldn't have called the kitten Darth Vader after all..

(Postscript - Whilst being a techy, gadgety sort of a fella, when it comes to writing, I nurture an inner Luddite. A large majority of these here blogs are written by hand on one of my many notebooks before undergoing the second draft process of being transferred to the webby page. During the analogue writing of this post, Evil The Kitten decided that a fun game would be to bat the pen around as I was writing. She was wrong. Unfortunately, she is persistent.)

Bathroom Buddies, Ringlefinches And Cobbled Bottoms

2011-08-08T20:23:00.007+01:00

A summers evening in August. A cobbled courtyard in Central London. A large cinema screen. A triple bill of creature features. These elements combined to make an enjoyable Saturday night of open-air film watching at Somerset House in That There London courtesy of The Brother (a birthday prezzie). Sadly, the combination of a slightly chilly night along with direct contact with the cobbled floor meant that we didn't last for the third film but, as the wise philosopher Meat loaf once sang, two out of three ain't bad.

"So what were those films?" I hear you ask through the medium of a rhetorical narrative device. Well, I'm glad that I imagined you asked. They were, in screening order, Gremlins, Trollhunter and Tremors - all monster/creature-based in some way. As I said, Bro and I couldn't last through to Tremors (there were only a few die-hards swaddled in sleeping bags and duvets who were sticking it out to the bitter end) but the experience was none the worse for it.

First, a word about the venue. Somerset House is an odd building on the banks of the Thames with a huge central courtyard. It plays host to exhibitions and fashion shows. In winter, it's converted into a massive ice rink. And in summer, it is transformed into a huge open-air cinema. They've been doing this for some years now but, for one reason or another, I've always managed to miss it. Not this year...

We arrived half an hour before kick-off and the place was rammed. We were left with but two choices - the front or the back (as the actress said to the bishop). At the back, the screen was small enough that you might as well be watching them on TV at home - not the desired effect. The front may well have lead to excessive cricking of the neck but would at least offer a splendid view. As it happened, because there was no one in front of us, we were able to set up our blanket and selection cushionage and stretch out full length. Result.

So, first up was Gremlins. I'm not going to waste your time and mine reviewing the film - we all know the score: cute Mogwai, rules (wet, midnight, sunlight), evil Gremlins, good times had by all. Let's talk about the experience. This is a film that I have loved (as has Mon Frere) since I was 8/9 years old (we watched it on rental video - remember those? - so it must have been a while after the cinema release) but i have never seen on the big screen. The print was scratchy and grainy and the sound occasionally popped, hissed and threatened to drop out... but it looked great. Also, Bro and I, despite knowing the film back to front, noticed a couple of things we'd never actually noticed before.

After Gremlins, a large chunk of the crowd decided to call a night and head for the last trains home but we were ready and waiting for Film Number 2 - the Norwegian mock documentary Trollhunter. It's a fun little oddity of a film - the opening is perhaps a trifle too long before getting to the action (presumably a necessity of its low budget nature) but it doesn't disappoint in showing the creatures (you see them just enough to get a good look at them but not too much so that they become tiresome) and has some nice little humourous touches throughout. Definitely one that's worth a watch. (This was a preview screening ahead of the general release in September.)

By the time the credits rolled on Trollhunter, it was nearly 1:30 and the chill air and cobbledy floor had taken it's toll on us over the previous four hours. We would have loved to see Tremors on the big screen too but it would have been a film too far. Next time, I'll bring bedding...

Letter To My (Currently) Unborn Nephew

2011-08-06T10:00:00.000+01:00

Dear Nephew*

Hello. I'm Nick. I'm your uncle. Well, one of your uncles, anyway. The one with the sort of upside-downy head - you know, hairy at the bottom and smooth at the top. Yeah, that's the one. Hi. How's it going?

I thought that I might take this opportunity to impart some vital words of wisdom to you as, before we know it, there'll be the whole birth thing (I imagine your mother may describe this in slightly more vivid terms) and then it'll be Christmas and then first birthday and school and university and then you'll pushing us around in wheelchairs and wiping our puckered old bottoms before any of us have really realised how we got there. It then occurred to me that I actually possess nothing in the way of what you might call "wisdom" or indeed anything even vaguely in its orbit so you'll just have to make do with a random selection of stuff which spews off the top of my (shiny) head. This will, in all likelihood, be a theme in the large majority of our conversations so best get used to it now.

I'm going to present it in the form of a list. The first item will explain why:-

1. I'm fond of lists. Your paternal grandmother is also fairly listcentric. (Is that a word? Well, it is now.) Actaully, your Ma and Pa are fond of a spot of listage so you may well be on the listy side.

2. You'll have a ready supply of 70s and 80s toys to entertain you as your paternal grandparents have kept the loft stocked with a large majority of the stuff we owned as kids. All of which is in keeping with the family motto - "Is vires exsisto utilis" or "It might come in handy" to you and me. There are probably also several boxes of our schoolbooks from primary school through to A level knocking about. Hint:- Steer clear of my geography and physics work unless your intention is borderline failure.

3. Your father, mother (via careful conditioning) and grandmother are all Charlton Athletic fans. I've picked up enough over the years to realise that this is some of football-based thing (football's the one with the round ball you kick and are not supposed to pick up - your dad will cover this with you in some detail). Don't worry if you decide to support a different team - your grandad is a West Ham supporter and your dad went through a Liverpool supporting phase in his youth that he doesn't like to talk about.

4. If you are extremely sporty then your dad and paternal grandparents will see you right. If your nature tends more towards the artistic side then Mummy and Uncle Paul are the ones to speak to. If you need someone with the mindset of a child with whom you can watch cartoons, read comics and play Star Wars Lego then Uncle Nick's your man.

5. You will be spoiled, By all sides of the family. I do not think you will find this to be a problem.

There's lots more, of course - like the realisation that your mum and dad will tell you one thing and then do something completely different (as is their natural right), that school really isn't the be-all and end-all, work really does go on forever and drinking really is rather a lot of fun - but why spoil all the surprises now? You've got another few weeks of kicking back in a nice comfy womb and enjoying the ride. Make of then most of this bit while it lasts, sunshine.

I can't wait to meet you, That Nephew Fella. We have much to discuss...

All my love,
Uncle Baldy

(Yes, I have been away from this blog thing for a while. If you're still making the effort to read these witterings after an absence of months then I thank you most kindly. You are a splendid person and life will smile favourably upon you. True fact.)

* Name yet to be officially revealed to the public at large.

Food, Glorious Food

2011-03-01T20:00:00.000Z

Smell and taste can be powerful aides to memory. I was struck the other day by how much certain foods vividly reminded me of younger, head-hairier days. More specifically, foods that remind me of visits to grandparents...

Oxtail Soup
I was obsessed with oxtail soup as a youth and I often remember having it round at Nana and Grandad's (Pa's folks). I was also fond of beef soup and could see very little difference between the two (oxtail being slightly lumpier was pretty much the only one I could see). The Bro, however, was a rather particular eater at the time and, while partial to beef soup, would not entertain the idea of oxtail.

Pearl Barley
Nannie (Dad's gran) had a set routine when it came to cooking. Certain days of the week were certain dishes and that did not vary. I can't remember for definite which day was stew (it may have been Monday) but the one thing I do remember about her stew was that it had pearl barley in it which I loved. It wasn't the flavour obviously as it has none but the texture and feel of as part of the stew.

Tinned Ravioli
Now, you may be beginning to think that these are not particularly exciting foods. Where is the caviar and pate de foie gras? Well, we weren't a wealthy family so our pleasures were simple. This one is from trips to stay with Nana (Nurse Gladys). I don't what it was about tinned ravioli that was so appealing - I can't imagine wanting to eat it now - but whenever we stopped over there, it was generally on the dinner or lunch menu at least once.

Rice Krispie/Cornflake Cakes
I had a Mr Man cookbook as a small child and it was a prize possession. It lived with Nana (Nurse Gladys) a lot of the time as that was were the baking took place (knitting was the other Nana's particular forte and my Bro and I wore many a jumper with arms of varying lengths). The cakes were OK, I kind of liked those and the biscuits were pretty good too but the Rice Krispie or Cornflake cakes... yeah, they were the winners. I could quite happily have eaten the whole batch of those. Apparently, though, we were at home to some sort of concept called "sharing" so there was none of that. More's the pity.

Nothing too out of the ordinary or spectacular but all foodstuffs which evoke quite strong memories of all the grandparents. In fact, I quite fancy some oxtail soup now - haven't had any for years...

I, Spy?

2011-02-24T13:00:00.000Z

There was brief time in my life when I flirted with the idea of being either a private detective or a spy. This would have been way back in the mid-80s, between the ages of about seven and nine. OK, so maybe it wasn't a serious career choice but it seemed like it might be fun at the time. The reasons for this desire? They were twofold - the Usbourne Detective's Guidebook and The Spy's Handbook.

These weren't just books - they were guides for living. Each had step by step guides on how to be sneaky and spy-like. Cool tips like how to invent your own code and plan out "dead drops" to leave your messages for other agents like the rubbish bin in the local park. How to read tracking signs in footprints and broken flora. How to use mirrors to look round corners. You know, all the standard spy and detective type stuff. Plus the Usbourne book had lots of cool diagrams of exactly how to deploy your various devices for snoopery - showing where to place the mirror over your office door so you could see who was lurking outside and so on and so forth. The pictured detective in the Usbourne book also had the traditional trenchcoat and fedora combination thus making him look shifty and suspicious and therefore cool.

The only problem with this was a problem faced by many seven to nine year olds - there aren't many top secret governmental plans or scandalous illicit affairs knocking about within your circle of friends. the most exciting information that could be imparted via dead drop method would be the arrival of a new consignment of fizzy cola bottles or the acquisition of a new computer game for the Amstrad. None of which particularly made for the promised life of intrigue and espionage that these books were offering.

The closest my friends and I ever came was making secret maps of the playground (cunningly marked out "SECRET MAP" and "TOP SECRET" and "DO NOT OPEN" in large letters to thus ensure that no one would ever have any interest in them). They marked out secret areas we could gather in - although once the maps had been secretly distributed in class and we'd all met up in the designated area, we were kind of at a loss as to what to do next. I'm guessing that we selected another area on the map, arranged to meet up there and then made our individual ways to said area (to begin the whole process again).

This period of clandestine yet mundane activity soon came to end when our teacher discovered me making one of the maps in class instead of paying attention and the secret suddenly became very public. Once revealed, the joy of the secret map was spent and they were created no more.

Still, for a brief time there, a life of subterfuge beckoned. It's probably not a likely option for me now that I've posted about myself on a public blog for the last five years. Ah well, just have to fall back on the other childhood aspiration - hoping science finds a way to turn me into a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It's good to have a plan.

A Budgie Called Dick - Part The Second

2011-02-23T13:00:00.000Z

It was Nannie that started the whole drinking thing off. She liked a drop of brandy most nights, did Nannie (purely for medicinal purposes, naturally*). Of course, being a bird of a curious nature, Dickie flew over and perched on the arm of her chair to see what goodies might be on offer. Nannie decided that it really could do no harm to gibe the feathered fella a wee nip of the hard stuff. She tilted the glass towards him. He tilted his head quizzically at it (as budgies are wont to do). She murmured some encouragement. He needed very little. In went the head, down came the beak and swiftly flowed the brandy.

The transformation was startling in its Jekyll-and-Hyde-like intensity. The bird was transmogrified into a fluttering dervish, chirping and tweeting his way around the room before landing on the back of Nannie's chair and arguing loudly with the wall for quite some time. It was on a par with the stereotype drunk in a film tripping over a chair and then leaping up with fists held out in a Queensbury-rules-style boxing pose, ready for a fight.

From then onwards, Uncle Dickie was a slave to the demon drink. He would know what time of day it was and pester and clamour at Nannie until his little nip of boozy goodness was provided. OK, it probably wasn't the healthiest way to look after a budgie but he lived to a ripe old age, too, so maybe there's something to this brandy after all. Mind you, we didn't perform an autopsy on him (mainly because only serial killers perform autopsies on their pets) so it;s entirely possible that, at the end, he went of cirrhosis of his tiny budgie liver. Who can say?

After the avian Uncle Dick passed away, Grandad decided not to get another one. I think for him that was the last time he wanted to go through the loss of a pet. Although I am , as previously stated, not one for birds as pets, I have to admit that when i pop round to visit Grandad, the sitting room does tend to seem that little bit too big without the open bird cage in the corner and that frenzied blue presence flapping its way through the air in attempt to steal your crisps.

* Which may well have worked as she lived to the ripe old age of 95.

A Budgie Called Dick - Part The First

2011-02-22T13:00:00.000Z

Grandad (the retired truck-driving one) didn't always have a budgie. No, initially his relationship to the tiny blue bird of terror was relinquished into his care whenever its owner, Aunt Doll*, went away on holiday. As time marched on, the holidays became more and more frequent and the length of the bird's stay longer and longer. Eventually, the Grandad-based holiday became the norm and the budgie took up permanent residence.

Uncle Dickie (for such was the budgie's name, presumably in honour of the late, great, teeth-rattling braces-pinger) had quite the presence for such a small bird. Personally, I've never been a fan of birds as pets (don't really know why, just find them a bit boring, I guess) but he was a fairly entertaining and I think he helped Grandad to deal with a dark time in his life. My Nana died of cancer when I was about 14 and Grandad was living with my great nan, Nannie. Unfortunately for him, this was his mother-in-law - a woman he'd always hated but felt duty bound to look after for the sake of Nana's memory. One of the main reasons he had no real love for her was that she had lived with the pair of them for their entire married life and had not even allowed holidays on their own - their one concession to time as a couple was a night of ballroom dancing once a week.

So there he was, in a maisonette in Lewisham, living with a woman he couldn't bear. Small wonder then that a small blue flying thing became such a firm companion. To give the bird its due, Uncle Dickie was a fair old character. Allowed to roam free in the sitting room**, he asserted his dominance over the area at every turn.

Having something to eat? Well then, Dickie wanted some of that, thank you very much, going so far as to perch on your hand and attempt to peck at the morsel as you raised it to your mouth. He was particularly fond of salt and vinegar Chipsticks. Having a drink? Yep, he'd have some of that, too, especially if it was of a boozy nature. Unfortunately for all of us, he was an aggressive drunk...

To Be Continued...

* My great aunt Dorothy. She wasn't literally a doll. That would be daft and a little odd. What were you thinking?

** He never ventured out. Even if the sitting room door, he just wouldn't venture beyond the safe confines of his small domain.

Pinging The Braces And Rattling The Teeth - Part The Second

2011-02-21T13:00:00.000Z

The other favoured game involved the aforementioned dentures. To pestering cries of "rattle your teeth, Uncle Dick, rattle your teeth", he would drop his lower jaw, shift loose those false teeth and let them click, clatter and clack together in his mouth. For a small boy, this was of equal entertainment value as the pinging of the braces and, like the braces game, was usually halted by Aunt Mag's exasperation.

Aunt Mag was definitely a talker. Most of her conversations seemed to be a continuation of previous efforts and the large majority of her opening pronouncements were prefaced by the phrase "Any old 'ow". Also, a talker she may well have been but pronunciation was not one of her strong points...
It was obvious that there were quite a few words which she read but didn't really hear anyone else come out with on a day to day basis (or, if she did, she didn't connect the two). This would be a source of first bafflement before giving away to amusement for my mother.

For example, upon one of our standard visits (presumably while Bro and I were ensconced in front of the TV and busy shovelling Maltesers into our gobs), Aunt Mag informed Mum that the high street in beautiful downtown Lewisham* had been closed off when she popped in to do her shopping earlier. The reason for said closure?

"Well," said Aunt Mag, "they had one of those bommoxes."

"A what?" asked a perplexed Mother.

"You know, a bommox," reiterated Aunt Mag, obviously confused as to why Mum was failing to grasp and very simple concept.

It was only later on that Mum realised that the high street had been closed due to a bomb hoax. Mind you, at least that also explained why Aunt Mag found it to be "absolute choss"** while she was waiting for the bus.

Aunt Mag also had difficulty in finding the right word to describe exactly what she meant. She knew what she meant and she knew the word she was looking for - it just wasn't necessarily the same word that everyone else used. For example, if she'd bought a new cardie and the material was somewhat more itchy and coarse than she was expecting, it would be said to have been "hesitating" her.

Uncle Dick passed away when I was about seven or so and Aunt Mag a couple of years later. I still think of them whenever I go past the place where their flat used to be. In a slightly odd form of tribute, Uncle Dick was to live on years later in a very different form. The form he was commemorated in? That of a slightly drunken and aggressive blue budgie...

* Definite sarcasm.

** Translation = chaos.

Pinging The Braces And Rattling The Teeth - Part The First

2011-02-20T13:00:00.000Z

On Pa's side of the family, not only did we grow up with our great grandmother, Nannie (Nana's mum), we also spent a lot of time with our great-great uncle and great-great aunt, Uncle Dick and Aunt Mag. Spending time with family was always important in our house - every Thursday was Nana, Grandad and Nannie (Pa's ma, pa and gran), every Friday was Nana (Nurse Gladys) and, when we were little, Monday or Tuesday was the time to go and visit Aunt Mag and Uncle Dick.

We loved going there for two main reasons. Firstly, we got spoilt rotten (as we did at every other family household). Aunt Mag always had a box of Maltesers waiting for us and maybe of a box Animal Crackers, too. These would be happily consumed in front of episodes of Grandad with Clive Dunn or the dubbed masterpiece that is Monkey ("Aiieee, Tripitaka, it hurts, it hurts!"). The second reason was that Uncle Dick was one of us. He was a short man to begin with, just a little over five feet tall. Whether this contributed to his affinity with kids, I don't know but it did mean that he was pretty much physically incapable of looking down on us. He wore braces and (as seems to be common on either side of our family) sported a pair of dentures. These two items were a source of endless entertainment not only to Bro and myself but also to Uncle Dick himself (and a source of mild but affectionate exasperation to Aunt Mag).

The braces, then. One or both of us would sit on his knee, making his lap a fairly crowded place being that, as I said earlier, he was not a tall man. The little nod or wink of encouragement would than come from Uncle Dick after a quick glance to check that Aunt Mag wasn't watching. One or both braces would then be grasped in both hands and extended to full elasticity. They would then be released to snap back against the rounded tum of little Uncle Dick to exaggerated cries of "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!" This was always referred to as "pinging his braces" and always resulted in hilarity on our part. That is until the noise got too much and Aunt Mag would chastise him for encouraging us. Muttering "yes, dear, sorry, dear"s, Uncle Dick would quieten down. At least until he thought she'd forgotten and the little mischievous gleam in his eyes would return and he started nudging us and egging us on...

To Be Continued

Hi There, You May Remember Me From...

2011-02-19T17:00:00.001Z

...this very blog which used to be regularly updated in a sporadic fashion, if that isn't a contradiction in terms. You know what I mean, anyway - it went through occasional bursts of consistent updates punctuated by more and more frequent bursts of regular inactivity. Up until about three and a half ago months, that is, when it just kind of stopped completely. No spectacular or devastating life-changing news to reveal as the reason for this prolonged lack of blogginess. Nope, just the usual reasons why these things fall by the wayside - work and personal life become busy, writing inane witterings becomes a luxury. And, once you've stopped, it's very easy to stay stopped.

Procrastination sets up shop and becomes an easy life partner. Tomorrow becomes a temptation that is constantly given in to. Well, no more. Procrastination is out on its ear and tomorrow begins now. Not actually, obviously, as, once you reach tomorrow, it becomes today and a brand new tomorrow then slots neatly in to take its place but you get the general idea of where I was going with that. Yes, you're right, the word that I'm looking for is "anyway...."

So, where were we when last we met? If I recall correctly (and I do because I've cheated and had a quick look at the last lot of posts - although to be fair I did write them too so that gave me an advantage), I'd been taking some time to tell some tales about my family. My Nana, Nurse Gladys, who took her teeth out on demand and swore at Dynasty; my grandad (Pop's Pop) who used to be a truck-driving man and pilfered pre-pulped books for his grandchildren; and my other grandad (Ma's Pa) who I never knew but has worked his genetic influence on my hairline (the original Baldy Fella).

What's next then? Well, in what TV producers like to call a "throw forward" because they're fond of making up jargon which makes them look both clever and important, here's a brief taste of some potential things to come*:-

- A budgie called Uncle Dick
- Bulgarian near-death experiences
- Braces pinging, false teeth rattling and bommoxes
- The day I nearly got a private screening of Episode III with George Lucas
- Danger! D.I.Y!
- The perils of no-budget film-making
- ...and more besides! **

So, why not pop back in next time? I make no guarantees about when you may receive these bits and bobs but the will is there and where there's a will, there's a beneficiary. Or something.

* The word "potential" is used there as an exercise in arse-covering in case I change my mind and decide to not to write any of these after all.

** Yep, that's all I can think of off the top of the old noggin.

They're Like Little Horses - Part The Second

2010-10-30T12:30:00.000+01:00

The hare was now up and running. There would be an expectant hush as the mechanical marvel approached the traps and then... an explosion of sound:- the bangclatter of the traps releasing, the the thudskitter of the dogs pounding relentlessly across the track, shoutcheering of the punters and the chatterdroning of the breathless and seemingly unbreathing commentators. And then, almost as soon as it had begun, it was over:- the dogs happily laying into a different fake rabbit thrown out for their amusement (except maybe for one smarter one who was now sniffing around the box which contained the recently covered deactivated rabbit), the disgusted snort and whispering tearing noise of punters discarding their useless betting slips (thus discounting them from our collection process - we only wanted pristine ones) and the shuffle of feet from those happy few queueing up to collect their winnings.

During the course of the night, we'd be allowed to pick out the odd greyhound for Ma and Pa to place a bet on. It was during this time that I developed my patented gambling technique which stills serves me on the very rare occasion that I place a bet - always pick the one with the pleasingly odd sounding name. Got one in the next race called Mary's Boy? no, thanks, think I'll give it a miss, ta. Got one called Lord Nifkin's Giraffe Meltdown? Stick some cash on it, that's the chap for me.

It worked surprisingly well for me on one of the last occasions that I went dahn the dogs. A friend I was with spent ages studying the form - their previous wins, conditions on each night, etc, etc - and lost about £30. I picked out ones with names like Claptrap A-Go-Go and came out ten quid up on the whole night (and that's good enough for me). It's a surefire winning system. Well, until it loses anyway.

As with the way of all things, ultimately Catford Greyhound Stadium's time has now passed and it's flashing series of neon lights depicting a greyhound running are blinking no more. But, as is also the way, the good times and the good memories live on.

They're Like Little Horses - Part The First

2010-10-29T12:30:00.000+01:00

It was almost like you were chancing upon some illicit secret. The way we always used to get there involved parking up on a nearby side street and then heading towards the train tracks. aiming for a small, nondescript archway in the wall along the side. This lead you to a bridge leading over the train tracks. A couple of turns and then there it was in front of you. The bright gleaming neon, the sounds, the smells, the fake mechanical rabbit. Ah, Catford Greyhound Stadium, how we miss you.

We always loved a trip down the dogs, quite often with Nana and Grandad (Pop's Ma and Pa). I imagine that the cleaners were also pleased after we had visited. You see, for some inexplicable reason, Bro and I became obsessed with collecting the discarded tickets from the various different touts; even the ones you got from the Tote betting back then were quite stylised, like old bus tickets. Happy were we and despairing were our parents when we would come home with arms full of old and useless betting slips (all of which were discreetly disposed of shortly afterwards; not that this was ever a concern as, like the buckets full of mouldering conkers which also regularly vanished, these would be replenished at a later date). The key thing was that it kept us quietly occupied for much of the time, running up and own the steps outside.

The other occupier of the junior dog-goer's time was that of "spotting the hare". Fairly straightforward, you may think, surely it always starts in the same place. Not so, for the start line varies depending on the length of the race and so too does that of the hare. (OK, if we'd worked out where the start lines were for all of the different races, we'd have known but we didn't hold that info in our little heads.) There were two ways to perform said spotting - one was from afar from the comfort of the indoor stands and the other was from up close at track level (although, what with us being very short and the track being raised, we still had to be up on the stands a little bit).

If you were inside, a cry of "Thahare izrunig" would come over the PA and eager youthful eyes would scan the track for a glimpse of the rattling, wobbling, possibly supersonic (to our young minds anyway) faux lapin. If you outside, an electric hum would start up to be swiftly followed by a whistling, clattering sound as the automated circuit began and those eager eyes would begin their robotic rabbitic searching. There was no prize for the spotting of the hare, just the satisfaction of knowing that you had spotted it before the dogs had - everyone likes to be able to feel superior to a greyhound.

To Be Continued

Pottymouth - Part The Second

2010-10-28T12:30:00.001+01:00

Friday night was always the night that Nana came over to stay, quite often babysitting while Ma and Pa went out. This meant two things- a delivery of comics, chocolates and crisps with which to spoil us rotten and a selection of Nana-friendly programmes on the TV (with an occasional film or programme that we weren't allowed to watch as we could always convince Nana that Mum and Dad said it was OK). Coronation Street was non-negotiable - she'd always watched this and would continue to do so, right to the end - but the prime time 8 o/clock show was variable. Murder She Wrote (featuring that mass-murdering Angel of Death Jessica Fletcher who ended each show by using her freaky powers of persuasion to get some poor sap to confess and take the fall for her) was often the option but, if Dynasty was on, then we were in for a treat.

For Nana always got fully swept up in her soaps and none more so than that haven for people with extremely high shoulder pads, Dynasty. She very much enjoyed all the glitzy soap-based shenanigans and goings-o (a far cry from Corrie) but one character in particular would send her into near apoplexy. Whenever Joan Collins would grace the screen, playing the scheming and conniving Alexis, there was only one word that would escape Nana's lips:-

"Bitch!"

Oh, she took exception to Alexis did our Nana and every time we heard the word that rhymed with rich coming out of that sweet little old churchgoing dentured mouth, the Bro and I would be beside ourselves with glee. For kids love nothing more than hearing their nearest and dearest forget where they are and let slip with a little bit of a swear. To this day, this has cemented two things in my mind. Firstly, any mention of the programme Dynasty automatically makes me think of Nana swearing. Secondly, and most importantly, old people swearing is always guaranteed to amuse me in an extremely childish way.

Pottymouth - Part The First

2010-10-27T12:30:00.001+01:00

Being a good Christian woman and born of a certain generation, Nana (of the Nurse Gladys variety) was not someone who was predisposed towards swearing. That's not to say that she particularly took offence at other people swearing - no, it just wasn't for her. However, as with any rule, there were naturally the exceptions - bizarrely for someone who was a church secretary for so many years, Christmas was often one of those times.

It all started on one Christmas way back when - I forget which one in particular. In our house, the alcohol has always flowed freely in celebratory times of family gathering. What can I say - we're a boozy lot. As kids, at the time of the Christmas, we were always allowed a couple of glasses of wine mixed heavily with orange juice and lemonade - never enough to get us pissed, of course, we weren't that sort of family. Nana had never been a big drinker but she was partial to a drop of sherry (and an occasional glass of stout on a Friday night) and, this being a festive time, she'd partaken of a little more sherry than usual.

I have to admit that I don't remember the specifics of the conversation but it had somehow turned to the subject of an animal's "doings" as Nana termed it (this is not unusual dinnertime conversation in our house). Knowing full well exactly what she meant but suspecting that the glasses of sherry may be starting to loosen her tongue somewhat, we pressed her to be more specific.

"Doings, Nana?" we queried, all innocent, like, hoping that we could push her further and little knowing that we would hit the jackpot.

"Yes, doings," said she in her Yorkshire accent. "You know." Pause. "Shit."

To her two grandsons, this was a moment of epiphany. Nana! Swearing! Saying one of the sweary words! The payingest paydirt of all time! Our shocked amusement was instant and total and thus began an annual tradition at our Christmas table - the swearing of the Nana. Some years it was successful, others less so (the trick was to correctly judge the sherry to Christmas dinner ratio). It always amused because, let's face it, little old ladies swearing is always funny but it never really recaptured that first explosive moment of surprise when she broke what was, to us litlle 'uns, quite the taboo.

Of course, we did hear her regularly use milder language, of which I was reminded the other day. I was surfing channels (to use a very 90s term) and an old repeat of 1980s supersoap Dynasty came on. Instantly, I was transported back a good twenty five years...

To Be Continued...

Oh, I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside

2010-10-26T18:17:00.002+01:00

Littlehampton. To my junior mind, this was a magical fun palace, a distant seaside Xanadu* whose delights were many and bountiful. In reality, of course, it's a fairly small seafront with an amusement arcade and a mini-funfair but, to the Bro and me, it was many an hour of unselfconscious entertainment.

Nana and Grandad (on the Pa's side) were traditional in their choices of day out for a working class London born and bred family. They didn't have much in the way of money so day trips and holidays were always cheap and cheerful - a day at the beach, an outing for a bit of a flutter on the dogs or the gees-gees** or a week away at a holiday camp. The Bro and I always looked forward to any of these - partly because we loved spending time with Nana and Grandad but also because they enjoyed themselves so we enjoyed themselves.

Memories of Littlehampton:- are-we-there-yetting our way through the entire journey in the back of Grandad's car (driven by said grandparent as if he were still behind the wheel of a 16-wheeler articulated lorry and everyone could see him coming); sliding down one of those long bumpy slides in either a burlap-sack-type-thing or something resembling a welcome mat with a pocket at the end for you to stick your feet in (which would always have to be thrown back on the pile at the end for the people going up to take on their way) and initially going down them with Nana or Grandad until I got a bit older and was left to take Bro on there on my own; sitting on the round swivelly stools at the bingo game with Nana (you dropped in your coin to make the board in front of you light up for play), sliding across all the numbers as the bingo calling man shouted them out with the traditional patter ("All the ones - legs eleven! Two little ducks - quack quack - twenty two! Clicketty click - sixty six! Two fat ladies - eighty eight!"); riding the Mini Mouse rollercoaster which, while containing no loops or rolls, from a structural point of view was probably far more unsafe than any later rollercoasters we went on; being fascinated and unnerved by the Laughing Policeman machine and not being entirely convinced that it wasn't just a man in a suit; getting a friction burn on my elbow from Bro deciding he didn't like the Helter Skelter and trying to get off halfway through; and being obsessed by the Hall Of Mirrors and pretending that I didn't know the way out to make it last longer.

Of course, Littlehampton wasn't the only seaside town we visited with Nana and Grandad. Hastings, Broadstairs and naturally Margate (home of the legendary but now sadly defunct Bembom Brothers Amusement Park) were all popular destinations. You name it and we'd been sat there cheerfully in the drizzle on the stony beach, happily munching away at a Strawberry Mivvi.

Sadly, the thrill of the small town amusement park is something that has faded for me somewhat in recent years, wowed by the glitz and glamour of the big budget theme parks. But I still fondly remember those days, coming back with arms full of cuddly toys won by Nana on the bingo and Grandad on the grab machines and nursing a stomach ache caused by too many sweets and toffee apples. I may not appreciate them so much now but I definitely loved them back then.

* The stately pleasure dome as opposed to the Olivia Newton John film.

** That's horses for you non-South London types.

Refocus

2010-10-22T12:30:00.002+01:00

So, those few of you kind enough to stick around and come back to read after my three month hiatus (I thank you kindly) may well have noticed a distinct theme emerging in the last set of posts. Part of the reason for the long break was that I was struggling to find something to say in these posts and was running the risk of just repeating myself ad infinitum - either in terms of constantly banging on about the stuff I like or in terms of constantly writing about having nothing to write about. So I stopped. And left it. And came close to knocking the whole blogging thing on the head as there's nothing worse than someone just churning out crap for the sake of it.

Then, over the summer, I discovered a rather wonderful podcast (which I wholeheartedly recommend) called The Tobolwsky Files in which character actor Stephen Tobolowsky talks about his life. Fortunately, he knows exactly how to craft a rather wonderful story and has lived an extremely fascinating life. Now, I don't claim to have lived a fascinating life (although I have done some interesting things from time to time) but my family have certainly done interesting things and led interesting lives (for better and for worse) and it got me thinking. If I don't tell some of those stories, if I don't write some of them somewhere, then those stories are gone. And there's nothing worse than a story that got away.

So, for the time being (until my notoriously fickle attention span wanders off on to something else) I'm going to talk about my family and my life and make sure that those stories don't go. It won't be particularly ordered, it won't be particularly chronological, it'll flit about about hither and thither and back and forth but maybe it'll ultimately add up to something greater than the sum of its parts. Maybe not but I reckon it's worth a try.

That's also not to say that you won't still get the occasional uninformed and bile-ridden rambling - this is a blog after all. Just that those'll probably be fewer and farther between.

Right then, let's see what's in here....

Shish And Shipsh - Part The Second

2010-10-21T12:30:00.001+01:00

So, with a determined Nana in tow, we board the log flume, and, as is traditional with your standard log-flume-based ride, you have two smaller drops before you reach the main event. And they're both fine and we're all having fun and Nana seems to be actually enjoying it. Until we round the corner and are confronted with the main drop. Now that it's staring us right in the face, it seems a lot higher than it did when we were on the ground looking up. Quite a lot higher. At this point, Nana is thinking that it's entirely possible she's made a mistake and I'm thinking that maybe we're about to give a sweet little old lady a massive coronary.

Our little raft crests the peak of the flume and we begin to plummet. Nana, naturally fearful that her long life is reaching an unexpectedly premature end, opens her mouth to scream. As she does so, two things occur at once. The first is that her natural parenting instinct kicks in and she becomes fearful that my younger brother (seated directly in front of her) is about to fall out. Her first thought is to grab hold of him to ensure his safety (the fact that is considerably heavier than her and would simply pull her overboard with him has not occurred to her). The second thing that happens is, as her lips are parting for the scream to escape, she can feel the Polygrip on her dentures loosening and the ersatz choppers beginning to ease their way forwards to freedom.

Torn between whether to save Grandson The Younger from a theme park based death or to prevent him receiving concussion from a set of dentures propelled into the back of his head at high speed, Nana spends the mercifully brief downward journey with one hand clamped on the Brother and the other clamped tightly over her mouth to prevent tooth escape. Bro does not fall out, the dentures are secure in their mouth-based incarceration and Nana has been too distracted to have a heart attack. Everybody wins.

Of course, if she had lost her teeth, we could have spent the entire homeward journey getting her to say, "She sells sea shells on the sea shore". And she would've, too.

Shish and Shipsh - Part The First

2010-10-20T12:30:00.003+01:00

Nurse Gladys was a side of our Nana that we didn't really see - she retired from nursing when I was quite young (in fact, Nana was on duty the day I was born and thus was the first person in this world to clap eyes on me; a sight my father was denied as, even in the mid-70s, men weren't allowed in the delivery room for the birth). No, the Gladys that we knew and loved was very much in the "doting grandmother" mode.

There is probably no finer example of unconditional love than that of a woman in her late sixties/early seventies (a woman who suffered from painful arthritis) willingly crawling around on her hands and knees pretending to be a giant lizard that has been extinct for many millions of years (and which she cannot even pronounce) solely for the amusement and mock terror of her extremely young grandchildren. Her love for us was not only to cause her physical discomfort but also some measure of teeth-based humiliation.

Dentistry being what it was when Nana was younger, she had, upon discovery of widespread tooth decay, been told that she needed her teeth removed. These were replaced by a set of dentures which, throughout her life, always caused her gum discomfort. While they may have been a source of discomfort to her (especially after a full day's wear), they were, of course, a source of amusement to us - children being blissfully unaware of many of the social niceties. Many was the time that poor Nana was subjected to pestering requests to take out her teeth and say "fish and chips"; more often than not in extremely public places such as the top deck of the bus to Woolwich. Nana, being a kind Christian woman and physically incapable of denying her grandsons anything they so desired, would eventually oblige to the hysterical and eye-watering delight of the two young boys (and the general amusement of the other passengers on the bus).

Yes, those teeth certainly provided their fair share of entertainment. The family outing to Chessington World Of Adventures being another case in point. Nana, at the very least well into her seventies by this point, was not overly disposed towards going on too many of the rides. Neither was Ma for that matter so at least they had company while the rest of us hared off to the main attractions. After sitting out most of them, Nana decides to give the log flume a go as it looks like quite a small drop. What we didn't spot until we were well and truly ensconced in the body of the queue was that we'd only been looking at the first drop. The third and final drop was quite high indeed. Still, it didn't look too bad from where we were standing and ex-Nurse Gladys, never one to shy away from something once she's put her mind to it, decides to go through with it....

To Be Concluded...

Truck Drivin' Man - Part The Second

2010-10-19T20:47:00.003+01:00

Grandad tends to talk about his fonder memories from his time during the war. Such as the time he was stationed in Belgium and walked in to a bar to find his brother Sid in there, propping up the bar. Not only that but the two of them were shortly joined but their brother-in-law Arthur. Small world. He also spent some time as a staff driver for the officers and was treated very well - occasionally being the recipient of crates of alcohol which were always gratefully received by all and sundry at the local alcohol-starved bars.

Being a driver is something about him that's a strong memory from when I was a wee lad. Like my grandfather on the other side of the family, Grandad took what work he could to support the family.As he was yet to hit retirement age when I was a nipper, the job that I remember him doing was that of a truck driver. And I mean proper truck driver. Massive, 16-wheeler, articulated type of jobbies.

There was something pleasingly intimidating about the vast lorry he used to drive - it used to make the street look small when he parked it up outside the maisonette he still inhabits. The fact that you had to clamber your way up quite a considerable distance before you even got to the seat was part of that. And then, once you were securely strapped in up there, the fact that you were up so high and able to look down upon all the other traffic (except maybe buses) was both impressive and a little scary all at the same time.

The trailer also held its fascinations as well. Firstly because it was this dark vast space full of crates and boxes and palates of stuff things, and secondly because said stuff and things were usually many, many, many remaindered books. You see, Grandad's job was haul off all these crates of misprinted books to be pulped. Generally, they were only missing the fly pages (those mysteriously blank pages you used to get at the front and back)without which they were technically unable to sell them - the upside of this being that we were never short of a free supply of technically unsellable but actually complete books for our reading delight.

They say that smell is one of the strongest aides to memory and I distinctly remember that lovely, papery, sawdusty smell of many, many new books all boxed up together. I was always an avid reader but this definitely helped to cement the appeal of books in my formative mind.

Other than helping to further my love of books, I'd have to say that Grandad was part of shaping my humour too (along with Ma and Pa, naturally). He loved nothing better than to sit and watch Tom & Jerry and Looney Tunes cartoons with us (and he is still amused by them, even in his 80s). Also, his fondness for old black and white comedy - Laurel & Hardy, Harold Lloyd, the Marx Brothers - has definitely filtered down to me; I still enjoy all of those to this day as does he. I guess I'm as much the product of my grandparents as I am my parents and not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to say that.

Truck Drivin' Man - Part The First

2010-10-15T18:45:00.003+01:00

On the other hand, my paternal grandfather I know very well (having celebrated his 87th birthday last week). He may just have the man one name - he is, was and ever shall be the man they call Reg - but he still has a surprise or two in him. He alternates between cheeky wisecracking chappy with a twinkle in his eye and stereotypical grumpy old curmudgeon who doesn't know why you bother buying him a present, especially as he'll probably be dead by Christmas (a claim he's made most years for at least the last seven years).

Grandad grew up in a busy household, being the youngest of eleven (hmmm, or was it ten? I must admit, I always lose track). Unlike my maternal grandfather, he did join the army and go off to fight in the war at the age of about 19 or 20. He never really used to talk about his time in the war at all up until a few years ago - I think he saw some pretty horrendous things out there (as did a lot of people) and he naturally never talks about those things. Partly, though, the reason he doesn't tend to talk about it is that he feels ashamed about his contribution to the war effort - he feels that he didn't do his bit when he was needed. Of course, this was due to circumstances completely his control...

Grandad was part of a gun crew out in Egypt and was readying for an offensive. One day, he started to feel a bit on the peaky side, a bit under the weather... the next thing he knew, he was waking up in hospital. In turns that he'd caught diphtheria pretty badly - fortunately for Reg, they'd caught it in time. In order to recover, he was shipped back home and, once he was fighting fit again, sent back out into the fray. He was told to go back and join up with his unit but could see no sign of them. Eventually, he managed to find someone who knew their whereabouts only to receive the worst news possible - the whole crew had been killed in the action he'd missed out on while he was in hospital. While I for one am glad that he didn't get killed in that offensive (as I wouldn't be typing this now), Grandad has, I think, never really fully come to terms with that survivors guilt.

To Be Continued

A Man Named Jack? - Part The Second

2010-10-08T12:30:00.001+01:00

My grandfather was a very bright man but circumstances conspired to prevent him from ever being able to utilise that intellect to its full potential. While his brothers were able to achieve some degree of satisfaction in the military and in journalism (in part thanks to the sacrifices my grandfather made), Jack took what work he could in order to support the family. That's not to say that his work wasn't valued. During the war, he was excused from service as his work in the munitions factory was considered more vital to the war effort.

Circumstances being the emotionless sequences of events that they are, my grandfather was once again cast into less than fortunate circumstances as, once the war was over and Britain's colonial influence over India came to its end, the family were forced to "return" to England. I say "return" for they had been born and bred in India so England wasn't really there home (but then, as the former oppressors, neither were they particularly welcome in India).

Jack fond that post-war Britain was offering even less in terms of employment. He took a job as a cleaner on the Tube, determined to get enough together to make ends meet. Being a man of single-minded intent )often described as stubbornness), he stuck with his job and eventually worked his way up from cleaner to a management position at London Underground.

That stubbornness is something that Mum says she sees in me - when my mind is made up, it is very definitely made up (that's not to say that I don't waver, hesitate, vacillate or procrastinate - just that, on those occasions when a decision is made, it's final). Ultimately, though, this "done is done" attitude may well have been my grandfather's undoing.

You see, Jack was a smoking man. From a very young age, he'd been a smoking man. And we're talking serious smoking here - three packets a day. Unfiltered in those days, too, and probably composed of more tar than tobacco. However, after nearly fifty years of hefty nicotine intake, Jack reached a jumping point. It was Budget time and my grandfather announced that, if the price of tobacco were to rise once again, he would no longer be counted amongst the ranks of the smoking. Lo and behold, the price did rise. And lo and behold, his lungs were untroubled by the stain of smoke again.

Perversely for such a heavy smoker, he's always been a healthy man but, having denied his body the drug it had depended on for so long, his health began to suffer. My mother remember him getting ill more often but, still having that stubborn streak, he hid just how ill he was getting. Eventually, he succumbed to a heart attack and my Nana, having been a professional nurse all of her working life, never forgave herself for not seeing the symptoms sooner.

But he lives on - in the silly sense of humour that was passed to my mum, my brother and me and in the shiny head and slightly stooping walk of yours truly. That man named Wilfred who everybody knew as Jack.

A Man Named Jack? - Part The First

2010-10-07T12:30:00.001+01:00

I never knew my maternal grandfather (he who was husband to Nurse Gladys); he died before my parents even met. He does live on in some form, though, in the bald-headed, bearded, round-shouldered personage that is me (at least according to Nana anyway who would frequently comment on my resemblance to him).

The world knew him as Jack, right up until he died when it emerged that his name wasn't Jack at all. I know what you're thinking - you're thinking, "Aha, his name was really John" as we all know that Jack is short for John (although how a word that is exactly the same length as another can be short for it, I've never quite understood). Well, I'm afraid that's where you would be wrong as his real name was, in fact, Wilfred. Yep, that's right, Wilfred.

How had this come to be? Well, it transpires that when my grandfather was born, his parents had somewhat of a difference of opinion. His mother was adamant that he would take the name of Wilfred. His father had other ideas. The boy was to be named Jack and that was to be the end of it. His mother was insistent - Wilfred was the name that was going on the birth certificate. Fine, said his father, you can put what you like on the birth certificate but I shall call him Jack. And so Jack he was until his dying day.

Jack was born into the British Raj out in Poona, India. They were by no means a wealthy family but being English in a country which was dominated as part of the (admittedly dwindling at this point) British Empire meant that they still had servants and domestics to cater for their needs. Life in Poona was made tougher for my grandfather by the death of his father when my grandfather was still very young. However, being the eldest child, this made him by default the new man of the house and so, things being what they were in those days, his schooling was abandoned so that he go out into the wide world and find gainful employment to support his mother and younger siblings...

To Be Concluded...

Nurse Gladys And Mary Ellen Baines - Part The Third

2010-10-06T12:30:00.001+01:00

Mary Ellen Baines had been exposed and humiliated and, with an urge for revenge worthy of a Mafia don burning inside her, she plotted her retribution. Said retribution was to be confectionery based in nature...

On a regular basis, the Baines family brought their beloved (or at least fondly tolerated) Mary Ellen a packet of lovely biscuits to help ease the time in this medical Bastille to which, in all likelihood, they had probably consigned her. Now, as you are probably expecting, these packets of biscuits started to disappear. The Bainesian accusatory finger was pointed squarely at Nurse Gladys who, quite clearly, "had it in for her". The family naturally sided with their beloved relative (or simply went along with her as they were all in favour of the quite life - one of the two). Once again, Nurse Gladys was performing her Columbo impression in full investigative mode.

A fresh packet of biscuits was delivered. That night, Nurse Gladys mounted a fresh vigil on her determined nemesis. Again, once she was convinced that she was unobserved, Mary Ellen Baines sallied forth from her bed once more and, armed with the newly acquired biscuit packet, snuck her way over the line cupboard, secreting the aforementioned confection within.

Nana was no one's fool. She'd tried the confrontation route and this had yielded no results. It was time to play the woman at her own game. Nurse Gladys waited until Mary Ellen Baines had returned to her bed, let her drift off to bed and then made her move...

The next day, once again the family Baines were firmly ensconced at the bedside. As per the newly established routine, biscuit-based accusations began to fly. The packet had vanished and the evil that was Nurse Gladys was definitely to blame. My grandmother begged to differ. Was dear, sweet Mary Ellen sure that the biscuits were gone? Had they checked everywhere? Of course she was sure, insisted the Baines woman, did Nurse Gladys think she was insane? Not at all, assured Nurse Gladys, but she was really sure that she'd checked the bedside table?

Naturally they had, claimed the bed-bound one, of course they'd checked there. Well, how about the bed, maybe under he pillows, suggested Nurse Gladys. If they hadn't checked there then they hadn't checked everywhere.

And so the pillows were duly lifted and, yes, Nurse Gladys' move in their chess game was revealed. For there, under the pillows, was an open packet of biscuits, crumbs akimbo. The family were suitably apologetic for besmirching a hard-working nurse's good name and, from henceforth, Mary Ellen Baines' Gladys-baiting shenanigans were not given the credence they once were. For this was Nurse Gladys' domain and woe betide anyone who tried to usurp her...

Nurse Gladys And Mary Ellen Baines - Part The Second

2010-10-05T12:30:00.001+01:00

I don't recall Nana ever mentioning what Mary Ellen Baines' specific psychiatric problem was. In those days, you didn't always necessarily get so specific a description of mental illnesses (the ward that Nana worked was simply referred to as "the mental ward"). What I do know was that she had it in for Nana and that Nana would always remember her run-in with Mary Ellen Baines. (And a small side note here:- whenever Nana would tell this story to us, she would always refer to the woman in question as Mary Ellen Baines. Never "Mary Ellen" or "Mrs Baines" or "that bloody Baines woman". Always "Mary Ellen Baines' in full and always said with a sense of exasperation. Anyway, I digress.)

Why the woman took exception to her, my Nana never knew but exception she did take. The early indication that perhaps the Baines woman had taken a dislike to her came when she chased Nurse Gladys round a table wielding a kitchen knife she'd managed to get hold of. That sort of thing tends to hint towards a rather strong dislike at the very least. Fortunately, that was only instance of threatened physical violence between the two of them but Mary Ellen Baines found other ways to continue her campaign against Nana...

One of the more mundane aspects of the job being the bringing round of the patient's cup of tea. All very straightforward except that, on every occasion that Nurse Gladys was the one to deliver the tea, Mary Ellen Baines complains that her tea is cold. And, upon being checked, it is. Absolutely stone cold. Now, Nurse Gladys was baffled by this for, every day, she serves the patients hot tea from the same urn and, when checked, all of theirs are still hot or, at the very least, warm.

Stumped by this mystery and, from their suspicious looks when they come to visit, beginning to think that the Baines family are convinced that she's the one with the problem, Nurse Gladys was determined to get to the bottom of this. So, one afternoon, she served the tea as normal but, with a surreptitious stealth that MI6 would be proud of, she hung back out of sight to observe Mary Ellen Baines with a cup of tea that is nothing less than piping hot.

The Baines woman had a quick check about to see if anyone was watching (not noticing the sneaky surveillance of Nursey Nana), maneuvered herself out of bed and slunk off with her steaming cup. Maintaining a discreet distance, Nurse Gladys set off in hot pursuit. Mary Ellen Baines made her way to the ladies room and, with one last quick about, crept her way inside. Quick as flash, Nurse Gladys caught her in the act. Said act? Emptying out half of her cup of tea into the sink and topping it up with cold water.

Having been caught in the act, Mary Ellen Baines was duly chastised and our Nana was absolved of all blame in The Case Of The Cold Tea. However, like Holmes and Moriarty, their rivalry was not yet over (it won't be spoiling anything, though, by telling you that this rivalry doesn't end with the two of them plunging over the waterfall - unless that is you haven't read "The Final Problem" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in which case I have just spoiled that. Sorry.)

To Be Concluded...

Nurse Gladys And Mary Ellen Baines - Part The First

2010-10-04T21:06:00.005+01:00

Our Nana was one of the kindest, gentlest souls you could ever hope to meet. At least, that's exactly who she was if you were a member of her beloved family (a family she was happy to extend to all of our friends who were also permitted to refer to her as Nana) or one of her cherished circle of friends. If, however, you were one of the people who knew her professionally and tended to refer to her as "Sister" as she went about her duties on the wards then it was a slightly different kettle of fish for she ruled her domain with a stern sense of authority.

She worked on many different wards in her time as a nurse and saw some pretty harrowing things (particularly during the war and also in her time on the children's ward which she vowed never to do again) but she never really told us about that. No, the two stories that stick in my mind about Nana's time as a nurse are the one about the teeth and the one where she got herself an honest-to-goodness nemesis.

The teeth, then. Working on a ward for the elderly, many of the tasks were those traditionally associated with those of an elder disposition. One case in point being that, due to their advanced years, a large number of patients on the ward were in need of false teeth (mainly to assist in the chewing of food and also to stop their sentences sounding like they were composed of shushing noises). As such, one of the nightly tasks for the nurse on duty was to collect in said dentures from the patients and store them safely for the night.

Nurse Gladys (for this was how our Nana was known) was on denture duty one fine night. She had the tray and did her rounds, storing all them neatly and efficiently away on the tray for later. Gnashers duly collected, she makes her way to the cupboard to store them... and drops them all over the floor. Quick as a flash and before the noise can be investigated, she scoops up the errant chompers and swiftly disperses them about the tray before tucking it swiftly away for the night.

Next morning. There is consternation on the ward. For some unknown reason, not a single pair of dentures seems to fit any of the patients despite them all being a perfect fit the night before. Nurse Gladys is called upon to explain. How is this possible? Our Nana, being a decent and upstanding Christian woman, does the only thing she possibly could in the situation - she lies and says that everything was absolutely fine when she collected them the previous night before sauntering off to resume her duties.

However, it was when her time on the psychiatric ward that earned her what could only be described as her nemesis...

To Be Furthered...

Ear, Ear

2010-07-06T13:30:00.001+01:00

Oh such a transport of delight is the London omnibus. Its glorious red streaked black with pollution and grime, its many seats filled to bursting with unspeakable deposits and untold germs, its countless passengers slowly baking in their own and other people's juices. A London bus is summer is truly a thing of splendour and wonder.

So I was on the bus yesterday and this bloke sits down in front of me. He's an older man, not quite "elderly" as such but definitely circling on the outskirts of that particular term. I catch an unpleasant whiff as he seats himself - the ammoniac tang of a frequently under- or unwashed body clad in under- or unwashed clothes. That, however, notable though it may be, is not what has drawn my attention to him. No, it is his ears.

They're not large. They're of a perfectly ordinary size. But they are by far and away the strangest shaped ears that I have ever seen. They seem to warp and bubble outwards, like some pastry-based hors d'oeuvres (possibly somewhere between a samosa, a blini and a bhaji) and I cannot seem to take my eyes off them.

I realise that I'm staring and try to look away. My eyes, though, are constantly drawn back to them, as though the ears are the singularity at the heart of a black hole and my gaze cannot escape its gravitic pull. Must look away. Cannot stop looking.

I wonder what has caused this malformation of his lugholes. Was it the result of a former career in boxing or an enthusiastic amateur keenness for a Friday night punch-up? They don;t really look like cauliflower ears, though. Is it a medical condition? Something new? Was he born like that? Or are they simply weirdly shaped?

Sadly, we shall never know the answers to these questions for my reverie was interrupted by the arrival of my stop. I departed the bus and the man and his ears went on their merry way (naturally - you wouldn't expect the ears to go around by themselves now, would you?).

Is it wrong that I had to fight the compulsion to flick them?

Oh Yeah, I Forgot That Was Great - No. 4: Batman: The Movie (1966)

2010-07-04T09:30:00.002+01:00

"Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb."

And some days, you suddenly realise that you've liked a film at different stages in your life for entirely different reasons. When I was a wee, hirsute nipper, I dearly loved this film with no trace of irony whatsoever. It was bright, it was exciting, it had fightings, it had gadgets and I watched it many times. Oddly enough, I was obsessed with the penguin. I dearly wanted an umbrella that turned into a gun and shot out gas and became a helicopter - this was the ultimate gadget as far as I was concerned.

As I grew older, I began to realise that this was, in fact, one of the finest comedy films ever. Even when I started reading Batman comics and wanted my Batman films to be all dark and grim and gritty (Batman And Robin, don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way out). my affection for this film never wavered.

Why is it so good? Oh, many reasons. One of the the chief ones has to the man playing Batman himself, Mr Adam West. His delivery is perfect - serious enough for kids to accept him in the role but with enough of a smirk lurking at the corners of his eyes for the adults to know that he's in on the joke. It's a masterpiece of using deadpan delivery to comic effect and is the definitive comedy superhero (with Patrick Warburton's The Tick coming a close second - although there is a hint of him channelling a bit of West).

Secondly, it knows that it has a low budget to realise a lot of the effects and makes a virtue of them. The scene in which Batman battles an obviously foam shark whilst dangling from a helicopter always raises a smile (particularly when the ultimate solution to his predicament is Shark Repellent Spray).

Lastly, it's just very funny. Some great moments of comedy timing, chief among them being this sequence (a sequence that is so iconic, it's referenced by Wallace And Gromit more than 40 years later):-

It's a cracking film no matter what age you are and definitely one that's fun for all the family. If you haven't seen it before and like your comedy daftly deadpan and campily serious then give it a go.

"They may be drinkers, Robin, but they're still human beings."

Oh Yeah, I Forgot That Was Great - No. 3: Cheesy 80s Film Soundtracks

2010-07-03T09:30:00.001+01:00

OK, let's go with the whole "80s films" thing briefly mentioned yesterday, then, while my brain is deciding to co-operate. Thanks to the glory of the Portable Music Device What Plays Songs Into Your Ears, I had a sudden urge to listen to an album that I hadn't heard in a while and, lo and behold, there it was at my fingertips. That album was the soundtrack to Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure and he listened to it and heard that it was good.

I mean, obviously, it's pretty naff. It's an album full of cheesy 80s-style rock bands who sound kind of like a lot of the major rock bands at the time but very much aren't them thus making their songs more available and, chiefly, more affordable. Given that the two main characters in the film are major rock fans, it feels like the album should have tracks by Van Halen, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, AC/DC and oh so many more on there. That's not what you actually get, though. No, the album features a far superior line-up including such greats as Shark island, Big Pig and Glen Burtnik. I know, I know, contain your excitement. The only reasonably famous name on there is Extreme of cheesy cock-rock ballad "More Than Words" fame and, of course, not forgetting their hilariously titled track "Get The Funk Out" (oh stop my aching sides).

Despite all that, though, there are a good selection of enjoyably cheesy songs that leave you with that feelgood factor. This isn't the only 80s soundtrack album with a rock theme to have this effect on me. I've mentioned before my love for the greatest film of all time, Transformers: The Movie (forget about Michael Bay, the proper one from the 80s with leonard Nimoy, Orson Welles and Eric idle in it*. Not least because it features the ultimate cock-rock power ballad, The Touch by Stan Bush.

So here's to the cheesy 80s rock-based film soundtrack. Long may they continue to satisfy my ears with their inoffensive guitar riffitude. And, to sign off, here's The Touch in all its glory followed by Play With Me by Extreme.

* No, I'm not making that up, they're really in it, go and check.

Oh Brain, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

2010-07-02T13:14:00.001+01:00

Recently, my brain has been steadfastly refusing to play ball for the majority of the time. I'll be happily walking along the road, probably just nipping up to the shop, and it begins to construct a blog idea or maybe some notes for a story. "Oh goody," thinks I, "this is just what I needed, the old grey matter getting going again, firing on all cylinders and all that guff." Naturally, at this point in time, I am unfettered by computer and keyboard or even pen and paper. It then chugs along merrily for a bit until distracted by the actual purpose for my visit outside. And then to top it all off, when I return to the place where the writing implements are, it stops and goes all inconveniently blank.

I mean, really, what are you playing at, brain? Do you really want me to stab you via the earhole with a sharpened Steadtler HB? Do you? Most frustrating.

All of which is to say that I've had several ideas for blog posts of late which fizzled away into nothingness as soon as I'm in a position to slap them down onto the page. Maybe they'll come flooding back and I'll enter into a sudden prolific month where the words flow like wine and everyone is illuminated with the shining light of my wit and wisdom. Or maybe I'll just post something trivial about 80s films and then shut up again for nearly a month. It could go either way, really...

The hotter weather doesn't overly help. Much like a PC, my brain operates best at colder temperatures and is prone to crashing whilst overheating. I'm one of those people who is much more at home during the colder climes. Don't get me wrong, I do like the hot weather when all I have to do is sit around in my swimming trunks drinking beer and not moving but you make me put on a shirt and shoes and cram me into a moving sweatbox (or train, if you will) with a couple of hundred other people and my liking for heat evaporates really rather quickly.

It also doesn't help that the equation "slightest sign of heat = disproportionate amount of sweat" sums up much my summer experience. It's not a pleasant thing for me or anyone nearby. Until someone invents some of cheap air-conditioning suit that maintains your body at an even cool temperature, that is. Yeah, that would be nice.

So, in conclusion then, my brain is still capable of random tangents. That is all.

Check One-Two, One-Two

2010-07-01T18:00:00.000+01:00

I probably shouldn't have watched so much of the Glastonbury coverage over the weekend - it made me wish I was there. Partly because the previous two occasions that I descended upon the festival were mudbaths of the highest extreme but also because it reminded me how much I love going to see live music.

I know a couple of people who argue that they don't enjoy live performances by artists they enjoy as it never sounds as good as the recorded version. I can see their point of view if they just want to listen the songs they know and love the way that they know and love them but, for me, that's not the appeal of the gig. Sure, a big part of is about the music itself but it's also about the shared experience, the company, the socialising. Even a bad gig can still be a good night out. There's just something about it.

You arrive at the pub/club/stadium/field. You find someone you know. The longing emptiness in your hand is replaced by the cooling fullness of a lovely cold alcoholic beverage. Imbibing commences. The anticipation builds. Music begins, probably a support act. They are good or bad. Discussions ensue. Imbibing continues.

At last, the act you have been anticipating graces the stage / corner of the pub / cowshed. You sing, you dance, you jump around, you shout yourself silly, you probably spill some alcohol but this is one of the few occasions where that is pretty much OK.

They were brilliant. Everyone is happy and carries on drinking and dancing badly to the post-gig cheesy disco (if there is one). They were awful. Everyone is a bit disappointed so carries on drinking and dancing badly to the post-gig cheesy disco (if there is one).

Having had many a friend or family member in a band at one time or another, there's just something appealing about seeing a band play live. Of course, you will inevitably spend the next day with ears ringing and throat sore from the singing but it's a small price to pay, I say...

Second Album/Novel/Whatever Syndrome

2010-06-02T20:36:00.004+01:00

There's nothing more enjoyable than discovering something new that really floats your boat. A new band, a new writer, a new TV show - whatever it may be, the joy of finding a new thing to get into is always a particularly pleasurable one. It does, however, seem to come with a potential downside - there's always the risk that what comes next just doesn't hit the spot. Or the absolute worst case scenario - the new thing is so far from what you enjoyed initially that you begin to forget why you enjoyed it the first place.

For example, way back in the dim and distant days of the early nineties, I got into Oasis in a big way. Was completely obsessed with their first two albums/ However, their subsequent tendency to just keep repeating the same Beatles rip-offs combined with their utterly obnoxious public personas actually drove me to the point where I no longer even enjoy those first couple of albums, even going so far as to get rid of them. (Although I must admit I quite like The Importance Of Being Idle - I guess because it's a Kinks "homage" for a bit of variety.)

It happened with Heroes. Here was a programme that I was completely addicted to during its first season. It was a lot like a TV version of all the best parts of X-Men comics over the last 25 years. Then came the lacklustre second season (curtailed by a writers strike) and a third season so devoid of anything resembling character development and plot coherence that it resembled all the worst parts of X-Men over the last 40 years that I jumped ship and haven't looked back with regret once.

How can something so filled with promise go so wrong? I guess in each case there are a myriad number of reasons as to why something successful sadly stumbles down the path to failure. I sometimes begin to suspect that some things only have a finite amount of greatness attached in them. Maybe this band only has one great album in them. Maybe that writer only has one great book in them. Or maybe it's a byproduct of the way certain aspects of culture accelerate so that we demand more and we demand it faster and creativity doesn't have a way of keeping pace with demand. Either way, it's always a sad day when something that once gave joy becomes a source of disappointment.

This Is Where The Title Goes

2010-06-01T19:21:00.004+01:00

It would appear that making promises about daily blog posting for the month of May may have been on the foolish side - buying a house with Gorgeous Girlfriend and helping her and the boys move all their stuff in (I haven't officially moved in yet) has been somewhat on the time consuming side. When not packing, unpacking, lugging, moving, hanging and shifting, there has been much lying around aching with a kind of "eeeeeeeeee" noise running through the brain. The idea of writing never even crossed my mind for much of the time - the main thoughts crossing that particular wasteland being "Where does this go?" and "How many boxes left?"

So, after a couple of Lost and feline-based toe dips in the bloggy waters over the last week, how to kickstart things around here properly? Good question. Do I have a good answer?

Erm, no.

I had the momentary feeling last week that the old neurons were beginning to fire again and pretty soon we'd have blog-based goodness coming out of our ears. Figuratively speaking, that is. The bloggy well may not be quite dry but it's certainly subject to a temporary hosepipe ban affecting parts of the South East.

I tell you what, I'll whack a stick in there, give it a good old stir and see if I can dredge up some unexpected noxious bloggy fumes from the long undisturbed brain slurry. And, when I put it like that, how can you resist?

Desire

2010-05-28T19:14:00.001+01:00

She has seen what she desires and she can think of nothing else. The sense of it fills her and she must have it. The only question is how to obtain it. It is fiercely guarded and the journey to attainment will not be easy. But the reward, oh the sweet reward. She can almost feel it and knows that it must be hers...

Suddenly, a window of opportunity. She knows that if she does not seize this moment of serendipity, this chance coming together of elements, she will regret it and, being a creature of wants and needs who is not given over to regrets for the paths not taken, she is spurred into action.

She moves, she grabs and the object of desire is hers. This is the moment she has wanted and she savours the taking. It is good and it is hers.

But then the window is gone and her desire is once again thwarted. She moves away relinquishing her victory but is satisfied to have had that stolen moment when it was hers, all hers...

All of which is to say that if the bloody cat steals a burger from my dinner plate while I'm not looking again, she'll get marginally less affectionate attention from me in future. Ah, who am I kidding? We all know that's not true. She ended up getting the rest of the burger in her food bowl anyway. Well, I wasn't going to eat it. It was covered in carpet hair and catty teeth marks.

And So It Ends...

2010-05-26T18:00:00.000+01:00

Warning - Don't read on if you plan to watch the end of Lost at some point and haven't yet...

Six years. Six years of being promised that, if you stuck with this series, it was going to head somewhere. And, to be fair to the creators of Lost, it did go somewhere. I just don't think it was somewhere satisfying...

Lost has been quite the TV phenomenon. I read and watch a lot of stories, so am always drawn in by something that I can't second guess, that I have no real idea where it's going to go. Lost was very much the definition of this - week by week, I pretty much had no idea where it was all going to end up.

Sure, at times I became frustrated with it. The constant piling up of question upon question began to wear me down in the middle of the third season and my patience started to wear thin but I stuck with the show and my obsession with it was rekindled once the ending was announced and the writers seemed to be pulling out all the stops to get to there.

Then came the sixth season and the "flash-sideways". These I was less interested in. It seemed to be a bit of a wish-fulfilment parallel universe where everyone was getting to live relatively happy lives. Parallel universe stories are usually good fun but, strung out over a whole season, I found myself caring less and less as the weeks went by. I didn't care about what was happening to the characters in this other reality; I just wanted to know what was happening in the main storyline.

Which brings us to the last episode and the biggest cheat of all. It turns out that we haven't been seeing another universe. Oh no, we've been watching our characters in some sort of limbo, waiting for them all to come together after their deaths so that they can "move on". The whole secondary storyline this season had purely been put in so that the writers could try and pull one last "aha!" before they left the room. I'd probably be better disposed towards it if it actually made any sense - there are so many things about this limbo that don't really make a lot of sense when you look back at it (why is Claire pregnant there? Why is Sawyer a cop? Why are Jack and Juliet separated with a son? Why are characters like Miles and Ana Lucia there but not in the church? And more and more...). Of course, the answer to all those questions is that the writers wanted you to think that that you were watching an alternate universe storyline so you'd be fooled by their final twist. As it is, it's still far too close to the whole "it was all a dream" ending for my liking - one ending that is absolutely guaranteed to raise my ire.

No, basically, the writers wanted to have their cake and eat it. They obviously wanted to have some of the characters sacrificed along the way to give the ending some emotional weight but, at the same time, have a nice, happy heart-warming ending where everyone gets reunited. And, for me, that just made it feel it was neither one thing or the other. It's also indicative of a trend we seem to be getting (certainly one that Doctor Who has been guilty of recently) in giving a resolution that's big on nostalgic sentiment at the expense of genuine emotion and plot logic.

As for the conclusion to the main island storyline, I expected things to be left mysterious to an extent but still don't really feel that the whole Jacob/Smoke Monster thing was adequately explained. There was a lot of talk of rules that governed the way they behaved which were never really explained and, to me, that's another lazy writer's way of saying "Well, we need a reason why he doesn't just kill them himself but can't think of one. It's just a rule, OK?" Plus the fact that this epic conflict was pretty much resolved by switching the island off then switching it back on again seems ridiculously easy.

All of which makes it sound like I completely hated it. I didn't, there was still stuff in there that I enjoyed and I always knew that, after such a long build-up, there was going to be a sense of disappointment when all was revealed. I just didn't expect to be disappointed quite that much. I think that, as it was a payoff that the writers claimed they always had in mind, it just doesn't live up to the build-up that preceded it.

So farewell, Lost. It was a ride that was by equal turns exhilarating and frustrating and, while the destination didn't live up to the journey, overall it was still worth the trip.

Namaste.

Under-appreciated Comedians - Gene Wilder

2010-05-12T13:43:00.002+01:00

Sometimes you forget how much you like someone and are amused by them. When asked about my favourite comedians, there are always some names that spring immediately to mind but it's often the ones that aren't immediately on the tip of your mind that can really make you laugh. Today's subject, Mr Gene Wilder, being a case in point...

He's in three of my favourite comedy films* - The Producers (original and best version), Young Frankenstein (which he co-wrote) and the eminently quotable Blazing Saddles** - and arguably steals the show in all three. He has one of those perfectly expressive comedic faces, able to induce hysterics with a glance, particularly in his portrayal of the hapless and neurotic Leo Bloom in The Producers. He's also able to switch to full manic shouting mode without losing any of the funny (a problem that Will Ferrell suffers from in my mind - he can be funnier in his quieter moments but makes me cringe when he's just being "shouty man who thinks he's funny").

He also formed a cracking partnership with Richard Pryor. They only made about four films together but it somehow seems like more. There was just something about the two of them together that really worked. As with all great double acts, I guess they just had that chemistry that you can't really engineer or manufacture. It's the elusive spark that comes from two people who just "get" each other.

So here's to The Waco Kid. He doesn't get enough recognition these days so this is my small attempt to redress the balance a bit. Mr Wilder, your work is definitely appreciated round these here parts.

* To be fair, that's a long list with sub-categories and everything but still...

** Yep, all Mel Brooks films, too. Mel Brooks - funny in the 70s then the 80s came along and the funny went away.

Annoying Plot Device No.2 - The Shock Dream

2010-05-10T17:45:00.002+01:00

No, it's not the "it was all a dream" ending so rightly reviled in yesterday's post on this themed topic. It is instead something that is used very. very commonly in serial television - the shock dream.

In general, this is most commonly consists a scene showing the shocking demise of a regular character which is then immediately followed by someone sitting bolt upright in bed (generally accompanied by a scream). And it's a dreadful, dreadful cheat. I can imagine that it creates a sense of glee - playing a cheap practical joke on the audience. "Heh heh, Favourite Character's dead. Oh no, wait, it was all Minor Character's dream. Ain't I a stinker?"

It all provokes that weary feeling again when it becomes obvious that we're drifting into dream territory. After all, as soon as you've realised that the section you're in is a dream, it all becomes a little bit dramatically redundant. Nothing you're seeing is "real"* so why should you invest yourself in it? I find myself marking off time while I wait for the sleepy gubbins to finsih and the story proper to pick back up again. OK, yes, I realise that a lot of times dreams are used to either foreshadow or underscore upcoming dramatic moments but that alos feels like a bit of a cheat as I don't really remember many of my dreams being prophetic or dramatically ironic. Mostly incoherent or, if I'm lucky, just filthy (on the rare occasion that I actually remember them - I generally don't).

That not to say that all dream sequences are bad. Some can be genuinely odd, disturbing or dream-like and those are the ones I like. If it actually seems like a dream then it's a different kettle of fish. Occasionally, if you're lucky, you get a slice of mentalness like Twin Peaks which makes bizarre dream logic integral to the plot but there are very few things that can get away with that level of oddity.

In conclusion then, drop the shock dream sequence and give us some actual dream-resembling dream sequences**. Until you can do that, let's all just stay awake for now, shall we?

* We'll leave aside the whole "what is real anyway?" thing for now.

** I'm using the word "dream" so many times that it's beginning to lose all meaning. Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream....

Annoying Plot Device No. 1 - Amnesia

2010-05-09T19:58:00.004+01:00

In anticipation of the run up to the very last episode and also due to the fact that we seem to be spending a lot of time going "Wait a minute, who was that again?". Gorgeous Girlfriend and I have been working our way through Lost from the beginning (currently up to the end of season 2 - hatch-based fun and shootings galore). In so doing, I was reminded of one of my least favourite of dramatic devices - the sudden case of amnesia.

It's lazy and tiresome and generally a way of stringing out storylines long beyond their natural span. It's the point where a writer has been backed into a corner by giving one of the characters information which they would not keep to themselves but, for dramatic purposes, cannot be revealed to the audience. And so it seems that, instead of coming up with a creative way around, the old "Well, why don't we just give them amnesia" card gets pulled out of the pack.

It fills me a kind of all-pervading weariness whenever this particular chestnut gets pulled out. It doesn't raise my ire in the same way that the "it was all a dream" ending does (I'll never regain that time I spent watching Boxing Helena*) but it comes a close second. Basically, it's a way ofmarking off narrative time until you can get the characters to the point they need to be at in the plot. I never think "oh goody, a nice juicy amnesia storyline". No, it's the inward groan, the rolling of the eyes and the gritting of the teeth til it's all over.

Just to point out, in now way does this mean that I'm not enjoying rewatching Lost cause I certainly am (with the exception of any of the Boone and Shannon episodes - snore). It just struck as one of those things that I hate in otherwise engaging stories. Anyway, that's my bit for today, as you were, at ease.

* Oh, did I spoil the end of that film for you? Good because now you won't be tempted to watch and I've just saved you both valuable time and a sense of frustration at being treated like an idiot. You're welcome.

Contains Traces Of Blog

2010-05-06T17:40:00.001+01:00

Time was, way back in the day, that simply giving a film a certificate (U, PG, 12, 15 or 18, those are your basics) was sufficient to give people ample warning as to the level of suitable content within a film. But no, for some unfathomable reason, we're increasingly given weirdly specific-seeming descriptions that do, in fact, give you no real information as to what you're going to encounter ("mild peril" being a particularly useless favourite - although I have to admit that "fantasy spiders" does leave little room for interpretation). So I thought it was time we were given some actually useful descriptions which may help us all decide whether or not to watch a film. Here area few examples:-

Summer Blockbuster CGI-Fest
- Contains 80% CGI, 18% shouting and 2% acting

Harry Potter And The Endless Franchise
- Contains characters using the full name "Harry Potter" throughout the entire film just in case you forgot who the speccy kid was

Generic 80s Horror Film Remake Part 3
- Contains nothing that you liked about the original

Michael Bay's KickExplodeFightBoom
- Contains 73 explosions in super slow motion and no need for cognitive reasoning.

Any Film Starring Or Even Featuring Or Just Mentioning Hugh Grant
- Contains a vomit-inducing amount of Hugh Grant*

Any more for any more?

*OK, that one may be a specifically personal bugbear

Oh Yeah, I Forgot That Was Great - No.2: Blood Sugar Sex Magik

2010-05-05T18:00:00.001+01:00

The portable music listening device is a wonderful thing, especially now that you can carry around enough audio goodness to fill your ears for about 45 days straight without ever having to listen to the same thing twice. Which is all well and good if it weren't for the fact that, when confronted which such overwhelming luxury of choice, this fella's brain does in fact go into total lockdown and become crippled by the inability to choose. When coupled with the fact that I tend to get obsessive about songs/albums that I like and listen to them repeatedly until I'm sick to the back teeth of them, it tends to mean that there are a large number of sadly overlooked items of joy lurking about in the electronic hinterlands.

So it's always nice to have that sudden urge to listen to something you haven't heard for ages, find it readily available at your fingertips (or earholes, I guess, I don't listen with my fingers like some weird man-grasshopper hybrid*) and discover that you still love it as much as when you first used to listen to it.

The latest rediscovery? The album Blood Sugar Sex Magik by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It wasn't their first album (they'd produced four more before that) but, to my mind, it's their finest. It's the first one that drew my attention to them and I was utterly obsessed with it from first listen onwards. Funky and rocky, melodic and shouty, emotional and puerile, it's a great mix that swings from slower, tuneful numbers like Breaking The Girl to the rock majesty of Give It Away and Suck My Kiss.

Sure, they produced some great tracks before and after and I'm sure someone more musically minded could come up with a good reason why some of their other albums might be better but this is the one that always gets me listening all the way through (and I always like it when you get to the end of a song and are starting to mentally play the first few bars of the next track in anticipation in your head). In conclusion then, Blood Sugar Sex Magik is good and I like it. More valuable insights next time.

*Yes, I know they hear through their knees but it;s the same sort of principle. As you were, biology police.

Oh Yeah, I Forgot That Was Great - No. 1: Nemesis The Warlock

2010-05-04T22:11:00.005+01:00

Being a child of the eighties, the first comic I became properly obsessed with was 2000AD (and quite rightly so). Obviously, characters like Judge Dredd and Sam Slade Robo Hunter were always big winners but the one that I remember being particularly drawn to as a child was Nemesis The Warlock. He was a truly alien-looking, demonic, cloven-hoofed sort of a creature and, in the issue that first really drew him to my attention*, he was fighting a spiky, armour clad villain called Thomas de Torquemada who was instructing him to "Repent or die!" on the cover.

It was partly the fantastic artwork of Bryan Talbot that drew me to the character but it was also the fact that the whole thing appeared to be utterly alien, utterly fantastical and utterly divorced from anything resembling real life. I was already a confirmed sci-fi fan by that point so it wasn't as if that needed confirming but I'd say that, from that point onwards, there was no going back from the path of comics fandom.

Sadly, in the end, it's a somewhat disappointing strip. It becomes confusing mired in a time travel story that kind of forgets it's a time travel story and ultimately limps to a rather disappointing squib of an ending. It did, however, attract some truly distinctive and different artists during its run; all of them great talents in very different ways. From the cartoony and scratchily inventive style of co-creator Kevin O'Neill to the glorious detail of the aforementioned Bryan Talbot through to the grotesque body horror of John Hicklenton (who sadly passed away earlier this year), it was always fascinating to look at even if it did skate over the edges of coherence from time to time.

So if you like your comics to be odd and alien, give it a go. While the storyline doesn't necessarily hold up in the end, it's warped sense of humour and inventive visuals certainly do. Credo!

* Issue 404 published in 1985 containing episode 18 of Book four - The Gothic Empire. No, I'm not that Rain Man-ish - I looked it up.

Heavy Reader

2010-05-03T15:25:00.002+01:00

There's never a time when I'm not reading something but I go through phases where I have the urge to just keep reading until my eyeballs bleed (I don't because the whole bleeding eyeball thing is not a good look and would probably frighten the kids). It's almost a physical need - a compulsion to keep consuming stories until my story-craving brain is sated.

They don't have to just be fictional stories although that tends to be the main default setting for me. No, I like some true stories as well although, if they're going to be true, I do tend to prefer them on the strange side. So what have been the highlights of this immersion in the written word? I'm so very glad you asked me that as that was pretty much how I was planning to pad out the rest of this entry...

The Eyre Affair & Lost In A Good Book by Jasper Fforde - A comic author in much the same vein as Robert Rankin and Terry Pratchett to an extent, these books follow the exploits of Tuesday Next, a literary detective living in alternate 1985 who gets involved in cases that involve stolen literary characters, the Crimean War, time travel, Shakespearean authorship conundrums and much more strangeness besides. He's got an extremely inventive mind with a very readable writing style and the plots rattle along at a good pace.

The Call Of The Wild by Louis Theroux - I've always enjoyed Louis' documentaries (although recently, he's gone off the boil a little bit by branching out into more serious subjects and losing a lot of that quirky appeal). This is his first book and details his attempts to get back in touch with previous documentary subjects as a ten year "reunion Tour". It makes for interesting reading, partly to see how the lives of the former interviewees have altered (not a lot in most cases) and partly because it's fascinating to see Louis' oddly naive belief that his subjects wouldn't have been offended by the mocking documentaries he made about them.

Screen Burn by Charlie Booker - A collection of his columns for The Guardian, I found it a fascinating read for two reasons - firstly because his brand of raging vitriol is extremely amusing (he has a very good turn of phrase when he's outraged) and secondly because it covers the years 2000 - 2004 and it's interesting to look back and see the changing nature of television over that time from the rise of reality television onwards.

I'm also indulging in something that I haven't for a long while - the reading of multiple books at once. As well as finishing off Lost in A Good Book, I'm also getting through Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (enjoyable but not overly easy going) and Uller Uprising by H Beam Piper (classic 50s pulp sci-fi). I'm sure this will all fade again soon but, for the moment, I'm a dedicated heavy reader.

Placeholder

2010-05-02T20:30:00.002+01:00

This being Bank Holiday weekend, it would appear that my attempt to blog daily is off to a mistimed start as currently the lure of bed and episodes of 1st season Lost are calling. Instead of an actual post, here are some of the things this weekend has involved.

Homemade paella

Driving lessons

Smoked salmon

Sunday dozing

Drunken SingStar

Chorizo

Doctor Who

Not really moving much

All with the added bonus that tomorrow is like an extra Sunday so there's none of "dread of Monday' feeling that normally assaults the soul in the long dark teatime of a Sunday. Huzzah! TTFN.

Reboot

2010-05-01T16:21:00.003+01:00

Today being the first of May

Your baldy host's here to say

That he will once again try

And drain the well dry

To post you new stuff every day

Now this is the sort of a vow

That's easy to make here and now

But when screen is bare

And inspiration's nowhere

He hopes that you all will allow

The odd day or two now and then

When the old bloggy muse once again

Does not dare show its head

And tucks up in bed

Out of sight to all women and men

(Which is basically me saying that I'm going to try and get back into writing something every day. But then again, I might not. yeah, it's always a bad sign when the limericks are on the loose.)

Big Fat Shat Attack

2010-04-28T12:08:00.003+01:00

Given that he has long portrayed a fictional namesake (until he was usurped by a younger, fitter model last year) and that he has also provided services to the world of music which may well redefine the word "unique", it's probably about time to get into some William Shatner news. Because, let's face it, who doesn't love the Shat? Well, alright, maybe most of the the original cast of Star Trek but still...

This is a man who is responsible for two extremely fine moments in pop culture history. This (the point where a man is acting so hard that his eyes go all wonky):-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRnSnfiUI54&feature=player_embedded

And of course this, which really needs no introduction (go to about 40 seconds in):-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvQwXOCKNLY

So why is Billy Boy newsworthy all of a sudden? Well, it turns out that, due to a Canadian journalist's experiments with the reach of new media (more specifically, the ever-present Facebook group), a campaign is now underway to have The Shat appointed as Governor General of Canada.

Despite starting as a journalistic exercise (i.e. way for journalist to come up with an article in a slow news week), this isn't necessarily all that unlikely. The Governor General position is apparently unelected and largely ceremonial. Also, the whole "actor holding political office" thing has been done many a time (ex-cowboy Ronald Reagan as US President, former bodybuilder and professional cyborg impersonator Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California, etc.). It's so silly that it just might work.

That's not the best bit about this, though. The post has to be appointed by the Queen and, for some reason, the image of Captain Kirk being appointed Governor General in a solemn ceremony with the Queen really tickles me. So I say Shat for GG!

(Yes, quite right, this whole post was a shameless excuse to post those two William Shatner videos. It was worth it.)

Unbloggy

2010-04-26T17:05:00.004+01:00

So it turns out that it's been nearly three weeks since you've had some bloggy action round these here parts. Well, it turns out that there was a pretty good reason for that. I've just not been feeling blog-like.

What's that you say? It's a relatively poor reason. Well, you may say that but, let's face it, nobody wants to read a half-arsed blog (although a blog about half-arses - whatever they may be, people with just the one buttock, I guess - may well be reasonably entertaining). Your blog should always be fully arsed, I reckon (unless it's on that singular buttock topic mentioned in the previous statement).

I tried, dear readers, oh I tried. There were a couple of half-hearted attempts at blogdom that fizzled and limped to an uninspiring halt (which I won't describe as I may cannibalise them for usable parts like some grotesque Frankenstein's blogs). I just wasn't feeling it, I guess. I didn't even have something about nothing to write and, given that over 90% of this entire blog has consisted of pretty much nothing, that's a fairly rare occurrence.

So what's today's topic then? Ah, well, I didn't quite get that far but at least I'm back to writing about nothing. Maybe tomorrow, you'll get something about something. of course, my use of the words "maybe tomorrow" just there now means that I have the theme tune to The Littlest Hobo firmly stuck in my head going round and round in a loop and so, in order to share some of that joy with you, here is that self-same theme to finish on. Y'all come back now...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgGKSjiw0HQ

Review - Doctor Who: The Eleventh Hour

2010-04-07T12:04:00.003+01:00

I feel a little bit like I may have missed out on something. Looking at the various reviews and comments online, the general consensus seems to be that, in the newly re-launched series of Doctor Who, Matt Smith is fantastic as the new Doctor. Maybe I was watching a slightly different programme as I mainly seemed to see an underwhelming actor vaguely mimicking the last person to play the role. Anyway, here's my own personal two-penneth on last Saturday's episode to add to the rest of the internet opinion...

The Good:- Given that it had a daunting run from David Tennant to follow, this was an assured and confident debut story. Stephen Moffat is an accomplished writer and indications here are good that he's got what it takes to step up to show-runner. There was a nice sense of fun, energy and wonder along with his trademark creepiness (the whole looking-out-the-corner-of-the-eye thing) which is so much a part of Doctor Who in general. There was also a nice sense of the surreal to the episode - giant eyeballs, barking workmen. As usual, the companion is the focus of this introductory story and Karen Gillan proves to be an engaging actress with a nice backstory for the character - if there's one thing that Stephen Moffat is good at, it's utilising the time travel element of the show to good effect. The newly designed TARDIS is also a winner, proving a nice mix of the new and the old (nods to the original design in some of the features).

The Bad:- The new theme is an absolute disgrace - taking a memorable theme tune and turning into something that barely even registers in your attention - and is accompanied by a shoddy looking new CGI sequence. I doubt it's going to grow on me - just have to grin and bear it for the next 12 weeks. Also, while the episode does have some nice, fun moments, it once again proves that new Doctor Who struggles with comedy from time to time with the overlong and not particularly funny food tasting sequence. The plot itself wasn't overly much to write home about but you can forgive that in an episode like this where there's so much to establish (new Doctor, new companion, etc.)

The Too Soon To Call:- Matt Smith himself. He seems to won over plenty of people with much raving about him being completely the Doctor but I was personally underwhelmed by him. There was nothing particularly distinctive or new about him and I felt at times that he was trying just that little bit too hard to be zany. that said, it is only his first episode and I didn't dislike him so let's see if he can win me over in the next few weeks.

The Verdict:- So, a new production team is at the helm and it has freshened up a show that was becoming in need of some new ideas but it still feels very much like a continuation of the same show. I'm not wowed by the new Doctor but I'm willing to give him a chance and I'm definitely keen to see where it goes in the next twelve weeks. I mean, it's Doctor Who and I've eagerly looked forward to each new series since I was four. I'm hardly going to stop now, am I? (No, I'm not, in case you were wondering.)

TV Gold

2010-03-31T21:50:00.000+01:00

There is many a delight gleefully crapping all over our eyes and ears via the medium of the television schedule these days and, judging by some of the competition out there, I reckon it can't be all that hard to pitch out a few ideas. I'm sure that all of these are imminently due to be snapped up by some far-sighted TV exec who knows televisual gold when it pokes him in his expense-account induced girth so keep an eye out for them come the winter season.

60 Minute Housebreak
Two teams of chirpy conmen attempt to break into a top-list celebirty's nouse and steal as many of their expensive celebrity trinkets as possible in just one hour. The winning team are the ones who have managed to fence as much of the dodgy gear as possible to Dave down the Nag's Head before the rozzers get wind of it. Presented by celebrity cockney Danny Dyer.

Celebritry Punchface
This show distills the format in which a Z-list celebrity is subjected to ritual humiliation at the hands of the public down to its purest form. The vote lines open for your chosen celebrity and, once the vote has closed, the remainder of the show is spent having a burly security guard called Dave simply slapping them about the face. Oh, the hilarity.

Eat Some Food
Some people cook for some other people who come round to their house and eat it. Oh no, hang on, that's already pretty much every reality-type show on at the moment.

I'm fairly sure that any one of those would get me at least a twelve week commission. Maybe more...

Aiii! Gojira!

2010-03-30T18:00:00.000+01:00

In keeping with yesterday's discussion of underrated pleasures, let's talk a bit about Godzilla. I've mentioned in the past that I'm a fan of these slices of cinematic fried gold. Sure, they're not to everyones taste but sometimes only the sight of two grown men in rubber monster suits smashing each other into cardboard replica cities will satisfy*. With that in mind, you can understand my complete lack of excitement at the news that a Hollywood studio has once again bought the rights to the big green lizard and plans to return him to the screen.

It was twelve years ago that this was last attempted and let's just say that the results were woeful (thanks to Independence Day's Roland Emmerich). With that in mind, here are my top tips to the new production team as to what to do to avoid stinking up the joint 1998-style:-

Don't Turn Him Into A Giant Crocodile-Style Jurassic Park CGI Rip-Off
Now, I'm not necessarily saying that they should break out the rubber suits again** but that doesn't mean they should change the overall look of the big fella. I mean, it's an iconic look, the sort of half-tyrannosaur-half iguana thing so why mess about with it for the sake of modernisation? By all means use CGI to realise the creature but make sure that it stays true to what was popular about the character in the first place.

Don't Give Him Kids
In the original run of films, Godzilla's son (who's name was Minilla, fact fans) was a sign of the series taking a more family-friendly turn as well as being one of the worst ideas imaginable. In the American film, lots of little Godzilla babies running around was just an excuse to have a bit of Jurassic park-style raptor action. And, of course, in the cartoon, Godzooky was an abomination before the eyes of man. So, please, no mini-Godzillas.

Give Him Some Massive Monsters To Fight
If I'm going to see a Godzilla film, I want to see him stomping about, smashing buildings and fighting other monsters. I don't want to see him going up against Matthew Broderick. That's not what I've paid my money for. Giant monsters, please.

Of course, the best option all round would be for Hollywood to leave him alone and for Toho Studios to get the suit out of mothballs and start building tiny Tokyos again. Mainly because this might be one of those cultural things that just doesn't really translate. That's not gonna happen, though, so let's hope that maybe someone somewhere remembers the lesson of the 1998 version and shows a bit more appreciation for the character.

Think I'll stick to watching "Destroy All Monsters!" instead. Abunai! Gojira!

* In fact, I have a fondness for the kaiju genre in general - how can you not love characters like Gamera, a giant space turtle who sprouts rocket jets from his leg-holes once his limbs are fully retracted and flies through the air in a spinny leg-hole-propelled fashion?

** Which reminds me, Trey Parker and Matt Stone (of South Park and Team America fame) where supposed to be making a monster movie called Giant Monsters Attack japan! in a Godzilla-styley but I never heard any more about it after the initial announcement. Wonder what happened to that?

Underrated Pleasures

2010-03-29T13:50:00.003+01:00

Some would say that they are guilty pleasures but I think underrated pleasures is a better way of putting it as you shouldn't feel bad about something that gives you pleasure (stop it, minds out of the trousers, people). They are the things that you don't think get enough attention - unjustly and undeservedly so. Here are a few off the top of my shiny head for starters...

Walnut Whips
No, this isn't a kinky thing. I am, of course, talking about one of these bad boys:-

I was utterly obsessed with them as a child, even though I wasn't particularly fond of walnuts. So, the walnut on top always got picked off and thrown in the bin so that the chocolatey cone with the whipped fondant filling could be swiftly demolished by my childish chompers (and no doubt suitably smeared over fingers and fizzog). Gorgeous Girlfriend bought some the other day and I was instantly transported back to Nana and Grandad's kitchen on a Thursday afternoon after school. Mmmm, walnut whips.

Adam And Joe on BBC 6Music
I always liked their TV shows but radio is the medium in which they've really come into their own (and it was one of their radio shows talking about underrated rather than guilty pleasures that set off this train of thought). They're silly and funny and the fact that they have been friends since they were at school together and still seem to really make other laugh hysterically is always endearing. They're also both extremely musically talented as proved by their regular feature "Song Wars" in which they pick a theme and each compose a song on it for the following week's show which is then put to the listener vote. Sadly, they're on hiatus at the moment as Joe is making a film and, with the imminent demise of BBC 6Music, it looks possible that they might not be back on the radio as a duo anytime soon. Which would be a crime.

The Larry Sanders Show
Another one of those shows that got shown over here in dead of night slots (both on BBC and on ITV4 when they did a run of it a couple of years back) and never really got the attention it deserved. Sure, Larry himself is not a particularly appealing character as such but the show is made by the dream team of Jeffrey Tambor as "Hey Now!" Hank Kingsley and Rip Torn as Artie the producer. Fine comic actors both and at the top of their game in this series.

So, what are the things that you love what people should pay more attention to?

Thief In The Night

2010-03-28T09:56:00.004+01:00

The dead of night. Saturday. Across the land, the traditional weekend merriment is taking place, be that a debauched night on the town or a quiet night in plonked in front of the television. People are drinking, dancing, watching, shagging, laughing, sleeping, puking, snogging, snoring and a million other things besides. And yet, as Saturday night unfolds, a merry thief stalks the land undeterred by the presence of so many...

It creeps into homes, into clubs, into pubs, into offices, into cars, into anywhere and everywhere that there may be people. And it steals, without compunction, without guilt, without prejudice from one and all, old and young, rich and poor, black and white, men and women. As swiftly as it comes, it is gone, laughing as it leaves behind mass bewilderment and internal body-clock confusion in its wake. The populace awakes the next morning, says, "Eurgh, that's really the time, isn't it?" and grumpily shifts its way about it day.

Whoever invented British Summer Time is a git and needs a swift kicking. I want my hour in bed back, you pasty-faced swine. British Summer Time? Bloody Stealing Time, I say. Oh yes, not everyone could come out with an absolute zinger like that, I know, but hold your applause.

Now, go away and let me grump my way through the day. Some of us have got to go to work, you know...

(Yes, I did just write a post moaning about losing an hour's sleep on the weekend that I have to go to work on a Sunday. Well spotted.)

Oh Body, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

2010-03-24T17:44:00.008Z

The early hours of Sunday morning. Sudden wakefulness is attained. Not a good wakefulness. A "something is wrong" wakefulness. Stomach. Stomach bad. Toilet. Toilet now.

And so begins a long day of bodily unpleasantness, all capped off with some lovely acheyness and shivering. You know it's a bad sign when you can't even muster the full attention span to watch something you actually would like to watch and are forced to stare at endless episodes of Come Dine With Me which seem to be designed to allow for you to doze off at three minute intervals as they are constantly recapping what has already happened and what is about to come up.

So Sunday passes in a blur of feeling like shite as does much of Monday only to be replaced on Monday night and much of Tuesday by agonising shoulder pain (presumably due to having dozed off in a funny position at some point during the day). Is this what it has come to? Has my body decided to turn against me so? Where a couple of days of feeling like crap results in additional aches and pains due to being ill in the first place?

Now, before I simply sound like I've already turned into a whingeing old grandad (and I realise that it may already be a bit too late for that), let me point out a recent sign of ageing of which I am extremely fond. For, you see, I have discovered new additions to the hairy growths upon the chin of your humble bald narrator. No, it's not the remains of last week's curry (I already knew that was there and I'm saving it for later). It is, in fact, a small selection of bright white hairs. I'm quite liking this. I'm hoping that it will lend me an air of, if not refinement and intelligence, then at the very least unwavering dedication to universal domination. Much like this fellow here:-

So come on then, Growing Older, let's see what else you've got, eh? Well, that is, as long as it's not things like standing in Tesco's in my underwear wondering why there are so many people in my kitchen looking at me funny and crapping in my pants every time I laugh. Let's just stick with the aches and the different coloured hairs for now, eh?