The Fishermen Have Already Done It....

The Return of Commuter Boy

2005-08-23T15:08:00.000+01:00

Yes, the original Mr Angry is back as promised!

A brief interlude...

2005-08-16T12:48:00.000+01:00

It's all been a bit quiet at the fishermen recently.

It's not that there's nothing to rant about - there's SO MUCH to rant about, believe me.

I just can't get motivated at the moment.

But, in the interim, below are links which you may find interesting:

http://radiationspaceboy.blogspot.com
http://dreamingofblue.blogspot.com

Hope you enjoy the reading. I'm going to go off and stick pins in a voodoo doll of Ian Paisley.

I am so proud

2005-08-08T09:21:00.000+01:00

...someone found this site while doing a search for "masturbating chimpanzee."

That's the perfect way to brighten your morning.

(Finding this out by the way, not masturbating a chimpanzee...)

No no no no no no no!!!

2005-08-01T11:48:00.000+01:00

Hideous news! Much badness and wrongness!

They're going to make a musical of Lord of the Rings.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Words fail me to describe how very wrong this is. I know there's song in the books, but for God's sake!

I can just picture it now. Effete boy with designs on being a Hollywood Star enters stage left:

"Gollum, Gollum, where do you go-o-o-o?"

Enter similarly effete boy, but who crouches and has a bit of mud artistically applied to show he's, you know, evil"

"I go, I go, I GO-O-O!
To find my precious..."

Dreadful. If you want to go and see a musical verison of the Lord of the Rings, go and see a Wagner opera (admittedly, not quite the same story, but still good fun). Otherwise, leave it alone!

It's Ranting Time!!!!

2005-07-29T09:40:00.000+01:00

I've had a few weeks of lost, confused soul-searching recently, coupled with a resurgence in my writing for pleasure. And now, having been satisfied that I have finally hit upon my multi-million pound literary idea, and in true U-B style have realised that it's got bugger all to do with what I've been writing about so far, a comment in an earlier post has managed to return me to my bilious, misanthropic state (with less swearing, because apparently I keep on getting blocked bypeople's WebSense systems).

It stems from my earlier Olympic post, when I believe I let out a bestial howl of rage against the world for the fact that the IOC decided to give us the Olympics.

Many people have said about this "but our neglected athletes will finally get some funding."

Neglected my left bollock. I am sick of hearing this. I swear it's no coincidence that everyone who says this is of a vaguely sporty persuasion themselves. I consider sport to be less important than inspecting a recently-plucked nasal hair. I am not sporty in the slightest. Well, no, that's not true, I play golf and I swim. But neither of these are really sport. Physical exercise pales in comparison to the possibility of eating more pies. No, as people who know me will testify, music is my thing. And compared to music in this country, "our neglected athletes" are as the Royal Family compared to a Big Issue salesperson.

I can hear the cries of rage now - "but what about opera? And the Festival Hall?! What about Government Subsidies for the arts?!" And what I direct these people to is "What about Wimbledon? What about the new Wembley Stadium? What about Government support of professional sport?"

And that's the difference. When people talk about "our neglected athletes" they are, of course, talking about at grass roots level. And therefore, it's only fair to compare that to grass roots level in music and the arts. Now, last time I checked, sport was an essential part of the National Curriculum (albeit smaller than in our days). And with the Government fight against obesity, it will become more and more important. Despite selling off land, most state schools have some form of playing area, and some form of sports hall.

Yet the Labour Government has comprehensively stripped away all funding from the arts in school. When I was at school, it was in the dying days if music in the curriculum. Every school still has a pool of "school instruments", but these were falling into disrepair, and it was only through the good nature of some instrument suppliers that they were repaired at all. Now, the majority of these supplies have gone.

Last year, the Government suggested having a central pool of instruments to share around many schools. This comes from someone who clearly has never, and has shown no interest in ever learning an instrument. It doesn't work on a timeshare scheme!!! You need it to practice on!!!! These same cretinous imbeciles would never even think of suggesting that schools should ahve a central pool of sporting equipment, and that budding tennis players should share rackets. BECAUSE IT'S A STUPID IDEA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The day arts funding, particularly in schools, comes at least vaguely close to sports funding, I will be a happy boy. But no, with the Olympics on the way, even professional arts will see their funding slip away. And that is a sad thing. So to all those people who say "what about our poor neglected athletes", I blow a general raspberry in their direction.

On a separate note, I was highly amused to see that, on my "referrers" tag in Bravenet, one of the ten listed there was someone who'd done a search for "ass fishermen".

What?!!!

I don't understand!!! Alright, perhaps it's a euphemism I don't know about. Perhaps it's to do with "dangling your rod". But I'm sorry, anything with the word "dangling" is not in the least bit erotic.

So to Mr "Ass Fishermen". I truly hope you found what you were looking for.

I Hate This Place 6

2005-07-25T11:03:00.000+01:00

Haven't written anything since everything went weird in London.

Despite the last post, I didn't really worry about things. I'm pretty safe, and these things don't happen to me or people I know.

Then you've got last week and suddenly the world is turned on its head. Firstly, bomb alerts at stations which are getting worryingly close to routes that I take (you see, I've got the Not-In-My-Back-Yard attitude perfected). Then we get bomb alerts across the road from work. Deserted streets and buses, more information coming from BBC reporters than from our own security, our Mighty Leader deciding that it was just the right moment to start blathering on about Australia and their fascistic Prime Minister, possibly the only major world leader who can make George Bush look like a namby-pamby leftie. It's about then that I started thinking:

"I don't want to die in London."

Regular readers may remember my series of columns entitled "I Hate This Place", where I went on and on about how London isn't the greatest place in the world, but is in fact a stinking damp dog lying on the face fo humanity.

It's got its good points. The Proms - fantastic. And indeed the general music scene which is tremendous. The Mayor, who is a King. Yes, I like Ken Livingstone, and I'm not afraid to say it. He is a breath of fresh air in the world of politics by the fact that he doesn't lie. He doesn't give a shit about anywhere else except London, and he's very open about this fact. For that, I respect him. And for the fact that he regularly pisses off the spoilt rich kids of Kensington and Chelsea.

But there's no way I want to settle here. I'm a northern boy through and through, and London just doesn't agree with me. Living in London takes a lot out of you, what with the stress and all, and it only works while you take just as much back out of it. But you can't go on working and playing hard in a place like this - it leaves you exhausted.

I've always planned to retreat to York or somewhere round the North East to properly settle down. Yet now, and ashamed as I am to admit it, I'm starting to think there's a slight possibility (only slight, I know, but still possible) I might not achieve this goal. And that makes me hate London even more.

I feel ashamed to admit this. It's probably way to melodramatic. But that's what this blog is for.

I really should write about something different now - what do you reckon, carry on the Brief History of Chaulk? Commuter Boy? Or just vile brain-wrong?

Thoughts

2005-07-08T10:32:00.000+01:00

Yesterday wasn't fun. It's worse when you think about it, and it's pretty hard not to think about it when you work amongst it all. It was a strange experience watching as the jokes amongst me and my colleagues that it was all a fuss about nothing died on our lips as we realsied it was a lot more serious than anyone thought. And interesting watching everyone try and keep each other jolly and happy while the doors were bolted and the protective shields raised. And the fact that, despite external appearances, everyone was worried about someone.

As the day wore on the mood changed. Making a break for home, you saw that most people were tetchy. Tempers were high, little things irritated. Never have I believed the saying "an Englishmen's home is his castle" as when I returned home yesterday. I may be Welsh but I think that saying holds true for all people.

Today things seem bizarrely back to normal. Almost eerily so. I caught a double decker today because I'm buggered if I'm going to be scared off public transport by this. And I think the same bloody-mindedness is common to a lot of people today.

And try as I might to avoid it, I cannot help but think about the horrendous repercussions this is going to have in the future. We aren't the most stable of people in the world, and many are now wounded and hurt. Large parts of the city are wounded and bleeding and looking to lash out. And that makes me more scared than any future threat.

NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2005-07-06T13:00:00.000+01:00

Bollocks.

Arse, fuck, bugger, wank, bollocks.

(That should boost my search potential on google...)

Those wankers at the IOC have decided to award London the Olympics.

ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What a POINTLESS, STUPID waste of fucking TIME AND MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you work in the Arts you might as well start packing up your desk now, because that's it - no more funding coming to you till after 2012. Or at least, not until these sport-obsessed tossrags in Government fuck off and die.

Oh joy. They've just sent the Red Arrows (hire them for YOUR garden party for a cut-price fee!) over.

SO now, millions of quid will be pumped into building huge big sproting facilities - when we had World Class ones in Manchester! But no, that's not London is it? Christ, I hate this place.

Thank God I won't be living here then.

I am not dead

2005-06-21T17:06:00.000+01:00

Some of you may be wondering why I've been so quiet.

I'm not dead.

Many many things have happened. The medication and straight-jackets seem to be working.

Et aussi, ma langue française suit un bon voie.

I'm thinking of resurrecting Commuter Boy...last thing I knew he was lying under a train somewhere.

Is this a good idea?

The Regular Missive

2005-01-12T16:50:00.000Z

Ah, my favourite subject. The Daily Mail.

I read in a headline yesterday:

"£100 000 - that's the taxpayer's cost of Tony Blair taking the Royal Jet on Holiday."

Now, much as I loathee Tony Blair with every inch of my being, I object to this transparent attempt by the Daily Mail to drum up support for a bunch of immature children who couldn't organise a bursting session in a lagoon of balloons.

It's quite frankly bollocks.

No, really. The thing is, it's that apostrophe in the headline. It implies that £100 000 is the cost to each individual taxpayer. Now, I've been doing a little bit of research, so let Professor U-B take you onto a journey into the exciting world of mathematics...

"Hello children,

It's a simple process, this. First, let's look at the numbers of people at taxpaying age in the UK. Now, www.statistics.gov.uk lists the people of taxable age (which I'm taking to be 16 or over) in the United Kingdom as 46 930 337 - that's nearly 47 million people on a couple of Islands! Aren't we lucky?

Next, let's take the cost the Mail gave of hiring this jet - £100 000.

Now, finally, we'll take that £100 000 and divide it fairly across the 46 930 337 people. What does that give us?

0.00213082. So, as we're dealing with money, and to prevent a short fall, let's call that 0.003p.

You see, Maths is fun!"

Thank you Professor.

So. 0.003p.

That's three thousandths of a penny.

Now, I don't know about you, but I really don't begrudge Mr Blair that. Well, that's not true, I begrudge him everything, but it's hardly very much really is it? I mean when you consider that my average tax bill per month is about £150, a thousandth of a penny really doesn't matter to me.

But the Mail is trying to convince me that, no, all my £150 is going to fund Mr Blair's little jolly, and then some. This is total crap. If they want to be accurate, they should write:

"that's the taxpayers' cost"

You see what I did there? The little apostrophe? Implying that, as is the case, the cost is shared? You'd have thought the sub-editors, or indeed the journalist in question, on the Mail would have picked up on this. But then again, I suspect it was a "deliberate" mistake, which is typical of them. I could defecate on a piece of paper, and the words formed at random by my fecal matter would constitute a more reliable and interesting article than anything that appears in the Mail, which is, generally speaking, a load of unmitigated arse.

I mean, let's look at the title of the paper itself: "The Daily Mail".

It implies a regular missive, possibly sent by an acquaintance, updating you on interesting happenings.

Now, I'm not being awful, but if I had a friend who sent me regular lines along the lines of what appears in the Mail, I'd have them sectioned. No, actually, I'd beat them to a bloody and swift death with their collected writings to put them out of the perpetual misery that clearly exists in place of a meaningful existence.

Someone once said they hated the Mail more than any other paper, even The Sun, because whereas other papers make you hate other people, the Mail manages to make you hate yourself too. This is very true. It's a loathsome publication that carries delusions of grandeur and tries to convince people it's something it isn't. And until they change, they can go and choke on my tumescent (and quite frankly magnificent) member.

(PLEASE NOTE: Personal details in this article may have been altered to make them more impressive than they actually are...)

It's a Jerry Springer moment...

2005-01-11T18:24:00.000Z

Now. Those of you who know me could probably predict this would be coming at some point.

I watched the Jerry Springer the Opera on BBC2 the other night.

For those of you who don't know, it's rude, childish in places, impossibly outrageous and bloody good fun.

To give a taster, one of the choruses features the lyrics:

"What the fuck?
What the fuck?
What the fucking fucking fuck?
Three-nippled cousin-fucker!"

Needless to say, it featured quite a lot of complaints. The majority of these came from the Christian community. Now they were outraged by the fact that at one point in the opera, a direct parallel is drawn between Jesus and a nappy-wearing child-man desperate to soil said nappy. Furthermore, Jesus admits at one point that he "is a bit gay".

I can see why this could be taken as offensive. Not the gayness - after all, he never said he was a "practising homosexual" which would be sinful, and henceforth blasphemous. But the comparison with the child-man is a touch vicious.

Bizarrely I'm not complaining about the people who complained before the opera was actually shown. Apparently 50 000 people did this, of which, if I was feeling PARTICULARLY generous, I'd say 800 or 900 had actually seen the opera before. Actually, no, fuck it, I am going to complain about this - WAIT UNTIL YOU'VE SEEN THE FUCKING THING BEFORE COMPLAINING!!!!! You can't live your entire life by what the Daily Mail says!

But that aside, these people had a right to protest, as I dare say some of their leaders HAD seen the opera. It's interesting though that they condemned the BBC for showing this as being an abuse of their license fees. Apparently 1.8 million people watched this. Taking into account the 50 000 "prior-protesters" and the subsequent 50 000 who complained, that still leaves 1.7 million people who watched and enjoyed it. Do the people objecting to the screening think that the 1.7 million people who did this have no say over where their license fee goes?

But anyway. Enough of my petty ranting. The BBC didn't exactly help themselves. I believe Mark Thompson came out and said something along the lines of "I'm a Catholic and I don't find any of the contents of the opera offensive." Not helping the cause there, Mark. You'd have thought that even the most blinkered pro-Springer could see that it was a tad offensive.

Now, on to the big rant. Apparently the Controller and Schedulers of BBC2 had to flee their houses with their families under armed guard because, after a Christian group posted their personal contact details on their website, they received credible death threats.

A touch of research has shown the following to be the Ten Commandments:

I. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
II. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.
III. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.
IV. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
V. Honour thy father and thy mother.
VI. Thou shalt not kill.
VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
VIII. Thou shalt not steal.
IX. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
X. Thou shalt not covet any thing that is thy neighbour's.

So nowhere in there does it say "Thou shalt not say Jesus is a child-man or is a bit gay." In fact, it doesn't even say "Thou shalt not blaspheme," but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt on that.

What it does say, however, is "Thou shalt not kill."

Commandment VI - see it?

So what the Hell are these stupid, blinkered, pig ignorant horse fuckers doing sending Death threats! YOU HYPOCRITICAL ARSEHOLES!!! YOU'RE BREAKING YOUR OWN RULES!!!!

What I'd like to do is recover the lost Ark of the Covenant, and fashion replica stone tablets from the dust contained therein. Then I'd take them and BEAT THE HYPOCRITES TO DEATH WITH THEM!!!!!!!!!! I know I'm going to Hell, but God I'd like to take some of them with me!!!!!

In conclusion, however, I think Jerry Springer - the Opera put it best. In that they should be:

Fucked

Up the ass

With barbed wire.

Stupid People (pt. IV)

2005-01-10T16:36:00.000Z

OK. So, I turned on the radio this morning in the middle of an interview with someone. Within the space of, ooh, about 5 seconds, I knew it was a Tory Minister being interviewed.

How did I know this?

Because all the person was doing was complaining about the Labour Government and what they're doing wrong. There wasn' t the slightest mention of their own policies or what they would do better, not the merest sniff of their own policies. No, it was just an endless stream of vitriol and invective against the Government.

Now I'm not a huge fan of our present administration. However, I prefer them infinitely to the nearest possible, alternative: a bunch of childish, pathetic muppets with no more substance to themselves or their stance than your average school playground bully.

It's embarrassing for them and irritating for us. They should stay quiet until they've got something worth saying. And preferably hold their collective breaths while doing so. That would get rid of a few of the toerags.

Then, as if that was not enough, "Doctor" Ian Paisley came on. What a pathetic excuse for a human being he is. A man who single-handedly derailed the Northern Ireland peace process by wanting to see a few pictures of what people were doing. All the warring political parties over there are total toerags who, because of an inability to get over their petty grudges have heaped death and misery on a host of people. (N.B. Appreciate I've simplified this a tad). The world will be a better place when Paisley and his ilk die and leave the way for people who aren't tired old men set in their ways.

In fact, for Paisley in particular, I know there's a special circle of Hell reserved for him. Being the "Right Reverend" won't cut any slack when he's being tormented with spikes for all eternity. In fact his special place will be underneath most other circles of Hell, where the effluent from the millions of inhabitants drips in a never-ending stream on his head, while his ranceid drool seeps ineffectively out of his mouth and drips with a seeming inevitability for all eternity on the head of a particular employee of South West Trains.

N.B. I appreciate that this rant means I have broken my main New Year's Resolution. Quite frankly I don't care. U-B is back to wreak vengeance on the mad and the stupid. They will all fall before the might of my words!! FEEL MY WRATH AND CHOKE ON THE DELUGE OF MY RAT-INFESTED IMAGINATION AND BRAIN DOINGS!!!!!!!!!!

I am U-B.

Hear me roar.

Genius

2005-01-07T13:53:00.000Z

A few more blogs to add to the reference list:

"Call Centre Confidential" - been reading this for a while, since it was referenced by the paper. Good fun.

Zach Braff's blog - "Scrubs is a deeply deeply funny programme. Have since been desperately scrambling to find anywhere on this godforsaken little island that we live on that actually shows "Garden State". But no, nowhere has it on. Bastards.

"A Free Man In Preston" - He's from Preston so I'm contractually obliged to hate him. But no, he's funny. And hey, I always preferred Preston to anywhere else local when I was growing up. Go Tokyo Joe's!

Right, that's me done.

A Brief History of Chaulk: Part II

2005-01-07T08:09:00.000Z

Things were going pretty well. We'd survived the Chundering Carrot Club, and not only that, had managed to avoid getting any of our kit dirty. We'd started to gel a bit as a unit too. I'd started talking to everyone a lot more. Rich A and I had started forming a pretty decent rhythm section. Dickie had keyed into the things I liked playing and started writing bass parts for me which took advantage of that.

The material we were playing was a mix of leftfield covers and originals. Dickie used to compose all the music, which none of us objected to because it was excellent. He'd turn up with a bunch of sheet music for Rich A, Chris and me, and then rehearse Ben separately with the lyrics and vocal melody. It was a really good way of working, meaning that there wasn't too much sitting around. Ben and Dickie would get together outside of main band rehearsals, leaving those for us to practice the music.

Dickie was a prodigious talent. He wrote all the music down to the last bar, including melody lines, and wrote most of the lyrics, though Ben contributed a fair bit too. We lapped it up though, because we could see here was someone who was going to go far, and he was letting us accompany him.

After about three months of rehearsals, attention then turned towards gigging. We needed money, pure and simple, but we also needed an outlet for the originals we were playing. Before doing this, though, we determined to make a demo tape. This was a pretty good idea, allowing us to hawk the tape around as a form of rehearsal.

So, come Easter '98, we decamped to Chris' parents house, a veritable mansion on the outskirts of Nottingham. It was huge. I’m talking seriously massive. And the view from the conservatory was down from a hilltop looking over rolling countryside. Gorgeous.

We converted the garage into a makeshift studio, moving all the kit in there and setting it up in the best way possible. By now I'd well and truly bonded with Rich A, mainly through having to negotiate shifting my ridiculously large bass amp around the country. It was a big beast, and made a sound to match.

Once everything was fixed, the engineer came, with all his equipment. A friend of Chris' family, and being paid by them too, we had him for a grand total of five days. For those five days, we had finalised the stuff to go on the demo tape as six songs:

"Karma Police" by Radiohead
"Boy in the Bubble" by Paul Simon, reworked by Dickie.
"Cigarettes and Alcohol" by Oasis, reworked by Dickie.
"Forgotten Heroes" by Dickie.
"Love Machine" by Dickie
"Piece of Mind" by Dickie

The Dickie originals were by far the most challenging. My particular favourite was "Forgotten Heroes", because it had a soaring vocal line, but mainly because it had a storming bass part which I could mess about with to my heart's content without undermining the song. "Love Machine" was the hardest though. Conceived in four sections, all in different time signatures (including a "Paranoid Android"-style central bit in 7/8), it was a bugger to get right, particularly for Rich A and myself. However, we rose to the challenge, and laid down our parts within a day and a half. And then there was the sitting around and waiting...

The bulk of the rest of the time would be taken up with recording the piano and guitar, before the final day on vocals. So Rich A, Ben and I were at a loose end. Which was pretty good actually, because I started to bond with Ben. Before this, all I knew was that he liked monkeys and was virtually married off to a girl called Becky who Dickie thought was one of the sexiest people he'd met. But over several million games of Sensible Soccer and Jedi Knight, together with the fact that we were rooming together in Chris' dining room, a lasting bond was created.

In the evenings we decamped to the pub, where we all drank too much than was good for us every night. We also spent some of the days working on new songs, and here a problem arose. Chris had formed the band with Dickie, and thought himself to be equally musically talented. He'd begun to resent not being allowed to contribute his own material to the band, and ruptures started to appear between the two childhood friends. In the end a compromise was reached, where we worked on several songs of Chris'. It has to be said that, nice bloke though he was, his songs weren't up to the high standard we were used to. They seemed a little lounge, and in one case, overly clever (the song in question didn't repeat a single chord during it's entire duration). But we played them, and we enjoyed messing with them. Chris was more willing to accept a little outside input than Dickie was, so it felt more like jamming stuff together. Even Dickie enjoyed this, so things began to smooth over between him and Chris.

Overall, we had a riot. And by the end of the five days we had a demo tape. We eventually cut it down to three songs, as we thought that people we would be "auditioning" for wouldn’t need to listen to much more. We went for two covers – "Karma Police" and "Boy in the Bubble" displaying our Indie and Funk credentials – and one original, "Piece of Mind". This latter was a bone of some contention, as none of us, not even Dickie, liked it that much. But it showed a harder, punkier edge to us, so we went with it. "Forgotten Heroes" and "Love Machine" were deemed too "prog."

The remaining four songs were lost to the ether, but we didn't care. We were ready to gig.

How to construct a Narrative

2005-01-06T12:09:00.000Z

Take a simple title.

Add most of your life.

Then Lie. Lie. Lie.

Greetings

2005-01-06T08:06:00.000Z

And a Happy New Year to you all.

I've been a bit quiet haven't I?

There are quite a few reasons for this.

Lack of an Internet connection away from work, meaning Christmas and New Year was a no-blog zone.

Hi-jinks in foreign climes.

And above all, my New Year's Resolution. I'm aiming to be happier. To let things wash over me a bit more. To not let things annoy me.

The Fishermen will be a good chance to see how I succeed...the first rant means I fail!

In the meantime, you'll just have to make do with whatever mad shit my brain produces instead...

When the Music's Over

2004-12-16T18:54:00.000Z

After 45 years, it looks increasingly like the second-best jazz venue in London - one of the main reasons for me living where I do - will be closed.

Yes, it's true, The Bull's Head in Barnes has been served with a Noise Abatement Notice by Richmond Council. If it does not install suitable soundproofing by February 15th, this fantastic venue will be ordered to cease with putting on a live jazz show every evening.

Why?

I'll tell you why. Because someone has complained about the noise. 45 years of no-one complaining at all, a perfect example of entertainment and residential sectors working together in harmony. Then this cretinous individual decides to kick up a fuss, and all of a sudden, the future of live music in Barnes is threatened.

To be fair, it's not entirely the dense homeowner's fault. Richmond Council, that useless shower of bastards, elected to reclassify the area immediately surrounding The Bull's Head from a "light industrial" area to a "residential area". Consequently this allowed some compulsively-masturbating property developer to decide to build very hi-tech flats in the impossibly small amount of space between The Bull's Head and the nearest house.

These flats are absolute eyesores. They are totally out-of-place with the rest of the surroundings, and all of them have exhibitionist-style plate glass front walls overlooking the river. As a result, if you're slobbing in your dressing gown watching TV on your gigantic 28inch Sony screen, it means the plebs below can look up and marvel at the fact that you can afford such a comfortable flat with such a plush interior.

Alternatively, it means passers-by wander past and shout "Fucking Show-Off Wankers! NO-ONE CARES!!!!" at them. Because, yes, these are "executive apartments" - for which read "hopelessly small bedsits which cost ridiculously large sums of money so they're only affordable by accountants and compulsively-masturbating property developers".

To be fair, the majority of these exhibitionist "executives" haven't complained. No, the complaint is down to one person, S.F., who has bemoaned the fact that she can’t get to sleep because of the noise.

Now, apparently Ms F is pregnant. I pity for the child, because the mother is obviously an insane, and most importantly, deeply STUPID, individual. You would think that, if you're going to buy a house or a flat, you would research the area you're going to move into.

Clearly not Ms F however. She probably went "Ah, Barnes, sounds nice dunnit?" and splashed out ridiculous amounts of cash to buy the first flat she heard of there. Because if the stupid bint HAD done a bit of research she would have realised that "Oh yes, the flat I want to buy is situated next to a pub, therefore there may be some late night noise." Perhaps if she'd opened her tiny closed mind, she would have also realised that the pub was not any old pub, but one of the best and most popular jazz venues in the country. And it wouldn't have been too hard to go there and gauge the noise, given that they have a concert every night. And she would have realised that perhaps the noise would go on...ooo...maybe until pub closing time?

But no, because she couldn't be bothered getting off her lazy arse to actually find any of this out, she moved in and decided to complain, thus ensuring that many hundreds of peoples' entertainment and happiness would be compromised. What a truly selfish and inconsiderate muppet.

I'm giving the daft bint quite a lot of abuse, but really, it's the Council's fault. That bunch of in-bred, self-flagellating, upper class MORONS decided that cash was more important than common sense and flogged the land to developers in the first place.

There's a special place in Hell for greedy people like Richmond Council. It's in a room with Ms F and that fucking wanker from South West Trains yesterday, being tortured for all eternity with dentists' drills, broken glass, TCP and Celine Dion.

Burn in Hades you bastards. I'll be standing there laughing in your crying faces.

Phew, that feels better...

2004-12-16T10:24:00.000Z

After having vented about that complete waste of space I encountered yesterday, I feel somewhat better.

This has been helped quite massively by the fact that, when checking who has been referred to my site, I see that MSN referred to here from a search for "19 year old lads in the nude".

That's hilarious - do you think it came from one of the orchestra posts? I'm highly amused by this.

Volcano U-B

2004-12-16T08:08:00.000Z

Yesterday was like starting the day finding out you've won first prize in a beauty contest (collect £10) followed by being dowsed, head to toe, in raw liquid effluent. Totally unconnected events, but one totally ruins the memory of the other.

To summarise - good, followed by unmitigated shit.

It was all going so well too...I'd had a nice long Christmas lunch with some friends, a bit (well, a lot) of mulled wine and a relaxing stroll.

Then all hell broke loose.

Firstly, the server at one of our off-site locations finally died after running agonisingly slow for several weeks. We tried repairing it, but to no avail, and all the time aware that the clock is ticking and people are noticing their network is down. After spending the best part of an hour cramped in a very small computer room with our heads inside a large box filled with electricity, myself and the head of IT decided to replace it with the backup server at our original location.

The taxi we telephoned to assist us with doing this didn't turn up until half an hour after it said it would. It then disobeyed our instructions to park outside and parked several streets away, refusing to come nearer.

Once we replaced this, I received a long awaited update of some software we've developed. It was two days later than I expected and requiring a turn-around by the end of the week, so I wasn't too happy when I discovered it didn't work.

However, all these could be treated as water under the bridge if it weren't for what I encountered with South West Trains.

I had to get an extension to my Oyster card into Zone 4, so I went to the ticket office, and arranged this. I was told it was £1.20 and, beign very low on cash at the moment, I had to hand it over in bits and pieces: one £1 coin, one 5p coin, 5 2p coins and 5 1p coins. I divided it up into piles so he could check easily, and apologised for not having any rounder figures.

SWT Employee: I don't have to accept this you know.

I smiled and shrugged in a resigned way.

SWT Employee: Don't laugh. I don't have to accept this.

U-B: Well, I'm sorry, I don't have any other money.

SWT Employee: I could give this to the next person - how do you think you'd like it if that was you?

U-B: (Tad flabbergasted)...errr...I'm sorry...

WHAT A RAGING FUCKING COCKMASTER!!!! I'd like to hold his head out over the train tracks at a non-stopping station and watch as his stupid fat fucking face gets purée-d all over the front of one of SWT's nice new trains.

Furthermore I can't believe I apologised so often to this steaming lump of horse shite masquerading as a man. What I should have done is say "I'm sorry, since when did 2 and 1p coins cease to be legal tender?".

Actually no. What I should have done is smash the glass separating me and the useless fuckwit. Then I'd should have reached across, grabbed him by his shirt and repeatedly smashed his smug fat grimace into the broken bits of glass at the bottom. Then I would have ripped off the top of his head and SHAT ON HIS BRAIN!!!!

You give a mindless fucking moron like that total twat a little bit of power and he goes wild with it. I hope he dies under the wheel of one of his trains with several people looking on and laughing.

A Brief History of Chaulk: Part I

2004-12-15T08:29:00.000Z

No, that's not a spelling mistake. You say it as it's written, with an "OW" sound in the middle. It's how Rich Anderson used to say it.

Chaulk was the first band I was in at University. It was one of the best bands I've ever played in. It was the hardest band I've ever played in. It's the closest I've ever come to being signed on a record contract. And it was, by turns, fantastic and upsetting.

It started within a few weeks of me joining University. For the first time I was having to make a fresh start with music. My hard-built reputation in the North-West counted for nothing. My long standing band at home, Wug, was on hiatus until the holidays (and, as it turns out, almost permanently). And I was too old to be a member of County Youth Orchestra any more.

To my relief I managed to grab the Bass Trombone seat in the University Orchestra, something I'd been determined to do upon arrival. And the rest of the trombone section seemed refreshingly normal, after the madness of Youth Orchestra. In particular, Richard (AKA Dickie), the first trombonist, seemed like a decent kind of person. A music student, he was very serious and committed, and quite clearly immensely talented. He also had a demented and seriously wrong sense of humour, and was deeply strange anyway, which helped.

After our first rehearsal the conductor, Paulie Brown (a fellow trombonist who played in the Chamber Orchestra alongside Dickie and I when we were needed) invited everyone to the pub for beverages. Dickie and I dutifully went along, and over much drunken carnage, a friendship was born. Along with the friendship came an invitation to audition on bass guitar for his band. Next orchestra rehearsal, we fixed a date for an audition with the other significant band member Chris. Dickie gave me some pieces to prepare. I'd made quite a good impression because I could read music for bass anyway, but one of these pieces was quite possibly the hardest thing I'd ever come across (and I grew up playing jazz bass, which isn't exactly easy). Cue long, late-night practicing after pub visits and last minute essays...

The day of the audition arrived and I turned up at Chris' house. He seemed an amiable kind of bloke - very quietly spoken, and deeply sarcastic, which was a good point. Together with Dickie and Chris was Chris' friend Simon, who was the band's roadie and manager (you can tell this was a bit of a professional set-up now can't you?) - he was a large bear of a man, who, like Chris, was quietly spoken and quite serious, but also sarcastic. And both of them were tremendous beer monsters...but anyway, I played the pieces, which amused them no end, because they genuinely hadn't expected anyone they auditioned to actually be able to play the hard piece, yet I managed to get all the way through it. I then found out a little bit about the band itself...

Apparently, there was a bloke called Benedict who sang "with the voice of a (very masculine, he was keen to point out) angel", Chris on guitar, Dickie on piano and a guy called Rich on drums (who apparently was exceedingly nice). Dickie and Chris had formed the band when they'd been at school together in Nottingham, had recruited Ben and Rich in the first year of University, and had previously been playing with Stephen Poliakoff's nephew on bass. They'd decided he was a tad poo, and so recruited for a new bassist - hence, me.

So, consequently, I found myself a member of Chaulk - named as such because, Rich being a true London boy, pronounced "Chalk" in this way, and it stuck. Rich did turn out to be a ridiculously nice bloke - 6 foot odd of tall Londoner, crowned with a shock of bright ginger hair. Ben too did sing as well as they'd told me, though I didn't really speak to him so much at first. In the end, I ended up spending most of the spare time around rehearsals with Dickie and Rich.

The first few rehearsals were held in the Undercroft to the College of St Hild and St Bede. This is where the University Radio Station, Purple FM, broadcast from, but every few days, we took over the area. It was a fairly massive place, underneath the main hall of the college. The walls were covered in a mixture of band and gig posters, newspaper articles, and graffiti. There was a large entrance hall, where several tables and chairs were normally stacked, before you descended into the main hall section. In the far corner was an extremely grotty unisex toilet area, while along the side ran a raised stage. Bemusingly, in the middle of the main hall section, on the floor, a large, animated carrot had been painted. Finally, along either side of the room ran two large gutters. These were indicative of the Undercroft's dark secret...

We discovered the secret about the Undercroft, when, one rehearsal, we went in to discover that the walls and the floor (and particularly, the carrot) had been covered in clear plastic sheeting. A couple of people were still finishing off the sheeting, so naturally, we asked "why?"

"It's for the Chundering Carrot Club."

Next we asked the question we really shouldn't have done - "what's that?"

"Basically every year, the Chundering Carrot Club come downstairs and lock themselves in here for twenty-four hours, with an unlimited supply of alcohol." One of them pointed to the beer barrels stacked up in the entrance hall. "It's a case of last man or woman standing. The only rule is, if you're going to be sick, you have to be sick on the carrot..."

I Hate This Place 5

2004-12-14T13:12:00.000Z

Two things happened to me on the way to work today.

Both of them add weight to the belief I have that London turns people into automatons, zombies trapped inside their own hermetically sealed bubbles.

The first was that, while sat on the train, someone was using my head to rest their newspaper on while they read. Not in an accidental way, they just propped it there.

The second was that as I emerged from Charing Cross tube I was borne down upon by a flood of people who jostled me, knocked me out of their path, and swept by as if I wasn’t there.

The thing is, I have no doubt that any of these people did these things on purpose. I firmly believe that the person on the train didn’t realise the thing he was leaning his paper on was a person’s head (or at least he didn’t until I moved). While the tide of people who mowed me down I firmly believe didn’t register I was there. They were treading their normal path to work, the same as they do every day. They do this on autopilot, not taking anything in around them, not realising there may be obstacles.

I know this because I do it myself. First thing in the morning, I just walk the usual way, and don’t look around at things. I barely register that anything is different or in the way. This occurred to me during my journey this morning, when I found myself on the Tube, having previously got off the train. I had no recollection whatsoever of the journey from the train to the Bakerloo Line.

Partly this is the effect of mornings. Very few people are at their best first thing in the morning, and especially not when they’ve been commuting.

But it’s also London. When people say that people are more unfriendly in London than in other cities, it’s true. It’s not a myth. It’s not us outsiders bemoaning where we grew up. As mentioned previously, I grew up in Blackpool, a place I loathe with a passion you can only dream of, but you will always find people friendly and willing to share a few words, whether it be on the bus or on the train, or just in a shop. And Hell, even the people when I lived in Nice were chatty and friendly, thus blowing the myth of the French being aloof and supercilious out of the water.

Here, when I’m my usual self and just try to exchange a few words with, for example, shopkeepers, they look at me like I’m strange, or treat me brusquely in order to move me on.

This is a gross generalisation, I realise. Sandro at our work café is always ready to chat, and I happily while away a few minutes in his company. I had a good chat with the people in our local chippy last night. But the majority of people I encounter are completely sealed off from the outside world.

It links in to the last “I Hate This Place”. London has more eccentric and disturbed people than anywhere else I’ve encountered. Therefore, keeping yourself to yourself is probably advisable. People probably think I’m crazy chatting to them randomly (I probably am). But then, as I said, a lot of the eccentric people are probably lonely BECAUSE no-one speaks to them, so they speak to themselves. It’s a vicious circle.

But there’s a difference between keeping yourself to yourself, and being rude. And unfortunately the isolationist tendencies encouraged through living in London exacerbate this. People lock themselves away into their own worlds, almost like they’re surrounded by an invisible barrier to prevent people getting in. And they rarely see outside this barrier. Everyone’s in such a rush to get everywhere, you don’t have TIME to look outside that wall. You don’t realise you may have knocked someone over, you don’t realise that you’ve been using someone’s head as a newspaper stand.

Most depressing of all though, is that I can’t think of a solution to this, without necessitating a total culture change. And that’s quite tragic.

Night of the Mulberry Wine

2004-12-13T08:21:00.000Z

Orchestra tours were always an excuse to see many of Europe’s most interesting towns and cities, and locate the English-speaking bars in these places. Obviously we went on tour to play music, but this was a very distant priority compared to Getting Pissed and Getting Acquainted With Ladies.

On tour in Italy, the trombone and tuba sections were foolishly allocated a four-bed room together. Given that, by this time, Man Mountain Paul was one of the only people in the orchestra who had achieved the Holy Grail of legal drinking status, sharing a room with him was perhaps not the most carefully-thought-out of moves.

The strange Italian Youth Hostel we were in was strictly segregated. One floor held the boys, the other held the girls. In between, there were some large, annoyingly cool Italian watchmen. In the boys section, our room was designated the Alcohol Storage Depot for all the people there. Given the legal status of Paul, he was willing to store and take the blame for all the alcohol and empties, in exchange for a tariff – 25% of all alcohol stores.

Unfortunately, one night, we had a party, and Paul got rather carried away, demolishing the vast majority of the alcohol store which we hadn’t so far managed to put away, while we looked on in awe. The carnage that ensued is quite memorable. After a biscuit fight, using the home-baked cookies that Big Ian’s mum had given him to bring with him (most of which ended up out of the window), Paul finished off the remainder of his Home-Brewed Mulberry Wine, belched and toppled over.

A comatose Paul was an opportunity too good to miss. While he was passed out, we covered his head in toothpaste and shaving foam. We then put cigarettes in his ears and nose (not lit – Paul WAS gigantic after all – 6ft 6, and 25 stone). He didn’t wake up. Then we shaved his legs (alright, we were stupid, we know). He still didn’t wake up, even when Big Ian took a chunk out of his knee. Unfortunately, Big Ian’s brother Mark, the Percussionist, then decided to go a little too far. Taking the empty two-litre bottle of Mulberry Wine Paul had earlier finished off, he proceeded to insert it, narrow end first and with some force, into Paul’s arse. An enormous cry went out. Then, miraculously he passed out again.

Photos were taken. Again, a bad idea.

With Paul unconscious, and the booze gone, we then had to decide what to do next. The night was, after all, young. So we decided to make a break for the Girl’s quarters. At the time, I was going out with a rather lovely violinist, who had expressed a desire earlier, to cross the line into our quarters. So an exchange was agreed. I would create a diversion on the boys’ side, and while the watchmen were distracted, the boys and the girl would swap sides.

The diversion was quite easy to create really. I simply claimed someone was locked out of one of our rooms, and we needed a key to get back in. So, while the guard was otherwise distracted, the majority of the boys’ section emptied into the girls arena, while the lovely Davina escaped into our section, and hid in one of the rooms while the Security Guard attempted to let me back into my room.

Once this amazing feat had been completed, and we had received the OK from the floor above (From the window above, Mark throwing some alcohol from the girls’ side down to me on the balcony below), Davina and I got on with the important business of finding a suitable location to “entertain” ourselves in. Our room was out, due to the large comatose Man Mountain in there. Most of the other rooms were locked, apart from those with a few “sensible” people in who hadn’t made the mad break for freedom. Consequently, the only remaining place was the shower block.

Bad mistake.

No sooner had we ventured in there and begun feverishly trying to discover how many layers each other was wearing, one of the “sensible” boys decided to take a late-night shower. On entering the block he was surprised and announce, in a loud voice “Davina! What are you doing here?”

The noise alerted the guards. Resisting the desire to beat said boy to death with whatever blunt instrument I could find, we frantically tried to find a place for Davina to hide. She ended up going for a changing cubicle.

The guards entered, and demanded to know, in best pidgin English, why we had chosen to shower at such a stupid time. God knows why it annoyed them so much – they probably thought myself and the Muppet Child were having some man love out of ours. Or they did think that, until they ordered us back to our room, and then proceeded to knock on the changing room where Davina was hidden, demanding that the occupant leave the shower so they can lock it.

So there was no choice. Davina sheepishly came out, at which all Hell broke loose. She was marched to the other side, and in the progress of this, the Guards bumped into the boys hastily exiting the girls’ section. Having heard raised voices, they’d decided to beat a hasty retreat. In the chaos that ensued, Davina broke loose and escaped into the girls’ section. There was no such luck for Mark, Big Ian and myself though. The Guards proceeded to give us quite a thorough kicking. The bastards knew they could get away with this, because if we were to complain, it would automatically imply that we’d been up to something which was Against The Rules.

So battered and bruised and frustrated, we retreated to our rooms. Entering the carnage that was our room, we stepped over the comatose Man Mountain, and started tidying. Empties were stashed into two rucksacks (including the bottle, which was dislodged from Paul’s colon). Ash trays and remaining biscuits were emptied out of the windows. We slept…

…until we were ordered out of our room at 7am for a meeting with the Conductor. Turns out that, immediately below our window, our Tour coach was parked. A coach which was now coated in dregs of beer, cigarette ash and cookies. This, coupled with Paul (who was still covered in shaving foam and toothpaste, barely coherent and complaining about his arse hurting), and the discovery of the rucksacks of empties (roughly 80 or so – we’d foolishly stored all the empties for all the rooms since we’d arrived) meant that the next few concerts on tour were done without a Lower Brass Section.

Paul’s revenge is another story.

I Hate This Place 4

2004-12-10T13:29:00.000Z

"The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum"

For so long, I thought of this as a cliché-d, hackneyed phrase, yet, having managed to escape from the Beast that is London for a few days, it has simply confirmed that this phrase was in fact coined about London.

There are more mad people per square kilometre in London than in anywhere I have ever been before (and I grew up in Blackpool, so that's saying something).

Now I have nothing against mad people. They've presumably suffered some hideous mental trauma which has succeeded in detaching them from the rest of the world. I can't comprehend that fully, and am certainly not going to criticise the majority of these unfortunate people. It's fascinating, however, to observe the various divisions of madness around this city:

Type 1: Mutterers

These are the people who you can walk past and become aware that they are carrying out an constant monologue. We all do this - you try and think of an instance when you haven't been walking along and thinking to yourself at the same time. Mutterers are just vocalising these inner thoughts, and are mostly harmless. However, as we all know, there's a reason why we don't tend to vocalise our own internal monologues - we often can think fairly bad things about people around us. When that rude person barges us out of the way to get on the tube, you think "Tosser". The Mutterer, on the other hand, will say "Tosser" in an undertone, and as you can quite imagine, this can lead to social problems.

Type 2: Shouters

Shouters are normally one stage removed from Mutterers. They often have the whole external monologue thing going on, but this will occasionally be interrupted by loud outbursts. Normally these seem bizarre, but are rarely aggressive or offensive. A case in point is the chap I talked about on "Commuter Boy" a while ago, who suddenly erupted with "SADDAM HUSSEIN SAVE US! THE GERMANS ARE ALL DEAD..." Random and very strange, but pitiable more than offensive.

Type 3: Ravers

Now Ravers are the aggressive Shouters. Again, they seem to be descended from Mutterers, but this time, they actually focus on swearing and aggressive behaviour focussed at a particular individual. This can be extremely awkward, and although rarely physically violent, the Raver can be perceived as so simply through the aggression of their outbursts. The only solution in this case is to walk away. On the Tube there was an unpleasant incident where an elderly man seemed to focus his wrath on a slightly rotund man who got on the Tube after him. This old man was screaming in the face of this larger man, and the latter seemed completely at a loss as to what he had done, and what he could do to help this man calm down. Other people interceded but nothing seemed do-able. That was very sad indeed.

Type 4: The Lost

The Lost are most upsetting. They are people who clearly have lost most of their faculties and often just sit staring vacantly before shuffling away. They do not speak, and look totally vague. They often smell as if they have lost the ability to look after themselves, which they in all probability have done. These are the people you have to help, even if it’s just guiding along or smiling. It’s heart-breaking to see people like this, and I just hope that even a little kindness can help lighten their lives a little bit.

Type 5: The Sinister

The Sinister are truly terrifying, because there is a feeling that they would, and will do anything. A case in point was at Richmond station two nights ago. A group of three men staggered out of the toilets. They all appeared to be vagrants, in ragged clothes, and with the unfortunate odour. The first was a Raver, swearing repeatedly at two business men as they walked down the stairs. The second was simply legless, barely even able to negotiate the stairs. The third however, was sinister. He was balding on top, but his hair was long at the back, and clawed back in greasy lumps. He carried a guitar, and emblazoned across the back of his jacket was a large Swastika.
There were two girls walking down the stairs in the opposite direction. Both were about 20 and both were wearing smart skirts which came halfway down their thighs. This man stared at their legs as they walked down the stairs, then turned and kept his eyes fixed on them as they walked through the barrier and towards the platform. The look on his face was…I want to say a leer, but that implies smiling. It had all the attributes of a leer, but mingled with anger. He walked down the stairs a few times, before his drunken companion called at him to help him.

Having seen this, I am not ashamed to say that that man, to me, seemed like a potential rapist. I really don’t think anyone like that should be allowed unsupervised in the community. But you can’t stop him, because he hasn’t done anything. But his face is etched in my mind, and I swear it’s only a matter of time before he DOES do something. And that, quite frankly is terrifying.

London is disproportionately full of all these types of people. I would be willing to say that at least one in twenty people I see during my day is a “Mutterer”. And I see at least one of the more severe cases during the average day.

Why is this so? It could be because of Care in the Community not working correctly. But I think it’s London that’s to blame. I believe a lot of these people clearly need some attention or care. They need to feel like they’re not alone. And London is the worst place in the world in which to feel alone. I feel that, if I didn’t have my friends around me in London, I would have deteriorated. It’s a lonely place, where people can only afford to care about themselves and their little unit. No other city I have ever lived in has made me feel as isolated as London does. And in a city of this size, that’s a bad thing.

Here endeth the lesson.

Arse

2004-12-08T19:16:00.000Z

For some godforsaken reason I ended up watching a bit of football on the telly while I was cooking the other night. It was Arsenal versus Rosenberg, and Terry Venables was among the people commentating. They had a quick "Coach's View" section, which was ironic given that Venebales isn't a coach at the moment and had never coached either of the teams playing. In the middle of this section, he let rip with the following fascinating insight:

"The Rosenberg defence...they're having a holocaust..."

What a twat.

I hate that word, but he is. He's a total and utter twat. I want to slice off the top of his head and shit on his brain. I want to slowly peel strips of his skin off and make him eat them, and then, when he's only got tender red new skin left, dunk him up to his neck in TCP. The man is a perma-tanned, talentless, cheating, shitty, heartless, incestuous fuckwit and I hope he dies lonely and alone.

You NEVER misappropriate that word. Especially not in the context of fucking football.

Rant of the Week: Buildings

2004-12-08T13:33:00.000Z

Enter U-B, stage right, with a flourish of the coat

Greetings my fellow citizens.

I thought, on my return, that I would re-introduce ROTW. And what better subject to do this on than Buildings.

I have just got back from one of the greatest areas of the planet - the North East. We were on a grand tour of York, Durham, and Newcastle, revisiting old haunts and friends who never made the foolish decision to move away.

While in Durham, I did something I never did in all the four years I spent as a student there. I went to Evensong in the Cathedral. Don't get me wrong, I went in the Cathedral a lot - at least 60 - 70 % of our concerts took place in there, so I knew the environs like the back of my hand. But this was the first time I had been to a Church Service there, and it was wonderful. The Cathedral Choir sang beautifully and I don't think can sufficiently describe the atmosphere I had form attending a service in this monolithic building, which, for centuries, has seen worshippers come and go. Furthermore, it also made me realise another of the reasons WHY, many hundreds of years ago, people slaved for an impossibly long time to erect this building in honour of a spiritual concept.

I could rhapsodise for pages on Durham Cathedral, but I will spare you that, especially as most of you know it well. However, late in the evening, we had a discussion with our very religious friend D-B about, amongst other things, the state of religion and especially, the state of the Anglican church. It is fair to say that it is in dire straits, and a great schism is fast approaching. And it saddened me to think that, having survived assaults, wars, and air strikes, Durham Cathedral may be rendered fairly ineffective as a place of worship by the very people who worship there.

(I shall pick up on this topic in a later post).

So I got thinking, what are our grand building projects in the current era? What do we construct to worship in?

A stroll along the Gateshead bank of the Tyne highlighted the best bits of Modern design, with the massive regeneration project taking place. The Millenium Bridge and the Baltic are exceptional examples of design old and new, with the Baltic in particular, being an entirely galvanised space inside a shell constructed in the 19th Century.

The there is The Sage, a masterpiece of modern design and, for me (being a Music Geek) one of the most important new spaces for music created in the past ten years.

For many people, these buildings are the modern equivalent of the Cathedrals, where we worship the Gods of Art and Music. However, it doesn't hold the same sway over the population as the old Cathedrals used to do. There is no sense of ritual with these buildings.

Then, on the train home, it struck me.

Our modern Cathedrals are Sports Grounds, and in particular, Football Grounds.

Yesterday, the train sidled into Kings Cross, passing on its way the new, rapidly-developing shape of the Emirates Stadium at Ashburton grove, the proposed new home of Arsenal FC. When completed, it will take up a similar ground space to a major Cathedral and seat 70000 people. The people who attend will worship their team, their people, and in the same way as a congregation at a religious ceremony raise their voices and sing forth, so too will the 70000 people here.

But the fact is, it's vile. It's concrete functionality at best. It will take three years to build, as opposed to the 150 it took people to complete Durham Cathedral. Sure, they'll gloss over the giant concrete frame with images and plastics and metals, but it'll still be a big concrete bowl. And I'm fairly certain I prefer "Thanks be to God" as a form of worship to "Who's the Bastard in the Black?"

I wonder if, in 500 years' time, people will traipse round the Emirates Stadium and marvel at the ceremonies that took place there? I doubt it very much, as by then it will no doubt have collapsed and been redeveloped. But I would be willing to bet that, even if unused, Durham Cathedral will still be standing.

This isn't really a rant, per se, just a set of observations about our time. I thought I'd share them with you.

Exit stage left, pursued by a bear.

Quotes of the Month Archive: November 2004

2004-12-01T17:02:00.000Z

'Oh God.' (The Guardian)

'A piece of cheese on toast purportedly showing the Virgin Mary' (BBC News picture caption of an item recently sold on E-bay)

'Fox-hunting? Cor blimey! What are we getting worried about fox-hunting for? Iraq's a very serious question, fox-hunting isn't.' (J. Prescott, Deputy PM)

And a little note...

2004-12-01T09:53:00.000Z

I shall be off to "for'n" parts for the next few days (well, back to the North East til Wednesday). So I shall probably be quite quiet until then. Hope you all miss me.

If you liked the last post, there're plenty more where that came from.

If you didn't, what a shame.

"This one time, at band camp..."

2004-12-01T08:51:00.000Z

Now, I’m only bringing this up because I’ve been reminded recently of much of the bad behaviour we got up to when we were younger. And after a particularly embarrassing experience at my first ever work do last night (a charity quiz won by the people playing on behalf of the Cornwall Monkey Sanctuary, where the entire room ended up laughing at me when I proved to be the only person other than the quiz master to know the name of the sixth book in the Harry Potter series, which hasn’t even been WRITTEN yet), I was reminded of various other embarrassing experiences in my life.

When I was at school it was assumed that the kids playing sport were the cool ones, who messed around and generally got up to the worst behaviour. People who were in band and orchestras however, were seen as freaks, straight-laced, and dull.

Not so.

I remember discussing the various goings on at a band concert with one of the sport team once and leaving him flabbergasted that, contrary to what he thought, band tours and rehearsals weren’t serene paradises of good behaviour. I consumed mammoth amounts alcohol and drugs during my time in the County Youth Orchestra, and indeed, I hold it entirely responsible for creating this well-balanced, pleasant, smiling individual you see before you today.

So anyway, this one time, at orchestra…

We were playing a concert in lovely Lytham St Annes (scene of the hideous “Vom River” incident). Now being a trombonist generally means you’re a bit of a slacker. As a comparison, we played Brahm’s fourth symphony once. The string part consisted of around 120 pages of music, double sided. The trombone part consisted of a single double-sided page (this was actually a bit of a downer when you were going out with one of the violinists, meaning every spare moment together was spent frantically trying to find quiet corners that you could disappear into to do stuff to each other).

Generally however, ladies aside, this meant we had a lot of spare time, which was normally spent at the nearest pub to the venue. In this particular case, we played in the first item in the concert, and then weren’t due to play until right at the end. We estimated the gap would be about an hour, including interval. So, the trombones, the percussionist and the tuba player buggered off for a quick bit of liquid refreshment.

Given the paucity of public houses in Lytham, we improvised as best we could. Cans of McEwen’s export quaffed at great speed in the small cloakroom where the instrument cases were. After about 20 minutes, there was a frantic hammering on the door to the room. Panicking, (given that we were all ostensibly well-behaved, god-fearing children, and our conductor made George W Bush look a picture of tolerance), we hid our beer in the only available place (Big Ian’s tuba case) and opened the door, waiting for the inevitable bollocking.

Instead we were confronted with a red-faced timpanist.

“There’s no fucking interval you daft fuckers!”

Cue mad scrambling over one another to make ourselves presentable and to not be the last person on stage. Happily, after kicking the first trombonist in the hamstrings, I wasn’t the last one back on stage. Scrambling back in under the watchful and glowering eyes of the conductor, we were relieved to find that the harpist was still negotiating into position, so we had a little time to warm up.

We all reached for our trombones, which we always left on our marvellous trombone stands.

Always, except this once.

Queue me looking confused, seeing the others warming up, and uttering…

“I’ve lost me trombone.”

I legged it back off stage to discover that it was neatly packed away in my case, where I’d put it so I could do a little warm up before playing again (yeah, right). Running back on with my trombone in various pieces, and being tripped up mercilessly by Big Ian, who was literally crying with laughter, I settled myself back into place and started rebuilding my trombone. While the conductor continued to stare at me. Like he was carefully weighing up exactly how many bones he could get away with breaking without preventing me from carrying on playing.

Still I had my revenge on Big Ian for laughing. You remember that beer we hid in his Tuba Case? He didn’t…

I Hate This Place 3

2004-11-30T08:28:00.000Z

Why are people so gobsmackingly, jaw-droppingly STUPID?

(Picture Stupid in big blocky letters on a hilltop. Actually, this kind of links into one of my more enjoyable fantasies where I creep up into the Hollywood Hills and replace the "Hollywood" sign with one saying "Stupid Fools").

But I mean it. This place seems to attract stupid people in the way that manure attracts flies or Daisy Beckham attracts accusations of having an affair.

Some stupid people do seem to have excuses however.

For example, there were a group of people today gabbing away at the crossing over the Mall. Now this is a particularly lethal crossing as it's only ever crossed by Taxi Drivers or Police Cars, both of which are more dangerous even than George Bush when he realises there's a country in the Middle East that he hasn't invaded yet. But these people were gabbing and wandering out into the middle of the road, carrying on their conversation without looking at the twenty tonnes of screaming death about to mow them down. But they, at least, had a decent excuse - they were foreigners. And we all know London was not built for foreigners - that's why we've got all the dark alleys where people can be mugged in.

Then there was the girl who barged past a group of people ahead of me on the exit to the Bakerloo line at Charing Cross. She got on the escalator, and for all her haste, stopped in her tracks. She wasn't going to walk up, oh no! So everyone else gets on the escalator, and no-one walks up, so this girl is still at the front. Having spent most of the journey up inspecting her nails, she gets to the top, and walks up to in front of the one working exit gate. She then stops, and begins rummaging in her bag for her ticket. Now, I'm not joking when I say she spent about a minute doing this, yet would not let anyone else past her through the gate. So there was a nice little queue of people with their tickets waiting to get past her. I mean, how stupid is this child? It's not as if you don't expect there to be barriers at the exit to the Bakerloo line. But no, apparently, her nails were more important than planning ahead, and if she was going to wait, then she'd be damned if anyone else could usurp her position at the front of the queue.

But even this prime example of stupidity had an excuse. She was a bint.

Then there are the people who phone in on Radio programmes. "Any Answers" on Saturday featured a woman complaining that we have "The Most Authoritarian Government Ever!!!!!" WHAT A STUPID COW!!!! She sounded like she was phoning while her butler held the telephone for her, and her maid brought her a fine mint tea especially imported from one of her numerous islands. If we had an Authoritarian government, she wouldn't be ringing in to complain, because she wouldn't be allowed to. Authoritarian Governments do not allow criticism of themselves by anyone. Then there was this useless waste of breath of a man, interviewed about fox-hunting, who said "I had no interest in hunting until they started trying to ban it. Then I went out and joined a hunt. Cos you know, if they're trying to ban it, it's got to be good." WANKER!!!!

This leads me on to all this moaning about a Nanny State. It's pathetic. Go to Hungary. Or Russia. See exactly what a Nanny State was. We have numerous liberties. Our journalists can still abuse everyone from the Prime Minister down - that's a pretty permissive society. People can still go out for a pie, pints and a punch up on the weekend- If I was this country's Nanny I wouldn't allow that! So what if the Government wants to ban smoking and stop people being lardy - I don't give a shit! If I want to smoke something, I'll go outside! And I think that quite a large portion of our population could do with being told not to eat fat food because they're porkers. Lard Arses! GIANT BLUBBERY BUFFOONS!!!!!

To be quite frank, I think a certain amount of Nanny-ing is important. Because a lot of the population is too stupid to do anything for itself.

I Hate This Place 2

2004-11-25T13:21:00.000Z

On the corner of Whitehall and Northumberland Avenue, there was quite a nice general store called “Europa”.

When I say “quite a nice” store, I’m judging this on London standards, rather than Global standards. It wasn’t the friendliest place in the world, and it was a fair bit over-priced. So in actual fact, it was a bit crap. But compared to most places in this stinking Hell-hole, it was a positive oasis of lightness.

The shop itself was innocuous. The front of the shop was unobtrusive, as they had made no attempt to convert the outside of the building – all the old windows were still in place, and the only external alteration was a double door on the corner, which was surmounted by an old, weather-worn yellow sign reading “Europa”.

Inside it had high shelves, stocked with all manner of strange and unusual products. There was your standard “Tartan Scottish Shortbread” for Tourists (Scottish Shortbread in London? Why not go to, say, Scotland?), and many other frankly ridiculous items of food on the central isle.

But in the rest of the isles, there was actually decent everyday stuff. For one thing, it remains the only place I’ve found in the area which does McVities Chocolate Shortbread biscuits (truly fantastic for a tea-time snack).

The staff were a fantastic haphazard bunch. They just wore standard clothes, and only two at a time could serve, while at least two other members of staff milled around, re-stocking, or pointing out the mistakes the people on the Till were making. It was gloriously unorganised and as such, quite homely.

A few months ago, it closed for refurbishment. It re-opened at the beginning of September as a “Tesco Metro”.

This is the most depressing thing I have seen in a long time.

Firstly, the old windows have been torn out, and the frames widened, to make space for large tinted plate glass windows bearing the Tesco logo on them. The inside has low shelves just stocking standard produce at more expensive prices than before. The backs of various lurid advertisements in the shop are visible from the windows outside, a tangle of wires and fastenings.

The till area has been replaced so that, instead of two stations with seats behind, there are now five cramped stations, with no room for the staff to sit. True, it means they can serve more people, but I think I preferred the informality of before.

Finally, the staff themselves are the same as before. However, this time, they’re all wearing the regulation blue speckled shirts and blouses and black trousers of Tesco. Whereas before they looked human, now they look like clones of one another. And there’s a certain aura of depression about all of them: whereas before they were the Kings of Europa, now they are the servants of Tesco.

Apparently, this is the way that local shops should go. Tesco are apparently pleased with their range of Tesco Metro stores, claiming their identifiably “British” theme of Red, White and Blue is recognisable and popular in all areas.

They are wrong. Their shop is an eyesore among the venerable buildings next door on wither street to it. I cannot believe how they got planning permission for it. Presumably the MD paid off the planning officers in Whitehall. Or alternatively made himself their bitch for the week. Either way, it’s despicable. I am now waiting to see how long it is before the old faces from Europa are “retired”. After all, to Tesco they’re not people, they’re a commodity. One is much the same as the other.

And they don’t sell McVities Chocolate Shortbread biscuits any more.

(For more reasons why Tesco are crap, go to this article.)

Growing old gracefully

2004-11-24T09:36:00.000Z

I picked up a copy of Metro today (I know, I know, there's no excuse that can justify it). As per normal, there was an advert for reviews of last night's TV which can be found in the "Evening Standard". Looking at this, one thing came to mind.

Victor Lewis-Smith.

What's that all about then?

Pomp and Circumstance

2004-11-23T11:37:00.000Z

I just got waved at by Prince Phil and the Queen. I'm more pleased about Prince Phil because, let's face it, the man's a comedy genius.

I knew they waved at me be cause I was close enough to make eye contact and there were only five or six of us stood at the railings. One of the advantages of working where I do is that they let us out of the back gate and into Horseguards. Normally Horseguards is off limits when the Queen is processing through it, but being Civil Servants, we were allowed at.

As I waved my hand in salutary fashion in return, two thoughts went through my head.

The first was that, as I pulled my hand out of jacket to return the greeting, at least three guns would have been trained on me, from the snipers on various rooftops.

The second was "what is the protocol for returning a Royal greeting? Do you bow? Do you raise one hand in the manner of the Knight in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"? Or do you leap up and down like a loon? I like to think my measured response was mature and thoughtful. Phil probably thinks I'm a pleb though.

I Hate This Place

2004-11-22T08:49:00.000Z

"Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." (Samuel Johnson, September 20, 1777)

I loathe this quote.

Now, far be it from me to contradict such a great literary mind as Dr Johnson, but what was true in 1777 can hardly be said to hold true in 2004. Yet it is very hard to go a week in the capital without hearing or reading a truncated version of Dr. Johnson’s words.

I have a different quote. It reads:

“No Sir, when a man is tired of London, it means he’s been there about 10 minutes.”

London is a beast. It squats on the landscape, weighing down the whole country and tilting it improbably towards the South East, and belching and shitting its foul waste all over the countryside. And every year, this waste seeps out from London’s putrid underbelly and absorbs more of the surrounding area. It’s a disease; a boil on the landscape; a foul, throbbing spot fit to burst, waiting for someone to prick it.

I loathe so many things about London. I loathe the fact that 75% of people think they’re the coolest and hardest people in the world. I loathe these people, who swan about and talk about “doing lunch some day”. These people are miniature versions of London itself – a hideously glossy façade hiding a rotting filthy soulless mass underneath. I loathe the people who try to pick fights in pubs because you don’t have a Cockney accent, yet will switch to being impossibly nice if you are a local. I loathe the fact that all these people, yuppies and chavs alike, look about as healthy as the chickens that Burger King mashes into nuggets. The pallid, wan faces, with colour bleached from them, except where they’ve applied ten tonnes of make-up to counteract the effects of London.

I loathe the stench – that fetid sewer / old burger smell that hangs around most of the centre, like the smell the morning after a party where most of the people attending took improbable quantities of drugs and food, and then revisited it all during the course of the night. I loathe the filth – the vomit slicks that strew the pavement, the ten-week old glob of chewing gum that applies itself without remorse to the soul of your shoe, and which only industrial strength chemicals can remove.

I have lived in London for two and a half years now. This is approximately two and a half years too long. I was exhausted within a week of getting here and have remained so ever since. I long to get away, to escape to somewhere approaching normality, but I can’t because it has been decreed that the only decent jobs are in London. But it doesn’t matter anyway. London is like the major accountancy firms at Graduate Recruitment Time – it hoovers people up, puts them through the most impossible stresses and strains imaginable, and then spits the ones who crumble out beside the wayside without a care for them, while it continues to devour new victims.

So the next time I hear someone say that “when someone is tired of London, they are tired of life”, I am going to find this person and insert Nelson’s Column into their rectum. That’ll teach the fucker.

Having said that...

2004-11-16T13:16:00.000Z

Having posted one of the most self-pitying blog entries for a while, I have to say, there are SOME perks to my job. Like being chauffeur-driven through the streets of Central London in a flash car with leather seats and (get this!) motion sensors to say if you're getting to near the cars in front or behind. Needless to say they went off a lot.

Also very amusing when one of the people on the intercom forgot to switch of their mic when speaking on a phone - the following snippet was heard quite clearly:

"Fuck You you fuck...."

"Oh yeah? Your mum...."

Marvellous entertainment.

My Life

2004-11-16T08:37:00.000Z

Hello.

I'm not doing good on this blogging thing really am I? I promise it's just for the moment. Everything's a tad manic and crazy. Not to mention depressing. I really am not happy at work at the moment. I don't mind working hard, though I'm getting annoyed at the fact that it's being taken for granted that I'll do overtime every night, and that I can't even take a days' leave or sick. I've got a days' leave booked on Friday, and I'm convinced that I'm going to have to fight to take it off. Well bugger it, if needs, be I'll work Saturday instead.

To top it all off, I've discovered something quite badly wrong in all the work I did last week, meaning a lot of it needs to be done. This is all the more annoying because it's a stupid mistake I made and I can't blame it on anyone else.

The there's the fact that all the work is affecting my outside life. I'm massively behind in my evening class, I haven't done any music practice for a while, and I haven't been able to contact anyone in ages. I've got a list of people I need to phone that's been building up, but when you get in after doing 10 or so hours, I just want to eat and sleep.

Then there's family issues. I'm probably being unreasonable here, but all my family live within an hours' travel of one another in the North. Unfortunately this means that when there's a get-together, I'm expected to attend. Which involves considerably MORE than an hours' travel. The weekend before last was a case in point. I had to travel up for a family birthday, but couldn't take time off. So I travelled all day on Saturday (and I mean ALL day thanks to Virgin trains), spent Saturday evening in bed with a migraine, spent Sunday at the party (which didn't turn out to be a family party, but a big get together of lots of people), and travelled back on Monday (during which time I had to work because I can't take time off). Then I get put on a guilt trip for not telephoning on the weekend when the actual birthday was.

I may be being unreasonable here. I do have a lovely family who are good to me, but sometimes, I find the demands a tad too much. But then it's probably because I'm feeling low about life.

Anyway, this wasn't meant to be a whinge about my life. No-one really cares, it's not what people read blogs for. But I've noticed a worrying trend in fellow bloggers. It seems they all look down on and sneer at people who post links to other sites in their blog. You know, where you put a post directing people to an article of interest or something.

Why is this such a crime?

If I read something of interest, I don't want to rephrase it in my own words and take credit for it. That's plagiarism. I want credit to be given to the people who actually put the effort in and wrote it. And if you have a problem with linking to sites generally, then I say you're a very petty individual. What's wrong with directing people to other areas of interest. It's nice to the people who receive the link, as they get more readers, and it's nice that you can share things you find interesting with your readers.

So before you get all sanctimonious about link posts, I say this. Get a life. Just make sure it's a better one than mine.

Celebration Time...

2004-11-11T17:40:00.000Z

This week is stupidly busy.

I am barely getting time to breathe, let alone speak to real people, spend time with my girlfriend, eat, that kind of thing.

I had a long, lo-o-o-o-o-ng rant planned about my train journey on Virgin this weekend (the standard two hours' lateness), but I'm so tired I can barely find the bile in my spleen to vent.

So, I actually thought I'd write a few quick things that have made me happy this week (shock horror!).

Firstly, my good friend B-K has created a blog - markspeak - which I thoroughly recommend to all. Few people would have the confidence to open their blog with the phrase

"It's me, my voice, my ideas. If you don't like it that's probably because you are not me."

But that's him for you. He's a very funny man, with a cracking dry sense of humour, and a healthy view of the world - it's a bit fucked really. He's also an author, and despite what he worries about (the lack of a publisher) I'm convinced he will get published. So go. Read. Enjoy.

Secondly, on a personal point of view, my dear friend Matt P and his lovely wife Su, who gave me the honour of being the Best Man at their wedding last year has just had a baby girl, Holly. I'm fantastically pleased for them - they'll be excellent parents.

Thirdly, Moore has created a new film. It's rather special, and gives a starring role to the G-Man. And a sinister monkey. Go and watch it now. And make sure you have the sound on.

So I shall vanish into the ether once again now. Normal service (i.e. bitterness, ranting and raving) will be resumed shortly.

Conspiracy!

2004-11-09T13:17:00.000Z

Earth Girl has succeeded in attracting a lunatic to her site with a post about that babboon George W Bush.

CrazyforJesus felt the need to respond to Earth Girl's comment about the Election Results. He started off being quite reasonable, and you can't really blame him for following what he believes in. But oh dear me, he really went off the deep end at the end...

"...people talk about iraq & the wmd, remember when the inspectors when all the to inspect, how come the had to wait for hours or even a day or so before they where allowed to inspect? I tell you why because that was enough time for France to warn the iraq's & for them to leave the country. where are they now, try Syria & Iran ~ oh yea nobody wants to say anything about that huh."

I think we ALL know the reason why nobody wants to talk about that...

"The Bastard Son of 10 000 Maniacs..."

2004-11-04T08:12:00.000Z

I don't want to die.

I really don't.

I have many years ahead of me, during which I want to do many things. I would like to see a bit more of the world. I would like to get back to earning money through music. I would like to complete seeing the cycle of Mahler symphonies in chronological order with Nick.

But it seem that the largest section of the voting public in America ever has decreed that this shall not be so.

HOW?

WHY?

BASTARDS.

Bush has one of the worst records of any President ever in terms of the American economy. His cabinet have been associated in numerous big business scandals which have impacted directly on the lives of the American populace. He has waged war against two countries, leading to the deaths of thousand of American soldiers. His leadership flushed away the near-global goodwill towards America after 9/11 to leave it as the most reviled state in the world.

Apparently though, none of this matters.

80% of voters apparently placed "moral issues" ahead of anything else when casting their vote. "Moral Issues" covers topics such as abortion and gay marriage. What harm, EXACTLY, does gay marriage do anyone? Who cares that it's prohibited in the Bible - the Bible says we should love our neighbour and forgive people's sins, but that clearly isn't adhered to in any way, shape or form (Death Penalty anyone?).

If you've seen the voting map of America, you'll see that the areas traditionally associated with liberalism and intellectualism in America - the states that opposed slavery for example - all voted Democrat. Yet the heartland and south of America voted Republican. I know why this is. They're worried that people will realise all the genetic problems they've caused by inbreeding over many years and try and prevent this using genetic modification.

This last point is a tad irrational, but that is what my rage has driven me to.

What terrifies me more than anything however is that according to the current constitution, Bush cannot be elected again. Therefore, he can pretty much do whatever he likes and not be held accountable at all. This is a terrifying thought.

To be blunt, in the next four years I predict the following things will happen.

1) At least two more wars (Iran and Syria seeming the most likely candidates)

2) Bush changing the constitution so that he can be elected for a third term (due to "National Security Issues" probably).

3) More major terrorist attacks across the Western world.

4) The first deployment of a nuclear weapon since the Second World War

I hope I'm wrong. But I don't think I will be.

P.S. I make no apologies for quoting "Nightmare on Elm Street" in the title of this.

A meditation on the next four years...

2004-11-03T23:09:00.000Z

Reprinted with kind permission from Growleroo.

"...the patriot act has already paved the way for widespread suspension of civil and human rights for anyone who challenges the state (it's like the arrowcross all over again), it's only a short step there before emergency powers get granted to the chancellor... uhhh, president.... enabling him to suspend larger and more significant parts of the constitution / democratic process / etc. it's the classic dictatorship model - pursue an aggressive foreign policy while instigating an atmosphere of paranoia and externally-induced instability at home, move to counter this 'external threat within' by gradually stripping the populace of their rights while heightening the impression that only the imcumbent can protect them, then move to consolidate power by declaring a state of emergency and suspending the democratic process. all the while pursuing an agenda, through use of moral and religious doctrine, of vilification and persecution of a minority (in this case it seems to be both middle eastern minorities and the gay community), to keep the populace scared and vulnerable and in need of a strong leader to counter these supposed threats to both their country and their way of life. hitler, stalin, palpatine, whoever - it's history repeating itself, and it bloody scares me."

I think we're going through a collective Dark Night of the Soul.

The Second Coming

2004-11-03T20:07:00.000Z

The Second Coming - W B Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

(Thanks for Andy flagging this up)

Hallowe'en

2004-11-02T09:42:00.000Z

Normally, I don't go in for Hallowe'en much. It's a bit pointless, and I can't quite believe that it is now the UKs third most popular festival after Christmas and Easter (mind, at least "Clinton's Cards" haven't started stocking "Happy Hallowe'en " cards).

The past three years, my attitudes have changed slightly, mainly because our old landlady Debbie held the most spectacular Hallowe'en parties, involving a good deal of merriment, alcohol and herbal remedies.

However, on Sunday, I had the most enjoyable Hallowe'en for a long time. It involved a get together at a friend's house, alongside all our fellow compadres from Hungary and The Inimitable Martin. We ordered two 1m wide pizzas (Heaven!), Jen laid on a cracking spread of nibbles, and we drank far too much of the vine.

The highlight of the evening was the first of the scary films we decided to watch - "Ghostwatch". Now for those of you who don't remember, this was a one-off BBC special shown in 1992, and featuring the talents of Sarah Greene, her husband Mike Smith, Craig Charles, and best of all, Michael Parkinson.

They really don't make things like this anymore. The premise was that a documentary crew were allowed in to witness the haunted events taking place in a suburban house. Now if they made it these days, there would be mediums, and the family would rationalise with the spirit and lay it to rest. And the spirit would probably be restless simply because no-one had ever found their hidden stack of treasure.

But not Ghostwatch. Oh no.

In the heyday of 1992, the ghost was a psychopathic child molester who hung himself in an under-the-stairs cupboard (nicknamed "the glory hole", leading to far too much amusement) and got eaten by cats. The young girls in the house were beaten up by these spirits, one of them was possessed, while the other gouged out the eyes of her stuffed rabbit toy. Really quite gruesome.

To my shame I was never allowed to watch it when it first went out (though I maintain I was working that night), though all my friends did, and they remember not sleeping for nights after it. It was truly spine-tingling. It built the tension slowly, with subliminal flashes of this deformed ghost figure, reflected for half a second in a window or against a curtain. Then there was the possession and injury of the girls, before it finished up with Sarah Greene and half her crew apparently dead, Craig Charles crying, and Michael Parkinson possessed.

Of course in retrospect, there are a lot of nods to adult viewers to let them know that the whole thing is a hoax. The afore-mentioned "glory hole" (still funny three days after watching the thing), Craig Charles thinking the camera was turned off, and hitting a small child over the head to get him to "sod off". But still I think it was a masterpiece of TV, and something I think we are unlikely to see again.

After having seen this, and being a tad scared, we then watched "Nightmare on Elm Street 3". Awful. 'Nuff said.

The Return of Commuter Boy

2004-11-01T08:57:00.000Z

Having assembled the stats from my month of commuting hell on Commuter Boy, I have sent off a rather stroppy letter to South West Trains, detailing exactly how much of my life they have cost me. They'll probably ignore it because, let's face it, it's a bit sad isn't it?

However, by the end, writing a "C-log" every day was driving me up the wall, and quite frankly I didn't have the time. So I shall leave Commuter Boy up for posterity, but from now on, any particularly bad journeys will get blogged about here.

Such as...

This morning. Mainly I'm aggravated about the tube. The B has written a good article on the hell of travelling by tube here, and basically I felt the same today. Especially when, as I extricated myself from the crush to prepare to leave the tube, the tall wide businessman behind me chose the same moment to stretch out a bit. The end result of this, apart from annoying the crap out of everyone around him, was to jettison me head first into the Tub door as it was opening. So not only did I hit my head, it got dragged along as well. This a happy bunny did not make.

And a special comment on the lack of co-ordination between the various transport networks this weekend too. Living in the forgotten wilderness of Zone 3, we were clearly not important enough to warrant any transport services this weekend. The trains weren't running on the line into Waterloo (needless to say, we weren't warned about this in advance). Then there was the closure of the District and Circle lines between Earl's Court and Whitechapel, (though at least they HAD warned us about this in advance. So if you wanted to get to Charing Cross or Embankment from where we lived, you were buggered basically.

It was quite amusing that the announcements stated "There is a good service on the Piccadilly Line, and that's it" while we were waiting on the Piccadilly line platform at Leicester Square. It seemed strangely ironic after that when our Piccadilly line train stopped between Kings Cross and the Caledonian Road for about 10 minutes due to signalling problems at Arsenal. We were eventually shepherded off the train at the Caledonian Road after they decided to suspend the line. So that meant not a single tub line in London was running well. Joy.

Anyway, I'm probably ranting because I'm tired and in a bad mood. But still, I've got a lot more to blog about in the next couple of days before we all face impending nuclear death.

Quotes of the Month Archive: October 2004

2004-11-01T08:48:00.000Z

'Americans!: You get your chance to vote for real next week. My simple advice to you is this - Don't fuck it up this time.' (Scaryduck)

'In polls of British voters, a clear majority consistently backs Kerry over Bush when it is a given a choice between the two men. But throw US television characters into the equation and you get Homer Simpson...[Today]Kerry will give a speech on national security in Green Bay, Wisconsin, then travel to Nevada and New Mexico for campaign rallies. Wisconsin is clearly the place to be today: Bush will be in Richland Centre and Cuba City before leaving the state for a rally in Iowa. Homer Simpson is a cartoon.' (the Guardian)

'Have you seen her [Jordan]? I've seen better-dressed wounds.' (Jo Caulfield, Radio 4)

'What do I think of the Sun?...I don't think it is necessary to buy this newspaper.' (U. Meier, The Guardian)

'This CD is beyond good or bad. It is from a world where concepts such as "unique" and "indispensible" live happily alongside "hilariously, brain-tearingly wrong".' (Guardian review of William Shatner "Has Been")

U.S. Elections III

2004-10-28T08:58:00.000+01:00

Why am I so bothered about the US Elections?

After all, it's not as if I live there, and have any say over who gets elected. I can see why many Americans are getting annoyed at us Europeans complaining and trying to tell them what to do (the Guardian's campaign was massively misjudged - a rare cock-up from a decent paper unfortunately). It's almost as if we don't trust the Americans to decide for themselves.

The problem is, it's not that we don't trust the American people. It's that we don't trust the current administration. We believe they will try and cheat and worm their way back in using whatever methods, fair or foul, to achieve this. The only way to prevent this is to ensure that the Republicans get a complete leathering in the polls.

This isn't going to happen though. So I have resorted to the last refuge of the heathen - I have started to pray. I have reconciled myself to the fact there must be a Supreme Being in Heaven (if only so Rumsfeld can FINALLY get what he deserves when he dies), and am regularly offering up pleas for him to strike down the Republican party. But this probably won't happen. Because as we are often told, God is all-forgiving.

But why am I so bothered?

Partly, it is because I am UTTERLY convinced that if George Bush remains in power for four more years, there WILL be a nuclear attack either on, or by America. Intimations have already been made that the American Department for Defence (the irony!) wants to attack Iran. And they have nuclear capability. As the Americans would say, go figure.

Then there's the fact that the current crusade has made many "less-well-informed" people around the Globe convinced that Islam is synonymous with terrorism. Consequently, now it is appearing that Bush is on a quest to wipe the Islamic faith from the surface of the Earth, (rather like the Imperial British Missionaries in the 19th Century), he is getting far less opposition than he should do, because he has consistently linked terrorism with Islam.

But finally, there's my hope for this country. If Bush goes, we have every hope to believe that a certain person in this country will be brought to account for his errors...

Bugger.

2004-10-26T14:29:00.000+01:00

Countdown

2004-10-26T13:04:00.000+01:00

No, the title doesn't refer to the strangely compelling antics of Richard Whiteley on Channel 4 (I don't know what time it's on though, which shows that I've not been a student for far too long).

The title refers to the dearly departed "Shat Day" countdown which used to run on my site. Since Shat Day has been and gone, I need a replacement. So I thought I'd turn to you lot out there.

Please note that countdowns should not be obvious, and possibly humourous. Hence why I'm not coming up with the idea...

As a brief mini-countdown, it's four days and counting till "the Fishermen..." gets my full undivided attention once more...

US Elections II

2004-10-22T11:44:00.000+01:00

A couple of things that have struck me about the US Elections in this past week.

Firstly, anyone who has been charting my rants against the TV Network that wanted to show an anti-Kerry film fours days before the Election will be relieved to hear this from the Guardian:

"A film linking Kerry's anti-Vietnam campaigning to the torture of captured US soldiers will now not be broadcast. Sinclair Broadcast, the Republican-leaning company that planned to show it, made the announcement after shareholders claimed the programme could harm their investment. Parts of the film will now be shown in a documentary examining the use of such broadcasts in influencing elections. Sinclair's shares fell 23 cents to USD6.26 yesterday, down from a high of more than USD15 in January."

Glad the Shareholders stepped in where the authorities supervising fair elections didn't...Interesting to see how the film is going to be used now however.

On the other hand, I am despondent today. Many things have got me down this week regarding the US - our re-deploying troops so George Bush can keep his Election promise of sending no more American troops to Iraq being just one of them.

However, this morning I heard that a spokesman for the Catholic Church in America has declared that any practicing Catholic who is seen as supporting abortion (that is, voting for John Kerry) will not be able to receive communion (i.e. essentially be ex-communicated). Therefore what the Catholic Church of America has stated is that all Catholics (of which America has one of the highest global populations) must vote for Bush.

I thought there were rules governing the involvement of religion in elections?

It has made me realise that the sheer number of underhand methods and extra forces that the Republican party have been able to employ against the Democrats makes it all but certain he will be President for another four years. Four more years of war. Four more years of big business dominating the world. Four more years of antagonism. Four more years of that evil bastard Rumsfeld.

Neevr mind, given the Republican tendency towards war, we can always hope they launch a Nuclear strike which wipes us out before the four years are up...

Rant of the Week: Helicopters

2004-10-19T13:22:00.000+01:00

I have many MANY things annoying me this week, but I'm very busy and am finding it difficult to blog. Commuter Boy takes up most of my spare time. Never mind, when he dies...

But anyway, just a small rant for this week, but something that is annoying me in the way that Robin Williams films annoy people with an aversion to sentimentality, and George W Bush annoys the whole of the world.

Helicopters.

They should be banned.

Actually, they should be shot down using some kind of improvised slingshot until they get the message to stop flying over my head. But that way madness lies.

Admittedly I really didn't choose the most sensible place to work if I wanted to be free of helicopters. I don't mind so much the "special" helicopters that fly into our next door neighbour's house. They're normally come in without much fuss and bog off as soon as possible. But it's the tourist helicopters that are annoying. They fly up around central London and hover over points of interest. Normally near my office.

And above all, perhaps, even more annoying than tourist helicopters, are the media helicopters. Bastard droning whining noisy little bastards. They fly in really low and hover for HOURS while some muppet films eternally uninteresting things on the ground because it looks a bit nice. Yesterday was particularly bad with the Olympic atheletes "homecoming", (don't get me started - the Rugby team had one because they won the World Cup. Our athletes had one because they came about 9th. The Paralympic team were far better coming second, but I bet there were fewer photos of them in the Evening papers).

Today however, there's been a helicopter over our building for about 5 hours, and it's annoying the crap out of me - why is it there? Have they decided "let's piss off Dave today?". It's like having a wasp trapped in your inner ear canal. But it's not only the buzzing. They also have a high pitched whine that pierces your ear too. They should be banned under an Anti-social Behaviour Order.

And joy. Just when it's finally fucked off (though it's still vaguely there in the distance) the bugler next door has started up. I love brass instruments. My dad was a teacher, and I have taught in my time too. 90% of the buglers at the barracks CANNOT PLAY!!! It's painful. It's like listening to a seven year old taking their first tentative steps. They play with all lip, no diaphragm, so it sounds rough, scratchy, and the pitch wanders all over the place. They had a pretty good one on Friday, but this new one's middling to say the least....

Calm...deep...breaths...oh fuck, now the helicopters come back. Someone kill me please...

Dear God save us

2004-10-14T13:46:00.000+01:00

I'm thoroughly worried and depressed.

I've had the misfortune of reading through some pro-Republican comments on the Guardian website, basically attacking us for being "yellow-belied liberals". But the crowning glory was some muppet called Chris who said-

"Europe. Always there when they need us."

- following a polemic about the superiority of America.

I hope this man burns in Hell. He probably keeps a gimp chained up in his basement who he releases from time to time to flagellate him (except he probably doesn't undertsand the veb "to flagellate" - it means "whip" monkey boy!)

I am sick of this argument from Right wing Americans that without them we'd be buggered. Yes, they did make two timely interventions in the World War, for which we should be grateful. But the number of times since that we have bailed America out of trouble. Hmmm...lets see...Iraq?!!! While the Americans strolled into a fairly undefended Baghdad, levelling everything as they went, the rest of the coalition actually faced the bulk of the opposition in Basra. Had they not been there, the Americans would have been trapped in Baghdad by the Iraqi troops stationed elsewhere and in all probability massacred.

And I'm sure that the Americans bombing our troops really helped us. At the "official" end of the Iraq war, it transpired that Britain had lost more troops to "friendly fire" from the Americans than to any other group.

Basically, I appreciate these arguments aren't my best, but I just really REALLY wish that people like "Chris" would fuck off and die.

Rant of the Week: Stupid People (pt. III)

2004-10-13T13:31:00.000+01:00

Now, far be it from me to criticise the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, but I think he’s little more than a trained chimpanzee with a severe case of verbal diarrhoea, the natural grace of a one-legged rat, and the social skills of a compulsively masturbating monkey.

Not only that, but he’s a cheating trained chimpanzee with a severe case of verbal diarrhoea, the natural grace of a one-legged rat, and the social skills of a compulsively masturbating monkey.

I’m sure few people have forgotten the fact that, when the Presidential Election was held in 2000, the whole outcome hinged on Florida. Similarly I’m sure that everyone remembers that the Governor of Florida was one Jeb Bush (what kind of an in-bred, stupid name is Jeb anyway? He’s basically a crapper version of Joseph Bonaparte isn’t he?).

And I’m sure that people still remember that votes from the coloured population were destroyed as invalid, as were votes from any minority group, and seemingly anyone who voted Democrat. Fewer people probably remember that a pro-Republican news channel went on record as saying the Republicans had won in Florida before the ballot boxes closed.

I’m sure NO-ONE has forgotten, however, that when all the valid votes were counted many weeks after Bush was declared triumphant, it transpired that Al Gore would have won Florida, and therefore the whole election. Quite why nothing was done to impeach Bush at the time is beyond me.

Then you had “9/11” and the subsequent attempts by Bush to bring democracy to other places in the world (here’s a tip, Mr Bush – bring democracy to your own country first). And now we’re back at election time again.

Despite the Democrats finding virtually the only person in the Universe who struggles to compete with Bush, John Kerry is doing very well, mainly due to the fact that he whips Bush’s arse every time they have a debate (not literally though – that would be hideous). But now we find out that a pro-Republican TV channel has decided to aid Bush this time round in a more sinister way than his brother helped him last time. I quote from the Guardian:

“One of America's biggest television companies has announced plans to broadcast a film days before the presidential election that portrays the Democratic candidate John Kerry as betraying his fellow soldiers in Vietnam.
The conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group will reportedly present the film as news on the 62 local channels it owns nationwide.”

So they’re going to present this as “news” four days before the election.

Hmmm…four days…that leaves SUCH a long time for Kerry to refute the allegations before the election doesn’t it. Crucially, the vast majority of local channels owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group are in swing states. Just think…one bit of bad press and the state goes to GWB. What was that I said about democracy in the US?

I really hope for the sake of the free world that the stations are banned from doing this. I hope even more that Bush is booted out and his like is never seen again. I don’t want to see him elected and face up to the awful reality that within four years we’re going to be participating in a nuclear war led by a chimp.

The Currant Bun

2004-10-11T10:03:00.000+01:00

Well, The Sun surpassed itself this weekend didn't it? From the paper which celebrated the death of 400-odd Argentinean sailors with the word "GOTCHA!" to the "YOU SCUM" headline which sees it still ignored in Liverpool, on Saturday we were greeted with "KILL THE BASTARDS".

Now, I'm not prudish about swearing. I swear all the time, and my feeling is "it's only a word, it doesn't mean anything". But having said that, I'm guilty of gross hypocrisy when dealing with newspapers. I don't think it's right that a paper should splash a swear word across its front page, no matter how bad things are. Imagine, you're taking your toddler son / nephew / cousin out for a walk and they say "Mummy / Uncle, what's a bastard?"

But I think it's the fact that the Sun did this that annoys me the most. The fact is, they've been trying to curry favour with the people of Liverpool all year, to try and "atone" for their mistake over Hillsborough (viz. they want more sales, and can't bear to think that a place exists where their paper isn't stocked). My theory is, Ken Bigley was from Liverpool, and so their "...BASTARDS" headline is basically trying to appropriate and jump on the bandwagon of one family's personal tragedy - they hope that by being jingoistic and gung-ho, people will go "hey, the Sun agrees with us, let's go and buy it".

It's sick opportunism, and I hope everyone has seen through it. The fact that it goes against what Ken Bigley's family have repeatedly tried to do, that is, ensure it doesn't damage Muslim-Christian relations in the UK, obviously doesn't matter an inch to the sub-editors at the Sun. Basically, they're not making any attempt to differentiate between the different groups in Iraq, and I think, like countless times in the past, the Sun is guilty of inciting racial hatred.

The most depressing thing though, is the fact that I come from somewhere (North-West England), where the Sun is rarely bought, apart from teenagers at school wanting to look at page 3. Yet here, in the South-East, virtually every single person reads it. It's depressing to think that their uninformed, biased bilge is being pumped into the brains of several million people.

Not that I'm bitter, but I really hope that some day, the Sun meets a really sticky end.

Rant of the Week: So many to choose from...

2004-10-08T09:56:00.000+01:00

Hello all,

It's been a while I'm sorry - blame it on work. Even Commuter Boy was held up for a couple of days...

But needless to say many things have been getting my back up this week, as usual. There's the usual suspects (the Tory party, George W Bush), and a few new ones.

Best story of the week has to go to the fact that Rebecca Loos was shown on TV masturbating a boar. I see some kind of bizarre poetic justice in this, given how she became famous in the first place (for those who don't know, it was alleged that she slept with some footballer or other, and seemed as likely as, ooo, a Z-list celebrity being filmed on TV playing with a pig). From what I can gather, she's participating in a programme called "The Farm" on TV which, far from being a fascinating look at those hard-working people who we rarely see, actually consists of plunking a load of has-been and never-had-been "celebrities" in a pile of manure. So far so good, one might say, but I can't believe it's being televised. Much less that I've actually picked up on an event in it. So I'll stop now.

Next on my list is George W. Seemingly the only man in the World, (well, barring Donald "Satan" Rumsfeld, the evil puppetmaster genius who has his hand up Bush's arse) who still believes Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction, and he's not going to let any amount of proof to the contrary get in his way. Perhaps the most depressing thing is that there are people who believe him, denizens of the Deep South who think that the next village is a "for'n" country, and Iraq is somewhere near New York. Perhaps more depressing even that this though, is that the Democrats have managed to find the only person IN THE UNIVERSE who could struggle to beat George Bush.

Lets look at the facts - we have a man who resembles a chimpanzee, has the manners of a chimpanzee, the intelligence and attention span of a goldfish, and believes that anyone who disagrees with him should be shot, nuked, or both. Yet John Kerry has actually managed to fall behind this primal ape in the American polls. Way to go JK!! At least he finally started clawing some ground back in his televised debate, although this wasn't so much to do with his arguments than the fact that both Bush and Kerry were on screen at the same time, and Bush was continually rolling his eyes, not interested and getting annoyed (for those of you who don't know, the Bush administration tried to ban televising the reactions of the person facing the questioning. Needless to say they failed). It remains to be seen how tonight's debate goes, but at the moment, I feel like even Michael Howard could have led a more effective opposition to Bush.

Which brings me neatly on to the Tory party conference. Average age of delegate = 70. Importance to the world = slightly less than Rebecca Loos masturbating a pig. I really don't like them at all, mainly due to the fact that I still can't forgive them for inflicting Thatcher on us, but also because of the gross hypocrisy and pettiness they continually demonstrate. It's never "We would do this if we were in power". It's always "Labour have done this and it's crap". There were some interesting statistics on Today this morning provided by the editors of the Bloomsbury English Dictionary. Of the three top men who lead each major political party in the UK, Michael Howard used the word "I" the most. Now there's someone who's going to selflessly devote himself to the country. Apparently, he also used "immigration" more than anyone else, always in a negative light. Which is interesting, coming from a Romanian immigrant. A Labour party spokesman was quoted as saying "it's alright for his family, but not for anyone else."

But what REALLY got my back up were the soundbites of the Shadow Cabinet detailing the last CD they bought. Everyone, EVERYONE, chose something modern, and perceived as trendy. Scissor Sisters and Keane were the ones which stood out for me. It was so utterly false, and the whole idea was to make the party seem "younger" and "more cool". Bastards. They're going to do exactly the same as Blair does now if they get in - divert all the funding away from Classical and Jazz because it's perceived as "elitist". They totally fail to realise that young people actually DO like Classical and Jazz music. Why couldn't they - just for once in their pitiful lives - be honest? But no, they'd sell their grannies for power.

Which brings me to my final subject, my biggest pet hate of this week. Formula 1, and specifically Bernie Ecclestone. Loathsome oik. Mind you, at least he's basically come clean and implied he doesn't give a shit about the sport, it's just one big cash cow for him. It is U-B's considered opinion that Formula 1 as a "franchise" should die off now. For a long time the imbalance in money has taken away the really spectacle. I don't blame Michael Schumacher - I think he is one of the ultimate sportsmen the world has seen. Everyone seems to forget when saying now that "he has the best car" that his first world championships were won driving an extremely uncompetitive Bennetton. He is unique, and yet if I were him, I would retire and distance myself from the whole farce.

With Ecclestone's perceived desire to move Formula 1 away from the UK, I would really say "let him". Firstly, I think it's a ruse by him to get more money, and secondly I think any money we spent on it would be better put towards establishing a competitive series to rival Formula 1, which is ready to step into the gap left when F1 finally goes belly up. I cannot even believe that Richard Caborn is considering using money from the East Midlands Development Fund to help supply Ecclestone with the money required to host a race. It's ridiculous. Shouldn't the race organisers be paying a fee to rent the circuit, instead of the other way around? And to think that the money will be going towards the empire of a multi-millionaire than say, ooo, housing regeneration, is obscene, and frankly leaves me speechless.

Which is a good note to end on. Hope you've enjoyed it - there will be more next week...

Shat Day

2004-10-04T09:55:00.000+01:00

SHAT DAY IS HERE!!!

Quotes of the Month Archive: September 2004

2004-10-01T14:36:00.001+01:00

'The bollocks about the North West being all about whippets and fish and chips is put about by southern wankers at London-based newspapers.' (T. Wilson)

'If hunters want us to respect their rural ways of hunting down animals and killing them in a brutal fashion, then they have to respect our urban ways of the Police leathering people with big sticks in a brutal fashion.' (Anonymous)

'Hunters do it because they enjoy the feeling of power from controlling one set of animals to scare the living shit out of another until it's too tired to get away whereupon it is ripped to shreds in the most painful way possible. The funny feeling they receive as their horses move underneath their nether regions is an added bonus.' (Anonymous)

'London consists of five mad people and thousands of people trying to avoid them.' (R. Noble)

'Your typical sports journalist has the intelligence of a dung beetle and a slightly less-pleasant odour and are almost invariably drawn from the ranks of ex-school bullies and dropouts.' (Anonymous)

'Sometimes it takes a dominatrix in your living room to make you sit up and think "what the hell am I doing with my life?"' (T. Max)

'If mediocrity had a theme tune, Athlete wouldn't quite be able to release the B-side' (C. Higgins)

Shat Day is nearly here!

2004-10-01T14:36:00.000+01:00

Oh yes.

Shat Day is nearly upon us.

I thought I'd best explain this perverse fascination I have with William Shatner. I'm not a Trekkie by any stretch of the imagination - I don't avidly feel the need to watch every episode. But I do enjoy Star Trek, particularly the original season. William Shatner was essential for this. I won't go into the details of th rumours behind the scenes or indeed during episodes, but anyone who's seen "Galaxy Quest" will have a pretty good idea of what Shatner was like. But this isn't the reason why I like him.

I like him for his willingness to send himself up. He's a big pretentious fool, as is shown by his previous "musical" effort, The Transformed Man, with its legendary cover of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", (which I actually feel has more musical and entertainment value than the original, which I've always found to be a tad plodding, and not one of the Beatles' best efforts). But he is never shy of making a joke at his own expense. He is never afraid to mock his own image. He's also the high prince of cheese, but he KNOWS he's the high prince, and revels in it.

My friend gave me a signed photo of Shatner in his Kirk heyday, which he got off E-bay. This seems to have perversely brough me luck, so it adorns the wall of my office now. People think this is strange - it probably is - but it never ceases to put a smile on people's faces, which is always nice.

"Shat Day" is the name I am using to refer to the day on which Shatner's second album, "Has Been" is released. I am particularly excited about this, because one of my all-time favourite recording artists, Ben Folds, has written, arranged and produced most of this album, as a return favour for when The Shat provided a wonderful contribution to Folds' first solo album, "Fear of Pop vol. 1", playing the role of the spurned lover on "In Love" and "Still in Love". In many ways, I'm viewing it as a Ben Folds solo project on which Shatner guests per track.

It will probably be very strange, and my friends are all thinking I'm a little odd for going with this, but it's something I think will be a musical milestone. The best review I've seen of it finishes with the following lines:

'This CD is beyond good or bad. It is from a world where concepts such as "unique" and "indispensible" live happily alongside "hilariously, brain-tearingly wrong".'

I think that's wonderful.

Rant of the Week: Sorry is the hardest word

2004-09-29T13:05:00.000+01:00

So Tony Blair has uttered an apology "of sorts" then.

"The problem is I can apologise for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I can't, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam," he said. "The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power."

But Mr Blair, no-one is asking you to apologise for removing Saddam. Even the most ardent anti-war protestor could not argue that getting rid of Saddam was A Good Thing. He was guilty of countless atrocities against his people, and if Blair and Bush had gone to war citing this reason the protests would not have been on such a massive scale. But no, we went to war because of the alleged presence of weapons of mass destruction, and his contravention of United Nations Resolution 1441.

Hang on, though, we ask. Surely if he was in breach of a resolution, that was a good reason to declare war? No, not really, because resolution 1441 was in relation to allowing weapons inspectors to view all of his stockpiles of weapons. He was in violation of this, we were told, because he was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, and was not revealing them to the weapons inspectors.

But if there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, then surely he was not in breach of resolution 1441? So therefore, this reason for going to war is invalidated. I know that subsequently, stockpiles of "normal" weapons were found which had not been declared, which strictly speaking put Saddam in violation of 1441, but this was not the case that the US and UK were pressing. The majority of the UN were in favour of allowing the inspectors more time to finish their job. But the US and the UK were not in favour of this - we didn't have time, we were told. Saddam had weapons of mass destruction ready to be unleashed at any moment (possibly even within 45 minutes...).

So the war went ahead, and so did the protests. I was a member of the march in London. I marched because I thought we were not doing things properly. We should have followed the advice of the UN. The majority of us also thought this was a botched attempt at an invasion led by Satan's own bottom-wiper, Rumsfeld, which had given little thought to what would happen after Saddam was deposed. Well, good thing we weren't proven right in this case isn't it? oh....

But back to Tony Blair. It was a joy to hear him on the ropes in an interview with John Humphreys on Today this morning. He received the kind of grilling that has been sorely lacking from any member of the so-called opposition in this country. He was really floundering to justify his actions, but he could have got out of this situation by simply giving the people what they want. What people want is for him to come out and say "I am sorry for leading the country to war on a false basis." We wouldn't mind if he followed this up with "...but I am not sorry for removing Saddam." We just want an acknowledgement of his own error of judgement, instead of a constant attempt to justify his actions on an increasingly fragile basis. And until he admits this, then he will ensure that he goes down in history as the second-most reviled Prime Minister in history (lets face it, no-one will ever be hated as much as Thatcher, loathsome woman that she is).

You're all Mentalists

2004-09-27T13:34:00.000+01:00

I happened to look through Guardian Unlimited's front page today. At the bottom is a list of "most frequently visited pages in the last week."

Number one is "Rabbi 'dismembered by rent boy.'"

I am worried about my fellow lefties...

Blown

2004-09-27T11:01:00.000+01:00

Apparently, the big news in certain papers today is that the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown has totally broken down.

Yes, right. And I'm the King of some small island community which specialises in exporting pink fish and worships a minor deity.

Several newspapers are obsessed with turning the top tier of our Government into some real-life version of Eastenders:

TB: "Right, get ahhht nah. I've had enuf of yer backstabbin' ways."
GB: "Ya can't do it t'me Tony. Ya need me."
TB: "Slaaaag"
Cherie: "Leave it, Tone, 'e's not worf it!"

Strangely believable isn't it?

No, actually, it isn't at all. We are dealing here with two highly professional, highly ambitious people. They will not exactly let personal rivalry get in the way of keeping their association at the top of the tree. I'm sure they're mature enough to let personal issues take second place to business interest. Regardless of broken promises, disagreements, you cannot have a functioning Government when the relationship between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has "broken down".

Yet we continue to have a functioning Government (despite the best attempts of Lucy Ferry to "bring it down"). The fact is, Blair and Brown both know that if they let personal issues get between them, they are opening the door to the other parties, and risking losing power. Which is something neither of them want.

If there IS a rivalry between Brown and Blair, you can bet that they won't be conducting it in public. Instead there will be a lot of behind-the-scenes manouevering, something which journalists are not privy to observing. And something which, above all, will not damage the health of the party. Who do these journalists think they are, the Conservatives? "Oh, we've had a leader for a year, and we're bored of him now, let's get another one!" I think not...

So here's a message for those people from the Mail, the Express, and other downmarket rags like them. Stick to something you know. I hear Eastenders has a new producer soon...

Behold the C

2004-09-24T16:12:00.000+01:00

Congestion charging is A Good Thing.

It has made my life considerably easier, and I think that the more of London which has it, the better. Despite Commuter Boy's repeated rantings, public transport in London is exceptionally good, and most areas are well served.

Which is why those muppets protesting about the congestion charge being brouth to Kensington and Chelsea need to be shoved up their own exhaust pipes.

Anyway, this is just a little link piece really as I discovered this while on a bit of a blog troll. Hope you agree with what she says - she's very good.

And another thing...

2004-09-24T14:19:00.000+01:00

Phil Alexander, editor-in-chief of one of the best music magazines on the market at the moment, MOJO, was interviewed on Today this morning in relation to the fact that it's the 50th Anniversary of the first Fender Stratocaster going on sale.

However, whereas normally, every utterance from Mr Alexander is greeted with delight by me, unfortunately he proved himself to be embarrassingly wrong about something today.

He claimed that the guitar, and in particular, the Fender Strat, has been the most important muisicla instrument of all time.

This, quite clearly, is arse.

If only he'd qualified that sentence with "of the last 50 years" instead, I'd have agreed with him. But to claim the guitar has primacy over, say, the Piano, is ludicrous. Modern music was founded on the piano. And I sincerely doubt that anyone will ever compose something to rival the sheer techincal virtuosity of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues, or to rival the emotion contained in the works of Chopin or Debussy.

But then, I'm a touch biased. I'm a pianist.

(Quiet at the back there!)

Toy Story. On Ice.

2004-09-24T13:11:00.000+01:00

Why?

It's a simple question. What is this bizarre obsession with recreating films on ice? It's an American import, I think, which normally excuses most things. But there're adverts for it everywhere in London!

I mean, right, ice skating is extremely entertaining to watch. It's very difficult (I've been skating three times in my life and will be happy if it's an experience which is never repeated), the people doing it are normally very easy on the eye, and there's always the possibility that someone might fall over and have a limb sliced off by another skater.

And films. They're great. Toy Story is a fantastic piece of entertainment, (though slightly inferior to A Bug's Life, I think. Nothing will ever beet Heinrich the fat caterpillar).

But ice...skating...and...films?

Who thought that one up? What vile substance was coursing through their body to make them think this would be a good idea? A comedy cowboy and a space man ice skating? The very idea makes my head want to break down. I mean, surely half the fun is watching Buzz come to terms with the fact he's not a toy. How does that translate to ice-skating? Is he going to be having this mid-toy-life crisis while performing a series of highly technical and advanced pirouettes?

No please, please, please for the love of God and my brain, please keep ice-skating and film separate.

A little message...

2004-09-24T13:06:00.000+01:00

Thank you to those of you who posted comments after my last entry. I was feeling a bit out-of-sorts, and going through a blog-related crisis.

It made me realise however, that I'd lost sight of why I blog. I blog for entirely selfish reasons, to let me vent my anger and relieve my stress. The fact that there are people out there who enjoy reading the poisonous dribble that emerges from my brain is a very pleasant surprise.

So anyway, yes, just wanted to say thanks.

And also an apology. I've got two log entries written at home and forgot to bring them in. Well, that's not strictly true. Being the muppet that I am I copied them onto my back-up hard drive, rather than my ZIP disk, but brought the ZIP to work. Great move Dave...These entries had rather drained me of my spleen, but i promise I'll post them as soon as I remember to bring them with me.

In the meantime however...

I must apologise

2004-09-21T14:17:00.000+01:00

Yesterday's post was a touch harsh.

Firstly, Belle de Jour didn't deserve such a kicking. She only does what everyone in a blog does and writes about her life. And at least she has a purpose. "Random Acts...", "Belle...", these blogs have a definite direction, detailing events in their work and lives which are compelling. And a damn site better than the vast majority of blogs out there, including this one.

The problem with this blog and many others is that we have no definite direction. I'm just collecting a series of rants, and in writing them down, it proves strangely cathartic. But not that compelling. No-one wonders "oh, I wonder what's happened in U-Bs life since yesterday". And the reason is that it's just not that interesting.

So come on people, how about suggestions of a running theme? Most of you who read this know me - what can I develop as the subject of my blog?

Actually, come to think of it, I haven't yet published one of my conspiracy theories...hmmm, there's an idea...

But back to Belle. I wasn't annoyed at her writing, it was more the people who have appropriated her that I objected to. It's part of my downer on London life in that it's just like being at school again. There's the "cool kids" who sneer at anyone and everyone, and that annoys me.

And then again, I was also still fuming about that git in the Lotus Elise.

Anyway, this is a fairly purposeless meander through my mind at the moment, and I have a lot of work to do. And lunch is coming to an end. So I'll leave you with a recommendation:

My Neighbours are Hoors

Highly entertaining stuff.

Rant of the Week: No-one cares.

2004-09-20T14:15:00.000+01:00

I have read that the blogger known as "Belle de Jour" has finished blogging.

Newsflash: NO-ONE CARES!!!!!!

Well, that's not strictly true. Sad London-centric trendies / journalists care. This is the only explanation for the fact that this non-event made page 2 of the Guardian on Saturday. Below is the opening paragraph from this article:

'Her web diaries have intrigued as much as they have titillated. Journalists, literary detectives and showbusiness agents have long puzzled over the identity of Belle de Jour, the blogger who chronicled life as a London call girl. '

Now, there are many things to take issue with here.

Firstly they have not intrigued. There is no intrigue in her writing. It is functional, and it is designed for lots of sad gits to jerk off over their powerbooks too. So I guess, credit where credit is due, it has "titillated".

The next bit: Journalists and showbusiness agents may have long puzzled over her identity, but that's because they have fuck-all to do with their time. The vast majority of them are pointless wasters who should burn in the fires of Hades. I very much doubt literary detectives have given THAT much of a shit to be perfectly - they've got far more important things to worry about.

Now, apparently, on the basis of her blog, she's got a six book deal. Now is this entirely down to literary merit do we think, or is it more likely that they heard the pitch "she's a call girl..." and immediately said "quick, let's sign her!". Let's not beat around the bush - sex sells, and that's why she's making the leap to the big league.

This annoys me, for many reasons. Firstly, this kind of thing has been done before, and in far better a manner. For an example see The Sexual Life of Catherine M, by Catherine Millet (First published in French as La Vie sexuelle de Catherine M. in 2001).

Secondly, it annoys me that someone like this can "jump the queue" because of her content. I have several friends who have been struggling to get their work published and out in the open for years, and a good deal of it in my opinion is far more enjoyable than any of "Belle..."'s pretentious waffle. But they're not talking about shagging so they're not going to get a publisher.

Of course, in all the above I am conclusively disproving my opening point that no-one cares. Quite clearly, I care. Although for entirely different reasons to those envisaged. You'd expect crap like this to get onto the pages of the Sun, but page 2 of the Guardian?!!!!

I'm probably coming across as bitter and envious, as it surely is every blogger's dream that they get picked up on by a publisher, and their works would make them lots of money and famous (I would deny this charge, but I'd be lying - deep down part of me would love that).

But for me this issue, more than anything else, has served to highlight the "too cool for school, London-centric" focus of the media these days. You can imagine crowds of media-luvvy-types stood round at a highly exclusive party going "ya, ya, but who IS Belle de Jour, darling?" and thinking that because they care, surely everyone else should too. These people need to get over it. I'm sick to death of being sneered at by trendy people with their fashion mullets because I happen not to be wearing the latest t-shirt from Abercrombie and fucking Felch. These people need to fuck off and die.

And there's a special message for one of them who drives a silver Lotus Elise, who helpfully gave me the wanker sign out of his window yesterday because I wasn't speeding, but doing the speed limit. If I ever see you again, I will smash your fingers into a bloody pulp using the door of your car, then reverse it very slowly over your head.

The further adventures of Commuter Boy...

2004-09-17T13:54:00.000+01:00

After another crappy journey today, I decided that, rather than risk the tales of commuter boy completely overwhelming anything else on this blog, I would create and entirely separate section for him.

It shall be a commuting diary, to record the trials and tribulations affecting the average London commuter. Most of it will be very dull, there may be some praise, but basically it's an excuse to have an entire blog slagging off South West Trains.

Apologies for the lack of posting yesterday, but I really didn't have that much to say. But today is another matter...

The aftermath...

2004-09-17T13:21:00.000+01:00

So, children, what have we learned about the world this week?

Thanks to certain members of the Countryside Alliance, demonstrations have been banned from being held in front of the Houses of Parliament. Marvellous. That may seem a bit of a non-event, but when you think about it, it basically means that next time people choose to protest against, ooo, lets say, an unjustified act of war, they will not be able to make their presence felt in the vicinity of the seat of Government.

Thanks to these eight muppets, future protests have been scuppered completely. Did they think about that when they burst in and uttered their inanities at the front bench? No! You'd think that they would have planned what to say in advance, given that they were going to make major news bulletins across the country, if not the globe. But instead, what priceless bons mots did we get?

"This is unjust."

Life changing, eh? And because some inbred chinless wonder decided to do this, we can no longer protest in front of Parliament. They interviewed one of them on the Today programme this morning, and at least he had the decency to sound thoroughly ashamed (though as to his protest that they received no inside help, that's a load of arse. I've been in there - it makes a rabbit warren look like Milton Keynes.)

Actually, to anyone vaguely interested in this issue, the Today programme has been consistently good all week. Even "Thought for the Day" was good today, where the Bishop of Oxford basically said what I've just said, but with less swearing, and far greater articulacy.

Now I agree that the actions of a minority should not be taken as indicative of an entire sections belief. There were probably several thousand protesters who simply made their point peacefully. But I do take issue with the statement released by Simon Hart, that loathsome individual who I have directed so much bile towards previously. He stated:

"The Countryside Alliance does not condone the actions of this minority."

But hang on a minute. Isn't this Simon Hart speaking? Didn't he state the following on Monday:

"The government has chosen the path of prejudice and spite - the reaction it unleashes will be entirely its own responsibility."

This strikes me as a form of tacit approval for any action taken by protestors, as the blame will not lie with the Countryside Alliance, but with the Government.

So the end result of their protest is that the ban on Hunting has been approved, with the only side-effect being a ban on protests outside Parliament. Well done the CA!

If only they'd displayed some of the wit and panache of the anti-hunt protestors on that day. I read today of a group he dressed up as animals (foxes, rabbits, stags) and played a concert opposite the Houses of Parliament. The highlight of their set? A rendition of "Do you really want to hurt me?"...

AAAARRRRGGGHHH!

2004-09-15T17:05:00.000+01:00

I'm being driven slowly mad by the noise of hovering helicopters.

ALL BLOODY DAY!!!!!!

I know I'm getting a bit "nimby-ish" here but when you're trying to knuckle down and work (stop laughing) it's not helpful to have the equivalent of a giant bee buzzing conituously in your ear. Just bugger off! BUGGER OFF I TELL YOU!!!

It's at these moments I drift away into my fantasy land and start thinking about rocket launchers...buildings...sending flaming helicopters down into the massed ranks of horse boxes below...MWA-HA-HA-HA-HA.

And what does our beloved Mr Hart say?

"The government has chosen the path of prejudice and spite - the reaction it unleashes will be entirely its own responsibility."

So that'll be the protestors getting beaten by riot police then? Great move.

What a cock that man is.

I am most pleased...

2004-09-15T13:34:00.000+01:00

...despite the evidence to the contrary.

I have added two shiny new links to new blogs on the right hand side - Octagon and Chocolate Digestive. Both are very good friends of mine who I don't speak to nearly enough, and both have lives which are considerably more interesting than mine. Go. Read. Now. It's reading blogs like those that make me think "why do I bother" because they're so much better and more worthy.

The soldiers outside my room are being particularly mad today. They started this morning with continual calls of "Dave" which confused the hell out of me, I can tell you. I think they were trying to get the attention of another of their number, but I can't be sure. Then one of the horses started going mad and threatening to stove in my window. They seemed to think the best way to deal with this was to shout at it and call it a "wanker". Hmmm.

They've quietened down a bit now. But it's a nice little insight into what goes on behind the seemingly regimented and organised front of Horseguards.

They're also closing Whitehall today due to a planned protest. This may prevent me from going home. Strangely, the only thing that annoys me about this is that the protestors are probably the Countryside Alliance led by Simon "The Sun says I'm right"Hart. Oh for a pack of slavering hounds at my beck and call...

Rant of the Week: Stupid People (pt. II)

2004-09-15T08:15:00.000+01:00

Two words.

Countryside Alliance.

I'm sure people would be more willing to accept their points of view, and listen to their arguments, if they didn't choose the world's greatest cretins to argue on their behalf.

Case in point: This morning, on Today, Simon Hart (head of the Countryside Alliance) was ebing interviewed. Now, given the grilling you'd normally expect on "Today" from John Humphreys you'd expect that you'd bone up on your subject, get some good examples and facts to hand.

But no.

Not Mr Hart.

What does he do?

His opening, main gambit is:

"All you have to do is look in the Sun today and see that every single person opposes the ban. And what the Sun says is usually indicative of what the population thinks."

Errrr.........NO!!!!!!!!

There are so MANY things wrong with that statement it makes my brain sore just thinking about it.

I loathe the Sun. I mean, I REALLY loathe it, in the same way that Saddam loathes Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld loathes humanity. I really REALLY hate it, and if there was ANYTHING I could do to bring it crashing to the ground, (preferably in an actual sense, burying certain people in News International with it), I would. It is an organ of hatred and perversity. It does more to damage inter-racial relationships, society relationships, and open-mindedness than any other newspaper.

But the thing is, it has to conform to company opinions, and when that company is News International, and the opinions are largely those of a certain CEO who owns most of the Western Media. I find it quite frankly incredible that a paper so against immigration is actually being prompted by the opinions of an Australian emmigrant, but then hypocrisy is quite common really in the media world.

Anyway, the thing is, the Sun no doubt received a great number of letters on the subject of hunting, but given that they take a Pro-hunting stance, they're hardly likely to:

a) cater to or be read by people who are anti-hunting, and

b) print letters that contradict their stance.

So a sample of letters in the Sun is hardly a balanced view of the opinions of society.

Secondly, of course, there's the fact that the Sun is read primarily in the South East. It has a vast readership, but if you go to, say the North West where I hail from, or the North East, you'll find very few people read it. Primarily this is because people haven't forgiven the paper for its coverage of the Miners' Strikes, or Hillsborough. But the point is that again, the Sun fails to account for a large and prominent part of society.

And for the leader of a supposedly serious part to use the Sun as a basis for his argument is unbelievable. Does he realise that people are not fooled by media bias? Does he himself not understand how the partisan press works? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, he should do the decent thing and resign. Or let himself be hunted out of his job.

I'm sure there is a reasonable case for hunting to be put. Personally I am against it, but then, I know that I'm not fully informed. I have never lived in an area of rural England where hunting is prominent, so I don't know the impact it has on local society. But as long as there are stupid, STUPID people like Mr Hart putting forward their case, the Countryside Alliance is never going to make headway, and never going to convince sceptics.

Noble Prize

2004-09-14T17:51:00.000+01:00

Firstly, apologies for the dreadful title of this post. Comedy is not my strong point, as regular readers / long-suffering friends will know...

As I mentioned yesterday, we went to see Ross Noble last night. I first heard of him on "Just a Minute" on Radio 4 where he proceeded to ramble aimlessly, and win by a country mile. He struck me as a very funny, possibly unhinged, definitely Geordie man, so when the chance to pop along and see his latest show, "Noodlemeister" came up, I leapt at the chance.

I was a bit worried at first, as there were very few people in the audience, but luckily there seemed to be a mad rush five minutes before the start. One of the reasons I was worried was because it must be hard for a comic to play to a fairly empty audience. But the primary reason was because of my absolute mind-numbing fear of being singled out by a comic and made the butt of their jokes for the entire evening. Or being invited on stage in that resolute stalwart of the unfunny comic, audience participation.

But luckily, by the time Noble wobbled on stage, I was happily masked by a pretty large crowd. And as Noble is a funny man, he didn't rely on audience participation. I say he wobbled onto stage, but that's not the best description. I could say he glided, but that implies too much grace...stumbled, that's the word I'm looking for! And pretty much from the first moment he was off into his own fantasy world. He pinched an umbrella from an audience member and that was it - have prop will caper.

His act was utterly surreal yet grounded in mundanities - bodily waxing / doodling, and a memorable section about being abused by the Queen of the Seagulls in Liverpool - I really was crying with laughter at that point. The only slight waver was when he turned onto the subject of Guantanamo Bay. It's just a little too scary and horrific or be a subject for comedy. But other than that he reminded us that you need to keep a sense of humour about you in the world. The Guardian review mentioned above refers to the joke about his Dad, who suffers with Parkinsons Disease. His Dad found it extremely amusing, we should point out, but this idea of using humour to overcome problems sums up Noble.

And not only that, he's an excellent diplomat. At the end he took questions from the audience, and one referred to "the irritating tarts" who had done nothing but talk loudly throughout his encore (even their boyfriends turned to them and said "for the love of God shut up!) Now it looked like the audience were going to get nasty, but Noble diffused it, by turning the joke on us. Having said how he would have liked to stab said people in the head for talking, he then righteously lambasted us for applauding us while groaning at an earlier reference to a poo sculpture.

And full marks also for laying into the tosser from Essex who accused Newcastle of being "a shithole". Noble's response?

"Have you BEEN to Romford?"

Commuter Boy 3

2004-09-14T09:32:00.000+01:00

It wasn't TOO bad today I suppose...

The 8:06 turned up at 8:20 - no explanation was given as to why it was running so late, and when it did turn up, despite having been one of the first people waiting for the train, I couldn't fit in as everyone else seemed to have positioned themselves miraculously in front of the doors.

The next train that turned up wasn't supposed to stop at Mortlake. It stopped. And sat there. For a good couple of minutes. But the doors remained resolutely shut. So "officially" it didn't stop there.

The 8:24 was a vast improvement however. More-or-less on time, it was fairly quiet (by which I mean there were a couple of empty seats). I had to ask a girl to move her feet from the opposite seat so I could sit down, which did NOT make her happy at all, and resulted in tutting and sighing until she got off in Putney (and hopefully stepped into a large pile of dog poo, which seems to be all pervading in Putney). However, by this time the train had already stopped unexpectedly between Mortlake and Barnes.

Luckily we had a driver with at least an ounce of compassion for his passengers, and he kept us fully informed.

"Apologies for the delay. There is a train ahead performing an illegal emergency shunting manoeuvre."

I could almost sense him going "WHAT is this MUPPET doing?!!!!!" But he was very calm and professional. So this made the journey quite pleasurable, despite it being delayed. But then it seemed we were deposited at Waterloo in the middle of a mini-hurricane. As I stepped out into the street in front of the station, huge swirls of detritus were blown up from the street and into our faces. A strip of toilet roll missed my face by inches and landed on someone's suit (Dear GOD, I hope it was clean). The usual stale urine smell assailed our nostrils meaning that we really couldn't breathe until the Royal Festival Hall. I swear I could see fellow commuters collapsing from voluntary asphyxiation either side of me.

But these are just silly whinges. It wasn't too bad today in the scheme of things (apart from me being half an hour later into work than normal). And I do have a fairly pleasant day in front of me. I like having a big project or two to get my teeth stuck into. And when I can lock myself away in my office to do this while listening to some good music (Chopin Sonatas this morning), you really can't complain.

It's not got much better...

2004-09-13T17:24:00.000+01:00

...in fact it's got worse.

The muppets who masquerade as the workmen for our office succeeded in fixing up my white board today. Now bearing in mind the request to do this was submitted four weeks ago, and an estimated completion date was set for the 9th September (if they'd let me have a screwdriver I'D have done it) it wasn't going entirely to schedule anyway. But to top it all off, despite them having a spirit level, they have succeeded in attaching the board at a "jaunty" angle close to 45 degrees, scratching the surface, and breaking the fixings. Why? I was nice to them! I offered biscuits! Why?!!!

I've also succeeded in breaking one of my PCs permanently, and having two people I work with convinced that my software is the root of all evil.

I'm not too pleased with myself really either. Our office is fairly segregated. The senior people outnumber the support staff by about 5 to 1 and are extremely busy, so you don't often see them. Someone new started this week, and at lunch she came up to the normally deserted coffee area. "Hello"s were exchanged, and then I retreated into a shell and said nothing more. I thought about this for a long while afterwards. Regardless of the fact that I often clam up when our senior people are around (they scare me), this person was new, and I should have been more friendly.

I have since attempted to make amends for this by going up and apologising for being rude, and introducing myself properly. She probably thinks I'm weird and a stalker now.

Never mind, at least I'm not one of the soldiers who patrol outside my room and regularly get abused by their seniors. I thought that was the stuff of Monty Python sketches, but apparently not...

Ah well, off to see Ross Noble tonight, all being well, and he's a funny man. I shall report back on him tomorrow.

Have fun y'all.

Coffee...must have coffee...

2004-09-13T11:48:00.000+01:00

I think my brain is broken today. So far I have managed to:

1) Spend 5 minutes trying to swipe into work before the security guard came and kindly pointed out that I needed to use my work pass to do this, not my Oyster card.

2) Been beeped by a scooter - A SCOOTER - to hurry up when crossing the road. Oh the ignominy...

3) Managed to comprehensively break my PC so that I need another.

4) Managed to burn myself on my morning cup of tea.

5) Finished all my chocolate for the day before mid-day...Nooooooooo!

I really hope this isn't going to set the tone for the rest of the week.

RE: I really don't care...

2004-09-10T20:41:00.000+01:00

I don't want any mention of the word "hypocrite"...

I'm touching on football again because I think here are two erudite and fairly amusing contrasting views on the England squad blanking the media on Wednesday night.

Scott Murray thinks they should 'put up or shut up'.

Richard Williams offers the case for the defence here.

I'm inclined to agree with Mr Williams. Just criticism is something that any figure in the public eye should expect and should not complain about. Comparing someone to a donkey however, is taking it a touch too far - no human being should have to put up with the amount of abuse that David James has had heaped upon him recently. Yet our press seems to forget that we are dealing with human beings. Just look how Emile Heskey was treated.

So go on, lets have a quick straw poll. Who's for and who's against?

The Von Detroit Soledad Stripes

2004-09-09T17:48:00.000+01:00

I figured, now I have a blog, I have permission to rant / rave as much as I like about gigs, concerts, performances I go to see.

Recently we've been going to a succession of concerts by bands from a fairly closed community in America. It all started when, a couple of years ago, my dear friend Andy loaned me "De Stijl", the second album by a then-unheard-of band called the White Stripes. It was pretty good, and I acquired a couple more of their records. Of course, this was about the same time they made their great break through, but before they achieved the position of "the NMEs favourite wet dream" which they occupy now. And through listening to them, and reading what they had to say, my friends and I discovered a host of similar bands: The Soledad Brothers, the Von Bondies, the Detroit Cobras, etc. They're all vaguely similar, but pretty good to listen to.

Now, we've managed to see each of these bands once in the past 6 months (we've seen the White Stripes twice - not necessarily a good thing), and one very interesting thing has come out of it. It seems the better the band, the smaller the venue. Let me explain...

We've seen the White Stripes twice, as I mentioned. The first time was at Brixton Academy. Now, I'd had my knee operated on, and was fairly immobile, so not in the best of moods for the gig. But they were OK - the acoustics didn't do them justice, and they were slightly po-faced when compared to the inspired lunacy of their support band, Whirlwind Heat (utterly dreadful, but very funny. The bassist had his instrument stolen from him mid-gig by the singer, then spent the rest of the time alternately giving the drummer a shoulder massage and kicking the singer who was writhing on the floor in ecstasy).

The second time was at the Alexandra Palace (I refuse to call it "Ally Pally" because that sounds ridiculous). It's a massive venue and they were mediocre at best. The crowd was full of Hoxton trendies (that's me being as polite as I possibly can) who shoved to the front for "Seven Nation Army" and then buggered off to the bar. Jack White though was a gimp. I swear, I thought many times I was at a Darkness concert. He was wearing skin-tight lycra and every song had a 15-minute guitar solo appended to it. Which is OK for a couple of songs, but gets thoroughly tedious by the tenth song.

So all-in-all, fairly poor.

The next biggest venue was the Astoria, where the Von Bondies played. Here they were supported by The Subways, who were pretty good, in a cut-price-Pixies kind of way. They won the Glastonbury unsigned band competition, and have been touring ever since. Of course, it didn't hurt their chances that the female bassist was wearing the shortest denim skirt since Jordan last stepped outside for a fag...Anyway, so far so good. The next band, Auf Der Maur, were not to my tastes, but lots of people enjoyed them. I maintain that no band needs three guitarists, a keyboard player AND a bassist, but Melissa Auf Der Maur was a compelling frontwoman - she was pretty chatty and engaging.

Then the Von Bondies headlined. I think the NME summed it up best when they said that "there were about 11 songs that couldn't be told apart except for DNA testing". It was a nice trick to have the female backing vocals around the Jason Stollsteimer wail, but there was very little interaction apart from a totally limp "blues-preacher-man" plea at the end "to feel the love". It was totally hackneyed and unconvincing. Coupled with the fairly middling standard of most of the material, you come away with the result "fair-to-middling".

The Soledad Brothers played Jongleurs. Small, and very sweaty, but far more suited to the rootsy blues they were doing. Again they did the "blues-preacher-man" thing, but the difference was, they kept it up from the start of the gig to the end. They chatted, they bantered, and never let the personae drop, thus making it a lot more convincing. That coupled with the mental Baritone sax playing led me to decree that this was a Good Gig.

Finally, we saw the Detroit Cobras last night in ULU. They were far more countrified than any other band we'd seen, but the lead singer was engaging, sarky, and chatty. It made the atmosphere totally different, and consequently, everyone enjoyed the gig far more. Again, another Good Gig.

I'm rushing here a bit, because I'm conscious this is a mammoth post. But basically my point in all that the smallest venue we were at was Jongleurs, and it was the best gig by far, despite the fact that not many people had heard of the band. Conversely, the biggest gig was the Alexandra Palace performance by the White Stripes, and it was limper than Kenneth Williams' left hand. But it got the most coverage, which is slightly unjust. It just goes to show, that although a lot of people may have heard about a band, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll be good live.

It's clear that you can't expect to enjoy a gig by a band on the basis of their reputation alone. Unless they're the Pixies...

Commuter Boy 2

2004-09-09T08:37:00.000+01:00

The sheer beauty of this morning's incident on the train could not be passed up for posting, hence this sequel to "Commuter Boy".

I was waiting with the insanely huge throng of very tired, mostly miserable looking people at Mortlake station (and getting quite a few glares from the millions of be-suited clones because I was going into work in my civvies, having left my smart stuff in the office last night). The usual eight carriage train turned up....

Credit where credit is due, eight carriage trains are a very sensible idea. Some Londoners look at me strangely when I say this, but anyone who has traveled on....ooo....First North Western will appreciate the advantage of running slightly more than two carriages.

...but anyway, I digress. The carriage we're waiting in front of (yes, myself and a lot of commuters are very sad and have specific carriage strategy) was deserted, and all the doors were locked and labelled out of use. B*gger. So we frantically disperse, running up and down the platform to try and find another carriage with space. One carriage shouldn't make that much of a difference, you'd think, but in actual fact that means there's in the region of 100 people trying to cram themselves in elsewhere - roughly, an extra 14 people per carriage. And bearing in mind that it's nigh-on impossible to run from one end of the train to the other before it leaves, most people go in the surrounding two or three coaches...mmm, 30 extra people on an overcrowded train...

Consequently, a lot of our journey was spent with our noses crammed into other people's armpits (luckily I was crow-barred between two lovely, sweet smelling ladies, which I though was my due reward as normally I get stuck behind the guy with flatulence problems). About midway through the journey, this woe-begone voice comes over the PA.

"We would like to apologise to passengers in the rear of the train for the severe overcrowding.

This is due to the out-of-use carriage in the back portion of the train. We have absolutely no idea why this carriage can't be used. It was like that when we picked up the train this morning, and we can't find anyone to ask about it.

We are sorry for the inconvenience this will cause."

Priceless.

Reasons to be cheerful...

2004-09-08T18:01:00.000+01:00

I'm conscious that, far from being a barrel of laughs, my recent posts have had all the humour and joie de vivre of a 4000 page treatise on wallpaper paste.

I'm not naturally so miserable, you know. True, I feel that the most spectacular things I've done in my life are behind me, and I dwell on every single little mistake I've ever made until they each develop the proportion of huge craters in the path of my life. But the fact is, I'm (relatively) healthy, I've got reasonably secure employment in a job that is interesting and provides me with the opportunity to learn, write my blog etc. I've got some of the greatest friends anyone could ever wish for in life, and I've got a girlfriend who suits me better than anyone I could ever have dreamed of, and who consistenty surises me with the amount of love and support she gives me.

I actually started this blog partly as a form of relief for her, as by ranting into empty space it relieves my stress, and means I'm not beinding her ear with all the things that annoy me today. It's strangely cathartic and I enjoy it. I don't know if anyone reads it at all, and I'll be thoroughly embarrassed if they do, but hey...it's fun.

Partly I feel I need to put my comments into perspective every time I read one of Tom Reynolds' entries on his blog. Here is a man who has more than enough reason to complain about existence, but he rarely does so without a good natured literary wink and a smile. And scrolling throuhg the blogs I realise that quite a few people do what I try to do, but far better than I do, (check out Justin Horton - very good, very witty, and far more thoughtful than i could hope to be).

But anyway, I'm waffling. At lunch, I was trawling through a random section of blogs and came across the blog of one Hector Padilla. It seemed pretty good, and then I came across quite possibly the best quote I have ever seen. It's from someone called Tucker Max, but I think it sums up life quite wonderfully.

Enjoy, and speak soon.

'Sometimes it takes a dominatrix in your living room to make you sit up and think "what the hell am I doing with my life?"'

Rant of the Week: I really don't care...

2004-09-08T14:02:00.000+01:00

My feeble attempts to not care any more about football are...well...feeble, to be honest.

I can't help it, it just assails my senses like perfume saleswomen on the first floor of John Lewis (not that I ever go near the perfume counter. Oh no, not me).

It's just that when you know a little about it, people ask you what you think, and it's very hard to state "I don't care" when in certain matters, I do.

I succeeded in missing the England game on Saturday, having about one million and one better things to do with my time (paying a visit to my oft-neglected friends in Lancaster just one of them). But honestly, you would think that it was the end of the world. Seeing all the papers on Sunday I thought "wow, we must have been thumped 4-0". Then upon checking the paper, I discover that actually, all we had was a 2-2 draw.

Yet this result has been appropriated by some of our wonderful organs of news dissemination as a clear indication of the decline and fall of Eriksson's England. This has, of course, nothing to do with the fact that said same reporters have loathed Eriksson from day one because he is - shock, horror - Not English (Newsflash for these little gibbons - a large proportion of the world is Not English, I'm afraid. Therefore I'd advise you to lock yourselves away in your little hovels and avoid any contact with the outside world. Except to buy a noose with which to end your pitifully bitter and sad lives.).

I thought that the press had a particularly appalling approach to the world that day, actually, when you consider what had gone on in Russia. Alan Green (normally good value just for being more bitter, twisted and angry than I am) was deeply offensive in the grand scheme of things, talking about "disasters" and the suchlike. I won't detail things unnecessarily, but instead direct those of you with a little time to Martin Kelner's "Screen Break" column in the Guardian on Monday - he puts it far better than I could.

The point is, as I may have mentioned before, football is ONLY A GAME. It's not "Our National Game" as a large portion of the national press like to think. For one thing, there are many others which could lay claim to that title, and I for one would choose Cricket. If England lose tonight, so what? No-one will die because of it (unless our exemplary fans conduct themselves in their usual manner again), and it's barely even likely to affect our chances of qualifying. Yet the press have decided, having destroyed Emile Heskey's career, they now want both David James and Sven Goran Eriksson to be destroyed too. I think really, we should sack Eriksson and let the newspapers pick and coach the team. That'd solve a lot of headaches.

Anyway, sorry to go on about football again, but it's bugging me. I'll really try to ignore it, honestly. Well, at least until tomorrow...

Commuter Boy

2004-09-06T11:12:00.000+01:00

AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That just about sums up my recent experience of England's FANTASTIC train system. £40 to travel on the rail equivalent of a push bike. If said push bike was slower. And colder. And full of annoying, vaguely psychopathic people. I would DEARLY love to be locked in a room with a selection of weaponry and the CEOs of both Virgin and South West Trains tied to a chair. Whimpering. Begging for mercy. And I would give them NONE!

Actually, what I'd really like is to confine them to an eternity of travelling standard class on their railway trains. Laugh as the baby vomits over them. Sneer as the announcement "we're extremely sorry for the severe delay to this service" comes over the PA while the scary drunk sharpens his knife and leers ominously at them.

Let me explain.

On Wednesday evening I had to travel to Cumbria (via an overnight stay in Preston) for a wedding (which was highly enjoyable). This neccessitates a trip on the infamous West Coast Main Line. Now I'm used to the legendary crapness of this service, hailing as I do from Blackpool, but working in London. However, on Wednesday, they surpassed themselves. First of all, I was allowed to book a train in advance from Euston, for the princely sum of £37 (apparently, despite booking three weeks in advance, the cheap tickets had all gone. I have been booking on these trains for four years and NEVER managed to get a cheap ticket, despite booking on occasion three months in advance). Anyway, they failed to tell me that Euston station was closed to long distance traffic. The nice people on National Rail Enquiries informed me of this after I rang the night before to make sure there was no delay. So I then found out that, instead of going direct from Euston, I would have to get a train from Marylebone to Banbury, chenge at Banbury, get a train to Stafford, change at Stafford, and then get a follow on to Preston. This journey takes about 5 hours, as opposed to the three it should have taken from Euston.

But with good grace, I made it to Marylebone, where I caught a hideously overcrowded local service (no replacement services laid on by Virgin, you note). The train left on time...and consequently broke down after 15 minutes. They kept us nicely informed, but this didn't help as the minutes ticked on. Eventually they fixed the fault on the train, and I arrived in Banbury 50 minutes late, having missed my connection.

So next I hopped on the next northbound train, which happened to be for Manchester. Now, Manchester is much easier to travel home from, (which begs the question why National Rail Enquiries didn't tell me about this). And it would have been easier, had the train not stopped for no reason. Several times. With no explanation. We saw the guard once, at which point he informed me "well, you can go to Manchester if you want, mate, but most of it's closed off due to a bike race" (at 8:30 in the evening?!!!!!!!!!). Anyway, by this point I'd arranged a lift from my dear sister from Manchester to Preston. And I would have loved to have told her we were running late, had we known. But instead, the first indication we were very late came when we went through Crewe 5 minutes before we were due to arrive in Manchester (note for Americans and other aliens - Crewe is NOT 5 minutes away from Manchester).

Upon arrival at Manchester, and having verified that the next train to Preston didn't get there until 20 past midnight, we left to discover that, contrary to what we were told, Manchester was very quiet, and not a single road was closed off due to a Bike Race, or anything. We eventually arrived at Preston at 11:30, six-and-a-half hours after we set off, but still 50 minutes quicker than if we'd stayed on the train.

Now normally, you would expect money back from a journey which should have taken three hours, but took nearer to seven. But Virgin Trains being Virgin Trains, I'll probably get a derisory 25% back (as has happened in the past - they always find a reason to wave their obligations to fee-paying passengers which are laid out in the Passenger's Charter). This time, I'm not going to take it though. I'm going to scweam and scweam until my head falls off...

Needless to say, for the return journey (Euston still being closed), I opted to drive back. More stressful, but reliable, on-time, and it only stops when you want it to.

And South West Trains? Well, I commute every day on them into Waterloo. There is what I have described as a black hole outside Waterloo, where trains get swallowed up (usually due to the fact that "we're waiting for a platform to become available" - for GOD'S SAKE, surely the same number of trains arrives every day - can they not do anything about this?!!!!!!). However, today this really took the p*ss. 20 minutes sat outside Waterloo station doing NOTHING! We could have walked there in that time. I know 20 minutes is nothing compared to say, ooo, 3 and a half hours, but proportionally, it's only a little less (for Maths Bods among you, the journey should take 25 minutes maximum).

So this is why I hate trains. And the thing is, it'll never get better unless the Passengers all go on strike. There really should be a general passenger strike on offending train companies - see how their CEOs like the fall in profits. i'm sure there are other ways we could get into work. Or perhaps everyone should take co-ordinated annual leave. But that's never going to happen. However, something needs to be done to show these fat little rich men that enough is enough, we will not take their cr*p any more.

Personally, I blame Thatcher (whenever anything is bad I always blame Satan's daughter).

Rant of the Week: Bobby

2004-08-31T16:27:00.000+01:00

Less of a rant this week, more of a lament.

Football is shite.

Fact.

I loathe myself for liking it. I loathe myself for paying attention to the antics of people who behave slightly less well than Michael Moore would do if given five minutes alone with George Bush and a baseball bat.

The fact is that football as I grew up with it doesn't exist any more. The Premiership has destroyed any possibility of teams such as my "beloved" Blackpool getting to the pinacle of footballing achievement. The money circulating in the Premiership could help sort out the debts of several small countries. And increasingly the football itself is an irrelevence. People are more concerned with the fact that Wayne Rooney has been tied up and spanked by a 60 year old in leather than the fact that he hasn't kicked a football in four months, yet is still worth £25 million.

Actually, the Wayne Rooney thing is a good example of what winds me up. Firstly, who actually gives a shit that he's been sleeping with prostitutes, apart from his fiancée (who is understandably a tad peeved)? You give a 17 year old lad £20 000 a week - what's he going to spend it on? Copies of the Bible?

Secondly, in what world is it deemed proper to put a picture of a middle-aged prostitute on the front cover of a newspaper with the headline "Don't Fancy Yours Much, Wayne"? This woman probably isn't too pleased about the fact that she earns a living by spanking teenage lads who earn more in a week than she does in a year. Yet in addition to this, she has to put up with a national newspaper saying "Hey! You're a Boot!" on its front page. Wankers.

Basically, football is the equivalent of "Coronation Street" for lads. Few people care that much about the result, they just want to find out about who Keiron Dyer is shagging this week.

I am generalising here a bit. I have a good friend who is a Torquay fan. He lives and breathes his team, and despite living in Windsor, he drives to see them most weekends. He cares about how well they does. It upsets him when they lose, but not so much that it affects his life. He only gets upset if there wasn't an enjoyable game played - even if the majority of the good play was done by the opposing team.

On the other hand, I have an acquaintance who thinks this attitude of giving plaudits to the other team is an example of weak minded-ness. He claims to support Arsenal but has never seen them play. And every week, his mood changes depending on the weekend's result. You'd think, given Arsenal's recent form, he'd be happy, but no. In fact, in the middle of last season,. when Arsenal were unbeaten in the English league, but not doing so well in Europe, he was calling for Wenger to be sacked, because "'e's French, in'e? 'e don't understand the European game."

And it's attitudes like this that make me hate football. Yet the bald truth is that, however much I hate it, if I stop following it, that means there's a whole section of society who I can't communicate with. As loathsome as it is, football is a great ice breaker in conversation, and particularly when moving around with a job, it's useful to have something like this which can be used to build bridges. Not many people want to discourse on my favourite subject, music, but there'll be plenty of people wishing to pass comment on the big non-event of football this week.

Anyway, this whole rant was sparked by what happened to Sir Bobby Robson. The Guardian has some good comment on this, in particular, a decent article by Gordon Strachan last week. It's a shame when someone who loves their club so much can't bring them the success he and they so desperately want. But sentimentality doesn't balance the books unfortunately. And similarly, the manager is fairly unimportant today when placed next to the gigantic egos of some players (Dyer and Bellamy - stand up you worthless scum).

I just hope he doesn't get too downhearted and realises the important thing behind this.

It's only a game.

"I'm not doing anything tonight, and I'm not doing anything tomorrow morning..."

2004-08-31T16:12:00.000+01:00

Well, the boys did it. They talked the talk, and now they've walked the walk (I'm sorry, that's utterly lame. Please kill me now).

Yes, my beloved friends have completed the Coast to Coast walk, and they even seem to be fairly sane after it. At least, as sane as they ever were. The G-Man has already been in contact, and given my blog some free publicity, which is handy. It seems that the final leg was the hardest, as many traps befell our party. It seems there were various temptations that lay in wait...alcohol, curly-haired temptresses...luckily, there were some calm heads who guided them through the traps and on to Mount Doom...well, nude swimming at any rate.

So congrats boys on a job well done.

They've all gone mad!!!

2004-08-26T09:51:00.000+01:00

Well, after a day of inactivity from the walkers, where I became convinced Rich had led them to some hideous end (possibly involving Sirens in an "Odyssey"-esque manner), they have spluttered back to life. And it's not looking good. Ibs appears to have cracked and is brandishing lethal sticks, while the G-man's feet look like they're doomed. I think conclusive proof is provided however, by the fact that they were pleased to have found a Weatherspoons...

Will they make it to the end alive? I don't know about you, but I'm on tenterhooks.

On a different note, isn't it nice to see what's happening to "Sir" Mark Thatcher? Quite what he did to deserve his knighthood no-one seems to know, but we know that he specialised in f*cking over small foreign countries (unlike his mum, who just vigourously shafted our pleasant land). But seeing what's happening now to him, you just feel that there is something like karma that exists in the universe...

Bobbins

2004-08-25T14:05:00.000+01:00

As you can see form the right hand side of the page, I've added a new thingy listing what I'm listening to this week. Mostly today, it's been The Doors "Strange Days". It's a very good album, worth buying for "Love me Two Times", "Strange Days", and "People are Strange" alone.

But there's one fly in the ointment. One misjudgement. One turd floating in the clear blue waters.

Horse Latitudes.

Anyone who knows this album will know what I mean. If you DON'T know the album, I urge you to go out and listen to it, simply because I want to share my pain with people.

It's AWFUL.

It's at the very beginning of Jim Morrison's pretentious "I Am A Poet" phase - I think the praise for the compelling (if slightly juvenile) lyrics of "The End" had gone to his head.

"When the still sea conspires an armour
And her sullen and aborted currents breed tiny monsters
True sailing is dead
Awkward instant
And the first animal is jettisoned
Legs furiously pumping their stiff green gallop
And heads bob up
Poise
Delicate
Pause
Consent
In mute nostril agony
Carefully refined
And sealed over."

Total and utter arse. And that's just the lyrics. His delivery of them rivals The Shat at his very best / worst (delet as applicable).

Just felt the need to share that with you...

P.S. Girish's blog is down and there's no word from the kiddies. I truly believe Rich has led them all to their Doom.

The road goes ever on

2004-08-24T09:32:00.001+01:00

A further update last night from the quest for the East Coast:

"Good day today. Was let loose with the map...."

Now this is a bad thing, given that Rich (who is the kind gent keeping me updated) is not the most reliable of people with a map. It's not that he can't read them - he can - but he's convinced he can find quicker routes between places than any map. And also, as can be guaged from his previous messages, if he sees an attractive lady, then he's lost to us...

"...Found I'm a little more direct in my route planning than Mr Wainwright. Got charged by some hungry cows. Jumped the nearest wall I could find. Fastest I'd moved all day."

The omens do not look good while Richie-boy is at the helm...

Rant of the Week: Stupid People (pt. I)

2004-08-23T14:30:00.000+01:00

A bonus rant this week, simply because I need to bring someone's utter and complete STUPIDITY to peoples' attention.

I was listening to the Radio last night ("Face the Facts", Radio 4, 21:00 - yes, I know I'm a pretentious arse). The programme was about persecution of innocent people by extreme animal rights groups. Now, obviously this programme is not going to present the most balanced of views, and anyone they interview from the animal rights side of things will probably be chosen from the more insane side of the spectrum. But one guy on there REALLY took things too far. I won't name him (mainly because I've tried to forget he exists, in the same way that if you ignore the madmen on the street they go away). But this individual went on radio saying:

"We're dealing with the animal holocaust here."

WHAT?!!!!!!!!!!!!

Right, backtrack a bit. What we're dealing with here is experimentation on animals, for medical or other purposes. What we are NOT dealing with is the decision of a group of people to systematically exterminate an entire section of society across the globe. The term "holocaust" is being malappropriated on a worryingly increasing scale.

IT'S NOT APPROPRIATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The holocaust was a singularly disgusting act in our history and applying it to something which (let's be fair) is not on the same scale is wrong and deeply disrespectful to the many thousands of people still alive today who were related to people who suffered and perished during the purges. Yet this incompetent little tw*t said this three times during his interview. You know, sod animal experiments, let's just experiment on this little ape! He clearly has no advanced cognitive functions. He is trying to compare the mass extermination of a people based on little more foundation than the fact that they follow a different form of religion, to the experimentation on, ooh, maybe 200 fluffy little animals. THIS MAN IS A CRETIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now of course, if he were ever to read this he'd think "Ah, sympathiser, let's burn him!". And, no doubt like in the rest of his life, he'd be wrong. I don't agree with animal testing. Or at least certain aspects of it. I certainly think there has to be a better way of testing out deodorants, make-up etc. than brutalising creatures. But if an experiment on an animal will help find a cure to save someone the life of someone close to me, or even me, then I will not object. This is a case of double standards, I know, but I think some testing is justified, when the benefits and outcome of said testing will result in the prevention of human suffering.

I think that the whole animal rights movement would do well to disassociate itself from the rants of little oiks like that buffoon last night. He gives an organisation which has some valid points and arguments, (and which does a lot of good) a bad name, and does far more harm than good.

Quest for the East Coast...

2004-08-23T11:41:00.000+01:00

The wandering band of fools were ominously silent on Friday and Saturday. Then lo-and-behold, I received the following on Sunday evening...

"Presently in Shap. We are tired, but content. There are foxy women in Shap."

Glad to see they have their priorities straight. I have also discovered that, when not chasing ladies, they are posting on Girish's blog. Complete with gruesome pictures. I'm so happy it's raining...

More brownie points for my physio, following more helpful advice and machinations on my behalf - she really does rock.

Free advertising service

2004-08-21T22:25:00.000+01:00

My beloved compadre and fellow musical terrorist Andy is commencing his career as a solo performer this weekend, having the opening and closing slots at the "Unsigned and Unplugged Festival" at SpaceTwoTenTwo in Whitechapel (that's him in the picture at the bottom left on the web link). He's got a rather special talent on acoustic guitar, and rather a nice voice. So people should go and hear him. Even if he is appearing in a too-trendy part of the world...

By the way, no update from the intrepid wanderers today. Therefore I assume that one of the following will have happened to them:

1) They've been stranded halfway up a mountain

2) They've fallen off a cliff to their doom

3) Girish has gone mad and killed them all in a fit of whiskey-fuelled rage

4) They've inconsiderately chosen to hike up somewhere where there's no mobile reception...

Rant of the Week: The A-Level "fiasco"

2004-08-20T17:18:00.000+01:00

And now we have a special new feature on my blog...a rant of the week entry!

Oh yes, finally I can vent my spleen in public. And what better way to kick this new chapter off than on the subject of A-level results.

I remember one day in 1997, the trepidation with which my intrepid group of friends and I ventured out of the deathtrap known as "Bob" (a green Y-reg Triumph Acclaim) and into College, knowing that when we came out, our lives would be changed forever...OK, that's a bit overdramatic, I know, but it was pretty important for us - our A-level results were going to determine whether we ended up at the Uni or job of our choice, or instead plunged us into St Bobbins' School of Needlework for the Terminally Dim. It meant a lot to us. And certain newspapers and commentators conspired to dump copiously over our achievements.

To come out and see the "outraged" headlines of certain rags that "A-Levels are too easy", and that there was a Government conspiracy to ensure the "Dumbing down of our youth" left me foaming at the mouth. Do we sense a bitterness from them? How many of the people writing these articles did badly at school? How many missed out on their A grades because they were too cool to study? I cannot believe they are STILL persisting with this pathetic and irritating denigration of the achievements of school children.

What kind of country do we live in when we complain because people are too bright? You cna bet all the money you've got that if the A-level pass rates started to fall, these same venemous little sh*ts would be up in arms claiming "Teaching Standards are Plummeting", and "Schools Failing". It's utterly pathetic, outrageous and wrong.

There may BE a case for A-levels getting easier. Certainly teaching nowadays is more geared towards getting results and focussing purely on exam syllabus material rather than subject-wide analysis. But I think it's a little childish and cruel to trumpet this on the front pages of our newspapers for all the world to see in the most lurid way possible. As usual, our press has failed to be socially responsible in the search for sales and shock value, and has ended up being utterly reprehensible.

There we go. A bit of a brief rant, as it's late and I need to get out of here. But hope you like it and agree with it.

Bone-crunching...

2004-08-20T14:06:00.000+01:00

Hello one and all

I feel the need today to praise a group of people who work for that much-maligned institute, the NHS.

Yes, my favourite people in the world today are physiotherapists. I've had two lengthy experiences of NHS Physio over the past couple of years, and on both occasions they've been friendly, knowledgeable, helpful, and tireless. I guess there are some perks of the job - if anyone's rude to you, you can make sure they get a REALLY painful work out that week - but they must see so many middling cases (of which I no doubt am one) and yet still seem to remain upbeat and positive, and give each person a thorough examination and work out.

Basically, this is a bit of a waffle really, but I just wanted to acknowledge these lovely, lovely people - I'm looking forward to my upcoming sessions...

I've lied already...

2004-08-19T22:11:00.000+01:00

I'm back sooner than I expected...

A few of my beloved and closest friends have decided to do the Coast-to-Coast this year (I wimped out and am doing it next year. Possibly with the same people. Mad, crazy fools).

I thought it's only fair to publish the regular updates I get throughout the course of the ordeal.

"Day 1:

Aha, top of the first peak. A small hill named Dent. It is windy. Which is fortunate as it's dried us off from this morning's soaking."

Doesn't it make you feel glad to be a lazy sod?

Argh! I've finally done it!

2004-08-19T13:00:00.000+01:00

Bugger.

I've finally done it. I've got myself one of these blog thingies.

I've been meaning to for ages, even though a) I've got nothing interesting to say (unlike Tom Reynolds, author of the blog "Random Acts of Reality", which is required reading every day) and b) I'm not (officially) insane (unlike "Scaryduck". The name says it all). But this is response really to my beloved friend Jon's comment that "You have to be a bit odd and narcissistic to do one of these". It's pretty much true, especially at the moment when you think that no-one except me is going to read this, but hey!

Anyway, I'm going to go, after this pointless introduction. I have decided that tomorrow will be the start of my blogging life...procrastination is the finest of arts...