That was 2002 - Epiphany of the year

Gazing over the Gulf of Correyvrekin and its detumescent whirlppol, after years of thinking about it, and after travelling by car, boat, bicycle and foot.

That was 2002 - Worst Record (Jenny from the Blog)

No, the worst records are the ones that are bloody awful, but with catchy tunes. This is why I've been humming this dire load of self congratulatory horse shit since it was on the radio when I was getting my haircut this afternoon. "Don't get fooled by the rocks I got, I'm just Jenny from the block...". Yeah? Think this stuff gives ya credibiliity? Well fook off.

Almost as irratating as George Michael's "take me seriously as a credible artist please" title, Listen without Prejudice.

You're a fabulously wealthy pop star son, I'll listen with as much prejudice as I please, thank you.

More rants to follow....

Excellent gag from Neil - why Glasgow?

Count Dracula was out on the pull in Glasgow and he spent the night doing
the usual, drinking Bloody Marys and nibbling on the odd unsuspecting young
lady's neck. Just before sunrise he is wandering along Argyll Street making
his way home.

Suddenly he is hit on the back of the head, he spins round but sees no one
there. He looks down and there, on the floor, is a small sausage roll -
strange he thinks.

He strides on and a few yards further down the road - BANG - back of the
head again. He whirls round but again nothing to be seen, looking down,
there on the floor, a small triangular sandwich.

Once more he moves forward for a few strides and CRASH, back of the head
again, turns round, nothing there but on the floor.. A small sausage!

He walks on a few yards when he feels a tap on his shoulder, with a swirl of
his cape he spins as fast as he can. He feels a sharp pain in his heart.
He falls to the ground clutching his chest, which is punctured by a small
cocktail stick laden with cheese and pineapple. On the ground, dying, he
looks up and sees a young female. With his dying breath he gasps "Who
the f*** are you?".

She replies "My name is.."


" Buffet, the vampire slayer"

Life as blog

I've been looking at Rebecca's Pocket. This is considered the definative blog, written by somebody called Rebecca Blood who's written a book on all aspects of blogging which I thought I might buy.

Rebecca's Pocket is beautiful, with film revues, book revues and all sorts of stuff. Her main interest is in American Public affairs, but given that she's American that doesn't seem unfair. But jeez, she must spend her entire life doing the thing...

Meantime I do think this place needs a clean up. Watch this space for some intelligent archiving....

Two whales in a mini car

To Rhos on Sea yesterday to meet up with Neil, his mum Vi and Neil's old college mate John. I hadn't seen John since... well since the summer actually, when Neil took these awful pictures (weight issue), but before then I hadn't seen him for decades. We had a great, totally non-alcohol fueled time - I havn't laughed so much in ages....

A false friend

I'm just listening to a documentary about German film makers.

Is there any way that all EFL teachers could get together and explain to the entire German speaking world that that in English "so called" means "some people would call this thing this, but we'd call it something else;" and not "what is known as".

Pyrotechnics - Life in a War Zone

If we've had a quiet Christmas, Frazer's has been a tad more spectacular. He looks to have been on a bender since at least Monday Night when he came round while Neil and Sue were watching telly at about 11pm, saying he'd been chucked out of his house for being pissed and obnoxious and asking to come in (and share our continued festive cheer supplies). Sue declined, on given grounds... He's been emerging from time to time since, at various hours of day and night and launching really noisy fireworks in low trajectories across the street. I watched last night as a couple of rockets exploded on the roof of Rod's opposite - fortunately Rod isn't in residence, as I suspect he'd have wanted to discuss the issue with Frazer with extreme prejudice. All this accompanied by frenzied barking from Shadow the Dog. (Cats Bob and Dave meanwhile are keeping a low profile round our back door.) It's all quiet so far today, but I'm not convinced Frazer has depleted his arsenal just yet....

Set the Controls for The Heart of Midlothian

So, life imitates Blog? I was thinking about driving up to Edinburgh while playing Pink Floyd, so I could use the above headline....

A continued Merry Christmas to all our readers.

Dreaming of a wet Christmas

Yo ho ho! Well what a miserable posting that last one was! I actually sent out about 200 emails wishing Christmas Greetings to folk and including the Christmas Web Card address and I've got loads of great replies from all quarters. Of course, as has happened every Christmas for the last four years, they all ignored existence of the web card, but hey, maybe there are a lot of people out there who don't know how to follow a web link, who knows....

Last week's little flurry of snow did turn out to be all we were going to get. Though it was dry yesterday, it looks to be the traditional soggy Boxing Day today. We had a fairly cool and relaxed Christmas; Neil was here through the weekend, and then we had Mandi, Terry and Tom over on Christmas Eve. I cooked Boeuf Bourguignon which was utterly lush, despite Sue's attempt to sabotage it by suggesting adding flour, then mustard, and in a final desperate throw, putting horseradish sauce on the table while I was serving. I removed it, muttering "I've not spent four hours creating a delicately perfumed Boeuf Bourguignon and then having people put horseradish on it..." to general sniggers. These bloody vegetarians.... I used a French recipe I found on the net - as usual I had to hit the dictionary as I can never remember if gousse as in gousse d'ail means a clove or a bulb of garlic - a fairly fundamental thing to get wrong...

Christmas Day was pretty groovy. Sue cooked a huge Turkey Dinner for me (what did I say about vegetarians?) and then it was just slob out with the Bond Film, the second part of the amazing Shakleton which I missed a few weeks ago, a rather wacky German Movie called Run Lola Run on F4 and the seasonal bottle of Laphraoig. Today I'm up for a soggy stride out across thills.

What chores?

Well, it's done. Over the last four years I have been creating a Christmas greetings web site each year. This has gone through a cycle which is evident for looking at them; 1999 is enthusiastic as I learn to use web design skills for the first time, but pretty crap - the old Angelfire pop-up is still there, though the drums are a nice groove; 2000 is easily the best, confident and ambitious, done when I was in to it and with enough time taken to do it properly, with cool music from the John Renbourne open tuning book; 2001 is over ambitious, doesn't achieve what I had in mind fully and has no music, while the one I've just done was something of a chore, taking three or four nights tio do -and I'm still to email people with the url. To be honest, over the four years I've learnt html and web design skills, but I've no longer any illusions about working in web design. Quite apart from the age thing, web design has moved very quickly from an amateur to a highly professional practice, over the course of only about three to four years - in fact the life of the period I've been doing the Christmas web site. To keep up now and produce a really good looking web page, I'd have to get my head around Macromedia Flash, or at the very least Dreamweaver. For the sake of an online Christmas card once a year it really ain't worth the candle... But then at least this year I've learnt how to loose the .htm/.html prefix off my web addresses...

Anyway, an initial Merry Christmas to all....

Soap

I can't believe how good The Archers was this morning. Debbie has discovered that her own father, Brian, is also the father of Siobhan's love child. In a tightly-scripted and brilliantly acted episode-long scene she confronts him when he comes in at 2.00 in the morning. Brian finally owns up, and agrees that first thing in the morning he will have to tell Jennifer (his wife, Debbie's mother - pay attention at the back there) the truth.

There's 7 1/2 hours to the next episode, so I've set the alarm clock. It's really time I got a life.

Told ya so

It's snowing!!!

Welding Rod

It's been pigging cold the last few days. Up to yesterday it was bright and clear with a blue sky, but farking chilly. I walked down to the Post Office and nearly froze. Today it's overcast with that particular horrid freezing fog over the hills. (Sorry, 'thills'). All this looks to mean one thing - snow! Could we be up for a white Christmas?

While I'm working here at the desk in The Blue Room, I can see Rod working on the garage he's building at the back of the former pub opposite which he owns. Not sure what he's planning to do with it - there's nobody living there at the moment. Right now he's putting together some sort of metal framework, possibly for the roof, using a welding kit. Every so often he starts up, with the bright blue welding light cutting through this Northern gloom - there, he's just started again.

Funny, yesterday the Sun was shining brightly on the River, and you could see it shining through the woods over Rod's garage. But now it's gloomy, there's no sign, you wouldn't know the River was there. I must put some piccies of Broadbottom and the house on here some time...

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TV Anne Diamond in the back

I'm getting seriously worried about this phenomenon. Basically what happens is that my brain appears to be processing a morphemic shift while retaining the original phonemic load.

In other words I keep waking up with songs going through my head, where the sound stays the same but the meaning has changed.

This could be related to what I think of as the 'Rimbawan' effect. When I worked at the British Council I used to find myself singing "Wimaway" all the time:- ("In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight..."). This went on for months, until I realised that it started every time I picked up the file on an Indonesian student called Mr Rimbawan...

Talking of that lamentable organisation, nice to get a long email from Mary in Nairobi. She works for them and they're messing her about, which, as we used to say in the Southampton Bus Company, is about par for the course.

Reddish lady sings the blues

Yesterday I had an individual singing lesson with the excellent Yvonne in Reddish. Yvonne charges a lot - £25 an hour - but she really is brilliant. She's also about as a-list a muso as I'm likely to encounter in a professional situation, being one of the backing vocalists in Simply Red. I was quite nervous, but I got a hell of a lot out of it. By the end of the session I was singing with far more confidence than usual, and stretching both my range and the duration of my singing. Yvonne has the ability to make you feel empowered about what you do and with a much greater sense of your own abilities - a pretty fantastic combination from someone who I presume has had no formal teacher training. (Although come to think of it, she does run workshops in schools.) To be honest, after three months off the cigs, Sue and I have both noticed in the last few days we have got much fitter than we were, without noticing the change happening. It happens with things like finding yourself going up staircases two stairs at a time that you used to have to stop on for a break halfway up. Last night I was singing far more strongly than I did last time I had a lesson with Yvonne, which must be well over a year ago. This was why I was nervous though - I thought I was going to break down in embarressing hacking coughs, but it just didn't happen. Anyway this is all very encouraging. When I first gave up I didin't notice much difference, and in fact ended up in hospital with an asthma attack after not having a tab for a month. I'd sort of decided that because I hadn't smoked that many to start with - I only usually smoked with alcohol - that giving up hadn't made any difference, but obviously it had. They do say three months is a watershed. (See Molesworth's geography exam - "a tool shed is where you keep tools, a wood shed is where you keep wood, a watershed is where you keep water. Do not waste my time in future.")

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Smoke em if you've got them...

It's three months since either Sue or I have had a cigarette, the night before the final Celidh, when the bloody awful Chris spent the evening blowing smoke in our faces.

In his Black Watch kilt, frilly Lord Byron shirt and Caterpiller boots. The guy's English, natch.

How to celebrate? Sue suggests a couple of really big, fat, cigars...

TWTWTW - Same gag in a different order

Back down south at the start of the week. To Nigel's again to discuss recording some tracks. The idea is to spend the evening checking out how we could interface backing tracks with his digital multitrack machine, whether it would be possible to record live drums without a click track, and explore options for mastering. However all this seems far too boring and complicated, so we spend the evening drinking Chablis and watching videos of this year's Glastonbury instead.

Next day, despite the mother of all hangovers, I'm off to a property auction, particularly interested in one of the flats I saw in Bournemouth two weeks ago. That one goes for exactly the price the agent predicted, but some of the others vary wildly. The room is packed with Lovejoy/David Dickenson clones and their women. At the back a guy is taking bids over the telephone from someone in Thailand. The mystery phone bidder buys a property that caught my eye, a run down looking flat on what is clearly a really rough estate in Gosport, with a sitting tenant. In other words, it's a nice little earner. The guide price for the place was £15000; it sells to the phone bidder for £20k.

This, then, is capitalism.

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Biting the Bullet

There's a million and one things to do around the house, so this fine Sunday morning I got up ready to get with washing, cleaning, tidying and buying concrete to finish the steps I've been working on for the past three years.

So I put my CD's into alphabetical order. (Well, I've done A - G so far.)

Strangely, I've never done this before, although the vinyl's always been in proper order. I guess although it must be nearly ten years since I bought my first CD, the collections taken time to grow (wow! maybe when they're in proper order I could count them, like I used to with the vinyl when I was a kid. I always assumed by now my album collection would stretch to the ceiling round three sides of the house.)

Anyway, I've always liked to play the game of seeing what sort of disparate artists the simple act of placing in alphabetical order throws together. How about this for a supergroup:-

Vocals - Al Green
Guitars - Rory Gallagher, Peter Green
Keys - Herbie Hancock

Wallop! That I'd like to have heard, although its not that difficult to imagine how it would have sounded. However, possibly rather more interesting (and involving rather more raising of the dead), might have been:-

Together at last!! The Chemical Brothers, Patsy Cline and John Coltrane!!!

That I would like to hear.


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Even better than the real thing

Slightly disturbing feature on my recent visit to Jem's. He asked me if I'd been up any Munros this summer. (Regular readers will be saying "oh Christ, not this again".) So I said "yeah I went up Ben Vorlich, it's all on the blog" and then started talking about something else. So, a new aspect of bloggery; you don't need to tell people a story, just refer them to where they'll find it on the net. Imagine a future world, in which Blonde Saga and her mates are meeting up for a beer after the mall:-

Shaleen:- Hi, babe http://www.howareyou.com/?
Al:- Oh, http://www.cantcomplain.com/. But did ya hear about http://www.darleen.com/?
Shaleen:- Nah, http://www.wassup.com?
Al:- http://www.stonedeadcat.com/
Shaleen:- Oh, sweet http://www.jesus.com/!

All the above links are genuine with the exception (I'm glad to say), of Stone Dead Cat (maybe I should register it). I wouldn't recommend following any of them, although http://www.jesus.com/ seems a tad stark raving sane... So blogging as conversational shorthand, hmm...

Lookalike

Ben said he thought I looked a lot like Tim Curry, so I said, "what, you mean":-

although much to my surprise Ben wasn't aware that the excellent Mr Curry created the role of Frank N Furter (in which I saw him at the old Kings Cross theatre some time in the mid 70s before the RHS went global.)

I'd have happily settled for:-

But I'm fairly certain that what Ben had in mind was more:-

(Actually, he looks pretty cool.)


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