Through a glass, darkly

Frape

2011-09-05T09:05:00.008Z

Ironically, last night we watched ‘The Social Network’ on DVD. Ironically because, just before signing off at midnight, I visited Facebook and discovered a thoughtless but no doubt well-meaning third party had set up a community page on Facebook, without our knowledge or consent. The page, under the title of our family name (as in ‘The Smiths’, but not that), included a detailed map showing the location of our house. There was provision for the creator or unconnected third parties to add further information, such our telephone number, but not to alter the title or amend or remove the map.

This was worrying, because links to the page appeared on posts on the family’s (and other) FB pages, which also gave details of my daughter’s gigs. Effectively they said, ‘This is where we live, and this is when we’ll be out”. In the case of a burglary, it would have been enough to invalidate our contents insurance. As she is a young, female performer, we have also made efforts to ensure that information useful to stalkers was not readily in the public domain.

With advertised gigs coming up, I wanted to get rid of it pronto. However, getting the page removed appeared almost impossible. Facebook supply no means of direct contact, address or telephone number. The only option was to click ‘Report’, which led to a series of tick boxes, none of which were appropriate. I ticked the ‘Not a public place’ option as the closest, but a disclaimer made clear that, while FB would consider the report, they was no guarantee that the page would be taken down. I guessed it would take many reports to trigger a response.

Eventually I found I could claim ownership of the page, which allowed me first to change the address to a local government office in Edinburgh and make the page only available to Facebookers in Slovenia (in case, as rumour has it, even deleted accounts remain dormant), and then to delete it. There are signs that in so doing I may have also deleted the personal FB account of the person who originally posted the page, which is embarrassing but, frankly, tough luck.

I’d like to pretend that I achieved this through 1970s computer savvy and hours of machine code hacking, but no. Invited to suggest a contact for the owner of the page I gave my own email. The auto-response email from FB provided me full access.

Apart from the invasive facility to set up FB pages in other people’s names and reveal sensitive information about them, this exposes a laxity in Facebook’s access protocols which takes one breath away. Apparently an unconnected individual can take control of a community page and alter or delete information in it, without any evaluation or consent by either the original owner or Facebook.

Caveat redemptor.

Playing for Change

2011-05-19T08:43:00.003Z

This video is so mellow and so inspirational, it brought a lump to my throat.

Playing For Change | Three Little Birds

Winter Sun and Summer Rain

2011-05-17T17:29:00.017Z

It's a red letter day.

Daughter Kirsty's first album arrived this afternoon. In a big lorry. When the back was opened, it was like the Albert Hall inside, with a single pallet at the back.

But what a pallet! A thousand copies of 'Winter Sun and Summer Rain' - ten cracking original tracks, hot from replication in France. Tears, commitment and joy laser-burnt into plastic. Expertly mixed by the awesomely talented Nick Wilson at Dave Neal Studios (Dave Neal was Suzi Quatro's drummer).

Yes, I know. A thousand? It's the economics of the business. Less than 500, and you get duplication, not replication, which isn't half as good. Beyond 500 the unit cost drops radically, and it just makes sense to cover yourself.

That probably won't help, when we still have 900 bending the floorboards in the spare room in 2021.

Faute de mieux, I've been acting as her manager. It's a steep learning curve; drafting press packs, designing album graphics, arranging photo shoots and mail shots, negotiating with labels. BA (Hons) courses in Town & Country Planning don't prepare one for this, and it's one reason I've been such a rotten blogger. Not to mention the horrific overheads which make being an independent musician more of a calling than a career.

So here's the deal, loyal remaining bloggers. If you would like to be in at the start and invest in this limited edition indie album, it's £10 plus £2 P&P, and for you guys I'll include one of the real wood propelling pencils which are included in the press/DJ packs (apparently you have to include freebies to get anywhere), because you're special. And if you ask, Kirsty will sign it for you, ready to sell on eBay when she's famous.

Contact me at RMacleod at aol . com, and I'll give you the details.

And if you're in Maidstone on 18 August, she's playing a set at Pizza Express.

No place like Ddedwydd Nadolig

2011-05-14T16:51:00.002Z

Just had my mother-in-law on the phone, much exercised that her Christmas Cards haven't been reaching a relative in Wales. Put the address she was using through a free Welsh-English translator. Turns out she'd been sending them to 'Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year'. Fail.

Hannah Scott

2011-05-13T17:17:00.003Z

Achieved a small ambition last night in finally hearing Hannah Scott live. We weren’t disappointed.

Actually she had a mountain to climb. Neither the venue billing nor the tickets mentioned the supporting act, so she came as a complete surprise to the audience, who were there to hear Spiers and Boden (of Bellowhead), full stop.

It was a full house, not a spare seat, and they were full on folk fans. So full on that someone in the front row was stitching a hat whilst waiting for the show to start. I thought I’d be the oldest there, but most of us were. Very Sevenoaks.

I read somewhere that Hannah believes her live performances deliver something extra, and that’s true. You get the soaring vocals and the subtle lyrics and the skilled guitar and piano instrumental, but there is more. It’s the passion, I think, and the directness of connection. That voice which cries out, and then drops almost to a whisper. The intimacy of confidences shared and guards dropped.

We wanted it to go on, and I know she won converts.

I’m ashamed to say we sneaked out before Spiers and Boden were done. No disrespect; they are as good as it gets. But the SS had an early start, and we’d had our money’s worth with Hannah, and it’s just...I don’t know...Folk should be hot and sweaty. Three pints of cider and sunshine in a field or a tatty back room, a dog under the table and a crush at the bar. It’s a foot-stomping participation sport, not a performance art. Where under forties are allowed as well.

It was good to have heard her live and good to say hello (trying and failing not to come over as a pervy middle-aged stalker). She has a charming smile.

Thank you Hannah.

(Watch out for her new album, which she’s about to record in Italy; it’s going to be a good one).

Burn it to the Ground

2011-04-27T13:08:00.002Z

And another (I did warn you!). This girl writes songs quicker than Ernie Wise wrote plays...

New Song

2011-04-27T11:37:00.001Z

More to come...Plus K's first CD is due for release shortly.

BT: Not Very Brave

2010-10-18T16:57:00.002Z

I am not much of a rider, in spite of having lessons all through the school holidays of my childhood. It was the jodhpurs that put me off. They were the old fashioned type made of non-stretch cavalry twill that ballooned at the hip, and getting them off was hell. And while hacking out was fun, schooling, with all that 'Round the World', figures of eight and such like was really, really tedious.

I've only had one fall, when a cousin in Essex took me out for a gallop on a hunter. I lost the stirrups and came off, but landed on my feet and wound up running alongside hanging onto the reins (it was drummed in from an early age; "If you come off, never let go"). As falls go it was probably quite elegant, but it wasn't the competently casual look I'd been aiming for.

The last time I rode with any serious intent was when I was first dating the SS; I got run away with, but managed to remember one was meant to turn the thing, and that worked. I suppose I must have passed whatever test as a potential life partner she was putting me through.

There have been a few pony trekking outings since in the Highlands. On the last occasion we came down a slope so steep that the rear of my mount was more or less sitting on the ground, and I found my feet doing the sort of bent-kneed walking that children do in pedal cars. That time the SS and K so liked one of the Highland ponies that they bought it, which raised a few logistical problems, as we were returning on the sleeper.

Another piece of equestrian lore I was regaled with is that one should always try and stop a loose horse. The favoured technique is to stand in front of it as it careers towards you, and stretch out one's arms. Needless to say, when this has happened at point-to-points, I find a compelling reason for setting off in the opposite direction. While doing this once, I was put to shame by my 70 year old mother who stood her ground doing the heroic arm thing.

What all this is leading to is yesterday afternoon, when the SS received a call about an escaped horse. I don't know why they called her, but she went down and recognised the escapee as a stallion belonging to a neighbour. The beast had been trying to get to a mare, and was some way from home (the mare was a grey pony; apparently they use grey mares to get stallions in the mood at stud, which suggests gentlemen horses prefer petite blondes).

The stallion was very steamed up and overexcited, but with help they managed to get a halter onto it and walk it home. Since then we've been shown this video of the same horse, before it came here. It provides a clue as to how he got out of his field...and also as to why I prefer to leave catching horses to other, braver folk (sorry about the music; it's French).

A Summer Sabbatical

2010-10-01T08:54:00.012Z

BT been a bit distracted.

There's been a bit of this:

Butter wouldn't melt? Don't be deceived; she's the hound from hell. Escapologist, sadist, roller in and eater of the unspeakable. Chews cookbooks for breakfast and consumes fingers as a sign of affection.

A lot of this:

Bob's first car isn't the little runabout I'd anticipated. I can't tell you the hours we've spent under it. We can now change a gearbox with our eyes closed, and putting in a replacement engine (off eBay) was so far out of my comfort zone it might as well have been brain-surgery. What I don't know about bodywork would fit on a postage stamp. Some good father-son bonding in there somewhere, though.

Some of this:

One perfect day Bob and I paddled a couple of miles to get here - mostly in circles. The bay may have a proper name, but it's always been 'Houpadout Bay' to my family, ever since, on some picnic expedition in the 1930s, a visiting aunt exclaimed, "Hope I don't fall in".

And plenty of this:

Worth the Ride

2010-09-29T16:39:00.001Z

K's latest song. I'm proud of this daughter of mine.

I Wish We Hadn’t Let That Goal In...

2010-06-20T10:56:00.002Z

Last week I was paddling across Loch Etive with my son, under the soaring bulk of Ben Cruachan. It occurred to me that at 3,694 from sea level, the height of the mountain was over a thousand feet less than the depth of the sea bed in the Gulf of Mexico. We had arrived a few days before via a hundred mile detour, while engineers struggled to recover a railway carriage which was perched 40 foot above the road, after it had derailed at the foot of Cruachan. It brought home the magnitude of the task of capping the current oil spill, and the sheer, irritating, negative pointlessness of the current American diatribe of invective against ‘British Petroleum,’ and by implication, all things British, as Satans of the western world.

In March 1967 the Torrey Canyon, a tanker carrying 120,000 tons of crude oil, ran aground on the Seven Stones Reef off Cornwall and the Scilly Isles. The Torrey Canyon was a US built ship owned and operated by a subsidiary of the Union Oil Company of California. The Captain, Pastrengo Rugiati, who was held responsible for the navigational error which caused the disaster, was an Italian recruited by Consulich, agents for Union Oil.

The Royal Navy were working at the scene within four hours. 42 ships were deployed to spray over 10,000 tons of dispersants. Efforts to use foam booms to contain the oil were of limited success due to their fragility in high seas. In an attempt to sink the ship and burn off and break up the oil, the RAF and Royal Navy dropped 62,000lbs of bombs, 5,200 gallons of petrol, 11 rockets and large quantities of napalm onto the ship.

Bombing eventually sunk the ship and the oil slick was finally dispersed by favourable weather. By then tens of thousands of seabirds had been killed, together with huge numbers of marine organisms including all fish within a 75 mile radius. The resultant oil release coated miles of Cornish beach in brown sludge, in what was then the world’s worst environmental disaster. The slick stretched along hundreds of kilometres of the south coast of Britain and Normandy, killing most of the marine life it touched and blighting the areas for over a decade after. When I was living and working in Cornwall six years later, football-sized lumps of crude oil were still sweeping ashore from the wreck.

Mistakes were made in this first oil disaster. A lot of technological lessons were learned, and maritime law was changed. But one thing stands out to me; a national government which put blame on the back-burner and focussed its immediate resources on tackling the problem.

Today BP chief executive Tony Hayward is receiving further vilification for spending a day with his son sailing at Cowes this weekend. Not adroit of him, although I doubt the man has seen much of his family in the last few weeks. Mind you, I see that President Barack ‘the buck stops here’ Obama was pictured in the Chicago Sun Times sporting a White Sox hat and drinking beer whilst enjoying a White Sox game at the Nationals last Friday. Of course, as Obama is reported to have made clear, “I can’t dive down there and plug the hole. I can’t suck it up with a straw”.

Following its merger with Amoco (Standard Oil of Indiana) BP has as many (give or take one percentage point) American as British shareholders. The American designed Deepwater Horizon rig is owned by Transocean, essentially an American company (it originated in Birmingham Alabama, but relocated to Switzerland two years ago for tax reasons). It was operating in American waters, extracting American oil, under American licence and American supervision and regulations. According to the Wall Street Journal, one possible key suspect in the loss of the rig is flaws in the cementing process which plugged holes in the pipeline seal. That work was the responsibility of Halliburton - the world's second largest oilfield services corporation, with its headquarters in Houston, Texas.

We won’t know for some time whether the blame for this disaster lies with an American-owned company, a multi-national company with substantial American ownership, or simply the risks associated with cutting-edge technology. However, if the Deepwater Horizon disaster causes the United States to reassess its addiction to fossil fuels and finally brings it, kicking and screaming, from cavalier denial into line with the rest of the western world’s efforts to address the causes of global warming, it may turn out to have been a blessing in disguise.

Meanwhile, I detect a quietly spiralling back-lash of anti American resentment building in this country. We all feel powerless, but as our pension funds dwindle and news reports on the continuing spill vie with the latest deaths of British soldiers in Afghanistan, in what some perceive to be the latest of a series of American oil-inspired wars in the Middle East, the ‘Special Relationship’ begins increasingly to look like a rather one-sided and insubstantial political convenience. Those mid term congressional elections have a lot to answer for.

Exploding Head Syndrome

2010-03-19T21:15:00.001Z

One has these conversations after a couple of gins. You know the ones; when you discover you're not the only person who knows how many panes of glass there are over the door of No.10, Downing Street; who stumbles on a paving stone and then looks around to see if anyone was watching; or who has met Tom Baker in a filling station.

K and I were having one of these last night, and I mentioned what I'd never admitted to before; that sometimes, just as I was dropping off to sleep, I'd experience a sound like a pistol shot inside my head.

Her eyes lit up with recognition (and I sensed, relief), because she'd had that too. It sent me Googling, and it turns out, according to Wikipedia and other sources, that we've both had 'Exploding Head Syndrome'.

Good name. Nobody knows what it is or what causes it and there are no known side effects, but we are not alone. Apparently it coincides with stress (which probably explains why I haven't had it since I started my gap decade). Some people get voices or bells, but mostly it's like a gun or a bomb going off...except you know it's in one's head, not outside.

I'm intrigued at how this is going to look on my CV. "Known Medical Conditions: Exploding Head Syndrome." I've a feeling that this may not be a major plus, but like any child of the 60s, I'll wear it with pride.

Which reminds me, dear blog friends. I just don't seem to be posting as much at the moment and, loyal though you all are, I really don't deserve to be on your side bar. I'm not going to stop, and do please call in from time to time, but I seem to have temporarily lost my regular blogging mojo, so I really don't merit a mention at the moment, and I won't be in the least offended if you remove me pro tempore.

Besides, it mightn't look good, to be flagging someone with Exploding Head Syndrome.

The Sound of Tomtoms

2010-02-12T12:26:00.011Z

K passed her test recently, and we set off on Tuesday to collect her 'new' car from my sister in Wedmore. The idea was that we would return in convoy, me hunched in the passenger seat with my fingers crossed, navigating K; the Social Secretary following behind. Expecting that we would separate en route (one way or another), she borrowed a TomTom navigator.

Being an old school cartophile/mapini (lover of maps) I've disdained these things, so the journey down to Somerset became a war of wills. I admit the irritatingly know-all TomTom rattled me, especially on the motorways. On the smaller roads it became a bit hyperactive, getting over-excited miles ahead about junctions where we just had to go straight on anyway, and imperiously demanding that we turn left at sharp bends where there was no other way to go. By the time we arrived, having bred successfully (in the past, not on the M4), I had begun to feel redundant. Navigation was about the only remaining thing I'd been useful for.

An evening in the pub and a takeaway curry were probably not the best preparation for the journey home. Not wanting to rouse the household by fetching a glass of water meant that I kept waking up with the sensation that someone had sneaked up and welded my tongue to my palate with a glue gun. When we departed next morning I left my dressing-gown behind; not a tragedy except it was an old one of the SS's, with pink ribbons below the bust. I may not own up to it.

Coming home, on the outskirts of Frome the TomTom and the SS over-rode my intention of turning right by way of flashing headlights and wild gesticulation, and we became lost. The TomTom lost its head completely, bleating about recalculating. Later, when we began ignoring the motorways for the A303 and A25, it became petulant and complained about losing its satellite. Haha, TT nil, BT one. And it can't mow a lawn.

The SS wants one anyway. Says it doesn't snore.

Paperchase Sucks?

2010-02-11T14:44:00.003Z

Paperchase describes itself as "the undisputed retail brand leader in design led and innovative stationery in the UK". Any Twitterers may already have learnt of this company's alleged (and I for one am convinced) unscrupulous and unrepentant plagiarism of an indie artist's work, for incorporation in its products.

Hidden Eloise is an independent artist whose work appears to have been stolen by Paperchase. A former employee of the company has said that the company's design team has a long history of ripping artists off in this way. Unfortunately, unless you have a corporate bank balance, the courts provide no answer.

Here, perhaps, is another opportunity for users of the Web to flex their muscles and shame the company into a more moral code of conduct. I've emailed Paperchase here to say what I think, anyway.

A Glimpse of the Future?

2010-02-08T12:21:00.003Z

I don't know what made me dream last night. For some of it I was back at Lily Farm. There were some trespassers, and an unpleasant spell scrambling up rocks to escape a flooded river. I'll spare you most of it, because other people's dreams are very boring. But the end seemed worryingly plausible.

I was being led by a nurse into what I knew to be some sort of mental institution. Coming to some double doors there was a woman cleaner coming the other way, and I stepped back to let her through. Someone behind remarked, "Would you believe that?"

It got me thinking, and I asked the nurse, "When I'm away, do I attack people or expose myself or do anything unpleasant like that?"

She replied, "No. You're just a bit out of it." Another nurse added, "Yesterday you called a ladder a rabbit."

I replied wittily, "Those rabbits can be damn slippery," and everyone laughed.

If this was really a peep into the future, I'm slightly reassured that I may be more or less behaving myself, even if I am with the fairies. And that I might have the odd cogent moment.

Albeit with the emphasis on odd.

The Benefits of Recession

2009-12-31T11:38:00.002Z

One unanticipated side-effect of the recession here has been the virtual collapse of the commercial shoot that has been a bane of our lives for the last few years. Two or three times a week we were subjected to trailers of city folk, dolled up in pristine tweed, blasting birds out of the sky around the house. For our neurotic dog, it was like a perpetual Guy Fawke's Night.

This year even the obligatory Boxing Day convoy turned round and gave up as drizzle pelted down on the sodden fields. The once nightly 'lamping' activity, in which unlit 4x4s crept around the field edges, accompanied by the beam of red flood lamps and the crack of small bore rifles, also seems to be in abeyance.

We are often told that commercial shoots bring wider benefits to wildlife and the landscape, but these are hard to discern. The call of foxes in the woods was once a familiar sound at night. Since commercial shooting began foxes are no longer heard or seen, although the corpses of badgers appear from time to time, lying in fields where they fell, or slung over fences like refuse. Birds of prey are now rare too. Forlorn signs about lost dogs appear on gateposts for pets that have strayed off footpaths and not returned, and rumours of poisoned bait make owners wary. Conversely, the feed hoppers have brought a plague of rats.

Commercial shooting has meant changes to the landscape too. Rearing and release pens have appeared, together with feed hoppers made from day-glow blue plastic barrels. Rectangular stockades of straw bales and alien strips of maize are scattered across the downs like lego. Swathes of woodland have been cut down, whether to accommodate the birds or the guns isn't clear.

I suppose some jobs have been lost. I suppose I ought to mind.

I don't.

Parcelforce - 'Thinking Ahead for You'

2009-12-29T11:37:00.005Z

From Parcelforce’s Conditions of Carriage:

12.6 If any provision of these Conditions is found by any court or administrative body of competent jurisdiction to be invalid or unenforceable, such invalidity or unenforceability shall not affect the provisions of these Conditions which shall remain in full force and effect.

Post Mortem

2009-12-28T11:44:00.003Z

I became curiously caught up in the attempt to deny Cowell his automatic Christmas No.1, and the cheer that went up from this house that Sunday night echoed across the valley and sent the dog under the sofa. Childish really, but as it seemed increasingly unlikely that we could succeed, I began to feel that not failing was more important than succeeding. It would be absurd to place too much significance on what was essentially a light-hearted exercise, even if there was a serious underlying message about corporate manipulation of the music industry and its impact on original, independent artists. But I suspect that the success of a grassroots Internet campaign to overturn a £50 million media machine, against all expectation, may not have gone unnoticed in government circles here and overseas. Any failure might equally have been noted.

In what was the coldest week for years, one happy side effect of the campaign was the £100,000 odd which the Facebook group members donated to Shelter, to which 'Rage Against the Machine' have promised to add their unexpected windfall income. The band have also announced a free UK gig in 2010, and rumour has it that tickets will be allocated to the people who made a donation to the charity. This may be apocryphal, but there is logic in it, and it would be consistent with Rage Against the Machine's moral awareness. It became clear that only a minority of the million or so people who signed up to the Facebook group actually bought the track. On the other hand, while not everyone who bought donated, everyone who donated most certainly bought.

One odd thing became apparent in that interesting week; the average age of the Facebook campaigners was a lot older than you might think. Whilst the critical voices on the wall and on the rival Joe site spoke in SMS txtspk and looked pre-pubertal, the Rage site spanned every generation. In a bizarre rôle reversal an older generation was encouraging the young to stop listening to schmaltzy covers and turn on to some angry hard-core metal rap. Whatever is the world coming to?

Thea Gilmore, Rod Clements, Rage Against the Machine and Simon Cowell

2009-12-11T08:44:00.004Z

This is not a music blog. I haven't got the qualifications for that. But we went to another Thea Gilmore gig on Sunday (if there's repetition in the bands I see, it's because not many of them come to Maidstone). The last local place Thea played closed down, no connection, and this one was in the strangely ambienced and faintly effete upstairs room of the local Pizza Express.

It's not an ideal venue. Waiters and waitresses clatter about between the audience and the stage, and the acts look down on people shovelling capricciosas and tiramisu into their mouths an arm's length away. More to the point, a glass of white wine costs £4.40 or £5.75 depending on size, and a beer is about £6. That's maybe fine with a meal, but if you're there for an entire evening, it's prohibitive. Add that to the cost of a meal and the tickets, and you're into House of Commons expenses territory. No wonder the clientele were not very rock and roll.

Last time, K's boyfriend and I whipped out for a pint at the pub next door. We got funny looks, Straw Dogs style, and had to act particularly macho (not normally a problem for either of us). This time, forewarned, I'm afraid I arrived with a flask in my pocket and spiked my soft drinks. Tacky, I know, but needs must. It involved lowering my empty glass into my lap at intervals and bringing it back up full. I hope I didn't put anyone off their meal. (They probably won't let me in again. Pizza Express, I'm the tall cross-dresser with the handlebar moustache).

The Social Secretary had her own difficulties. She went into the windowless Ladies and immediately recoiled because it was untenably...there is no other way of putting it...smelly. In a very SS kind of way she was standing in the corridor flapping the door open and shut in a vain attempt at ventilation (this is the sort of thing that comes naturally to her) when Thea herself came along. Like a-pong-in-a-lift scenario, there is no socially smooth escape from such situations.

But it was worth it. My American Hot was good, and the supporting act was Rod Clements (Lindisfarne), a legend from my Tyneside days, who played guitar like a dream. Thea herself was superb, She has a new album out, 'Strange Communion' (if you look at the sleeve notes through a magnifying glass you can spot my name amongst the sponsors), so it wasn't like a repeat performance. It's not a Christmas album (she calls that the C-word), but an alternative, more pagan take on the season. I think her voice has deepened, and she just gets better and better. The opening song on the album, 'Sol Invictus' has a full choral accompaniment. Not having a choir in tow she sang it a capello, and it was hauntingly beautiful.

Thea's album is sort of relevant to the current Facebook/X Factor battle. I abhor X factor. There is something unsavoury about a promoter with a self-evident financial interest manipulating the public through hours of prime-time TV. Christmas number ones haven't meant much to me since I was a teenager, but the dumbing down involved in the annual inevitability of Simon Cowell's latest karaoke protégé seizing the spot is destructive, and I've joyfully signed up to the Facebook group which is trying to steal it from him with Rage Against the Machine's 'Killing in the Name'. The idea is for everyone to download the track next week. A mere 79p to wobble Cowell's stranglehold on the music industry seems good value. At the time of writing the group had 592,684 members, and it is growing nearly as fast as Cowell's current account. They might just do it.

Hobo Jones and the Junkyard Dogs

2009-12-06T10:47:00.003Z

Local boys Hobo Jones and the Junkyard Dogs travelled all the way to a big city recently, all on their own. Someone had suggested they visit 'Britain's Got Talent' and, always eager to try a new pub, they removed their tags and went for it. They never found the bar, but someone let them play a few numbers instead.

I hope they get through and you have the chance to see them on the programme. Hobo Jones is the nicest chap, who has gone out of his way to encourage K with her songwriting and performing. Hearing him singing his 'Tyburn Jig' in our kitchen was an unforgettably moving experience. We have redecorated it since.

'Britain's Got Talent' seems an obvious next step for a band that opened at Glastonbury this year (somewhere between the Main Stage and the cider wagon), and for whom development strategy probably consists of choosing between a new set of strings or another round.

Go see them if you can. They transcend greatness.

You Can't Keep a Good Girl Down

2009-09-13T11:31:00.003Z

I mentioned my enthusiasm for the Avro Vulcan before. Another member of Britain's Cold War 'V' force was the once futuristic looking Handley Page Victor bomber.

When an iconic aircraft is retired, there's not a lot you can do with it. At best, it is lovingly maintained by enthusiasts, so that it can occasionally be rolled out and taxied up the runway for the entertainment of the crowds.

Video footage has only just emerged of one such run in May this year. Through an accident of inappropriate throttle applied by an engineer, a Victor at Bruntingthorpe seized its chance to return to its natural element. The aircraft hadn't left the ground for two decades and was not airworthy in any technical or regulatory sense. As it veered towards a nearby housing estate in a strong cross-wind the driver, a surprised 70 year old former squadron commander named Bob Prothero, had to gain control whilst making a very rapid choice between attempting a go-round in an unmaintained aircraft, or attempt to put it down on the grass overrun at the end of the runway. He chose the latter and successfully landed it without damage, describing the incident as 'the worst nine seconds of my life'. Perhaps in recognition of his skill and quick-thinking, the Civil Aviation Authority has investigated and decided against any charges.

Attrition

2009-09-11T11:53:00.002Z

I stopped playing when I was ten;
A part of me was taken then.

I sold the bike when I grew soft;
Another bit of me was lost.

I quit smoking when my lungs grew tired;
A little more of me expired.

I gave up lust when I grew old;
Another part of me was sold.

I forsook drink when the doctor said;
One more piece of me had fled.

When anger goes, expelled by pain,
Then I'll be like a child again.

Come the day that I don't wake
There'll be nothing left for death to take

So if there's a God, pray God he's nice,
And leaves a little bit of vice.

(Or if the Devil takes my soul,
Pray he leaves me Rock and Roll.)

BT

(Don't worry - I haven't even achieved line one yet)

Done and Dusted

2009-09-08T14:30:00.006Z

We've finished. We got reverse working today, which was the last problem, and we've all been tearing round the garden at 5 mph like Jenson Button. It sounds like a monster truck but starts first time and goes up a 1 in 2 slope. It's going to be wicked in snow with chains on. Bob says he wishes he'd had it when he was younger; me too.

I'm particularly proud of our home-made steering pinion. The original on the right only had three teeth left. The cog on the one on the left was made from a piece of scrap bronze using nothing but a hacksaw and files. We ground down a bit of iron bar, tapped a thread into it, and drilled three shear pins to stop it rotating.

Who needs engineers?

Seven Quirky Personality Traits About Myself

2009-09-04T11:32:00.022Z

I've been tagged with this meme by the poetic Gadjo Dilo. Brought up in a house with lead pipes I'm told I have eccentricities, but some of these I've admitted before, and others...well, I don't have Gadjo's courage. But their side-effects show up around the house and garden, so I'm going to cheat and use those.

The Flyer

Some years ago I was throwing out an old ladder and the children's pram, when I had a silly idea. This was the result. It steers by a small handle between the driver's knees, and there is a rudimentary handbrake. It was intended for the children but was invariably appropriated by the grown ups. For a year or two, after a certain stage of inebriation, most of our barbecues migrated to the grassy hill behind the house, where we careered down the Downs in the gathering dark at terrifying speed, not always succeeding in making the necessary handbrake turn at the bottom. It's the best toy I've ever had.

Later my father-in-law gave me a windsurfer sail he'd picked up at a marine boot fair. This only works well in a full gale, which is hairy. We need to try it on a beach.

The Cannon

This is my version of a garden gnome. It needs a coat of paint. We had some timber left over from building work, and I was working in Chatham Historic Dockyard at the time. The barrel was moulded of papier mache around a stack of plastic flowerpots, together with chicken wire, a drainpipe, some washing machine hose, the tubes from two kitchen rolls and half a football. After drying the mould was covered with fibreglass. The cannon balls are ground-down boules. For a year or two, after a certain stage of inebriation at barbecues, we used it to launch fireworks towards the village below...

The Dog Window

Not very exciting this, but it brings the dog pleasure. It used to be a cat flap in the kitchen, but we didn't have a cat, so I double-glazed the hole and put a shutter on it. The pheasants have learned they are safe on the other side, and tease the dog mercilessly inches from her nose.

The Bookcase

I'd always wanted one of these. The catch is operated by a false book (I wanted it to be 'Tales from the House Behind' by Anne Frank, but that wasn't wide enough), via parts of a bicycle cable brake and bits of a Reliant three-wheeler door mechanism. It was intended to have a security function, but also provides useful extra book space. The Social Secretary once carried a tray of tea through it to some decorators who hadn't been warned, and they dropped a tin of paint.

The Graveyard

One of our predecessors was a landscape gardener who'd worked on churchyards, and I kept unearthing old gravestones in the garden. I set them up in a disused corner when the children were going through their goth phase. They used to hang out down there with their goth friends and think gothic thoughts. They're all real except the Adam Boddy one ('a damn body' geddit?), which I made from an old paving stone.

The Intercom

Bits of this house are hard to reach from other bits, so we use this rather retro communication system involving three wartime Fuller Phones. There is something satisfying in winding the handles to make the bells ring - one ring for this one, two rings for that, etc.

Security

Being remote, we are slightly paranoid, and there are a number of quirky security measures, some of which I can't mention (or I'd have to kill you). This catch on a shed actually just raises a magnet past a magnetic switch, tripping the alarm. It's the obvious thing to try a door, and I care for the idea of a would-be thief setting the alarm off themselves, before they've even gained entry. I know it to have worked on at least one occasion. In the picture below, the green door is one we seldom use, because there is access from inside. If you look closely you'll see the handle and lock are on the hinge side. My theory was that someone working in the dark might try and jemmy the wrong side.

Another measure I enjoy is our prominently placed switch marked 'Burglar Alarm, On/Off'. It stays permanently at 'on', but is reverse-wired and if switched 'off', triggers the alarm.

Scarily there are a lot more quirkinesses, but that's quite enough. I maybe should see a doctor. Gadjo?

I'm not going to specifically tag anyone, but invite you to take this meme on, in either its original or modified form.

Festival Sanitation

2009-09-03T08:04:00.001Z

I'm afraid this post isn't going to be in the best of taste. But to be true to themselves, bloggers sometimes have to go where others fear to tread.

Bob spent three days at Reading festival last weekend. He was particularly keen to go, not so much for the bands as to get away from the pervasive smell of muck-spreading in our neighbouring fields.

The day before he left I noticed he was eating abnormal amounts, even for him. In between meals he seemed to be forever stirring snackpots and rice or pasta ready meals. The microwave was pinging like a wind chime in a gale, delivering cheeseburgers and steam puddings. Eventually, noticing I was giving him funny looks, he explained that he had a cunning plan. Given the primitive and unsavoury nature of festival sanitation, he aimed to put away a vast amount of food the day before, thereby guaranteeing a tremendously successful final sitting in the comfort of his own bathroom before setting off, and avoiding the need to eat much and use the very basic facilities at Reading.

I got up at 5 am the next morning to drive him to the station, and found him standing in the darkness outside the back door with his backpack and handfuls of tent, sleeping-bag, gas cooker etc (the backpack was full of beer), looking slightly bloated. He seemed disconsolate; "My plan didn't work," he confided.

Ironically, we'd all had a disturbed night because his mother and the dog had eaten something which had violently disagreed with them (not necessarily the same thing), and had been suffering the opposite problem. There were scented candles burning in several rooms when we came down and, as the cowsh-fragrant wind wafted over from the Downs, Bob remarked "I can't decide whether it's worse indoors or out".

(Postscript: Bob has drawn my attention to the phenomenon of 'Poo Girl'. At Reading's simultaneous sister festival at Leeds, this poor girl dropped her handbag down the long-drop loo. She tried to reach down through the hole to retrieve it, and became stuck, head first and legs in the air. She had to be rescued by firemen, and has since become a facebook hit.)

In Bad Odour

2009-09-01T12:19:00.006Z

I'm keeping a low profile, after finding myself unpopular in Havering, as reported in the Romford Recorder (with the passage of time, the link doesn't work any more). I suppose if someone is going to take out a fatwah on me, I'd rather it was Humanists.

But we have been busy. Faced with the long summer vacation, Bob was on the lookout for projects, and a kind friend donated a 36 year old ride-on mower which had been abandoned in a field for several years. We have spent many oily and abortive hours on it, me rather more than him (I'd like to think this showcases my qualities of patience and dogged determination, but really it is because he had better things to do).

Yesterday we were finally rewarded when the 8 hp rear-mounted engine burst into life, drowning out the sound of a passing muck-spreader and filling the garage with exhaust. We high-fived, after which he had to go and swarfega his hand.

Today we will test the gears and drive. There is no steering wheel as yet, and it has a steering problem which I don't want to go into because it's embarrassing. We don't know if the clutch will engage, or once engaged, disengage. The test is therefore fraught with danger. My idea is to set the thing up crossways on the garage forecourt, facing a hedge, and delegate Bob to sit on board and work the gear lever and pedals. I shall stand well to one side, possibly wearing a helmet. On the scale of domestic accidents, it has the potential to be an unusual one, although more predictable than most.

Speaking of domestic accidents, the neighbours recently took off for a relaxing few days in their delightful moulin in the Limousin. On arrival, unlocking the front door, they disturbed a nest of particularly vicious, French-speaking bees. Under intense attack, she took off across an expanse of uncut meadow and leapt into the river. Landing on a submerged rock she damaged her leg, whilst her arm flew up and the car keys shot out of her hand into the drink.

Spurred by her cries he gallantly galumphed down, flailing his arms against the swarm, and plunged in after her, losing his glasses in the process. Her leg was not fully functional, so after crawling around the river bed and retrieving both specs and keys, he braved the still angry bees to try and bring the four-track down to the river to rescue her. Unfortunately everything was a bit overgrown and he reversed the back end into the medieval millrace.

Still under attack he managed to get her into the relative safety of the car and, with a coat over his head, began trying to lever it out with a baulk of timber as she revved. After several attempts, with smoke now pouring from the wheels, she opened the driver's window a crack and asked, 'Should I take the handbrake off?'

Prənunsiaysh’n

2009-07-31T11:33:00.003Z

I misspelt ‘aggrandizement’ the other day. I realised when I read it in a book this morning. Words are like buses. Or busses.

It got me thinking, by association, about pronunciation. Growing up as an avid reader I had trouble with words that I’d read rather than heard. ‘Awry’ was one. I said it to rhyme with ‘story’. Another was ‘cotoneaster’, which I thought was ‘cotton easter’, not ‘c’tony-aster’.

The family often challenges my pronunciations, although I’m lucky that my inherited ones, albeit dated, are usually correct.

My mother talked about ‘gazey-boes’, where the rest of us say ‘gaz-ee-boes’. I always imagined that she must have read that before hearing it, but I’ve just looked it up in my 1932 Webster’s, and it’s an alternative pronunciation, so she was right all along - as she usually was, having never been to school. (It doesn’t appear at all in my older Webster’s, which is undated but in which the most modern thing illustrated under ‘aeronautics’ is Lana’s aeronautical machine - a sort of boat-shaped picnic basket with a mast and sail, suspended by four or five large copper party balloons.)

No one is sure of the etymology of ‘gazebo’. Wikipedia says “the origin of the word is unknown, and it has no cognates in other European languages”. Suggestions include the French ‘que c'est beau’, the Latin ‘gazebo’ (‘I shall gaze’ - although there was no such verb when I did Latin), and the Hispano-Arabic ‘qushaybah’ (allegedly a viewing platform, but the source seems to be a single poem and scholars of Arabic say it’s pronounced differently).

I’d like to put forward my own suggestion, which doesn’t appear in any source I have come across; ‘case beau’, from the French for ‘beautiful hut’. In which event my mother’s pronunciation would have been closer to the root.

In contrast, my mother-in-law occupies the linguistic no man’s land of Mrs Malaprop. Last week she remarked that her friend’s son was so clever that he’d been hedge-hunted.

Multi-tasking

2009-07-29T13:24:00.011Z

I sense my long leave of absence is sparking concerns about my health. No need chaps. Here's a quick clip of BT on one of the 'Go Ape' zipwires, to show that he is still hanging loose. And, in simultaneously closing his eyes and clenching his buttocks, proving that men can multi-task.

One reason for my neglect is the project Bob and I have been tackling for a friend.

This walled garden had been neglected for nearly 20 years, and the pool had been filled with rubbish, rubble and soil. Between us we have shifted and sorted tons of the stuff, and then put much of it back, stashing hardcore behind a wall built from some of the blocks we dug out. Not to mention machete-ing our way through briar and thorn, discovering terraces and even a forgotten hut. There is more to do before this becomes the elegant walled garden we envisage, but it's been a good father and son bonding exercise, and I've lost half a stone or so.

Add a little bit of Scottish walking here, a little kayaking there, and plenty of badminton between the Pimm's, and you'll appreciate that all is well. But I am missing you guys and expect to return soon, bronzed, muscled-up, and down to an A cup.

New Song

2009-06-08T18:35:00.003Z

In haste, K's My Space link here. 'Say Goodbye' and 'Just a Boy' (You Tube link for the latter here.)

The Gentle Art of Cheese Rolling

2009-05-28T08:51:00.005Z

A short video for anyone who hasn't enjoyed footage of this two hundred year old tradition. Think flower-sprigged frocks and dancing round the Maypole...then think again.

I think I read that 34 were injured this year; thirty-three were chasing cheeses, one fell out of a tree.

An Open Letter to Nadine Dorries

2009-05-22T09:38:00.002Z

I listened to you this morning on the Today programme. You defended free use of the Additional Cost Allowance as part of an MP’s pay, and likened the Telegraph’s revelations to a McCarthy witch hunt. You said, ‘People don’t understand what is happening’.

You just don’t get it, do you?

You argued that the allowance is justified because an MP’s salary is not commensurate with anyone else’s at that professional level. Do you view MPs as some sort of overclass, more deserving of rewards than the rest of us? What makes you think that election as an MP infers or confers instant professional qualification? There are dedicated, hard-working MPs, and there are under-performing, self-serving ones. Election is not a measure of ability. I was a professional in local government. Seven years of training enabled me to start at the lowest grades. I never earned more than £30,000, and survive on half that now. I could have earned more in the private sector, but I believed passionately in public service as a vocation. Being an MP is a vocation; it should never be a profession.

You say that everyone, other than the electorate, understood that the allowance was a discreet adjunct to salary, because no Prime Minister would dare stand up to the media and increase MPs’ pay. It was not simply that Prime Ministers lacked the courage to stand up to the media; it was that the electorate would not support such increases; electors like me who lived with years’ of cut-backs and below-inflation pay restraint. Did you see nothing wrong with that cosy, tacit acceptance? Did you believe that such a deception of the public was moral? If you did, maybe you are indeed a consummately professional MP, but perhaps you are not a vocational one.

I have read your response to the Telegraph’s query about your claims for a second home. You explain that you had misled your constituents for privacy reasons. I understand those, and recognise the difficult circumstances which underlay your claims. But many ordinary people share such difficulties. A nurse or a teacher may also need a second home in similar circumstances to enable them to do their job. They receive no subsidy. Most of us believed the provision for second homes allowances for MPs reflected their need to have a presence both in their constituencies and at Westminster, not to complement an additional home elsewhere to address the problems arising from a broken marriage. ‘Ordinary people’ get no such support, although it is they who funded yours.

In likening the Telegraph’s revelations to McCarthyism, you do a disservice to the many honest and committed individuals whose lives and careers were unjustly damaged in that time. The Telegraph has achieved a public service in exposing shameful abuses of the allowances system, which parliament, abetted by the Speaker, has assiduously sought to conceal. It may be unpleasant, but it is a predictable, self-inflicted and thoroughly deserved wound. To rail against the public exposure of these abuses is to misjudge the public mood. The electorate has at last found itself empowered to influence reform, and it is not going to be dissuaded.

The Calming Influence of Flowerpots

2009-04-18T09:40:00.012Z

The field is full of lambs and calves and courting pheasants. Everything's growing like crazy. Mowing takes twice as long because primroses, violets and cowslips have sprung up everywhere this year, and I haven't the heart to cut them. Blogging's had to take a back seat, and this is bad scenesville because I know I'm missing good stuff in all of yours. If it rains for days I'll have the consolation of catching up.

Yesterday some update from Microsoft or AVG fouled up my virus protection, making it impossible even to uninstall what I already had, and therefore to load a replacement. In spite of my antediluvian past I have the computer literacy of a gnat, and spent most of yesterday trying to resolve it. At one point I became so stressed out I had to go and buy flowerpots.

Even though I go cold turkey for days, internet access is like a far from superfluous extra limb. It dangles somewhere cerebrally prominent, possibly trailing like a pony tail from the back of the head (and as my brother-in-law is wont to remark, we all know what is found under a pony's tail).

I had to resort to searching for and deleting anything with 'avg' in the title. This probably means lots of vestigial orphans clogging up my memory and that I've deleted the pictures of Auntie Vera's Garden. But the joy of success was almost worth the angst. My prodigal PC and I are friends again.

Go Ape

2009-04-10T15:47:00.004Z

This is K in her new office. Parents hope their children will go up in the world, but this isn't quite what we imagined.

Apart from scrambling about in tree tops, instructors at Go Ape have to pull themselves up the several zip wires to open the course each day, rain or shine. She's beginning to pack some serious muscles, and my days of bettering her at arm wrestling may be numbered.

When I was a kid we lived in a valley in the Chilterns, with a garden that fell steeply down from the beech woods of the Duke of Buckingham's estate. My father rigged up a steel zip wire from some left over rigging. We had to climb up a ladder, grasp a metal bar slung from a pulley, and launch ourselves off. It was fantastic fun - provided you remembered to lift yourself above the nettle patch halfway down, and let go before you slammed into the conker tree at the bottom. Health and Safety wouldn't have approved (but then they wouldn't have approved of much of what we got up to, like being towed up the lane on a sledge behind the Landrover when it snowed).

These zip wires are a different matter, and heights cause bits of my anatomy to try to retract in a manner they're not designed to, so I am plucking up courage before I have a go...

My 25 Gun Salute

2009-04-02T12:27:00.007Z

To Chatham yesterday, to attend the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, including a 25 gun salute and a lunch in the Commissioner's House. The three big field guns rocked the town; 24 single shots and then the three together for the last. I think the gun captain's quivering closing salute might have been directed at Admiral Sir Ian Garnett and Margaret Beckett, but hell, I took it anyway.

In 1981, when I was a pre-pubertal strategic planner for the County Council, the Royal Navy announced it was going to pull out of Chatham Dockyard. I accidentally talked myself into doing an appraisal of the Georgian part of the yard - a historic and architectural gem. The timescale was just two weeks, and I worked into the nights - often in the local pub as the Social Secretary (then my girlfriend), fetched me pints from the bar. I met the deadline and in a very short space of time my report wound up on the desk of the then Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Heseltine. The report argued the case for gifting the historic dockyard to an independent trust or public authority as a living maritime museum.

The Government accepted this, and when the Navy finally pulled out in March 1984, the newly established Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, with a board of eminent trustees and what would prove a woefully inadequate endowment of £8 million, inherited the lot.

My employers offered the nascent Trust initial staffing and administrative support. The staffing support turned out to be me, and so the day after he returned from honeymoon a very nervous Brother Tobias found himself seconded as acting General Manager of a redundant dockyard - the same dockyard to which his father, at the outbreak of war, had reported for training as an engineer officer half a century earlier.

Our HQ was the Old Pay Office, where Charles Dickens' father had once worked. The two tall, Georgian windows of my office looked out past the flag mast of the Captain of the Dockyard's House along the elegant eighteenth century Officers' Terrace. To the left was the No. 2 dock where HMS Victory was built, and the vast structures of the covered slips.

Chairman of the newly formed Trust and my boss was the recently retired Commandant General of the Royal Marines, Lieutenant-General Sir Steuart Pringle. Also part of the team was Deb, a loyally protective former Wren; Ken, a draughtsman from the dockyard drawing office who became our visitor guide; and Joy, a lady cleaner who had been a dockyard employee. With her help I also secured the services of Ron as general handyman (there were uncharted and arcane services running around the yard, including AC and DC electrical supplies at different voltages, steam, sewerage, potable and non-potable water and gas; Ron's knowledge of these proved invaluable).

Between us, we had to look after 84 acres which included over 40 scheduled Ancient Monuments dating from 1697 onwards, dry docks, caissons, cranes, covered slips, pontoons, piers, a steam pumping station, a helicopter pad, mast ponds, stables; a church; a laundry; a working railway complete with a small shunting engine; and a variety of commercial tenants.

For a green local government officer used to the protective carapace of a multi-layered bureaucracy, it was a scary time. For the first time in my life I found myself empowered to take decisions on the hoof, without consultation. At any moment I might be negotiating rents, chasing round the yard after thieves, lying on a sinking pontoon in a three piece suit attaching markers, chugging around the yard driving a Lister diesel tug, or attending a Board meeting. The telephone seldom stopped ringing and it usually brought crises; Trinity House complaining that the lights on Thunderbolt Pier weren't working; a high tide threatening to float the caissons which sealed the dry docks (in 1954 one of these broke free, causing the submarine Talent to burst out into the river, killing several men); failure of a steam boiler bringing production to a halt; someone working on services in some underground chamber overcome by methane; the press demanding interviews...

In my few spare moments and armed with a set of master keys, I made it my business to explore every building, room, loft, tunnel and cavity, from Brunel's sawmill to the Dockyard Church; the Yarn and Tarring Houses; the Anchor Wharf Stores (the largest ever built by the Navy); the quarter mile long double Ropery; the Lead and Paint Mill; the Mast House and Mould Loft (where the lines of HMS Victory's timbers can still be seen marked on the floor); the Sail and Colour Loft; the Joiners' Shop, the Wheelwrights' Shop; the Galvanising Shop; the Smitheries where tools and forges rested amongst heaps of rusting cannons and ferns growing in the half-light; and the silent, secret, World War II and Cold War bunkers many feet underground, which housed eerily abandoned telephone exchanges and command centres. This had been a self-contained enclave capable of building, equipping and provisioning warships without external support. Day after day I trespassed amongst the ghosts and echoes of four centuries of maritime history.

The SS recalls me walking tense and silent around the garden each evening, clutching a glass of gin while I reviewed the events of the day and sorted out the priorities for the next. Aside from someone getting killed, my nightmare was waking to the news that the nation's last surviving timber-framed covered slip, like a vast, upturned ship, had burnt down - as its former neighbour had been. Every weekend I would return with a bunch of sweet-smelling roses for her, thoughtfully cut from the Admiral's Garden or the Officers' Terrace by our secretary and our cleaner.

A crisply courteous, near military culture quickly established itself (addressing the Chairman as 'Sir' came naturally from our respective naval or boarding school backgrounds). One day we were given a demonstration run in a paddle-steamer that wanted to operate from the yard. As I hovered as usual by the General's shoulder (no doubt irritatingly, but he was much too nice to say so), my hands clasped behind me like an obsequious aide-de-camp, the First Officer asked my background. When I told him I was on loan from the local council he raised his eyebrows and said, "Good Lord. I thought you were a naval officer'. I felt I had arrived.

After six fraught months I handed over to my permanent successor, a recently retired naval commander. A week later the Queen paid a formal visit to the Dockyard. Watching in the crowd as he was introduced to her, it crossed my mind that it might have been me standing there. But I wouldn't have known what to say. And after all, it will always be my dockyard.

Hannah Scott and John Carden

2009-03-30T21:51:00.004Z

I mentioned Hannah Scott when her debut album came out last year . Her new CD - a collaboration with John Carden, arrived yesterday, signed by the two of them without me asking and with a wee handwritten thank-you note from Hannah enclosed again. I find that really sweet; it's that precious moment when a band is teetering on the cusp of greatness, but still have time to appreciate you and take nothing for granted. When each order matters and they're grateful for every supporter. This girl is destined for big things, and it's a mystery to me why she hasn't been signed yet. She is like a butterfly beating her wings against the glass; any moment someone's going to open the window and then you'll need a telescope to see her.

'Falling into Spring' is an EP with just five tracks, but they're all crackers. It's maybe her register or the east coast accent that reminds me of Beth Orton (I know, her's is west), but this is lighter and less plaintive. I've never met these two and have no axe to grind, but I reckon I'm putting a good tip your way in suggesting you visit this link and have a listen. And if you like what you hear you just click the button and for the price of a pint or two the thing arrives in the post, and you can shoot a line to your pals and you have the sound for this summer's braais and a collector's piece to boot.

Bean Beetles

2009-03-28T09:48:00.006Z

A retiring little chap is
Platypus Cylindricus
Inclined to keep his head down,
Preferring not to mix with us.
He tidies up detritus
Avoiding any pain or fuss
Assisted by his mucker,
Agrilis Pannonicus.

BT

Parings

2009-03-12T11:21:00.017Z

Nice Savannah has tagged me for a meme. The rules are to: put the link of the person who tagged you on your blog, include the rules, mention 6 things or habits of no real importance about you, tag six people adding their links directly and alert the tagged. I'm going to skip number six, but sincerely invite you to have a go anyway. And, so as to halve your boredom, I'm going to split my six into two; three today, three not.

1) John Peel (who like Darwin went to my school and didn't much enjoy it), collected bits of himself that fell off, like toenails and blisters, in a plastic container labelled 'Dad's Scrapings'. I'm not as bad as that, but I do hoard ephemera which is unlikely to have any interest or value unless my descendents go on saving them for another hundred years, which not being deranged they are unlikely to do. I'm talking train tickets and car tax disks and bad poetry and letters and instructions about how to cane chairs or discourage moles.

2) I doodle. After a phone conversation I find notes in front of me that I don't remember writing, but which weren't there before. They say things like, "Good morning ... some difficulty ... understand ... twat ... Marymarymarymary ... No", interspersed with flowers and strange, shaded shapes like erotic bricks. In my fifth and final degree year, suspecting correctly that I was 5% knowledge and 95% silver-tongued bullshit, my tutors asked to see my lecture notes. Since these all started off with a heading and a date, followed by about half a sentence that tailed off into a page of doodles, I had to pretend, suddenly not so convincing after all, that I'd left them on a bus. In fact, I came across some of my early literary efforts this week. The poems are rubbish, but the doodles must say something about the mental state of my 16 year old self. I'll paste a couple in and you can draw your own conclusions.

3) I have slight OCD leanings. For example, I find myself unnecessarily counting stairs, and it is not normal to know that there are 76 panes of glass in every window in Dunvegan Kirk (although the sermons were very dull). The Social Secretary and I are opposites, in that I like order; for example, the tools in my workshop each have their place and I could find them blindfold. In contrast, the SS hangs kitchen utensils in a different place every time, and seldom closes cupboards or drawers. It's a moot and much discussed point whether it is me that is obsessive, or she that is untidy. In looks and demeanour, however, she is Sinead O'Connor, and I am Shane MacGowan.

Avro Vulcan

2009-03-09T17:28:00.015Z

Against all the odds it looks as if we might have the chance to see the mighty Vulcan fly again this summer. As of this afternoon and in the nick of time, a million pounds has been pledged to keep the aircraft flying this year. Over 90% of this has been promised by private individuals. In an economic 'perfect storm' which has made it almost impossible to attract commercial sponsors, this is the second time the public has come to the rescue. In 1993 the Vulcan seemed to have flown for the last time until, last year, XH558 took to the air again after donations helped to fund a refit.

I've blethered about this aeroplane before. It was designed by Roy Chadwick, designer of the Lancaster bomber, who began work on it in 1946. The first prototype flew in 1952, and 112 were built altogether. They were a mainstay of Britain's nuclear deterrent throughout the Cold War, although they were never used in anger until, already scheduled for retirement, they were hastily converted for conventional ordnance and used to bomb Port Stanley airfield in the Falklands War.

The three components of Britain's nuclear 'V' Force, The Avro Vulcan, the Vickers Valiant and the Handley Page Victor, sound like echoes of a past era, and it is hard to believe that the Victor, which first flew as a bomber in 1951, was still in use in the Gulf War. If, like Concorde - which emerged from the same era - the Vulcan does not look its age, the Victor looks like something out of Rupert and the Space Ship.

Carrying twenty-one 1,000 lb bombs per aircraft, the round trip of 8,000 miles in the Falklands' 'Black Buck' missions was the longest in history. To get a single Vulcan to the target and back required no less than twelve Victor tankers and a Nimrod, in a mind-numbingly complex pyramid of refuelling rendezvous, in which tankers refuelled tankers, that refuelled tankers that refuelled tankers. The Victor tanker which flew furthest itself required eight support aircraft.

It may seem profligate to spend money on this aircraft in the current recession, but once on the airshow circuit it could become self sustaining, and the cost of keeping it in the air compares favourably with Sir Fred Goodwin's annual pension. As an inspiration for young engineers the Vulcan is worth every penny. If you want to sign the petition seeking to persuade the Government to contribute something to keeping this aircraft flying, follow this link. To find out more about the last flying Vulcan and its display schedule, look here.

Amongst useless but jolly facts I learnt while writing this, are:

In 1956, when a pilot got its nose down too far, a type 1 Victor accidentally broke the sound barrier.

The Vulcan wowed the crowds in a display (which included a barrel roll) at the 1952 Farnborough Airshow, just 72 hours after its maiden flight.

The prototype Victor had to be transported by road to Boscombe Down for its test flight. Bulldozers were used to create alternative routes where the road was too narrow, and the aircraft sections were hidden under wooden framing and tarpaulins printed with 'Geleypandhy, Southampton' to make them look like a boat hull in transit. 'Geleypandhy' was meant to be an anagram of 'Handley Page', but the signwriter ballsed it up (I love it that, while we tried to hide the prototype from Soviet spies, we couldn't resist painting a darn great clue on the box).

The Irresistible Glamour of the Average Town Planner

2009-03-05T17:26:00.006Z

While his mother was away the neighbour's boy had a little problem with the wood-burning stove.

He was just leaving the house to drive his girlfriend - who is delightful - to the station, when he heard a noise like a Eurofighter cranking up for take-off at Saba. Looking up, he noticed that a turbojet on full afterburner appeared to have become embedded in the top of the chimney, casting an eerie glow into the night sky. Unlocking the house he entered the kitchen. Unopened mail, snackpots, decorative garlic plaits and smaller items of furniture were being sucked across the room into the stove door, which now resembled the mouth of a volcano on curry night. The cat had its front legs wrapped round the marble sculpture of two penguins that his mum did on a residential week in Tuscany. He quickly phoned the Fire Brigade, while his delightful girlfriend sat down with her laptop and began some coursework.

The Social Secretary and K happened to be driving nearby when they caught a glimpse of flashing blue lights, and stopped off to see the fun...the fun being firemen in rubber boots. (What is it with women and firemen? Why not women and town planners? What have firemen got that town planners haven't? Do firemen use Article 4 Directions and Section 106 Agreements? Do they have Rotring Rapidographs in all sizes from 0.1 to 0.8 and several seductive shades of black and burgundy? Can they quote the Use Classes Order or operate a Planimeter? Have they got felt tips? I don't think so).

When they arrived the neighbour's son was in the yard, adjusting his story. His girlfriend (who is delightful) was sitting in the car doing some course work on her laptop. Several of the firemen were 'well fit'. And they won't need to get their chimney swept this year, so there's always a silver lining (assuming it hasn't burned through).

(Incidentally the neighbour's boy's mum now knows about the cat poo on carpet tile frisbee incident, which someone accidentally let slip the other day. The passage of time and a bottle of South African shiraz softened the blow, and she forgave him).

From Zaftig to Aspie by DJ Kirkby

2009-03-02T20:23:00.004Z

You cannot choose the moments in life which will become perfectly preserved in memory. They are accidents of mood and sensation. Each is a miraculous survival, a tiny treasure. From Zaftig to Aspie has many such moments. It is like opening a jewellery box and seeing the contents sparkle as they catch the light. The author has captured her childhood in Canada with a vivid freshness, giving it an immediacy which suggests that she has not forgotten how it feels to be young.

DJ Kirkby’s earliest memories read like scenes from a road movie, and her nomadic, unconventional home life might have today’s child welfare authorities blenching. There are shadows of poverty, of an unsettled family structure, cruelty from classmates and of sexual abuse, but all these are outweighed by the love of her free-spirited, hippie mother and the easy-going kindness of a loose circle of friends and relations. What emerges is a picture of a little girl who was different. Who preferred pickles to sweets. Who was trusting of animals and people, and unfazed by the weaknesses of human nature. For whom rock music and the scent of marijuana was more normal than playschool. A little girl who found riches in the woods and sea shore, and who grew into a creative, uninhibited, well-balanced woman. The author’s undiagnosed Asperger syndrome contributed to the trials of growing up, but also to her unique and colour-filled view of the world.

The anecdotal nature of the writing is complimented by the episodic structure of the book. No chapter is longer than ten pages; most are only two or three - but this in no way interrupts the flow of the narrative. D J Kirkby’s style is flowing and unfussy, and I was captivated from the outset. Sometimes the originality and aptness of a turn of phrase or choice of adjective stopped me in my tracks; this is practised writing, but it is not slick or formulaic. Her recollections are brought to life by their detail and precision – no dry account this, but a pointillist picture, a pietra dura mosaic in which shards of colour create a picture that is greater than the sum of its parts. Throughout, modesty and humour give the book an uplifting lightness. As D J Kirkby invites us, ‘Welcome to the story of my blunders.’

It is difficult to escape the feeling that all of us share some of the drives and constraints common to autism, and that diagnosis is a matter of degree. This is not to underestimate the difficulties that those on the autistic spectrum face, but it explains why we can relate to the author’s experience. This is not a book about autism; it is a book about childhood and adolescence in a richly unusual world in which, as we later discover, autism is both a hurdle and a gift.

Read it.

A Party to Remember

2009-03-02T15:09:00.017Z

The last time I was at Penshurst was when my school performed Twelfth Night there, one wild and stormy January night, as the timbers creaked in the gale and a bat flapped around the minstrels gallery (the poet Sir Philip Sydney, whose home it once was, had been a pupil at the school, although we just missed each other by 400 years or so).

There was magic in the 14th century Great Hall last weekend. It was a clear, frosty night, so cold that each female guest was given a silk and cashmere pashmina on arrival, and a huge log fire was burning on the open hearth in the centre of the room. No new-fangled chimney nonsense, the smoke rose up into the church-like timbered roof, vying with the faint smell of mothballs lingering around Brother Tobias. The masqued guests, all dressed in black or white evening dress, drank champagne and mulled wine as jugglers and jesters wandered amongst them. At the appointed time our host's wife arrived, probably beginning to guess that some sort of birthday treat was in store, delivered to the door in a white coach pulled by two plumed shires.

We ate above the pantry and buttery in the West Solar, part of the medieval building and hung with elizabethan family portraits of gentlemen in doublet and hose and ladies sportingly exposing their left breasts in the interests of classical allegory.

The meal was to die for. I chose the beef - great slabs of filet mignon that melted in the mouth like meringue, washed down with the best of wines. And the waiting was the best I've ever seen; for each course and clearance the staff filed smartly in, their hands behind their backs. Each table was silently surrounded, a waiter or waitress to each guest. Then, at a hidden signal, every plate was placed or removed simultaneously.

At the end of the meal we were treated to this

It was a splendid surprise. The 'three waiters' really had been doing a bit of waiting, and for most of us unsophisticates it took some time to realise that it was an act at all. They were so good that they won a standing ovation.

And then on to a disco in a heated marquee, lined with black drapes and twinkly lights, to dance the night away to an Abba tribute band and a generous bar. I believe I may even have smoked...

This was the sort of party you never forget. In fact in our case it's the sort of party you never get invited to, and it was a joy to be there and forget the gloom and the recession for a few hours.

Ascendant Band, Astronomical Beer

2009-02-22T13:42:00.002Z

To a gig last week; a guy named Paul Dunton from Tunbridge Wells has established a series of candlelit soirees featuring local artists. This was the first to be held in Maidstone, upstairs in the local Pizza Express. Most of the musicians came from Tunbridge Wells, and may be familiar to Justme and Completely Alienne

Any showcase for local talent is worthwhile, and this was potentially a good venue. Unfortunately the twin emphases on food and music clashed. It was a distraction having waitresses clattering to and fro with orders, and the restaurant prices for drinks were prohibitive. With beer at £6.50 a pint and entry at £7 per head, a party of four could be £50 out of pocket before they'd sipped the first drink. Order a meal as well, as was clearly expected by the staff (we didn't, and we weren't alone), and you were into serious money. When we'd seen the price list we whipped straight back out to the pub next door and sank a quick pint before the first set, and then nursed an expensive bottle of cheap wine for the remaining three hours.

The evening opened with a 16 year old pianist/singer/songwriter, Annabel Durnford, who performed with grace and maturity. She was followed by the event organiser Paul Dunton and friends. Piano, violins, flute and cello delivered an unusual fusion of pop/rock ballad and chamber music. I'm not sure the room did them justice.

Third act was singer/songwriter Joanne Louise Parker. Her spare guitar technique placed the focus on a voice of bewitching tone and clarity, and she showed an almost celtic ability to sing on pitch without accompaniment (or 'a cappella' as it's poncily known down here). Perhaps there is a Free Church enclave in her native fens. Folk/blues flavoured, she is very good.

Headliners Cyrano came from Tunbridge Wells. They produced a consistently tight, studio-quality sound which belted around the room in a sustained, plangent attack. When I looked at the audience they were tapping and twitching as if they were wired in series, and women were dancing on the steel stairs to the mezzanine floor. Joe Ackerley's voice soars with plaintive purity, Karl B hammered away on lead guitar like an onanistic gnome, and bass and drums were balanced, punchy and harmonious. Cyrano are currently putting together their first album. Watch this band, because I reckon it will become a household name.

What's in a Name?

2009-02-16T13:52:00.003Z

The Sagittarian has speculated about the title of my blog. My readers have varied tastes; in an attempt to please both of them, I will offer several different explanations, any or none of which may be true.

Bergman

A memorable event in my early life (in fact the only memorable event in my early life), was playing the part of the ferryman's son in Ingmar Bergman's 1961 film, 'Through a Glass Darkly'. I was offered it through an old family connection, and the location was the island of Fårö, which was closed to normal visitors at the time because it contained secret military installations. But Bergman lived there, and this was the first of many films he made on the island. I was only there for two days and have limited memories of it all. I do recall that Gunnar Björnstrand, who played the novelist, was always pleased to see me and taught me a traditional greeting which I still remember; 'Gå bort du otäck litten räka'. Sadly Ingmar Bergman was by then unrecognisable from his famous rôle as Ilsa Lund in 'Casablanca'.

Balloons

Newcastle's Long Bar is on the Great North Road, almost opposite Central Station. In those days it was very much a men-only bar. In retrospect it was a bad idea to have agreed to meet Tim Darkly there for a pint of Fed Special on the way to a party. I'd have been all right. Cherry loons and an Afghan coat might have escaped comment in a student town. But Darkly was dressed as a nurse, complete with balloons. It wasn't a fancy dress party; he always dressed as a nurse, and I should have remembered that. Even then, we might have got away with it, if he hadn't misjudged his embonpoint (the balloons were over-inflated) and jogged the arm of the diminutive Geordie standing next to him, causing him to spill beer down his shirt. The man said something very brief that neither of us caught, and very deliberately poured a significant amount of brown ale down Darkly's cleavage before turning away. Darkly asked me how we should respond and I, thinking that the best thing would be to buy the man a drink, said, "Through a glass, Darkly". Unfortunately he thought I said, 'Throw a glass, Darkly'.

I can tell you, should you ever be in a similar position, that the care offered in the Royal Victoria Infirmary is second to none.

Bible

My choice of hymn for our wedding was number 240 from Hymns Ancient & Modern, which is adapted from the poem 'Elixir' by George Herbert (1593 - 1632). It includes the verse, 'A man that looks on glass on it may stay his eye; or if he pleases, through it pass, and then the heaven espy'. (It's a pretty line, although the following verse gave me an opportunity to glance significantly at the Social Secretary; 'A servant with this clause makes drudgery divine: who sweeps a room, as for your laws, makes that and th' action fine'). The glass line seems to echo Corinthians 1, 13,8. "For now we see through a glass, darkly" - a line I've always had affection for, since I am not unknown for seeing life slightly hazily through a glass.

The Sun is Out, the Sky is Blue

2009-02-14T10:38:00.005Z

It's been such a sairie, downing few weeks, and suddenly the sun is out and the sky is cerulean blue (shameless plug), so here's this, because I can.

Valentine

2009-02-12T08:32:00.003Z

Roses are red,
Violets are blue;
Our leader is Brown
And we're in the poo.

BT

Your turn...

Twitter

2009-02-10T10:47:00.006Z

I'm just trying you out to see what everyone's talking about.

Sorry. I was playing with Twitter, and it asked me what I was doing.

Ooo. I've got a tweet.

Brothertobias@ nudrig2 No, I'm not famous. Although I like to think I have a modest following in the world of scripophily.

Brothertobias@ nudrig2 Not at all. It was a pleasure talking to you.

Another tweet. That's two tweets already.

Brothertobias@heavenlytwinny Thank you. It's early days. What about you?

Brothertobias@heavenlytwinny I do find the 140 word limit a constraint when trying to address issues of any complexity, especially when there is a moral or ethical dimen

Bugger

Brothertobias@heavenlytwinny dimension

Brothertobias@wedekindboy Isn't 0825 an odd time to be eating pesto?

Brothertobias@heavenlytwinny Ahaha :)

Brothertobias@wedekindboy Ah. Guadalajara. I understand. Wasn't thinking. No, I don't think I'm that Brother Tobias; I never taught at a mission school.

Brothertobias@wedekindboy No, really. I've never even been to Mexico.

Brothertobias@wedekindboy Well quite. That must have been very painful, and you have every right.

I have to go now.

_______________________________________

I dunno. I guess it's like marmite. It has a strange fascination. Yes, I visited Stephen Fry's tweets, of course I did. And thence to Sandi Toksvig's sister's. It was a learning experience (I didn't know Sandi Toksvig had a sister). And snooped in on some familiar bloggers, whose one-sided chatter was witty and entertaining, like listening to shiny people at the next table, wishing they were your friends.

But it's a bit like Blogger with just the comments and no blogs. I don't want to start collecting celeb responses like tiny trophies. And just tweeting and being tweeted would become a full time occupation. It's as if networking has become the end, not a means.

I admire anyone who can blog and twitter. So many balls to keep up. Some of my favourite bloggers have taken to Twitter. You know who you are. But I hope we who are left sedately in the blogosphere don't lose you altogether.

Don't Pick Me, Pick Chesley

2009-02-07T09:26:00.004Z

Listening to the recordings of the splendidly calm Chesley B Sullenberger's radio transmissions as he prepared to ditch his stricken airliner into the Hudson River impressed the hell out of me.

One afternoon in November 2001, I was locked in an unlikely embrace with a fridge/freezer as I manoeuvred it in a stiff-legged waltz across the drive behind the house, ready for the local council's collection service the next morning. There happened to be a thick fog, so I was surprised to hear a low aeroplane approaching. A very low aeroplane. Approaching. Very low.

I stopped and stared blankly into the mist, and at the last possible moment a light aircraft appeared an extendable ladder's height or so above the house and disappeared again into the whiteness.

There is a wooded hill behind us, and I had time to think, "Jeez, that's low. He'll be lucky to clear the trees," in a sort of 'but of course he will' tone of thought, when I heard the violent sound of breaking branches and the aircraft's engine appeared to stop abruptly.

I learned a lot about myself in the next few minutes. Principally, that I am not a Chesley B Sullenberger. I am not fashioned from the stuff of which cool-headed, laconic heroes are made. Headless and chicken spring to mind. My 999 call must have sounded excitable at best, and probably an octave too high. (When I reported an aircraft impacting trees, the operator remarked disbelievingly that they had not had any other reports to that effect. Sully's measured tones would have had them scrambling helicopters before he'd finished giving his name).

Conscious that any support would be some time to arrive and that I might be faced with people who were feeling not very well, I set off up to the wood in my gum boots carrying a fire extinguisher, some dressings and bandages, my mobile and my Boys Book of Light Aircraft. I was trying my best, but frankly, Mr Cool I was not.

When I got to the right part of the wood I clambered about in the misty undergrowth, looking down for wheels and bodies, and up for tail planes and the like. All I found was a few foil-wrapped packets of foreign coffee amongst the brambles. I began to wonder if I had imagined the whole thing, until I heard on the local news that an aircraft had made a forced landing at the Kent Show Ground, formerly the wartime Detling Airfield.

I found the report of the accident today. It is interesting that the Instructor stated that he had been flying at about 650 feet - significantly lower than the height of the treetops in this area. It also seems incredibly lucky that the place they came down happened to be a former airfield. Although the aeroplane was substantially damaged, with bits of tree around its nose and undercarriage, the two occupants were unhurt.

About a year later I recounted this story to a knowledgeable friend who told me that it was standard practice for smugglers to conceal drugs in packs of coffee. I was away up to the wood as soon as it was light, but disappointingly the packs I found (which I imagined had been torn out of some sort of hold or locker) appeared to contain nothing but ground coffee.

Cerulean Blue

2009-01-31T19:20:00.001Z

Big Brother

2009-01-31T10:23:00.004Z

One of our friends is a detective. Well actually, two of them are, but that's an accident of geography, not habit. One day we ran into him and he turned to me with an evil grin and said, "Who were you kissing in town last Wednesday?"

Apparently they had been conducting some sort of street surveillance operation from the upstairs floor of a shop. As he watched the screen I appeared, accosted a woman, and gave her a hug and a kiss. "I know that man," he told his colleagues, and they watched on with interest.

The embarrassing thing was that, while I could remember running into someone, I couldn't for the life of me remember who. This didn't seem very plausible at the time. In fact it still doesn't. The Social Secretary started giving me funny looks and finding reasons to come shopping with me. So if by any chance you can remember being kissed by me in Earl Street on a Wednesday, would you very much mind contacting her?

It just shows the opportunity to misbehave (not that I was, you understand) is dwindling. It was bad enough in Essex in the 1960's. The Rodings (always pronounced 'Roothings') being terribly flat, I had to cycle miles to find a tree behind which I could drag on a discreet Consulate with a reasonable chance of not being spotted. Consulate of course, in the belief that the menthol would disguise the smell of tobacco (the innocence of youth; I also believed that we could end war and that I would become rich).

Because teenage drivers who should be wearing green Ps keep bumping into us in the lanes, my latest toy is a tiny camera which sits on the dashboard and continuously records the view ahead onto an SD memory card. The whole thing cost £25 from Hong Kong, which is less than the card alone would cost here. And it might just save me shed-loads in lost no-claims bonuses. Not to mention proving that the traffic light really did change too late to stop. Or that the police patrol car did indeed make an illegal U-turn on the dual carriageway.

The other fun thing about the recorder is that I can say things like, "You know when you drove down to the stables last Wednesday? Why did you stop under the bridge for several minutes, then turn round and park outside 22, Focaccia Avenue?"

Not that I would.

Things you can do with your toes

2009-01-26T15:01:00.007Z

Completely Alienne has tagged me to list ten honest and interesting things about myself. The 'honest' suggests that these should be frank and a bit revelatory. Not sure about that. If I have few illusions about myself I like believing you might still have some. And I suppose I shouldn't recycle ones from previous memes, which rather implies dipping into the reserve list.

1) As a child I always went up stairs on all fours. I still do sometimes, but try not to in public places.

2) I have fitted my bath with a reading light, and have been known to read an entire book in one immersion (emerging like a literate prune).

3) I once inadvertently killed my landlord's cat. It got into my Cornish flat through an open window while I was out, ate the fat in an unwashed frying pan, went back downstairs and died. I never owned up. (Note, too much fat is bad for your health).

4) When I was about twelve I buried our own cat in a Swedish crispbread tin. It went missing and we assumed it had followed walkers in the wood and was enjoying a pampered new life. Then I found it in a wild part of the garden, mutilated by a dog or a fox. I conducted a secret burial to protect the rest of the family from the grim truth. I'm surprised nobody missed the biscuit tin, which was as big as a drum and rather useful.

5) I was a difficult adolescent. At school I became such a subversive influence that they created a bed-sit for me - the first in the school's 400 year history (a hatch in the ceiling gave access to a loft space, and I slung all my empties up there. I believe a later occupant got in trouble for that, after I'd left).

6) I can unscrew bottle tops, hold pencils and do other useful stuff with my toes.

7) Amongst houses once occupied by grander-than-me relations are this,
this (my earliest memory is living in the west wing one winter), this (my grandmother's home when she married, but it was only rented), this (I lived here for a little while too), and this (now a bijou health spa). Damn - where did it all go?

8) I have been mistaken for James Hewitt, but only by the sort of people one avoids on trains.

9) Things I have done in pursuit of girls include: joining a canoe club; being run away with on a horse; going through the entire electoral register for Truro and Falmouth constituency; and accidentally breaking a window whilst trying to get into someone else's house at midnight (it's a long story).

10) The blue plastic bucket at the bottom of Dover Harbour belongs to me.

I think I'm meant to tag other people here, but as always I feel diffident about that, because you've probably all done similar ones before. But I will tag Extra Virgin, who probably hasn't. And please feel free to have a go.

Falling

2009-01-23T10:15:00.006Z

It's ages since I blogged. Don't know why; nothing to say, I suppose. Anyway, I like K's new song. She wouldn't be persuaded to appear on camera, so she's stuck it onto some footage of the Inverness-Kyle line I took years ago.

I suppose I must have travelled that line two or three hundred times, but I never tired of it. Skye-bound, my heart lifted with every mile that the island drew closer and my office desk receded. In summer, sun sparkled on absurdly blue water and the banks wore gold epaulettes of gorse. In winter the deer lifted their heads from foraging in the snow, to watch the carriages clatter by. Like a time-lapse film houses were spruced up, and faded. Generations of sheep and cattle trod the same braes. Oil rigs appeared in Loch Carron, and then were gone. Eagles soared.

Enjoy the song.

Bedroom View: Dawn

2009-01-10T11:01:00.001Z

Chilly, Chilly is the Evening Time

2009-01-07T11:18:00.003Z

The snow lies hard as ice on the Downs, and the Social Secretary and I have been out sledging. Bob watched from his window and said we were behaving like big kids. Woohoo!

We don't much mind not having central heating as a rule. Visitors sometimes complain of the cold and sit in their coats looking like soft jessies. This last few days, though, has been something else.

The ice on the inside of the windows has been too tough to scrape with a fingernail, and the Arctic icy draught whistling up between the floorboards has made BT's usual TV watching position, prone on the sitting-room floor, untenable.

The Social Secretary started the rot by moving an old portable set into the kitchen. Then Bob and I, watching the repeat of 'Dead Set' in there last night, had a brainwave and silently carried the sofa in while the SS was having a bath. An occasional table for drinks and the old gimballed paraffin lamp on the wall beside the aga completed the ambience. Much to the dog's delight we are now all more or less living in the only warm room.

It's really rather cosy, and awfully handy for mulled wine.

A Year End Economic Alphabet

2008-12-31T13:17:00.009Z

A's Armageddon, a smidgin upsetting,
B are the Bonuses Bankers are getting.
C is for Credit, and also for Crunch,
D is for Death to the city lunch.
E is the 'End of 2008',
F is for Falling (the Stock Market's fate).
G is for Government, and Gordon, our leader
H is for Happy New Year, dear reader.
I is for Interest, nearly at nought,
J is for Junk (the shares I once bought).
K is for Keynes (John Maynard, not Milton)
L is the Lending the economy was built on.
M is for Meltdown, losing the lot,
N is for Nothing, which is what we have got.
O is for zero, zilch, bugger all,
P is for Penury, backs to the wall.
Q is for Queen (otherwise 'Lizzie')
R's the Receiver, who's frightfully busy.
S is Stagflation, making analysts grieve,
T is for 'Turn out the lights as you leave'.
U is Unemployment and Unrepaid loan,
V are the Vultures repossessing your home.
W is Woolworth's sorry demise,
X is Expenditure, still set to rise.
Y is for Yearning for a better bank rate,
Z is the Zeitgeist of 2008.

BT
New Year's Eve

Does Nobody Else Do This?

2008-12-29T09:32:00.005Z

I used to do a lot of long-distance rail journeys, travelling alone. One of the ways I amused myself was to imagine a motorcycle keeping pace with the train. It was entertaining looking for routes through trees and between fields. One had to allow the occasional Steve McQueen style leap across a fence or hedgerow, but only where the lie of the land made this remotely feasible. I was a biker at the time, and felt this excused such mild fantasising. Not long ago, though, I met someone who rode, who said they did the same thing with an imaginary horse and rider.

I mentioned this as we drove home on the M25 last night, and Bob remarked that he sometimes imagines himself grinding on the central reservation crash-barrier. There was a pregnant silence until he added that jumping the gaps was fun, and we realised he was talking about skateboarding. I see now that transport corridors are paralleled by a phantasmagorical revving, galloping, grinding horde of shadows. It is they, not the passing vehicles, that stir the daisies on the verge.

There is an equivalent to this in typography, which I became aware of when I had the job of editing a newsletter. It involves the gaps between printed words. Sometimes, like pointing in amateur brickwork, they join up in successive lines, so that the eye can trace a wandering white track down the page. If text was chocolate, these are the fault lines that it would break along. Typesetters call these 'rivers', and they become a particular problem if you are using narrow, fully justified columns, because bigger spaces have to be used to juggle the words into position.

It turns out, according to the Today Programme, that there is a bit of the brain (there usually is) devoted to this sort of pattern recognition. It is suggested that we need it to spot predators concealed amongst leaves and grasses.

Like looking at a cartoon of two faces and seeing a Grecian urn, once the eye becomes tuned to spotting rivers they can pounce out at you in an unwelcome way. If you don't see them, try slitting your eyes so the words blur. In boring meetings, as a change from doodling, I have been known to draw routes down through the text of reports and briefing notes, from top to bottom of the page. The more direct the route, the better.

So there you have it. A way to make even Jeffrey Archer novels entertaining. Look on them not as literature (I know, I know), but as puzzle books, every page a new challenge.

Is there anything you do which 'normal' people might find peculiar?

John Logie Baird / Aeolian Harp

2008-12-22T11:50:00.039Z

My Scottish grandfather liked gadgets. Around 1935 he built a television set to pick up Baird's daily 10.00 - 10.30 am test transmissions from Alexandra Palace. It was only supposed to be possible to pick these up within 80 miles of London, and my grandfather's success in picking them up in Ayrshire interested Baird enough for him to visit and discuss it. The set comprised an aluminium disc with tiny square holes around the edge, each a tad nearer the centre than its predecessor. In one revolution of the disc the holes scanned the width of a (selenium?) cell which could vary in brightness very rapidly. In front of the disc was a magnifying glass through which the pictures could be viewed.

At five to ten a picture of a five bar gate was transmitted, for tuning. The spinning disc was mounted on an electric motor with a variable speed control, and at the correct RPM the gate would appear - usually in two pieces until it was fine-tuned.

Hung above a door in the hall of my grandfather's house, amongst the weapons and oars (Uncle Alastair was a Boat Race and Olympic oarsman), was another device that appealed to him; an Aeolian Harp.

Aeolian harps were popular in Georgian times. They were placed in open sash-windows, where the wind could play over them. For over seventy years this one was strung cosmetically with silk fly-fishing line because my grandfather feared that any tensioning of the strings would place too much strain on the supporting posts.

When it was eventually passed to me I noticed two holes in the carved, porpoise-shaped posts, as if something was missing. These allowed me to rig up a spring-loaded copper bar to compensate for any strain, without having to physically adapt the instrument. After some research (there are several schools of thought about how to tune aeolian harps) I strung it with twenty guitar 'E' strings, all tuned to the same pitch. We opened the front and back doors and held the thing in the ensuing draught with a microphone nearby. And, hauntingly, perhaps for the first time in 170 years, the harp began to play. It felt as if we were hearing a recording made around the time of Waterloo, an echo from the past.

I found the tape this week and digitised it. You should be able to hear a bit by clicking the title of this post.

Something for the Weekend

2008-12-22T11:11:00.003Z

I've just been into town for a couple of last presenty things. While I was there I thought I'd pop into HMV and treat myself to one of the films Rol recommended.

I couldn't find it anywhere. Not under 'Feature Films', nor 'Charts', nor 'Recent Releases'.

It was only when people turned to look at me as I enquired at the busy counter, "Do you have 'A Complete History of My Sexual Failures'? that it occurred to me that he might have made it up.

Luckily he hadn't. But at £18.99 I'm going to try Amazon.

Ferret

2008-12-19T15:34:00.006Z

The neighbour's boy just drove over to borrow some bread flour. As he walked up the path he saw a long furry thing on the lawn. It was a ferret. We watched it undulating exploratively round the garden, looking like a hairy U-bend.

I'm glad he saw it too, or I might have doubted my sobriety.

There was a stoat living under one of the sheds earlier this year, but this seemed a lot larger and a lot tamer. Judging by the tail colour, it may be a polecat crossbreed, which could help with the rats that are staking out the bird feeder, but won't please the gamekeeper much. I won't tell him; less birds means fewer fat men peppering the car with falling shot. The ermine could come in useful if they ever make me a lord, though.

Hope it doesn't eat the dog.

Pain and Hair

2008-12-16T14:38:00.005Z

When threatened with something mildly hurtful, like an injection, my father often feigned fear and claimed that he felt pain more than other people (I know he was feigning, because he was given a DSC in the war, and you don't get those for good hand-writing).

I didn't inherit his valour gene, but I have borrowed his line about feeling pain more than other people from time to time.

Research at the University of Louisville in 2002 discovered that people with red hair are more sensitive to pain, and consequently need more anaesthetic during operations than other patients. In people with red hair, the cells that produce skin and hair pigment have a dysfunctional melanocortin-1 receptor. This dysfunction triggers the release of more of the hormone that stimulates these cells, but this hormone also stimulates a brain receptor related to pain sensitivity.

Research at the University of Edinburgh in 2005 discovered that redheaded women have a higher tolerance of pain and consequently require less anaesthetic. Normally the melanocortin-1 gene produces a protein that reduces the efficacy of opiate drugs, but without a functional gene, natural and artificial painkillers appear to induce a threefold stronger effect in redheaded women.

So there you are, it's official; redheaded people feel pain more than other people. Or less. This may explain my predilection for anaesthetic around 6pm. Or not.

The Girl Done Good

2008-12-12T19:43:00.010Z

K did her first public performance the other night, at a local 'Open Mike' night.

It wasn't a full house, but it was still a major hurdle to cross. Knowing my aversion to public speaking, I was well impressed by how well she did.

She kicked off with 'Autumn Leaves'. Then reprieved with her own song, 'Devil in Your Hair'.

For a quiet house there was tons of applause, so she did Audioslave's 'Like a Stone' as an encore. That went down a storm, so she sat down but was dragged up again, to sing 'Billie Jean' with another guitarist (whom she'd never played with) doing backing guitar. Then the Beatles' 'Across the Universe' with the same guy. Finally, still not off the hook, she was called back to close the evening with 'I'm Going to Haunt You'.

She did really well and enjoyed herself a lot; professional as a cucumber, no one could believe it was her first gig, and she was implored to go to a bigger open mike night in Maidstone, and to another in a working men's club on the Isle of Sheppey.

I don't know where she got that kind of courage from (but it wasn't me). Proud parents we may be, but watch this space!

Bronco, Izal, Andrex and Jeffrey Archer

2008-12-09T20:41:00.003Z

I'm reading 'Atonement', which is an altogether excellent book. Sadly its excellence doesn't stop my tendency to be distracted by harmless anachronisms. In the book McEwan mentions a wad of toilet paper being used to soak up some spillage in a pre-war country house nursery, and later he refers to a pervasive smell of diesel from retreating British army lorries near Dunkirk.

Both of which sent this sad schmuck googling, ultimately satisfying himself that absorbent loo paper wasn't invented until 1942, and that most British army lorries at Dunkirk were Bedfords, which had petrol engines until the 1950s. I want to make clear that I don't search for mistakes in a mean spirited way. It's just that when they intrude on my consciousness they interrupt the reality the author has spun.

I can understand the diesel slip, but McEwan should have known that over here there has always been a deep snobbery about loo paper (it could only happen with the British) which meant that the soft stuff wasn't normally found in posh houses until after the mid 1960's. For some reason the hard variety was thought to be superior - as well as being frightfully useful for tracing or making makeshift kazoos with a comb. This prejudice might have had its roots in a bawdy rhyme which apparently circulated in pre-war schoolrooms and playrooms. It went something like, 'Poor little Johnny, the paper's too thin; he pressed too hard and his finger went in'.

Instead, grand people bought Bronco in rolls, or boxes of medicated Izal if they had those wall-mounted ceramic dispensers. (It's odd how the gentry were quick to run with some innovations, like cars and cocktails, but were pathologically resistant to change in others).

In the course of my ridiculous search for enlightenment I was amazed to learn of Mankind's epic quest for Andrex. I knew all about the Romans using sponges on sticks from visits to Housesteads Fort on Hadrian's Wall, but apparently at different times people have also used wood-shavings, grass, leaves, sand, seaweed, snow, corn cobs, sea shells, sticks and stone. Sand? Corn cobs? Sea shells? Time travel suddenly seems less attractive.

As so often the Chinese got there first. In 1393 during the Ming Dynasty, 720,000 sheets of toilet paper, two by three feet in size, were produced for the general use of the Imperial Court. Two feet by three feet? That's serious loo paper.

Returning to mistakes in books, I was once given a newly published Jeffrey Archer by my in-laws. I can't remember which one it was, because it quickly went to a jumble sale. In spite of being irritated by his style, I tried, I really did. But I couldn't take the chain of sloppy errors. It was obvious he'd churned the stuff out without even having the good manners to check it. For example, early on in the plot someone entered a room, locked the door and sat down. Shortly after a visitor knocked, the sitter called 'Come', and in they came. I mean, really. That's just disrespectful, and as an author you can't expect to retain any credibility.

Not that I'm a fan of the man himself. I went to two Trafalgar Night dinners in the Painted Hall at Greenwich in successive years, when it was still in the hands of the Royal Navy. At the first the speaker was Sir John Harvey-Jones, who talked modestly and entertainingly about the senior service (he had joined the navy as a midshipmen in 1942, when he was 16). At the second the speaker was Jeffrey Archer, who spoke at length in a high-pitched voice about himself.

Ah well. I suppose OCD makes my books last longer. Does anyone else find themselves distracted by mistakes in books? Discuss, giving examples where appropriate.

Thea Gilmore

2008-12-02T11:09:00.008Z

To a gig at the Zebra Bar last night. I happened on Thea Gilmore in 2001 when 'Rules for Jokers' came out, and we haven't stopped playing her since, and K sings her spine-tingling ' 'I'm Gonna Haunt You'.

The audiences here are sedate, respectful and perhaps not the easiest to warm up. Joan Coffey had that job and did it well, ranging from sweet-voiced colleen to someone who could round up sheep. Her well-structured lyrics seize you with a strange sense of deja vu; 'Sometime' is still going round in my head.

Thea's own set was just....superb; the sort of gig you never forget. That makes you glad you've been standing for three and a half hours, because a chair would have been a shackle. Supported by husband/producer Nigel Stonier (vocals, guitar, harmonica), who has written for the likes of Fairport Convention, Lindisfarne and Sandi Thorn and sung with Martha Wainwright, and by the multi-talented Fluff (vocals, violin, guitar), who has played with the Incredible String Band, Nick Harper, Waking the Witch and others, she held us hostage from start to finish, here the plangency of Nick Drake, there the soaring, spine-tingling purity of Sharleen Spitiri. We didn't want it to end.

But one thing I don't understand. Average age of the audience? Probably over 50. What's that about? Was there something better going on in this two-bit town on a Monday night? Were they all racing each other in nicked motors on the ring road? Popping Es in some techno house? Brains addled by their iPods? Doing their homework? Glued in front of Celebrity Makeover Academy Factor on Ice? Eating burgers? I wouldn't have classed this gig as folk, but even if it was, when I were a lad folk clubs attracted all ages. Everyone is into Roots Blues now. Well, Folk is our Roots; it's raw and unmixed, unplasticised, undigitised, un-Walshed and Cowelled; un Ken Bruced and Woolworthed; it's soul-food red in tooth and claw, vegetables with muck on them; love, lust, honour, courage, sorrow, grief... God save the singer-songwriters.

Oh, what's the point?

Overheard at Dinner

2008-12-01T10:50:00.003Z

"I have a good relationship with my dustmen. I always flash them."

The Arrest of Damien Green; Government Lies and Politicisation of the Met

2008-11-28T13:39:00.009Z

The Mugabe-esque arrest and detention of shadow Immigration Minister Damien Green for exposing information embarrassing to the government should send shivers down our spines. Downing Street asserts that the neither the Prime Minister nor any other minister had prior knowledge of the arrest. This is laughable and patently a lie - especially as the leader of the opposition and the mayor of London were told.

It seems more than coincidence that the arrest, which included at least nine counter-terrorism officers, occurred on Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair's last day in office. It is also interesting that the raid took place after news of the Mumbai atrocity had emerged, effectively filling the headlines (remember September 11 and 'This would be a good day to bury news").

There has been mounting concern about the politicisation of the Metropolitan Police. While in his parting speech today Blair rants about the influence of the mayor, it is worth remembering that while the Chief Constables of every other force are local, not government appointments, it is the Home Secretary that appoints the Chief Commissioner. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's concern at the Commissioner's resignation may well have reflected the impact on government influence over the Met.

In November 2005 Blair was involved in allegations of the police being politicised, when he and other senior police officers lobbied MPs to support Government proposals to hold terrorist suspects for 90 days' . He received further criticism when 78 police officers were involved in a £7,200 night operation to confiscate placards displayed by lone Parliament Square anti-war protester Brian Haw.

I had first hand experience of the politicisation of the Met on 15 September 2004, when I took a day's leave to visit Parliament Square with other country folk.

Usually friendly, it soon became clear that the 1,300 armed police attending the peaceful demonstration had 'zero tolerance' instructions and were in a mean mood. A 'Wapping Box' barrier system was erected around the Square, ranks of police vehicles were drawn up, and the Mounted Division were in reserve. We could see what we took to be police surveillance cameras on the roof of the Houses of Parliament, and a helicopter circled and filmed overhead. Some people had arrived at the rally on bicycles, and had left them chained to the railings. An early indication of the police mood was that they were removing these not by cutting the chains or padlocks, but by maliciously cutting through the bicycle frames.

The day began quietly enough, as we sat in the sunshine eating sandwiches and listening to the speakers. The subsequent farcical Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation noted blandly that, "at 3.23 pm a police officer was captured on CCTV using his baton to strike a demonstrator". What followed was an explosion of gratuitous violence against the most lawful of crowds, who were inevitably roused to anger and self-defence.

The IPCC report was an institutional cover-up in every sense, but the IPCC knew that the events had been seen live around the world, and it had to admit that police officers used their batons to strike demonstrators on the head, causing injuries; that there were examples of 'considerable force' being used from the police lines towards the demonstrators (one member of the public received a baton injury which required 12 stitches); that the police had injured demonstrators who had clearly not been involved in any disorder and had been unable to escape due to the volume of the crowd; and that an examination of the CCTV and still photographs showed that members of the press were caught up in the conflict and at least two photographers received head injuries.

Attempts to deploy the Mounted Division only served to inflame the crowd who didn't like to see horses used in that way, and failed because they did not fear close contact with horses. The IPCC admitted that 'a number' of police officers had removed the epaulettes bearing their identification numbers, and that police batons were cleaned up before forensic evidence could be taken.

The violence, which I have absolutely no doubt was an inevitable outcome of police aggression, lasted for two hours. Within a matter of days complaints ranging from common assault, to unlawful wounding, and assault occasioning actual bodily harm had been lodged by 54 people who attended the demonstration who claimed to have been injured by police officers and also from 119 people who attended the demonstration but were not injured. The Metropolitan Police alleged that there had been over 60 injuries to officers, but after they had examined the extensive video footage, no members of the public were charged with any assault offences.

The IPCC heard evidence from a range of police officers at various levels, who described how officers had been specifically instructed in prior briefings to be really awfully nice to the demonstrators, and particularly to be sure to wear their identification numbers. In a move unlikely to encourage witnesses, the Senior Investigator of the IPCC decided it would be appropriate to pass on details of anyone making complaints against the police to the 'Operation Ashcombe' investigation of assaults on police officers. The IPCC was also told not to investigate common assault complaints against the police because there would potentially be too many of them and they would be difficult to investigate because the victims would be unlikely to have forensic evidence of the assaults.

Even given the difficulty of identifying officers in riot gear who had removed their ID numbers, and after deciding not to investigate allegations of common assault, 31 officers were the subject of complaint. 17 files went to the Crown Prosecution Service. After a number of trials and disciplinary hearings, one officer was referred back to the Met for discipline, consisting of 'words of advice'. That's it. Two years of prevarication, hundreds of complaints, scores of injuries, and one officer received 'words of advice'.

Three months later Ian Blair, who was Deputy Commissioner at the time of the rally, was appointed Chief Commissioner. Eight months after that Parliament passed the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, banning unauthorised demonstrations within a one kilometre radius of Parliament Square, and placing the power to authorise demonstrations in the hands of the Chief Commissioner.

On the Today programme this morning Gordon Brown's immigration minister Liam Byrne repeatedly stressed that his shadow opposite number had been charged with conspiracy - something he seemed anxious to make political capital of, until it was pointed out to him that no charge had been made. Be nervous; this government is trying to stifle opposition and free speech, and truth and open government have been the first casualties.

Dream Lover

2008-11-25T19:13:00.005Z

Dream Lover
I want to baste you and taste you,
Make a cocktail laced with you;
Trace the lips and the dips of you
The tips and the tricks of you;
Test the turns and the tapers
And the subtle twists of you:
The flanges and the rims,
The dimples and the whims;
The ins and the outs of you
The pleats and the pouts of you.

I’d like to tease you, please you,
Bring you to the knees of you;
The breath and the beat of you,
The sweat and the heat of you;
Bisect you, inspect you,
Parse you and dissect you
Conjugate the pieces,
The components and the creases,
The perfection and the puzzle,
The silence and the hustle.

I want to ream you, unseam you
Desiccate and wean you;
The please and the pardon
The secret scented garden
The nectar and the wine
The undulating line
The fruit that is forbidden
The thoroughbred that’s ridden
The incubus’s wedding
A twist of tangled bedding...

Dawn beyond the pane;
The waking and the shame,
The telltale dream-tossed quilt,
Oh, the wonder and the guilt.

BT
October 2008

P8RS0N4L1S3D N0 PL4TE8

2008-11-24T09:20:00.009Z

Back in April I had a little rant about personalised number plates. Your comments at the time seemed to share my view about them. However, I've just had a contrary comment from Cinnamon Girl. This surprised me until I realised her business is selling personalised number plates. It's probably a lucrative occupation, or was before the credit crunch, bearing in mind the current record is £440,000 (for 'F1'), and that single numeral plates sell for upwards of £10,000.

In her promotional blog Cinnamon Girl conjectures that it is over-contrived registration plates which encourage criticism. But it isn't only that. It's the 'look at me' element which irritates. Nobody loves a show-off. And that image should matter so much to the owners that they are prepared to fork out thousands of pounds for such an ostentatious and not terribly classy statement.

However, to her great credit, besides linking to my less than supportive post, Cinnamon Girl linked to this clip from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's ' The Chaser's War on Everything'. I have subsequently wasted much too long on other clips from the same team.

Old Joy, Into the Wild and Vampire Weekend

2008-11-23T10:38:00.011Z

I've watched two movies lately which share some lost, yearning, other worldly quality. Both of them stick in the mind long after the credits have rolled. Both are perfectly scored.

They are Into the Wild and Old Joy.

Old Joy in particular is an understated masterpiece; a one course meal of bread and water which becomes a thought-provoking, wine-rich banquet for the soul.

Finally, here's a band.

How to Get Rid of Sparrows

2008-11-22T08:58:00.007Z

The shooters were out again on Wednesday. My study looks out across the field to the release pen in the wood, where the captive bred birds are introduced to 'the wild'. The Dutch banned the rearing of birds so that they can be shot down for pleasure in 2002, regarding it as morally and environmentally insupportable. I have sympathy with their view.

A couple of years ago I found a sparrowhawk which used to perch on a drainpipe at the end of the house lying dead on the ground, and I have little doubt it ate poisoned bait (as probably did the pet dogs and cats which regularly go missing in the woods).

In 2006 The Times drew attention to the fact that 'Shooting Times' had published a list of the countryside's 'most wanted pests' - a list which included eagles, ospreys, red kite, buzzards, falcons, harriers and goshawks, together with otters and badgers.

I was reminded of this by the report about paving and decking being responsible for the fall in urban sparrow populations. It's not a new suggestion. Authoritative studies have also shown the fall to be due to aggressive magpies, cats, disease, climate change, pollution, unleaded fuel and mobile phone masts. I'm not convinced of the paving and decking argument, because numbers have also fallen massively in rural areas. Our sparrows all but disappeared some time in the 1990s. They reached a clamorous peak one year, in which we could barely hear ourselves think for the clamour of them in the eaves, then the following year, Bam! Not a sparrow to be seen. It was so sudden that I can only put it down to disease or a bird of prey.

Anyway, while we mourn the endangered sparrow and are urged to remove our decking and put up nesting boxes, a host of commercial pest companies are offering to rid our gardens of the pesky sparrow. For example Safeguard, 'The Pest Control People for London and the South East', advise that there are several methods available for controlling sparrow populations including use of pesticides. Countrywide Falconry And Pest Control Services Ltd offer "humane, fast, effective removal' of sparrows across London and the South East of England. The Pest Control UK Directory regards all birds as a source of disease, and says that keeping birds away from your lawns and gardens is not 'anti-environment'. They suggest use of spikes, nets, holographic and iridescent foil, sonic and ultrasonic devices, and
elimination of food sources for wild birds, such as spreading methyl anthranilate on the lawn to make it taste bad. These are the sort of people who don't like trees because leaves make the patio untidy.

Yesterday there was a quail with a damaged leg huddling by the garage, presumably injured the day before. But don't feel sad; fresh batches of fee-paying urban 'sportsmen' waddle out of the shoot trailer twice a week, so perhaps it'll provide gratification for one of them today.

Organ Donation: Opt In or Opt Out?

2008-11-17T11:15:00.001Z

I wonder how you feel about the current transplant debate? Gordon Brown supports a change in the law to give the State the right to remove and reuse organs from deceased individuals, unless they have specifically opted out.

There are, of course, good arguments in favour of increasing the number of organs available for transplant. If availability of an organ might save my life or that of someone dear to me, I imagine that I might feel the gift of life outweighed any personal sensibilities.

But I find the idea of the State awarding itself ownership of our bodies altogether too reminiscent of 'Brave New World' and 'The Handmaid's Tale'. The conscious choice of an individual to gift his remains so as to give a chance of life or health to another is generous and altruistic, but I am not sure the 'right' to life is such that the State should be empowered to seize cadavers for dissection and the removal of body parts under the noses of grieving children, parents and partners.

I can see other difficulties too. Not so much the fear that hospitals, keen to get their hands on organs in best useable condition, would 'give up' on patients earlier than might otherwise be the case - although there would always be that risk. What I suspect would be inevitable though, would be strong institutional pressure against death at home, so that organs could be 'harvested' in the freshest possible condition - just as for years hospitals made it very difficult for mothers to choose a home birth. The prospect of a duty to report deaths of loved ones immediately to the local hospital, so that 'organ snatch squads' could tear up one's stairs to the master bedroom, scalpels twinkling, is equally unthinkable.

Deemed consent would inevitably bring a shift in attitudes. From the present position in which a donor's family are welcomed as benefactors by the medical establishment and organ recipients - bringing them pride and solace - there would be the sense that organs were taken by right, and perhaps vexation with the relatives of anyone who'd opted out. In any case the chances are that, with the burden of proof on next of kin, by the time they had discovered and were able to demonstrate that their loved one had opted out, any organs would have been long gone.

So I come down emphatically on the side of sticking with an 'opt in' approach, albeit with better publicity and encouragement.

It's a Bloke Thing

2008-11-13T10:05:00.001Z

In his mother's recent absence the neighbour's son experienced a domestic crisis; the cat shat on the mat. Or on his bedroom carpet, to be exact.

He cleaned up with male ingenuity. Using a craft knife he cut out a square patch of carpet around the offending offering, and then frisbee'd it out of the window.

The Horror

2008-11-12T09:21:00.004Z

I've been thinking about the way Great War veterans never talked about their experiences. It's puzzling. Like a conspiracy, except that with conspiracies there are always rebels. Then I remembered how at boarding school no one ever told their families about bad stuff that happened.

If this seems like a really crass comparison, it's not intended. The vicissitudes
of the boys' preparatory schools of those days bear no similarity to life in the trenches. Or very little, and not in the same degree. But the discipline, restrictions, discomfort, injustice and fear was so alien to our home lives that we seemed to inhabit two different worlds. Heaven and Hell, if you like. And some instinct made us want to protect our mothers and sisters from the unconscionable realities; from the loneliness, the bullying, the beatings, the perverted fumblings of damaged staff, the cold, the food. Our fathers had been through the same system and must have known; their silence was manly and complicit, like veterans of earlier wars.

Our weekly letters home were vetted and censored, but even if they had not been, we would not have told. Instead we wrote of the cheerful and mundane; of cricket matches and half-holidays, of the weather and...well, that was about it. At the end of term, in the car on the way home after twelve weeks away, they would ask, 'How was the term?', and we would reply, 'All right'. Locking it all away in a dark vault of our minds; looking forward instead to the sunlit uplands of the holidays.

We were fully aware of the parallels between boarding school and POW camps - German ones, anyway. In fact, any prisoners of war who had attended an English boarding school would have been well-prepared. From time to time unhappy boys even planned and executed escapes, although they were almost always caught, turned in by a stationmaster or picked up by police as they tramped along a road verge (we weren't allowed money, and our uniform of herringbone tweed shorts and jackets, besides giving us chapped legs, screamed 'escapee!'). If we could have, we'd have lined the drive and cheered as they were escorted back, except the drive was out of bounds. And we'd have been shot.

I was only 8 when I left home. Some were younger. I no longer feel resentment about being sent away, although I did at the time. It was just the way things were. Parents made sacrifices to do it and it hurt them too. No doubt the education was good; no doubt it made us self-reliant. And these things were the exception rather than the rule; I'm sure such schools are very different now. But we were unworldly children from sheltered homes, and the cold, curtainless, carpetless, draconian life of bells and rules and dormitories was not a comforting one. Even if we could have afforded the fees, I didn't need much persuasion to send our children to day schools. They've never complained.

Anyway, I believe the men who had experienced the horrors of that war concealed them not only from convention and because they wanted to forget them, but also because they felt that resurrecting those experiences would pollute and corrupt the sacred home life they had lost and then, against all odds, regained.

Daniel Takes A Train

2008-11-11T13:15:00.008Z

Nice cousin-in-law Paul plays sax in the 80s band, 'Daniel Takes A Train'. The band, which in its day played venues such as the Astoria, Ronnie Scotts, the Empire Leicester Square, Hammersmith Palais and The Limelight Club and famously gate-crashed the 1987 Brit Awards, reformed this year. They are releasing a new single, 'One Last Dream,' in a couple of week's time, and will therefore challenge Simon Cowell's X factor finalist for this year's Christmas single.

If you love Simon Cowell, please don't visit the band's website here.

If you really love him, don't whatever you do explore the widget to the right, because you can listen to the various mixes and even order copies by clicking on its bottom. The song should carry a health warning, because it grows on you, and at just 77p it's perfect for those family stocking fillers...

Select Committee Calls for Ban

2008-11-10T09:18:00.008Z

An influential Parliamentary Committee has called for introduction of a minimum price for books and other literary products. Citing research that showed that the real price of literature has fallen dramatically in the last 30 years, the Home Affairs Select Committee wants to ban special promotions and prohibit supermarkets and other outlets from selling books at a loss to attract customers. Chairman Keith Vase said that popular titles were 69% more affordable now than they had been in 1980. "Police are spending too much time dealing with reading-fuelled social unrest, and the easy availability of reading material is contributing to the problem. More working time is lost through reading than through accidents in the bath, and there is increasing evidence of older people stocking up and reading at home, often solitarily. They may be unaware of the dangers of excessive reading, which can damage eyesight and contribute to obesity and heart disease. We are asking for a ban.

"We are particularly concerned at products intended to entice younger people to read. Brands such as Harry Potter may seem innocuous, but they can quickly become habit-forming. Studies suggest that early reading increases the risk of developing a lifelong reading habit."

Besides seeking to legislate against the sale of cut-price literature, the committee wants to revoke the licences of some outlets currently authorised to sell reading matter; introduce prominent health warnings drawing attention to the physical and mental health consequences of reading; and outlaw reading in public places. When it was suggested to Mr Vaj that some people enjoyed reading and that moves to restrict it might be unpopular, he replied, "Happy readers lead to unhappy communities. The Government needs to act decisively in the public interest."

[For any non-UK readers, a Select Committee has today called for restrictions on the sale of alcohol]

WWII in Colour

2008-11-08T15:19:00.006Z

The Telegraph is doing a free DVD offer all this week of the extraordinarily good series 'The Second World War in Colour'. This was made in 1999 by Carlton Television. One of the diarists they drew on was my mother, so the Social Secretary and I got to represent her at the launch at BAFTA in Piccadilly. As simple country cousins we were rather excited about going, associating BAFTA with glitzy awards ceremonies. And as luck would have it, when we got to the front of the queue for taxis at Victoria, along came a head-turning reproduction vintage cab, all headlamps and mudguards and cream livery, so we felt appropriately important as we arrived at the doors.

Carlton followed this in 2000 with a second series, 'Britain at War in Colour', which also drew on her diaries. A small team travelled up to Skye and spent a long day interviewing and recording my mother at home, which she enjoyed, although she was far from well at the time.

The SS and I again went to the launch, this time in the main hall of the Imperial War Museum. While I chatted to a liveried Chelsea pensioner (who invited us to tea at his gaff at the Royal Hospital) and wolfed the delicious canapés and champagne being handed round by (it seemed) increasingly pretty girls, the SS got to meet Ian Lavender of 'Dad's Army' fame, who she said was charming. For the screening we sat behind Dame Vera Lynn (I would love to have told her that at school at the turn of the 1970s, as rock blared from out other studies, being too broke to buy a stereo it was her voice that crackled out from mine via old 78s and a wind-up gramophone). Next to us was a pleasant fellow named Bob Hanna, who very kindly gave me a copy of his father's memoir. Sam Hanna was a teacher from Burnley who spent his spare time recording local trades and tradesmen, making very early use of colour film.

Although the available wartime colour footage is limited, the immediacy it brings helps to shrink the years between and put us in closer contact with that world.

1,000 mph: Bloodhound SSC

2008-11-07T13:41:00.005Z

I am unreasonably proud that in the limited edition of 'Thrust' by Richard Noble, my name appears in the appendix as a member of the supporters' club. In the absence of a dominant major sponsor, the club became the project's biggest single sponsor, providing 20% of the cost of the project. At times it was this support that kept the whole, mad scheme afloat - support from ordinary enthusiasts with ordinary incomes, who probably didn't even tell their friends for fear of being seen as nutcases.

Now a new British land speed record attempt is planned. Richard Noble, who took the record in Thrust 2 in 1983, and managed the Thrust SSC project which took it in 1997, will manage the project. The current land speed record holder, Andy Green, will drive the car. Weighing in at six and a half tons, Bloodhound SSC will be powered by a Typhoon Eurofighter jet engine and a rocket. Its fuel pump will be an 800 hp V12 racing car engine. It is designed to accelerate from 0-60 in one second and to reach 1000 mph within 40 seconds - a speed of 4 seconds a mile, faster than most jet fighters. The attempt is scheduled for 2011 (although, on past experience and any possible funding difficulties, I would be inclined to add at least a couple of years to that).

The Thrust SSC project was in progress as we emerged from a recession. Bloodhound SSC has been launched just as we enter one. People will say that it is grossly inappropriate to spend large amounts of money on such an apparently pointless project, when it could be better spent on health, or job creation, or foreign aid. Of course they will - and on the face of it they would be right. But I believe we need dreams. We need inspiration. We need to fire the imaginations of the children who could become the scientists and engineers of the next generation. We need role-models who are willing to risk all for an idea. It could be cheap at the price.

The Bloodhound SSC project's website is here.

Packed

2008-11-06T11:45:00.003Z

The Social Secretary sent off for some free promotional glucosomine tablets. This label was on the Jiffy bag. Now there's an odd packing technique.

Manners and Insults

2008-11-05T12:05:00.002Z

Alison Hairdesser arrived upset. On her way she had pulled over to let a Landrover through. They both had their windows open, and the driver had shouted "wanker" at her as he passed. It seemed undeserved, and I suggested that perhaps he had said, "Thank yer," or even that he might have been German and said "Danke," but she said he had a leering expression on his face that made his meaning unambiguous. As it happens many 4x4 drivers around here have a leering expression. It may be inbreeding or a side effect of squinting down gun-sights at barely flight-worthy corn-fed pheasants, so the jury is still out in my book.

I told her a friend of mine had been driving along a lane, minding his own business, when a driver coming the other way leaned out of his window and yelled "Pig" at him. Puzzling at what he had done to deserve the insult, he rounded the next bend and ran one over. (Alison said she didn't understand. Was I suggesting that her Landrover driver had been trying to warn her of an approaching hazard?)

Undeserved, gratuitous insults have a disproportionately unsettling effect. I've never forgotten an exchange in the entrance to the Victorian Shopping Arcade in Inverness. A stranger and I did that avoidance dance in which you each move in the same direction, and when we'd sorted ourselves out I said "Sorry" unnecessarily in the way that politeness dictates, and he replied, "You will be". If you read this, Inverness person, or even if you don't, may your cloutie dumplings shrivel.

Manners can be a burden. I seem to have spent a significant proportion of my life holding the door open at Woolworth's while an endless stream of people walk through without even looking at me, let alone thanking me. And elderly ladies, assuming me to be a shop employee, regularly ask where the rubber gloves are. I've given up explaining that I don't work there, because they don't believe me. It's easier just to show them. Unless they ask rudely, in which case I send them next door to Ann Summers.

I'm It

2008-11-03T17:22:00.005Z

Can Bass 1 has tagged me for six random facts. He is too nice a chap for me to sense a hint of malice, but if it were anyone other than he, speculation might be my middle name. Here are mine - and I have been as honest as I can.

1 Standing on a biscuit tin.

2 Probably Sigourney Weaver, although Monty Don might be fun.

3 It depends on several things, including what I've eaten and the weather.

4 Only once - and we both wound up in hospital.

5 A petrol strimmer.

6 Alas yes. I put it down to single-sex schooling.

Since the tag has transmogrified into something altogether more profound, I tag Lucy back because she started it. And also Steve.

The Joys of Life

2008-11-02T08:57:00.001Z

The car has been playing up for the last couple of weeks, refusing to start in the cold mornings. We're a good couple of miles from the nearest bus route, shop or station, so it's kind of essential. Replaced the glow plugs (£40), then the battery (£60); still no good. So it's been bicycles, battery on charge every night, and faffing about in dressing gowns in the frost putting heaters under the block and ether up the air intake (which one really shouldn't do with a diesel, as it can blow the manifold off). Yesterday we finally sorted it with a new starter motor (£££s).

So what happens? To add to the bitter cold, it starts to rain like you've never seen. French rain, from France. And they've spread pig muck on the hill, directly upwind. And then - as we prepared dinner for eight - the loos start backing up, and I find that the lowest drain is overflowing over the terrace. So Bob and I were out in the freezing monsoon, in the gathering dark, inhaling pig poo, rodding the sodding drains, swathed in our oldest macs and hats in case of collateral splashback. When the blockage finally cleared with a great audible glop, the plunger nearly got dragged in by the suction, with the two of us on the end of it.

Talk about it never rains but what it pours. Sometimes I think there must be a divine hand in all this. With a warped sense of humour.

Magic Rattle Pooh

2008-11-01T10:24:00.002Z

If the TV ad I overheard is any indication, the must-have toy for toddlers this Christmas is 'Magic Rattle Pooh'. Call me alarmist, but I shudder to think what confusion this may cause in tiny minds.

How Are You, Mr Tobias?

2008-10-31T15:34:00.003Z

"How are you, Mr Tobias?" the booking clerk enquired yesterday (well, he used my other name, but you get the idea). I was buying a ticket in the county town's main station. He's greeted me like this for years, and it used to impress the hell out of work colleagues as we set off for a meeting with the Department of the Environment or the National Coal Board or whoever (yes, the Garden of England had coal mines too).

The reason the polite clerk remembers my name is that a few years ago I was his nemesis. When he saw me approach his window he knew it wasn't for a straightforward single to London Bridge or day return to Barming, but return tickets for the family to Kyle of Lochalsh.

Those bookings weren't straightforward. For a start he had to get the right combination of sleepers. Sleeping compartments come in pairs with a concealed communicating door between them. Usually these are locked, but if you book the right pair the door can be opened to create a roomy, four berth space.

Then there was the dog. They normally travel in the goods van, but the SS won't countenance this. Once upon a time you slipped the guard half-a-crown and he let you bring one into the sleeper. Now you have to pay an £80 excess for 'deep cleaning'. I don't suppose for a moment any deep cleaning ever actually takes place, but it presumably satisfies the objections of non-doggy people. (Anyway, the habits of most dogs are a lot cleaner than those of some passengers; I've never felt quite the same about the basins in sleepers since Rather Grand Aunt admitted she peed in them if taken short in the night. I mean, I know there will always be some people who pee in basins, but Rather Grand Aunt? If she did it then absolutely anyone might).

The Caledonian Sleeper is still impossibly romantic, and arguably the finest way to travel. After a nightcap in the lounge you fall asleep between crisply laundered sheets, lulled by the motion of the train, and wake in the morning to the steward's knock with a tray of tea or coffee, followed by a cooked breakfast as the sun rises over snow-capped hills. So civilised.

When everything goes to plan, that is.

Exposed

2008-10-30T09:00:00.003Z

I ran into Mike in town the other day, in the queue in Smiths. We asked after each other, and he said he read my blog from time to time. "You're very brave, exposing yourself," he said.

"Have I been exposing myself?" I asked, taken aback.

"Well yes, you have really," he replied. Then a checkout became free and he left. I noticed everyone in the queue was giving me funny looks. Except for a middle-aged man in a brown mac, who winked.

Girl on a Roll

2008-10-29T09:46:00.003Z

K 's latest song has a strange history. When she said she was short of ideas I fished out a song lyric I'd written in the 1970s and done nothing with. Neglected in a drawer for 33 years, she wrote a tune, guitar riffs and harmonies for it in about as many minutes. So here is a time-warping song-writing collaboration between a 21 year old girl and her 23 year old father.

And before you ask, I wasn't in love with a boy called Andy at the time; the song was originally for a girl named Angie.

You Tube

2008-10-27T08:36:00.006Z

Either side of lunch with the parents-in-law I spent much of yesterday learning how to use Windows Movie Maker, so as to put K's latest song on You Tube. It was a slow process because I kept having to doctor photos - painting out other members of the family (cheerful family snaps didn't match the mood), power lines, etc. And I hadn't realised how often the irritating yellow date stamp kept switching itself on on my previous camera. Then I got distracted playing with psychedelic effects, which didn't suit the song at all but were irresistible, and also let me conceal less-soulful parts of twin sister-in-law's kitchen and garden.

It reminded me of the slide-tape presentations we used to prepare for public exhibitions in lower-tech days...for which I usually got roped in to do the voice-over. One year we bought a large trailer that had been a mobile dental surgery, and converted it into a touring exhibition which plugged into lamp posts in town centres all over Kent. It worked pretty well really, except in the East Kent mining village of Aylesham where it was stoned by a gang of youths. Also this was before the county logo had been emasculated into a limp-wristed 'my little pony'; in those days the rampant white 'Invicta' horse was unmistakably a stallion, and staff had to be provided with a special cleaning kit and replacement logo stickers, to address the outsize organs that were often graffitti-ed overnight.

Anyway, should you want to hear K's song, accompanied by an unlikely selection of family holiday pics, here's the link. K is the first to admit that it is not the most upbeat of numbers. She has just recorded (on our rather primitive home equipment) a well-balanced album which friends are bombarding us with requests for. Unfortunately I can't publicly post any of that because they are cover versions, but if any of my regular blog readers fancy her interpretation of songs usually sung by people named Nellie, Thea, Sheryl, Paulo, Christina etc, and would like a free copy (packaged horribly cheaply), then email me with your address at rod(at)budweiser.comremoveme and I'll post you one.

The Manners Stone

2008-10-25T10:50:00.007Z

Galtrigal

'Remember the two that stood here?' whispered the old wise stones.
'We recall,' said the tree and the bird that sung; 'They had no need of anyone.'
'Lovers,' mused the cave, 'from the way they sat with only the sound of the sea.'
'It was me; 'the Manners Stone replied, 'the magic that I have inside.'
'It was they,' the gulls cried back, 'their laughter and their fun;
Their eyes that met, the hearts that beat as one.'
'They never knew,' called the seal in the bay.
'Oh they knew,' said the waves, 'but they dared not say.'
'Remember the two that came,' said the stones, 'that loved, then went away?'

BT

The Manners Stone sits on the grazed turf near a crumbled field wall. It is unremarkable in a landscape dotted with boulders and outcrops, and you would never know it for what it is if you weren't shown. Once there was a sizeable village looking out across Loch Dunvegan, but now there is just a nearby croft, and a scatter of humps and brackened ruins.

The tourist brochures, if they mention it at all, say that the Manners Stone is reputed to give good manners to those who sit on it. This limp interpretation probably comes from a book 'Place Names of Skye', written by the Rev.W H Forbes in 1923. But it's not what I heard. Someone - I can't remember who, but it was someone local - told me that whoever sat on the stone would have good luck and fertility - but only if they sat on it bare-arsed.

The writer and recorder of legends Otta Swire, who was descended from generations of Skye folk, was told a different story, which came from a man of Galtrigal, where the stone lies. The Galtrigal man said:

"The Manners Stone's real name was the Bowing Stone, and it stood in 'the Field of Bowing'. At the proper season everyone came and walked round it three times and bowed. It was the stone of the ancient gods, and if you bowed to it you would bring good fortune to the harvest.

"Then came a minister who was angry and forbade the 'worship' of the stone, for he said it was a pagan practice and the stone an idol. So he had the stone moved into the churchyard as being sacred ground. But the people still visited it and bowed. Then the minister said that it was accursed and ordered it to be thrown out.

"Now, the man on whose land it was thrown had six strong sons, and when his crops were trampled down and ruined by people visiting and circling the stone he grew angry and told his sons to remove it. They did, and threw it into the ravine [there is a deep ravine close by] and it broke.

"Sheriff Nicholson came from Husabost and was angry and said, "Replace the stone as it was or on rent day you'll lose your croft." So the six sons tried to and it was then they found that the stone was broken. They collected the smaller pieces and laid them close together in the stone's old place and then laid the largest piece on top of them, and Sheriff Nicolson accepted that. There it still lies and people still bow to it. But I think there are other stories too."

In her introduction to Otta's book, Dame Flora Macleod noted that, "In olden days the Church did much to forbid and to destroy the ancient beliefs", and I am sure that is what has happened in this case. The good manners explanation, itself recorded by a minister of the church, seems to derive from association with the stone's name, and is a conveniently anodyne substitute for anything earthier or more challenging to the Church's authority. But the name of the Manners Stone must surely pre-date the arrival of english language, which completely undermines the theory.

I wondered whether perhaps the name had a biblical root, as 'Manna'; an association of good harvests with the 'divine sustenance' of the Israelites in the Book of Exodus. Then I looked in a Gaelic-English dictionary and found an obvious clue that seems to have been missed; 'Manadh' in gaelic (the 'dh' at the end isn't pronounced) means 'an omen', good luck'. What better name for a stone that could bring fortune to a harvest? The Manadh Stone.

Little Pricks

2008-10-24T08:18:00.001Z

The Social Secretary and I are so pumped full of viruses - in the last few days we've had flu, tetanus, polio and diphtheria jabs - that it's hard to know whether we're well or not. K had the flu one too, and we've all had unexplained headaches, until it dawned on us why. I've been putting off the tetanus booster for years - I reckon I snag myself on sheepy barbed wire so often that I get boosters from the bacterium itself.

At the flu one, in the village hall, K got the giggles when the administering doctor confided, "Just a small prick." Mine said, "Let it hang," but I think he was referring to my arm and the slightly camp hand-on-hip pose that I'd helpfully adopted. Afterwards we had to fill in forms. Sex, age, no problem. Then came, "Ethnic Origin". Sounds straightforward, except I put 'White Caucasian' and the SS put 'C of E'. Then we spotted an advice sheet, and crossed those out and obediently wrote 'White British' as instructed. Probably Caucasia is now an independent former Soviet republic, but ethnicity to me is not equivalent to 'nationality'. Next time I'm going to write 'Sudanese Ginger' and see what they make of it.

Along with her second jab the SS also had a routine smear test (not in the village hall). This was made more awkward by the fact that she was meeting for the first time the nurse whose dog she would shortly be walking twice a week (times are hard). She probably now knows the SS more intimately than I do. I passed the time playing with the new do-it-yourself blood pressure machine in the waiting room, which prints you a read out like those fortune-telling machines in fairgrounds. (I'm 'optimal', which is a lifetime first for anything; I may frame it and hang it with my sub-optimal certificates in the downstairs gents).

My non-twin sister-in-law once importunately fell for a hot doctor at Guy's who was involved in administering and assessing the results of her barium meal test (she described it as like consuming and passing a bowl of plaster of paris). Although on the scale of barium meal test attraction I'm sure sister-in-law scored highly, she didn't get a date out of it. Sometimes the odds are just stacked against you.

All Mimsy

2008-10-23T13:16:00.004Z

I am indebted to Steve for tasking me with blogging six random facts about myself. Indebted, because I have neglected blogging and, worse, my fellow bloggers for a couple of weeks, for no good reason, and this gives me no option but to get to it. I think Lucy already tagged me with this a while back, although it has metamorphosed from the 'six interesting facts' it was then, which I found much harder.

1) I was baptised twice. This isn't actually allowed. The first time was into the Anglican Church, in Khartoum Cathedral. It happened to be Gordon Sunday, which was an important day in colonial Khartoum. This is how I acquired Gordon as a third forename. The second time was into the Church of Scotland. As the minister paid feu duty for the manse to my grandfather (as did the hotel, the garage, the shop, the doctor, Argyllshire Constabulary, the Post Office, the North of Scotland Hydro Electric Board and Argyll County Council amongst others), he probably wasn't in a position to demur when my grandfather requested a second baptism, to be held at the family home. It hasn't made me devout (I think one may have cancelled the other out).

2) I was once hospitalised for two weeks by a beer can. The beer was Watneys, so I probably deserved it; the can was a party seven, which no normal can opener fitted. Students don't have access to proper tools, but trying to open it by stabbing it with a large kitchen knife was a mistake. I wrapped some loo paper round the ensuing wound, where the sticky-out part of the blade near the handle had ploughed into the base of my little finger creating the sensation of an elastic band shrivelling up inside my palm, and enjoyed the party. It was some days later that I realised that the finger was not working as it should. (If I made a fist, it projected out straight, like someone genteely drinking tea from their best china). After an operation involving insertion of a plastic drinking straw from wrist to finger tip, followed by another involving replacement of the straw by a tendon transplanted from my forearm and the sewing of a shirt button through the nail, the damage was more or less repaired. I took my third year exams with the help of an amanuensis, who presumably got the blame for not being able to spell words like 'Schumacher' (yes, I know we can all spell it now - this was the 'Small is Beautiful' economist, not the racing driver) and Ada, the computer language that I had a distressing tendency to spell 'Aida', like Verdi's opera. I was lucky to have had the great Fenton Braithwaite as my plastic surgeon - famed for his work on the 'Guinea Pig' burns victims of WW2.

3) I was once taught by Frank McEachran, the inspiration for Hector in Alan Bennett's 'The History Boys'. He had a more profound effect on me than I had on him.

4) I once celebrated New Year in a lunatic asylum. Although I guess it was called a psychiatric hospital by then. St Nicholas Hospital in Gosforth was formerly Newcastle upon Tyne City Asylum, and the African nurse who was a housemate must have broken every rule in the book inviting friends in for the night shift, to drink wine in an attendants' office between two wards. My main recollection was two patients shouting across at each other, "I'm Napoleon!" "No you're not, I am!" And spotting a rather fine Montague Dawson hanging vulnerably above a staircase, which I thought could have funded a lot of electro-convulsive therapy or vallium or something (I later learnt it had been on loan from the Hancock Gallery).

5) I may be the only surviving person to have vaulted an industrial-scale lighting column in a three wheeler. I was driving up the A1 at night, and a drunk driver had just run into it, felling it at right angles across both lanes of the northbound carriageway. I saw it too late to stop, and my tough little Reliant Regal hit it full on, became airborne and landed on the other side. A man who had stopped in time remarked that he thought I was a goner. The car seemed to have sustained no major damage, although the steering column never again sat quite right where it passed through the dashboard. A tribute to the durability of Tamworth engineering and the elasticity of fibreglass. Or possibly to being baptised twice.

6) Someone once tried to commit suicide in front of that same three-wheeler. She leapt out in front of me, again late at night, after quarrelling with her boyfriend at a dance at the local barracks. I sprinted quarter of a mile to the nearest telephone box to call the police and ambulance, looking for all the world like a manic hit-and-run driver, and leaving the ignition on (the coil burnt out the following day). Fortunately the boyfriend (a squaddy) stuck around to tell the police what had happened. After being breathalised (I passed), I was allowed to drive home with damage to the bonnet and one smashed headlight. I drove carefully round the next corner.....and ran over a cat. Conscious that the attending police were following not far behind, I didn't stop. Twice in two hundred yards might have looked careless. (Sorry cat). The girl, who had appeared terminal, turned out to be merely very drunk and badly bruised. A tribute to the elasticity of fibreglass and the durability of Maidstone girls.

That's six. Apparently I now have to tag six people. It would be rude not to (and more public than breaking a chain letter, which I habitually do), but I don't know how you feel about tagging, and it isn't unreasonable to find them tiresome, and anyway you've probably been blogging eight years longer than me and have more readers than you can cope with and therefore had it umpteen times before already, and you really don't have to, and I won't be hurt if you don't, and at least you get a gratuitous link here, and there's no need to apologise if you don't....

Hattiehattie
Can Bass 1
Laugh Now, Cry Later
Megablog
Extra Virgin
Fresh as a Daisy

The rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Write six random things about yourself
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Coming Out

2008-10-07T20:45:00.011Z

I have a boyfriend.

We met at a barbecue the weekend before last, at the end of the Indian summer weather.

I'm not sure of his real name; people call him Dude.

He has had a hard life - rejected by his family, fostered and subsequently adopted in early childhood. Perhaps because of that early rejection he is hard to get to know...rough, self-sufficient, uncommunicative, somewhat remote.

I think affection comes hard to him, but I believe he has a noble spirit and an endearing vulnerability which tugs at the heartstrings.

Not everyone would find him handsome. But in love, it is the peculiarities that attract, not the perfections. His lower jaw is strangely malformed, as if it doesn't belong to him, so that his lips never close over a perpetual smile. This may be inherited or a product of early neglect, but he is self-conscious about it and I haven't asked. His hirsuteness is strange to me too, but he has all his own hair, his breath is sweet, and he runs like the wind. There is natural grace in his stride, and an irreverent gleam in his eye which is full of promise.

It may have been the wine, or the red glow of the sunset, or the music, but as we relaxed together on a bench in the embers of the evening our eyes met in mutual recognition, and he stretched out beside me and laid his head in my lap, and somehow I knew that it was right. That whatever people might think or say, whatever society's mores and expectations, there was a beauty in this relationship which dare not speak its name.

Nokia Waterloo (My my, I tried to hold you back ...)

2008-10-07T10:50:00.002Z

Yesterday the Social Secretary had a difficult day. Her mobile kept shooting out of her jodhpurs pocket like a bar of soap (too small a pocket or jodhpurs too tight? I wasn't going to ask). So when, tacked up and ready to go, she popped into the stables loo ('Nothing serious', she insists), she held it in her mouth to be on the safe side. As she flushed she said to herself, "I mustn't let it fall in". At least, she started to say it to herself. Aloud.

Fishing it out can't have been fun.

When she got back an hour or so later the phone still wasn't working, so I scrubbed up, snapped on a mask and latex gloves (unnecessary, I know; it's a private, sartorial thing) and we set to work.

After a vigorous shake (water poured out like brine from a drowned man), we stripped it and I began passing organs for treatment...battery, subscriber identity module, plastic slidey bit. Then resuss with a hair dryer played on several tiny orifices.

After some charging (the battery had shorted out completely), the first vital signs returned. However, the patient was still deeply confused; WXYZ was swopping round with TUV, and GHI with MNO, causing predictive text to produced psychedelic interpretations. We repeated the process three times before a little colour returned to its cheeks and it was able to recall the date and remember its address.

It's more or less back to normal this morning, although callers sound like goldfish.

And we're all insisting the SS washes her hands after texting.

Loseley Park

2008-10-05T11:21:00.006Z

Yesterday to the wedding of a friend and former work protégé who, far from seizing the opportunity to absorb my sober tutelage and carve out a sensible career in local government, had wound up teaching me so much (how to do considerably better in the private sector; how to get thrown out of a pub for staging a puppet show with your socks; the health and safety implications of teenage mutant ninja turtles in Danish discos; how crawling on all fours doesn't necessarily render you invisible in the dark.)

It was a generous and meticulously organised wedding, clearly planned by a tasteful romantic. I don't want to make a snap judgement here, but I'd say this may have been the influence of the charming and beautiful bride, rather than of friend-and-former-protégé.

The ceremony was in a relaxed secular format - no hymn singing (probably nobody knows the tunes anymore anyway), but tranquil music choices (Canon in D, Glasgow Love Theme), followed by various moving and thought-provoking readings ("I knew that I had been touched by love when I started thinking in terms of 'we'," provoked the thought that I shouldn't have snatched that last coffee before we left).

The Great Hall at Loseley House, with its panelling, stained-glass roundels and scent of wood smoke, was a timeless setting for the ceremony (it was already 130 years old when the Pachelbel processional was written). The reception and breakfast were held in a lofty timbered barn, the tables invitingly decorated in white and purple with a gift-boxed spirit shot at each place-setting (mine was a very thoughtfully-chosen miniature of Jura malt).

We were at a good table. On one side was Gareth Malone, the choirmaster in the BBC 2 documentary series about reviving school choirs. He swore he wasn't, and his name card said something different, although he admitted that we were not the first to remark on the likeness. Anyway, he was good company and probably sings beautifully. On our other side, best surprise of the day, was the girl with lovely eyes, whom I haven't seen for ages and much miss. With her was her partner, whom we hadn't met. Clearly a man of taste, he seemed very likeable, with a restrained dry humour that hinted at dineability.

I am easily provoked into a diatribe about wedding excess; the absurd amounts that people are expected to spend on weddings now, when a do in our day meant coronation chicken vol-au-vents and asparagus tips rolled in brown bread, washed down with a few glasses of Asti Spumanti; when you could count your friends by your cheese-boards, tin-trays and toast racks; and when at t' end, when all was said and done, there was still change out of' tenner for t' meter.

But it's awful nice being on the receiving end of a really good one, and I'm only sorry we had to leave before the band arrived and the evening celebrations began.

Boiled Eggs, Soldiers and Tummy Ticklers

2008-10-01T11:18:00.005Z

A comment from the Saggittarian got me thinking about those peculiarities and sayings that families have. For instance, when it comes to boiled eggs I come from a family of spoon tappers. Apart from the atavistic satisfaction of bashing in it's skull, you don't waste any of the white, you don't cut your thumb and you don't get your knife eggy before the toast and marmalade stage. And we had soldiers with it. The Social Secretary, on the other hand, comes from a long line of egg-beheaders, and her soldiers were called dippies. Inevitably the children have grown up as dippy decapitators.

Then there are those sayings that are only understood within the family. If we wanted a bit of cheese without biscuits, we asked for 'cheese like a mouse' (do other people say that?). The SS's family calls those humpbacked bridges that leave your tummy floating for a moment, 'tummy ticklers'. My mother's family knew them as 'Thank you maams', after a past chauffeur who would warn his passengers one was coming with, 'Hold tight please', and then thank them afterwards. Caravans are 'Jo's' (don't ask), unnecessary urban four-wheeled drive vehicles are 'Ilfords', croutons are 'sippits' and chocolate digestives 'Daddy Bs'.

In one family we knew, if one of them was relating an anecdote that might put another down, someone would mutter 'Lith', and the speaker would immediately stop. Lith, we discovered, stood for 'loyalty in the home'.

One of the barns in my childhood home, in which the mowers and tools were kept, was known as 'the agricultural shed'. When my sister and I bought our own houses, out of habit we each called our garden sheds 'the agricultural shed'. This amused our father, who reminded us that the original barn had also been used as a second garage. Getting us to call it an agricultural shed was a ploy to stop us innocently giving away its garage use to any visiting council official, who might then have increased our rates. Probably our children in turn will have agricultural sheds.

There is also a stubborn inertia in the names we gave things. For example, there was a green, perforated steel food safe which was once used to store half stiltons. Over the years it moved house with us and was repainted white, but it was always known as 'the green thing'.

I'm guessing we all have these idiosyncratic quirks which help to define our membership of our individual clan, and set us apart from those unfortunates outside the magic circle.

Martin Stephenson and Helen McCookerybook

2008-09-29T09:56:00.006Z

To Whitstable on Saturday night, to see Martin Stephenson and Helen McCookerybook.

It was a beautiful, mild evening. We parked on Middle Wall and crabbed through Squeeze Gut Alley to the Horsebridge. On the beach and the sea wall near the Pearson's and the Royal Oyster Stores there were clusters of people standing with drinks and cameras, watching the sunset over the estuary, as if it was the tropics. We bought a drink and it was almost perfect and to complete the moment, to the SS's chagrin, I blagged a rare cigarette off a couple standing nearby. They wouldn't take anything for it, but wound up next to us at the gig, our new best friends (thanks Michelle; here's to Limerick and original sin!).

Helen opened, quickly winning over the audience. For Freight Train she pulled the promoter/sound man on stage to accompany her; he looked thrilled and terrified in equal measure, clutching a guitar as if it was a fig leaf and singing rather well. Martin Stephenson joined her for several songs too. It was the first time we'd seen Helen perform, beyond parties and people's sitting-rooms; she was confident and relaxed, and her set was flawless.

In the break we visited the bar and looked down from the Horsebridge Centre's balcony at the fizz of laid-back provincial night-life below. (I once wrote a design brief for new development in Whitstable. It suggested weather-boarding, seaward-facing gables, balconies and external staircases, and maybe someone read it, because much of the newer stuff has these and the town has hung on to its quirky character).

Martin Stephenson gave a stunning performance and provided a masterclass in audience-connection. The stage had been erected between the two doors, so that any comings and goings couldn't easily be ignored. And there seemed to be many comings and goings, individual and group. No one escaped Martin's quick (but malice-free) wit. A smiley man with protruding teeth sitting near the front had a magic phone which leapt repeatedly out of his pocket and clattered on the floor like a spawning salmon (we saw him later on an ancient bicycle, wobbling home down the High Street on the wrong side of the road, shedding things). In the front row a small boy slept on his mother's lap. When he woke near the end, tired and disoriented, Martin turned whatever song he was doing into Postman Pat and sang it right through in a magical little concert for one, and no child has ever smiled more widely (there is something strangely endearing in a rock musician knowing all the words to Postman Pat).

You can't pay an audience a bigger compliment than to give the impression that you are enjoying yourself and don't want to stop, and that's the impression Helen and Martin gave us.

Thanks guys.

Across the Universe

2008-09-25T10:15:00.002Z

I'd never heard of this movie (clearly don't get out enough) and only bought it on spec. We watched it last night and were completely blown away. Like Mamma Mia it is a love story woven round the music of one group, but it was in an altogether different league.

The cinematography, choreography, and sets were stunning, and the cast could actually sing. The plot and characterisation may be a spare - it is, after all, a musical - and the songs were sometimes crudely stitched in, but the political and cultural backdrop of the Sixties and the sensitively set Beatles' music gave it a gravitas which made MM look like a package holiday. This was 'Moulin Rouge' to Mamma Mia's 'Una Paloma Blanca'

Although the locations flit between Liverpool, Greenwich Village, Detroit and Vietnam, this was a British film through and through, from the Karl Ferris style false-colour palette, through the Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais screenplay, to the cameo roles of Joe Cocker, Eddie Izzard and Bono.

I wallowed nostalgically in the trippy, psychedelic sequences, and it's turned K onto Beatles' music in a way that fifteen years' of fogey parental promotion had naturally failed to do. This was simply a haunting, beautiful film. I only wish we'd seen it on the big screen.

Plug

2008-09-23T15:28:00.002Z

Just in case you are in need of a lift, A Free Man in Preston's posts always work for me. If you haven't visited him for a while, read his latest post (see my blog roll).

An Imaginary Massacre and a Minor Miracle

2008-09-23T08:36:00.006Z

There are many reasons for not blogging. This last week's was having a daughter in hospital with respiratory problems. Apart from our ordered daily schedule going to hell in a handcart, I kind of just lost the urge, choosing instead to tidy the workshop and a couple of sheds with an obsessive single-mindedness which suggests I may be pregnant.

K is back home now, having mentally machine-gunned a socially maladjusted male nurse; a patient with an amputated toe (or rather, without an amputated toe) who kept the mixed ward awake all night complaining of pain in his phantom digit; several senior hospital administrators prematurely promoted from the post room; and the limited linguistic skills of a Latvian drug nurse.

There were good things and bad things about her time there, although - this being Britain's leading C-Difficile hospital under Rose Gibb's appalling mismanagement (Ms Gibbs is now involved in a private consultancy with her partner, who also has a dubious hospital management history, seeking to provide advice on hospital management) - we'll count it a success if she doesn't come home with something she didn't go in with. The initial triage bit (if that's the right phrase) was excellent. Shutting down all systems for the weekend was not.

However, instead of muck raking, I've remembered a really heart-warming hospital story that happened earlier this year.

There is a delightful, diminutive lady near here, who lives alone in a little cottage. She was a nurse all her working life, never married and is now a cheerful and quick-witted 87. Earlier this year she caught a cold and it turned into pneumonia. Even as she recovered from that, her eyesight suddenly and rapidly deteriorated, threatening to steal away her ability to look after herself, let alone read or watch television.

A close friend and neighbour, herself 85, insisted on driving her to hospital, where for many hours they sat and waited to be seen. When, in the late afternoon as the place was pretty much closing up for the day, a consultant finally examined her, he said, "You have sudden onset cataracts. As you've waited so long, I'm going to operate on you right now".

And, in a little laser miracle, he did. Both eyes.

On the drive home, she said "I can read that road sign!"

And her friend behind the wheel replied, "Well I can't!"

I wish I could name the surgeon. But to have so disdained the bumph and procedure and procrastination of the NHS and restored this lady's sight and life on the spot seems a wonderful kindness.

Ryanair - The World's Worst Airline?

2008-09-13T12:54:00.004Z

I was having to fly quite regularly a few years ago, not for pleasure. This was just after the al-Qaeda shoe bomber, Richard Reid, had tried to destroy a Boeing 767 with plastic explosives and a detonator. I never saw any passenger make a fuss about the increased security which followed; we were all quite reassured to be shuffling barefoot through those snaking scanner queues.

There have been other terrorism alerts and foiled plots since. In 2006 an alleged bomb plot to blow up passenger jets bound from Britain to the United States using explosives smuggled aboard in hand luggage was uncovered, and security at airports was again increased. On this occasion Ryanair's CEO Michael O'Leary's response was to throw a hissy fit condemning the inconvenience of security measures. Ryanair reportedly threatened to sue the Government for compensation if airport security measures were not relaxed. Here was a company that seemed to put profit before the safety of its passengers.

Around this time O'Leary also ruled out joining the EU carbon emissions trading scheme. He is quoted as saying, "I am far too busy doubling Ryanair over the next few years to be joining any carbon emissions trading scheme." Nice.

Last month, in part of a private war with travel booking web sites, Ryanair stated that it would refuse to honour any online bookings unless they had been made through its own website. A spokesman for the airline said that it was trawling through bookings, identifying passengers who would be prevented from boarding. The Air Transport Users Council suggested that the airline does not want the travel trade selling on its fares because it makes money from other things it sells through its own website. The consumer watchdog 'Which' accused Ryanair of treating passengers (who were to be summarily turned away at the checkout with ruined holiday arrangements) as ''pawns'.

According to an exposé by the Sunday Times last month, Ryanair are now curbing the discretionary rights of pilots to request extra fuel, by imposing a cap on fuel safety reserves for its aircraft. An internal Ryanair memo, sent to pilots earlier this year, reportedly reveals that the company have insisted that any request by a captain for extra fuel should be the "exception", and refers to the normal limit being 300kg maximum reserve, providing about five minutes of extra stacking time for a Boeing 737. Although CAA guidance advises that sufficient fuel should be carried to cope with the standard stacking time of 20 minutes over busy UK airports, the company memo states: "Ryanair can statistically prove that 20 minutes' fuel is not required in LTN [Luton] or STN [Stansted]. Therefore it is not Ryanair policy to carry this fuel." Pilots are also refused extra fuel for observing altitude restrictions imposed by air traffic controllers.

Civil Aviation figures reveal that the number of fuel shortage emergencies in British airspace has doubled in five years. Under European rules, every plane must carry a "contingency" load of about 5% of a trip's fuel, and enough to divert to an alternative airport. Captains have a duty to anticipate delays from head winds, storms and re-routeing, and to request extra fuel to cope with this. Evan Cullen, a pilot with 19 years' experience and president of the Irish Air Line Pilots' Association, is cited as saying that commercial pressure on pilots to pare down the fuel they carry was compromising safety.

In response to reports that Ryanair pilots are condemning this move to restrict fuel safety margins as 'insane', an airline spokesman apparently retaliated that, "No pilot is allowed to fly with minimum fuel as these clowns claim," whilst admitting that pilots were allowed extra fuel only in "exceptional cases", and acknowledging that Ryanair had suffered a Mayday caused by fuel shortage within the last three years.

In 2007 Ryanair was voted 'the world's worst airline' for the second year running. A third of respondents in Britain voted the airline their least favourite, giving delays, cancellations, unfriendly staff, uncomfortable seats and poor leg room as the reasons (in one incident, Ryanair charged a man with cerebral palsy £18 to use a wheelchair).

Me, I can put up with a bit of rudeness and discomfort (although the company's proposal to allow use of mobile phones in flight is pushing it; aeroplanes are one of the few public spaces left where one is not subjected to the one-sided ramblings of loudmouthed prats, and about the only place you would be unable to escape them by any means). Compromising safety is another matter. I know I won't be flying Ryanair so long as it remains under the control of the ruthless and bombastic Mr O'Lairy.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

2008-09-12T10:05:00.002Z

To meet a rail passenger at Kyle you drive down a ramp from the main road and turn round between the platforms.

On one occasion, while my father was waiting there in his white Vauxhall to collect my mother who had been shopping in Inverness, an elderly stranger tapped on the window and asked whether he might be taken to Carbost. It was only a few miles out of the way and my father, ever polite, said, "Yes, of course". The man opened the rear door and got in, placing a number of bags on the seat next to him.

Shortly after, my mother arrived. He helped her put her shopping in the boot, and she climbed into the front passenger seat, politely greeting the stranger and asking whether he had had a successful day. The old Highlander explained that he had been shopping in the new Tesco's, and then lunched in the hotel. They discussed how handy the new store was, and the bewildering choice there was compared to the Co-op in Portree.

After they had passed through the toll and crossed onto the island, she told my father about her adventures in Inverness, and he reported on his progress servicing the boiler.

As they chattered away, a silence grew in the back of the car (insofar as a silence can grow) until at length, in a pause, the Highlander remarked hesitantly; "This isn't a taxi, is it?"

"No," my father agreed.

It was a very embarrassed Highland gentleman who disembarked in Carbost, trying to proffer notes and thanking repeatedly for the lift.

Three Bad Smells

2008-09-10T11:57:00.004Z

Smoke in a Jar

When I was about eight, playing with matches one day, it struck me how attractive smoke was as it curled and twisted in the sunlight. Deciding to save some, so that it would spiral prettily for ever, I lit a match under an inverted screw top jar, then sealed it.

Next time I came home for the holidays the smoke seemed to have gone, but when I removed the lid an unimaginably revolting, claggy, sulphurous reek of stale smoke burst out like the horrors of Pandora's box. It is still with me, a premonition of hell.

Vomit

Nobody's favourite. Once, at that sensitive stage of adolescence when you think the world is a stage and that everyone is looking at you, I was standing at the starboard rail of the Harwich-Hook of Holland ferry, trying to look noble and intellectual. Unknown to me, a child had been seasick three hundred feet or so further for'ard, and its mother was attempting to clean it up with a paper hanky. As she tossed the vomit-sodden tissue overboard the wind snatched it and flung it aft like a guided missile. It must have been doing about 40 knots when it hit me, with the kind of resounding slap which only a soggy Kleenex connecting with a face at high speed can make.

Look noble after that, I defy you.

Abandoned Molluscs

Skye. We were strolling above the shore between Struan Beg and Rubha na h-Uamha one summer afternoon, making for a favourite bay. The sun was shining, the sky as blue as a jay's wing, and the light breeze bore the balm of heather and wild thyme.

We sensed the corruption before we happened on the source. First a hint of the fishmonger's slab, crab paste and kedgeree. Then something feistier, sea wrack and stale sex. As we descended the brae towards the beach it grew stronger, so that the very air stilled and darkened, and the oily swell recoiled from the black shore.

And there it was, perhaps the rankest smell on earth; an abandoned sack of whelks, suppurating in the August heat. Primordial juices ripened and fermented, metamorphosing and evolving. A mucilaginous grey precipitate seeped from the hessian; where it had pooled, the turf was dead.

Even in beauty there is corruption.

Roger Federer v Andy Murray

2008-09-09T10:27:00.005Z

I suppose I ought to have been rooting for Murray last night. I went to bed instead, and woke to hear that Federer had won the US Open in style. I felt rather glad.

Federer seems like a pleasant, well-mannered, grounded sort of bloke. He has put time and money into being a UNICEF goodwill ambassador and into his own foundation for The Disadvantaged. He also likes cricket and football. Nice Roger Federer is like a lovely bun with icing on.

Murray, on the other hand, has the charm of a malignant malt loaf. His remark during the 2006 World Cup that he would be supporting 'anyone but England' did little to woo supporters south of the border (although it was a view shared by many Scots).

Like Murray, I am mainly Scottish and a quarter English. I feel most Scottish in England, and most English in Scotland, which may be the curse of all expatriates. My loyalty, though, goes to both.

Perhaps in a shrinking world it's okay to prefer the nice guy to the compatriate. What a difference that might have made to History.

Energy Saving Tips

2008-09-03T19:05:00.005Z

There are an awful lot of holly berries on the bough this year, which is supposed to mean a bad winter (there is a saying in these parts, 'When hol'berries be rife, best cuddle a wife'.) And now that BT has stocked up on anthracite nuts, candles and paraffin before they run out, he can share his suspicion that when the Russians cut off our oil and gas supplies, we might experience the odd power cut over the coming months. These won't last long, because people will stop buying caviar and listening to Tatu, which should soon bring the Russian economy to its knees. In the meanwhile, BT has jotted down his top ten energy-saving tips which you may find useful.

Pop down to B&Q, buy a small pot of own brand Signal Red Gloss, and paint your radiators red. They will look so warm that you will be able to get away without turning the heating on.

Keep an empty hot water bottle under the bed. If taken short in the night, no need to turn on the lights and lose body-heat going to the bathroom; just use the bottle. It'll warm you for an hour or two afterwards as well.

Make your own organic, warming toothpaste; mix two tablespoons of bicarbonate of soda with an ounce of grated dried chilli peppers. Add a teaspoon of lime pickle and stir into a paste. Brush teeth and gums vigorously before bed. There's no need for a partner to snuggle up to with this hot number. Be careful to wash your hands afterwards.

Next time you go to the supermarket, ask for some empty boxes. Tell them that you are collecting for 'Warmer Homes for Wensleydale'. When you get back, move the furniture away from the walls and pile the boxes up from floor to ceiling. You'll be surprised at the difference this makes. The extra storage opportunities are a bonus.

On cold nights a cupful of table salt will stop the lavatory from freezing over. Antifreeze will also work, but be sure to flush well before use. (Always check that the pan is not frozen. If it is, a kettle of boiling water will usually resolve the problem).

Cling film is not an effective repair for cracked lavatory pans.

Marmite has unparalleled antifreeze properties. Squeeze some into your car door locks using the back of a teaspoon. It also makes a useful screen-wash.

In cold weather many foods require more energy to consume than they supply. Try to eat a high-energy, low mastication diet involving efficient calorific ingredients such as bananas, Yorkshire Pudding and Maltesers.

Anyone used to swimming in Britain will know that the water feels warmer on a normal, grey summer's day than when the sun is shining. This is because perceived body temperature is relative to ambient temperature. In winter ensure that you regularly lower your blood temperature with a generous intake of alcohol (you may not technically be warmer, but you won't care).

Dig out that old record turntable from the attic and attach a 3 volt bulb to the short pins on the power plug. Set the turntable to thirty-three and a third RPM and invite a friend to spin the turntable vigorously in an anticlockwise direction; this will provide sufficient light for you to top up your guests' glasses.