Exploding Head Syndrome

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

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?

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?

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

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'

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

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?