...ruffles...

Guy Fawkes night is a big night at Emma’s school. The whole village congregate for a music and fireworks spectacular. Emma is usually followed around the muddy field by past and present pupils demanding her attention and pointing at me. Friday was no different; she was quickly surrounded by a swarm of last year’s class who have been scattered to the four corners of the local secondary school world. From the gloom appeared two former pupils, Anna, and Jeremy, a plump mildly autistic boy, dressed in a red and yellow Harry Potter jumper and scarf. Emma greets them.

“Hello Anna, how’s St Joseph’s? and Jeremy, have you come straight from Hogwarts?”

Then on Saturday, Emma was looking at the TV listings and complaining that BBC were dedicated two and a half hours Paula Radcliffe’s next race; entitled “Paula’s Return”. ‘How can they justify that amount of time just on one race’.

I explained that the New York Marathon would be very difficult to complete it in any less time.

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Labels: General me

Having bought it religiously for years, I rarely buy the NME now. I’ll buy the Christmas special or the issues when they do the best 50 LP’s of all time etc. I gave up when I realised their understanding of ‘dance’ music stretched little beyond Trip Hop and no hip hop artist could escape without a comparison the De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising. I also sussed the editorial style, which, when assessing a new band’s style always listed two peers that you had heard of (to help you) and one that you hadn’t (to make them look cool).

“Gobstopper’s sound is not unlike early Joy Division, Blur and Flungebuckets Christmas Retention Programme”

I decided I didn’t want to read a magazine written by isolationist sixth formers dressed like Robert Smith. I’ve never regretted the decision, in fact whenever I’ve bought it I’ve found it as informative as the Tesco top 100 CD chart. Ooh the coolest bands on the planet are The Strokes, The White Stripes and, crikey, Nirvana.

I bought it this week for the Peel tribute, in which it praises his style of playing records in their entirety without speaking over them because it “allowed people to tape the songs off the radio, which is what people used to do before file swapping” Jeez where’s my Zimmer frame?

Anyway, here are my favourite Peel facts from their list of 50: -

• A massive Captain Beefheart fan, in 1969 Peel volunteered himself to chauffeur him around the Midlands gig circuit. At one point, Beefheart, ordered Peel to stop the car with the words “John I want to hug a tree”.
• Ater giving The Damned exposure on his show, he received a letter from the drummer’s mum thanking him for “helping Christopher’s career”.
• Part of his show was The Pigs Big 78 which involved his wife choosing a 78rpm record for him to play.
• He hated Essex drivers so much he’d drive around the county to avoid them.
• With the wide range of music played, Peel would get annoyed when his Festive 50 were always made up of white boys with guitars. When Nirvana topped the poll in 1991 with ‘Smell’s Like Teen Spirit’ he cancelled the poll altogether. A Phantom 50 was later broadcast through the year, one a week.
• In 1997 he ran a Festive 31 due to the paucity of votes
• He deleted the first 5000 words of his autobiography by mistake
• The only band ever to be bumped down the Festive 50 were The Dawn Parade who had something like 20 times as many votes as anyone else due to Internet vote rigging. He let them be Number 50 for sheer cheek.
• At www.planetbods.org/radio/peel.live you can find the John Peel Sweet Eating Game. It involved eating a sweet whenever he played a record at the wrong speed, mumbled incomprehensibly about a family member, was caught by surprise by the end of a track or played a record so obscure it’s only available at one shop in Oslo.

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Labels: Music

The thing about John Peel was his relevance, whether it was dad’s Elvis and Beatles generation or my indie pop and acid house generation Peelo was all over it. The announcement of his death appears to have been greeted with uniform shock. Peel was hardly old, but he wasn’t young either, he was omnipotent in music terms and rather like the music he championed, I suppose we all assumed he would last forever.

Peel was unique, able to traverse the musical generations without effort or embarrassment. The musical tastemakers of today – Pete Tong and Tim Westwood, for example, have had their moments, but as their favoured genres become marginalised, so will they. This never worried Peel, his ability to avoid getting sucked into the industry side of music (and it’s inevitable trends and fads) meant it’s always been about the music. The industry outputs may dip and peak, but there is always good music available somewhere – Peel knew that and had a voracious appetite for finding it.

The news was broken by our Nervy Cerebral Manager who had heard it on the radio in the car. He, like everyone reacted by positioning himself in a Peel context announcing that he was a punk at University (one, we teased, who supported Anarchy in the UK as long as it was within a structured community and observed the rule of law – “Of course” he replied going crimson). In tribute, he then burst into a chorus of Uptown Top Rankin’.

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Labels: Music

My dad and I agree about “one thing” apparently; that George Bush is evil. A victory for Bush endorses his right wing Christian radicalism, further polarising global politics, legitimising the ‘affirmative action’ of those disenfranchised by his aggression. His “You’re either with us or you’re a terrorist” attitude creates a vacuum in the middle where liberalism perishes and his ideological war is accelerated. Or as dad says; he represents everything that is wrong about America.

On the other hand, baseball represents everything that is right about America, and the Red Sox winning the World Series represents everything that is right about Baseball. The sport is resolute about its traditions and history which are involved and romantic. Major League Baseball is wholly democratic, players negotiate salaries and terms collectively, it preserves individual liberty – it’s a team game but you are judged on your individual merits. It is international and multicultural – it’s not unusual to find Japanese, Ecuadoreans, and Cubans in any team and I don’t mean Ecuadorian-Americans, I mean Ecuadorians who were born in Ecuador.

Why do Americans deny their own national identity by authenticating themselves with claims of being Irish or African or whatever?

Anyway, the great thing about Baseball is that no matter what level you watch, it always looks like its being played by pub players in the park on a Sunday. Most of the time the ball flies off the top of the bat and into the crowd, or scuffs along the floor. You can be rubbish at Baseball and still look like a pro (although, unlike you, they do occasionally throw the ball at 100 mph or welly it out of the ground). The great thing about the Sox though is that they are, almost to a man, shaggy barrel chested barflies which, despite the rampant modernisation of sports science today (coupled with the fact they wear almost identical uniforms) means a modern baseball professional looks no different to the hard drinking hard living players of the twenties. Football fans who hit their early thirties must come to terms with the fact they will never play professionally, a baseball fan reach his late forties before that happens.

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Labels: Sport

Regular readers will know of my love hate relationship with Michael Moore. Something that will make the man himself sit up and think, when you’ve got a Ruffles on your tail it’s got to be a worry. I loved Bowling for Columbine, but thought Stupid White Men was, generally, pish. So it’s one-all with Moore’s latest venture in the cinemas.

Moore’s central argument in Fahrenheit 9/11 still makes a lot of sense, America is built on rampant capitalism, capitalism’s central theme is greed, and those who are more successful at being greedy use corporately funded fear and alienation (or more specifically, the fear of being alienated) to maintain their position. I agree with all this, although you could argue that the land of the free, means you are equally free to succeed and fail by any means necessary and it’s just that Bush and his cohorts are better than most at succeeding. Perhaps the true argument should be that the model of the American Dream is fundamentally flawed, for which all Americans must take responsibility – but Moore isn’t brave enough to make that kind of accusation.

Fahrenheit 9/11 isn’t a great documentary in itself; it’s a bit one paced and his central argument barely develops as the film progresses. Moore’s clearly struggled to get together decent footage to support what he’s saying (either that or his deliberately used grainy TV footage to give it that gritty ‘urban warrior’ feel). His interviewing style is frustratingly leading, expressing his own personal feelings as questions that his hand picked acolytes are happy to agree with.

It’s difficult to know what Moore’s objective truly is; this isn’t an intelligent commentary on the state of America and therefore the world post 9/11. If that’s what it’s supposed to be then it will fail to rouse the chattering liberal middle classes. If it’s a wake-up call or call to arms to America’s great unwashed, then the message itself is sound (watching the aggressive recruitment of troops for Iraq in mid-America shopping malls will raise a few eyebrows) but its stylistic execution is unlikely to draw people away from Spiderman 2. If it’s simply a historical social documentary, it’s really quite poor, but if it’s just another voice to add to the anti-republican cause then I suppose it’s sound, if undeserving of the publicity it’s had.

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Labels: Films

“i am working at 8, g is out with the lads and i don’t want him wakin me up at 3”

So said the text message from Sara, explaining why she was staying over on Saturday night. At midnight, I retired to bed having fallen into a takeaway induced coma.

The phone rang.

Gareth was on the other end slurring that he was in “A whole world of trouble” – I thought he’d been arrested. He hadn’t as it happens, he’d caved in under intense drinking pressure and decided to make for home. Once in the taxi he either threw up in it, or got the driver to stop so he could. Either way the driver wasn’t prepared to take him any further and kicked him out on the edge of Oxford.

Detached from his friends, miles from a taxi rank, freezing to death, he was stranded. We were his only hope a mere 25 miles away. When I eventually reached him he told me the story rather like a tatty flick book which plays out a few pages before jumping to another section then ending abruptly (he was asleep within a mile of me picking him up).

At exactly the same time Gareth phoned, Sara’s mobile went off. It was from Waitrose (where she works – it wasn’t extended customer service). Now check this… the temperature in one of the fridges in the shop was going up, so the fridge phoned up a control centre to tell them it wasn’t feeling well. The control centre called Sara – who was on call – to go and sort it out.

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Labels: General me

Sunday: Help two year old niece look for cat, soak people with a hose, jump as 'high as the sky' and, ulp, fall into a pile of stinging nettles.

Monday: Fend off questions about delays to re-branding and the building of a new website, check latest 'management metrics' and lose sleep about low bookings for conference.

Go figure.

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Labels: General me

In a rare display of collective philanthropy everyone at work participated in Jeans for Genes Day, a neat idea where you pay £1 to charity to wear your jeans to work. Hell why not?

Naturally this caused quite a bit of discussion; from our immaculately tailored saleswoman turning out in her (immaculately tailored) Shakin’ Stevens bleached denim suit, to the big issue of the day was it just jeans, or could was it extended to general civilian garb.

One woman asked me whether we could wear trainers (why me, I don’t know) I told her no, she would have to wait for Pumps for Mumps Day.

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Labels: Work

Exhausted from mothering triplets, ravaged by years of low self esteem and married to a hopelessly dispassionate man, Sara thrust herself into the willing arms of Trinny and Susannah on What Not to Wear. The rejuvenating process was humiliating; they were uncompromising in their criticism highlighting her sagging TITS and at one point forcibly removing her knickers in a public changing room. Exercising, one assumes, some clause in the sexual assault laws which excuses attacks made on make-over TV shows.

Eventually she broke down and sobbed “But you’re fashion experts and I’m from York”.

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Labels: TV and radio

This blog is exactly the same age as Sophie, my niece; in fact one of my first posts announced her arrival. So I suppose it’s remiss of me not to mention the arrival of my second niece, Izzy, or Isabella Catherine, or if Sophie gets her way, Fizzy Bella La La.

Izzy’s arrival hasn’t really had the same fanfare that Sophie’s did. Kirsty has controlled the inevitable flood of visitors to the flat, Izzy didn’t put up much of a fight, arriving as she did after a few hours of labour (much shorter than Sophie’s [gulp] 23 hours). She’s an altogether quieter more chilled baby, which is probably the result of nine months of listening to her sister’s bonkers ways – who is JTT (Just Turned Two).

Last week, after running around, shouting, screaming and laughing for half an hour, Sophie finally spotted Izzy asleep in the corner of the room. At this point she turned to me wide eyed and concerned to inform me knowingly “The baby’s asleep, shhh, we have to be quiet or she might cry”.

It may be my imagination but I’m sure in response Izzy opened one eye and said “has she gone yet?”

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Labels: General me

A week or so ago after England beat Poland the England team refused to talk to the media about the performance. The action was in response to fierce and personal criticism aimed at David James and David Beckham after the draw against Austria.

The response from the media has been a huge backlash against these ‘spoilt petulant millionaires’ because, apparently, they have a responsibility to the fans who pay their salaries (or more specifically, they have a responsibility to the media who, they claim, have put them where they are.)

The world’s hairiest sports presenter, Sky’s Richard Keys was apoplectic. He claimed on the night that the reason the players wouldn’t talk to Sky was because their quotes would have been used by the printed press – who were obviously the true villains – thus defeating the objective of the players’ protest.

Sky’s coverage of the game lasted for five hours; take out the game itself, leaves three and a half hours of airtime to fill. They had six goals from the other home nations’ games to show (which were all shown live on other Sky channels earlier in the evening), but apart from that they had to fill it with what they like to call ‘build up’ and ‘analysis’. This is the banal interviews with players, scrutinising and passing opinion on the minutiae of games and offering the same groundless critiquing the England players were protesting about in the first place. The idea that Sky are somehow different to the rest of the media is a joke, every night they show You’re On Sky Sports! (NB sensationalising exclamation mark) which is as bad as any tabloid.

What Keys knows as well as anyone is that TV programmes are simply the things that you make to put in between adverts. Stretching a programme about an hour and a half football match over five hours simply means more advert breaks and more money. Not only do they need players to speak to them to fill the time available, they also need to talk a heap of crap themselves to fill the space.

Sky were unrelenting. Prior to the following Sunday’s underwhelming live fixture between Spurs and Norwich they skirted around Wednesday’s lovers tiff by creating their own version of history (something they have done ever since they bought football ten years ago). Needing a hook when there really wasn’t one; Paul Robinson and Jermaine Defoe two stars of Wednesday night became the focus. But how could they reconcile their fawning over Defoe and Robinson, both of whom were party to the boycott that drew their vitriol? Well, according to Sky, they were victims of the more senior England players’ militancy, both were desperate to talk to the press, but they weren’t allowed.

Sky presenter Rob McCaffrey even claimed that the squad had “obviously been badly advised”. Obviously? So obvious that respected ex-pros like Gordon Strachan and Mark Lawrenson were clearly supportive, so obvious that a BBC poll did come out overwhelmingly in support of the players, so obvious that callers to Five Live’s 606 phone were in favour of their actions.

Sky seem to have forgotten that people are far more interested in the game than the media hullabaloo that surrounds it. If that circus didn’t exist, football would continue. Sky needs football much more than football needs Sky (this is different to the relationship between Sky and the Premiership; who do need each other). In fact the most intelligent analysis of David James’ performance against Austria (the thing that kicked it all off) came from David James himself. Asked about his terrible mistake on the second goal he simply responded “I’m an international goalkeeper, I should have saved it, and I didn’t”.

Nobody’s reading this are they?

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Labels: Football

It’s strange how easy it is to get wrapped up in the safety of your own social norms. The code of practice you assume everyone, by and large, follows to make a harmonious and peaceful community.

This week I’ve heard a woman talk about “The bin Laden’s in our street” referring to Asian families who have all built brick out-houses at the end of their gardens to “Keep their families in”. I’ve also heard someone talk, openly about “Those Paki asylum seekers” without any consideration that they may be going well over the edge of social acceptability (or indeed the presence of an Asian student working for us in the next room).

Last night, on a work do, we were talking about a particularly cerebral manager at work. He has a slightly nervous disposition and will never use three words when two paragraphs will do. He’s the only person I know who regularly uses “productive social discourse” to describe a conversation.

Suddenly one of the women at the table piped up “He reminds me of those Jews in films”. “Those Jews in films?” I said wanting to protest without rocking the boat “Yeah he rubs his hands like one of them Jewboys”. A quick poll around the table of those who share a more liberal mind about such things revealed that the key Jews In Films were Oscar Schindler, Mel Brookes and Jesus of Nazareth. If anyone has any other suggestions, I'll gladly add it to the list to try and find out what she was on about.

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Labels: Work

1. See iPod Mini in Dixons Duty Free at Gatwick airport but decide against buying it on a whim
2. Decide after boarding the plane that actually you wanted it in the first place
3. Return from holiday and scope out iPods on Amazon
4. Employ rampant scope creep and move from possibly fancying a iPod Mini on a whim to desperately wanting iPod 20GB
5. Order iPod, receive it from Amazon
6. Install iTunes onto laptop
7. Find that iTunes can’t see the CD in the CD tray
8. Test CD tray, play CD through Windows Media Player
9. Install iTunes onto Emma’s laptop
10. Find that iTunes can see the CD in the CD tray of Emma’s laptop (woo hoo)
11. Plug in iPod to Emma’s laptop
12. Find that Emma’s USB is a slow 1.1 port rather than the required 2.0 port
13. Find that Ruffles’ laptop has a 2.0 port (but iTunes still can’t see the CD)
14. Gain advice from Spankee – Spankee tests all connections using MP3’s from King of the Boots –all works fine
15. Fill iPod up with hundreds of tunes from King of the Boots – mostly the rubbish ones
16. Gain advice from Spankee – download WinAmp to do the ‘ripping’
17. Decide not to wait until Monday to use company internet connection to download WinAmp
18. Decide instead to rip a few tunes from Emma’s laptop, put them onto CD and install them onto Ruffles’ laptop then onto iPod
19. Save 3 albums onto disk put them into laptop
20. Find that the 3 albums haven’t saved for some reason but that the files have deleted from Emma’s laptop
21. Repeat actions 19 and 20 again
22. Twice
23. Get into a mess and reset iPod to factory settings
24. Go to work and download WinAmp as suggested
25. Get home, rip four albums using WinAmp
26. Find that you’ve simply recorded over the same files four times
27. Start ripping with WinAmp again renaming each folder in turn ensuring there is no repeats of action 24
28. Plug in iPod, download tunes
29. Unplug iPod for hours of endless fun

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Labels: Technology

Stew. When we said we were going to Croatia on holiday some said we’d only be able to eat stew. Some questioned whether we’d be safe, after all hadn’t it been bombed to hell? Some read that it was the new cool place to go on holiday. Nobody actually knew what it would be like.

Dubrovnik was shelled into little pieces by Bosnian forces in 1991, apparently more to break the Croatian spirit than for any strategic reason. Despite months of siege, Dubrovnik didn’t fall, and when the war finished they embarked on an expensive rebuilding programme, which spiralled the country into debt, but revitalised the soul of its people.

Where most cities are in constant evolution, or in Vegas’ case; revolution, Dubrovnik is as complete a town as you could hope to see. The continuation of a seven hundred year old planning strategy means that even the most modern buildings use the same materials and are built in the same style of the rest of the town. The limestone streets have been polished to a shine over the years. The result is that the town always looks finished. Altogether it gives the place a magical feel, particularly at night. You can see why it is supposed to encapsulate the essence of the country.

Walking the city walls, or passing the [sigh] Irish pub, or talking to the sophisticated, cool, cosmopolitan Croats you forget its recent past. Anyone over the age of twelve was actually a victim, or even participant of the war. This was my first visit to anywhere that was a warzone in my lifetime (apart from the time I got lost in Manchester and skirted the edge of Mosside), I’m looking forward to a fortnight in Basra in a couple of years.

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Labels: Holiday

For my birthday (which was now three weeks ago) Emma took me to Dublin for the day, flight out at 10am, back home by midnight. In between Trinity College, Grafton Street, Temple Bar, and all the other delights Dublin offers. It was a brilliant way of spending a day. Our mid-afternoon break saw us visit Bewley’s Café. According to the Rough Guide, Bewley’s is so much of a Dublin institution, when it ran into financial trouble the Government had to step in amidst public pressure and prop it up until new investors could be found.

I can’t deny that Bewley’s is one nice café; its labyrinthine layout hides a myriad of mezzanine floors and hidden rooms. Nice though it was, I didn’t I feel the magic that whipped that national fervour. My Fanta and pink iced bun were very nice, but it didn’t stir my spirit.

Well of course not, I’m not a Dubliner; Bewley’s has no history with me so it doesn’t exist in my soul. To get to the soul of something, you have to absorb it as much as possible. If I’d been visiting Bewley’s with my friends for years, and shared thousands of hours of laughter and sadness and drama, I’d have a connection that would stir me into action.

It takes years to get a connection with any city, but I can’t get anything at all just by turning up. For this reason we walked the Dublin sites rather than take a bus tour. I’m averse to bus tours or anything that reduces the meaning of visiting a city down to a tick list of ‘things to see’. It separates you from the true soul of the place, you may not really ‘get it’ in a day, but by sitting on a bus you’re guaranteed not to.

Likewise, people love Bar-b-que-ing because it makes a connection with their inner spirit to fend for themselves. It makes little sense on a practical level; you can’t guarantee the weather, it takes much more effort than regular cooking, it’s messier and less hygienic, but people love it. Making the oven, lighting the fire, nurturing it, and cooking it. Bypassing any element of the true bar-b-que-ing process releases another finger from that connection. That’s why I resist the pressure to buy a gas powered bar-b-que. I know they’re more convenient, I can’t deny that gas-powered bar-b-queing tastes exactly the same as proper a bar-b-que. But by rationalising the process, all in the name of convenience we will eventually get to the stage where we won’t bother doing it at all.

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Labels: Holiday

[Phone rings]
"Hello?"
"Hi, it's Nobby I'm at the game so I thought I'd give you a wave, where are you sitting?"
"In Croatia eating an ice cream"

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Labels: Friends

Overnight bombardment hits Najaf, Yngling crew win gold, US army medics accused over abuse, Robertson/Emms take silver, Vietnam dominates Bush-Kerry fray, GB Canoeists Progress, Paris court weighs Arab hate TV …

This is a selection of headlines taken alternately from the international news and Olympic sections of BBCi. The first week of my holiday has coincided with this first week of the games. BBC’s coverage has a brilliant, hypnotic quality about it. Hours can be lost lilting from the archery to kayaking to badminton before racing back to the pool for the much-anticipated final of the 100 metres doggy paddle.

I’ve also been reading Michael Moore’s Dude Where’s My Country, which is much better than Stupid White Men. Moore links the ‘opportunities’ presented by 9/11 to the evils of corporate America. His argument has been galvanised by 9/11 and the Iraq war so he no longer sounds babbling and paranoid.

With these two things occupying my time simultaneously, it strikes me that getting 11,000 people together in a country to compete against each other in a variety of sports is far better than sending 150,000 people to a country to kill defend people.

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Labels: Sport

It’s as if some artistic director spent a few hours dancing around his studio spouting whatever came into his head, and nobody had the heart to tell him no. “Yes, I can see it now, Bjork…. on a forty foot pedestal… surrounded by a million square metres of silk… with DJ Tiesto…. playing trance music… in a cow’s udder….”

Is it me or does ‘Spectacular Opening Ceremony’ actually mean over long fragmented corporate performance art installation? Do we really need to see ‘ancient sport elves rising from the ancient seas surrounding Olympia’ (three hundred children dressed head to toe in lycra body suits and massive papier-mâché heads crawling out from under a parachute) just to kick-off the world’s biggest sports day?

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Labels: Sport

I was drawing a table on the whiteboard in our meeting room. Anticipating that there would be much to write I used the full extent of my 6’ 3” frame to start at the top. Whilst I did, others in the room gave me sarcastic encouragement as they filled the time before the meeting started.

Through the melee someone said “It’s a good job you’re so tall”. To which I turned, bowed deeply, removed my three peaked hat with an extravagant flourish and retorted; “But madam, if I was shorter, I would have started much lower”.

Smug in the satisfaction that I am the funniest person in the whole world, even if nobody laughs, I turned to complete my task.

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Labels: Work

Other people have bigger jobs than me, more pressure, work longer hours, but I’ve only ever been me and I’m feeling stressed. After work on Friday I found myself barely able to contain a mix of emotions; I wanted to laugh hysterically and cry and shout and keep quiet all at the same time.

Since moving jobs eighteen months ago the pressure has undoubtedly increased, however until recently there was just too much to do in too little time. It was fairly easy to rationalise, if not cope, with. Whilst it’s hardly a stroll in the park, there’s less to do now, but I want to do it better. I’m putting this pressure on myself; our often chaotic management could allow me to cruise. But I’m not like that I have a very clear and genuine desire to make a significant impact on the company. This may be irrational and you could argue that a job is simply a mechanism for getting paid and there are more important things in life, which there are, but that’s not me.

The pressure does manifest itself physically, I have what feels like a ball of nervous energy hovering below my ribcage, my emotions are pulling at it in one direction then another, and if it tugs too far in one direction it feels like it will implode. What the consequence of the implosion will be, I’m not entirely sure.

Sounding much more melodramatic than it really is, I can see how people are tempted to relax this tension through drink because it’s an easy short term option. Whilst I’m far from the point of drinking lighter fuel hidden in a plant in the corner of my office. One of the reasons for writing this is to acknowledge the existence of this pressure so that I can manage it better.

Our holiday can’t come soon enough.

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Labels: Work