...ruffles...

Do you ever feel like you’re rushing to keep up? That the world it moving too fast for you to truly comprehend what is actually going on? Lots of little oddities that throw you for a second, but before you have a chance to analyse them, the next thing is on top of you. So, for example: -

Plumber; I’m not coming round on Monday; I’m coming in a couple of weeks. Me: Why I’ve booked holiday and everything. P: It’s down to the Kyoto agreement. Me: Really? P: Yeah, the government are offering £100 off energy efficient boilers in accordance with the Kyoto agreement to cut emissions, but they’re not doing it for a couple of weeks so I’m waiting until the price drops. (result: Kyoto discount doesn’t come through).

Emma leaves a message on my phone saying “Hello, can you tell me what time it is on my mobile”

To the plumber; do you want a tea? Yes please. How do you have it? Just a splash of milk. Sugar? No thanks… what has it come to that plumbers don’t have 45 sugars in their tea anymore? What’s more, the plumbers mate didn’t have sugar either.

The Territorial Army advert where two stern looking women are being chatted up by two blokes, when, eventually the blokes ask the women their names they reply with “This is Lance Corporal Jones and I’m Captain West”. At which point the men recoil with obvious horror and revulsion. Women, join the army to scare and repel men.

The comments book in the curryhouse from Dan and James “Lovely meal, now we’re off to bum each other”

To the plumber; do you want a tea? No thanks I’ll wait a bit. What has it come to when plumbers don’t drink you out of house and home anymore?

10 and a half minutes from the end of my gym session, the ten and a half minute sure-fire adrenalin shot that is Impact by Orbital comes onto iPod. After about 2 minutes it inexplicably flicks onto next ‘shuffle’ track… Transmission by Joy Division.

…and without a word of a lie I saw naked hairy man with his arms round a naked dwarf coming out of the sauna at the gym. The naked dwarf was laughing saying “And I’m not letting you do that again”.

0 comments  

Labels: General me

Sometimes there’s nothing better than a quiet night in. Just cooking a nice meal and watching a DVD. Last Saturday was a quiet night in; Jamie Oliver Botham Burgers, Fried chilli wedges, fizzy pop followed by Tesco Finest Toffee Sundaes at a gluttonous 800 calories per pot. Yummy.

Sorry? Which DVD you say? Oh yeah, Supersize Me.

0 comments  

Labels: General me

At first, the Aviator seems to be all sub-plot. You suspect that the story of Howard Hughes is simply too big and Scorsese should have chosen a more modest yarn, like biopic’ing Howard Hughes from Ever Decreasing Circles.

It jumps from one preposterous adventure to another, the world’s most expensive film, the world’s fastest plane, the world’s biggest plane, buying TWA, dating Katherine Hepburn and Ava Gardener, taking on the US Government and Pan Am and winning. Hughes did it all, and in this film, he does it really really quickly.

You get no real sense of his impact or the perspective and environment in which he operates. He’s accused of being a war profiteer, but you don’t get a chance to understand whether that’s true, or even that there was a war on. This may just be a reflection of the general detachment the US had during the War. They probably ran their own World (Series) War (Bowl) at the same time proclaiming the Denver Spitfires World War Champions in the process. It feels like you’re watching Hughes’ life through a frosted window, with ear muffs on, and a towel in your mouth… and, well you, get the picture… or not, as it turns out. Eventually, however, the story emerges. It’s about his obsessions; his ability to pull off stunning audacious projects is simply the result of a neurotic fastidiousness he struggles to control.

From compulsive hand washing to fully blown Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Hughes struggles to channel his mania into something productive, and then fails completely. Whilst it’s an overly long film that broods rather than thrills, it’s this that lifts it from a straight Biography Channel story.

0 comments  

Labels: Films

For a hackneyed cliché in corporate team building, paintball is a particularly lonely experience. I’ve been twice, both times on Stag dos. Whilst there is a camaraderie that surrounds a Stag party it is a brittle one. The party is made of a mix of work, university and school friends, each with their own histories and stories. To build a team through paintball means that you have to be a close knit team in the first place. Making it all rather pointless.

For those who have never been, a day of paintball involves joining a hybrid team of birthdays, stag dos, corporate team builders and most worrying, hobbyist paintball enthusiasts (serial killers in training). You take part in a series of set piece games with names like ‘defend and attack’, ‘take the flag’ and ‘total annihilation’. Paintball guns fire little pellets of paint that feel like you're being hit by a hailstone. When you’re hit you’re dead. In between each game you gather in a holding area where the general bonhomie of naive squaddies ensues, nonchalant marshals with heavy metal hair drift around waiting for the next game to start, when it does the anomie sets in.

Paintball companies are paranoid about safety, exiting the safety zone you put a full face mask on which makes you look like a Stormtrooper. With everyone wearing identical baggy fatigues you’re stripped of your identity, unable to separate friends from strangers. The walk to the battleground is usually made in near-silence. All you hear is the hiss of your own breathing. By the time you get there, the mask has usually misted up so you can’t see anything.

Once the game starts, hope of any kind of teamwork is instantly forgotten and you become an individual vigilante. The game is explained in about ten seconds and the opportunity for planning almost non-existent. There are two broad strategies you can employ. The first is ‘Hide in a Hole’. This involves finding a nook, or diving behind a bit of wood and randomly firing into the general area of your foe. The second strategy is ‘Run like a Loony’ This involves kamikaze runs at the enemy firing wildly. The first means you play for the whole game, but have no fun. The second means more fun, for about 30 seconds, then you get shot and it hurts.

When you are shot and therefore out of the game, you have no idea who shot you there’s a thud, a burst pain and it’s all over, you’re being bullied by a faceless aggressor. Usually after you’re shot you’re hit a couple more times as you head for the Dead Zone. This is exacerbated by the fact that you don’t know how successful you’ve been because you never see the people you’ve shot. You’re being bullied and you don’t know why, and you are stripped of your individuality and any affirmation of your own ability.

Even a victory is hollow, last Saturday we had a couple of girls in our team. Both were little over five foot tall. In the heat of the first battle a scream was heard behind…

“Owww”
“Are you alright”
“Shit I’ve been hit”
“Oh no, does it hurt”
“A little bit, I’m dead so I’ve got to go”
“I don’t want to get hit, I’m coming too”

We’re not dealing with trained killers, a victory is meaningless.

When the game is over everyone trudges back to base in silence. When the masks come off, everyone has a fictitious war story of taking a hail of paintballs for the team. Johnny had a good strategy, he bought 200 paintballs per game, suggesting he’d either seen some serious action, or was eating them.

0 comments  

Labels: General me

Bez’s Celebrity Big Brother win gives me reason to tell my favourite Bez story.

Years of lurching from one disaster to another Tony Wilson’s punk rock brainchild, Factory Records, was going to the wall. Two things could save them, New Order’s new album Republic and the Happy Monday’s fourth album, Yes Please. There were doubts that New Order could stop arguing long enough to record anything. The Mondays were Wilson’s last chance.

The Monday’s were deep in a hellhole of smack addiction. Surrounded by gangsters and drug dealers Sean Ryder simply wasn’t conscious for long enough to complete the album.

Wilson decided to get the band out of Manchester so he sent them to Jamaica. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, you might say. The band spunked tens of thousands of pounds on cheaper, purer crack cocaine, selling items from their studio to raise the cash. The wolves continued to bark at Wilson’s door.

Wilson needed Yes Please; the Monday’s needed money so Ryder took the master tapes hostage. Despairing, Wilson pawned his children and wired the money to Jamaica. Ryder handed the tapes over where the relieved Wilson played them, they were half finished instrumentals with no vocals.

The madness continued. Bez, bombed out on smack, hired a jeep to drive across the island. Travelling down a one way track he came across another jeep coming the other way. Swerving, he turned the jeep over. He broke both his arms and was rushed to hospital. The doctors put both arms in solid casts fixed so that his arms were sticking out as though pinned to a crucifix.

Feeling he was missing the party, Bez quickly discharged himself and decided to get out of the madness (presumably his maraca parts were sorted). He took a holiday on the other side of the island.

Still in his plaster casts he was drawn to the fun that could be had riding the ‘flying bananas’ which were popular with tourists. Despite being unable to hold onto the straps the world’s greatest Mancunian went for a thrill a minute ride…

Where he hit a wave, was thrown into the air, landed in the water he broke his broken arms.

Both of them.

Again.

Within a week.

0 comments  

Labels: Music

Last night Channel 4 mapped the Michael Jackson’s compulsive attraction towards young pre-pubescent boys in, er, Michael Jackson’s Boys. Inevitably the story of Jordy Chandler raised its head. The programme investigated the FBI's in-depth enquiries into the allegations. One ‘source’ said…

“They took pictures of his front private parts, his back private parts, his side private parts…”

Excuse me? Michael Jackson has side private parts?

0 comments  

Labels: Music

Leave meeting in Angel Islington at 6.30
6.35 Catch cab to Marylebone
Crawl across London in cab, whilst driver tells you about the suicide on the Marylebone flyover (they had to wash blood and bones off the road and everything).
Arrive at Marylebone Station at 6.46 see that next train departs at 6.58
Buy orange juice and pistachio nuts
Put ticket into barrier, pull out after it’s rejected
Look at ticket, realise that you’ve managed to buy a Travelcard which doesn’t cover Zone 1
Head for ticket inspectors
Wait for ticket inspectors to finish dealing with about 60 tourists
After 5 minutes of waiting decide instead to buy a Zone 1 ticket just to get you through the barrier
Go to machine, select appropriate ticket
Put debit card in
Take card out after it’s rejected because you can’t use it twice on a ticket machine in the same day
Go to cash machine to get cash out
Wait in queue
Withdraw £20
Go back to machine
Select ticket and put £10 into slot
Pull £10 out after it’s rejected
Put same £10 into slot
Pull £10 out after it’s rejected
Put another £10 into slot
Pull this £10 out after it’s rejected
Put it in again
Take it out again
Miss 6.58 train
Walk up to ticket inspectors
Look confident, wave invalid tickets in the air, proceed onto platform
Finally board next train at 7.30
Arrive Amersham at 8.15
Get changed in car park
Depart car park at 8.22
Go to Tesco to get Petrol
Realise you need the toilet
Drive to Tesco shop and go to toilet
Head for Beconsfield
Join M40
Listen to Pete Tong
Listen to Westwood
Turn Westwood off after 15 minutes as he doesn’t appear to have played a single record not completed a single sentence even though his music and talking have been constant.
Join M23 at Junction 7
Stop at Pea’s Pottage Services for Burger King
Eat Burger King
Feel ill
Set off towards M23
Turn back as Coke passes straight through and toilet is needed again
Go to Pea’s Pottage Services toilet
Get back in car
Put half cup of Coke in cup holder in glove compartment
Depart Pea’s Pottage Services
Drive over small bump
Spill Coke all over car
Turn back to Pea’s Pottage Services and collect napkins
Set off towards M23
Join A23
Arrive in Brighton at 10pm
Drive to seafront
Park at NCP
Check into Quality Hotel
Leave Quality Hotel, head north
At Traffic lights turn right
At HSBC turn left
Komedia is on your right
Arrive at Komedia at 10.35 (and the show ended 20 minutes ago)

0 comments  

Labels: General me

OK, it’s not Ghandi, it doesn’t even have the emotional texture of Dodgeball, but Team America – World Police is as funny as your mum starring in a blaxploitation flick. Using Thunderbirds style marionettes gives Trey Parker and Matt Stone licence to do things that wouldn’t normally get near a mainstream cinema. Alongside songs about AIDS (whether you’re gay, straight, white or spade, everyone’s got AIDS) and hard core pornography is a clear ridiculing of the breast beating Americans and bleeding heart liberals that Hollywood is otherwise scared to touch at the moment. Every time Team America is deployed to save the world they’re accompanied by red neck soft rock soundtrack which goes “America, FUCK YEAH!” It says it all really.

Along side is the typically brainless South Park stupidity. Terrorists communicate with each other using a combination of just three words – Mohammed, Jihad and Dakadaka. Kim Jong Il is a Dr Evil type character with a daft evil plan for world domination. He talks by switching his Rs and Ls round (like what Koreans do). Whilst you shouldn’t, you can’t help laughing every time he says Herro Everlybody! His song, Ronery, is truly touching. Of course there’s endless jokes that can be drawn from the limitations of marionettes (stupid walks, imprecise movements, strings everywhere) they use every one, about six times each.

As a piece of satire, I’m not sure how clear the message, if there is one, really is. There’s something to do with pussies (liberals, depicted by Hollywood Actors) don’t like dicks (Flag waving Americans) because dicks fuck pussies, but dicks also sometimes fuck assholes (evil dictatorships) and if they didn’t we’d all get covered in shit, and that pussies aren’t that far from assholes anyway. There’s something there, but I don’t know.

It’s not big and it’s not clever, but it’s very big and very clever. Hmm.

0 comments  

Labels: Films

I often concern myself over the utter drivel written on this site, I'm comforted in the short term by occasionally reading those blogs written by teens exclusively in txt msg language. However this opening paragraph from this article is actually written a by paid professional journalist.

"According to figures released by the Football League yesterday, only nine clubs in League Two did not pay for the services of a licensed agent in the second half of 2004 and Oxford United were not one of those."

0 comments  

Labels: News

How out of touch can the royals be? Do they not understand this country at all? Do the people they claim to represent mean nothing to them? I mean, who the hell goes to a “Natives and Colonials” party anyway? Have these people never head of Vicars and Tarts.

According to GMTV, The Jews have accepted Prince Harry’s apology for wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party last week. Well done The Jews, all 300,000 of you!

I believe the conversation would have gone something like this…

“Hello… Harry who?... Oh he’s The Ginger right?... as a Nazi you say? … accept his apology for what?... Right, whatever, ‘spose so, go mad, now can I go its quiz night down at the Red Lion”.

Apparently William went as a Lion, well done Wills, what a jolly good chap he is.

0 comments  

Labels: News

Let’s face it, if Bez entered the boat race he’d deserve to win it, his victory in Celebrity Big Brother should be assured. I never got the chance to see the Mondays in full flow, but I did once see a shambolic Black Grape gig at the Town and Country Club.

We were in the balcony and could see right into the wings of the stage, the Grape’s backing band came on following a shouty support slot from Kaliphz, who had a brief but bright career as an Asian Agit-Hip Hop unit until they spoilt it all by hooking up to record a single with Prince Naseem.

The band struck up one of those signature Mondays style ramshackle grooves. It went on for an age, round and round, chugging a dirty funk. After about four minutes, it seemed that Shaun Ryder and Bez weren’t actually going to turn up. Just as it seemed the gig wouldn’t happen, from the wings, a dancing monkey appeared in the gloom. Bez grooved into view shaking his maracas as though he’d freaky danced his way all the way down the M6 from Manchester. The place went ballistic, but the rapture didn’t break Bez’s rhythm as he continued across the stage, halting occasionally to do a little back step or a freestyled trot on the spot. Eventually he reached the far side of the stage squatted to shake his maracas at a couple of enthralled fans. Then he rose and, still without breaking his rhythm, danced straight off the other side of the stage.

And that was it, Bez went home, one Ecstasy induced circuit, the best performance of the night, and he was done. Or so it seemed. He did return several songs later, presumably having carried on in the same direction until a roadie turned him back towards the stage. When he eventually came back, he took up station on the edge of the stage. He didn’t break his rhythm at any point for the next two hours, he even danced to the silence in between songs, demonstrating some of his best moves as it happens.

0 comments  

Labels: TV and radio

Baz brings up a good point in my top 50 CD’s, (aside from the fact that I have both Coldplay albums in my top 50, which seems odd even to me) he questions my Queen selection. Which brand of overblown pompousness do you prefer?

Early Queen Era?
Begone with you you shod and shady senators
Give out the good leave out the bad evil cries
I challenge the mighty titan and his troubadours
And with a smile
I'll take you to the seven seas of Rhye

Or

Mid-Late Queen Era
You say smile I say cheese
Cartier I say please
Income tax I say Jesus
I don't wanna be a candidate for
Vietnam or Watergate
Cos all I wanna do is
Bicycle bicycle bicycle

0 comments  

Labels: Music

With this furore surrounding the BBC’s decision to show Jerry Springer The Opera on telly, I’ve a bit of a guilty secret to tell you about the show. Jerry Springer The Opera has been running in London’s fringe theatre district of “The West End” and all over the country for years. What’s more, the show is inspired by a television programme that’s been subverting viewers of a on a small terrestrial channel called ITV since the mid-nineties.

I think I should tell Mediawatch. This underground campaign to teach people to swear must be stopped.

0 comments  

Labels: TV and radio

The things you do on a Christmas day, my fifty favourite albums, OF ALL TIME [thunderclaps, lighting strikes]…



1. Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back
2. Depeche Mode - 101
3. Goats – Tricks of the Shade
4. Orbital - Brown
5. Stone Roses - Stone Roses
6. Happy Mondays - Pills Thrills and Bellyaches
7. Coldcut - Journey's By DJ
8. Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine
9. Carter, Jon - Live At The Heavenly Social
10. Radiohead - OK Computer
11. David Bowie - Hunky Dory
12. Leftfield - Leftism
13. Radiohead - The Bends
14. Nirvana - Unplugged
15. New Order - Republic
16. Dr Dre - The Chronic
17. New Order - Technique
18. Massive Attack - Protection
19. Depeche Mode - Violator
20. Nirvana - Nevermind
21. Portishead - Dummy
22. Smiths - The Queen Is Dead
23. Oasis - What's The Story Morning Glory
24. Beatles - Abbey Road
25. Beatles - The White Album
26. Smiths - Louder Than Bombs
27. Run DMC - Raising Hell
28. Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique
29. Massive Attack - Blue Lines
30. Cypress Hill - Black Sunday
31. Coldplay - Parachutes
32. Bjork - Debut
33. Orb - Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld
34. Carter, Jon - Viva Bugged Out
35. Beatles - Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
36. Stevens, Cat - Teaser and the Firecat
37. Sugar - Copper Blue
38. KLF - The White Room
39. Streets - Original Pirate Material
40. Pharcyde – Bizarre Ride to the Pharcyde
41. Queen - Jazz
42. Blur - Park Life
43. Pop Will Eat Itself - This is the day, This is the hour, This is this
44. De La Soul - 3 Feet High And Rising
45. Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head
46. Radiohead - Pablo Honey
47. Public Enemy - Fear Of A Black Planet
48. Depeche Mode - Songs of Faith and Devotion
49. Charlatans - Between 10th & 11th
50. Stereo MCs – Connected

0 comments  

Labels: Music

At the risk of losing all friends and/or respect, this was pretty much written about me and my childhood. I often ask people what they do on Saturdays because mine are largely dictated to by going to see Oxford play; it’s been like that for years. I’m not sure what others’ do when they wake up on Saturday morning. Without a similar affliction, what occupies their spare time?

It wasn’t always like this, when I was small the whole weekend would be taken up by Subbuteo exactly as it’s described in the story. Generally I would play on my own, partly because I couldn’t abide others’ interpretations of the laws of the game (high powered flicking wasn’t allowed, nor was waggling your goalie from side to side – when did you last see a goalkeeper running from post to post at 500 miles an hour to save a shot?) mostly, I played on my own because I wanted to play more often than anyone else.

Friday nights was the, ahem, Friday League. This was years before SKY’s Monday night football or Super Sunday. The Friday League consisted of six teams including Walketon Rovers (pictured left, looking angry) and Wolvenal (pictured right, looking surprised), who I resurrected from my dad’s childhood (Wolvenal being a mix of dad’s favourite teams – Wolves and Arsenal).

The players who played for these clubs were drawn from that year’s Pannini Sticker Book, apart from Mark Flint, England and Rovers Captain (notable because he was badly painted) who was made up all by my own.

Saturday morning’s, apart from the arrival of that week’s Roy of the Rovers, was the big cup competition, the (oh, god help me) Saturday Cup. This was followed by the big European night on Monday when, usually, Walketon or Wolvenal, would take on the giants of the scene. For some reason these weren’t Juventus or Real Madrid, but teams like Widez Lodz, a Polish side who dominated my competitions.

There were some classic games, I still remember Rovers’ keeper being sent off in the first half of a European cup quarter final versus Antwerp (who had the most potent striker at the time – Van Der Somebody or other). The striker stepped up to take the resulting penalty, thundering it against the bar. What followed was a legendary Rovers rear guard, without the benefit of a keeper, which saw an unlikely victory and them proceed into the Semis. I always had a sense of fair play; I wouldn’t offer any bias and my favoured teams won as much as they lost.

I completed about 10 seasons and a couple of World Cups in total (champions of the World – Sweden followed by Brazil, England once knocked out in a dramatic semi-final by, erm, Wales). Then I got smart, introducing a UEFA Cup competition on a Tuesday and a couple of additional divisions of the Friday League, played on Thursday. Like SKY, I got greedy, and the quality of the football and the spectacle got diluted. It was the beginning of the end, I tried to speed through the minor competitions by playing games on the Commodore 64, or through some elaborate dice game, but it never worked. The legend collapsed around my ears and I moved on. I hope Rupert Murdoch and the FA are reading the sorry tale.

0 comments  

Labels: General me

Sorry, a gratuitous, isn’t my two-year-old niece funny post…

On running into a room full of people… “Hello anybody”
On the spectacular London New Year fireworks… “Look, fireworks, wow… and… WOW”
On being tucked into bed… “Put the blanket on me, but you can’t sleep with me because that would be dangerous”
On god knows what… “If you close your eyes like a rabbit (or possibly a carrot) your shoes will disappear.”

0 comments  

Labels: General me

1. Felix Da Housecat - Devin Dazzling and the Neon Fever
2. Burgess, Tim - I Believe
3. Spinbad, DJ - Frabriclive 14
4. Orbital - Blue Album
5. Armand Van Helden - A New York Mix Odessey
6. Jurassic 5 – Power in Numbers
7. Krafty Kuts and Yousef - Circus Meets Chibuku
8. Basement Jaxx - Kish Kash
9. Kasabian - Kasabian
10. Goldie Lookin' Chain - Greatest Hits

0 comments  

Labels: Music

My best ever Christmas haul was the year I got a six foot snooker table, it was complemented by a number of other presents including Subbuteo, Lego, portable radio and the Roy of the Rovers annual to make it the best ever. This year, I reckon was the best since then.

Amongst the booty was a juicer, perfect for my attempt to become healthier through the aid of kitchen appliances alone. I got some diddy Altec Lansing speakers for my iPod from Emma. There was a didgeridoo from Kirsty, allowing me to finally fulfil my ambition to play an acoustic version of Aphex Twin’s techno classic, one of my all time favourite tunes. Talking of which, Spanx tracked down a mint and rare as hen’s teeth vinyl copy of Tricks of the Shade by the Goats – a favourite album (3rd in fact, but more of that later).

It was comic strips ahoy as I got a full set of Boondocks books and one of Matt Groening’s Big Book of Hell. If that wasn’t enough, I also got The Snow Patrol mix CD The Trip, with Freelance Hellraiser on the knobs, Hot Fuss by the Killers and Medulla by Bjork.

Along with some cool Christmas knitwear, a t-shirt with a lego version of Mr T on it and a copy of Top Spin, sometimes receiving is better than giving.


0 comments  

Labels: General me

I wouldn’t say that Grandma’s house was hot on Christmas day, but mum did tell dad to put the leftover turkey in the car so that it wouldn’t over cook in the central heating. F'real.

0 comments  

Labels: General me

One of my biggest regrets is that I don’t see enough of my friends. It’s not that we make it easy for ourselves, Katie and Australia Jo live in Australia, Penny and Mike are in Jersey, Jules has spent the last couple of years shuttling between Nottingham and New Zealand. Everyone is busy, so it usually takes a wedding to get everyone in the same room at the same time.

Worryingly, Scuff 2’s main room was empty for quite a long time. But at least it was occupied by those I most wanted to see. We hadn’t seen Penny, who for the second year running turned up as a surprise, since the 24-hour mercy dash to Russ and Sam’s wedding in July. We hadn’t seen Willy and Leo since their housewarming, and we hadn’t seen Jules since she helped me with my foot at The New Year hideaway in Derbyshire. Nobody had eyeballed Andrew for over a year.

I kept reassuring myself that as we’d managed to get nearly everyone in the same room and that this was the success we were looking for. Penny, suffering from a dose of trapped wind, was able to get down on all fours and rock rhythmically to release the discomfort in the middle of the dancefloor with nobody noticing. The party wasn’t rocking quite how we’d envisaged.

It was kicking off on the ground floor, people were getting stuck in the bar – and damn them – enjoying themselves too much to explore the rest of the venue. Then the evening pitched down a notch as a kerfuffle involving a lost sister driving around London aimlessly unfolded. The whole thing was turning into a nightmare.

But, one thing my How To DJ Properly book talks about is patience, soul destroying though it was we kept cool and cranked the music up slowly from a bit of 60’s funk and disco, to some hip hop, a Spankee deep house set, a Ruffles slightly bigger house set. As the nonsensical breakdown for Felix Da Housecat’s Watching Girls Go By wound its way up, I looked up to see the room had suddenly become pretty full.

Someone came and asked to help us dig out some records – thanks, we said, but there wasn’t enough space. There are some people here “desperate to dance to Hey Yah by Outkast”. We’d play it, we said, he wanted to know when, where, how, why. We were on a role, and back in control of the night, I rebuffed him and he retreated.

Then Spanx called it, the time had come, it was time to make people dance. I pulled out Lose My Breath by Destiny’s Child, a gargantuan tune, a sign to say that we were onto a new level. Clearing the palette with Tipsy by J-Kwon we introduced some floor slaying Beyonce.

Thousands of pounds of investment in music and music playing paraphernalia, hundreds of hours perfecting our laughable mixing skills and it took Beyonce, Wham Rap, Deee Lite and, of course, Outkast to set the party alight. But that doesn’t matter when you’ve got the whole room smiling. People were dancing, standing on chairs, and erm, doing press-ups. We mixed up Wiseguys and Sugarhill Gang, sampled and looped up the opening refrain of House of Pain’s Jump Around so it opened with a 10 second screech of horns. At one point Spanx simply got bored of a tune, stopped it and put on something new. Liberation!

The tunes pitched up to Do Your Thing by Basement Jaxx as the witching hour approached. There was time for one more tune, and it was obvious which it was to be. I sampled up the opening blast of Beyonce, introducing it in time with the final thuds of the Jaxx. There was a whoop of delight from the dancefloor, somebody recognised a tune coming in. The Jaxx closed out and Beyonce, for the second time, went back on and everyone wigged out.

The landlord said we had two more tunes before he’d have to turn us off. But that was it, that was the peak, people may have wanted more, and we could have given them more, but they weren’t getting it.

We won.

0 comments  

Labels: Music

When people ask where I’m from I say Oxford, even though I’ve never lived closer than 15 miles from the city. If pushed, I’ll say I’m from Thame, where I’ve lived longest, even though I’ve lived in Aylesbury for about five years. Most people have heard of Oxford, some of Aylesbury, few of Thame. Oxford is convenient shorthand for the region I’m from.

I find visiting Thame an anxious affair, walking down the High Street (the widest in the world, or something) is a rat run through the past. I find myself staring into the eyes of people my age trying to peel back about 15 years, through the wrinkles, fat and babies, to work out whether I went to school with them or not.

Not that I’ve ever bumped into anyone. What would I say if I did? Do I give bland platitudes? Potted histories? Reminisces? Or is it time to deconstruct shared pasts and really get down to it. I’m more confident, outgoing and, obviously, funnier than I was at school, do I return to the ‘type’ they once knew? I’m reasonably successful in what I do; do I tell these people? If I do, then will they think, as I do, how the bloody hell has he getting away with that, unless they’re proportionally more successful than I am, which they probably are. And what if they read this site… which I know some do.

Christmas, of course, increases the likelihood of an encounter as people return home to their family. Jacques Perretti’s article in The Guardian’s Guide on Saturday promised to empathise with my predicaments as he described what it was like to return home for Christmas. What’s more, Perretti is from Beaconsfield, not that far from where we live.

What started out with me thinking that I could just post the link and tell people that this was how I feel, ended with me wanting to hunt the dog down. Perretti paints an utterly fictitious picture of his home town. He has to give his train ticket to a ticket inspector “BY HAND”, he gets into a Nissan Micra Mini-cab driven by an old school chum (whose life consists of three marriages and a burnt down hotel, allegedly). He makes claims about people driving around in White GTi’s, that Christmas in the Home Counties is stuck in the 50’s and that the in-town entertainment consists of fighting and setting fire to each other. His final claim is that on returning to his local pub, the answer his old school mates give to the question how are things round here is “Alright if it weren’t for the Pakis.” The article was illustrated with a cartoon of three men drinking pints in Ku Klux Klan hoods.

I don’t know which train Perretti caught to get to this version of Beaconsfield but if it departed from platform 9 and three-quarters I wouldn’t be surprised. Beaconsfield is very much like Thame, a beautiful town, affluent, prime commuter belt. Broadly speaking the inhabitants are well travelled, educated, and liberal. These are all luxuries a town’s affluence affords, sadly this doesn’t satisfy Perreti’s jaundice view. There may not be the ethnic mix of, say, Brixton but the reasons are economic, not social. OK, so it hasn’t got a gay fetish Grime Garage club night, but it really isn’t the other world he paints.

Perretti paints a fictitious world – stations have automatic barriers, the mini-cabs outside the station are identical to those that sit outside every London club on a Saturday night. I’ve not seen a white GTi in years, nor a fight or fire. As for overt racism, I’m not naive enough to think that it doesn’t happen, but I live in the region, and don’t see it. He was either unfortunate… or lying.

Presumably this distortion is hiding the subtext that he wants everyone to know that he must be cool because he’s living in London. The kind of person who gets excited by going to work in his jeans, and living next door to black people (they’re so real… and nice…), he’s a Londoner because he can describe the tube map by the name of the line, not its colour on the map. Perreti wants us to believe he’s escaped from some middle class ghetto, forgetting that it’s he’s a product of the town. It seems that home is where the heart is, but not, necessarily, where your brand is.

0 comments  

Labels: General me

The audience in the Creation Theatre Company’s version of A Christmas Carol was resolutely drawn from the Oxford boho elite, and us. The company have carved a neat niche for themselves by placing an ornate mirrored tent in the car park of Cowley’s BMW plant, some kind of post-modern art meeting commerce type statement, perhaps.

The tent is small and intimate; the cast charge around the packed audience. As Ebenezer is lead through his Christmas nightmare rain pounds down on the canvas giving the whole thing a highly atmospheric charge.

Good though it was it did feel like I was watching the DVD of the show, stuck on one of the special additional feature commentaries. At every turn Emma would lean over and whisper in my ear the equivalent movements from the Muppet version of the tale.

0 comments  

Labels: General me

To prefix The Phantom of the Opera with the chillingly exacting qualifier ‘Andrew Lloyd Webber’s’ is not a good start for the ‘lavish film production of the smash hit west end snore’, but it is particularly difficult to articulate the a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e g-a-r-b-a-g-e the film turns out to be.

Of course, I should have known, I’ve seen Starlight Express, but with a clear blue print in Moulin Rouge, it surely isn’t that difficult to produce a modern musical film which is, at least, a decent waste of time.

Minnie Driver’s histrionics as diva Carlotta and Jennifer Ellison’s girly charm aside, the entire cast have been painted grey, unlike La Rouge which is spectacular in pace, rich in colours and bold in characters.

Most unforgivable is the appalling technical production – the dubbing and sounding mixing makes the songs flat and distant. The signature song – The Phantom of the Opera – should be a journey of horror, love, lust and beauty taken by the virginal soprano Christine into the menacing Phantom’s lair. Whilst the rest of the orchestration is classical, this song switches to a vague mid paced electroclash soundtrack which reaches its crescendo with a god awful pomp rock guitar solo. I found myself involuntarily crying ‘Oh God no’ at every agonising turn.

The director can’t decide whether the narrative should be played through song alone or with a mixture of speech included. It switches between the two approaches throughout finally deciding, wrongly, that the whole thing should be done sung. The story gets lost (you can’t hear the lyrics) and the supposedly touching, tender moments are more painful than having your testicles pulled. It makes you prey for double DVD box sets of extended versions of Scooby Doo 2 and Barbed Wire for Christmas.

0 comments  

Labels: Films

Getting home from a hard day’s work and serenading your girlfriend with poetry.

OK, so the poet was Jay Z and the verse was “If you’re having girl problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems but my bitch ain’t one”.

But you’ve got to say the sentiment is there.

0 comments  

Labels: Music

Inexplicably, Oxford have recently appointed ‘The World’s Third Best Coach’ Ramon Diaz as their new manager. Whilst this claim is dubious there is no doubt he’s a big name having managed River Plate, winning the Copa Libertaros and the Argentine league title five times. It wouldn’t be that much of an outlandish claim that he was the South American equivalent of Arsene Wenger… only more successful.

Anyhow, he doesn’t speak English, so Radio Oxford (who now insist on playing Ricky Martin’s Living La Vida Loca every time his name is mentioned) were running the equivalent of a caption competition for him, playing one of his Spanish quotes and asking people, hilariously, to guess what he was saying.

Tony from Kidlington came on, the last caller on the show, he’d had a couple of hours to think up his answer, a wicked play on words, and now his time had come. Tony, the county is listening, you’re on.

“I thought that because Oxford haven’t scored many goals this season that he’s talking about scoring more goals, but it’s being misinterpreted as scoring more own goals, because, like, we scored, you know, an own goal against Rochdale a few weeks ago.”

It was, at best, a work in progress, Tone’s suggestion was conceptually sound, but lacked the clever interplay of words and puns that would have made him a winner. Still, you’ve humiliated yourself, time to get on with your weekend, eh Tone? … Tone?

Tone hadn’t finished, talking over the presenters attempts to move on and finish the show…

“…yeah I think there could be quite a lot of misinterpretation, that’s my main worry, he’s clearly a good coach but…”

The show’s end music began to wash over Tone as he expanded his concept to encapsulate the three strategic pillars of his answer which were underpinned by sound philosophical constructs drawn from the great thinkers of Ancient Greece. He’s probably still talking now.

0 comments  

Labels: Football

The best quote from BBC Three’s ‘Story of Bohemian Rhapsody’ has to be Bob Geldof’s…

“’Mama, just killed a man’, wow, really I’m there, so what happened?… well nothing happens we just go off and sing a load of rubbish for seven and a half minutes.”

Best bit of BBC One’s ‘Story of Band Aid 20’ was the exchange between Joss Stone, who thought the guru behind the idea was Bob Gandalf, and Justin Hawkins of The Darkness…

JS “So where are you from?”
JH “Lowestoft… Home of rock, what about you?”
JS “Cornwall, home of soul”

And, on Radio Five, did I really hear the spokesman for the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution explain the need for a drastic cut in commercial fishing using references to The Blue Planet and Finding Nemo?

0 comments  

Labels: Music

Nina is the disembowelled spelling dominatrix on Hard Spell, BBC’s new prime time Edutainment show (Christ, I didn’t realise edutainment is actually a word). She is also a news reader on ITN. She is also friends with Vixstah.

Last week whilst having a curry with Gill and George, some old University buddies, the subject of Hard Spell came up. “I know the woman that announces the words” I said in a ‘I’ve been to one more wedding, one more baby naming party and been out to dinner with her one more time than you’, kind of way.

George’s eyes lit up, suddenly he was exalting her radiant beauty, fantasising about dates with her, daydreaming about articles in Hello in their ‘beautiful home’ together, and what it would be like going out for dinner with Ulrika Johnson and her husband.

Such is the seduction of fame, Nina’s new profile which, let’s face it, is not yet on Elton John’s level and our very distant association with her really seems to generate a unnatural reaction in people. A couple of days earlier, Emma was discussing the show with people at work. It’s the talk of the school staff room. Emma threw in that she knew Nina, suddenly whenever the programme is mentioned, rather than questioning the relative merits of humiliating children who can’t spell ‘emollient’ someone will breathily pipe up that Emma has a connection with fame. It’s got to the point where she daren’t explain that the link is tenuous for fear of a lynching.

Just wait until I tell people that my dad is friends with SKY Sports newsreader Dave Bobin, or that I went to school with stand-up comedian and Challenge TV regular panellist Rob Deering.

0 comments  

Labels: General me

On Tuesday night Alex Ferguson celebrated his 1000th game in charge of Manchester United with a Champion’s League win over Lyon in front of 67,000 fans. His two strikers cost a combined £40 million.

Alex Ferguson’s first game in charge was a 2-0 defeat against Oxford United in November 1986.

Since that day, Ferguson has won one Champions League title, eight Premiership titles, five FA Cup’s, one Cup Winners’ Cup and one League Cup. He has also been knighted.

Since that day Oxford United have slipped down the leagues and are now 21st in the bottom professional league in the country. On Saturday they were beaten 1-0 by Rochdale with a last minute goal which came off the back of the goalkeeper’s head.

Go fig.

1 comments  

Labels: Football

Musically, I wasn’t mad keen on the first Band Aid record. I’m pretty sure the family had a copy or two and I wouldn’t ever try to deny its impact just because the participants weren’t very cool. I just didn’t like it. I always preferred USA for Africa’s We Are The World, though it still teases my sensibilities to admit it.

We Are The World? Let’s face, you’re not, are you?

The new version’s OK, a marginal improvement bar the Dizee Rascal bit. Sadly it’s the want of fifty-something year old men to think the way to modernise and update music is to introduce ‘rap’, because after all it is a genre that is only, at least, twenty-five years old. That, or lay a 4/4 house beat over the top (See: The recent remix of Lou Reed’s Satellite of Love).

Along with the song, the history of the whole event has been re-written. Firstly, the original concept actually wasn’t that high profile. First I remember of it was an afterthought announcement at the end of a local news bulletin. There was no precedent to it, so nobody really knew who or how many stars would turn up to the recording. Geldof was a has-been punk and the Boomtown Rats were a distant memory. As a spectacle it had little more impact than a Radio 1 Roadshow. It was only afterwards, when Geldof had pulled it off, that the impact started to hit.

They’ve also largely ignored the fact that a remake has already been done by the Kylie and Jason era pop clan. There was nothing wrong with that version, but the participants weren’t that cool and the fashions not as retro as the original.

The thing that’s really bugging me, however, is Bono and That Line. No mention of the new version is complete without a mention that Bono has recreated “His famous line”. In 1984 U2 were very much at the edgy end of the pop spectrum. The omnipotent rock giants of 1984 were McCartney, Queen and Elton John, the Blues, Girls Alouds and Westlifes were Duran Duran, Wham and Bananarama. U2 were the Franz Ferdinand of their time, local pockets of fervent support, bags of potential, but nowhere near the real major league.

Bono’s Line had no more, or less significance than Simon Le Bon’s nasally whine or Paul Young’s tissue thin vocal croak. It was U2’s performance at Live Aid that started to join the pockets of support for the band and turn it them into a global phenomenon. Now they are these rock behemoths, the line has acquired a significance it never had before. Not that the whole thing needs any hype or angle, it was one of the most significant events of the decade, and perhaps the only time the whole world has been united against one cause. Oh how I loved when they cut to Live Aid Russia and the poor soviet techies had managed to plug the sound into one TV channel and the pictures into another meaning we listened for ten minutes to appalling soft rock whilst watching old women picking cherries on a farm.

0 comments  

Labels: Music

A genuine conversation from a re-branding workshop we’ve just done at work.

“We want to be all things to all people.”
“Yes, so perhaps our logo should be lots of different colours, like a kaleidoscope or a rainbow”
“And we want to be approachable, but credible. We want to give people a warm fuzzy feeling, but know they are going to get good service”
“Maybe we need an icon or figurehead, a friendly face?”
“What? Like Mickey Mouse? He’s warm and cuddly.”
“Yes, an animal would be good. Ooh what’s that animal that always changes colour”
“A chameleon?”
“Yes, that could be our figurehead”
“But they’re not warm and cuddly”
“Well, we could make it more cuddly, ooh, how about putting a chameleon in a waistcoat?“

0 comments  

Labels: Work

The Northern Line was an interesting place to be on Saturday afternoon. Sitting opposite me was a battered vicar in his eighties talking to a scrawny man with a regulation Marine’s flattop crew cut wearing a blue uniform, white gloves and holding a bugle.

Amongst the smattering of Arsenal and Tottenham fans returning from the North London Derby were a gaggle of Arsenal stewards straight from the 1950’s in red and white ties and thickly greased hair. Sitting amongst them were blue rinsed old ladies and nice girls who do well in their studies clutching union jacks returning from the Lord Mayor’s Show.

Dominant, however, were about 20 kids talking loudly and animatedly amongst themselves. At Archway the doors opened and the Vicar bade farewell to the bugle man and made for the door. He signalled to the kids who were clearly in his charge. The battalion of twenty North London Boys Brigade plus all their marching band paraphernalia, made for the exit. Ten made it through before the beeps threatened to close the door. The frail vicar valiantly stood in front of the door preventing it from closing. The rest of the battalion piled through the gap he created (and partly filled). For a moment, the vicar, disappeared under a flurry of teenagers, drums, and twirling batons. Eventually he regained his composure and with a bony hand directed the boys to the exits.

Bugle man stayed on for the next stop, when his cue to exit came, his afternoon’s bugling done, he ambled off to who knows what. A wife? A cup of tea? A disturbing obsession with paramilitary organisations? An imprisoned Danish student?

The rich tapestry of London.

0 comments  

Labels: General me

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.

0 comments  

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.

0 comments  

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’.

0 comments  

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.

0 comments  

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.

0 comments  

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.

0 comments  

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.

0 comments  

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.

0 comments  

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”.

0 comments  

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?”

0 comments  

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?

0 comments  

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.

0 comments  

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

0 comments  

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.

0 comments  

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.

0 comments  

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"

0 comments  

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.

0 comments  

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?

0 comments  

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.

0 comments  

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.

0 comments  

Labels: Work

Emma believes Rachel Stevens has sold out since leaving S-Club 7
Emma thinks she’s a bit more Fraser than Niles
Emma thought twice when responding to the question ‘are you a bit more Barbara or a bit more Margot?’

0 comments  

Labels: General me

One element of office culture I have yet to fully understand is that of Coffeequette – the art and science of getting hot beverages for work colleagues. 

Firstly, you can tell a lot from how people order their coffee and tea at work. Where you hear the refrain “coffee, white with one” or “tea with a splash of milk” you can be safe in the knowledge that you work for a friendly, probably small, company equipped with a kitchenette. There’ll be short momentary bouts of anger related to people not rinsing their spoons, but the people around you are your friends, feel safe.

However, where you hear the words “Mine’s a 21” you’re in a big ugly corporate with a Nescafe drinks machine on each floor that spits its insipid venom into a small plastic cup. It will peel a couple of layers of skin from your fingers as soon as you pick it up.

If you hear the term, “Tea, nine sugars” you work on a building site.

More complex is the fetching of coffee. There are approximately three schools of thought employed here: -

1. The each to their own school of thought focuses rather firmly on the self. Quite simply when the need takes you, you glide to the beverage paraphernalia and fill your boots without a thought to those around you. This has the distinct advantage of efficiently satisfying your personal needs. However it is at the expense of others. This is a particularly acute problem first thing in the morning when you’re often found tangoing with others who are trying filling their own boots. This results in awkward questions such as “Do you want me to put a bit more water in for your cup” or “Can you throw a teabag in there please” which simply highlights the selfishness of it all.

2. The close community shuffle is a means of engaging with those around you, offering your more caring inclusive side. It means that you are expected to take your turn in making teas and coffees (and always ONE hot chocolate). The upside is that, of course, you are part of the group. The downside is that these groups tend to be like a disorganised peloton, never knowing who’s next to take the lead. I used to work in a department of ten; each person would take their turn in getting the drinks. By mid-morning, and six coffees down the line, I was spent. I could either get a round in for the good of the group, or refrain completely which would leave me getting more than I gave (this would result in extreme agitation amongst others because you hadn’t taken your turn, and because they were going cold turkey). I would simply live off the caffeine for the rest of the day. The next morning the cycle would begin again, meaning I never reached my turn. 

3. The inevitable end to the close community shuffle is the drinks are on me drift. This is where slowly but surely, the close community involve more and more people in the round. Soon enough people are getting drinks for whole floors of people and you’re drinking eighteen gallons a day, you can’t focus on your computer screen because you’re eyeballs are shaking. The collective coffee craving grows and grows and the cycle gets tighter and tighter. Soon you’re getting in nine rounds of forty cups of coffee all by yourself, and everyone else is doing the same. Productivity plummets and you’re made redundant. You can’t keep up your mortgage payments, and you’re thrown out on the street where you freeze to death. Alone.

No, really, my advice is when you flick the kettle on… think.

0 comments  

Labels: Work

So, this year’s Big Brother has been punctuated by moments of violence and farce. This is surely one of the beauties of the show. The accusation is that Big Brother is just a bunch of stupid, attention seeking wannabes being boring. Well, now they’re destroying each other, isn’t this what the detractors want?

The ‘drunken brawl’ in the house a couple of weeks ago lead to the live feeds being cut from E4 for an hour. Sixteen people watching at 3am on a Thursday morning actually called the police in response to the argument. Que?

I find the live feeds surprisingly resting, on Tuesday I was watching them all doing nothing very much and started to surf the channels. I wasn’t aware, but I was actually on E4+1 (watching the re-run of nothing very much happening an hour earlier).

From channel 164 I moved to 166, which is Overload, a teleshopping channel. At night they show Babestation, a show with a format that is replicated throughout satellite TV after 10pm. The screen is split into four; in each window is a ‘glamour’ girl apparently on titillating callers on premium rate chat lines.

Anyway, I inadvertently tripped over Overload (you can throw in a few “Yeah Rights” in here if you want). Except were no girls to be seen. The bar at the bottom showing the text messages was gently ticking over. The four windows were there, the beds they normally sit on were there. But the people weren’t there.

I watched; hypnotised at this totally dormant show, no test card, no announcement telling us that normal service will be resumed. Nothing. The unmanned fixed cameras just whirred away. It was like Big Brother with no contestants. I watched and watched and watched for maybe fifteen minutes longer than I’ve ever watched a Big Brother live feed.

Eventually, a girl appeared and picked up her phone. Slowly the vacant windows were populated and the show returned to normal. Perhaps there’d been a fire alarm or something.

Over stimulated by the movement on the screen I turned back to E4, never to return to Overload ever again. For the shortest period of time, they seemed to have stumbled on the perfect TV format.

0 comments  

Labels: TV and radio

Things I learnt about Kwik Fit on Saturday…

Profitability –  “I don’t care (what price they sell my tyres at) as long as they get something in the bank who cares?”

Staffing – “We’re really busy ‘cause we’re short on staff, one of our blokes fucked off in a massive rage this morning, Ynarwumisayin?” – luckily I did know what he was saying.

Stock control – “I need to check whether your tyres are on the rack ‘coz the computer’s gone tits up”

Health and safety – “It’s been a bloody awful day; we nearly burnt the place down earlier coz a gas canister was leaking”

0 comments  

Labels: General me

Awash with the detritus of a typically modern life, there’s an undercurrent of things that I never get round to doing; paying bills, throwing out old clothes, setting up direct debits, paying people I promised to sponsor, it usually involves money, but the list goes on. It is to my eternal shame and disappointment that one of these things is not seeing or contacting family and friends as much as I’d want.

Grandma Ruffles is particularly neglected. When I wrecked my ankle at Christmas I had to cancel a visit, and when I did it a second time a few weeks ago it got me thinking that six months had passed and I still hadn’t fulfilled the debt. Hop the months slipped by, I simply don’t know.

It’s nothing to do with not caring; it’s just about life taking over. I’m not unique, nor is it an excuse; it’s just the way it goes.

So, I took the opportunity to go over the Grandma Ruffles’ crib last week. She’s getting more frail and hunched, but at least she’s still in her own home. When Grandpa Ruffles died about ten years ago the smart money was that the only practical solution would be for her going to go into a care home. A decade on and with the help of a not inconsiderable number of North African immigrant carers, she’s still in her own place.

The conversation, as always, was rambling and pointless; life experiences filtered by the television leave her world view somewhat narrow. Endless stories told as though they happened yesterday could easily have been fifty years old.

Never the less it was still an enjoyable couple of hours. Perhaps she thinks, like me of her, that it’s a case of out of sight out of mind and the time simply slips away unnoticed.

Or maybe not, her last, entirely fictitious story could tell another tale. Holding an arthritic hand up like a fist she started “Justin, I don’t know if you remember when you were little you were sitting in the back of grandpa’s car with me. We were practicing counting, I would say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and you would continue, 7, 8, 9, 10. Anyway, we got up to eighty and you turned to me and said ‘Grandma, that’s when you’ll be dead’”.

Maybe a little reminder that, at 88, she wasn’t?

0 comments  

Labels: General me

After the debacle of Russ’ stag weekend, I suppose it was asking too much for the wedding (a couple of weeks ago) to go off without a hitch. Last year, on the morning of Australia Jo’s wedding, Penny drove to Heathrow to pick up Mike whose flight from Jersey was actually landing at Gatwick. What ensued was a breathless mercy dash from Heathrow to Gatwick, then to the church arriving with just seconds to spare (then I realised how long the service was going to be and made an even more breathless and sweaty mercy dash to the local pub for a wee).

On the Saturday before Russ and Sam’s do, Emma and I were discussing the logistics of getting to the wedding on Sunday. Penny and Mike would fly into Heathrow at about 9am, they would make their way to a local Travel Lodge and we’d pick them up on the way to Egham arriving in time for the kick-off at 3pm.

I joked, thinking back to Australia Jo’s wedding, “They’ll have loads of time, unless Penny’s booked them on a flight to Prestwick by mistake”. 9pm Saturday night, the phone rang. A tearful Penny was calling from Jersey. “We’ve got a problem” she said “we haven’t got a flight tomorrow”.

It turns out that they thought they’d booked their flight on the internet. Realising that they didn’t have a reference number, they phoned British Airways. But BA didn’t have any record of them booked on the flight.

We discussed the options. Ferry? Too long. Another flight to Heathrow or Gatwick? Too expensive. Could Emma’s friend who flies a Tiger Moth get over to pick them up? Possible, but not probable. Only one option was available, a flight to Coventry arriving at 9.45 on Sunday, with the return at 7am on Monday. So I had to pick them up at on Sunday morning, and for the second time in the Russ and Sam wedding preparations, we had a pre-5am start to get to the airport the following morning.

So Penny and Mike finally in situ, the wedding at the splendid Great Fosters Hotel went off with the elegant efficiency perfectly fitting for the bride and groom. Even if it was difficult to explain to the bride’s parents that the reason you’re there is because your oldest friends met them getting dressed in a toilet.

0 comments  

Labels: Friends

Liz came into the office this morning and told me she was on holiday for the next couple of weeks. As she was going to be away, she wanted me to get someone to take the tea towels from the kitchen downstairs to get them washed. I said I’d do it.

“…or you could get Tina or Susie to do it”

I looked up and reassured her that I could do it.

“Well” she said swatting the air dismissively as though I was joking “there are plenty of women up here who can do it.”

0 comments  

Labels: Work

Pele from The Hives was being quizzed on Popworld in a section called “The Big Ones” a series of irreverent questions about a range of things from ‘what was the last dead animal you saw’ to ‘when’s your new album out’.

“Have you stuffed a bird?” was greeted with the response “I’m sorry, that sounds like a question about sex”.

This would have been funny enough if he hadn’t, two minutes later, given the exact same answer to the question “Have you wormed a dog?”

0 comments  

Labels: Music