...ruffles...

I’ve been feeling unwell all week, at first I thought I’d just overdone it at the gym, then a cold took over, then flu, then you get to a point where you don’t know what is illness and what is a result of the illness. So is the sore throat a virus, or because of the coughing?

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Labels: Technology

I know what you’ve been thinking; what happened to The Ruffs? The annual rundown of my favourite albums of the year. Well, to tell you the truth, I forgot to post it. So here it is:

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Labels: Music

We’ve got Tesco just down the road from us. Barely a day goes by when we don’t pop in for supplies. Tonight, whilst perusing the asparagus, a vision caught my eye.  Actually, to be perfectly honest, the asparagus is on a low shelf, and as a result I was initially struck by this woman's curvaceous booty. She was wearing a skirt which barely covered her essentials. She had curves like Jessica Rabbit. She had a main of braided hair. Everything about her was turned up to 12.

At first she was just startling looking. Then as I glanced up, and looked away, and up again, and looked away again… I began to piece together her familiar face in my mind. It matched a face I’ve seen before. Improbably, it was Makosi from Big Brother 5. At the self-service till, she kicked up a stink because she couldn’t get anything to scan. I felt like contacting Heat there and then.

I walked up the road and past the Islamic school. It was kicking out from this evening’s lesson. A small Asian boy, fresh from being spiritually enriched, was singing along to his iPod. As I passed I heard him rapping “…your mother is a ho”.

This doesn’t happen every day in Aylesbury.

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Labels: General me

Recently we decided that we needed some more space and started investigating the possibility of having a loft conversion. We don’t want to move but could do with a little more space. We were told that it would look like someone had dropped a shed on our roof. Casually, Emma looked at a couple of websites to see what else we could get for our money. We had a look round one house and then… our house bit back.

Firstly, the toilet overflowed, inconveniently I was in Belgium on a stag do and Emma, her dad and our nice-bloke-but-terribly-disorganised plumber - “Plumbing’s an art form, not a science” - battled to bring the thing under control.

I was walking around Brussels taking phone calls and texts about the ensuing disaster. First I would get accusatory calls saying that we would have to throw money at the problem in a ‘don’t you fucking dare even challenge me’ kind of way. It was the only practical answer, obviously. Then I would get a text saying “I know it’s not your fault”. Then I would get another text saying “Call me urgently”.

When I asked why I had to call, Emma’s response was “Well I wasn’t going to pay for it”. Which rather suggests that I had to pay and that, ergo, it was considered to be my fault.

On Thursday a pipe started dripping in an awkward-to-get-to place. We calculated that the dripping would fill the only bowl that would fit the space every hour and a half. So, every 90 minutes throughout the night, we took turns to go down stairs and empty the bowl. “It was worse than breast feeding” said Emma, possibly not referring to the incessant dripping.

The dripping pipe was fixed by the plumber and his monkey wrench. This has once again highlighted an apparent failing of mine – my inability to do DIY. It is considered a source of some hilarity that I am no good at DIY. I admit, had I had a bit more time and application, I should have trained to be a master plumber, carpenter and all round builder. It is not so much that I’m not good at DIY, it’s that I chose not to do it. In the same way that people choose not to rear their own cattle for beef.

Instead, I buy it in. Ultimately, it is more expensive than doing it myself, but that’s why I go to work – to make money to pay for things I want (and don’t want e.g. a weekend of DIY). Strangely, however, being male and not doing DIY is, for some reason, considered effete. I say it’s a choice I have taken, it is fundamental to a functioning economy (specialisation and the exchange of monies) and that because I think like that I am the very essence of modern mankind – rational, specialised (and standing upright). It’s not an argument I often win.

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Labels: General me

I don’t know where the year is going. Life is like a series of dials, turn one up and another goes down. If you don’t keep tweaking the dials you find one is turning itself up to max to the expense of all the others.

And so it is for me; the work dial has slowly turned itself up to the max eclipsing everything else. As a result I’ve been going to the gym less, football less, I’m getting home only 40 minutes before Millie goes to bed, then I eat and get back on the laptop. And, of course, I’ve been blogging less. I really need to readdress the balance.

So in an attempt to catch up a little, a few excerpts from some recently aborted drafts…

… The vilest spectacle at the Brits was The Brits School. It’s alumni – Kate Nash, Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis, Adele, Mika all got exposure from their sponsors, cheered on by their peers who like the Aliens in Toy Story are waiting to be chosen for stardom.

Thank God then for James Nesbitt who announced the football scores before sneering ‘yeah , football’s big at the Brits School, isn’t it?’ before mouthing ‘wankers’ at the hysterical wannabes …

… The traditional stag do is outdated; the stags I know don’t actually want or need a last night of freedom because being with their partners is not considered any kind of purgatory. In fact, I’ve yet to see a naked woman on a stag do and would be quite scared if I did.

But a stag do is a noble thing; it should go back to fundamental principles and have the stag party ‘laying siege’ to a town of their choosing. Camping on its walls like a Roman garrison; stealing food and drink under the cover of darkness for sustenance. The townspeople should accept this law breaking for the greater principles it is demonstrating; men bonded, proving themselves as the hunter gatherers – a right of passage towards the next stage in their lives ...

... I like to ‘walk’ London because you hear and see the richness of life itself. A tour guide on Carnaby Street got the emphases in his spiel all wrong. The line I heard was “FROM 1964 PRACTICALLY ALL THE SHOPS on Carnaby Street WERE [pause] clothes SHOPS”…

If emphasis is designed to bring out the important components of the sentences – he basically said that “FROM 1964 PRACTICALLY ALL THE SHOPS WERE SHOPS”…

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Labels: General me

I see that Fabio Capello has declared he’s the not the new messiah…

Presumably that then makes him a very naughty boy.

Thankfully, GMTV are keeping me up to date with the presidential elections. Apparently on Tuesday Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had spent the night ‘winning their victories’.

Why wouldn’t they? These are the best kind of victories.

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Labels: News

A few months ago I started getting a Costa Coffee Latte with my petrol. Then it became my Friday morning treat. The same bloke served me every week. Just prior to Christmas he engaged in some light discussion.

I went in a couple of times over Christmas, he asked me how my Christmas was, then how my New Year was and when I was going back to work. I wasn’t wholly comfortable with this. He was being nice, and my discomfort was my failing not his. I’m just not very good at small talk and we had few shared experiences on which to hook any conversation – he knows I like Lattes, he knows I was wearing shorts on boxing day, I know he get ‘fucking pissed off’ when he spills steaming hot milk all over his trousers. Beyond this there was little to discuss.

Still, he pursued the friendship, he started serving me large Lattes not regular as requested, and he even gave me two complimentary chocolates rather than one. It was all getting a bit Brokeback.

I haven’t been in for a couple of weeks, last week I was ill and just didn’t feel like a coffee. The week before I was in meetings and was Latte’ed up to the eyeballs. This morning I went in… and he didn’t recognise me. He just served me a regular Latte and didn’t even ask me how I was. We have drifted apart. Having not liked the fact he tried to engage in discussion with me; I now don’t like the fact he ignored me. I am never happy.

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Labels: General me

Following Louis Theroux trip to San Quentin Jail, where he met a married neo-Nazi with two children who was having a non-physical homosexual relationship with a gay jewish man in make-up, one could only conclude ‘only in America’.

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Labels: TV and radio

New Year means resolutions, I’ve tried formulating some SMART objectives, but I can’t quite nail it. Like most people, I want to be better than I was last year. I’m just not sure in what ways.

I want to swear less, Millie was quick to copy me saying ‘tractor’, it will be markedly less sweet if she comes out with ‘fucker’ over the next few months.

I want to stay fit; I’m already a gym regular and have had a clean bill of health on both my teeth and, by some miracle, eyes. I’ve been going to the gym for about 3 and a half years, but it’s still a daunting ugly prospect. I figured I should get some new kit to make me feel better.

I found some trainers, which literally overnight dropped £30 in price (and were only available in my hard to find size 10.5), so I bought them. I didn’t know whether they were any good, or even if they were suited to my needs. According to the website they were for ‘neutral’ running. I looked everywhere to find out what neutral running was – perhaps it was Swiss. Perhaps it was a new fangled exercise programme I don’t understand – like ‘core fitness’. Eventually, by downloading the Mizuno catalogue did I find out its true meaning. Apparently it just means it doesn’t have any specific purpose.

I also bought some ClimaCool Adidas shorts. They’re a bit like cycling shorts but I wear them under my normal shorts. Again, I had no idea if they were any good, but sometimes on the rowing machine my boxers show out the bottom of my shorts and it’s a bit unsightly. The blurb said that they have physiological and psychological benefits to performance which basically means that, although they are generally more comfortable, they have no real purpose apart from making you feel like you might start looking like John Arne Risse.

I’m torn by buying kit in January. On one hand it tends to be in the sales, on the other, you simply look like one of those new resolution numpties who think buying the kit takes you half way to running a marathon.

Those people are the ones who buy exercise DVDs. They’re not short of choice there’s the minor, previously fat, celebrity who starves herself to death type. There’s also the novelty exercises – today I saw an advert for a pole dancing DVD called ‘Poleercise’ and a Strictly Come Dancing DVD called; wait for it – Strictly Come Dancingercise. Surely you can’t legitimise exercise regimes by simply tagging ‘ercise’ on the end of something. Otherwise I’m going to make a new DVD called lager and kebabercise.

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Labels: General me

I lie in wait in the dark recesses of the forest. My pray is sitting alone in an open pasture. I have spent time firstly finding it, then tracking it; the kill is nearing.

But as I sit watching my vulnerable prey, a prey that will not fight my attack, I know that others may be sitting in the shadows. I may not be alone.

The minutes tick by. I could attack early to draw out my foes. Too early, however, I may find myself facing something I can’t handle. If I sit here, someone may attack when I’m not ready.

The silence is deafening; all I can hear is my own breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Should I just attack? Let the frenzy begin? I know that more experienced hunters wait.

Eventually, I decide to attack…

And as a result I won my first ebay auction. I’ve never been a big bargain hunter so ebay hasn’t really held me like it has others, but I have been usurped in a couple of auctions.

OK, so it was a CD, it was £1.99 and I was the only bidder. But, hell, it was exciting

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Labels: Technology

I haven’t yet joined le grande return, as the French might enigmatically say. Christmas and New Year were pretty fragmented. We weren’t really prepared, finishing just three days before Christmas day. Millie got Chicken Pox. Three walks were cancelled, as was a Boxing Day party. We missed The Big Friends Night Out due to babysitting technicalities. Even Millie’s immense Christmas day nap meant that we didn’t get to unwrap all her presents.

Which makes it all sound like a disaster, which it wasn’t. Dinner at the Dobscrubs, Christmas Eve with the babies, Boxing Day football and Christmas Dinner were all good (Christmas Dinner was officially The Best Ever). It was just that when we actually managed to engage with the festivities, we seemed to bounce along the surface rather than delve right in.

For New Year we managed to disengage totally. As last year, we decided to do nothing, but this year we surpassed ourselves with nothingness. Following a nice meal, Emma decided to go to bed at 10.30 (learning from last year that snoozing on the settee and going to bed at 12.05 does not a New Year party make). I was supposed to go and wake her just prior to the chimes.

Nothing was on TV so I put on my new DVD copy of Depeche Mode’s 101. At 11.55, halfway through the film, I ventured upstairs. Emma didn’t respond to my calling… so I went downstairs and continued to watch the DVD whilst she slept on oblivious.

Party on. 

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Labels: General me

Two of the women at work get on like a house on fire. It’s not a surprise, female demography of the organisation appears to be split between 19 year old administrators and 40+ managers with just those two in between.

Physically, they are similar height and build and have a similar style. One is blonde, the other brunette. One drinks white wine, the other red. Today, whilst sorting through another tin of chocolates they found that their tastes complimented each other in this area too. 

“Cor”, said one, “Sharing a packet of Revels with you would be AMAZING!” 

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Labels: Work

From a primal perspective, dancing is all about sex. Dancing demonstrates vitality and health, and many of the moves – with the exception of The Pogo and Big Fish Little Fish Cardboard Box – are simply distilled sex moves of one kind or another.

With metronomic predictability, the Christmas Party happened last week and sure enough there was dancing. I don’t really dance to cheesy wedding/Xmas disco music; not because I don’t want to – I’m not one of those who think dancing is merely a right of passage into homosexuality – more because I simply can’t.

Quite literally, music has got to move me if I’m to dance. Cheesy discos don’t do that –they’re just too slow and predictable.

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Labels: Work

Looking back, I’m surprised I haven’t mentioned Ginger Woman; Emma’s superhero alter-ego. Over the years, she’s managed to be in the right place at the right time to break up street fights, direct traffic around burning cars and bring to justice a couple of local tyre thieves. Oh, and she became implicated by a tabloid newspaper in a terrorist attack… but that’s another story.

Like all good super heroes Ginger Woman’s world is a secretive one. She lives in the shadows waiting to be called upon. What she does in the shadows, who knows?

On Wednesday we watched Arrange me a marriage. The woman whose marriage was being arranged was Lynn. Lynn’s parents are friends with Emma’s, one of Lynn’s closest friends is in our ante-natal group and one of the blokes selected has a son Emma taught.

Emma doesn’t know Lynn and the three people connected to Emma don’t know each other. She’s clearly is in control of a lot more than I’d previously realised. I’m just innocently making my way through life whilst she’s the master puppeteer of Oxfordshire society. I feel like Nicholas Garrigan to her Idi Amin in Last King of Scotland.

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Labels: TV and radio

The ‘ ‘ has fallen off my keyboard. Sorry, the ‘double-u’ has fallen off my keyboard. The cat as alking over it, hen she slipped, fell off and plucked it our ith one of her cla s.

It’s a bind, especially hen surfing the orld ide eb. It stays on for a little hile, but it’s all obbly and eventually falls off. There’s a plastic holder thing it clips into, hich has been damaged so the key on’t stay on.

I’ve got no choice but to replace it ith a ne key. Just one tiny key, ith one tiny plastic holder thing. Eventually I found a ebsite that replaces individual keys on Po erBooks.

Keys, of course, are integral to doing computer things. And don’t these suppliers kno it? One key ith plastic holder thing is £4.50 ith another £2.50 postage.

£7.00 for one measily key. ankers.

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Labels: Technology

Before… those who say Steve McClaren has been given a lifeline by Israel beating Russia are wrong. I’m no fan of McClaren, but the fact that England need to draw with Croatia in their final match is merely a scheduling anomaly. The only way to ensure qualification remains in your hands is to win every game; a feat no team in Europe achieved. If the schedule of games were rearranged and the results were the same; which given that the minor highs and lows – injuries, bad decisions – even themselves out, is a reasonable assumption; then the outcome would be the same. The man can’t be judged until it’s all over…

And after… It’s all over and Jesus, how many chances did you need? How many mistakes can you make? McClaren inherits a team from Sven Goran Eriksson that is amongst the top 8 in the world. Rather than tweaking, he bows to the media hysteria shows that he’s his own man and drops the captain David Beckham.

After a number of bad results he finds himself having to pick in-form Beckham and ultimately reassembles the team Eriksson created. Results improve. Injuries return and it falls apart again. Lead against Russia, qualification beckons – lose to Russia. Israel beat Russia, qualification beckons – go two down to Croatia. Manage to get back to 2-2, qualification beckons – concede another goal. And out you must go.

In reality he screwed up against Macedonia when he was still showing the world he was being his own man. When they were getting bogged down in that game, they needed a player who could change a game with one pass… and Beckham was in Madrid.

The domination of the so-called Golden Generation disguises how weak this generation of England players are. Which is mind-boggling coming from the richest football country in the world. Although maybe we should get real – this isn’t an English league, it’s a global brand. Don’t be surprised to see a Premiership game staged in China or the US soon.

And what of the Golden Generation? They’re great players for their clubs. But the role they play is as the iconic battling bulldog whilst the Carlos Kick-a-bouts do all the fancy stuff. Modern club sides are like that; they take the best qualities from the countries around the world and blend them into a team. The English players bring English qualities; put them all together its just one boorish headless mob which the more technically able intelligent countries can just play around.

Eriksson got that and tried to slow everything down, but that was viewed as having a lack of passion - McClaren just didn’t get and turned England into a pub team. It was so badly exposed last night; I could do no more than laugh at every farcical turn.

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Labels: Football

So, over two-thirds of people who downloaded the Radiohead album didn’t pay a rusty penny for it? Those who did only coughed up a couple of pounds on average.

I’m a creature of habit when it comes to music. I expect to pay for it, I buy albums on CD and until Millie came along bought singles on vinyl (part of my DJ-ing delusions). Space has dictated that I can’t really fit anymore vinyl into the house, so I’ve started buying the odd download single.

Downloading a whole album and not paying for it didn’t fit. I am a fan, so I did contemplate it, and decided to pay £5. This makes me more generous than most, I guess. When they announced that it would come out on CD, I decided to wait.

I wonder what Radiohead think of all this. Maybe it’s all part of a grand plan – sign to a major, make commercial albums, and then use the money made from The Man to subvert the industry. Using corporate greed to bring down corporate greed.

Or maybe they had faith in humanity and actually assumed people would want to pay for it. Like me, they’re of the generation that bought its music in hard format with money. Maybe they despair at the kids today who see nothing wrong in stealing other people’s work. It’s enough to make Thom Yorke start reading the Express and vote Tory.

There’s been a lot in the rhetoric about how this is changing the face of the music industry by cutting out the record labels. But Radiohead, and their kin (The Charlatans and Prince) have established their profile as a result of the labels. They can now operate outside their control.

Other artists can’t operate like this; they need the publicity that labels offer. For all the talk of MySpace bands, the Radiohead move isn’t really going to bring down the status quo. The Radiohead way maybe an option for the late career artists, but its not really going to work for those who are up and coming.

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Labels: Music

Having worked over 40 hours in the last two and a bit days, I’ve taken the day off today. Tomorrow I’m back at work, tackling that key tasks of archiving my emails and drinking coffee.

I’m not much of a sleeper, but I was determined to stay in bed for a goodly length of time. As a result I’ve managed to catch up with the dark netherworld of daytime terrestrial TV.

First up was Jeremy Kyle, which I can’t watch for more than about 3 minutes at a time. The topic was ‘You slept with my cousin’s fiancé’. Gormless Chav Number 1 took a lie detector test to find out whether this was true. Kyle announced that it was, to which Gormless Chav Number 2 (who had been cheated on) sat in his Adidas tracksuit and shouted ‘Booyaah’. It was like watching Newsnight.

On Channel 4, rather more unpredictably for 10.30am, was a short documentary on the making of a glamour model. Seren, a media student from Goldsmiths College, was embarking on a glamour model career to ease her student debt.

The agency who signed her up needed to give her a distinctive look to make her stand out. They decided to brand her as the ‘smartest glamour model on the circuit’. Summarised as: pictures in FHM, talking about the pictures in Media Guardian. The creative director suggested she was pictured surrounded by books. Great.

In the end branding of the ‘smartest glamour model on the circuit’ involved shots of her topless in a white shirt and knickers. Very cerebral.

They interviewed her afterwards asking whether she knew they were branding her the smartest glamour model on the circuit. No, she said. Do you think the pictures reflected that? They said. No, she said.

She reflected, slightly shocked, before continuing...

I suppose I did cover up my fanny with a copy of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

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Labels: TV and radio

During this great weekend of sport, in which the country ended with less world champions than it started, questions were raised as to whether we should switch our national sport from football to rugby.

Do you have to declare your national sport to the UN? I mean, does the National Sport Security Council sit and have conversations that start; “Sir, our intelligence informs us that the Afghans have developed an unauthorised liking for the pole vault”?

The argument basically goes that we’re better at rugby than we are at football. This, despite the fact that the rugby world is comparatively tiny, making us a big fish in a small pond and despite the fact had England won on Saturday night it would have been a travesty to declare them the best in the world.

The second argument is that football is boorish, bloated and over exposed, whereas rugby is more refined and cultured. After all, despite having a controversial try disallowed, there was no apoplexy, no derision, and no cries of foul.

This is because despite the endeavour, tension and excitement; after the final whistle blows; nobody really cares about rugby.

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Labels: Sport

You won’t find any meaningful analysis of the Rugby World Cup from me. However, I have enjoyed the tournament. The Wales v Fiji game was a ding dong battle and the France v All Blacks game was pure theatre from the French standing nose to nose with the snarling Kiwi haka to Jean-Baptiste Elisalde sprinting in towards his own line to punt the ball into the crowd and ensure victory.

I admire what England have achieved, though they are a one man team, I know Johnny Wilkinson couldn’t win games on his own. More importantly, England can’t win without Wilkinson. Without him on the pitch, their efforts are largely redundant. Unlike many, I like to see heroes being heroic.

But, the problem with Rugby is that it is only accessible at a certain level. From an outsider’s point of view, a vast majority appears to be about big men lying on top of each other. Its difficult to know whether Sebastien Chabal, the modern day cave man and hairy scary bastard, is a good player or just a hairy scary bastard. He looks great when his beard and hair is drenched in mud, sweat and others’ teeth, but what’s he doing lying on the floor in the first place?

The rules don’t help, they’ve been invented to make the game as aesthetically pleasing as possible, but you can only trust that the referee isn’t making them up like a game of Mornington Crescent. Players can be penalised for going in on the wrong side and doing things in a scrum that no end of TV replays can clarify. With England so reliant on Wilkinson’s penalties, who knows what might win them the game – eating fish fingers in a ruck or doing impressions of Ronny Corbett with one foot off the ground perhaps?

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Labels: Sport