I am pale turquoise

Nicked from tvor (again, like most memes ;o))

you are paleturquoise #AFEEEE

Your dominant hues are green and blue. You're smart and you know it, and want to use your power to help people and relate to others. Even though you tend to battle with yourself, you solve other people's conflicts well. Your saturation level is low - You stay out of stressful situations and advise others to do the same. You may not be the go-to person when something really needs done, but you know never to blow things out of proportion. Your outlook on life is bright. You see good things in situations where others may not be able to, and it frustrates you to see them get down on everything.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

Amazingly accurate, for the most part

In this digital age

This week's Radio Times included a "Digital TV" supplement. The UK's digital switchover is about to begin, and RT - as the nation's premier TV listings magazine - is doing its bit to ensure the populace are educated in what's happening and what they'll need to do to carry one watching telly.

We've already made the move to digital using a Freeview PVR, but as we're considering installing Freesat in the next few weeks so we can enjoy HD programmes in time for Christmas, I thought I'd give the 15-page guide a flick through to see if it could tell me anything new. Anything I haven't already gleaned from reading t'Interweb.

On reaching page 8, I found I was being patronised and subjected to outrageous ageism. The magazine begins to describe a series of "average" example family units, and the steps they need to take to cope with digital. First up, it's "the Harrisons" who, the leaflet tells us, are "a couple in their mid-50s. They have to move to digital because of the nationwide switchover." Here they are, as pictured in the rag:

Just look at them. In their fifties? Bloody cheek! They look more like they're in their late seventies. And look at that furniture! I think the graphics designer was confused and thinks he was asked to draw a scene from the NINETEEN fifties. Ducks on the wall? Twee little standard lamp? And their TV (which I've cropped from the picture) looks like something from Rediffusion. Good grief. Let me tell you, ALL the 50-year-olds I know are more than au fait with digital thengyoverymuds. Ahead of the curve, if anything.

The "questions" these poor old farts ask are more like something you'd hear from pensioners too. "Do I need a new television" (because these are the kind of people who don't replace their telly until it breaks, right?); "Can we still use our VHS recorder?" (because let's face it, 50-year-old couldn't possibly have heard of PVRs, right?) and on, and on.

You have to get to the next page and read about "the Khans" - who are clearly in their early thirties and hence SO much more clued up about everything - before you see sensible questions. See, they're already using Freeview, so they're asking whether they need a special PVR for Freeview, among other things. As an aside, the leaflet also tries to claim that PVR is a deprecated term, and that the "correct" term is now DTR - for Digital Television Recorder.

Someone needs to get their facts straight. The Topfield website - home of one of the most popular PVRs on the market - still refers to it as a PVR, and Wikipedia, while its major listing is under DVR (Digital Video Recorder) still admits PVR as an alternate term and lists DTR as Digital TV Receiver. But MUCH more important than that, stop patronising people in their fifties. Don't you know fifty is the new thirty??

Book Review: Brideshead Revisited

I wasn't looking forward to this one. I began to read it with very low expectations and for about the first third it met them. A story of upper-class twits, one of them - in his late teens - still in love with his teddy-bear, dissipating their small talents in drinking and carousing and gazing into their navels about their dysfunctional families. Yuk. And on top of that the narrator, from an almost normal background, held in thrall to the awful owners of the country pile.

Then something happened. It may have been nothing more than the train journey. In the past I've noticed that when I'm struggling with a novel it pays to carve out some time to sit and read it in large chunks - all the way through in a single sitting if possible - and that if I can do this, somehow I get into the book no matter how unappealing I find the subject. Doesn't always work, but on the whole it's far more successful than reading in ten minute nibbles, as I do if I'm waiting in the car park for Nikki to leave work. So this train journey - one of the increasingly rare occasions where I'm called to Westminster and therefore have to endure more than four hours train travel for a ninety minute meeting - enabled me to finish the last two thirds of the book in two sittings.

While it's still not a book I would have chosen to read, except insofar as it's one of those "famous" novels that it's always nice to be able to say one has read, I did end up enjoying it once they got into the adultery. I still didn't manage to conjure up any sympathy for any of the characters. For the most part their misery is self-inflicted. But maybe that's the point Waugh was trying to make. Or one of them, at least.

One thing is certain: books like this make for very interesting and lively debate at the club meetings as there's always a healthy mix of people who enjoyed it or didn't, and almost as many different interpretations of the hidden meanings as there are people at the meeting. If you're interested in a description of how the outwardly ostentatious world of the landed gentry in the years between the two World Wars hides a series of broken dreams and borderline psychoses then this is the book for you. From what I've heard, I personally would have got on a lot better with almost any of Waugh's other works.

Leaving the kitchen door open

Efforts to rehome Mimi continued this week.

We "inherited" her with the house ("we're moving so far away, she wouldn't enjoy the journey, she wouldn't settle in the new place, is there any chance you could keep her?" which translates as "we already have two other cats that we're much more fond of, and we've even palmed one of those off onto a neighbour. This one's a bit stand-offish and we can't be arsed.") and although she's very pretty, and has grown more confident and (almost) affectionate as we've given her a bit of attention, being shut in the kitchen and the only cat in the house is a bit of a lonely life, we don't get a lot out of it either, and it makes going away awkward.

So I've been phoning shelters, trying to find a place for her, but they're all full up. I really wasn't comfortable with the alternative. Having an animal killed for any reason other than they're in pain or have a terminal illness doesn't sit well with my philosophy, so the weeks dragged by as the shelters continued to have no free places, or I forgot to phone them because I didn't want to consider the consequences of them being full.

Are you one of those people that think things happen for a reason? I am. In this case my procrastination paid off. Yesterday, in the office, making another round of calls to the shelters, I was overheard by the colleague who sits opposite me. To cut a long story short, one of their cats had recently died, and he thought his wife might be keen to replace her. A couple of quick text messages later, the deal was set and I agreed to take Mimi over in the evening provided she was home when I got in and I could wrangle her into a carrying case.

We dropped her off in Mossley at 6.30 yesterday evening, and reaction from the family was very positive. Apparently Mimi has almost identical markings to their other cat, another lucky coincidence that proves this is what was meant to happen.

And on returning home, for almost the first time in two years, we could leave the kitchen door open.

More room please

Having dumped the contents of Paul's iPod onto my PC when he was here in March, and continued to take 3-400 photos of each Chorlton Players' dress rehearsal this year, I found recently I was down to my last 10GB on the 250GB disk that came with this puter.

At around the same time, the appalling performance of this machine (running Windows) finally became too much to bear. Whether it was the dreadful McAfee AV code, which seems to hang everything up while it does its updates, or Firefox, which begins to behave like a dog once you get beyond 8 open tabs, or Windows itself, which regularly goes into a coma doing the simplest of tasks, that represented the final straw I couldn't tell you, but one thing became clear: I couldn't go on like this.

These two threads came together when Nikki found an incredible deal on a Samsung 1TB (terabyte) disk from Microdirect. SATA-2, 7200rpm and a 32MB onboard cache, for barely more than £70 including VAT and carriage. I couldn't resist. The disk arrived shortly after Nikki's folks flew back to Canada and I've been waiting for an opportunity to fit it. Said opportunity finally arose yesterday afternoon, when we arrived home from Chesterfield.

There were a few head-scratching moments. Firstly, from what I'd remembered, Fujitsu-Siemens PCs have a pretty comprehensive wiring loom included - enough to populate the cabinet with as many disks as it is designed to take. I was half right. The loom is IDE-only. Fortunately Annie just happened to have a spare SATA signal cable and power adapter lead in her bottomless bottom drawer. Once I'd collected those I came to the second minor headache.

The FJ disk cradles are a little different to the ones I'm used to, bearing in mind it's more than ten years since I fiddled around inside a PC case. All the hard disks I've fitted in the past have screwed into the baseplate from underneath. This PC has two double-height cradles that are sprung on one side and accept the screws - 3 - through the other side. Once I'd figured that out, the new disk went in just fine.

With the original system disk being SATA, there was only one remaining SATA port on the motherboard, so I'll be in trouble if I need another extension disk. I'll probably have to get hold of a copy of Ghost and clone the original disk onto a new larger unit.

BIOS and Windows recognition of the disk was all automatic (I'd read some forum entries that suggested earlier BIOSs would baulk at large disks, but I haven't had that problem so I must be up-to-date) and once I'd solved the final hurdle (remembering how to partition and format a disk using Windows - it's been so long since I did it that I used fdisk last time!) all was fine.

Formatting the whole disk took a little under 3 hours, and I now have a nice clean 50GB M: (for Mandriva) partition and a 882GB N: (for New data) partition all ready to take my first steps to Linux. After threatening to do it for at least five years, I'm finally going to give it a go. Next stop Mandriva installation! :o)

Another fine night

We don't need an excuse to spend time with friends, but we had one last night. Ostensibly we went over to Chesterfield to "plan" our activities for New Year - meals, whether we'll be going out or staying in, what we'll be doing if we stay in, etc. In reality, as you might have predicted, this only took about five minutes. Which left the rest of the early evening and night free for general socialising.

Unusually for us, we didn't venture out to the pub before dinner. We'd all brought plenty of liquid refreshment which, combined with the cold weather, was enough to make us hunker down inside for a lazy chat before dinner, during dinner (a fabulous lamb tagine, preceded by some excellent dips and followed up with a delicious berry-fruit pastry), and after dinner.

Somehow I managed to consume the better part of two bottles of wine on my own. Nikki was no help at all, confining herself to a single glass with dinner, but a man's gotta do, etc. This may have contributed to me not remembering an awful lot about Big Band Night on the X Factor, which we settled down to watch off the DTR much later on. A poor show given that I was supposed to be reviewing it. Thank heaven for t'Interweb forums, and YouTube :o)

The only slight downer on the evening was the lack of Ian & Gill, who couldn't make it on account of being temporarily discumbobulated, but we drank a toast to them, and somehow managed to polish off their portions of dinner, so it wasn't a total loss.

Fine Foods in small quantities

We attended last year's Northwest Fine Food Festival and were so impressed that we determined to squeeze in a visit to this year's event even though we were expected in Chesterfield later in the day. We figured a swift jaunt over there after breakfast would still leave us plenty of time to get to Chesterfield by mid-afternoon.

What a disappointment. Whether as a result of the blimmin' credit crunch, or because retailers had concluded that spending a couple of days handing out freebies to grazers who walk around and don't buy much was not the most profitable business model ever invented, I don't know, but the show was much smaller than last year. Roughly half the size, at a guess, and with much less variety. The cheesemakers/vendors were still there, as was the farm-fresh meat, but the vintners, chocolatiers, cake and pudding makers were in short supply and the whole place had an air of desperation about it. Quite sad really. For the second time this weekend, we didn't stay long, and we didn't purchase much.

Some interesting and original marinades, some mature cheddar with added chillies and a free sample of organic coffee, and that was about it. On the basis of that experience, we won't be bothering next year, unless there's some promotional material to convince us that the show has returned to its 2007 standard.

I'm such a pleb

There's a lot going on this weekend, so to fit it all it we started this evening right after work, with a visit to the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair, which is on at Manchester Grammar the whole weekend.

We didn't know what to expect, but if it turned out to be "things" for sale made by craftspeople then we figured maybe we'd find a nice new ornament for the lounge, and if it was craft suppliers for crafters, then maybe Nikki would discover some useful bits and bobs, or even a new craft altogether.

It was the former. Unfortunately for us though, it was definitely at the high brow end. Three rooms of stalls populated by people who are barely on the planet talking in hushed tones about their art and thinking a ceramic bowl is worth £2,200. Too much jewellery, too much glass, too much attitude that something is worth hundreds simply because it took them (a) a long time to make it or (b) a long time to learn how to make it. Or both.

Whereas to me, it's only worth what I'm prepared to pay for it, and that figure will vary up or down depending on how original or well-made a thing is, and whether it appeals to me or not. Let me tell you, not much in any of those three rooms appealed to me at all, and the few things that did were so outrageously expensive I walked right on by with a pained expression.

I guess there are those who would be prepared to take a punt and give house room to an ugly lump of clay in the hope that the artist will become famous and the price of their incunabulae rocket. I'm not one of them. We didn't stay long.

A Fantastic Find

I keep remembering things that happened while I was taking a break from blogging. Towards the end of the outlaws' visit, we made a brief sojourn to the local craft shop so that Shirley could stock up on all those patterns that aren't available over there. While that was going on, I sneaked off to Borders to check out the books and DVDs.

First stop: the bargain 3-for-2 table (I'm such a cheapskate) where I made the find of the decade. Book 2 of the THIRD (and, according to the cover notes and strapline, last) Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Book 2? I hadn't even known Book 1 was out. I'm clearly not spending enough time in book shops.

Twenty years ago, the first and second Covenant trilogies were among my all-time favourites. I devoured them avidly, reading and re-reading the entire series as each new edition was published. I know there were many naysayers around who thought Donaldson's world a cheap imitation of Middle Earth, but I was never one of them. In my view, there's only so many fantasy creatures to go around, so it was entirely sensible that The Land had a people who lived with horses, and giants, and magicians, and a single, powerful, evil overlord - in Donaldson's case, Lord Foul. His narrative style was sufficiently different, his hero even more tentative than Frodo, to make me dismiss suggestions of plagiarism as mere jealousy. I loved the Chronicles, then and now.

Finding that after a gap of twenty years, Donaldson has picked up the story of Linden Avery and returned to the Land centuries after her last visit, gave me a thrill of expectation I haven't experienced for a long, long time. Picking up a copy of book 2 - Fatal Revenant - I almost ran to the fantasy section and soon found a pristine copy of the first book - The Runes of the Earth. On my return home Wikipedia revealed that the Last Chronicles are planned as a tetralogy, with book three expected in 2010 and book four in 2013. That's a long wait, but I know it'll be worth it, and meanwhile I have over a thousand pages to pore over with geeky delight. The only question now is: should I dive right in, or bow to tradition and reread the other six books first?

Book Review: In Cold Blood

A sorry side-effect of my month's hiatus is that I'm behind with my book reviews - this was the book club book of the month for September, and I've already finished October's, so this will be a very brief review.

Basically, I found this hard going. I know, I know, it's a classic, people still visit the farm, yadda, yadda, but even though it's a true-life story and the first "journalistic" novel of its kind, and exceedingly well written, I still plodded through it thinking "so what?" for much of the time. It wasn't so long ago that I would have given up around one-third of the way through. When it's the book club choice though, I feel I should give it a better chance. It wasn't worth it. A well documented and researched exposé of a senseless, virtually motiveless, crime is still a book about people in whom I have no interest and no point of reference. I wouldn't have chosen to spend time in their company and I would have preferred not to know the things I now know about them.

To cap it all, since the end is known from the beginning, and although Capote does a technically excellent job of keeping the nugget of truth from the reader until the last possible moment, I found the ersatz suspense tiresome and, when it was uncovered, the nugget to be one of fool's gold.

Caution! Stupid things are stupid!

As you may have gathered, we had a bit of a social weekend here at Digger Towers*.

With only one functioning spare room, having my darling daughters here at the same time as we're putting mates up wasn't an option until recently, and we'd normally have had to juggle their visits around other social activities. This was a sorry state of affairs. Not only did it mean messing them about, and occasionally not seeing as much of them as we like to, but also they missed out on the socialising!

The solution came in the shape of a new addition to the family: a ReadyBed®.

One of the purchases I made with points earned from the rewards system at work. It includes an inflatable double mattress with an attached double sleeping bag, and I had more than enough points to invest in an electric pump to inflate it with. I don't have anywhere near enough puff for that kind of shenanigans these days.

Blythe reports that it's very comfy, but could we please turn the computers off overnight? Unfortunately there's nothing we can do about the neon-bright blue flashes that emanate from the PIR detector every time she turns over.

But the point of this post, and the reason for the title, is to pass on the laughs I had reading the instruction leaflets. First, the bed:

CAUTION! The mattress is not a life saving device.

Glad we got that cleared up. I was planning on leaving it in the boot permanently in case of emergencies. But the hilarity was only just beginning. Apparently, the electric pump is potentially even more dangerous:

WARNING! This appliance is not intended for use by persons (including children) with reduced physical, sensory, or mental capabilities.

Reduced compared with what? I'm not as physical as David Beckham. I don't have the mental capacity of Stephen Hawking. I'm nowhere near as sensitive as Nikki. That's it. She'll have to inflate the mattress from now on. Of the two of us, she's the one with the least reduced capabilities.

*Actually we have a much more alliterative name for them, but news of that will have to wait until the new website's ready.

Mexican Night revisited

What a fabulous day yesterday! I spent a happy couple of hours being Nikki's kitchen bitch as we prepared the Mexican dishes for tonight's meal: Mexican 7-layer dip for starters, Cheesy chilli beef enchiladas and Mexican pasta bake for mains and pumpkin pie for pud (OK, that might have been where the Mexican theme came crashing down, lol).

With those either wrapped up and shoehorned into the fridge, or baked and cooling on the stove as appropriate, we hopped a bus into town for some gentle browsing and shopping.

The traditional stops - Waterstones; the Apple Shop; Sinclair's Oyster Bar - were supplemented by Habitat (Phil & Vicky were after some posh crockery and we found a replacement pepper mill since ours has gradually been intermittently refusing to emit even the smallest particle of pepper dust for a few weeks); Lloyds for lunch (Sinclair's was full); and Hotel Chocolat (where we bought some chilli chocolate penguins and some exciting-sounding Aztec Chilli drinking chocolate); and HMV (several Pink Floyd CDs to progress my desire to replace my vinyl collection, and a couple of new movies from the 3-for-£20 selection) after which the girls and I caught the bus home leaving the serious shoppers to carry on for a couple more hours.

We ate fairly early and as usual had vastly overcatered, but that was OK as it meant Mexican pasta leftovers for our Sunday meal as well as an emergency food parcel for Nat, and then settled down in front of a flickeringly friendly fire to enjoy an evening of reality with both X Factor and Strictly. Top that off with some rather fine wine and a glass or two of brandy and the whole thing added up to a pretty perfect day.

The Musical Box 2008 - the Trick of the Tail tour - Manchester

The tickets for last night's gig at the Manchester Apollo have been sitting here on my desk under the monitor since early March, heightening the anticipation of the evening. Phil & Vicky came over from Chesterfield, and we'd secured tickets for my daughters too, so we were an excited party of seven in total as we took our seats on row J at around 7.30pm.

I'd been disappointed initially, when I saw the set list, that the band were not playing the whole album, but then I remembered Musical Box's trademark adherence to the absolute letter of the original tour experience, from staging, through slides and effects, music, instruments and, of course, content. This being Genesis' first album of the post-Gabriel era, the tour necessarily relied on a lot of their Gabriel back-catalogue, and so only five of the tracks from Trick of the Tail made an appearance.

The set was cleverly bracketed with the opening and closing tracks from the album - Dance on a Volcano for starters and Los Endos (which was to become Genesis' traditional closing number) to finish, and in between we were treated to a selection of the most mouth-watering goodies from the early 70s.

Following Dance on a Volcano, the band performed a medley from Lamb comprising the title track, Fly on a Windshield and (my personal favourite) Carpet Crawlers. And then, with Denis Gagne doing a passable impersonation of Phil Collins' stage antics, it was time for the Cinema Show.

I'm not sure if it was a problem with where we were sitting, or the staging, or the mix, but this time round (the third time we've seen Musical Box) I found the sound very thin, and many of the vocals overtaken by the instruments. Maybe thirty years of listening to the studio versions has coloured my judgement, but I don't remember this being an issue with earlier gigs.

Wasn't a problem for the next number though - back to Trick for Robbery, Assault and Battery, accompanied by the original film footage on the backdrop, and Denis dressed in the traditional flat cap and overcoat. I switched off after that while they did White Mountain from Trespass. Of all the Gabriel-era albums, Trespass is my least favourite and the least-played by a very long way (I've probably only listened to it 2 or 3 times in total), but it wasn't long before we were treated to a note-perfect rendition of Firth of Fifth, followed in quick succession by two more Trick of the Tail gems: Entangled, and Squonk.

By now we were all well warmed up and ready for the highlight of the evening: the whole of Supper's Ready. Before we came out tonight, I'd passed comment that this would probably be the last time we'd fork out to see Musical Box. We were about six bars into Supper's Ready when I decided that no, if and when they come to Manchester again, we'll be here again. It's such a rare treat to hear Supper's Ready live from beginning to end that I don't want to pass up any chance.

There was just time for the "first ever Genesis single" (as it is often badged in the press) I Know What I Like (in Your Wardrobe) before they hit the roof with the closing number: the aforementioned Los Endos.

We had been expecting both It and Watcher of the Skies as an encore, but they must have been running late, or made a late change to the running order, because Watcher was dropped.

I had been extremely impressed with Denis's drumming during the evening, until Annie revealed that the forum-chatter had given the game away. It's only Phil Collins who can sing and drum, and when Denis walked around the flats in the direction of the drum kit, he never reappeared. A "real" drummer came back on, dressed in identical clothing and with an identical wig and beard a la Collins, and changed back into Denis on the return journey. It was very cleverly done and I didn't have a clue!

All in all a great gig, hugely enjoyed by us all. The chances of a full Genesis line-up touring again any time may be fading into the distance, but while we have Musical Box it (almost) doesn't matter.

Friday memes

OK it's Friday, it's traditional, and these are very late owing to my recent hiatus.

Book meme nicked from tvor (who nicked it from someone else)

Da rules:
* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the next two to five sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don't dig for your favourite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

OK I read the rules, but the CLOSEST (sic) book is the friggin' dictionary, so I'm going with this one:
"That's all she wrote; those were the twelve lines. But beneath the workmanlike description of a button, the poem was living and breathing on its own. The button was a button, yes. But it was also the embodiment of a daughter's grief, her attempt to fill the missing space. Sewing on a button was the last chore she would ever perform for her father."

from "Word Painting - A Guide to Writing More Descriptively" by Rebecca McClanahan.

...and an OLOGY meme nicked from tvor (who again purloined it from elseone):

tell us about yourself and head the post with your name plus -OLOGY

Diggerology

*FOODOLOGY*

What is your salad dressing of choice?
Salad cream. Cos I'm cheap, unsophisticated, and from de Norf. And I like to leverage preconceptions.

What is your favourite sit-down restaurant?
I'm assuming this is some sort of North American code for a restaurant where you are served by waitpeople, rather than helping yourself, or a fast-food joint, because really, I never heard of a stand-up restaurant.
So on that basis I'd have to go with Terpsis, in Pefkos, on the lovely island of Rhodes. God, how I miss that place.

What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of?
Curry. And then I'd do another two weeks.

What are your pizza toppings of choice?
pepperoni, salami, jalapeños, peppers, and extra cheese.

What do you like to put on your toast?
"Mummy's" home-made marmalade. And real butter, obviously.

*TECHNOLOGY*

What is your wallpaper on your computer?
A cartoon girl holding up a big paisley-pattern heart with "I Love You" written on it in a scrolly font. Nikki made it for me :o)

How many televisions are in your house?
two

What colour mobile phone do you have?
silver

*BIOLOGY*

Are you right-handed or left-handed?
right handed

Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
quite a few teeth, one or two sebaceous cysts and a very short section of vas deferens ;o)

What is the last heavy item you lifted?
The study door. I took it downstairs to paint it, and brought it back up again.

Have you ever been knocked unconscious?
no

*BULLSHITOLOGY*

If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
no

If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
anything I wouldn't have to spell out every time someone needs to write it down.

Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1,000?
no

*DUMBOLOGY*

How many pairs of flip flops do you own?
none. Seriously, do *you* know any blokes with flip-flops?

Last time you had a run-in with the cops?
The most recent time I was caught speeding by a real cop as opposed to a freakin' camera. He let me off. (The damned cameras never do that)

What do you want to be when you grow up?
dead

Last person you talked to?
my team-mates on the weekly voice conference

Last person you hugged?
Nikki. Why is this in "dumb" ology? Hugging's not dumb! *stamps feet*

*FAVOURITOLOGY*

Season?
spring

Holiday?
christmas

Day of the week?
saturday

Month?
may

*CURRENTOLOGY*

Missing someone?
yeah. Two someones.

Mood?
edgy

Listening to?
human highway, by Jim Witter And Cassandra Vasik (from the Out of the Blue movie soundtrack)

Watching?
the time tick past until the next voice conference

Worrying about?
whether i'll ever enjoy my job again

*RANDOMOLOGY*

First place you went this morning?
bathroom

What can you not wait to do?
see The Musical Box perform the original set from the Trick of the Tail tour, tonight at Manchester Apollo

What's the last movie you saw?
in the cinema: The Dark Knight.
at home: Erin Brockovich

Do you smile often?
yes

Being a Beresford

A wry smile crept over my face at yesterday's news that the government had decided to abandon SAT tests for 14-year-olds. The decision comes just a few months too late to benefit my younger daughter, who was one of the unfortunate students caught up in the Excel fiasco this year.

The wry smile was because this is typical of Beresford luck, or timing, in respect of government initiatives. For the whole of my childhood, child allowance was not payable for the first child in a family. Only for the second and subsequent children. Being an only child, my mother got absolutely no help from the state.

Eventually, the unfairness of this situation was recognised, and the rules changed so that the allowance was payable for all children. The date of the change? A few weeks after my 17th birthday, when I was too old to benefit from it. And yes, later changes to continue payment while offspring were still in full-time education were similarly too late to affect me.

Decked by Deckers

We ate out at Deckers last Thursday. A traditional end-of-holiday meal with the outlaws, and their choice of restaurant. I suppose it does me good to eat out somewhere that isn't Indian, Chinese, or Thai once in a while (read: once a year), but their menu is a little on the bland side.

It's well done though, in the main. Nikki had the Hunter's Chicken (which I'd had last year), Neil ordered battered cod but instead received what looked like poached cod with a few juniper berries arranged on top in an effort at nouvelle cuisine (which, given that it's now around 20 years old can't really be called "nouvelle" any more, can it?), Shirley ordered the lamb, thereby avoiding any chance that she would stretch the bounds of predictability, and I had a peppered fillet steak, medium rare.

For once, having ordered medium rare, when the steak arrived it was medium rare. Full marks.

So it should have been a perfect evening. Why then did they spoil it at the last minute? Fall at the final hurdle? I mean, what restaurant in their right mind serves raspberry pavlova with SQUIRTY CREAM??!?!?!? You know, that plastic, processed crap that pretends to be cream but comes in an aerosol can for instant delivery on to the dessert of your choice. Where my choice would be: none.

For a restaurant trying to deliver a cordon bleu experience this just screams chav. It's indicative of piss-poor attention to detail and attitude and it would normally be enough for me to write a restaurant off and never set foot there again. Unfortunately, as this is one of Shirley's favourite places, the luxury of high dudgeon isn't available to me, so I'll just have to breathe a sigh of relief that we won't be dining there again until at least 2010.

And in case anyone from the Decker's kitchen happens by, this is what a raspberry pavlova should look like (courtesy of Flickr):

Sad fuck

We took to drinking in The Southern again last week while Shirley and Neil were here. Neil likes it, and it's handy for the bookies, even though it's no longer walking distance from home since we moved.

This meant a short sojourn for me each day - late afternoon or early evening - to meet up with whichever of the rest of the family had fetched up there, take anyone who hadn't already made their own way there, sink a couple of pints and drive everyone home for dinner.

Parking up outside the pub on Monday I noticed a small pile of broken glass at the edge of the footpath, along with a tumbler still miraculously in one piece. I didn't think much of it - par for the course round there - but stepped carefully over it and entered the establishment to negotiate the vending of some beery comestibles.

I don't know what sixth sense told me to check the car over when we came out of the pub, but I'm grateful for it. Someone - probably one of the schoolkids bored by waiting for the bus - had decided it would be a hilarious prank to place the unbroken tumbler under the car, directly in front of my front wheel. Had I driven off without moving it, I would certainly have crushed it beneath the wheel and suffered, at best, a slow puncture, or even a total blowout.

So to the sad little fuck who did it: what goes around comes around buddy. Keep your eyes open for someone as funny as you.

Back in the saddle

What's that? Almost a month since my last post? Umm...yeah. Sorry. There's no one reason. It's a combination of things, the main one being a slight change in our daily routine which means I rarely have any computer time in the early evenings or before retiring for the night.

That small change meant something had to give, and for the last four weeks the loser has been this blog.

On top of that, we've had Nikki's Mum & step-Dad here for a week (they left on Saturday but owing to a slightly foggy Heathrow didn't fly home until yesterday), which always means more pub time :o)

It's a little disingenuous of me to use their visit as an excuse - if anything I had *more* computer time last week than usual - but for some reason a lot less enthusiasm for blogging. The time off work was welcome though, and we spent a very pleasant day in Bakewell, driving over the Cat & Fiddle around midday and arriving to find it was market day there (Monday last).

The market provided many opportunities for "arty" photos such as this study of the cotton reels on a haberdashery stall. I took a couple of the obligatory apple shots too. We had a very nice lunch in one of the town centre pubs, and checked out all the local shops while Neil whiled away the afternoon enjoying the hospitality of Mr. W. Hill. Bakewell's one of those places we've driven through many times over the years but never stopped for a really good look. And no, we didn't buy a tart.

Took the Cat & Fiddle road back home too, but by this time the weather was closing in and the views weren't quite as spectacular. We did stop off for a pint at the pub though and very refreshing it was. I did wonder whether they suffer much trouble at that location. The winding road and superb views both attract a lot of bikers and walkers to the area, but that doesn't necessarily explain the need to have a sign behind the bar saying "Be Nice Or Leave." :o(

It was virtually deserted while we were there though - just a lone biker enjoying an early tea and an elderly couple of walkers - so we managed to avoid getting beaten up. Just.