Movie Review: Avatar

I've tried to stay away from the hype surrounding this movie. In years gone by I would have been so excited by the concept I'd have barely been able to sit still through the adverts and trailer reels. With age, and with many experiences of excitement and expectation being dashed on the rocks of reality, I stilled myself. Hoping for the best and fearing for the worst. Having treated ourselves to the PS3 Avatar game and watched Nat playing it for a few minutes, the worst I expected was nearly three hours of video-game footage a la Transformers.

I needn't have worried.

Before the detail, here are the headlines. Avatar is outstanding. A team of creative giants at the peak of their craft, led by a man with a monumental vision, have created a world of beauty and wonder. What else is film-making about? If you haven't seen it, I would urge you to. If you're thinking of waiting for the BD/DVD release, I would politely suggest you go to a theatre to see it in its breathtaking 3D glory. Avatar will not only take you to another world for 162 minutes, it'll make you wish you could stay there.

"Pandora is a moon of the gas giant Polyphemus, which orbits Alpha Centauri A" says the Avatar wiki page, and you've grabbed me right there, from the off. Since the very first time I saw an "artist's impression" of the surface of a world with more than one moon in the sky I've been hooked on those images. Having a gas giant on the horizon just makes it that much more impressive. But this is just one of the jaw-dropping visuals with which you're assaulted in the opening minutes, and there's even better to come later on. Here is a world similar to those previously locked in the imaginations of the likes of Roger Dean and Rodney Matthews. Only it's real.

Undoubtedly using every cycle of processing power on the world's fastest graphics-rendering computers, and every nuance of programming subtlety developed over years to faithfully reproduce real-world physics and biology, Pandora looks real.

I've been impressed with CGI before - from Lord of the Rings to various Terminators - but there's always been something, some little thing, that jarred me out of my suspension of disbelief. That mental hiccup where you think oh yeah, it's just a drawing. Not here. In Avatar, CGI finally comes of age.

And at that point, the only limit is your imagination. From the gently floating seeds of Eywa through the bioluminescent forest pathways to the mighty Leonopteryx (Toruk), Pandora is the world you've only been able to read about up 'til now. Whether it's Hothouse or Hyperion, Halvmork or Helliconia, they've been more real in your head. Now they can be real in front of your eyes.

As good as any visuals are, they can always be lifted with the addition of a good sound track and here again Avatar does not disappoint. From the simplest forest sounds through the Na'vi native music to the soaring and uplifting strains that accompany the Ikran flights, Avatar is as much a joy to listen to as it is to watch. This must surely be the best work of James Horner's career.

Although Avatar pushes the envelope in so many technical ways, and achieves such heights of success with all of them, still it would be a hollow shell without a story to fill it and here, you may read, some critics have fallen short of rapture in their reviews, calling the plot predictable at best. Actually it had the opposite effect on me. The presence of the stereotypical characters - the grizzled military leader out for blood; the impatient businessman with his eyes so fixed on the money he doesn't see the real prize; the suspicious warrior leader; the beautiful native girl who steals the hero's heart; and on; and on - for me merely added a comfort factor. Knowing where the story was headed almost allowed me to relax and enjoy it MORE. There were still enough surprises to keep it interesting, even if the visual delights as each new part of the planet was revealed hadn't.

Scriptwise, some of the early exposition wanders close to the border with the Realms of Woodenness, but all things considered the backstory of how Pandora was found, why humans need masks to survive, why the Na'vi are revolting and what the military forces are really after, is all sorted out in pretty short order, arming the viewer with the necessary information and leaving him or her free to lap up the alien landscape as it unfolds.

Avatar as a whole, and the world of Pandora and the Na'vi in particular, have stayed with me in a way I cannot remember a film ever having done since I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey at the age of 12. I saw it yesterday and I'd be delighted to go back and watch it again today. I don't think that has ever happened. Simply outstanding in every way. I read one critic's claim that it is the best film of the last thirty years. I couldn't disagree.

Progress

iTunes have an offer running from today. "The 12 Days of Christmas" offers a free download every day for... well... you get the idea. So I thought yeah, why not? It's free - what's to complain about? Even if the first track on offer IS by Snow Patrol.

Having subscribed to the email reminders, I get a handy-dandy link to click on. That takes me to a page saying "hang on, we're just loading up iTunes so you can access the iStore."

Now I don't know about you, but whenever there's mention of iTunes I get that watery feeling in my bowels. Earlier versions of this pile of steaming doos used to hang my machine on a regular basis. It's *always* slow, always cumbersome, and the other thing it does nearly every time I use it is tell me there's a new version available, would I like to download it? And then proceeds to fail to download it.

So anyway I ran it. And it told me there's a new version available (9.0.2 or something). With its track record of total fail I replied Nah I'll Leave It Thanks and proceeded to attempt to download my free track.

Network timeout.

I tried again. "This item requires iTunes 9 to download."

You've got to laugh. Even though, every SINGLE time I use iTunes, I'd much rather cry. But, you know, faced with the inevitable, the Zen thing to do is bend with the wind, like the bamboo. Or something. I bent. I downloaded it. HOW big? Ninety-something MEG? Good grief. But hey, the download time was nothing like the install time, and here (finally, I hear you say) we get to the point of this post.

Status: Computing space requirements (a progress bar)
Status: Validating install (another progress bar)

It's a progress bar Jim, but not as we know it. What progress is it measuring? Who knows. How many more stages will there be? Who knows. How long 'til the entire task will be finished? Who, the f***, knows? That progress bar certainly doesn't tell me anything useful, except how far it is away from the next progress bar starting.

Call me old fashioned, but I remember a time when progress bars gave you an indication of... you know... progress. I know! Mad, wasn't it?! If it was half-way across, the job was halfway done. In some rare and wonderful cases, it was even true - ALMOST true - that if it had taken ten minutes to get half way, then there were ten minutes left. No. Hang on. That's false memory talking. Things were never THAT good. Were they? But they were better than this. How many of these damned things am I going to have to sit through?

Year end meme

Snagged, as most of these things are (on my blog at least!) from Diane, this is probably the last chance I could have to answer some of the more Christmassy questions in this meme, and what better way to spend the last few moments of Christmas Morning before popping down to open our presents? :D

1. Was 2009 a good year for you?
It brought a lot of disappointment, and on the work front much stress, worry and confrontation which isn't over yet, but there were high points too. Not a "good" year, as such, and I'll be glad to see the back of it, but let's just say it could have been worse. We're still employed, healthy, and together which are the most important things (not necessarily in that order lol).

2. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
Went on strike (and stood on the picket line). Wrote a radio play.

3. What was your favourite moment of the year?
The moment I learned a New York agent had requested my full manuscript.

4. What was your least favourite moment of the year?
The moment I learned the New York agent didn't want to pursue my full manuscript.

5. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I never make them.

6. What are your plans for 2010?
Trip to the Lakes in May, decorate our bedroom, write more!

7. Did anyone close to you give birth?
A cousin's son had a baby boy at the beginning of November. Several of the book club girls gave birth, although I'm not sure they qualify as "close" ;o)

8. Did anyone close to you die?
My uncle (and the last surviving of my Dad's brothers) died last month.

9. How many weddings did you go to?
None.

10. What countries did you visit?
Umm... Wales?

11. What date in 2009 will remain etched in your memory?
The day I learned Shiny Media had filed for bankruptcy.

12. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Making the long list for the Alfred Bradley Bursary Award.

13. What was your biggest failure?
You've only failed when you give up trying. I haven't given up trying.

14. Did you suffer any illness or injury?
A few coughs and wheezes. Nothing serious.

15. What was the best thing you bought?
The biUbe aquarium for Nikki's main Christmas present.

16. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Friends and family have all had successes to celebrate during the year in some way.

17. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Our CEO. All our politicians, with their dodgy expenses. All world leaders, with their pathetic show at Copenhagen. Any Americans who voted against universal health care plans. Various groups of terrorists.

18. Where did most of your money go?
I wish I knew!

19. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
That request for a full. I literally jumped up and down.

20. What songs will always remind you of 2009?
Spin Doctor. The second song to be recorded for our second album - Weird & Wonderful - which will be released next year. It's about corrupt politicians and it sums up the year for me (even though it was written some time ago).

21. Compared to this time last year are you:
a) Fatter or thinner? Almost exactly the same
b) Happier or sadder? Probably the same there too.
c) Richer or poorer? I feel poorer, but I don't really know why!

22. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Writing!

23. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Playing Spider Solitaire

24. How will you be spending Christmas?
Eating, drinking and being merry at home with Nikki, and friends, and (close) family.

25. Which LJ users did you meet for the first time?
Ah. An LJ-specific question. Let's assume it means "which online friends..." and the answer is, this year, none.

26. Did you fall in love in 2009?
I fall in love with Nikki all over again every day :o)

27. What was your favourite month of 2009?
May, definitely. The month we bought the bird feeder for the garden, did a lot of work to tidy the garden up, Natalie came to stay for several weeks' study leave, we endured - I mean enjoyed - Annie's birthday camping weekend near Buxton, went on the Gannet & Puffin cruise and to see the new Star Trek movie.

28. How did you see in the New Year?
Stayed in Chesterfield with mates and had a fantastic night playing daft games, exchanging secret Santa presents and watching indoor fireworks. Oh, and drinking.

29. What was your favourite TV show?
Really enjoyed Spooks this year (shown in North America as "MI5" I believe, owing to the negative racial connotation of the word 'spooks' over there).

30. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I don't hate anyone.

31. What was/were the best books you read?
The Runes of the Earth by Stephen Donaldson. First in the final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever (to be a quadrilogy, apparently), always one of my most favourite series it was a delightful revelation to discover he'd picked up the story again.

32. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Not a new discovery, but I REdiscovered my love for Pink Floyd. I'd quite literally forgotten how good they were/are. Listened to their stuff a lot lately. King Crimson too, as it happens. Maybe it's been a year for musical nostalgia.

33. What did you want and get?
Can't think of anything that I wanted really badly apart from a writing contract, and that comes under...

34. What did you want and not get?
A writing contract.

35. What was your favourite film this year?
Watchmen. Visually stunning.

36. What did you do on your birthday and how old were you?
Well, not actually ON my birthday, but shortly before, Nikki treated me to a spa day at a nearby hotel complex. It were fab. I don't think I've ever been so relaxed. This year wasn't a milestone of any kind. Unless 53 has some special meaning somewhere in the world. Comments from numerologists welcome!

37. What one thing would have made your year more satisfying?
Persuading that New York agent that my novel really is the one they've been looking for.

38. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

39. What kept you sane?
The people close to me. Jointly and severally, they're wonderful.

40. Which celebrity did you fancy the most?
Er... Cheryl Cole. Sorry.

41. Which political issue stirred you the most?
The expenses scandal. I could spit vitriol about that for hours. Not only the fact of it, but their entire ATTITUDE to it.

42. Who did you miss?
Anyone who's not here. Duh.

43. Did you treat somebody badly in 2009
Probably didn't see as much of my Mum as I should.

44. Did somebody treat you badly in 2009?
Well there was that guy who cut me up on the M60...

45. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned this year?
Don't do today what you can put off until tomorrow. Play Spider Solitaire instead (q.v.).

46. What would you like to have in 2010 that you didn't have in 2009?
Sorry to, you know, repeat myself, but a writing contract would be nice.

47. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year...
Too many. And it's present opening time, so I must dash!

Seasonal bombardment

This year will go down in my memory as the year online retailers finally caught on to the use of email to whip up business. I'd already done my Christmas shopping (almost all of it online) by the end of November, but back then things had hardly even got warmed up in terms of emails. Guess I can't call them spam, because I signed up to them when I joined, or used, the sites, but damn there's a lot of them!

During December I've been getting at least one per day from
amazon.com
play.com
ebay
hmv.com
the PlayStation Store
Xbox Europe
thorntons
iwantoneofthose.com

not to mention all the usual stuff inviting me to "review my shopping experience" and the odd seasonal message from other retailers - like the local garden centre - we've used during the year. It's going to feel really quiet in my inbox once all this dies down. Unless they're just as keen to drag me back for the January sales! ;o)

One downside to shopping early is that I've missed out on some deals, but that's always a balancing act even with traditional B&M shopping. On the high street some places have been offering 50% discounts, or better, in the week before Christmas. Personally I'd rather be sure I've got everything covered, and it's all been delivered, in time for a leisurely wrapping experience in the few days before the main event. This year especially, with the weather causing major disruption to deliveries, I've been grateful for putting my innate procrastination to one side where gift buying was concerned.

So now it's looking quite festive under the small tree in the lounge. Everything's done - apart from cooking the bird - and it only remains for me to crack open the wine, light the fire, and wish all my readers a very happy Christmas and a peaceful, prosperous and successful New Year. May 2010 be the year everyone stops referring to the date as "two-thousand-and-something."

Cheers!

Sludge

I've been semi-permanently exasperated by the increasingly poor performance of my PC for months now and have been trying, in a low-key way, to track down the culprit. My first suspicion was that I'd picked up a trojan, but after several scans with industry-standard utilities revealed nothing, I realised I'd have to look elsewhere.

That was back in March (did I mention this is a low-key activity?) and since then I've run a registry cleaner, which sped things up a bit after removing almost 500 bits of crap from my registry (quicker than a wholesale reinstall), and checked the memory for errors with the Windows Memory Diagnostic (no problems there). Sad to say, but the main culprit continues to be Firefox.

Read up on Firefox and you'll discover that they invested a lot of time and effort, when version 3 was young, in fixing a pile of memory leaks. What they didn't fix was Firefox's DESIGNED IN behaviour of hanging on to all the memory it has ever allocated, even when it's not using it. The unused memory is returned to Firefox's own heap, but not released back to the OS. The visible effect of this, if you run Firefox like I do (never less than 8 tabs open and occasionally twice that many, and the browser always open - sometimes for days on end), is that I regularly sit down at my PC first thing in the morning to find FF's memory occupancy has ballooned overnight to more than 600MB, which on a system with only a gig of RAM is all it takes to bring the whole thing shuddering to a halt.

And I mean shuddering. As in, it can take several minutes to redraw a window, move from one tab to another, read an email, or launch another app. Until today I thought the only fix was to restart the browser, and even this takes an age. Several minutes for the main browser window to disappear and the process will still hang around in the task list for 10-15 minutes before it releases all that memory. Finding myself at a loose end this afternoon I did a bit more research and discovered RAMBack: an add-on that forces the release of memory.

What a difference! With Task Manager running I can see FF's occupancy plummet when I minimise it from around 200MB (its apparent resting state with my standard eight tabs newly opened) to only 17MB. True, this figure then climbs rapidly back up to ~100MB as the active content of those 8 tabs (Facebook, Google Reader and various other widgets) gradually grabs the resources back, but at least I can now force it to dump its heap and allow the rest of my system to behave normally. It remains to be seen what state it'll be in tomorrow morning, but for now the sludge has been replaced with the slick.

I think I may have left it too late...

...to do the last lawn cut of the year.
It's been snowing pretty much all day here. Last night's temperature fell to -7°C so this lot settled on top of the previous lot, which itself was atop another load. All that makes it the longest and coldest cold snap I can think of since the last time I lived on this road - way back in the winter of 1980/1.

I love it, but only because I'm off this week and - apart from ferrying Nikki to and from work - I don't have to go out in it. These days, snow is best appreciated from behind glass, with the heating turned up.

Raging against the machine

Bloody brilliant.

Whether you like Killing In The Name or not, whether you hate Simon Cowell or not, whether you watch X Factor or not, whether you'd rather poke your own eardrums into your brain than listen to a charmless, tuneless, passionless, charismaless cover of the blandest of bland Miley Cyrus numbers or not, there's no denying the reality of people power.

This was never about who makes the money, who owns the songs, or whether the charts are a fading anachronism of yesteryear. It was all about flicking the finger at the man who never listens to music in his own home, yet thinks he has the right to dictate what we listen to in ours, every Christmas. Well, he doesn't.

Like I said, bloody brilliant.

And if you can't find two better singers out of 200,000 entrants than the wired jiggler Olly-the-Essex-boy Murs and the Bland Balladeer McDingleberry maybe it's time to call time on the X Factor, which became a parody of itself several series ago.

Fishy situation

I just *know* you've been dying to hear how our fish are faring.

Well, they seem happy enough, despite having to cope with the chemical toilet that masquerades as an early-life aquarium undergoing its first cycle. I just completed my third week of tests, and - as far as this novice can tell at any rate - things are progressing as expected.

A healthy aquarium contains several kinds of bacteria that convert the ammonia produced by the fish and the decomposition of left over food into nitrites and those nitrites into safer nitrates. In a stable tank, ammonia and nitrite levels should be almost undetectable, and nitrates gradually accumulating in the water through the bacterial activity are removed by doing partial water changes each week.

In a young aquarium, the bacteria haven't established colonies of sufficient size to deal with the chemicals, so levels gradually rise in the first couple of weeks. I've seen exactly this with my testing. Levels of ammonia peaked last week, but have now dropped off to the lowest number so far recorded (about 0.4ppm), whereas nitrite levels, which were relatively low last week, are now extremely high. This indicates we're almost exactly at the mid-point of the cycle, but because nitrite is especially dangerous to fish (it binds to haemoglobin and can leave them gasping for oxygen) I've done a 20% water change this week instead of the usual 10%.

By this time next week nitrite levels should be dropping and hopefully in a couple of weeks the aquarium will have fully cycled and we'll be able to add three more friends for Bee, Bop and Lulu to bring the cherry barb shoal up to full strength.

Thoughts from the picket line

As I mentioned yesterday, I arrived on the picket at 7.15. Things were already in full swing. They'd started picketing at 6.30. 'Full swing' is, perhaps, the wrong term to use for such a low-key event. What I mean is, there were people there. Half-a-dozen or so. I'd walked past three of them on my way to the main group. They'd been sent to cover the exit road from the campus, as a few people had been seen using this as a route to avoid the picket. We exchanged quips as we passed each other. One of them had been in my team in the old VME support days but as with so many others, we'd lost touch. Meeting up with him again in such circumstances was slightly surreal.

The first thing to strike me (pun acknowledged) as I arrived at the main entrance was the lack of a brazier. Since my experience of pickets up to this point was limited to what I'd seen on news bulletins over the years - and with the early morning temperature at the aforementioned -2° - I'd expected to arrive to find the group huddled with hands outstretched around a glowing brazier. I'd reckoned without the mighty reach of the Health & Safety regulations. Our picket captain assured me braziers were no longer allowed. It was OK for us to freeze, apparently, but we couldn't be trusted not to cause ourselves or our surroundings some lasting damage with an errant lump of burning charcoal. The air temperature never climbed above zero the whole day, and within 30 minutes of my arrival I couldn't feel my fingers. An hour later, my toes had gone as well.

My next revelation: how very British the picket was. Already aware that the law mandates "peaceful" picketing, I was still disconcerted by how laid back was the approach. Virtually horizontal. A stern look appeared to be the only intervention allowed. I'd expected at least an upraised hand to slow down any approaching car, a wound-down window and a few words of gentle persuasion. Instead we all gazed on disapprovingly as a steady stream of cars - slow at first but gradually increasing as we approached "regular" office hours - drove through our small throng. Even the cold stares were lost on most of the drivers as they studiously avoided eye contact with any of the pickets.

Pedestrian arrivals didn't get off quite so lightly - being treated to a polite "can I persuade you not to go in?" or "would you like a leaflet?" - but in the Age of the Motor Vehicle these were few and far between. Mostly they ignored us too. Only one of them was moved to mutter an edgy "no you can't" in response to the first question. We were there a total of four hours and didn't succeed in stopping a single person entering the building. I bet we made a few of them feel uncomfortable though. As I said, very British.

On a more positive note, we enjoyed a lot of support from passing motorists in the form of horn tooting. I've done this myself, from the other side, but had no idea how uplifting it can be for those on the picket. One driver memorably sounded his hooter from the moment he noticed the picket to the point he disappeared around the last bend at the other end of the site - several hundred metres - to loud cheers from everyone. The hoots weren't restricted to delivery drivers, or other overt tradespeople. Ordinary drivers in their hundreds pipped and waved their messages of solidarity during the morning, each one greeted by a return wave of hand or placard and a cheer.

Around eight o'clock someone from inside the building took pity on us and carried out a cardboard box loaded with cups of hot coffee and soup. I made a grab for a soup. Too hot to sip when I picked it up, the December air sucked the heat from it faster than I could drink it. The dregs were cold by the time I reached the bottom.

It's been a long while since I had chance to stand and watch dawn break, and even though the scene was perhaps not as idyllic as the last time I did this, still it had the same profound effect on me. Thoughts of it "always being darkest just before the dawn" and "the dawning of a new era" and suchlike skipped randomly through my mind but mostly I just stood and absorbed the quiet miracle of another new day, silhouetting the construction across the road and lighting a fire under the tail feathers of a flock of starlings who took off squawking to find their breakfast.

Breakfast! I'd heard rumours that the local college had a restaurant open to the public. This was confirmed later, around the time I'd started to wonder if I could last the final hour without "facilities," as another member of the group returned with a glowing report of their breakfast. Shortly before ten I took myself off to sample the delights of a full English. The ten-minute respite from the cold was enough to restore feeling in everything except my toes and the breakfast proved more than enough to sustain me through the final half-hour of picket duty. We packed up all the flags, placards and banners around half past ten, and bid each other farewell and Merry Christmas.

Whether it will be a Happy New Year remains to be seen!

Strike!

I was on strike today.

Go on, call me a dinosaur.
"People don't still go on strike do they?"
"Didn't even know they had unions in the computer industry."
Well believe me if you'd told me a few years ago I'd be standing on a picket line holding a placard in the dark at quarter-past-seven on a freezing (OK, you Canadians, it was "ONLY" -2°C) December morning I'd have laughed in your face. I'll have been in this industry, and working for this firm, 32 years this coming January and I too used to laugh at the idea of unions, and strikes, and the traditional "us and them" attitude.

That was before the company cancelled our bonus on a pretext, before going on to declare record profits for that year. It was before they decided, with a pay deal negotiated, agreed and signed up to by all parties, not to pay it. It was before they threatened to close our pension scheme, thereby reneging on a 32-year-old promise to look after me in my retirement (and imposing an equivalent 25% pay cut). It was before they decided they needed to declare a thousand of my colleagues redundant, not to save the company, but to protect their profit targets. Targets that were set by managers who in some cases no longer work for the company, at a time before the global economic meltdown.

Yes, that's right. My company think it's a good idea to keep aiming for boom-level profits during a bust-riddled economic period, and to shed jobs in order to achieve them.

As one of my fellow pickets said to me this morning: "If the company was in trouble and our backs were to the wall, we'd sweat blood and break our backs to dig it out of the hole [he knows how to mix a metaphor, this guy], but it's not like that. They're still on track for record profits, and taking the piss out of us at the same time."

No wonder the slogan we've adopted for this campaign is "Enough Is Enough."

That sums up exactly how I feel. They've burned through all the good will, all the long, unpaid overtime hours, the thousands of road and rail miles clocked up, the holidays missed, the stress endured, the snatched meals and missed breaks and the lonely nights in cheap hotels. Their litany used to be "our people are our greatest assets." Well, we all know what happens to assets in this modern world, don't we? They're sweated. They're leveraged for every ounce of effort and profit you can squeeze out of them. We always went the extra mile for the company, but when boot's on t'other foot, do they reciprocate? Don't make me laugh.

Yes, 32 years I've been in this company, and for 30 of those I was not a union man. It's taken me a long time to shed the blinkers but they're off now. I've seen the light. It's not pretty. But as the union are fond of saying, if they won't listen to the strength of our argument, then the only recourse is to use the argument of our strength.

The last curry of 2009

...and my fourth celebratory Christmas dinner... a curry with the Wilmslow crew. A much-reduced crew too, as one of them was busy working the lights at a local panto, and another had poked his eye out (not literally I hope!) when putting the Christmas tree up his fairy. I guess that would be enough to put you off a curry.

So for only the second time, we paid a visit to Ayo Gurkhali. My second time, I should say. The crew went without me once, after our first visit, and two of them had, how shall I put it, a bad intestinal experience. They haven't wanted to return since.

Going back was my idea - I'd really enjoyed the food on that first visit, and I reckoned their gastric upset was either a coincidence or a case of a one-off bad bunch of prawns or something. If we all go down with Montezuma's Revenge I'll be persona non grata for a while!

As always, and even though there were only four of us, it was great to catch up over a couple of pints and a nice meal. The curry easily equalled the quality of last time, and the amazing variety of originally-shaped white porcelain serving dishes still provided a feast for the eyes even as their contents were supplying a feast for the mouth. Adding the final professional touch to the whole experience, the waiters are the very model of polite and friendly service, without being pushy or obsequious.

They do a take-away menu there too. Sadly, I think Wilmslow would be a bit too far removed from home base for them to deliver.

Canteen Christmas

My third traditional Christmas lunch took place, after the extraordinary success of last year's visit, in the staff restaurant, where the catering ladies and gents had laid the tables with Christmassy cloths, crackers, holly-bedecked napkins, and set some traditional Christmas music playing over the restaurant PA.

Compared with last Friday's effort, this was top value for money. Six quid buys you a starter (I opted for the prawn marie rose), a main course (turkey - four slices of succulent breast meat - sprouts, carrots, roast parsnips, roast and mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing and cranberry sauce) and a dessert (in my case traditional Christmas pud with brandy sauce), followed by a mince pie, coffee and a mint. Fantastic. Great company too, even though we missed Steve, who had eaten with us last year.

The jokes out of the crackers left a lot to be desired, as usual. In fact someone told me the set of jokes has suffered a complete overhaul this year. If anything they're worse than before. And I'm not entirely sure what the small blue plastic house in my cracker was supposed to be for.

Crackers apart though, it was a cracking meal, and left me with cracks developing in my belly, it was so stretched. Only trouble is, being in the office, I couldn't sneak an afternoon nap.

Copenhagen

I've had a draft post with this title sitting in my bloglist since the Copenhagen climate summit opened. I intended to write about forlorn hopes, high ambition, good intentions and inevitable failure but to be honest, in the end, the whole thing was just too depressing and predictable.

More than a week on, and what I assumed at the start would be the inevitable end looks as though it is indeed coming to pass.

Twenty years of talking, of governments agreeing, or not agreeing, to emission limitations and then missing their targets by miles, while all the time the palm-oil industry destroys the rainforests at ever-increasing rates and every single government ignores their activities. It's hard to avoid the clichés when writing about this stuff. Vested interests driven by fat cats more interested in protecting their billion-dollar stashes and their "right" to drive across the street in a four-ton, gas-guzzling "sports" vehicle than in any notion of protecting the planet. Desperate presidents and leaders of island nations only a few inches above sea-level and hence in urgent need of, well, greater elevation at least, sharing their desperation with the world in the hope of some compassion and receiving? Not a lot.

And what would a "successful" outcome to Copenhagen look like? It's all talk anyway, so at best they'll all walk out, patting each other on their expensively-suited backs and congratulating themselves on agreeing to some vague target years in the future which no-one actually believes they'll hit and even if they did wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to anything.

Those who never wanted to restrict their emissions in the first place have dived on the emergence of what looks like evidence that some of the numbers have been... manipulated... with such shameless alacrity that you wonder they're not entering the 2012 Olympics as a new form of gymnast.

I don't claim to know whether the planet is actually in danger from CO2 or not. Quite honestly I don't trust any of them. These are all human beings with their own axes to grind and it's every bit as likely that the scientists' main interest is in protecting their research budgets so they can carry on producing their nice little graphs, or promoting expensive new technologies to "fix" the problem. On the other side of the scales sit the oil billionaires along with the other main players in the old carbon economies and we all know where their interests lie. There's an exact parallel between them and the cigarette companies, who for years denied any link between smoking and lung cancer, while all the time piling high and selling cheap death wrapped in small tubes with a filter on the end.

The world is even more addicted to oil than it is to tobacco and anyone who thinks that is likely to change any time soon is as deluded as the poor guy from the island nation who thinks any of his presidential peers is really interested in giving him a leg-up away from the encroaching ocean.

So no, I never believed Copenhagen had a hope in hell of fixing the planet. While individually human beings can exhibit intelligence and compassion in sufficient measure to solve the problem, collectively we are like lemmings heading for the cliff. See you on the other side.

Another Christmas tradition

I may have commented before on the importance, for any group of friends, colleagues or acquaintances, of having an anchor. That person who takes responsibility for keeping the group together. You can have more than one, but one is the magic number, below which the group will cease to be a group.

It's been a good few years since I worked at the office known as "the airport" (mainly because it was fairly close... to... the airport), but the times we had there were relatively good. Frontier times. Breaking new ground. Or so we thought. Good or not, they were sufficiently memorable for us to want to meet up once a year for a Christmas lunch, and the group has the aforementioned anchor - a lady who at the time was PA to the main man in that office - who is happy, each year, to pull the event together. In the main these annual reunions have been memorable. Until now.

Whether it was the fact that we returned to a restaurant we'd visited a few years ago and the food wasn't as good as that first time, or the seating arrangements were less than ideal, or some of the group couldn't make it so we didn't achieve some sort of critical mass, or because I knew from the off that I had to leave early and stayed on soft drinks the whole time I don't know. Something didn't work for me.

I won't name the restaurant because I honestly believe they don't deserve a bad press for it. Last time we went - about three years ago if I remember right - the food was excellent. This time, it looked and tasted like a million other mass-produced Christmas lunches. Too much dark meat for my liking, light on the cranberry sauce (anyone would think it was the most expensive component of the meal the way they dole it out by the teaspoonful!), the vegetables barely cooked and the piggy in its blanket having a distinct taste of old grease.

For the first time in several years my seat at table was some distance from the members of the group I know best. Worse, I sat directly opposite a woman with whom I had a long-standing disagreement (she drove into me in the office car park and refused to take responsibility) that was never properly resolved, and to the left of a woman I've never seen before - not one of the original group - who was clearly a good friend of my 'nemesis'. Surrounded!

I couldn't even take refuge from these harridans in drink. I had important driving to do which meant leaving at 3.30. It's an enlightening experience to sit, perfectly sober, and watch how quickly a group of people can dissolve into a socially relaxed state when they put their minds to it.

Finally, adding insult to injury, the mediocre meal turned out to be the most expensive of all the Christmas meals I'm planning to attend this year, I was suckered into contributing a tenner to the "drinks kitty" for which I received a single pint of fresh orange and soda, and the city centre car park robbed me of another £8.60.

Just sometimes, maybe, keeping a group together is not such a good thing!

That kid

He would have been the nerdy kid at school. The one with the National Health specs held together with Elastoplast and the clothes that didn't quite fit him, spending playtime with his head buried in one of the Ladybird books from the top class, even though he was still a first-year. Walking around with his hands stuffed deep into his pockets and his mind stuffed just as deep into his thoughts, which were of problems so esoteric for an eight-year-old that none of his contemporaries would have made it past the first sentence, even if he could have put them into words.

In years to come he would gravitate to a group of like-minded individuals, occupying the corner table in the library and sharing no more than a few words of conversation. Preferring to point at passages from hefty pictureless tomes with a knowing grin that passed around his contemporaries faster than a headcold in the PE classes he was always trying to duck. But at age eight, in a small suburban junior school, there were no like-minded peers. The jousting they dreamed of wasn't mental. It might be contemporary - five a side in the playground when he'd be the last one chosen - or historical - an ad-hoc re-enactment of King Arthur's clash with the Green Knight, when he'd be cast as the wizard and condemned to stand alone in the bike sheds pretending to assemble potions from left-over school milk, playground moss and berries from the tree that hung over from Mrs Washowska's garden - but it was totally physical and hence by definition excluded him.

And today, when you see him walking along the balcony and heading down the stairs to lunch, the deep-rooted echoes of the nerdy kid remain. The intervening years have covered him with the shell of an adult - taller, greyer, wearier. But his hands are still stuffed into his pockets. He still gazes unseeing at the floor as his mind grapples with a thorny, high-concept design problem, the latest in a lifetime of arcane solutions that still leave his contemporaries floundering. His gait is the shuffling near-skip of the man who, having always played the wizard or the goalie, never quite gained total control over his physical self. His clothes still don't fit properly. If you knew him back then, you would recognise him now. And knowing him now, you can still see him as he was then.

Mullington Crescent

Our fourth mulled wine evening was a smaller affair than in previous years. We never ask for an RSVP, but this time round a majority of the houses on the street weren't represented. Just one of those things I guess. It's a busy time of year and folk have many calls on their time.

Still, it was nice that word got back to us via various roundabout routes that those who did attend enjoyed themselves. We certainly did. It's not really a lot of effort to mull a few pints of wine and put a small selection of nibbles into well-distributed dishes. And at least "small and intimate" meant we got to bed at a reasonable hour, rather than the 3am finishes which have been the norm in the past.

The old farts' club

A while ago I hooked up with an ex-colleague who organises a regular lunchtime get-together of people we used to work with. Most of them are now retired but a few continue to work, albeit no longer at "the old firm."

Since these gatherings are held during the working day and a good half-hour's drive south of here (Thursdays, as it happens) I don't normally attend, but THIS month's was their annual Christmas lunch and the combination of the first turkey dinner of the season, a few hours off work, and the chance to catch up with so many familiar faces (some of whom I haven't seen for 20 years) proved irresistible.

It was an enjoyable event. Intellectual conversation, bags of laughs, a meal that - almost unheard of for seasonal lunches - managed to combine good value, excellent quality, perfect quantity and superlative service, and best of all the chance to catch up with one of the best, if not THE best, managers I've ever had and one of the aforementioned twenty-year absentees.

I spent most of the drive home in reflective mood. It's not unusual for reunions to affect me like that. This one served to highlight the stark contrast between those I used to work with and those I work with now. And perhaps more poignantly, those I used to work for and those I work for now. Because it seems to me that the managers from those bygone days were actually capable of demonstrating some leadership skills. They recognised that their job consisted primarily of rock-moving, to allow us techies to get on with the job unhindered by any of those rocks in our paths. They nurtured, they mentored, they protected us from the shit.

Their modern-day counterparts are good at saying "go here, do this, don't do that," but that's as far as their "skills" go.

As a result, a workplace where once we could always count on having some fun alongside the serious work, and which naturally therefore made that serious work pass more quickly, enjoyably and successfully, has been replaced with one where the overriding feelings are of stress, fatigue and sullen resignation. Where every technical skill is treated as the same technical skill, and consequently every technical body is just another technical body to be shunted from one repetitive task to another, irrespective of experience, personal preference, or ability.

Back then there was pride in expertise, and time allowed to grow it. Now we're all fed through the mincer, forced to be jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none. As Squatter may once have asked: "Is this any way to run a fucking ballroom?"

It's good to be reminded every now and then how bad things have got. *cough* It's either that, or give up going to Christmas lunches.

All's well... so far!

The good news is that, while the aquarium suppliers were at a loss to explain the death of our first three fish, they agreed to replace them right away. Figuring I'd best collect them when the traffic was light I went over there at lunchtime the next day, made sure they were triple-bagged against the cold and not fetched out of their home tank until I was ready to leave, and drove home gently but swiftly.

Hard to describe my relief when I floated the plastic bag in our biUbe and I could see the little fellas were still wrigglin'. I followed the Instructions For Introduction of New Fish to the letter and pretty soon they were investigating the nooks and crannies of their new home.

A worrying 48 hours passed with us checking the tank at every available opportunity and, more often than not, searching the water surface for floating bodies before glancing around the rest of the cylinder. We needn't have worried. These three have settled in really well, seem happy enough and, on the flimsy gender evidence available to us at this early stage, have been christened Bee, Bop and Lou-Lou.