First night camping

Well, I say camping. We're on the sofa bed in the study - "camped out" for the duration of the work that's going on in our bedroom. The ceiling is due to come down today, for reasons explained earlier.

Our new IKEA sofa bed "LYCKSELE" (??) proved remarkably comfortable. To say we've left a 6-foot bed and moved to what is effectively a "put-you-up" that's only fractionally wider than a traditional double (4 foot 6), the experience felt nowhere near as cramped as I was expecting. We both agreed that it will be fine for the expected five-week hiatus, and more than adequate as an occasional guest bed. The mattress is firm without being hard, there are no creaks or wobbles from the frame, so all in all the camping is going pretty well on the evidence of one night.

Even the eerie blue light from the PIR detector that clicks on whenever either of us moves has its uses. With dark-adapted eyesight, it illuminates the room very well for those essential nightly sojourns to the bathroom.

There is one blue light that I'll have to do something about though, and this will raise a hollow laugh in at least one young lady reader. That flashing blue light from my PC when it's in sleep mode will have to go. But that's OK. I found the BIOS setting for it this morning. I have the power to change the power down mode :o)

Preparing to drop

Today we cleared out the last of the furniture from our room prior to the ceiling coming down tomorrow.

Bedside tables slid into place in the study alongside the chest of drawers, and our 6-foot sleigh bed followed them, disassembled into its constituent pieces which we distributed around the room where they will be most stable and least hindrance in the coming weeks. The mattress was the hardest to find space for. In the end we decided it would have to go on the last few square feet of visible carpet on Nikki's side of the study, meaning she won't be able to reach her curtains until we move back into the bedroom.

This left just enough room on my side to deploy the new sofa bed in preparation for our first night's "camping out" tonight.

The empty room echoes eerily, as empty rooms do. Although we weren't planning to do this room next, the unexpected chance say goodbye to the final example of the previous owners' décor - the once-ubiquitous rag-rolled flame colours - is definitely welcome, and the room will be much warmer once the fireplace is removed and bricked up. Those wanting to return houses like ours to their former Edwardian glory may hiss and make the sign of the cross at the thought of ripping out an original fireplace, but the fact is that this one is not original. It's not even a good reproduction.

Curreh!

Travelling to experience the delights of eastern cuisine is nothing new for us. When I first came to Manchester as a student we'd think nothing of piling six of us in a car and driving from Nottingham to Manchester for a curry, and then driving home again.

Last night, we made the pilgrimage in the reverse direction, the only concession to age being that we stayed over for the night rather than driving back in the same evening. These days, a whistle stop in Bridgford has the added bonus that we can, as I put it, "reset the visit flag" with mother without spending too much time trying to think of news to tell her that she'll forget again five minutes after we've related it, or insisting for the fifth time in half an hour that we don't want a coffee, thanks.

The restaurant of choice this time, at Ian's suggestion, was the Bombay Bridgford, just opposite the cricket ground. Traditional décor and seating, but those were the only aspects of this venue that could be considered run-of-the-mill. We enjoyed a much warmer than usual welcome from the smiling greeter, and the interesting and eclectic menu mixed some exciting specials among the more usual fare of kormas and jalfrezis. Having insisted before we set out that I wouldn't just go for the hottest thing on the menu, in the end I plumped for the chicken Jai Puri; the... er... hottest thing on the menu. So hot, in fact, that it came with a health warning.

"Have you had a Jai Puri here before?" asked the waitress.
"No," I smiled back, "but I have thirty years' experience eating very hot curries."

As it turned out, I needed every year of that experience to weather the waves of extreme chilli in this dish. Every mouthful tasted like boiling water on the tongue, among the more subtle flavours of coriander, cinnamon, vinegar, lemon and so on that make very hot curries such an irresistible choice for me. Absolutely delicious, and I made sure the owners knew how much I enjoyed their hospitality. Even the Peshwari nan was above average.

We don't eat out in Bridgford very often these days but it's a sure bet that we'll be returning to this place.

Windows 7

We've been running Windows 7 at home for some time, but yesterday I was scheduled to have it installed on my work's laptop as part of an internal pilot. There's been a few horror stories floating around from those who have already undergone the transition, so I wasn't expecting the upgrade to be glitch-free, and I wasn't disappointed. What should have taken a little over three hours turned into an overnight job as the rebuilt machine failed to get its encryption keys from the central server - the request stuck in a queue 11,000 items long with no way of reprioritising. Poor design, which has resulted in me having to go back in (thereby wasting an hour and a half from an already packed day) to collect it this morning.

I can only hope the works build is more stable than that on my home PC. Since upgrading I've been suffering regular blue screens (three or four a day sometimes, but usually at least two on the main occasions I wake it up from a sleep) in a video driver - atikmdag.sys. If you can be bothered, you can Google that for yourselves. I have. Pages and pages of forum entries bemoaning the problem, stretching back as far as Vista's first release in 2007, and still - three years later - no fix. It's a problem with a feature introduced with Vista known as TDR (Timeout Detection and Recovery) which was intended to allow the OS to recover from video card/driver timeouts without blue screening but which, when it fails, er... blue screens.

The failure has been attributed, at various times, to having two memory sticks instead of one (which can increase the risk of memory timeouts), Windows Aero features, hardware overheating (seems strange, because I always experience it either immediately after boot, or on wakeup, when the hardware is cold), hardware fault, or graphical driver errors. I've disabled Aero, but I still have two 1GB memory sticks and I may well have a transient video card fault, but I'd be willing to bet on the driver being the real problem. I had some similar issues on XP before upgrading the driver. Unfortunately I'm already on the latest W7 driver, so if that is the problem, at least for now, I'll have to put up with it. :(

At least W7 loads a heck of a lot faster than XP! (lol - but it's a humourless, hollow lol)

Vinyl: Better By Far

Artist: Caravan

Owned on digital media: No

Want to replace: Yes

Another of those albums where the years have ticked by and left me with no recollection of (almost) any of it, with the possible exception of the title track. Amazon reviews (there are three) of the digital remaster vary from thinking this is an overlooked masterpiece to disbelief that the band could have so badly lost their way and released an entire album of duff tracks. 

While it definitely will never count as my favourite Caravan collection, now that I know it's available I can't do other than add it to the want list, even if it remains quite a way down.

Beeb under fire

The culture and media Secretary has recently announced a review of the BBC by the Audit Office, which potentially may result in a reduction of the licence fee. Cue the predictable whining about "Tory cuts" from socialists and luvvies both within and without the Beeb, and the raising of spectres of shredded drama budgets and how we need to "protect our beloved and sacred Beeb from the wicked Tory axe."

I'd like to peer for a moment behind the curtain of party political bollocks and bring some calm rationality to the debate. Before we start I should nail my colours to the mast: I'm a firm fan of the BBC. I willingly pay my licence fee, and am happy that for the princely sum of 40p per day I get access to a load of quality, ad-free output, as well as a load of other crap I wouldn't watch, or listen to, in a million years. But hey, there are 26 million households also forking out their 40p a day and they're perfectly entitled to watch crap if they want to.

But that's not what this is about.

1. Every publicly-funded organisation, government department, local authority, or whatever is coming under financial scrutiny right now. To suggest that the BBC, which is effectively (if indirectly) funded by public money, should be exempt from this scrutiny just because it's in the "arts and entertainment" sector, is patently ridiculous. We're paying for it, we should be assured that we're getting value for our money. We can debate how that value is perceived in the BBC's dramatic or entertainment output, and I don't for one second believe the government should (or even can) impose any controls over that, but on the business side Auntie should be as well run as possible, and should be able to prove it.
2. Every large organisation embodies a proportion of waste. It's as inevitable as a thunderstorm in an English summer. Some are better than others but ALL will have some waste in them somewhere, and the longer the time that elapses between audits, the worse that waste will be. Whether it's more efficient procurement, industry standard benchmarking of costs and remuneration, better management structures, more effective administration and on, and on, every business can benefit from close scrutiny from time to time. The Beeb is no different in this respect, and a lot of the savings could, I predict, be made without impacting the core BBC business - radio and television output - at all. (Whether or not they WILL be implemented in this way depends on how much the implementers have a political axe to grind. I wouldn't, for instance, put it past some people to try to trash something like The Archers to give "the cuts" the maximum profile and impact among the listening public)
3. While we're on the subject of "core BBC business" - what is it that we actually expect from the BBC? What is the BBC FOR? Because as time goes on, simple focus on that key question can be lost, and corporations of the size of the BBC can easily fall into a mindset of "here's how much money the licence fee generates, now how can we spend it?" Which will usually lead, over time, to growth in non-core sectors of the business, leeching money from the pot and generating apparently legitimate business cases for ever-increasing licence fees. It's good every so often to take a step back and examine what direction the Beeb is moving in: what business, what outputs, what is really important? What do we - the people who pay for it - want it to be for? 
4. I hope the auditors will examine the thorny issue of "competitive salaries". No matter how much the corporation's leaders bleat about it, the BBC is not in competition with commercial media. They should exercise some discretion and play on the cachet of working for Britain's best-loved entertainment provider. The most high profile example of a hyperinflated salary deal was Jonathon Ross's £6million-a-year wedge, but he's gone now, so who's next in the firing line? Whoever it is, they don't need to be paid that much. Other recent examples of well-reported leavers - Brummie tosser Adrian Chiles and his vacuous sidekick Christine Bleakley - have been gone for a while. Do we miss them? No. Are their replacements paid as much as they were? No. Has that made a difference to the "quality" (*cough*) of The One Show? No. I rest my case. Anyone - and I use that word advisedly - anyone can present a TV programme. Assuming they can read. They are not "celebrities." They are not "stars." In a way, they're a bit like receptionists. They sit at the notional front desk of TV programmes and show people where to go. And we all know how well-valued receptionists are, don't we? TV presenters deserve similar wages. There, that's a few million lopped off the budget right there.
5. Finally - because this is turning (has turned?) into a lengthy diatribe and you'll be wanting your lunch - on the subject of licence refunds. It's been said that if and when the audit finds significant savings, these will be given back to the licence payer as a refund. No, thanks. I think I'm on pretty safe ground when I suggest that the overwhelming majority of licence payers can do without the couple of quid a year they would probably get back. Keep it. Make some good programmes with it. Don't give it to Ross, or Norton, or Wogan, or Chiles or anyone like them. Don't set up a new department. Don't buy a new manager, director, or executive. Make more programmes. Make better programmes. That's all we want from the Beeb, really. Isn't it?

Triple decker

A couple of years ago, I blogged about the night we woke up to find water dripping into our bedroom. Since then we've had the roof (and the gutters) replaced, and the downspout cleared of tile shreds, and there's been no repeat of the leak.

Unfortunately that's not the end of the story, as we learned recently when discussing other works with our builder. He pointed out something that must have crept up on us while we weren't looking. In that stealthy way things that you see every day have, of changing imperceptibly over time so that you believe they've always been like that.

Fact is, when wooden beams get wet they lose more than 50% of their strength. The beam in our bedroom, that holds up the bay window, is a wooden beam. Saturated by the leaking roof, it sagged under the weight of the ceiling (an original lath-and-plaster job), and then dried out in its bowed state. When examined closely from most angles, the ceiling can be seen to have adopted a dangerous curve vaguely reminiscent of the radio telescope dish at Jodrell Bank.

So the whole lot has to come down, the beam replaced (or at best braced and pinned) and a new ceiling put up. Being an old house, we know the ceiling void is full of sooty, filthy, pumped asbestos fibre insulation (because we experienced it on a small scale when the toilet wall came down), so when the ceiling is "dropped" (see how fluently I insert real construction terms into the story) the room has to be cleared. Totally. Including... the wardrobe.

This beast has never negotiated the bedroom door. Or the landing. It arrived in five (count 'em) boxes and was assembled in situ, so to move it out of situ will require some disassembly. And that, gentle reader, was this weekend's project.

In the end, and entirely predictably, the single wardrobe section proved not to be a problem. Much. Undoing the bolts that hold the two sides together did result in minor chewing of the veneered chipboard, but nothing that's visible in everyday use, so that's OK. With its pelmet removed the single side slid happily through the door, across the landing, through the study and now sits in its allotted slot beside the window.

The double side was not so easy. It proved literally a millimetre too wide to turn the corner into the study, but that was the millimetre that counted. We couldn't lift it over the skirting board either, as that meant it hit the top of the door. The only thing to do was commandeer some space in Nat's room for the duration. It makes an already small space even smaller, but it should only be for a week or so. Once the construction is complete the wardrobe can move back in and sit under a sheet while I decorate. Or we may decide not to bother until the carpet is down, to avoid too much toing and froing. So, a few weeks really then. Sorry Nat.

Our room doesn't half feel big without it though.

Wish in one hand...

I wrote recently about shit my Mum says, and I've just remembered something else she always used to trot out regularly when I was a kid. It was a memory of her grandma - whom she called Gram - and the old lady's reply whenever, as a girl, Mum would wish for something.

This homespun philosophy was passed on to me when I in my turn would make some wish, of the sort kids are wont to do. "I wish I had a bike," or "I wish I had someone to play with," etc. Round she would spin, eyes sparkling brightly at this new-found opportunity to pass on her worldly wisdom. "Wish in one hand," she would declaim, "and shit in the other, and see which hand gets full first."

And as I've remarked many times in the past, my mother's mind often works like some kind of fleshy programmed text which is incapable of independent thought. So this Epithet of Astonishing Profundity would inevitably be followed up with the observation: "that's what my Gram used to say, and she wasn't being rude."

Which, clearly, she was. She was revelling in the chance to be slightly naughty and use the word "shit" where in fact almost any other physical activity which could possibly have resulted in the filling of a hand would have served as an alternative. She could have said spit, for instance, although admittedly it would not have had the instant memorability of the mental image of someone actually shitting into their hand.

I did wonder occasionally what effect it would've had on my Mum if I'd taken her advice literally. If I'd walked up to her with my handful of shit stretched out in front of me and said something like "look Mum! This one got full first!" I mean, she would only have had herself to blame for putting such a mad thought into a kid's head.

Incidentally, the irony of referring to this stuff as "shit my Mum says" has just hit me since, occasionally, she did say "shit." Q.E.D.

The remastering starts

Having spent almost five times as long on the recording of our second album as we did on the first, and being much, much happier with the result, we decided it would be a good idea to go back and apply all the lessons we'd learned in the last five years to the older work and bring it up to the same standard. Remastering is, after all, a well-tried activity in "proper" music circles, and as that first album never enjoyed an official public release we figured we'd prefer to make it as good as it can be before letting it loose.

Suburban Nostalgia contained 10 tracks written by Beresford & Wallace, but we also each did a cover of a Genesis track. Retaining these covers would lead to all sorts of copyright complications and royalty payments (which we avoided first time round by not selling any of the small number of physical CDs we created for family and friends), so the remastered album will only contain our original work.

I've already redone the artwork in preparation for the new release and tonight we got together at Annie's place to start re-recording tracks, beginning with one of the ones I'd always been least pleased with. Old Love was written with a key transition in the middle which really stretched my range. Half of the song was either too high or too low, depending where I started, and the result that made the final cut of the first album sounded painfully thin and reedy in places. Happily, with new vocal warm-up techniques and some minor transpositions, the new recording is much stronger and includes some nice harmonies too - something Annie is becoming famous for. I have to admit I totally hate recording the harmonies. Although my musical memory has improved over the months, it still takes me several... takes... to "get" what she's trying to achieve. There's no denying it makes the final sound much richer, so it's something I have to put up with, but I don't have to like it!

Anyway, one down and nine to go before Suburban Nostalgia is re-released - this time for digital download.

I Write Like...

Apparently...

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

but there again, earlier in the same novel,

I write like
William Shakespeare

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

and later in that same chapter,

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

So all in all I reckon either (a) I'm unwittingly suffering from multiple personality disorder, (b) I haven't quite settled into "my voice" yet, or (c) I Write Like is just another one of those crappy Facebook apps that doesn't know wtf it's talking about.

The Graduand

I always remember it being "The Graduate" but I guess that means someone who has already graduated. What I learned today, and the first time I'd ever heard the term, is that someone in the act of going through the process of graduation is a graduand.

And how do I know this?

Because I attended Nat's graduation ceremony this morning.

I always hesitate to say that any one particular event or occasion has made me proud of either or both of my daughters, because the simple fact is that never a day goes by without me thinking how proud I am of them. I used to get really pissed off when someone would say to my mother "oooh he's a credit to you, Kath." I remember thinking "hang on, this is me. I've done this, not her." So I'm not going to fall into the trap of taking any credit for the wonderful people they've turned into. They're a credit to themselves, which is way, way more important than being a credit to me. In everything they do, write, or say. In every joke they crack, every kind word or deed, every mistake corrected or lesson learned, they fill their old Dad with wonder and pride and joy.

So, before this turns into a total gushfest of fatherly sentiment (too late! LOL) I'll bring it back to today, which if you like was a crystallisation of all of that, and more. The ceremony was relatively short, which was a blessing. A little of the Vice Chancellor and his soporific tones goes a long way, and on top of that I had... er... company. It was... not exactly comfortable, but, well, let's just say it could have been worse. Before we knew it the first of the 204 graduands was mounting the stage to collect their faux certificate (yes folks, that's a fake scroll they collect - it has to look good for the cameras) and I knew Nat would be concentrating on one thing - getting up and down those stairs without having a pratfall in full view of the assembled throng and those darned cameras.

I soon worked out that the ceremony was proceeding in alphabetical order of degree which meant we'd have the longest possible wait for the Zoology grads, but they zipped through the other 180-odd in record time and pretty soon I was on my feet trying to get a decent shot of The Handshake. I'd been practising with burst mode on my camera expecting that to give me four or five decent shots of the crucial moment. Big mistake. Rather than the one decent shot I would have been guaranteed had I stuck with the tried and trusted method, I ended up with four blurry snapshots on which Nat is barely recognisable. I redeemed myself (somewhat) later by capturing on video the replay of the "graduation DVD" footage that was being repeated on a loop in the other building.

And then suddenly... it was all over. Mother jumped a cab back to the train station and as neither Nat nor I really fancied sticking our little fingers out at the champagne reception, we drove home, stopping on the way to collect a celebratory Sub sandwich, which I reckon must taste even better when you're eating it as a fully fledged Bachelor of Science :o)

Water boy

We have a hosepipe ban here in the North West of England, as of last Friday. You might remember I blogged on United Utilities' incompetence a while back, and now the predicted ban is in place.

Information on how to save water, and how to keep your garden alive without a hosepipe (save the bath water, the washing up water, use a watering can, etc, etc) abounds. Businesses that rely on hosepipes, such as the dodgy five-minute car wash places that have sprung up all over the place, largely unmonitored and, I suspect, not paying an awful lot of tax beyond what they're forced to pay on account of their water supply being metered, are exempt. This is understandable. We wouldn't want people thrown out of work just because we're running out of water, would we? No matter what tax avoidance scams they're getting away with.

But even so, I'd expected (in my naivete) that most businesses would at least be doing their bit to avoid wasting water. Not so the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive, apparently. I drove home this morning past a man with a van, and a handy hose-and-spray attachment, giving our nearest bus shelter a quick squirt. Because let's face it the one thing everyone needs in the middle of the worst drought since 1929, is a clean bus shelter.

Shake your booty

For reasons I won't bore you with, we're doing a fair bit of sorting out at the moment. It means we've uncovered a lot of boxes marked "eBay" - more out of a desperate hope that they might somehow list themselves and walk out of the door, than with any expectation that we'll ever actively engage in their sale - as well as making life-changing decisions to finally throw out that box of bubble wrap and the futon base that's a bit split.

Having (almost) confronted the eBay demon, we started considering other options for tat disposal, the most obvious and convenient being a car boot sale. There's one held every weekend at Bowlers, so we decided to pop along there today for a bit of a nose, suss out the competition and get some idea what second-hand books, CDs and DVDs sell for these days.

This short visit was a revelation on many levels, the first being that in the approximately thirty years between my last car boot sale (as a vendor) and this (as a browser) Nothing. Has. Changed. Except perhaps that, here at least, some indoor pitches have power, and vendors plug their tat in to prove it still works. Oh, and it's £15 for a pitch now, when it used to be a fiver. But broken down pasting tables? Check! Dog-eared paperbacks? Check! Unrecognisable bits of kitchen paraphernalia? Check! Old clocks, mirrors, grandma's teeth mug, scuffed toys, jigsaw puzzles in broken boxes? Yes, they're all still there. Might be exactly the same stuff as I used to pick through thirty years ago as far as I can tell, apart from the DVDs of course. We didn't have DVDs in 1980.

Most DVDs look to be selling for a pound or two. Some vendors had attempted to arbitrarily apply a range of pricing based on some vague perception of rarity, popularity or whatever, in 50p increments starting at £1. Others just applied a tatty notice stating "all DVDs £2" to a boxful. But whatever pricing was in operation, we never saw anyone browsing the movies. We later discovered this particular venue has a bit of a reputation for carrying snide merchandise, which was a bit disappointing as we've a couple of dozen to shift. It wasn't just films - no-one seemed to be in a buying mood. Punters in general were a bit thin on the ground; surprising for such a sunny Sunday. Maybe having such a large sale every week in the same place suffers from the law of diminishing returns. Certainly, on the face of it, we'd be hard pushed to make back our pitch price, which kind of defeats the object. Anyone want to buy a model Ferrari?

Silver Light

We attended a silver wedding event this evening for some friends, who also happen to be neighbours. One of the nicest families you could hope to meet, so it was an honour and a privilege to help them celebrate 25 years together, and a laugh to see all the old photos projected on the wall of the function room. That hair! That suit! That moustache! Etc. Well, it was 1985, and the eighties weren't exactly renowned for their fashions.

It occurred to me as we sat at the table and the conversation flowed around and through us, occasionally stopping to pick up some words and move on, like a verbal tram with an unpredictable timetable and a driver who may well have been R.P.McMurphy, that 1985 was also coincidentally the year I got married for the second time. Which means that, had I stuck it out, we too would be celebrating our silver wedding next month. Of course it's also true that, had I stuck it out, I would probably have been driving that tram, assuming I could have escaped the funny farm, so I think it's safe to say things have turned out for the best.

Our hosts being (reasonably) devout, we were "treated" to a blessing from "the father" at one point. Far be it from me to impose my beliefs and prejudices on anyone (although I hear fellow heretics shouting from the back "it never stops them!!"), but I could have happily done without hearing the message that the success of their marriage was actually nothing to do with their own efforts, but largely down to the beneficence of The Lord, who smiled down upon them from on high, probably on account of their having attended His Place of Worship on a regular basis.

Thankfully this drivel didn't go on for too long, as I was on the verge of converting to Dawkinism. I did wonder though, and not for the first time, exactly what credentials one requires to be a priest. Beyond the obvious predilection for... well... you know what I mean. By the look of the guy he must have been priesting for easily as long as our hosts have been married, and it wouldn't have surprised me to learn that he'd been at it twice that long. Yet in all that time he never found the time to actually learn the words of the blessing he delivered to the happy couple. Only a short passage, at most half the length of my introduction to this year's hotpot, which I learned in two weeks and delivered word-perfect on three occasions, and with many fewer polysyllabic utterances, but his years under the cloth had not provided sufficient opportunity to commit the simple homily to memory. He read it, falteringly it has to be said, from The Book, in a bored monotone utterly lacking in charisma or even any apparent interest. Apologies to Woody Allen but it made me think "those that can, do. Those that can't, teach. And those that can't teach, join the church."

Vinyl: Blind Dog at St. Dunstan's

Artist: Caravan
Owned on digital media: No
Want to replace: Yes

And so we reach the first (alphabetically) of the Caravan albums in my original collection. The default position for "Want to replace" for the next 8 entries will be yes (apart from the two I already have), which is not surprising when you learn that for many years Caravan were my favourite band. Hard not to tell the entire story in this first post but I guess I should save some of the interesting bits for later.

So what to say about this one? It's notable in that it is the only one in my Caravan collection I didn't pay for. It's the first (and so far only) prize I won in a radio phone-in contest. I happened to be listening to Radio Nottingham (not a frequent or regular occurrence) one summer's holiday when the competition question "who are the only two members of the original line-up still with Caravan." To a fan of my calibre the answer - Pye Hastings and Richard Coughlan - was a doddle, so I phoned up and left my message. I was back at Uni when the result was announced and had it not been for my mate Pete being an avid RN listener (at the time) I would never have been able to claim my prize.

As it turned out that may not have mattered too much because, to put it politely, this is not one of their better efforts.

Faster than a speeding email

It never fails to amaze me how fast email is.

Nat's sat here with me in the study today, and we're both surfin' and browsin' and generally being good netizens when a writing opportunity pops up that I think she might be interested in.

"You know that site I was telling you about before?"
"Yeah?"
"Well they're recruiting new writers, I'll send you the link"
"Okay, thanks!"
*copies link into email and sends*
"Thank you!"

The time that elapsed between me clicking 'send' and her saying 'thank you' could only have been measured by the kind of chronometer you might find in a physics lab. It appeared to be instantaneous. Certainly an order of magnitude faster than I could have walked over and handed it to her, and she's sitting less that six feet away.

In't t'Internet brilliant?

Missing the festivals

We had a surfeit of festivals in Chorlton this weekend. The ZestQuest BeerFest - which we have been known to visit in years past - on Friday and Saturday; and the Beech Road Festival - which to be honest we've missed more than we've hit over the past ten years - on Sunday.

This year, we contrived to miss both. Couldn't really summon up the enthusiasm on Friday night, Saturday afternoon was never really an option (I can only do afternoon drinking if it's immediately followed by evening drinking), and I knew, based on last year's experience, that there'd be no beer left by Saturday night so there was no point going. In this at least I was proved right when a contingent of Chorlton Players were turned away at 7pm as most of the beer had run out. An organisational nadir for Chorlton's favourite (i.e. only) beer festival, it has to be said.

Sunday was forecast rain and in any case we had plans to begin the long task of tidying up the attic space, not to mention meeting our new neighbour, so we made an early decision to opt out of Beech Road festivities again this year. In this case it may have been the wrong decision, as the rain held off and a good time was (allegedly) had by all. But we had a good time too, so it wasn't all bad.

Not only did we greet our new neighbour, we were invited round to imbibe a few glasses of wine in the company of her and her parents. All very nice people and another fine addition to the community. 2010 is going to be a big year in terms of changes on the street, as the guys further along finally put their house on the market this week too, so assuming they have any luck selling we'll be welcoming yet another new arrival before the year's out.

Stuff my Mum said

We've all heard of "Shit My Dad Says", right? Well, you can Google it if you haven't. What? You want me to do everything for you? Good grief. Alright: here.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. Well my Mum doesn't say much these days that's worth reporting. It's not like she's as clued up as that guy's dad. But way back when I was a kid she used to say a bunch of weird shit. I mean, I was fifteen before I discovered who "our Side" was. I thought he was some fat bloke my Mum used to know. Whenever she saw a really fat person she'd say he (or she) was as fat as our Side.

Who was he - a long lost relative or something?

No. It was me not hearing properly. What she was really saying was that they were as fat as a HOUSE side.

The Excellent Eight

In response to several (well OK, two) comments wanting me to come clean about which tracks in the Storm the Charts top 40 I'd rated "excellent" I thought I'd make them the subject of a post in their own right, rather than hiding them away in the comments. They are, after all, excellent. According to me at least. And according to several thousand other people too, if their current positions in the Amazon chart are any indication.

I've called this the "excellent eight" but as it happens the top 40 has been subjected to some last minute adjustments on account of a couple of acts not managing to make their work available through the required outlets in time. As a result of this, one of the tracks I didn't consider excellent was replaced by one that I did, so it's actually an "excellent nine" now. Oh well. I'm lucky enough to be able to afford the extra 49p.

49p you say? Don't you mean 79p? Well, maybe. But there's a good chance (I haven't checked) that this extra track is one of the 32 whose price Amazon has dropped this week. Are they supporting the Storm? Who knows, but as they say in retail "every little helps."

Anyway enough of this waffle, here are the tracks I'll be downloading later today, with their artists:

Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo - Nostalgia.  [listen here] [buy here]

The Lovedays - House of Cards. [listen here] [buy here]

Woodpigeon - ...and as the ship went down, you'd never looked finer. [listen here] [buy here]

Pocket Satellite - Toy Train. [listen here] [buy here]

Olivia Broadfield - Don't Cry. [listen here] [buy here]

Rubika - Robots. [listen here] [buy here]

The Portland Authority - A New Year. [listen here] [buy here]

Penny Black - Green. [listen here] [buy here]

My Luminaries - Parasol. [listen here] [buy here]

Vinyl: Moonmadness

Artist: Camel
Owned on digital media: Yes
Want to replace: N/A

The last Camel album on my list, their fourth album and the last to feature the original line-up. In listening to their stuff over again, I find it quite hard to decide on a favourite album of theirs in my admittedly limited collection (they released eight albums I've never heard).

Their third - Music inspired by The Snow Goose - was a favourite for some time even though it doesn't appear in this series of posts on account of me never having owned it on vinyl. It was the first Camel album I owned but I bought it on cassette tape and replaced it directly with the CD almost as soon as it came out. But now I find the typically haunting melodies and lyrics of Moonmadness are bewitching me again. This, along with Mirage, is rapidly becoming the Saturday morning music of choice, and particularly good for winding the wick up so I can still hear it over the sound of paper being scraped off the walls.

Back in the saddle

Seems like a long time since I did any serious writing. Novel #2 has been in the starting blocks for almost nine months but with only a little over 2000 words written it can hardly be said to have got started yet.

So I was grateful for a link from a mate at the end of last week, pointing me in the direction of a Manchester-based writing competition that closes on Friday of this week. Luckily - in view of the extremely short deadline - it's a *short* story competition. No more than 3,000 words and on any topic at all as long as it reflects city life in some way, and the city of Manchester in particular plays "a central role" in the story.

Always a good sign when an idea pops into one's head straight away, which is exactly what happened to me as I flicked through the competition rules. I'm on to the second draft now, and really pleased with the idea I've come up with for the ending. The short story is a form I'm entirely unfamiliar with, as a writer not a reader, although I have read the odd article on the particular challenges faced by short story writers. I refreshed my memory of those over the weekend in a couple of stints of Internet research, interspersed with actual writing. I know myself well enough not to fall into the trap of spending all my time reading about the good practice and no time on the actual doing.

Winners are announced at the beginning of August so that's another bonus - I don't have to sit around for weeks wondering how I've done. Always the worst part.

Blattered but not Broken

Sepp Blatter has been conspicuous by his absence since Sunday afternoon. Calls for his resignation, or at least a reconsideration of his ridiculous policy not to allow goal line technology to be introduced in international competition, have been legion.

His arguments - that football is "a human game that contains human mistakes" - sound like something you'd hear in an Amish community hall. Tennis too, is a human game, but the number of human errors has been greatly reduced with the use of HawkEye electronic line judging to supplement - not replace - its human counterparts, and avoid the kind of glaring error of judgement or momentary lapse in concentration that marred Sunday's England v Germany fixture. Cricket too has seen HawkEye deployed to assist the umpires. So why is football - the most ubiquitous game on the planet and a multi-billion-dollar industry - kept in the dark ages by a ruling body who remain inexpicably and embarrassingly unmoved by two examples of refereeing incompetence in a single dismal day.

Closing your eyes, ears and heart to the march of technology in the name of keeping the game "pure" is like saying that writers should continue to use quill pens, or DNA evidence can't be used in criminal law, or policemen should continue to rely on whistles and truncheons, eschewing radios, tazers and patrol cars. Technological advances are there to help humans achieve their highest ambitions, not replace them.

It's simply beyond belief that we even have to have the debate. The correct decision is so obvious. I'm not saying we would have won if the half-time scoreline had been, correctly, 2-2. But there can be no doubting that the decision to disallow a perfectly good equaliser took the wind out of England's sails. Even though they were outclassed for most of the game by a fitter, younger and far hungrier German side, we had already proved we could score 2 to match their 2, and the demoralising effect of having one of those two snatched away simply because the officials could not do their jobs properly should not be underestimated. At least, if we're going to get totally slaughtered, let's have the scoreline reflecting the number of goals actually scored.

This guy doesn't need my help, but...

...even so, I'm going to point you at him.

About a week ago Nikki found Stuff No-One Told Me (But I Learned Anyway) - a new blog by Spanish artist Alex Noriega.

I don't read many blogs, and I can't remember ever having recommended one before, but Alex has lit a small fire on the Internet with his witty, perceptive and well-drawn cartoons about life and I wanted to share. In the 7 days since I've been reading it, his followers have jumped from about 150 to 1573 and in the way of Internet phenomena I'm certain that number will continue to explode as word gets around.

Today's cartoon is one of his best yet:

but my personal favourite is still number 15. Number 09 is pretty cool too. I'm sure you'll have your own.

The final forty

After more than ten weeks of voting, using one scheme or another, polls finally closed on Saturday night, and the last four acts to join the 36 announced over previous weeks learned that they'd managed to sneak in as the door was closing on Storm the Charts 2010.

As I mentioned last week, I've been keeping count. What seems like years ago, as the acts were announced on the catalogue pages, I spent these early mornings listening to the music and noting down whether I liked it or not.

In the way of notes that are not intended for public consumption, some of my comments were a little... raw. Others gushed. Those early notes were on paper (I printed off the catalogue pages as they grew) and when I found a track I really liked, I'd draw a box around it so I'd be able to find it again easily if and when it came time to download. As the days went on I fell into a pattern of writing an X against those tracks I thought were really bad, and a Y for the good ones (that weren't good enough to merit a box). As the list careered towards its final total of 568 artists I invented another category - YY - for stuff that I appreciated was *really* good but not the kind of thing I'd want to download.

So in this rather unscientific and piecemeal way I arrived at a place where I'd defined five categories: X (crap); Y (good); YY (very good); boxed (excellent); and the rest, which didn't make enough of an impression on me, either way, to have any mark at all. A kind of "meh" category. And what, you might be wondering, does the final forty look like when it's Diggered™? Well, it looks like this.

Which, if it says anything at all, probably says "John's musical tastes are somewhat at odds with the mainstream."

So it's talking a lot of sense, because I can't stand rap, or hip hop, or anything like it. Not too keen on most R&B either. I could go on. But that small and perfectly formed green wedge in the pie - the tracks with the boxes - represents eight songs that I will be downloading from next Sunday. An investment of something like six quid and if any of them gets anywhere near the top 40 I'll be well chuffed. And so will they, probably.

Vinyl: I Can See Your House From Here

Artist: Camel

Owned on digital media: No

Want to replace: Yes

The completist in me shows through on this one, because my only reason for wanting to replace this album is my certainty of Camel fandom. I like their music, so I'm guessing that once upon a time I liked this album, although I have absolutely no memory of it, even after looking at the track list on Wikipedia. 

Another one of those old albums that's sat gathering dust under the stairs for three years, and was never played in our previous house either. What's more, I don't remember having seen a remastered copy in any of the music shops, although it's available on Amazon and even has a couple of reasonable reviews.

Utter shite would have been an improvement

I'm the first to admit I don't know anything about football. I don't follow a league (is it even called the league any more? Premiership? Whatever) team, I'm terminally bored by office football pundits, TV football pundits, footballers, footballers' wives, football hooligans and... well... you get the picture.

But come on. It's the World Cup. Once every four years even I can try to get a bit excited about the beautiful game. Except there wasn't much beautiful about it last night.

In one of those rare minutes of the 90 where I found my attention wandering from the pitch (*cough*), I began wondering exactly how much money there was running around aimlessly, failing to make, or receive, the simplest of passes, constantly passing back, waiting for other players (including Algerian ones) to catch up, not shooting, not tackling, not really doing much of anything apart from collecting their vastly inflated salaries.

So I've done some research. Ignoring substitutions and going with the starting lineup, here's what I found.

01 James. Signed for Portsmouth in 2006 for £1.2m. Salary said to be £65,000 per week.
02 G Johnson. Signed for Liverpool in 2009 for £18m. £139k per week
03 Ashley Cole. Chelsea paid £25m for him in 2006. £120kpw
06 Terry. Never moved from Chelsea but Man City offered £50m in 2009. £135kpw
18 Carragher. Never moved from Liverpool and no transfer value or offers found. Using his salary (£75kpw) as a comparator, he'd probably fetch something like £4m on the market.
04 Gerrard. Never moved from Liverpool but Real Madrid rumoured to have bid £85m. £125kpw+
07 Lennon. Signed for Spurs in 2005 for £1m. His last posted salary of £20kpw was improved in 2009 but no figure given.
08 Lampard. Chelsea bought him for £11m in 2001 but there is a more recent Real Madrid rumour of £30m. One of the highest paid in the premiership at £151kpw
14 Barry. A Man City signing in 2009 for £12m. £120kpw
10 Rooney. Signed for Man U in 2004 for £25.6m. His £115kpw is due for review, some say it's set to rise to at least 140kpw, and his transfer value is estimated to be on a par with Ronaldo (£80m)
21 Heskey. Bought by Aston Villa in 2009 for £3.5m (less than his previous two transfers, which probably explains his relatively low salary of around £50kpw).

So there you have it. At conservative estimates, given that many of these numbers are years out of date, the England players on the field yesterday are worth almost THREE HUNDRED AND TEN MILLION POUNDS and between them they earn £1.14 million per week.

Now I know that footballing isn't a 40-hour per week job, and that rates of pay for playing for England differ from "the day job" but assuming it was, and it didn't, then for the 90 minute total shambles we witnessed on Friday 18 June 2010, these "professional" "footballers" earned a total of £42,750. That's about one-and-a-half times the average UK ANNUAL salary.

Worth every penny, I'd say. If you paid me to say it, that is.

Yours for only £12.99

Along with most of the (Internet enabled) planet, I'm guessing, I get spammed regularly by Universal Online Retailers Inc. (aka Play.com, Amazon, etc) with offers of stuff their "clever" algorithms have decided I'll be interested in.

I say spammed, but I'll admit in this case it's partly my own fault for, you know, shopping there. I do take exception to the notion that if you've ever, even once, bought a vampire movie then you're bound to be interested in every other vampire, near-vampire, or teen-vampire movie, or anything with characters similar to "vamp" or "pire" in the title, genre, plot description, crew or cast.

Partly because I'm lazy, partly because it's easier to just delete them, and partly because I'm an eternal optimist who believes that in among the dross will one day sparkle an irresistible gem, I remain subscribed to these emails and occasionally, when the morning crop is a bit thin on the ground in the Inbox, I read one.

Today was one such day. And what I saw was more frightening than the goriest schlock horror film ever produced.

A 3-disc boxed set of... the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest.

I mean, come on. It's bad enough watching the crap the first time through. Who the hell would PAY to watch it again? To be able to watch it again whenever they want? Weird.

Stop worrying

The "Quote of the Day" widget on my Google homepage regularly gives me a smile. Occasionally a laugh. All too rarely it delivers something so appropriate, so timely, all I can do is listen to the sound of my jaw dropping while I sit immobilised at the keyboard.

Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student.
-George Iles

So I'll stop worrying that I'm 53 years old and I still live in a house where half the rooms (including our bedroom) have no carpet. Where half-completed construction projects shed their dust (it's a SIN!) over the entire house. Where my tools litter the study floor alongside the disassembled pieces of that rim latch I was saving for when I repair the door on the spare room. Where the attic is stuffed with things of almost no perceptible value, which I can't bring myself to chuck out in case someone will offer me a few measly quid for them on eBay.

Assuming I ever got around to listing them there.

It used to scare me - a little - how much this house resembles the digs I had as a student. It's even in the same road (albeit the nicer end, I tell myself). But, you know, it's a home. I like it. Love it, actually. And it does get better, slowly. Or "at my own pace" as I prefer to put it.

It's a place where there's always time for a laugh, or a cup of tea. Time for a leisurely breakfast, a game of Buzz, or a movie. And where I never need to feel pressured to DO anything, or guilty that I haven't.

Yeah. In the words of a popular icon from my youth: "What, me worry?"

Earlier this month

I lost a spreadsheet today.

I've been keeping track of the artists selected to Storm the Charts at the end of this month and having had an Excel blitz at the end of last week it had dropped off my MRU list. No problem obviously, I'll just open up the folder where I keep all my spreadsheets...

Oh.

Ah! Must've saved it in my "reference" folder.

Um...

OK, how about the folder where I keep everything to do with StC (not to mention the Weird & Wonderful files)?

Nope.

OK, well there's still nowt to worry about (right?) because I've got the good ol' Windows Search facility. Now I *know* I edited this file last week to add the four artists that were chosen last Sunday, so what kind of date filter do I need? Ah yes, here's a handy-dandy one called "files that were edited earlier this month" and I *know* it'll be on my data drive somewhere, so I'll just search the whole damn drive for anything that's been edited "earlier this month."

Er... Shit. Where is it? Not there, apparently. Which is mad, because I know it's there. It was there last week. Everything else is there. Why isn't this there? It has to be there.

So hang on, cos I haven't used Windows Search ON WINDOWS 7 before. And it looks like there's this cool date widget that I can drag across and select "anything that's changed between June 1 and June 14"

Holy Crap!! That's about ten times more files than my first search found! And... yes! There's my spreadsheet! (breathe small sigh of relief). Last edited on... Monday morning.

OK I have to ask. In what dark festering corner of the entire universe is "earlier this month" NOT THE SAME THING as "between June 1 and June 14" ???

Vinyl: Mirage

Artist: Camel
Owned on digital media: Yes
Want to replace: N/A

Probably my favourite of all the Camel albums I owned, either on digital or vinyl. Includes classic tracks like Mystic Queen ("have you seen the mystic queen, riding in her limousine?"), and the epic Lady Fantasy and Nimrodel/The Procession/The White Rider, which has a Lord of the Rings theme.

It also heavily features Andrew Latimer playing one of my most favourite instruments of all time - the flute. So, adding all this together - flute music, Lord of the Rings, fantasy - what's not to like? Easy to see why I've already replaced it.

The future's bleak; the future's Bleakley

Warning: rant coming.

In the news recently, speculation that Christine Bleakley is on the verge of signing a new 2-year deal with the BBC worth £1million. An increase of £100,000 a year over her current pay. Shortly after that, news that Bleakley had issued a statement denying this rumour, and stating that she had received offers from both BBC and ITV and was "torn."

Until a couple of weeks ago, my impression of Bleakley was based entirely on her 2008 appearance on Strictly Come Dancing. Personable enough. Made an effort to learn the dances. Usual media speculation about romantic entanglements with her partner. I never watched her on The One Show because I couldn't (still can't) stand her sidekick Adrian Chiles. A talentless buffoon hiding behind faux blokey "charm" who could get right up my nose within milliseconds of being subjected to his pudgy face spouting inanities in a Brummie accent.

Since Chiles left, we've risked the odd half-hour with The One Show. Bland pap for the early evening, when the schedulers must think everyone's rushing to cook and scarf their evening meals in between the regional news and the soaps, and anyone left watching will be easily entertained with a few talking heads and content-free general interest stories.

So has my impression of Christine changed since I've watched her in her natural habitat? Not really. To be honest I can't see what all the fuss is about. She looks relatively pretty, sits on a sofa, smiles and reads an autocue. In a Northern Irish accent, which for some reason virtually guarantees that media luvvies will be falling over themselves to give her air time. Can't understand the attraction myself, but each to his own.

So nurses are worth something like 20 grand a year, police and firemen a bit more. But if you're a vacuous bimbo who can smile and read at the same time, you can get a job with the Beeb and be paid half a MILLION pounds a year. Of our money.

Oh no, sorry. To be entirely accurate you can WRING YOUR HANDS  and be publicly "TORN" about whether you want to accept the offer of half a million pounds, or whether you'd rather run off to the competition for probably a bit MORE dosh, and the chance to once again share the same sofa with an old mate.

I must be missing something, but what is it she actually does that is so difficult? I'm experiencing that stress that one gets when the perceived value of something doesn't match the actual money involved. Let's just hope that the BBC aren't sucked into a bidding war for this non-entity. If she decides to go, let her. If ITV think she's worth more than half a million a year, and their advertising revenues can stand it - with people deserting the channel in their millions and those still watching fast-forwarding through the ads with their PVRs - let them have her. It's June, and university finals are finishing all over the country. Within a few weeks there'll be hundreds of media studies, journalism, drama, and similar graduates tipping out onto the job market. I'd wager there's at least a dozen in that bunch who are (a) as attractive as Bleakley; (b) can read; and (c) would jump at the chance to take her place for one-tenth of the wedge she's on.

There but for the grace of God...

The first funeral was held yesterday for one of the victims of the Cumbrian shootings. It was attended by one of Nikki's colleagues and took place in the sleepy Lake District town of Gosforth.

Some news items swim past, barely touching the surface of our consciousness. So many horrors in the world, so regularly delivered to our living rooms, if we gave them all full heart we'd be constantly ragged with emotion, enraged at our inability to help, railing ineffectually at the perpetrators (if human) or the universe (if natural).

This story though, has a special and chilling significance for us. It is only five weeks since I stood outside the local general store in Gosforth, not 100 yards from where that young man was randomly gunned down. Had we taken our holiday five weeks later, or had Bird gone on his mad spree five weeks earlier, we could so easily have been involved. As eye witnesses, or as victims.

Twice in that idyllic week we spent in the Lakes I drove alone to the shop first thing in the morning for breakfast supplies. And on at least two other occasions, we both attended the store. In uncountable ways, life is a matter of timing, and had our timing been off in this respect, I might never have returned to the cottage, leaving Nikki wondering where on Earth I'd got to, or we both might not have come back from the Lakes.

In nearby Seascale, where another two murders were committed, we spent a couple of hours walking on the beach, picking up pebbles, breathing the sea air, enjoying the view and exchanging polite "Good mornings" with the few other people on the beach. The thought that one of those we encountered could have been carrying a gun with intent to use it on whomever he met, still sends involuntary shivers through me.

The natural desire for retribution, or at the very least for an explanation, is so often thwarted in cases like this after the gunman turns his weapon on himself at the last. Those directly involved are left without an outlet for their anger or grief, staring down their own barrel: a lifetime of anguish and loss. And for the rest of us, for a time, the stark realisation that these terrible incidents can happen anywhere, at any time, without either meaning or warning, is enough to account for some restless dreams.

The YouTube generation

You'll be surprised to learn that it's common practice to decamp to one of the local ale houses following any (and all) Chorlton Players' performance(s). So it was that I found myself stood outside on the "porch" of The Bar clutching a pint of Alchemist's on Thursday last.

The evening began in unassuming fashion, but turned rapidly surreal as we watched a woman dressed in a leopard skin outfit drive a disabled cart determinedly across the road towards a waiting taxi. It seemed a dangerous manoeuvre, it being dark, the cart having no lights, and the road outside The Bar - passing as it does over the railway - being effectively on the brow of a hill. Still, she made it alright, and the taxi driver got out to help her into the cab (or so we thought), so we turned back to our drinks and our conversations expecting that to be the end of it.

How wrong we were.

A few minutes later, someone called out "oh my God! Look at her!" Far from alighting the cab and leaving, the woman was now holding up the traffic. Facing the cart the wrong way down our side of the road, she drove it from side to side in a kind of mad, figure-of-eight dance, narrowly missing the headlights of the first car in a queue of about ten that she was preventing from making any progress down the road.

The cab driver decided he didn't want to know, did a U-ey and headed back into Chorlton centre.

That was the start of an interesting half-hour during which this lady, who was clearly inebriated, high, mentally disturbed or a combination of all three, drove maniacally around on the open road, or the pavements, alternately stopping vehicular or pedestrian traffic. When, eventually, a man intervened to try and steer the cart to safety, she beat him around the head, and then got out of the cart and chased him down the road!

So. Not disabled then. No. It wasn't even a real disabled buggy. When it passed us at close range we realised it was a disabled person's shopping trolley, the "Asda" emblem clearly visible on the side. As the nearest Asda is in Hulme she'd done pretty well to navigate the thing from there to here, especially in her... incapacitated... state.

Eventually someone called the police, but they didn't seem especially interested in her or her behaviour. Not the theft of the trolley or the multiple traffic offences she must have committed, or even any kind of breach of the peace (she'd had minor altercations with several bystanders by this point).

But the most surprising and disturbing thing of all, for me, was the reaction of the overwhelming majority of onlookers.

Did they try to help her?
No!
Protect her?
No!
Warn any of the other approaching drivers?
No!
Call the police?
No!

They got out their videophones and recorded the whole thing for YouTube.

Why Aye

Those "cherished" number plates - we keep spotting them. Not as many, probably, as you'd see around Kensington High Street or other such places where the streets are paved with two-pound coins, but enough for the occasional blog post ;o)

Last week, it was the turn of W1 EYE, which we could only interpret as the famous Geordie greeting "why aye!" We tried various online searches to work out how much a plate like that would be worth, but all of them asked, at least, for a declaration that we owned the plate or had the permission of the owner, and in some cases we would have had to sign up and give them an arm, a leg, and our inside leg measurements before they'd let such sensitive information loose. Tch!

Near as we could tell though, with similar but not *quite* so legible plates going for around the £400 mark, is that it would be worth about five hundred. It wasn't on a particularly stand-out motor. Occasionally we see what must be a very valuable plate on a totally mundane car, which looks quite incongruous.

All of this made me wonder: if you had a budget of £50,000, would you spend it all on a snazzy motor with a regular registration, or would you spend £20,000 on a reasonable car and £30,000 on a really unusual plate? Where would your dividing line be?

Years ago, I registered my interest in a cherished plate that was, at the time, unavailable. As far as I can tell it still is, since they've never contacted me to see if I'm still interested. I quite fancied driving around behind D16 GER, but I wouldn't part with more than a couple of hundred quid for it, and I suspect I'd be in a very long queue if it ever came up.

Water, water, everywhere...

Here we go again. A drier spring than usual has led to reservoir levels being 15% down on the average for this time of year, and we're already getting water companies warning of hosepipe bans and giving us advice on how to save water.

Apparently leaving the tap running while you're cleaning your teeth wastes 7 litres. Imagine that! And then imagine the fact that United Utilities (previously Northwest Water) wastes considerably more each day through leaks. And when I say considerably more, I mean orders of magnitude more. I mean 460 million litres. Per day. "Chief Reporter" Dave Guest pointed this out to the water authority stooge on the telly last week and got the same old reply. We have an ongoing programme of leak control in place. Yeah, and you've been saying that for the last ten years to my certain knowledge. After ten years of "ongoing" leak control, you're still losing 460 million litres a day. How bad was it when you started, ferchrissake?

It's a total disgrace that water companies up and down the country are STILL allowed to sit on miles of old, dodgy, perforated piping and yet declare "profits" every year. Profits that come from ordinary households paying over the odds for their water supplies, only to be told to cut their usage in times of drought. Not even drought, actually. It's been raining on and off for weeks. There is no drought. If this is a drought God help us if it ever gets as "bad" as the oft-quoted summer of 1976 when we went 10 weeks without any rain at all.

Let's do the maths together. If you wanted, through the simple expedient of not running your tap while you were cleaning your teeth, to save the water wasted by our local water company in a single day, it would take over 65 million people changing their behaviour to do it. The entire population of the UK. And then what could we all do to save the wastage by Southern Water? And Severn Trent Water? And Thames Water? And Yorkshire Water? There are 20 water companies serving the UK. 20 companies pissing our expensive, treated, potable water out of their pipes and back into the lakes, rivers and streams, and all the while shelling out the money we've paid them to supply our water, to their shareholders, as "profit."

You couldn't make it up.

Comic timing

We've been trying to sort out the pressing of physical CDs for Weird & Wonderful for months. The cover art for the front was, as regular readers will know, put to bed months ago, the photo for the inside front cover was in the bag in March, so what's really been holding us up was the back cover or, more precisely, the permission to use one of the two photos I'd found on t'Internet.

Permission for the first of the two was granted almost as soon as I asked, but the owners of the second were, shall we say, slightly more "legal" about the whole process, requiring a signed contract for limited use to be exchanged (by fax) and taking several months to even decide that approach was acceptable. Still, to give them their due, they did eventually come through and I was able to place an order for 100 CDs a couple of weeks back.

We had wanted them to be available for sale at the hotpot, but it seemed unlikely that hope would materialise, as the original delivery estimate was for June 10 and that didn't take account of international shipping. Sure enough hotpot came and went, with no sign of the discs.

They arrived in this morning's post.

Pimp My Hotpot: Final Night & BBQ 2010

A pretty hectic day for me yesterday, as the final night of the Hotpot show clashed with the annual street barbecue. So it was up with the lark to prepare the usual salads (always such a popular item I'd been asked to make the same three for the third year running), cut the new neighbour's grass (she moves in soon and it was looking like a bit of a jungle out there), and pull the garden chairs out from the depths of the shed.

BBQ started around 3pm and for once - unlike the last two years - the day was glorious. We'd had fabulous weather last weekend and the forecast in the early part of the week suggested we were in for a repeat of last year, missing the good weather by a week and being subjected to a downpour. Instead the bad weather slipped back a day and left us smiling under the sun while chomping on our toasties.

I should give the toasties a special mention this year, as it may well be the last year we enjoy them. Torsten & Keeth are set to emigrate to Portugal by the end of the summer, and their special contribution to every year's barbie will be greatly missed. Someone was supposed to watch the assembly of these delights this year so the tradition could be handed on, but no-one turned up and now they might be lost forever. I think I'll be popping down the road sometime soon with paper and pen. A street barbecue without toasties is unthinkable.

At 6.30pm, in the middle of the first quiz, I had to duck out, change into (one of) my stage costume(s) and drive over to the hall in preparation to open the final show. Even though I knew I had that monologue in my head, I didn't want to be blasé about it, and still repeated it to myself a couple of times before taking the stage. It all went very smoothly (although a slightly smaller audience than last night owing to the good weather) and pretty soon I was changing out of my tux into the black jeans and T I've been wearing all week for Beresford & Wallace's interval set.

On balance I think our performance last night was the best of the three. Not surprising, I guess, as it was the one we'd had most practice for, and I think we both (or all three of us if we include our guest artiste Becky Hodges who played a flute accompaniment to More Than Just Your Face) felt totally comfortable with both the material and the performing of it. But although it may have been technically the best performance I didn't enjoy it quite as much, both on account of knowing it was the last one, and because Nikki, Nat & Blythe weren't there as they'd been the night before. We did have a couple of friends in the audience, but it wasn't the same.

Coming off stage around 9pm I grabbed my other costume and headed back to the street BBQ, where the Chocolate Game had just finished and people were once again sitting around chatting. We had a very short gentle shower which caused us to move the chairs into a quadrangle under the gazebo, where we lit candles and enjoyed a couple of rounds of the Story Game (everyone in turn says a sentence to carry the story on) and Mafia (rules too complicated to relate but can be found here for anyone interested - although we didn't include the Nurse role mentioned there.) before moving inside, when the rain became more persistent, for another round of Mafia and more drinking (!)

Shortly after midnight most of the family had had enough so we left the remaining dozen or so revellers to their fate and wandered over the road. I picked up some more beer and headed off to the after-show party (another barbecue!) at Annie's - luckily only a short walk away. The rain had, mercifully, passed off a couple of hours before, leaving the night fresh and warm, and I spent a pleasant couple of hours munching on more BBQ food, sipping on a couple of ales and chatting with fellow members of cast & crew. It was also the first (and probably only) time I got to enjoy the Aftershow Awards ceremony that is a Chorlton Players tradition. Great fun. When I got home shortly after 3 I was more than ready to crash, even though dawn was already faintly visible over the roofs of the houses.

Pimp My Hotpot: Two Down!

It's frightening how much I'm enjoying this - and last night was the best yet. What made it so special was having family and friends in the audience. As I said to Natalie on the way back to the car - it's a kind of payback for all the wonderful concerts I've been to over the years when she's been performing. I think I'll need a few more outings before we're all square but hey, it's a start.

I managed to join the family table for the latter half of the show before diving back to the green room to join the queue for the curtain call. Luckily myself and one of my fellow compères were the penultimate cast members to take the stage, so my timing was spot on.

If anything this experience has confirmed my long-held opinion that I have absolutely no interest in treading the boards in an acting capacity. Opening the show as compère can't be called "acting" IMO. It's more like doing a presentation (only without any slides) and from day one I've found it no more nerve-racking than any presentation I give as part of my day job.

And the singing is really not that different to the karaoke I've been doing for almost ten years. Except the songs are our own, and we don't have to keep stepping off the stage to "let someone else have a go."

But having mentioned karaoke, I should just add that if it hadn't been for my past experiences, gaining confidence in singing in front of an audience, I would never, ever, have been able to step up on stage and give a performance like I did tonight. A certain person who shall remain anonymous laughed at me when she first learned I'd started singing karaoke. But say what you will, everything happens for a reason, and starting out on that path all those years ago has led me to last night - one of the most fulfilling experiences I've ever had and a buzz that can't be easily explained to anyone who hasn't done it, or matched by much else. Laugh all you like, but if I could change anything at all, I would only want to have started sooner.

Pimp My Hotpot: Opening Night

So, what was it like for you?

In the end, I was nowhere near as nervous as I expected to be, but on reflection that probably has something to do with confidence that I knew my lines, the fact that there were only 2 minutes-worth  rather than a whole play, and that it wasn't *really* acting. Being a compère is more like doing a presentation, which is something I've done dozens of times, to much bigger audiences.

So that part went pretty well. Got a few laughs, even. The worst part was the heat. I picked a really bad night to be wearing a tuxedo and bow tie. Later there was a brief panic when we thought we'd lost the laptop with our music on it, and then I was nearly killed by falling scenery while we set up the mikes for our interval slot. The movable wall, used in the previous sketch, was in a slightly different position than it had been at dress rehearsal. As the half-tab curtains were pulled across the stage they caught it and toppled it over.

Luckily I spotted it out of the corner of my eye in time to move out from under it, but it was a peripheral vision test I could have done without at that particular moment.

As predicted the audience were preoccupied with conversation, and getting on the outside of their food, during most of the first number, but we were pleased that they soon realised we were worth listening too, and by the middle of the second number we had everyone's attention. I don't think the sound of my stomach reacting to the smell of chilli as it wafted onto stage was audible over the singing.

And then, suddenly, it was over. First night was behind us. In the bag. A success, albeit with a pitifully small audience (on account of the good weather, we decided, along with the fact that the local paper let us down and didn't include our press release in last week's edition).

The post-show beers have never tasted so good.

Pimp My Hotpot: Dress Rehearsal

There's many a slip twixt cup and lip, but if last night's dress rehearsal is anything to go by, tonight's 'opening night' show should be a corker. Even when I was singing on a weekly basis I've never felt as comfortable on a stage as I did last night. Admittedly, I was singing my own material, and there wasn't much of an audience to speak of (a few other cast members and the crew), but even so I had a blast. Hopefully my familiarity with the songs and the venue will help overcome any nerves that are bound to crop up when I'm faced with a real, live audience. If the singing accountant can use his nerves to focus his singing, I'm sure I can. He's balder than I.

As far as "the other" part of my involvement goes - the first-act compère - I've developed a delivery style that gives me lots of pauses to let the memory flow. At the outset I thought I'd bitten off more than I could chew, having written a 2-minute (or so) monologue in the style of Leonard Sachs (in his The Good Old Days persona) I ended up packing it with so much polysyllabic alliteration that I thought I'd never be able to memorise it. However, perseverance has paid off and - so far at least - I've been pretty close to word perfect at most rehearsals, and bang on last night.

That's not stopped me from engaging in more practice today though. I'm all too conscious that I could go blank at any moment, so I need those six paragraphs fresh and at the forefront of my mind until Saturday.

I wrote "the other" part of my involvement above, but of course there's one more role that I traditionally perform on dress rehearsal night: the taking of the production photos. This proved physically impossible for those parts of the night where I was in front of the camera, so I was grateful to have a deputy to take over for the ~25 minutes when I was on stage or in the stalls. Most of the photos are available already. The ones of the "Hurly Burly Burlesque Queens" are awaiting vetting by the Queens themselves. When you're dancing it what is essentially underwear, it's only fair to have a veto over what images are made public!

Reality check

The dust has settled after Monday morning's revelation of the UKSC results for 2010, and - with the help of a distant friend from the Pacific Northwest - I've gained some perspective.

Give myself some credit, she wisely wrote: it wasn't so very long ago that I hadn't written a song in my entire life. True, that. And now I've co-written not one but two songs which have received the accolade of being "good songs that almost made the semi-final" in one of the most prestigious songwriting competitions in the world. So yes, maybe that's not so bad after all.

I've been thinking a lot today about the source of my reaction to bad - or should I say "not glowing" - criticism. I've decided it comes from a long way back, from the time when my mother used to tell me "don't be an also-ran, John." Unfortunately her parenting skills only stretched as far as sharing aphorisms like that with me. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, neither a borrower nor a lender be, you know the kind of thing. While she was off congratulating herself on what a good job she was doing bringing me up, I was left to wonder (a) what an also-ran was - I was very young at the time - and (b) how to avoid being one.

What she meant, I soon realised, was that she wanted me to be a winner. What she wasn't able to do much of was give me, or help me find, the skills to become one. I was on my own with that one. And what she clearly was never able to grasp is that there's one thing worse than being an also-ran, and that is to never run at all. Which is what most people do, and, to a very great extent, what she herself has done. At least we *entered* the contest in the first place. We set ourselves up to be measured. We ran the race. And if it wasn't for "also-rans," there wouldn't be a race to win.

So thanks Mum, but I'll take also-ran for now. In fact I'll revel in it. And while we're at it, if I wasn't a borrower I wouldn't have a house to live in, and not checking those gift horses' mouths just gives people free rein (see what I did there?) to dump a load of old tat on you.

I'll let you know when I think of one of those hackneyed old parental phrases that was worth listening to.

UK Songwriting Contest results

The results of the 2010 UK Songwriting Contest were posted early yesterday morning.

We had two songs in the competition - Spin Doctor and More Than Just Your Face - in the "Pop" category. Deciding on the category to enter was almost half the battle, since most of our music straddles the divide between folk and pop, with occasionally a bit of (very) light rock thrown in. Still, we figured Pop was close enough, and any claim to be entirely folk may have been met with derision on the part of the judges.

This did, unfortunately, put us into the fiery pit of hell as far as competition was concerned, as "pop" is probably the most oversubscribed category in the whole thing. This year there were over 5,000 entries in the overall competition, and judges commented that they had all been much stronger entries than in previous years.

So, I guess, on balance, with that level of competition and given that it was our first attempt, we should be fairly pleased with the results. Both our entries received a "Commended Entry" Certificate, and both received scores of 5. The scoring is explained on the UKSC website like this:
"A score of 4 or 5 indicates that this is a good song and it will receive a Commended Entry Certificate. A score of 5 indicates that the song very nearly made the semi finals. All songs with a score of 4 and 5 are considered for the semi finals."....

At the moment I'm still flipping between being happy that we did as well as that (and that we even bothered to enter, which I guess is something), and disappointment that we didn't make the semis. Being able to badge our songs "UKSC Semi-finalist" would have been really something. Commended doesn't have anywhere near that same cachet. But I always was my own worst critic. Some people would put the maximum possible positive spin on this, whereas I'm struggling to see it as anything other than another comment that my work is good, but not quite good enough.