After a month's absence from Curry Club on account of our unexpected trip to Toronto, I was determined not to influence the choice of restaurant this time round but we ended up at my favourite Ayo Gurkhali anyway.
I say favourite, but apparently there's a new kid on the block - a fourth curry house has opened in the centre of Wilmslow - which hopefully I'll get the chance to suss out next month. Sounds like an interesting place: it's open all day and serves Indian-themed food that varies to suit the mood, be it breakfast, lunch or evening dinner. It'll have to go some to beat the Gurkhali, but I'll give it a fair hearing. Er, tasting.
Starting the evening off in our traditional haunt - the Bollin Fee - was a revelation too. Not only is their refurbishment complete, providing an altogether plusher experience with its tasteful deep pile carpets, upholstered bar stools (replacing the previous bum-numbers) and subdued mood lighting, but their first-week-of-the-month beer festival continues to go from strength to strength. This month there were seven guest ales to choose from. Almost enough to make me wish I lived in walking distance!
Not sure whether my enjoyment of tonight's main - a return to the well-loved Himalayan Cham-Cham - was blunted by the exotic flavour of my Chicken Sukuti starter (which I had as a main on my previous visit), or whether their standards are slipping. I hope it's not the latter as this has firmly established itself in my top five favourite curry restaurants. Whatever the reason, the Cham-Cham didn't have as much flavour tonight. I'll have to revisit the menu the next time we "try the Gurkhas". There remain at least half-a-dozen appealing dishes on the Specials menu I've not yet tried.
Thursday, November 04, 2010
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Finding amusement in simple things
I wouldn't dare to claim that I never feel grumpy (at least, not on a post with open comments), but I have always been able to find amusement in small things. I think it's a gift, being able to find something to smile or laugh about in even the darkest times, and it helps to lift a humdrum day out of the ordinary and into the sublime, even if only just into. It's a small glimmer of the kind of spirit that kept the Chilean miners going, and helps most of us get through the boring work day. Without it, we would be that other kind of people. The kind who growl and scowl their way through life, determined to look on the black side and make everyone else endure that black side too. The kind you find on, say, the London Underground.
With one massive decorating project ahead of me, and about a dozen smaller "finishing off" jobs still hanging over from earlier projects, we've been to B&Q for the last two Saturdays on the run. Exactly the kind of mundane trip that provides the opportunity to exercise a finely-honed sense of the ridiculous.
First visit we were amused to notice that someone had been at the sticky letters (those you might use, for instance, to spell out your house name if you were pretentious enough to have a named house - although obviously not that pretentious if you were considering naming it with sticky letters) and had rearranged the first row of letters to spell C O C K.
On our second visit - last Saturday - one of the things on the list was a black bucket to replace the one I'd "lent" to the builders and never got back. It's the kind of thing that - being not electrical, or illuminatory, or woody, or decorative, or (particularly) gardeny - doesn't have a natural home among the labyrinthine shelves, so we scoured the aisles for several minutes looking for them... in vain. We then repeated our aisle-scouring activities in the hope of finding a B&Q operative of whom we could enquire the location of the buckets. Rounding a corner into the very last aisle, we spotted a group of three operatives enjoying a cosy chat. They were standing next to a large pile of black plastic buckets.
With one massive decorating project ahead of me, and about a dozen smaller "finishing off" jobs still hanging over from earlier projects, we've been to B&Q for the last two Saturdays on the run. Exactly the kind of mundane trip that provides the opportunity to exercise a finely-honed sense of the ridiculous.
First visit we were amused to notice that someone had been at the sticky letters (those you might use, for instance, to spell out your house name if you were pretentious enough to have a named house - although obviously not that pretentious if you were considering naming it with sticky letters) and had rearranged the first row of letters to spell C O C K.
On our second visit - last Saturday - one of the things on the list was a black bucket to replace the one I'd "lent" to the builders and never got back. It's the kind of thing that - being not electrical, or illuminatory, or woody, or decorative, or (particularly) gardeny - doesn't have a natural home among the labyrinthine shelves, so we scoured the aisles for several minutes looking for them... in vain. We then repeated our aisle-scouring activities in the hope of finding a B&Q operative of whom we could enquire the location of the buckets. Rounding a corner into the very last aisle, we spotted a group of three operatives enjoying a cosy chat. They were standing next to a large pile of black plastic buckets.
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
One Thing
I think I've discovered a natural law. One of those like Sod's Law, or Gunnersen's Law, or Sattinger's Law. I hesitate to name it Digger's Law, because I'm not certain it has remained undiscovered until now. But I could perhaps call it the Law of Single Omission.
It goes something like this. If there are a number of things to be done, where "things" can be any list of objects or tasks and "to be done" is the action you are performing on them, then if your concentration lapses at any point there will always be one thing left over at the end.
Thus there is always one thing left to wash up after you've let the water out of the sink. Probably sitting on the cooker behind you rather than on the draining board.
And after you've put that shopping list back in your pocket, assuming there are so few items left on it you'll be able to remember them all, you'll get home to find there's one thing left you didn't buy.
It goes something like this. If there are a number of things to be done, where "things" can be any list of objects or tasks and "to be done" is the action you are performing on them, then if your concentration lapses at any point there will always be one thing left over at the end.
Thus there is always one thing left to wash up after you've let the water out of the sink. Probably sitting on the cooker behind you rather than on the draining board.
And after you've put that shopping list back in your pocket, assuming there are so few items left on it you'll be able to remember them all, you'll get home to find there's one thing left you didn't buy.
Monday, November 01, 2010
What is it with scaffolders?
We've had scaffolding up twice since we've lived here. The first time, when we had the roof replaced, it stayed up for several weeks after the work was finished, and wasn't taken down until we'd prompted and poked and urged and pleaded several times.
As I mentioned at the time, I find it hard to relax properly when the house is surrounded by scaffolding. First floor windows in older properties, inevitably, are not as secure as ground floor ones. They don't have to be. Opportunist burglars don't carry ladders, and even planned burglaries don't usually involve clambering in through an upper-storey window. So I prefer to get it down as soon as practicable once the work is completed.
Our second experience of scaffolding has, so far, been if anything even worse than the first. Admittedly it's not all round the house this time - we've had the gable end repointed - but it is full height and it has been here since the middle of August.
The work was completed before our recent visit to Toronto, so as we were gone for 12 days we fully expected to find it gone on our return. No such luck. A phone call to the builder revealed he was just as surprised as we were, since he'd spoken to the scaffold guy before we went away. After chasing him, we were promised it would be gone by the end of that week. Then by the following Tuesday. No, Friday.
By now the excuses were coming thick and fast. He'd been on holiday, and his men had let the jobs pile up while he was away. He didn't know why it hadn't been done but he'd chase them up. They'd been onto our road and taken down the wrong set of scaffolding from someone else's house (!).
Finally with dark talk of "repercussions" and penalty payments, we were finally promised - no, really - that it would come down on Friday last. And did it? Well when the clock had ticked around to half past two in the afternoon I did begin to lose hope. They eventually arrived just before 3pm. It was gone by 5.
See, as far as I can make out, the thing with scaffold is, you pay for it up front and they come and erect it when you say you need it. But from that point on, there is absolutely no incentive for them to remove it, until the scaffold firm themselves need it for another job. It's like your house is their storage yard, often with built-in advertising. Removing the scaffold takes time and effort, and they've already had their money, so it's time and effort they feel they're not getting paid for.
If we need any more scaffold in the future I think I'll be making sure the penalty clauses are written in from the start, or hold back some money until they take their gear away. Tch.
As I mentioned at the time, I find it hard to relax properly when the house is surrounded by scaffolding. First floor windows in older properties, inevitably, are not as secure as ground floor ones. They don't have to be. Opportunist burglars don't carry ladders, and even planned burglaries don't usually involve clambering in through an upper-storey window. So I prefer to get it down as soon as practicable once the work is completed.
Our second experience of scaffolding has, so far, been if anything even worse than the first. Admittedly it's not all round the house this time - we've had the gable end repointed - but it is full height and it has been here since the middle of August.
The work was completed before our recent visit to Toronto, so as we were gone for 12 days we fully expected to find it gone on our return. No such luck. A phone call to the builder revealed he was just as surprised as we were, since he'd spoken to the scaffold guy before we went away. After chasing him, we were promised it would be gone by the end of that week. Then by the following Tuesday. No, Friday.
By now the excuses were coming thick and fast. He'd been on holiday, and his men had let the jobs pile up while he was away. He didn't know why it hadn't been done but he'd chase them up. They'd been onto our road and taken down the wrong set of scaffolding from someone else's house (!).
Finally with dark talk of "repercussions" and penalty payments, we were finally promised - no, really - that it would come down on Friday last. And did it? Well when the clock had ticked around to half past two in the afternoon I did begin to lose hope. They eventually arrived just before 3pm. It was gone by 5.
See, as far as I can make out, the thing with scaffold is, you pay for it up front and they come and erect it when you say you need it. But from that point on, there is absolutely no incentive for them to remove it, until the scaffold firm themselves need it for another job. It's like your house is their storage yard, often with built-in advertising. Removing the scaffold takes time and effort, and they've already had their money, so it's time and effort they feel they're not getting paid for.
If we need any more scaffold in the future I think I'll be making sure the penalty clauses are written in from the start, or hold back some money until they take their gear away. Tch.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Movie Review: Paranormal Activity
Second reason: it's made in that Blair-Witch-Project, Cloverfield-esque way with the pretend hand-held home camcorder amateur video shtick which, frankly, doesn't work for me at all. If I wanted to watch home movies I could go to any one of a dozen friends' houses and watch their crap. And in many cases their "crap" would actually be way better than this stuff that only pretends to be hand made in some kind of false, arty way that is just irritating.
So I wasn't expecting much, as you've no doubt realised by now. So why did I go? Well, it's Halloween for one. It was a Chorlton Players fundraiser - their first movie night - for two, and I like to support their efforts. And it was a girls' weekend for three. I often feel like we don't "do" much, so when a convenient local opportunity arises to do something a little (only a little) out of the ordinary, I don't like to pass it up.
And why Paranormal Activity? Well there was a choice of movies on offer which was put to a web vote, and this one won. I'll come clean and add that it got my vote too, because it was pretty much the only one on the list I hadn't seen before (alongside such staples as Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, Halloween, and American Werewolf in London, all of which I've seen a thousand times), and I didn't know about the Cloverfield production thing at the time.
I called this a "movie review" and so far this post has all been set-up, so let's get to the review part. It was OK.
What, you wanted more? Oh, alright. For much of the first half I could hardly hear a word they were saying. I think that's another aspect of the faux-home made thing; that they deliberately muddy the sound and mess with the levels so it's sometimes too loud, sometimes too quiet. Or maybe I'm just going deaf. Anyway, that. And it took forever to get started. OK, OK, I get it: there's something weird going on in the house and you're going to try to get it on tape. Jeez, does it really take twenty minutes (or something) to get that message across? Yes, there's some spooky stuff that sets your head tingling a bit, but the hard core frighteners, such as they are, are all in the last quarter (of what is really a very short movie - 86 minutes). I guess it's an attempt to build up the tension, but it's a bit weak. So, on balance, a bit meh, slow and boring for most of the first half, approaching interesting for most of the second half, with some occasional high points.
But fair play, for a film that only cost $11,000 to make and was filmed over 10 days in the director's own house, not a bad first effort. Be interesting to see what this guy is making in ten years' time, when you think how Spielberg got started. At least he didn't go down the gorefest route. I think a slightly less predictable ending would have been better, but it wasn't all bad.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Bloody hell #2
I had a text yesterday from the Blood Donor service warning that stocks were low and asking for my help. So I popped along to their website (because I'm one of those shy retiring types who prefers to do things by typing and reading rather than talking to a real person on the phone) to see what was afoot.
As it happened I ended up calling them anyway because I had to register to use the site and their security procedures meant I had to wait to receive my login details through the post before I could do anything useful online, but that's not the point of this post.
No, the point is the headline text that greets you when you visit the blood web site:
96% of us rely on the other 4% to give blood.
What? Are they serious? Don't get me wrong I'm very proud to be part of that 4% but, really? Every single scheduled and emergency operation throughout the UK relies on just FOUR percent of the population for its blood? Crikey. Come on you lot, get off your arses and get on your backs and get donating! Wimps.
Friday, October 29, 2010
OB
I may have ranted about this before (although I've checked, and I can't put my finger on the post at the moment), but one edition of the evening news last week really brought it into sharp focus. The problem? Outside broadcasts as a way of lending faux "realism" to news items. It does my head in on a regular basis, but on this particular night we were treated to three in quick succession.
Coverage of the inquest into the London Tube bombings? Let's have the reporter standing outside Aldgate tube station.
Wayne Rooney possibly leaving Man U? Stand outside Old Trafford.
Reporting the latest on the Government Spending Review? Stand outside Number 10.
WTF? The BBC have just had a 5-year licence freeze imposed and are supposedly wringing their hands trying to work out how to save money. Well apart from the obvious - cutting the salaries of prats like Graham Norton, Chrisses Moyles and Evans, et al - you could start by bringing these reporters in out of the cold. It adds a sum total of zero importance, content, or gravitas to a news report to have a reporter on location if all they are doing is standing and talking to the camera. They may as well be in the studio. They'd be warmer, happier and more relaxed. The viewing public wouldn't be subjected to that annoying satellite delay between the anchor handing over to the reporter and the reporter hearing that handover and starting his/her report. And most importantly in these straitened times, the Beeb would save a whole bundle of cash.
I don't know who thought up the idea of OB as a generic news coverage staple, probably someone with a vested interest in increasing the number of OBs, but it was a bad idea right from the off and it should be stopped. Now.
Coverage of the inquest into the London Tube bombings? Let's have the reporter standing outside Aldgate tube station.
Wayne Rooney possibly leaving Man U? Stand outside Old Trafford.
Reporting the latest on the Government Spending Review? Stand outside Number 10.
WTF? The BBC have just had a 5-year licence freeze imposed and are supposedly wringing their hands trying to work out how to save money. Well apart from the obvious - cutting the salaries of prats like Graham Norton, Chrisses Moyles and Evans, et al - you could start by bringing these reporters in out of the cold. It adds a sum total of zero importance, content, or gravitas to a news report to have a reporter on location if all they are doing is standing and talking to the camera. They may as well be in the studio. They'd be warmer, happier and more relaxed. The viewing public wouldn't be subjected to that annoying satellite delay between the anchor handing over to the reporter and the reporter hearing that handover and starting his/her report. And most importantly in these straitened times, the Beeb would save a whole bundle of cash.
I don't know who thought up the idea of OB as a generic news coverage staple, probably someone with a vested interest in increasing the number of OBs, but it was a bad idea right from the off and it should be stopped. Now.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Kindle Edition
November's book club selection, voted in last night, is The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. Many thousands of reviews of this online, it was highly controversial and acclaimed when first published, it's been around for 25 years, and it was a runaway winner in our monthly poll, the other choices only managing one vote each. Sounds like it will be a cracking read, if a little... grim... in parts.
So here I am on Amazon first thing this morning, putting in my order, rather disturbed to discover the following...
Formats:
Kindle Edition £4.51
Paperback £4.75
Huh? You're telling me all that paper manufacture, typesetting, print run, ink, cutting, binding, packing into boxes, shipping to the distributor, storage, shipping to the store, that is no longer necessary because of "the wonder" of Kindle... all that... translates into a retail saving of 24 PENCE???
Good grief.
Not that saving money is the main reason for buying a Kindle, but I'd have expected a bigger differential. At that rate and assuming I went for the non-3G version, I'd have to buy 455 books before I'd made back the outlay. Something which, at recent rates of purchase, would take about 20 years!
So here I am on Amazon first thing this morning, putting in my order, rather disturbed to discover the following...
Formats:
Kindle Edition £4.51
Paperback £4.75
Huh? You're telling me all that paper manufacture, typesetting, print run, ink, cutting, binding, packing into boxes, shipping to the distributor, storage, shipping to the store, that is no longer necessary because of "the wonder" of Kindle... all that... translates into a retail saving of 24 PENCE???
Good grief.
Not that saving money is the main reason for buying a Kindle, but I'd have expected a bigger differential. At that rate and assuming I went for the non-3G version, I'd have to buy 455 books before I'd made back the outlay. Something which, at recent rates of purchase, would take about 20 years!
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Book Review: The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
I think the voting went so massively in favour of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher because it's based on a true story. Personally I'd have preferred Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone. I saw it dramatised on BBC Children's telly when I was a boy but somehow never got around to reading the book. Anyway, this is what we were stuck with, and as it turned out "stuck with" is the right way to describe it.
I wrote "based on a true story" above but it would be more accurate to say the book recounts the true story. More or less verbatim. With just enough additional prose to tie all the pieces together, it assembles the facts from newspaper reports, police notes, eye witness interviews, court transcriptions and such other information as is attainable through research, and then presents them chronologically with minimal interpretation and virtually no embellishment. What I had thought would make the book interesting and unique - the fact that it represents itself as the first true detective story (at least insofar as it occurs fairly close to the formation of Scotland Yard, when detectives were first invented) and the beginning of a cultural icon that remains popular to this day: the mystery of a murder in a locked house with multiple occupants - actually didn't help to make the story compelling at all, for me.
The Kent family - a complex set up involving a large number of children and step-children along with the master of the house, his second wife (originally the nanny) and their coterie of servants - go to bed one night and wake up the following morning to the discovery that one of them - the youngest - has been taken from his bed and murdered.
So the book unravels as a series of events, observations on various character traits of the players, a little bit of history of each as far as it's relevant to the story (and, later, straying into aspects totally irrelevant), in a way that I found almost entirely unprepossessing and worthy of only the most marginal interest. I suppose it didn't help that I'd worked out who the murderer was by about halfway through the first chapter, and only the small question of finding out whether or not I was right kept me going. Once again the book's sleeve is full of reviews calling it "absolutely riveting", "brilliant" and "gripping" but naturally the publishers aren't going to print sleeve notes revealing it to be "boring", "tedious" or "terminally dull" are they?
The author makes no attempt to heighten the mystery, or represent the chief detective - the eponymous Whicher - as anything other than a methodically plodding introvert with about as much charisma as a bowl of porridge, whose previous "successes" as a detective uniformly arise from his habit of deciding who did it and then badgering them until they confess. I begin to see who the TV detective Columbo was based on.
The "revelations" about the private life of the Kent family are dreadfully predictable and once the murderer has confessed and been imprisoned the book degenerates into a chronicle of how that prison time is spent, and what happens subsequently to all the other detectives, lawyers and family members over the next (would you believe it?) hundred years. The whole work could easily have been shortened by a third, which might have helped the crawling pace of the narrative. In the end the only positive thing I can find to say about it is that I was surprised by the ending - but only because it came much sooner than expected, the last quarter of the book being made up of footnotes and bibliography.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Good morning! This is your early morning call
Sunday. 7.45am. Not the time of day (or even day of week) you'd normally expect to receive a phone call from your mother. Especially one that goes: "I tried to call you yesterday and got a message saying 'the number you have dialled is not recognised' so I thought you'd emigrated to Canada and not told me."
Closely followed by the recently popular "I thought I was going to have to change my will."
Not sure if this is deliberate, but there's been an awful lot of talk of changing wills lately. As if the spectre of the loss of my (almost certainly enormous - *koff*) inheritance will be enough to make me toe the line and behave in a more dutiful fashion (by her reckoning).
Sheesh.
Closely followed by the recently popular "I thought I was going to have to change my will."
Not sure if this is deliberate, but there's been an awful lot of talk of changing wills lately. As if the spectre of the loss of my (almost certainly enormous - *koff*) inheritance will be enough to make me toe the line and behave in a more dutiful fashion (by her reckoning).
Sheesh.
Monday, October 25, 2010
First Scrape
It was a bit of a shock to have to scrape the car on the first frosty morning of the season last Thursday, but even worse this morning as temperatures hit -2°C and the scraping was correspondingly more vigorous and knuckle-numbing.
There's only been a few years of my life (I could probably work it out exactly... hang on... *stares at fingers* ... 7) when I've enjoyed the luxury of a garaged car in the winter (and then only after a massive clearout and shelf- and wood store-building operation) and the benefits of that luxury were more than outweighed by the drawbacks in the end (!) but on mornings like this I must admit that a small part of me hankers after structural automotive protection of some kind. Even a car port would be enough to keep the frost off. Probably.
There's only been a few years of my life (I could probably work it out exactly... hang on... *stares at fingers* ... 7) when I've enjoyed the luxury of a garaged car in the winter (and then only after a massive clearout and shelf- and wood store-building operation) and the benefits of that luxury were more than outweighed by the drawbacks in the end (!) but on mornings like this I must admit that a small part of me hankers after structural automotive protection of some kind. Even a car port would be enough to keep the frost off. Probably.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Commercial-Time
I've been trying to work out why I found the adverts on Canadian TV so intrusive and irritating. Canadian Broadcasting limits advertising to 15 mins per hour on commercial channels, but "only" 12 minutes per hour on "Specialty" channels. However those numbers apply to real commercials - i.e. those advertising product. From my admittedly brief exposure, it doesn't cover trailers. And it doesn't excuse the extremely annoying habit - something we don't have in the UK - of running the same ad twice in the same break - sometimes only 30 seconds apart - or running very similar ads, such as hair care products for two different types of hair, which have almost identical wording, serially. The worst we ever get is a repeat of the last few seconds of an ad - these agency types have learned their lessons about the way memory works - to "fix" the product in viewers' minds, but these almost always run at the end of the ad break, separated from the original by up to three or four minutes.
One evening I finally managed to watch a movie from beginning to end. Aliens. It was scheduled to air over three hours, which given its posted running time on IMDb of 137 mins leaves 43 mins for ads - 14.33 per hour. But they're not evenly split. The first hour felt almost like UK television. The first break didn't come until 20 past the hour, and the next was twenty minutes later, each one showing only 3-4 minutes of ads. I should have been wise. As the film continued, the frequency of breaks increased, to the point where the last half-hour of the film suffered three breaks of five minutes each.
I have no idea how the law constrains the incidence of ads. My Aliens experience would suggest that rather than being a rigid per-hour limit, that "15 minutes per hour" is an average. Being allowed to relax the grip of ads in some hours only to tighten it fiercely later, destroys any enjoyment.
I used to think I'd be able to live in Canada. That I'd actually quite enjoy it. But if I ever had to, I don't think I'd be watching any live TV. I'd be PVR-ing everything and spending a lot of time with my finger on the FF button!!
One evening I finally managed to watch a movie from beginning to end. Aliens. It was scheduled to air over three hours, which given its posted running time on IMDb of 137 mins leaves 43 mins for ads - 14.33 per hour. But they're not evenly split. The first hour felt almost like UK television. The first break didn't come until 20 past the hour, and the next was twenty minutes later, each one showing only 3-4 minutes of ads. I should have been wise. As the film continued, the frequency of breaks increased, to the point where the last half-hour of the film suffered three breaks of five minutes each.
I have no idea how the law constrains the incidence of ads. My Aliens experience would suggest that rather than being a rigid per-hour limit, that "15 minutes per hour" is an average. Being allowed to relax the grip of ads in some hours only to tighten it fiercely later, destroys any enjoyment.
I used to think I'd be able to live in Canada. That I'd actually quite enjoy it. But if I ever had to, I don't think I'd be watching any live TV. I'd be PVR-ing everything and spending a lot of time with my finger on the FF button!!
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Used Dust Collectors
One of the most depressing aspects of our recent trip to Toronto was discovering how devalued an extensive array of "collectible" plates can become over a period of 30 or so years. It's not the intrinsic value - or lack of it - that depressed me. I hardly gave a second thought to the money side of it. What I found much more upsetting was how easy it is for someone, even someone of above average intelligence, to be convinced by well-meaning friends that something is worth collecting, and will appreciate in value. And thinking how disillusioned he must have been as the reality of their value slowly dawned.
eBay is saturated with these things, more often than not being offered at around 5 dollars (for something that could have originally cost anything from 50 to 150 dollars) and with no bids. To be sure of a sale at the best price, collectors are forced to keep all the original boxes (I found three large cartons full of them in the garage) and paperwork. This paperwork, tricked out in full Reader's Digest or Franklin Mint stylee, declares their "certification" of being part of a "limited edition" the limit, in most cases, being a run of 150 firing days. Imagine how many plates a modern ceramics factory is capable of churning out in 150 days and you'll get an idea of just how limited these editions were. Or not. Even with all the appropriate certification and authentic packaging the value, 20-30 years on, is on average less than a quarter of what you paid, assuming you can find a buyer at all.
I did eventually find a dealer who advertised that they were prepared to take on plate collections from estate sales. I emailed them a list and received a reply a couple of days after returning home, to the effect that they were already "fully stocked" with those items.
I did enjoy one moment of delicious irony though. While I was searching for some idea of how to get rid of the collection in the simplest way that would maximise the return, one of the pages I ended up at carried an ad for used dust collectors. Lower down I found a second ad, this time for "quality" dust collectors. Yes, I thought, I'm clearly in the right place.
eBay is saturated with these things, more often than not being offered at around 5 dollars (for something that could have originally cost anything from 50 to 150 dollars) and with no bids. To be sure of a sale at the best price, collectors are forced to keep all the original boxes (I found three large cartons full of them in the garage) and paperwork. This paperwork, tricked out in full Reader's Digest or Franklin Mint stylee, declares their "certification" of being part of a "limited edition" the limit, in most cases, being a run of 150 firing days. Imagine how many plates a modern ceramics factory is capable of churning out in 150 days and you'll get an idea of just how limited these editions were. Or not. Even with all the appropriate certification and authentic packaging the value, 20-30 years on, is on average less than a quarter of what you paid, assuming you can find a buyer at all.
I did eventually find a dealer who advertised that they were prepared to take on plate collections from estate sales. I emailed them a list and received a reply a couple of days after returning home, to the effect that they were already "fully stocked" with those items.
I did enjoy one moment of delicious irony though. While I was searching for some idea of how to get rid of the collection in the simplest way that would maximise the return, one of the pages I ended up at carried an ad for used dust collectors. Lower down I found a second ad, this time for "quality" dust collectors. Yes, I thought, I'm clearly in the right place.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Pensions again
At a time when I'm feeling particularly sore about my own pension - having had it ripped out from under me after 33 years by a company that took years of "pension holidays", and variously used the fund to pay off criminally negligent senior executives and to bankroll redundancy programmes - here comes a Panorama expose showing that I wouldn't have been much better off in a privately-held scheme.
Panorama: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/10_october/04/panorama.shtml
Pay in 120,000 over 40 years; lose almost 100,000 in fees and commissions.
How is it even legal to have 80% of your money taken away from a pot that is supposed to look after you in your retirement? Why are the fees so high? Because the average length any particular share is held is now one year, and buying and selling the porfolio contents - the "churn" - attracts bumper brokerage charges and fees. And then there's the bonuses to pay, even if the fund hasn't performed well. And finally - surprise surprise - many of the investments involve kick-backs to the fund managers, incentivising them (see how effortlessly he invents new verbs!) to leave your money in under-performing investments because they pay the biggest bribes.
Yet another example of how the financial world stinks, and lines its own pockets at the expense of the ordinary guy struggling to put enough by to be comfortable in old age. Is it just me, or is this kind of thing becoming WAY too common these days?
Panorama: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/10_october/04/panorama.shtml
Pay in 120,000 over 40 years; lose almost 100,000 in fees and commissions.
How is it even legal to have 80% of your money taken away from a pot that is supposed to look after you in your retirement? Why are the fees so high? Because the average length any particular share is held is now one year, and buying and selling the porfolio contents - the "churn" - attracts bumper brokerage charges and fees. And then there's the bonuses to pay, even if the fund hasn't performed well. And finally - surprise surprise - many of the investments involve kick-backs to the fund managers, incentivising them (see how effortlessly he invents new verbs!) to leave your money in under-performing investments because they pay the biggest bribes.
Yet another example of how the financial world stinks, and lines its own pockets at the expense of the ordinary guy struggling to put enough by to be comfortable in old age. Is it just me, or is this kind of thing becoming WAY too common these days?
Thursday, October 21, 2010
The absurdity of following
Bearing in mind that we've recently been to Toronto and, as always with holidays, have therefore been spending more time "out and about" than usual - shopping, drinking, eating, watching the unfamiliar TV - it's as if the culture was thrown into a kind of relief by virtue of it being (only slightly, agreed) alien.
Somehow the brand names on the clothes, the celebrity magazines telling you how to be like someone, the adverts exhorting you to drink the same vodka, or coke, or juice as your "hero", all seemed more than usually visible, and definitely more than usually intrusive.
Isn't it the ultimate in sad that there are people who really believe aping the products that someone successful uses will give them their life or in some ill-defined and abstract way make the wannabes more like the... bes?
Free advertising, reflected cool. It's all shit, really.
Somehow the brand names on the clothes, the celebrity magazines telling you how to be like someone, the adverts exhorting you to drink the same vodka, or coke, or juice as your "hero", all seemed more than usually visible, and definitely more than usually intrusive.
Isn't it the ultimate in sad that there are people who really believe aping the products that someone successful uses will give them their life or in some ill-defined and abstract way make the wannabes more like the... bes?
Free advertising, reflected cool. It's all shit, really.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Notes on a trip to Toronto
I've been away. We've been away. I did have access to a puter during this hiatus, but I didn't feel much like blogging (apart from that piece about Bob Edwards), and to be honest I haven't felt much like it since we got back (a week ago last Tuesday - October 12 - in the early hours of the morning. Jet lag? Maybe, a little. Holiday? Maybe, a little. Blogging can feel like work at times, which since I still entertain aspirations to be a full-time writer should probably be classed as A Good Thing, but who wants to work when they're on holiday? Especially when there's all that Coronation Street, EastEnders, Casualty, X Factor, Strictly and Spooks on the PVR that needs catching up with?
I wouldn't want to give the impression that we spent the whole of our remaining six holiday days in front of the TV. No, we went for the occasional walk. Did a bit of grocery shopping. Had lunch. But there was an awful lot of telly, it's true.
I think I might have been in awe of the raw *quality* of it all. After 12 days of Canadian TV I was starting to feel a bit like a vegetable. After being in a pressure cooker. And then a blender. And having been forced through a sieve. The chance to watch some British TV was like stepping into cool water after the burning heat of the desert.
So I made some notes in here while I was there (hence the title of this post) about my general impression of things that have changed in the five or six years since I was last in Toronto. Some of these will eventually be fully fledged posts in their own right. What remains in here is just jottings really.
The Americanisation of Canadian news - oh my GAAAHHD. I don't ever remember it being so breathless and repetitive. Maybe I was watching a US cable channel. Can't remember. Actually a lot of the really bad stuff I sat through WAS American. Endless sport, gameshows where the contestants are forced to clap incessantly like performing seals (Wheel of Fortune), adverts repeated twice in quick succession in the same break, breaks five minutes apart.
Cigarettes behind the wall. Apparently they've passed a law now preventing the display of tobacco products in corner shops, newsagents, convenience stores, etc. So instead they have row upon row of little grey plastic shutters behind the counter, which the cigarettes hide behind until the shop keeper rescues them at the request of the customer. I'd be interested to see the statistics on what effect this has on smoker numbers and consumption.
Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe the reason for our trip hung over our entire stay, leeching out much of the fun, but whatever the cause, this time round, I found Canada lacked a lot of the magic that I've come to expect from it.
I wouldn't want to give the impression that we spent the whole of our remaining six holiday days in front of the TV. No, we went for the occasional walk. Did a bit of grocery shopping. Had lunch. But there was an awful lot of telly, it's true.
I think I might have been in awe of the raw *quality* of it all. After 12 days of Canadian TV I was starting to feel a bit like a vegetable. After being in a pressure cooker. And then a blender. And having been forced through a sieve. The chance to watch some British TV was like stepping into cool water after the burning heat of the desert.
So I made some notes in here while I was there (hence the title of this post) about my general impression of things that have changed in the five or six years since I was last in Toronto. Some of these will eventually be fully fledged posts in their own right. What remains in here is just jottings really.
The Americanisation of Canadian news - oh my GAAAHHD. I don't ever remember it being so breathless and repetitive. Maybe I was watching a US cable channel. Can't remember. Actually a lot of the really bad stuff I sat through WAS American. Endless sport, gameshows where the contestants are forced to clap incessantly like performing seals (Wheel of Fortune), adverts repeated twice in quick succession in the same break, breaks five minutes apart.
The litter. We've had this problem in the UK for as long as I can remember, but I always had this mental image of Canada being *clean*. I don't know if they've had to cut expenditure on street cleaners, or whether the younger generation is going the same way as much of England's youth - dropping their drinks cans and candy wrappers as soon as they've consumed the contents, no matter where that happens to be (I drove behind a carful of youths the other day, who seemed to think it was great fun to continue scouring the inside of the vehicle for bits of rubbish which they then dumped out of the windows) - or a combination of the two, but the streets around where we stayed were definitely besmirched.
Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe the reason for our trip hung over our entire stay, leeching out much of the fun, but whatever the cause, this time round, I found Canada lacked a lot of the magic that I've come to expect from it.
Monday, October 04, 2010
Congratulations to Robert Edwards
Bob Edwards' pioneering work into in-vitro fertilisation began in the 1950s, and its first fruit "ripened" (in the form of "test-tube baby" Louise Brown) in 1978. He must be delighted at today's news that he's been awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine, but I have to ask: why has it taken more than 30 years?
I suppose it could have been worse. At least the Nobel committee didn't leave it until he was dead, like his research colleague Patrick Steptoe. Their story contains all the traditional elements of small guys with a vision fighting against opposition from all sides - church, government, scientific establishment, holders of research funds - and not giving up in the face of continual adversity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm" but enthusiasm is only one facet of success. An even greater ingredient is tenacity. Something Edwards and Steptoe had in spades, and which is embodied in many other well-used quotes. My personal favourite is good old Thomas Edison and his approach to inventing the electric lightbulb. He didn't view his (perhaps apocryphal) 10,000 unsuccessful attempts as failures, but merely treated each as a discovery of one more way that didn't work. A stepping stone to eventual success.
So whether your particular challenge is getting a book published, or buying a house, or finding a job, or trying to manage the estate of a deceased relative makes no difference. Just keep on keeping on.
I suppose it could have been worse. At least the Nobel committee didn't leave it until he was dead, like his research colleague Patrick Steptoe. Their story contains all the traditional elements of small guys with a vision fighting against opposition from all sides - church, government, scientific establishment, holders of research funds - and not giving up in the face of continual adversity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm" but enthusiasm is only one facet of success. An even greater ingredient is tenacity. Something Edwards and Steptoe had in spades, and which is embodied in many other well-used quotes. My personal favourite is good old Thomas Edison and his approach to inventing the electric lightbulb. He didn't view his (perhaps apocryphal) 10,000 unsuccessful attempts as failures, but merely treated each as a discovery of one more way that didn't work. A stepping stone to eventual success.
So whether your particular challenge is getting a book published, or buying a house, or finding a job, or trying to manage the estate of a deceased relative makes no difference. Just keep on keeping on.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Bloody Hell
I've had a gmail.com email address for almost exactly two months. Two months and two days, to be precise. I've never, so far, used it for anything. No subscriptions, no web forms, no purchases. I've only even disclosed what it is to very close family and friends, none of whom has ever used it.
I was spammed on it just now.
How does that work then? I only created the bloody thing as insurance against the day (rapidly approaching) when I'd have to abandon my main addresses at johnberesford.com.
It's about time something sensible, serious, and technologically impregnable was done to sort out flippin' spammers once and for all.
I was spammed on it just now.
How does that work then? I only created the bloody thing as insurance against the day (rapidly approaching) when I'd have to abandon my main addresses at johnberesford.com.
It's about time something sensible, serious, and technologically impregnable was done to sort out flippin' spammers once and for all.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Flasher
I've long been of the opinion that just because you CAN do something, it doesn't mean you HAVE to.
If only BBC programme designers shared that opinion.
Recently we've been subjected to a series of really annoying animations on BBC News output. Whenever they put up a list to underline whatever point the talking head is making, each list item is accompanied by a matched pair of brackets - [ ] - that appear over the middle of the item and then gradually fade out as they slide apart heading for the start and end of the word respectively.
This is the wonderful world of Flash animation. A tool that has its place (probably) and can be very effective (occasionally) but which is so overused and ubiquitous now that it's become a joke. It is no longer clever or cool, assuming it ever was. It's been used in the title sequences of dramas for several years, as the actors names slide over each other in opposite directions, fading in or out as necessary. Or expanding as they fade - a trick that belongs in Flash 101.
None of this adds anything to the piece, whether it's a credit sequence or a news graphic or whatever. It's a distraction, and an expensive distraction at that, as it presumably requires the services of a graphic designer. Still, I guess the producers figure they've got all these graphic designers sitting around, right? May as well use them for something. And if you don't need a pie-chart for your particular piece, what are you gonna do? Go on, stick some Flash animation to the viewers. At least the more moronic ones will be impressed.
If only BBC programme designers shared that opinion.
Recently we've been subjected to a series of really annoying animations on BBC News output. Whenever they put up a list to underline whatever point the talking head is making, each list item is accompanied by a matched pair of brackets - [ ] - that appear over the middle of the item and then gradually fade out as they slide apart heading for the start and end of the word respectively.
This is the wonderful world of Flash animation. A tool that has its place (probably) and can be very effective (occasionally) but which is so overused and ubiquitous now that it's become a joke. It is no longer clever or cool, assuming it ever was. It's been used in the title sequences of dramas for several years, as the actors names slide over each other in opposite directions, fading in or out as necessary. Or expanding as they fade - a trick that belongs in Flash 101.
None of this adds anything to the piece, whether it's a credit sequence or a news graphic or whatever. It's a distraction, and an expensive distraction at that, as it presumably requires the services of a graphic designer. Still, I guess the producers figure they've got all these graphic designers sitting around, right? May as well use them for something. And if you don't need a pie-chart for your particular piece, what are you gonna do? Go on, stick some Flash animation to the viewers. At least the more moronic ones will be impressed.
Monday, September 27, 2010
A series of sorry tales
I've been shopping on the Internet for over a decade, almost without incident. It seems either I've been very lucky, or I was saving all my bad luck up for our latest project.
We've been having an en-suite shower room fitted and our online purchases have, to say the least, not been straightforward. My previous successes in the area of online retail have definitely lowered my guard, to the point where I never even think of checking for adverse reviews before using a new supplier. More fool me. I can't work out whether the plumbing supply trade has more than its fair share of incompetents, but such has been our experience so far.
Problem #1: Broken shower tray; strange approach to customer service
We ordered a Coram shower tray and door from a supply company who quoted up to 5 days delivery. I gave the builder an estimate of arrival, to which he worked. It didn't turn up. To be fair, this was partly my fault for misreading the delivery details. It meant 5 *business* days. Buried even further in the small print, news that this countdown didn't start until after the products were shipped, and it had taken them two days to process the order and pick the goods from the warehouse. Hardly Internet speed that, is it?
But the problems didn't really start until the tray arrived. I should have been suspicious at the haste with which the courier dropped the goods off and presented his electronic device to record my signature, but a cursory glance revealed nothing amiss so I signed and he left. Three hours later, when the plumber came to remove the packaging, he discovered a huge chunk missing from one edge of the tray. A piece had been broken off and was rattling around inside the polythene sheet. I thought at first this had happened in transit - a result, perhaps, of heavy braking and the tray careering into another package in the van - but closer inspection showed that the package had previously been opened, and there was no waste trap included with the tray. It looked like a returned product had been recycled without being checked.
I returned to the supplier's website to look up the customer services number and was horrified to find they didn't have one. Policy. To "keep costs down" all customer complaints were handled by email. I emailed them, and proceeded (belatedly) to search out online reviews of the company. What I found sent a cold chill down my spine. Appalling reviews seemed to be the norm, and numbered in the hundreds, with only a handful of notes from satisfied customers. Late, incomplete, or totally absent deliveries, damaged goods, money taken from accounts before goods were shipped and never refunded. Lack of response to complaints. The same story told over and over again.
And then I received a reply to my customer services email. They handled (they said) all contact in the order of receipt (i.e. no attempt to prioritise urgent problems), and my ticket was #126 in the queue. I would receive an update on its progress every two hours until it was answered. Two hours later, I had moved to position #110 in the queue, but by now it was 3pm and they only work until 5. And this on the Friday before Bank Holiday weekend. I passed on the bad news to our plumber and builder, who began the process of scratching heads to work out how they could rejig their schedule to cope with the lack of a tray for what would probably be a minimum of another week.
The day after the holiday, the email countdown resumed. By then we had already investigated alternative suppliers. No local outlets carried stock and it soon became obvious our only recourse was to wait for the original suppliers to deal with the issue. This turned out to be a good thing, as my first contact with the support department that WASN'T a countdown informed me that a replacement would be despatched immediately. I replied that if this second delivery was going to take 9 days, like the first, that was unacceptable. "As a gesture of goodwill" they agreed to upgrade to next-day delivery and sure enough the replacement tray arrived the next day.
So a good result, eventually, but not without a deal of angst and I still wouldn't use them again. If I'd been able to talk to someone on the phone it could have been sorted on the Friday and a replacement delivered Saturday.
Problem #2: "Pedestal" Sink
We ordered a washbasin/toilet combo which came complete with pedestal. An easy assumption then that it had a standard fitting (wall mounted) to go with the pedestal. Wrong! The version supplied was designed to be fitted atop a vanitory unit. Luckily our builder had dealt with such a situation before, as none of us could face another trip around the complaint/replacement loop.
Problem #3: "Chrome" robe hooks
We chose a small (300mm wide) heated towel rail for the small return wall at the side of the shower, and I wanted some robe hooks to clip onto this similar to the one we already have in the main bathroom. I found two suitable designs but the one from taps4less, which because it was "chrome" came in considerably more expensive - like five times - the other, was exactly what I had in mind.
Delivery was swift, as was the disappointment when I opened the package to find the hooks (two of them in the deal) were not solid chrome, nor even chrome plated brass, but that awful faux-chrome plastic that they use for kiddies toys.
A brief sojourn in the online forums yet again revealed one awful review after another, with no evidence that anyone had ever had any satisfaction from long months of complaining. I decided to swallow it. Yet another company I'll never deal with again.
We've been having an en-suite shower room fitted and our online purchases have, to say the least, not been straightforward. My previous successes in the area of online retail have definitely lowered my guard, to the point where I never even think of checking for adverse reviews before using a new supplier. More fool me. I can't work out whether the plumbing supply trade has more than its fair share of incompetents, but such has been our experience so far.
Problem #1: Broken shower tray; strange approach to customer service
We ordered a Coram shower tray and door from a supply company who quoted up to 5 days delivery. I gave the builder an estimate of arrival, to which he worked. It didn't turn up. To be fair, this was partly my fault for misreading the delivery details. It meant 5 *business* days. Buried even further in the small print, news that this countdown didn't start until after the products were shipped, and it had taken them two days to process the order and pick the goods from the warehouse. Hardly Internet speed that, is it?
But the problems didn't really start until the tray arrived. I should have been suspicious at the haste with which the courier dropped the goods off and presented his electronic device to record my signature, but a cursory glance revealed nothing amiss so I signed and he left. Three hours later, when the plumber came to remove the packaging, he discovered a huge chunk missing from one edge of the tray. A piece had been broken off and was rattling around inside the polythene sheet. I thought at first this had happened in transit - a result, perhaps, of heavy braking and the tray careering into another package in the van - but closer inspection showed that the package had previously been opened, and there was no waste trap included with the tray. It looked like a returned product had been recycled without being checked.
I returned to the supplier's website to look up the customer services number and was horrified to find they didn't have one. Policy. To "keep costs down" all customer complaints were handled by email. I emailed them, and proceeded (belatedly) to search out online reviews of the company. What I found sent a cold chill down my spine. Appalling reviews seemed to be the norm, and numbered in the hundreds, with only a handful of notes from satisfied customers. Late, incomplete, or totally absent deliveries, damaged goods, money taken from accounts before goods were shipped and never refunded. Lack of response to complaints. The same story told over and over again.
And then I received a reply to my customer services email. They handled (they said) all contact in the order of receipt (i.e. no attempt to prioritise urgent problems), and my ticket was #126 in the queue. I would receive an update on its progress every two hours until it was answered. Two hours later, I had moved to position #110 in the queue, but by now it was 3pm and they only work until 5. And this on the Friday before Bank Holiday weekend. I passed on the bad news to our plumber and builder, who began the process of scratching heads to work out how they could rejig their schedule to cope with the lack of a tray for what would probably be a minimum of another week.
The day after the holiday, the email countdown resumed. By then we had already investigated alternative suppliers. No local outlets carried stock and it soon became obvious our only recourse was to wait for the original suppliers to deal with the issue. This turned out to be a good thing, as my first contact with the support department that WASN'T a countdown informed me that a replacement would be despatched immediately. I replied that if this second delivery was going to take 9 days, like the first, that was unacceptable. "As a gesture of goodwill" they agreed to upgrade to next-day delivery and sure enough the replacement tray arrived the next day.
So a good result, eventually, but not without a deal of angst and I still wouldn't use them again. If I'd been able to talk to someone on the phone it could have been sorted on the Friday and a replacement delivered Saturday.
Problem #2: "Pedestal" Sink
We ordered a washbasin/toilet combo which came complete with pedestal. An easy assumption then that it had a standard fitting (wall mounted) to go with the pedestal. Wrong! The version supplied was designed to be fitted atop a vanitory unit. Luckily our builder had dealt with such a situation before, as none of us could face another trip around the complaint/replacement loop.
Problem #3: "Chrome" robe hooks
We chose a small (300mm wide) heated towel rail for the small return wall at the side of the shower, and I wanted some robe hooks to clip onto this similar to the one we already have in the main bathroom. I found two suitable designs but the one from taps4less, which because it was "chrome" came in considerably more expensive - like five times - the other, was exactly what I had in mind.
Delivery was swift, as was the disappointment when I opened the package to find the hooks (two of them in the deal) were not solid chrome, nor even chrome plated brass, but that awful faux-chrome plastic that they use for kiddies toys.
A brief sojourn in the online forums yet again revealed one awful review after another, with no evidence that anyone had ever had any satisfaction from long months of complaining. I decided to swallow it. Yet another company I'll never deal with again.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
A Grizzly tale
Just back from another get-together with mates in Nottingham, where as usual a good time was had by all.
The festivities were not dampened at all by the weather, or my discovery a few minutes after arrival of another slow leak in one of my tyres, and were only slightly blunted by the absence of one of the couples.
This time round we enjoyed the hospitality of someone who hasn't hosted before (personal reasons that it would be inappropriate to bore you with) and who did an excellent job of not allowing his self-confessed lack of culinary accomplishment get in the way of a good party. He proved perfectly capable of (a) preparing enough garlic bread to sink the Bismarck, and (b) assembling a fine selection of takeaway flyers that empowered us to choose some of the most intensely cheesy pizza I have ever feasted on. Way to go, Griz.
The festivities were not dampened at all by the weather, or my discovery a few minutes after arrival of another slow leak in one of my tyres, and were only slightly blunted by the absence of one of the couples.
This time round we enjoyed the hospitality of someone who hasn't hosted before (personal reasons that it would be inappropriate to bore you with) and who did an excellent job of not allowing his self-confessed lack of culinary accomplishment get in the way of a good party. He proved perfectly capable of (a) preparing enough garlic bread to sink the Bismarck, and (b) assembling a fine selection of takeaway flyers that empowered us to choose some of the most intensely cheesy pizza I have ever feasted on. Way to go, Griz.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Sometimes, the little guy wins
Just been reading a weekly news breakdown on the Guardian website. In among the headlines of Vince Cable's conference speech and Fatty Moyles' BBC Radio One rant, is the story of Paul Taylor, a 61-year-old widower who this week won a fight he began in 1995 to buy his council house under the right-to-buy scheme.
Back then the local authority refused the sale, arguing the house stood on consecrated land and also had a public footpath running through the garden. Undeterred, Taylor took a law degree and eventually was able to prove the house is built on separate land, and has no legal right of way through the garden.
The courts awarded him the right to buy the house (current value £350,000) at its 1995 market price, less the right-to-buy discount for long-term tenancy - in his case 30% - which reduced the price to £63,000.
It gets better. On top of that, he won back payment of rent paid since the fight began in 1995. A total of £36,000. Way to go, Paul. Wonder if he's now going to sue them for wasted time, distress, psychological trauma and hair loss? Be a shame to let that law degree go to waste.
Back then the local authority refused the sale, arguing the house stood on consecrated land and also had a public footpath running through the garden. Undeterred, Taylor took a law degree and eventually was able to prove the house is built on separate land, and has no legal right of way through the garden.
The courts awarded him the right to buy the house (current value £350,000) at its 1995 market price, less the right-to-buy discount for long-term tenancy - in his case 30% - which reduced the price to £63,000.
It gets better. On top of that, he won back payment of rent paid since the fight began in 1995. A total of £36,000. Way to go, Paul. Wonder if he's now going to sue them for wasted time, distress, psychological trauma and hair loss? Be a shame to let that law degree go to waste.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Silent Key VE3QF
I've never known much about amateur radio, but the little I do know has always interested me. Whenever I think about it, it's with a feeling that if I'd been born one generation earlier it would have been something I'd have been into. My existing penchant for chat, on IRC and now more modern alternatives, is easily interpretable as a leaning towards communication with new and interesting people in exotic places all over the world, and amateur radio was always the best - indeed only - way to do this in the years before the Internet.
I've never known much about the man who I liked to think of as my father-in-law, but the little I do know has always interested me. Whenever I think about him, it's with a feeling that if I'd been able to spend more time with him, through an imagined combination of meeting Nikki earlier and living closer than 3,000 miles away, he would have been someone I'd have got along with really well, what with our shared background in computing, our tendency to geekiness, the chat thing, ...
But now, after one of those traumatic late evening phone calls and a poignant Facebook status update, I'll never have that chance. "Silent Key VE3QF" was Paul's brief message, and although I knew the background to it, knew that VE3QF was Tony's call sign and I could work out what "silent key" meant, I still looked it up. What I found was a clear explanation of a simple yet profound message for the amateur radio community that I found unexpectedly moving.
Part of the explanation reads: You may hear a silent key referred to as an SK in Morse Code, although "SK" can also signal "end transmission."
End transmission. What a perfect expression for any geek at the end of their life, especially one steeped in the lore of the amateur radio enthusiast and who had a well-developed appreciation of irony. Sleep well Tony.
I've never known much about the man who I liked to think of as my father-in-law, but the little I do know has always interested me. Whenever I think about him, it's with a feeling that if I'd been able to spend more time with him, through an imagined combination of meeting Nikki earlier and living closer than 3,000 miles away, he would have been someone I'd have got along with really well, what with our shared background in computing, our tendency to geekiness, the chat thing, ...
But now, after one of those traumatic late evening phone calls and a poignant Facebook status update, I'll never have that chance. "Silent Key VE3QF" was Paul's brief message, and although I knew the background to it, knew that VE3QF was Tony's call sign and I could work out what "silent key" meant, I still looked it up. What I found was a clear explanation of a simple yet profound message for the amateur radio community that I found unexpectedly moving.
Part of the explanation reads: You may hear a silent key referred to as an SK in Morse Code, although "SK" can also signal "end transmission."
End transmission. What a perfect expression for any geek at the end of their life, especially one steeped in the lore of the amateur radio enthusiast and who had a well-developed appreciation of irony. Sleep well Tony.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Vinyl: In The Land of Grey and Pink
Owned on digital media: Yes
Want to replace: n/a
By the time Caravan released this their third album, they already had a small but dedicated following, but this was really their breakthrough disc and is the one that widened their fan base considerably. Most significantly from a personal perspective, it was my first exposure to the band that were to become firm favourites in my late teens and the first one from whom I bought more than one album.
Even though later supplanted by Genesis in my affections, this remains one of my all-time favourite records. Surprising then that I didn't replace it with a new digitally-remastered version until April of this year, but it was certainly worth the wait. Rediscovering Golf Girl, Winter Wine, Nine Feet Underground and the title track again after not listening to them for over a decade was a total delight.
Thursday, September 09, 2010
We've been carpeted
Great excitement yesterday evening as the carpet company called to say our replacement carpet had finally arrived and would it be convenient to fit it today? You bet your sweet bippy* it would.
The very personable man on the phone assured me that since we'd been waiting ages and the (replacement) order was marked as urgent, he would put us down as the first call. Which meant the fitters should arrive shortly after 9am.
At 10:45 I tried to call the shop. After the third busy tone I was in the middle of trying again when my mobile lit up with the shop name, calling with sincere apologies that the fitter had been delayed but was loading up his van RIGHT NOW and would be with me in 20 minutes. Which turned out to be, naturally, 40 minutes. But at least he was here! With a carpet!! Which was the right size!!!
But didn't have any underlay or gripper rods with it.
Chief Fitter walked into the room.
"Just going on the floor, is it?"
My initial reaction, which I managed with superhuman effort to bite back, was to say "No, it's a carpet. It's going on the fucking ceiling, where do you think?"
Then I realised what he was saying. That he was going to lay the carpet on the bare floor.
""No, there should be underlay with it."
"They've not given me any underlay. Or grippers."
""You ARE joking?"
I fetched the invoice.
""Underlay," I pointed.
He called the shop, and shortly afterwards with much muttering under his breath at the incompetence of both the shop and the previous fitter, who "if it had been me" should have at least fitted the underlay and grippers before taking the too-short carpet back, returned to the depot to pick up... underlay and grippers.
An hour later he was back, and not much more than half-an-hour after that (it always amazes me how fast professional carpet fitters work), our new room was finally, finally ready to receive furniture, and have its new curtains hung.
A task for the coming weekend. With any luck, we only have one more night on the sofa bed! Yippee!
*What exactly is a "sweet bippy"? Does anyone know?** And why would you want to place a bet with it?
**Yes, I know. Google does. Slang term for unspecified body part (probably 'ass') as used in Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. God, I never knew it was THAT old.
The very personable man on the phone assured me that since we'd been waiting ages and the (replacement) order was marked as urgent, he would put us down as the first call. Which meant the fitters should arrive shortly after 9am.
At 10:45 I tried to call the shop. After the third busy tone I was in the middle of trying again when my mobile lit up with the shop name, calling with sincere apologies that the fitter had been delayed but was loading up his van RIGHT NOW and would be with me in 20 minutes. Which turned out to be, naturally, 40 minutes. But at least he was here! With a carpet!! Which was the right size!!!
Chief Fitter walked into the room.
"Just going on the floor, is it?"
My initial reaction, which I managed with superhuman effort to bite back, was to say "No, it's a carpet. It's going on the fucking ceiling, where do you think?"
Then I realised what he was saying. That he was going to lay the carpet on the bare floor.
""No, there should be underlay with it."
"They've not given me any underlay. Or grippers."
""You ARE joking?"
I fetched the invoice.
""Underlay," I pointed.
He called the shop, and shortly afterwards with much muttering under his breath at the incompetence of both the shop and the previous fitter, who "if it had been me" should have at least fitted the underlay and grippers before taking the too-short carpet back, returned to the depot to pick up... underlay and grippers.
A task for the coming weekend. With any luck, we only have one more night on the sofa bed! Yippee!
*What exactly is a "sweet bippy"? Does anyone know?** And why would you want to place a bet with it?
**Yes, I know. Google does. Slang term for unspecified body part (probably 'ass') as used in Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. God, I never knew it was THAT old.
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
What happened at the car doctors
I took the car to the garage this morning. You may remember reading exactly the same opening sentence to yesterday's blog. There's a reason for that. I had exactly the same opening sentence to my day. This is because unfortunately, despite my mechanic being both very good and very reasonably priced, he has a limited grasp of scheduling.
The way it works in his garage is that he says "yes" to any work that appears on the horizon and then proceeds to handle them sequentially. If it transpires that he's taken on more work than can be done in a day, the ones left over simply get shunted to the next day. Which is fine (I suppose) if you can leave your motor with him overnight. I can't. So when I call up towards the end of the day I get "sorry, I've not even looked at it yet."
Which has now happened on four out of the five occasions I've taken the car to him. In any other circumstance this would be grounds for me to take my business elsewhere (with a level of huffiness dictated by my grumpiness at the time), but he IS cheap. And the garage IS within walking distance.
Anyway it turns out all this enginemanagementpoorperformancelumpyrunning business is my own fault. I haven't been checking my oil regularly enough. He actually said that. "I get the impression you don't check your oil very often." Yeah, that would be right. Well, to be entirely honest, "at all" would be closer to the mark. I usually leave it until the oil warning light flickers when I'm taking a hard corner, and then think "ah. Must get some oil next time I fill up."
This, apparently, is not the best approach to take. Especially on modern engines with hydraulic tappets. Because, well, being hydraulic, they need - you know - oil. If the oil level drops all their little reservoirs go dry in a kind of homage to the state of the country's water supply a few weeks ago, the valves don't open properly, and the engine management unit registers a misfire and turns on its little light to tell me all about it. Occasionally the whole situation gets so bad the misfires become audible, and affect more than one valve, which explains last Friday's (and Sunday's) journeys.
He cleaned it all up, reset the EMU codes, and topped up the oil. For my part, I'll be doing weekly oil checks from now on. Me ol' Dad would be proud of me. Exasperated, but proud.
The way it works in his garage is that he says "yes" to any work that appears on the horizon and then proceeds to handle them sequentially. If it transpires that he's taken on more work than can be done in a day, the ones left over simply get shunted to the next day. Which is fine (I suppose) if you can leave your motor with him overnight. I can't. So when I call up towards the end of the day I get "sorry, I've not even looked at it yet."
Which has now happened on four out of the five occasions I've taken the car to him. In any other circumstance this would be grounds for me to take my business elsewhere (with a level of huffiness dictated by my grumpiness at the time), but he IS cheap. And the garage IS within walking distance.
Anyway it turns out all this enginemanagementpoorperformancelumpyrunning business is my own fault. I haven't been checking my oil regularly enough. He actually said that. "I get the impression you don't check your oil very often." Yeah, that would be right. Well, to be entirely honest, "at all" would be closer to the mark. I usually leave it until the oil warning light flickers when I'm taking a hard corner, and then think "ah. Must get some oil next time I fill up."
This, apparently, is not the best approach to take. Especially on modern engines with hydraulic tappets. Because, well, being hydraulic, they need - you know - oil. If the oil level drops all their little reservoirs go dry in a kind of homage to the state of the country's water supply a few weeks ago, the valves don't open properly, and the engine management unit registers a misfire and turns on its little light to tell me all about it. Occasionally the whole situation gets so bad the misfires become audible, and affect more than one valve, which explains last Friday's (and Sunday's) journeys.
He cleaned it all up, reset the EMU codes, and topped up the oil. For my part, I'll be doing weekly oil checks from now on. Me ol' Dad would be proud of me. Exasperated, but proud.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
The smell of green
I took the car to the garage this morning. Its 'Engine Management' light had been glowering at me for some days. In recent months this hasn't been cause for concern as, before I could (be arsed to) organise a visit to the garage, it would go out again. And then come on again, a few weeks later.
This time it came on and stayed on.
Worse than that, on long journeys (such as last Friday, and again on Sunday) the car would give a worrying lurch, the light would start flashing, and the performance of the car dip alarmingly, as if it's only firing on two cylinders. Which, given it's the Engine Management light, is entirely possible. So I booked it in yesterday, and dropped it off this morning.
The garage I've used since the demise of the garage I used to use before I started using the one I use now, is only a short walk away, which is the main reason I chose it. That, and the fact that it comes highly recommended on the local community forum. It's wedged between two semi-detached houses on a bend in a normal suburban street, so "dropping the car off" entails hunting down a parking space before walking back to the garage to leave the keys.
I started to explain where I'd left it. "I'll find it," he breezed. How are you going to do that when you haven't even asked me for the registration, I wondered? I offered him the registration. "You wouldn't believe how many people don't know their own registration," he mused. Well actually mate, given my penchant for examining the human condition, I would.
This time it came on and stayed on.
Worse than that, on long journeys (such as last Friday, and again on Sunday) the car would give a worrying lurch, the light would start flashing, and the performance of the car dip alarmingly, as if it's only firing on two cylinders. Which, given it's the Engine Management light, is entirely possible. So I booked it in yesterday, and dropped it off this morning.
The garage I've used since the demise of the garage I used to use before I started using the one I use now, is only a short walk away, which is the main reason I chose it. That, and the fact that it comes highly recommended on the local community forum. It's wedged between two semi-detached houses on a bend in a normal suburban street, so "dropping the car off" entails hunting down a parking space before walking back to the garage to leave the keys.
I started to explain where I'd left it. "I'll find it," he breezed. How are you going to do that when you haven't even asked me for the registration, I wondered? I offered him the registration. "You wouldn't believe how many people don't know their own registration," he mused. Well actually mate, given my penchant for examining the human condition, I would.
Walking back from the garage through the leafy streets of Whalley Range on what was a sunny morning following a rainy night, the smells of fresh grass, early hints of autumn, and rain-dampened pavements evoked many memories. Something smells are known for, but for some reason this morning the memories were more powerful than usual. Maybe it's because I don't walk anywhere very much any more, whereas as a boy I walked the 2-3 miles home from school every day. I should do it more often really. But not, I hope, on account of having more car trouble!
Monday, September 06, 2010
Blog fodder
There are times when I have absolutely no enthusiasm for blogging. I'm sure I'm not alone in that. And then there are times when the urge to write is so strong it's like a physical ache. Not ever having experienced withdrawal symptoms, thank God (well... not counting caffeine withdrawal which I've gone through on three separate occasions. I don't suppose a mild headache really cuts it as 'withdrawal'), I imagine that this nagging emptiness combined with the need to do something without really knowing what is about as close as I'll ever get to dependence on 'substances.'
The fates often play a cruel joke on me by giving me lots to write about on those days when I don't feel like it, whereas on the days when my enthusiasm knows no bounds there's nowt to write about. So during those Times of Limited Energy, when subjects present themselves, I make little notes under the general heading 'Blog Fodder' so that I'll have some material for when Mr Muse returns.
And then, being a disorganised sort of chap, sometimes those blog fodder notes get a bit lost, and don't turn up 'til months later. Now you begin to perceive where this rambling is taking us. Back to November 2009, when I made a note about a daily horoscope that was particularly apposite:
"In the midst of a sea of change, you decide that the more routine you can make your day, the better. Doing some tasks in a familiar manner now helps you relax, while only last week they made you bored and restless."
Which I found passing strange at the time, as I was engaged in the TENTH recasting of the deployment schedule for the project I was working on. Dates had kept slipping, and obstacles kept presenting themselves. Servers weren't ready, or had disappeared owing to incorrect DNS entries, or the admin password had been lost or corrupted, or the patch levels were wrong, or the management priorities changed and now we needed to do applications BEFORE firewalls, etc, etc, etc. Only the week before, as the horoscope rightly reminded me, this constant change had been doing my head in. But on the day in question, I distinctly remember thinking that the only thing I really wanted to do was sit mindlessly shifting rows about in a spreadsheet because it was a simple, familiar task too close to therapy for comfort.
The fates often play a cruel joke on me by giving me lots to write about on those days when I don't feel like it, whereas on the days when my enthusiasm knows no bounds there's nowt to write about. So during those Times of Limited Energy, when subjects present themselves, I make little notes under the general heading 'Blog Fodder' so that I'll have some material for when Mr Muse returns.
And then, being a disorganised sort of chap, sometimes those blog fodder notes get a bit lost, and don't turn up 'til months later. Now you begin to perceive where this rambling is taking us. Back to November 2009, when I made a note about a daily horoscope that was particularly apposite:
"In the midst of a sea of change, you decide that the more routine you can make your day, the better. Doing some tasks in a familiar manner now helps you relax, while only last week they made you bored and restless."
Which I found passing strange at the time, as I was engaged in the TENTH recasting of the deployment schedule for the project I was working on. Dates had kept slipping, and obstacles kept presenting themselves. Servers weren't ready, or had disappeared owing to incorrect DNS entries, or the admin password had been lost or corrupted, or the patch levels were wrong, or the management priorities changed and now we needed to do applications BEFORE firewalls, etc, etc, etc. Only the week before, as the horoscope rightly reminded me, this constant change had been doing my head in. But on the day in question, I distinctly remember thinking that the only thing I really wanted to do was sit mindlessly shifting rows about in a spreadsheet because it was a simple, familiar task too close to therapy for comfort.
Sunday, September 05, 2010
Italian Night
The latest safari night on the street kicked off at "new girl" Helen's place, where the antipasti were delightful and the Peroni and wine flowed freely from the very first ring of the doorbell. Yes, it was Italian Night this time round, and having managed to find a stripy shirt, a straw boater, and - courtesy of one of the many local charity shops - a single red curtain suitable for ripping into a rough cravat, sash, and a replacement band for the boater, I'd cobbled together a passable gondolier's outfit.
My imagination is clearly as limited as the majority of the neighbours: I was one of three gondoliers. If you think that's bad you should have counted the number of mafiosi in attendance! But as always, it didn't matter. The costumes are only there to get you into the spirit of the occasion, and there was more than enough spirit to go around.
Lasagne may have been a predictable menu choice, but it's all in the execution and this particular lasagne was murdered with relish by just about everyone. Everyone who had room left after scoffing the pizza and focaccia that followed the antipasti, that is. Thankfully the portions were small enough for me to enjoy a helping of spaghetti and spicy meatballs at the fourth house (add obligatory cod Italian accent when reading "spicy meatballs" of course. Something like this: sPIE-see meat-a-BALL!). By the time we hit the last house I could only just manage a single portion of tiramisu. Followed shortly later by an even smaller scoop of trifle. Not sure how Italian trifle is but by that time it didn't matter.
As always the conversation and the company, rather than the food, drink, or costumes, were the highlights of the evening and even though we were one house down due to illness our sojourn to la bella Italia was a great success and another fine chapter in the annals of neighbourly revelry.
Enthusiasm for safari nights remains undiminished too. At one point, when conversation turned to the topic of the next event, no fewer than six ideas for the theme were suggested. Enough to keep us going for another two years at least.
My imagination is clearly as limited as the majority of the neighbours: I was one of three gondoliers. If you think that's bad you should have counted the number of mafiosi in attendance! But as always, it didn't matter. The costumes are only there to get you into the spirit of the occasion, and there was more than enough spirit to go around.
Lasagne may have been a predictable menu choice, but it's all in the execution and this particular lasagne was murdered with relish by just about everyone. Everyone who had room left after scoffing the pizza and focaccia that followed the antipasti, that is. Thankfully the portions were small enough for me to enjoy a helping of spaghetti and spicy meatballs at the fourth house (add obligatory cod Italian accent when reading "spicy meatballs" of course. Something like this: sPIE-see meat-a-BALL!). By the time we hit the last house I could only just manage a single portion of tiramisu. Followed shortly later by an even smaller scoop of trifle. Not sure how Italian trifle is but by that time it didn't matter.
As always the conversation and the company, rather than the food, drink, or costumes, were the highlights of the evening and even though we were one house down due to illness our sojourn to la bella Italia was a great success and another fine chapter in the annals of neighbourly revelry.
Enthusiasm for safari nights remains undiminished too. At one point, when conversation turned to the topic of the next event, no fewer than six ideas for the theme were suggested. Enough to keep us going for another two years at least.
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
HOW many?
I bought Nikki a new Lumix camera for her birthday - she's been hampered for a while by the limited zoom on her old Ixus and envious of the 12x optical zoom on my (older) Lumix, so I thought I'd treat her - and I noticed the other day when copying some photos off her (new, 16GB) card, something that should have been obvious right from the start: the two cameras use identical file naming formats.
This could have been an issue leading to all sorts of photographic clashes and mixups, but for two things. Firstly, we file all our photos chronologically, in top-level folders named 2005, 2006, etc, so unless there was a chance of her "catching me up" it's unlikely that two pictures with the same filename will end up in the same folder. We just have to remember not to change the filing system to be, for example, topic-based.
The second factor is the precise extent of the remoteness of that chance that Nikki will catch me up. I have something like a 6-year head start with my Lumix and I was astonished to find, by comparing recent file names, that in those six years I've taken around 110,000 photos. The wonders of digital photography, eh? If I'd taken that many with my old 35mm film camera it would have cost me something over £25,000.
I'm guessing that there'll be a low-level option somewhere to adjust the file name convention but in light of the above we probably don't need to bother. Let's hope those aren't famous last words.
This could have been an issue leading to all sorts of photographic clashes and mixups, but for two things. Firstly, we file all our photos chronologically, in top-level folders named 2005, 2006, etc, so unless there was a chance of her "catching me up" it's unlikely that two pictures with the same filename will end up in the same folder. We just have to remember not to change the filing system to be, for example, topic-based.
The second factor is the precise extent of the remoteness of that chance that Nikki will catch me up. I have something like a 6-year head start with my Lumix and I was astonished to find, by comparing recent file names, that in those six years I've taken around 110,000 photos. The wonders of digital photography, eh? If I'd taken that many with my old 35mm film camera it would have cost me something over £25,000.
I'm guessing that there'll be a low-level option somewhere to adjust the file name convention but in light of the above we probably don't need to bother. Let's hope those aren't famous last words.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Vinyl: If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You
Owned on digital media: Yes
Want to replace: n/a
Caravan's second album, and for me, and many other fans, one of Caravan's finest hours. Ever since I first heard it, the melodic soft-rock organ of Dave Sinclair exhibiting total synergy with the guitars and drums of the other band members have epitomised summer. Playing it at any time of year will always evoke summer, but actually saving it for a gloriously sunny summer's day with the smells of new-mown grass wafting in through the window in counterpoint to the sounds of superlative prog rock wafting out, is an experience guaranteed to have me smiling from ear to ear while I sing along with the familiar lyrics. Anyone who has never understood the hold prog rock has on us who came of age during the 70s only has to listen to this.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
More bad news on the carpet front
Looks like we'll be camping out in the study even longer than anticipated.
The irony is not lost on me, that I put together a detailed plan to ensure that we'd be on the sofa bed for as short a time as possible. The plumber, the plasterer, and the decorator (me) were planned and scheduled to the nth degree, every day for four weeks, and we all kept rigidly to that plan.
Then, on Monday of this week, the plan fell apart. And today the carpet suppliers inform me that there is no stock of this particular carpet left anywhere in the UK (something I find hard to believe, since they are one of the UK's largest floor covering firms) and we'll have to wait for more to be imported. Due on September 6. I'll believe it when I'm walking on it.
The irony is not lost on me, that I put together a detailed plan to ensure that we'd be on the sofa bed for as short a time as possible. The plumber, the plasterer, and the decorator (me) were planned and scheduled to the nth degree, every day for four weeks, and we all kept rigidly to that plan.
Then, on Monday of this week, the plan fell apart. And today the carpet suppliers inform me that there is no stock of this particular carpet left anywhere in the UK (something I find hard to believe, since they are one of the UK's largest floor covering firms) and we'll have to wait for more to be imported. Due on September 6. I'll believe it when I'm walking on it.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Book Review: Stuart - A Life Backwards
The chapters deal with blocks of time from Stuart's life, and these are taken in reverse order, but within each chapter time flows in its normal direction. So the narrative takes the form of a kind of running stitch - leaping backwards behind the scenes to start at a point several years before the previous stitch, but then moving forwards during the course of the chapter.
Masters is neither totally absorbed by, nor totally aloof from, Stuart. Their partnership in the creation of the work leads to what appears to be a "real" friendship - possibly, even, the only one Stuart has ever had - and indeed this is perhaps one reason for the criticisms that this isn't a "proper" biography. But the author skilfully avoids the traps of sentimentality, solutionising, or preaching when recounting the problems that Stuart deals with daily, whether these be internally or externally generated.
Perhaps the single most important thing this book taught me is that there are no simple explanations for why someone becomes homeless, or remains homeless, and similarly there are no simple solutions. But there are other lessons too. That it can happen to anyone, for example. Both homelessness and injustice. There's a lot of "there but for the grace of God" in this, but it is never mawkish, boorish, or overly focussed on the often horrific facts of Stuart's existence.
It's one of those books that, while it's occasionally an uncomfortable read, also occasionally has you laughing out loud. It certainly provoked one of the most interesting debates we've had for a long time at book club.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Family milestones
A little while ago I wrote a proud Dad post about my elder daughter, and today it's the turn of my younger daughter. For today is GCSE Results Day and all over the UK year 11s are opening envelopes, or reading notice boards, and either slumping or jumping.
In Blythe's case, there was much jumping involved I suspect. There certainly was here when she revealed her results - all passes with a highly creditable smattering of As and A*s in all the important subjects.
That's her passport to college, and her future mapped out for the next two years, which in these uncertain times is a welcome wedge of certainty. One other certainty is that there'll be a celebratory meal happening next time we see her.
In Blythe's case, there was much jumping involved I suspect. There certainly was here when she revealed her results - all passes with a highly creditable smattering of As and A*s in all the important subjects.
That's her passport to college, and her future mapped out for the next two years, which in these uncertain times is a welcome wedge of certainty. One other certainty is that there'll be a celebratory meal happening next time we see her.
Monday, August 23, 2010
What a difference a foot makes
Having spent the weekend tidying up the loose-endy type of jobs on the front bedroom - refitting the power sockets; replacing floorboards; checking for squeaks; pushing the lighting cables back into the ceiling void and refitting the light; caulking the skirting boards to avoid draughts; etc - we sat back this morning with excited expectation to await the carpet fitter.
He arrived mid-morning and within minutes of dropping his tool bag in the bedroom was wearing a worried frown.
"It's 570 this."
"That's right"
"I've only got 540 on the van."
Those being linear measurements, in centimetres, of the room and the carpet respectively.
Now I've made many mistakes in my life, but one of them definitely isn't measuring a room and getting the length out by 30cm. That's very nearly a foot. An inch and I might have accepted responsibility, but a foot? No way. So what's gone wrong? Seems to me either the salesperson made a mistake converting my Imperial dimensions to metric, or (more likely) when keying it into "the computer" she's hit the 4 instead of the 7.
But as you might expect, no-one is owning up to that, so we have two options:
He arrived mid-morning and within minutes of dropping his tool bag in the bedroom was wearing a worried frown.
"It's 570 this."
"That's right"
"I've only got 540 on the van."
Those being linear measurements, in centimetres, of the room and the carpet respectively.
Now I've made many mistakes in my life, but one of them definitely isn't measuring a room and getting the length out by 30cm. That's very nearly a foot. An inch and I might have accepted responsibility, but a foot? No way. So what's gone wrong? Seems to me either the salesperson made a mistake converting my Imperial dimensions to metric, or (more likely) when keying it into "the computer" she's hit the 4 instead of the 7.
But as you might expect, no-one is owning up to that, so we have two options:
- Accept a join in the carpet, a foot from the window end of the room, using a piece cut from the side which would therefore have its "grain" going in the wrong direction. Not a very attractive option.
- Wait for a replacement piece of the right length, and pay for the (slight) extra yardage, plus a cutting charge for the mistake. Their mistake. Earliest possible return visit by the fitter? Friday. Might be next Monday. Also not a very attractive option, but slightly less unattractive than #1.
So that's what we've done. Guess we'll be on the sofa bed for at least another four nights. >sigh<
Friday, August 20, 2010
Vinyl: For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night
Artist: CaravanOwned on digital media: No
Want to replace: Yes
After four albums, all of which by this time I had in my hot, sweaty hands, Caravan's line-up changed. Bassist Richard Sinclair left to be replaced by John G. Perry, and perhaps more significantly from my point of view - because initially I hated the effect his viola had on the music - Geoffrey Richardson joined from Spirogyra.
My reaction to the new boy meant that it took me longer than most to reach the conclusion, shared by many of Caravan's long-term fans as well as those who discovered them later, that 'Girls' is the band's finest hour, even if it never quite displaced my first love (Grey and Pink - still to come in these reviews) in my Caravanny affections. Sad to say it is also notable as being their last really great album, for while they continue as a band to this day, everything that came after failed in some respect to measure up to it. There were a few moments of magic and intervals of inspiration, but mostly... not.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Beware the painted hair
Had the new radiator fitted in the bedroom today - one large double to replace the three smaller singles that were connected in series beneath each of the bay windows. A positive side-effect of this is that I can now get to those final small sections of skirting board that were previously hampered by the old pipework.
Whoever installed the heating in this house originally had some funny ideas about plumbing. Like running the pipes as close as humanly possible to the skirting board, which meant when it came time to fit thermostatic radiator valves they had to chisel out part of the plaster to make room for them! And that there was no room behind the pipes to get to the boards for painting.
With the new rad sitting proudly beneath the central window and the old pipes removed, around nine inches of skirting board on each side needed sanding down, undercoating and glossing, and that small area of wall required a spot of filler and some Gentle touching up :o)
While I was on my knees with the undercoat, I noticed a paintbrush bristle painted into the wall. I usually spot these and pick them off while the paint is going on, but this was close to the top of the skirting boards and had escaped my attention. Since one end had dried sticking up it was easy to slip a nail under it and remove the offender.
Or so I thought.
The paint-hardened bristle had achieved unexpected strength, and stabbed me under the fingernail, drawing blood. Ow! Next time I'll be using a blade!
Whoever installed the heating in this house originally had some funny ideas about plumbing. Like running the pipes as close as humanly possible to the skirting board, which meant when it came time to fit thermostatic radiator valves they had to chisel out part of the plaster to make room for them! And that there was no room behind the pipes to get to the boards for painting.
With the new rad sitting proudly beneath the central window and the old pipes removed, around nine inches of skirting board on each side needed sanding down, undercoating and glossing, and that small area of wall required a spot of filler and some Gentle touching up :o)
While I was on my knees with the undercoat, I noticed a paintbrush bristle painted into the wall. I usually spot these and pick them off while the paint is going on, but this was close to the top of the skirting boards and had escaped my attention. Since one end had dried sticking up it was easy to slip a nail under it and remove the offender.
Or so I thought.
The paint-hardened bristle had achieved unexpected strength, and stabbed me under the fingernail, drawing blood. Ow! Next time I'll be using a blade!
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Everything stops for tea
Remember that old ditty about the English penchant for afternoon tea? It covers a lot of ground, talking about various activities that all stop for tea, and the final verse goes:
Now I know just why Franz Schubert
Didn't finish his unfinished symphony
He might have written more but the clock struck four
And everything stops for tea
We have it all wrong in this house at the moment. Everything stops for painting.
Yesterday: undercoat. Today: gloss. Picture rail, windows (three of them, with it being a bay), and skirting board. Takes between six and seven hours to get round the whole room - longer than doing the walls because by this stage I have to be careful with the edges, and there are a lot of edges - so it's no wonder I feel like I've done a day's work by the time I'm finished.
As for tea, well I don't stop for it. I drink it on the go. Mind you, that doesn't have to mean a break with tradition. I've been picking up my brush around 8am, so by the time "the clock strikes four" I'm done with painting for the day!
Now I know just why Franz Schubert
Didn't finish his unfinished symphony
He might have written more but the clock struck four
And everything stops for tea
We have it all wrong in this house at the moment. Everything stops for painting.
Yesterday: undercoat. Today: gloss. Picture rail, windows (three of them, with it being a bay), and skirting board. Takes between six and seven hours to get round the whole room - longer than doing the walls because by this stage I have to be careful with the edges, and there are a lot of edges - so it's no wonder I feel like I've done a day's work by the time I'm finished.
As for tea, well I don't stop for it. I drink it on the go. Mind you, that doesn't have to mean a break with tradition. I've been picking up my brush around 8am, so by the time "the clock strikes four" I'm done with painting for the day!
Friday, August 13, 2010
Wyrd or Woubt?
I say struggling, because being at least in part a spoof of Hamlet, it's all medieval and witchy, so the set is very dark to start with. When you combine that with the fact that they've chosen (quite resourcefully, I thought) to handle the multiple scene changes using a series of slides projected onto the rear of the set, which means flash is out at least for shots taken head-on, and it all adds up to one big headache as far as photography is concerned.
So I threw away pretty much half of the ~300 shots, and wasn't all that happy with quite a few of the rest, but in the end I managed to salvage 98 half-decent ones which you can now see in the gallery.
There aren't any pics of the last five minutes or so, as my battery light started flashing red and I'm still a bit paranoid about continuing to shoot from that point on after that "memorable" night when I corrupted the card on the last photo and lost every one of the shots I'd taken. I keep threatening to invest in a second battery, but I only ever think about it on dress rehearsal night and by then it's too late.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Vinyl: Cunning Stunts
Artist: CaravanOwned on digital media: No
Want to replace: Yes
Caravan's sixth album, and the second one to feature Geoffrey Richardson on viola. By this time, I was warming to him a bit, although I still found his live performances a little... theatrical. But in spite of any personal antipathy I felt towards him (having, obviously, never met the poor guy), there was no getting away from the fact that he could play, and several of the tracks on this album are warmed and made more melodic because he's on them.
I note that some reviewers bemoan the fact that with this album Caravan strike out in a more commercial direction, but for die-hard fans like me it was just good to have another record of good Canterbury tunes to add to my swelling collection. Their, by now traditional, single long track this time around is Dabsong Conshirtoe, which ranks in my mind among the very best stuff they ever did. It's worth buying the album just for this.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
It's the future!
I have a Slashdot widget on my iGoogle home page. Along with most of the other widgets on there, except Google Reader, I don't often pay it much attention, but today it displayed a tantalising headline: Extreme Memory Oversubscription For VMs. Having worked on VME for many years, I still retain an amused, distant interest in the activities of today's virtual machine enthusiasts. Here's a quote from the article...
"Their method is based on a combination of lightweight VM cloning (sort of like fork() for VMs) and on-demand paging. Seems like the 'other half' of resource oversubscription for VMs might finally be here."
Good grief. On-demand paging! Imagine that. Something we were doing in the mainframe world at the end of the 1960s. Next they'll be telling me they've invented a subsystem called Virtual Store Manager.
That's the trouble with the computing industry today. It's staffed with twenty-somethings fresh from college who like to think they're original thinkers and have no concept of, or interest in, history (or reinvention of the wheel). Even if they could be bothered to read up how we did it on mainframes they would probably not think it relevant (as a commenter on the article points out). Sad, really. The truth is high-end PC systems with massive amounts of memory and virtualisation technology look more and more like mainframes every day. They have the same problems, and those problems have the same solutions.
(If you're *really* interested, you can read the original Slashdot story here.)
"Their method is based on a combination of lightweight VM cloning (sort of like fork() for VMs) and on-demand paging. Seems like the 'other half' of resource oversubscription for VMs might finally be here."
Good grief. On-demand paging! Imagine that. Something we were doing in the mainframe world at the end of the 1960s. Next they'll be telling me they've invented a subsystem called Virtual Store Manager.
That's the trouble with the computing industry today. It's staffed with twenty-somethings fresh from college who like to think they're original thinkers and have no concept of, or interest in, history (or reinvention of the wheel). Even if they could be bothered to read up how we did it on mainframes they would probably not think it relevant (as a commenter on the article points out). Sad, really. The truth is high-end PC systems with massive amounts of memory and virtualisation technology look more and more like mainframes every day. They have the same problems, and those problems have the same solutions.
(If you're *really* interested, you can read the original Slashdot story here.)
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The mask of doom
Masking tape and I have never quite hit it off.
However, since my worst experiences from years gone by have been with the older, traditional "beige" tape, the more modern painter's tape is specifically designed for the purpose and supposedly does a MUCH better job (quote from the main website: "This is the advantage of using low-stick tape: you can press it down very hard without worrying about the tape pulling the paint up."), and Nikki had expressed a preference for edges that were considerably less wobbly, I put my reservations to one side and applied a few metres of the tape - as reported yesterday.
I should have known better.
It's my own fault really. For not sticking to my guns in the first place and, worse, for not abandoning the idea after a very early indication of likely failure (I'd had to reposition the second piece of tape, and it took off some of the ceiling paint when I moved it).
So after slapping a second coat of Armagnac onto the chimney breast at lunchtime, I spent an increasingly frustrating 40 minutes this evening removing the tape, and an even more frustrating 45 minutes painting over the holes it left in my lovely white ceiling. Not a single piece of tape came off without some damage, and at a guess I'd say around 90% of the total length of tape used came off with some ceiling attached. Even more annoying, much of the paint removed was right on the edge, so repairing the gaps - sans tape - meant the reintroduction of wobbly edges, thereby rendering the whole exercise a complete waste of time.
I spent much of the rest of the evening with my grumpy face on.
A search of online information sources reveals a possible reason for the problem: "Normal Blue Painter's tape should not be used on faux, delicate finishes, lacquer or new paint finishes that have been done less than one month." What? Who in the world suspends a decorating project for ONE MONTH while one half of the job cures to the point where masking tape can be used? Tch!
However, since my worst experiences from years gone by have been with the older, traditional "beige" tape, the more modern painter's tape is specifically designed for the purpose and supposedly does a MUCH better job (quote from the main website: "This is the advantage of using low-stick tape: you can press it down very hard without worrying about the tape pulling the paint up."), and Nikki had expressed a preference for edges that were considerably less wobbly, I put my reservations to one side and applied a few metres of the tape - as reported yesterday.
I should have known better.
It's my own fault really. For not sticking to my guns in the first place and, worse, for not abandoning the idea after a very early indication of likely failure (I'd had to reposition the second piece of tape, and it took off some of the ceiling paint when I moved it).
So after slapping a second coat of Armagnac onto the chimney breast at lunchtime, I spent an increasingly frustrating 40 minutes this evening removing the tape, and an even more frustrating 45 minutes painting over the holes it left in my lovely white ceiling. Not a single piece of tape came off without some damage, and at a guess I'd say around 90% of the total length of tape used came off with some ceiling attached. Even more annoying, much of the paint removed was right on the edge, so repairing the gaps - sans tape - meant the reintroduction of wobbly edges, thereby rendering the whole exercise a complete waste of time.
I spent much of the rest of the evening with my grumpy face on.
A search of online information sources reveals a possible reason for the problem: "Normal Blue Painter's tape should not be used on faux, delicate finishes, lacquer or new paint finishes that have been done less than one month." What? Who in the world suspends a decorating project for ONE MONTH while one half of the job cures to the point where masking tape can be used? Tch!
Monday, August 09, 2010
It's a record
Achieved superluminal velocities after work while belting around the 'Gentle' walls, completing the task in under two hours thanks to (a) it being the second coat and (b) the judicious application of masking tape around the ceiling and chimney breast.
A straight edge was required by the Mistress of Ceremonies so I'd been round during lunchtime with the ScotchBlue™.
A straight edge was required by the Mistress of Ceremonies so I'd been round during lunchtime with the ScotchBlue™.
Sunday, August 08, 2010
Colour my world
The good news is that yesterday morning saw the second (white) undercoat go on with no damage to the initial coat. I got away with it.
But if the undercoat turns a decorating project from a building site back into a room, then the next phase - applying the colour - brings that room to life. After a considerably shorter painting session than either of the previous two days, on account of having Nikki's help doing the low-level cutting in while I was working on those parts only accessible from a step ladder, this was the result.
The picture doesn't really do justice to the colours. It's the first coat so still a little patchy, and the full effect won't be brought out until the picture rail and skirting get their fresh new white paint, but it gives an idea of the final look. The lighter shade, which covers all the walls apart from the chimney breast, is Crown's "Gentle" matt emulsion, while the accent colour is provided by their "Armagnac." Yeah, I know. We had that conversation about "who chooses the names of the colours" too.
Second coat tomorrow night after work, and then "only" the woodwork remains. Radiator fitting booked for next Monday. Carpet fitting booked for the week after next, but I'm still hopeful that I'll be able to bring that back three or four days and give us a weekend to move all the furniture back in.
But if the undercoat turns a decorating project from a building site back into a room, then the next phase - applying the colour - brings that room to life. After a considerably shorter painting session than either of the previous two days, on account of having Nikki's help doing the low-level cutting in while I was working on those parts only accessible from a step ladder, this was the result.
Second coat tomorrow night after work, and then "only" the woodwork remains. Radiator fitting booked for next Monday. Carpet fitting booked for the week after next, but I'm still hopeful that I'll be able to bring that back three or four days and give us a weekend to move all the furniture back in.
Friday, August 06, 2010
When a room becomes a room
It's been a quiet week on the bedroom redecoration front as we watched the damp patches receding, and worried about whether they were receding quickly enough. My plan had me applying the first (sealer) coat of white emulsion to walls and ceiling today, and it was touch and go whether the drying would be complete or not. Other activities during the week (including the famed monthly curry night) were suspended in favour of preparation - mainly sanding of windows and skirting boards - which was hampered on account of having fingers permanently crossed.
This is a self-imposed deadline, it's true, but the plan is designed to avoid this job hanging on longer than necessary. No-one enjoys having the entire house turned upside down, and one of the best ways to keep up the pace of painting is to book the carpet fitters and work to that date as an immutable fixed future point. Even though it's not really.
This stage of the proceedings is always one of my favourites. It's the moment when a room in progress turns from a building site, with its bare plaster and woodwork splashed with dried PVA, back into something that's recognisably a room.
The finish may be patchy (I always apply two coats of white before the colour) and the woodwork still has that post-sanding mottled aspect that makes it look vaguely diseased, but it's no longer just a newly-plastered room. It's visibly on its way to becoming a bedroom once more.
I took a risk, in the end, with the dampness. There were still one or two small patches of plaster not entirely dry. I won't know until tomorrow whether this will be a problem. The last time I started painting too early the second coat ripped the first coat off in places, leading to all kinds of patching up and rework issues. Very frustrating, not to mention physically demanding, as it was the ceiling causing the problem. This time the trouble, if there is any, is restricted to small areas of wall. Fingers crossed I'll get away with it, but for the moment at least, the deadline is safe.
This is a self-imposed deadline, it's true, but the plan is designed to avoid this job hanging on longer than necessary. No-one enjoys having the entire house turned upside down, and one of the best ways to keep up the pace of painting is to book the carpet fitters and work to that date as an immutable fixed future point. Even though it's not really.
This stage of the proceedings is always one of my favourites. It's the moment when a room in progress turns from a building site, with its bare plaster and woodwork splashed with dried PVA, back into something that's recognisably a room.
I took a risk, in the end, with the dampness. There were still one or two small patches of plaster not entirely dry. I won't know until tomorrow whether this will be a problem. The last time I started painting too early the second coat ripped the first coat off in places, leading to all kinds of patching up and rework issues. Very frustrating, not to mention physically demanding, as it was the ceiling causing the problem. This time the trouble, if there is any, is restricted to small areas of wall. Fingers crossed I'll get away with it, but for the moment at least, the deadline is safe.
Monday, August 02, 2010
Watching plaster dry
It sounds like it should be as boring as watching paint dry, but I can tell you watching plaster dry is much more interesting than that. Every time I walk into the room, the pattern of damp has changed. Receded. It's fascinating, in its own way, and every centimetre of changing colour, from the deep maroony-brown of wet plaster to the clear shining almost-alabaster aspect of dry, brings us that much closer to the day when painting can start. Which, according to my plan, will be Friday.
Yes, I have a plan. We don't want to be camping out in the study for any longer than we can help, so to bring the schedule in in the minimum time requires that things like radiator and carpet fitting are booked in advance, which it turn means we need to know when the wall painting will be complete (for the rad) and when the woodwork will all be done (for the carpet).
Still, no photos yet. I may be sad enough to get some small frisson of excitement from a visibly decreasing patch of damp wall, but I wouldn't dream of suggesting you are too :o)
Yes, I have a plan. We don't want to be camping out in the study for any longer than we can help, so to bring the schedule in in the minimum time requires that things like radiator and carpet fitting are booked in advance, which it turn means we need to know when the wall painting will be complete (for the rad) and when the woodwork will all be done (for the carpet).
Still, no photos yet. I may be sad enough to get some small frisson of excitement from a visibly decreasing patch of damp wall, but I wouldn't dream of suggesting you are too :o)
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Warble
It's been a long time since I've sung karaoke, so when I heard that Chorlton Players had organised a karaoke fundraiser, I was among the first to sign up, and the first (apart from DJ Annie, and Simon who was playing the part of doorman for the night) to arrive.
I was conditioned from a very early age to turn up right at the start of events like this. My parents were always the first to arrive at (and usually the last to leave from) any parties, weddings, or family gatherings to which we were invited, so naturally I grew up thinking this was the way it was done. I don't recall any pithy phrase of my mother's that accompanied these early arrivals, so this story won't feature in "shit my Mum says"; it just was. As I got older, I soon realised I was in a minority in this respect, and sure enough with a posted start time of 7pm it was after 8 when the first of the "real audience" turned up, by which time I was champing at the bit to get going with the song I'd had cued up almost since I arrived.
A traditional starter for me - Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street - an easy melody to get the pipes warmed up. As I progressed during the course of the evening through a series of my most favourite karaoke staples, I realised just how long it had been since I sang any of these in public, and how easy it is to get out of practice with the nuanced phrasing of songs like Vincent, Desperado, and Englishman in New York.
Still, you know, it's karaoke not the Royal Opera House, so who cares? We all had a lot of fun and some good choons got sung. Not sure it was much of a success as a fund raiser - I think they needed 30 people to break even and I counted 29 at the busiest point - but if *almost* 30 people can have such a good time for a whole night and not actively lose money, it can't be that bad.
I was conditioned from a very early age to turn up right at the start of events like this. My parents were always the first to arrive at (and usually the last to leave from) any parties, weddings, or family gatherings to which we were invited, so naturally I grew up thinking this was the way it was done. I don't recall any pithy phrase of my mother's that accompanied these early arrivals, so this story won't feature in "shit my Mum says"; it just was. As I got older, I soon realised I was in a minority in this respect, and sure enough with a posted start time of 7pm it was after 8 when the first of the "real audience" turned up, by which time I was champing at the bit to get going with the song I'd had cued up almost since I arrived.
A traditional starter for me - Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street - an easy melody to get the pipes warmed up. As I progressed during the course of the evening through a series of my most favourite karaoke staples, I realised just how long it had been since I sang any of these in public, and how easy it is to get out of practice with the nuanced phrasing of songs like Vincent, Desperado, and Englishman in New York.
Still, you know, it's karaoke not the Royal Opera House, so who cares? We all had a lot of fun and some good choons got sung. Not sure it was much of a success as a fund raiser - I think they needed 30 people to break even and I counted 29 at the busiest point - but if *almost* 30 people can have such a good time for a whole night and not actively lose money, it can't be that bad.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Vinyl: Canterbury Tales
Artist: Caravan
Owned on digital media: No
Want to replace: Yes
As a general rule I don't like (a) live albums and (b) compilations of "best of" tracks (especially when I already own all those tracks on their original albums). In the era of MP3, playlists have pretty much eaten "best of" albums' breakfast, so this is very much an album of its time and you may think with all of that said, it stands almost no chance of a place on the want list.
And yet... and yet... I can feel my inner completist bleating about how good it is, and demanding that I head over to Wikipedia and make absolutely sure there's *nothing* on here that I don't already have/wouldn't already have if the want list were all fulfilled. We'll see.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Construction Complete
The chimney breast looks the dog's bollocks with its new length of skirting perfectly fitted and a rather high-quality plaster vent in place of the crappy repro fireplace. The wall to the left of that is one that was plastered yesterday. Drying nicely. In fact as I type the ceiling is almost dry already, so my allowance of seven days for drying before I can start wielding the roller is looking generous. I will wait the full week though. Experience tells me that plaster which LOOKS dry can still be sweating a bit, and the first coat of paint either won't go on properly, or it will blister when it dries as the last vestiges of moisture struggle to get out through the paint, which can lead to all sorts of problems with the second coat.
The drying time won't be wasted though. We'll be sanding woodwork and doing other prep this weekend. Oh joy.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
A drop in the ocean
The 'drop' in question being, as you might have guessed, our bedroom ceiling, which I guess makes the 'ocean' the vast sea of home improvements that stretches before us with no land in sight!
After the initial horrendous mess on Day 1, when our builders sealed themselves into the room, and then sealed themselves into those suits that forensic pathologists wear on the telly, with heavy duty breathing masks and elastic around the extremities and proceeded to make scary rumbling noises for four hours, fetching an estimated ton of sooty insulation, slate, brick, wood and other assorted bits of detritus down from the ceiling void, along with the lath-and-plaster ceiling itself of course, came Day 2. The reconstruction phase. Tying the somewhat flimsy original ceiling joists to the much more substantial flooring joists of the loft room floor, installing a steel beam to replace the original wooden beam across the bay window and screwing this to the wall plate and finally, once a stable, level surface was established, boarding it all out with plasterboard.
Here's how it was left at the end of yesterday. Today will see the final "construction" jobs - like attaching angle iron to corners, etc - completed, ceiling plastered and maybe some of the walls too. Good thing is, most of the really bad mess is done. I'm already looking forward to the weekend, when I'll be able to get going with my bit!
After the initial horrendous mess on Day 1, when our builders sealed themselves into the room, and then sealed themselves into those suits that forensic pathologists wear on the telly, with heavy duty breathing masks and elastic around the extremities and proceeded to make scary rumbling noises for four hours, fetching an estimated ton of sooty insulation, slate, brick, wood and other assorted bits of detritus down from the ceiling void, along with the lath-and-plaster ceiling itself of course, came Day 2. The reconstruction phase. Tying the somewhat flimsy original ceiling joists to the much more substantial flooring joists of the loft room floor, installing a steel beam to replace the original wooden beam across the bay window and screwing this to the wall plate and finally, once a stable, level surface was established, boarding it all out with plasterboard.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Book Review: Timolean Vieta Come Home
I nearly didn't get past page seven. The sentence "His then boyfriend, a middle-aged Austrian music publisher whose name had slipped from memory but whose big, grey moustache and fierce, hooded eyes lingered on, had just announced that he was going to sleep in the spare room that night, and that Cockcroft could suck his own stupid penis for a change." brought me to an abrupt stop, wondering whether I really wanted to read any more like that (assuming there would be some more). But I was reminded of the reaction of another book club member from years back - she hasn't been to the meetings for about three years - to a line in a book I had recommended. May's The Many-Coloured Land. One of the minor characters says something about "having to get himself some gash" on his return from a long space mission, a sentence which had had a similar effect on her, back then, as Dan Rhodes' line had just had on me. I resolved to plod on.
Only it wasn't really plodding. The book did indeed turn out to be a very easy, if somewhat unstimulating and unsatisfying, read. Its online reviews frequently make much of Rhodes' beautifully crafted prose. A shame, then, that someone with such talent for the written word should use them to say not very much of any interest. The book is a series of short stories masquerading as a novel, with the stories thinly connected by the meanderings of the eponymous dog, who has been kicked out on account of the antipathy of his owner Cockcroft's latest lover. Cockcroft himself, his life, loves past and present, and many failures - as a composer, friend, lover and even human being - feature large in those parts of the book not devoted to the many characters the dog meets on his travels, but as Rhodes gives us little or nothing to like about Cockcroft, his reminiscences and liaisons never get under the reader's skin. Since the dog himself is little more than a narrative device, he elicits no sympathy either, and the people he meets and whose stories we read about in the aforementioned lambent prose, are come and gone in an instant far too brief for empathy or identification.
So once again, a book club read has left me with a huge feeling of "so what?" It's true that it is far more enjoyable to read a well-written book than a poorly written one, but no matter how well written it is, if the subject matter is nothing more than a loose agglomeration of everyday people doing everyday things, what IS the point? I may as well have been watching Emmerdale.
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