Door #3

It's over a year since I painted the first internal door, and in that time I've only managed one other - the study door that long-time readers may remember was propped up on the landing for several months. No particular reason, except other projects (and life in general) got in the way.

I get the impression Nikki is keen for me to get on with it now. Or get on with something at least. First it was dealing the various bits of bare plaster and damp damage and now that's done, the remaining five doors are coming under scrutiny. Which is fair enough. I feel like I've had quite a long break from "home improvements," especially as we spent what little bit of summer we had tidying up the garden.

A few moments' head-scratching was required to come up with a workspace for this small project, which if I carry on and do each door sequentially I estimate will take about two months. The lounge door was painted in the lounge, before plastering, so clearly that's out of bounds now. I painted the study door in the dining room (wooden floors, a bit of sheeting, simples!) but since then we've bought two new arm-chairs which now occupy the painting space. Only one answer: the conservatory. Using that as a workshop will give me an added incentive to get on with the job, as it won't be long before it starts to get very cold in there. Autumn is, after all, just around the corner.

So I set myself up in there yesterday, took off the dining room door and filled/sanded the first side. It's not in bad condition - there are no cracks in the panels and only a few small gouges in the rest of the frame. Today saw the first coat of undercoat, and I'm always freshly surprised by the difference a single coat of white paint can make to the look of a door. If I stick to the normal schedule this one should be back up just over a week.

Shifters, shifters, there were never such devoted shifters

It was all hands to the pumps today to help the shifters... shift. The idea being that if each person took responsibility for their own stuff the job would go a lot smoother. Many hands and all that. 'Course the theory falls down when some of them can't make it owing to prior engagements, so we ended up wedging two lots of desktop kit and three people's boxes into the back of the car for the short journey to Cheadle.

Ironically, this was my first sight of Nikki's old offices. Having parked outside them virtually every working day for almost three years when picking her up, I'd never ventured inside. As you might expect from a small office in an old building, they looked very tired. The general demeanour was not helped by the empty desks, piles of boxes, and small heaps of detritus left behind when desks had been moved from positions they'd occupied for 30 years. But even looking beyond that it was clear that the offices would have been quite poky and dark to work in. Narrow corridors, old furniture, and very reminiscent of the kind of working environment I "enjoyed" for at least the first ten years of my career.

We dodged around the professional removals men who were taking the old desks away to a charity auction, and soon had the car loaded up and ready to roll.

The new place is a complete contrast. In fact I get the impression the amount of space has taken everyone by surprise. The phrase I heard most often after arriving there was "it didn't look this big on the plans." Which, you know, is nice for them all. Plenty of light, airy space. Brand new furniture. A newly-fitted kitchen (not yet complete when we were there, but with fitter beavering away), new phones, new network and, for those who had not had flat panel monitors before, all new monitors.

All this newness inspired Nikki to want some new desk accoutrements, so we headed off round the ring road to IKEA and wandered through the store enjoying the fact that we didn't have to rush for once. She found exactly what she was looking for: a set of two stand-up magazine holders and an in-tray (both called, confusingly, DOKUMENT), and we picked up a few things for our place too, including a pair of KASSETT boxes for the study. No amusing ikease names jumped out at us today, sadly.

A quick hop back to the business park, narrowly avoiding the Canada geese that have settled in by the lake, and an even more rapid assembly of Nikki's new in-tray and we were ready to come home and enjoy a midday cuppa. Our leaving was delayed slightly by the arrival of her new IP phone. We had a play with it before we left but disappointingly I was unable to find a CTU ring tone. An admittedly small drawback in the face of all the smart newness.

Curry mark 2

Not often we go out for a drink on a Friday night, but this was a special occasion: the last working day for Nikki and her colleagues in their old offices in Northenden. They're moving to posh new offices in Cheadle Royal Business Park over the weekend and have been clearing out almost 30 years of "archives" for the last couple of weeks in preparation for the move.

First stop: the Farmers Arms. Closest pub to the old offices and hence a favourite watering hole, until a recent altercation about something and nothing made the... er... decision makers of the group decide to take their custom elsewhere. I guess they must have put their differences aside in a nod to the long years' tradition for one last night. Two rounds here and then a short walk to...

Lounge About. A rather nice bar in the middle of Northenden furnished with extremely large, old, comfy sofas. What a brilliant idea. Sadly the choice of beer was only what you might call "bar standard" - Peroni, Sagres, an IPA, an Extra Cold or two, etc, etc - but in the end it didn't matter much, as we only stayed for one. It was soon time to move on to...

Jai Kathmandu. This "famous" curry house further down Palatine Road has been made legendary by tales from many of Nikki's colleagues, so I was expecting great things. At first glance there didn't appear to be a table free but once the manager recognised Bob, a couple who had not yet been served were moved over to a smaller table, and two large tables pushed together to accommodate eight of us in style. The advantages of being a regular, I guess. Little did the manager know that this was likely to be his last visit from this particular group (even though Bob did suggest the odd trip back, possibly for a Christmas curry).

On the evidence of tonight's meal I have to say I won't be joining them for that Christmas curry. Whether because they were extraordinarily busy - they'd initially told us to come back in an hour and even after seating us it still took almost an hour to be served - or because their curries tend towards Nepalese style, I don't know, but I wasn't tempted by anything on the specials menu and having fallen back on the old standby of chicken vindaloo I was served the most insipid example of that dish I've ever eaten (and I've eaten a few). It delivered only the merest hint of the vindaloo's traditional sourness and almost none of the heat. A real disappointment after the big build up. Their Peshwari nan left a lot to be desired too. Dry, burnt, and with no discernible sultanas. Tch! Strike one!

Curry revisited

Having made contact with a bunch of ex-colleagues last month, it appears I'm now "in with the in crowd" again, and not long after that outing I received a permanent invite to their monthly curryfest.

Mates' etiquette was at the forefront of my mind when accepting this month's invite. Left to my own devices, I wouldn't go every month, but since this was the first "non-special-event" invite, I felt it important to establish my credentials, as it were, as part of this small fraternity of curry lovers.

As it happened, the restaurant we'd used last month - Garlic Spice - was closed this evening. Unclear whether this is a temporary outage or a more permanent demise in these credit crunchy days. Either way it meant we had to choose between the other walkable options which, I was pleased to discover, numbered at least three. After a brief debate we opted for Eastern Revive, only a couple of minutes walk in the opposite direction and one which, a short Google revealed, is very well reviewed and liked by the locals. This was obvious from the moment we walked in. Not only was the place surprisingly busy for a Thursday (and also in view of the aforementioned crunch of credit) but we were welcomed fulsomely and a table large enough to accommodate the seven of us assembled before our very eyes.

Having never tried, or even heard of, Chicken Silsilla before last week when Nikki and I made an all-too-rare trip to Chorlton's marvellous Asian Fusion, I was surprised and delighted to find the same dish available here, and persuaded two of the others to join me. The meal was of equal quality to that enjoyed at Fusion, and the conversation flowed so freely we were still sitting chatting when the waiters collectively cleared their throats at 11.15.

Book review: The Book Thief

August's book club book - The Book Thief - is a hugely bestselling, award-winning, and well-reviewed account of the events that befall young Liesel Meminger during World War II after she is orphaned and sent to live on Himmel Street with foster parents Hans and Rosa Hubermann. The book is narrated by Death, who despite his stereotypical depiction on the cover art, insists that he doesn't have a skull-like face, or a scythe.

The Book Thief is undoubtedly well-written, in a literary way. As usual with literary works it has almost no plot to speak of, but meanders its way pleasantly enough through Liesel's few years on Himmel Street. There are no spoilers here (unlike in that Wikipedia entry linked above), but several things conspired to dull my enjoyment of this book to the point where it ended up on the metaphorical pile of those I've read and ended up thinking "so what."

So much of this novel seems cynically designed to appeal to lovers of literary work. To make it stand out from the crowd, rather than concentrating on its story. The device of using Death as narrator adds nothing to the work, and Zusak's depiction of Death has none of the humour of Pratchett's Mort, and none of the chill horror of the traditional Grim Reaper. He's just a sad old gatherer of souls, disinterestedly looking upon the lives of those he waits to collect and enjoying only the faintest and most occasional glimmer of excitement when he comes across a story like that of the book thief. How apt. Because only someone with an equally boring and monotonous existence could revel in this tale.

Even the descriptive passages and figurative language felt calculated to me. Calculated to elicit the maximum effect from the literati as they ooh and ahh over each new turn of phrase. 'Tears like wire', 'hair like splinters (or twigs) brushed away from a face with a wooden hand'. As if the author pored over his work groping and grasping for an original way to say something and - yes - finding it, but in the end, so what? Mostly they stuck out like the points on barbed wire, scratching my eyes as they scanned the text.

One or two of the characters stood out - Hans and Rudy are probably worth mentioning - but overall I couldn't develop any empathy with any of them until the last 30-40 pages, by which time I'd long since written the book off. I'm not a huge fan of WWII literature in any case (see my February review) so in the end this was just another heap of meh. I gave it 5 out of 10, but in the group discussion it gained two 10s and a good smattering of 9s, so don't take my word for it.

An absence of being moist

Ever been irritated and satisfied at the same time? I finished those small (re)decorating tasks today, finally. So the irritating part is that small jobs like this (I reckon all three areas we're talking about here add up to no more than 25 square feet) need just as many individual visits - stain stop; replastering; two coats of paint; and, in the case of the study ceiling/walls, additional days because the ceiling and walls can't be done on the same day owing to one or other edge being wet - as a much larger project. Which means just as many brush- and roller-cleaning events too.

The satisfying part should be obvious. We now have a kitchen ceiling that doesn't stare balefully down at you with its one plaster eye (albeit the painted part is slightly whiter than the non-painted part, but that's only temporary), the landing doesn't look so much like a building site, and the study doesn't have that mouldy, mottled, bubbling aspect of something out of Skellig's shed. Result! It's only taken a week.

Or two years, if you count the elapsed time.

More Stupid Signage

While we're on the subject of signage at the Wildlife Park, the last photo of the day on Monday was this one - a sign displayed on the fence beside the gate leading from the final animal area to the shop.

Now I've seen some rip-offs in my time, and dealt with some tightwads, but this really took the biscuit. For a start, there are signs all over the place telling you not to cross the barrier, so the chances of finding a peacock feather on the path must be fairly remote, but to then expect visitors to hand them in, and then pay two quid - TWO QUID!! - to get them back again.

Well, it made me laugh. You know, on top of the £11.50 we'd already paid. Each. Which includes a £1 surcharge for their charity. AND signed the Gift Aid declaration so they can claim the freakin' tax back. It's a damn good job we had a voucher allowing one of us to get in free. The one paying the lowest admission price, naturally. So I said to Blythe, even though she qualified for their child rate, she could blimmin' well claim to be an adult, and then at least we could save paying £11.50 for her rather than saving £8.

That made all the difference.

An ass among asses

It's often said that the law is an ass, and while we were at the Wildlife Park yesterday, we saw signs all over the place reminding us of that very fact.

No smoking in any part of the park, they said. Anyone wishing to smoke must leave the park. This is, I'm sure you'll appreciate, an OPEN AIR wildlife park. Sure, there are buildings. Restaurant, shop, animal houses, but these areas are outweighed many times over by the paths, walkways and open-air enclosures.

Now I've never been a smoker, and it's true that I've been known to rant against inconsiderate smokers in the past, but come on. This is taking persecution (and the letter of the law) a bit far. It seems they've classed the entire park as one huge "place of work" and banned smoking everywhere. So if you feel the craving, you have to step from one section of open-air path to another, through a small metal barrier.

I didn't see anything preventing the smoke blowing back across the barrier. I think they need another sign warning anyone standing in the vicinity of the barrier that they might be at risk.

These Animals May Bite

First day of a week's holiday yesterday that I've taken off to spend some time with my lovely daughters. It's great having them around the house, but when I'm working our chats are limited to lunchtimes and snatched conversations around a teapot while it brews our latest cuppa, so I wanted to take advantage of my extra holiday and have a week where we could all relax together without the distraction of earning a crust.

Since this is a British summer the weather forecast for the week isn't brilliant, and when Nikki happened across a leaflet for the South Lakes Wild Animal Park we knew we'd have to go early in the week if we wanted to avoid being rained on.






The usual crop of giraffes, rhinos, lions, tigers, penguins etc were entertaining enough, but the real fun of the day came from listening to our fellow visitors. See the lemur shots up there? As you can see, most of them are ring-tailed lemurs, but casually draped in the grass on the left side is what may be a red ruffed lemur. One knowledgeable young man informed the rest of his family that this was "probably an orang-utan," while his grandma remarked that the huddled group of lemurs "looked like refugees."

Climbing up the steep slope past the flamingo pond I overheard one guy ask if his group wanted to come see "the flamencoes" and I almost tripped over a mother entreating her toddler to "stay on the path, or you'll be eaten by a wild animal." Poor kid will grow up never remembering why she has a life-long dread of zoos.

But the best comment of the day came from the mother taking a photograph of her son standing beside one of the rheas which were wandering loose on the path outside the main aviary.

"Smile Jeremy. No, smile like a person."

Being Moist

When a friend of ours recently stated categorically that he wanted to be moist, I thought he'd lost his mind. Being moist has been nothing but trouble for us since we moved into this gaff. In his case, however, he was after playing the part of Moist in any potential production of Terry Pratchett's Going Postal. Whereas in our case it's a question of too much rain and leaking showers.

Since we first had those problems, the roof has been fixed and so has the shower, but what we're left with is some damp damage to the decorating in the study, and a small area of replastered kitchen ceiling that's a bit of an eyesore.

The damage in the study comprises flaking paint on the ceiling above Nikki's chimney breast, together with some slight lifting of the plaster on the vertical surfaces just below, so the first task was to scrape back all the loose material and paint it over with some "stain stop" solvent-based paint.

There's no evidence (in terms of damp smells or watermarks) that this area is still being moistened on a regular basis, but I know from experience that damp stains are tenacious buggers and will bleed through regular paint unless special measures are taken. I've had good results with the stain stopper before, so I'm sticking with what I know works.

Since the plaster damage extends over quite a large area I've invested in a tub of SmoothOver along with the relevant toolset. Parts of the kitchen ceiling will also benefit from a liberal application of this jollop (the bits where our plasterer hadn't taken as much care as usual owing to us making the mistake of admitting we'll be having the whole ceiling replastered at some stage), and while I'm at it there's those large cracks around what used to be the bathroom door, where the jobbing plasterer subcontracted by the World's Worst Bathroom Fitters didn't give a shit and slapped his mix on the minimum possible area to qualify as "his job."

Hard to believe that one small tub of ready-mixed Polyfilla could be so versatile in fixing three of the niggling little jobs left over from some of the major works of the last two-and-a-bit years.

The Lull

Haven't been blogging much lately because tbh there hasn't been much to blog *about*. Ironic really, that I could be on the brink of a life-changing event, but until something happens on that front everything seems somehow quieter and flatter than usual.

Sure, I've had another couple of rejections arriving from the queries I sent out before #44, but as you might expect their pain is massively dulled by the knowledge that someone, somewhere in New York City, is reading my manuscript.

I've half expected a second request for a full or a partial to arrive on the heels of the first, which would be doubly ironic. The rules of querying would forbid me from sending it to anyone else while it is being considered by the first requester. For that very reason I've suspended sending out any more queries for the time being, although there are still 14 out there that I'm waiting to hear back from.

Visit UKwriters

I have joined this place though. I came across it via the blog of one of my recent commenters (thanks Laurence!). I know received wisdom is that it's good to join a writers' group but doing this IRL never appealed to me overmuch. Writers as a breed are solitary folk sitting in garrets sharpening pencils and staring out of windows waiting for inspiration, or crouched over their keyboards with semi-maniacal stares illuminated only by the soft glow of a desk lamp and the reflections of their monitors in their wire-rimmed spectacles as they bash out another best-seller. They don't do groups. But they DO do virtual groups, so this could well be perfect.

Query No. 44.

I'm going to have to stop checking my email immediately before bed.

It was incredibly hard to get to sleep last night after that pre-nocturnal check revealed the words:
Thank you for your query. We read it with some interest and would like to see the full manuscript.

Yes, after 43 attempts ended in total disinterest (we're not taking on new clients; this isn't the kind of thing we're looking for; we no longer take email queries), someone finally wants to read my book.

OK, it's a bit early to be breaking out the champagne, but to be honest I feel like I've already had three glasses.

Odds of Evens means a sure-fire loser

We sped over to Nottingham at a snail's pace this morning (owing to the M1 roadworks, which have now reached new heights of ridiculousness) for a long-delayed visit to my Mum. We haven't been over since the weekend before her birthday, which is in March, but to be honest we've (I've) been putting it off. These visits are becoming more of an emotional ordeal with each tick of life's relentless clock. With a rapidly failing memory, she hardly ever has any news for us, simply on account of her not being able to remember much of what has happened, and so has fallen back even more heavily on her stock of extremely well-worn and oft-repeated phrases in lieu of real conversation.

This time around, even my standard levels of dread were insufficient to set expectations for the new depths this visit would plumb as I embarked on the pointless task of relating our news. I say pointless, because it's obvious even during the telling that most of it will be forgotten moments afterward, but there is, clearly, no other option. We can't sit it in silence for four hours.

One of our snippets was that I've recently hooked up with my cousin Joanne on Facebook. Now it's hard enough explaining the concept of Facebook to someone who has absolutely no interest in the Internet, and pretty much no concept of why anyone would want to spend time on it, but I'm used to having to dish up copious quantities of modern-day cultural scaffolding to shore up my stories so that wasn't much of an issue. I was totally unprepared however for the complete lack of recognition on my Mum's part for the name 'Joanne'.

"You know. Jacqueline's daughter."
Blank stare. Slight shake of the head.
"No, I don't know who she is."

We had some photos of Nat's recent Belize trip on our iPod/Phone too.
"Here's one of Nat with a boa constrictor round her neck."
Short pause.
"Who did you say this was?"

But this post isn't really about Mother And Her Failing Memory. To counteract the stress of these visits we occasionally treat ourselves to a pub meal on the way home.

We initially intended to stop at our favourite journeying watering hole - the Dog & Partridge at Dunford Bridge. Home of the UK's finest fish supper as well as an extensive range of main meal alternatives and a good supply of fine local ales. However, since our last visit to the Dog, we have sampled the delights of...

... the Bull I' Th' Thorn just outside Buxton; scene of much hilarity (not to mention temporarily misplaced tempers) during Annie's birthday weekend. Nikki had had a hankering for one of Graham's meat pies for a few days, and casually dropped the stone of the Bull into the calm millpond of our chosen eatery just as I'd thought everything was all settled.

As usual, the final decision was left to me.

"Why do I have to pick? I always pick."
"Because I'm not bothered which one we go to."
"Neither am I."
etc.

I didn't know which one I'd end up heading for until we set off back home, at which point I plumped for the Bull. Mainly, it has to be said, because the sun had broken through the mid-afternoon cloud, and I fancied a leisurely drive through the rolling hills of Derbyshire in preference to the "same old same old" aspect of the trans-Pennine route.

Bad decision.

As we approached the Bull from the south, we were almost upon it (in fact I'd already started indicating to turn into the car park) when we noticed both entrances were cordoned off with dayglo orange barriers, and the camping field next to the pub was awash with multicoloured canvas. One of Graham's famous biking rallies? A camping weekend organised by a group WAY more into tents than the Chorlton Players? Whatever it was, the pub was clearly closed to all but the chosen few, and our dinner plans were left as ragged and bloody as a piece of weekend roadkill.

A few hundred yards further up the road we tripped over the Duke of York, which proved to be *almost* the equal of the Bull in terms of comestible quality, and what's more served up a cracking pint of Robinson's. Result!

Can there be anything more satisfying...

...than sitting in one's study while working, and hearing the strains of one of your favourite albums of all time coming up from downstairs, because it's being listened to by your daughters?

Well, I'm sure you have your own list of "most satisfying moments," but this *definitely* qualifies as one of mine.

It's like... passing on the baton of prog rock enjoyment to the next generation. What a pity there are so few contemporary bands with the musical prowess of those great 70s icons to create new stuff that's equally as good.

*waits patiently for the denizens of bothbarson to hotly contest that last point*

That syncing feeling

Woke up to a little message from iTunes to say 8 tunes had not been copied because they couldn't be found.

Which, out of 1930 tunes, isn't a bad hit rate, but it still surprised me. I thought I'd sorted everything out. Turned out to be songs from my old "Caraoke" folders (yes, I know it's spelled karaoke. These songs were for listening to in the car. Geddit?) some of which I'd already spotted had been *moved* into the folders from their original locations, rather than copied. Don't ask me why; I must have been having an off day.

Anyway since the magic of playlists means I no longer need duplicates for the purposes of practising my karaoke warblings while on long drives, I'd decided I could delete the Caraoke folders. All three of them. Which explains the missing eight tunes. Damn.

Luckily they're all songs from compilation albums currently gathering dust in the top room. At some stage I'll need to dig them out and re-rip the missing tracks. For now, the other 1922 will just have to keep me going.

I'm starting to sync

Almost three weeks after I started on this tagging/album art business, I think I'm finally ready to go. To... you know... plug the damned thing in and let it rip.

The last item on the list, and easily the most tedious, was finding art for every single one of the tracks that I'd called "Singles" and Paul had lumped together as "Tunes." Removing the duplicates, listening again to the Tunes I didn't recognise, airbrushing some out of the picture, and deciding whether to go with a grainy scan of the original single's cover, or the album sleeve the track is from, or just some random picture associated with the artist.

But now, it's all done. And I'm syncing fast. Well, as fast as iTunes can manage, which looks like it'll be done sometime in the early hours of tomorrow.

The march of environmental fascism

For reasons I won't bore you with I was trawling through my posts in the Blogger window the other day when I came across the draft below. Somehow it had slipped unnoticed onto the second page without ever being published and, thus hidden, had languished there ever since. Which is a shame because (a) it was a finished post and (b) it's a rant, and everyone loves a good rant.

So I've bumped it and, although when it reads "yesterday" it actually means some time last year, I think the rest of it still holds. We've bought our own canvas bags for shopping now. Pass the hummus...


Hulme Asda were doling out warnings yesterday about their stopping supplying carrier bags from next week. This warning is accompanied by a relocation of the bag supplies under the till, thus making it more awkward to insist on using them. They've been replaced by "bag-for-life" type bags on sale for 5p, or 10p, or something.

Doubtless I'll get pilloried by the hummus-lovers, but (and pardon me for saying so) I think there are about a thousand environmental problems in need of more urgent attention than plastic bags. But sure enough, the "plastic bags" issue is the one this bankrupt government concentrate on, and the major supermarkets, with all their massed commercial might, are only too delighted to toady up to them and go along with it.

And why wouldn't they be? Supplying carrier bags for free has, until now, been seen as a cost of being in business. Here's a chance for them to pass that cost onto the hapless consumer, and LOOK GOOD IN THE PROCESS! Oh look at us, we're being environmentally conscientious. We're doing our bit for the planet. This is such utter b0ll0cks. How many billion pounds a year profit do these ba5tards make? I don't know, but almost certainly enough to swallow the entire cost of recycling every single plastic bag in the country. They could even afford to pay us a penny every time we reuse one, as an incentive. Oh look! Some of them HAVE been doing that already! Until the government let them off the hook by declaring the plastic carrier bag Public Enemy Number One. A nice, easy target. One whose destruction will only affect the poor old consumer, right at the bottom of the corporate food chain, who now has to cart around a dozen bags every trip, bags that will get dirtier and smellier as the weeks go by.

Meanwhile the number of 4x4s on the roads continues to climb, the icecaps keep on melting, China and India continue to pour millions of cubic metres of concrete, the rainforests are almost gone, fish are being caught at unsustainable levels and drug companies defy testing regimes and outright bans. But it's OK, the planet is safe. As long as you use a sustainable form of plastic bag. God.

July Wednesdays. Number 5: Book Club

With me "officially" in the chair - because it was my selection this month - rather than my normal "unofficial" chairing (i.e. supporting the official chairperson when they can't remember the running order).

Last time I chose the book - by some strange coincidence exactly two years ago in July 2007 - only 7 people turned up at the meeting to discuss it, so I guess on that basis you could say I did well to garner a turnout of 12. When compared to recent numbers though, it looked a bit sad. We've been having 20-25 people attending for months now. If I felt like being kind to myself I'd say something about it being holiday season, or the good weather keeping them away, but if I'm being honest I know there'll be a lot of the group who decided right off they wouldn't read the book this month because they hear the words "science fiction" and the shutters come down.

I can hardly blame them. There have been at least two months this year when I haven't read the book either, and another couple of occasions where I've either not finished it, or wished I hadn't. It seems that the idea of joining a book club to read books you wouldn't normally read is good in principle but too easy to avoid in practice.

Still, I was pleasantly surprised by the reaction. A few people enjoyed it. Kind of. Only one absolutely hated it (and didn't get past page 70). I wanted to point out that I'd made my eyes bleed reading through HIS selection, so maybe he owed me similar respect, but I didn't have the heart. This is supposed to be fun, after all. And having not really enjoyed the read myself this time around, I'd have been on shaky ground arguing with him really.

So that's the end of the July Wednesdays. A month of almost unheard of mid-week sociability and activity. I'm exhausted. I think I better have a lie down.

Book Review: Stranger in a Strange Land

For only the second time in three years, I chose the book club book for this month. I offered a choice of (what I thought were) three outstanding SF novels from different times, and this - Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land - won the vote.

Billed as "the most famous science fantasy novel of all time" (Heinlein was never known for his reticence) I've been trying to remember when I last read this. The obvious answer is "thirty years ago" but I don't think it's quite as long as that. What I *do* remember is a lasting impression of a book I enjoyed immensely, back then.

So... what book was that then? Because when I started rereading this, I thought it was the most pompous, inflated, self-important drivel I'd ever read, with stilted dialogue and unbelievable leaps of plot. The idea is great, the execution? Not so good.

Clearly, the book hasn't changed. But somewhere in the intervening 25-30 years, I have. And so have social mores. And on top of that, the landscape of acceptability, equality and political correctness has shifted radically, as if borne on sociopsychological tectonic plates. The end result is that Stranger has been left behind in the very early 60s and now reads like an anachronistic diatribe rather than a piece of cutting-edge science fiction.

There's a famous quote from the book (which I won't bother repeating here) on the subject of rape and my God! It leaps out at you as (now) totally incongruous and... well... just plain wrong-headed. Much of this conspired to dull the enjoyment of what I had expected to be a pleasant experience, refreshing my youthful memories of a damned good read. Instead I found whole swathes of text tedious in the extreme. Even the better parts were less than good. My self-created illusions about this author were severely dented and I regretfully concluded that I won't be able to bring myself to reread any of my (reasonably extensive) collection of Heinlein for fear of repeating this unhappy few weeks. Honestly, I couldn't wait for it to be over. What a disappointment.

Theatre night

We had another book club outing last night. Dinner at Chaophraya followed by theatre: Everyone's A Winner at the Royal Exchange.

It's so rare for us to spend any time in town - at all, let alone in the evening - that virtually every eatery or pubbery is a new experience. We'd certainly never visited Chaophraya before. The first to arrive, we busied ourselves drooling over their extensive menu and sipping on a couple of pints from the bar.

Imagine my disappointment then to learn, once everyone had arrived and we'd taken our seats upstairs (11 of us were dining) that the restaurant has a policy for "large parties" of not taking orders from the menu. Diners are expected to select from one of the five set menus, although these can be mixed. So it would be possible, for instance, for a party of ten to order every one of the set menus and then be faced with the near impossible task for each pair to chomp their way through a plate of starters and FOUR main courses.

Not to mention the fact that the cheapest set menu is twenty quid per person, whereas our preferred selections from the menu would have set us back only a little over half that amount.

Sadly, on that basis alone, it's clear where their "policy" is coming from, but it wasn't really the money that pissed me off so much. Part of it was the extreme waste of food, but most of it was my lifelong hatred of being arbitrarily told what to do. Ordering from the set menus was not going to make their life appreciably easier, was a needless imposition, prevented us from eating what we had already decided upon (*none* of the set menus included our preferred dishes), and on top of all that cost us more than we would otherwise have paid. I ended up having to bite down really hard to stop their attitude spoiling the whole evening.

The food, when it eventually arrived, was OK. I've had better. But frankly even if it had been the best Thai food the world has ever seen I would never go back, and I wouldn't recommend going there if there's more than four of you.

In contrast, the theatre was a delight. I won't spoil it for you - I realise it's unlikely any of you will get to see the show, but even so - except to say that the whole thing revolves around an urban bingo hall, the audience get to participate in the bingo, and in the second half someone really did win £200. Two hundred real pounds. How cool is that? It could have been me. Next time. Etc.

We don't go to the theatre half enough. In all the years (thirty, naturally) I've been going to the Royal Exchange I can count the bad shows I've seen on the fingers of one finger. Great entertainment, even if the second half did somewhat abandon the comedy in favour of some half-baked social commentary.

More iTunes madness

When Paul came to stay last year, I took the opportunity to dump his iPod onto my PC. That was 16 MONTHS ago and as yet none of that music has found its way onto mine. Not that I've been doing nothing. It takes a while to listen to 80GB of music and decide whether it's something you'll want to listen to again and, Paul would be the first to admit, he does listen to some weird shit.

Having jettisoned the weirdest of the weird, there's considerably less than 80GB of the original stuff left, but even so what I added to the pile virtually doubled my music collection, and along with the fact that I've bought quite a few new albums recently, I was coming in for some serious nagging (well, exasperated sighs anyway) from some quarters at the fact that *another* car journey was taking place and there was *still* nothing new on the iPod. I'd already ticked the WMA to MP3 conversion box, so I was running out of excuses.

It's been a while since I used iTunes and I soon remembered why. Sure, I'd had some pretty bad experiences with it when I first loaded up the iPod, and since then I've avoided it as much as possible. It didn't help that every time I opened it up it would tell me a newer version was available, and then pretend to download that newer version but never get anywhere.

I decided that upgrade had to be first on the agenda. A newer version *might* be more stable, and if the auto-upgrade wasn't working for some reason, I'd just have to go over there and drag it off the Apple site myself. Installation complete, I set version 8.2.1.6 off on its crawl through my hard drive again, to find all that lovely new stuff from Paul, and those purchases from the last sixteen months.

One of the things I really, really wanted to sort out was the lack of Album Art. I've always had a thing for album covers (I even bought Roger Dean's book ferchrissake), so it was a source of some irritation that almost none of the music I copied over that first time had any art associated with it. I'd done some research and discovered the iTunes Library album art fetching thingy, which looked like an obvious first step since it involved no effort on my part beyond a click or two.

Sadly - a common experience by all accounts - iTunes managed to find less than half the album art I needed. For one thing it's extremely sensitive to naming inconsistencies, and beyond that it simply doesn't have a very extensive collection. So here's where I trip over the first of today's stupid iTunes annoyances. See, being an Apple product, iTunes has to pretend it understands nothing about Windows, or how the Microsoft Media Player rips CDs to your PC. Most CDs come with their album art stored on the disk as JPEG files, and Media Player conveniently copies these to the same folder as the music, and calls the files "album art." That's too subtle for iTunes. It pretends it can't find them. OK, so they're hidden files. Don't get technical on me. If I can see them, so can iTunes.

I reverted to the manual method - dragging the (hidden) Album Art files into iTunes. But what about all those albums from Paul, that I didn't have files for, hidden or otherwise? Two words: Google Images. Just typing the artist and album name into Google Images, in most cases, resulted in several thousand copies of the right picture file being presented for my selection. Brilliant. Brilliant and tedious, but brilliant even so.

Did I say "the first" of the iTunes annoyances? Yes. There's at least one more. Track numbering. iTunes will interpret ID3 tags correctly, and list the tracks in the right order if they're there. If not, tracks are listed alphabetically. But once again iTunes deliberately ignores, or pretends to have no knowledge of, the standard Media Player method of naming the music files it has ripped. "01 First Track Name" "02 Second Track Name" and so on. So even in the absence of correct ID3 tags, there is the smallest CLUE there as to the correct order, and I REALLY didn't want to have to trawl through the majority of my music collection telling iTunes what it should already have been able to work out.

Still, you know, it's not like I've got anything else to do.

July Wednesdays. Number 4: A recording session

I didn't know when I arrived for our fourth recording session that the switch to Wednesdays was going to be a permanent thing. We'd moved it for this week on account of Annie's committee meeting tomorrow, but as of next week she's going to give aquaerobics a shot, and that's on Thursdays. Could be a good move, cos I'm pretty sure that's something Nikki would like to join in with, so Wednesdays it is from now on.

Apart from any Players dress rehearsals and book club nights, obviously.

Fourth song, and another one of Annie's vocals. When I recorded my first two, I found the second session went much more smoothly than the first, and the same thing happened with her. Almost as if that first session scraped the rust off one's pipes leaving them smooth and shiny for the second session. Whatever the reason, things rattled along much easier than last week and before we knew it another main vocal was wrapped.

Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Took Natalie & Blythe to see this at the IMAX on Sunday. IMAX has somehow become our preferred venue for movie-going, probably on account of us being somewhat selective about what we see in the cinema and, having decided that something is worth watching on a big screen, it makes sense to go for the biggest screen around!

The first 12 minutes of HBP was presented in IMAX 3D. An entertaining and absorbing experience but ultimately I find it distracting. When I'm not trying to duck out of the way of the revolving Warner Brothers sign that's threatening to chop my head off, I'm thinking about how clever the effects are, and lifting the 3D glasses off to see what the film looks like without them (I've done this at every 3D presentation I've ever attended, going right back to Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone). So I was quite grateful when the little red heads flashed up to tell us it was time to remove the glasses and get on with the rest of the film.

And what a film it was. Easily the best of the Potters so far, screenwriter Steve Kloves did an admirable job of turning another overlong book into a watchable movie with many levels of interest. From what I've read opinion among HP fans is sharply divided. The ending was all wrong, too much was left out, scenes invented that weren't in the book yadda yadda yadda. I'm coming at it from the perspective of someone who's only read the book once. For me, the further you get through the HP series, the more long-winded and tedious the books become. I've long said that it's as if the publisher gave up any pretence of editing Rowling and decided the whole thing was just such an amazing money-generating machine they may as well roll over and publish whatever she came up with. As a result the books became ever more self-indulgent, flabby and overwritten.

That approach won't work for a movie. You only have so much time to play with. So what's important? To make an entertaining film that stands on its own merits, or one which is less entertaining for the masses, but ticks all the boxes for the few who like to steep themselves in Potter lore and know every nuance and motivation of every character backwards?

I know where I sit. HBP was entertaining from start to finish. Some great comic moments, many centred around the wonderful character of Luna Lovegood (played brilliantly by Evanna Lynch), some excellent character development, and overall a superbly fell and claustrophobic atmosphere pervading the entire 153 minutes. OK, maybe we could have spent a bit less time on the various teenage relationships, but for me this only added realism to the piece. With hormones raging, many teenagers DO think their relationships, real or imagined, are the most important things in the world, even when there's dark magic invading every corner of the world and threatening to destroy life as we know it.

One downside of the massive amount of story we had to get through in a (relatively) short time, was the number of characters effectively reduced to cameos. Hagrid, Professor McGonagall, most of the Weasley family, Tonks (more Natalia Tena please!), Lupin, Neville, Wormtail, even Crabbe and Goyle, have mere seconds on screen, although without exception they manage to make the most of their moments.

Conversely, those who enjoy the most screen time pull out performances that, each in their own way, are stronger than anything that's gone before. The three main characters get better with every outing, Michael Gambon's Dumbledore enjoys some of his best scenes ever, and Tom Felton finally has the chance to turn Draco Malfoy into more than a two-dimensional cipher of a baddie. He grabs that chance with both hands.

I guess the next instalment will be subtitled "the search for the Horcruxes" which will have a tightrope to walk to keep the interest up. Is there really enough material in the last book for two movies, or is it merely an excuse to wring every last drop of profit from the franchise? Time will tell.

Another 4x4 rant

Now that the schools have broken up and the roads around our house are mercifully free of the damned Chelsea tractors for at least 6 weeks, I can afford the slight rise in blood pressure to write about my reaction to a recent Mitsubishi advert.

Apparently one of their tanks has the lowest CO2 emissions of any 7-seater 4x4. Wow. Big deal. Still worse than a regular car though eh? How many of you really *need* 7 seats? How many of you benefit from (or even know how to engage) the 4-wheel drive?

Wankers.

Kabin Konundrum

Last Friday, Norris was heard to mutter something about how he wasn't aware that it was a nice day on account of it being "dark when I started work." Excuse me? Are the scriptwriters not aware that it's light by about 4.30am at this time of year in Manchester?

Even newsagents don't start work THAT early.

That wasn't the only gaffe in that Kabin scene either. Sloppy writing. (And yes, I take this stuff far too seriously)

Fun at IKEA

Bit of an oxymoron you might think, but the daft Swedalike names that IKEA use for all their products never fail to amuse me. I know, I'm a big kid. You have to do something to relieve the boredom during a trip to somewhere like IKEA.

So we dropped in there last night during the journey home on account of Natalie needing some new stuff for her latest student digs, and tickled ourselves helpless at the merchandise's expense.

Later, at the dinner table, we relived the hilarity of the visit for Nikki's benefit and recalled that the woman in front of us at the till had, among her other purchases, a toilet seat.

Not knowing what the actual name of this item is, I set everyone a challenge of inventing an IKEA-type name for it. Here's what we came up with:

POOJAR
POORING
CHET
BUMSIT
ÅRSRING
and, my personal favourite, DOKNUT

It's actual name? Online research reveals it to be almost funnier than anything we came up with. It's called RACKEN.

The awesome power of the government mind

We still get a surprising amount of mail for people who no longer live here. This coming October we'll have been here three years, but still it dribbles in. Mainly for the people we bought the house from but still, occasionally, for other names who must be long gone.

I address this issue with undiminished vigour, as I long for a day when the only mail to be delivered here is ours. To that end I always seek out the contact email or webform of the senders and send them a standard note requesting they desist.

With the most recent example, it was easy to find a contact. It was a government letter. Their response was almost immediate, and beautifully demonstrates the capacity of civil servants to behave as if they only have one brain between them, this being one of days when their head was empty. Names and addresses have been changed to protect their blushes:


Dear John

Thank you for your recent email.
Please provide us with the address that the mailing was sent to so we can remove it from our list.
Please also accept my apologies for the inconvenience this matter has caused.

Kind regards,
Brian Dead
The Government Information Team for Improper Mailings


-----Original Message-----
From: John Beresford [mailto:john@thingummyjig.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 1:13 PM
To:
Cc:
Subject: Ralf Previous-Owner

You are receiving this email because you have sent postal mail to Ralf Previous-Owner at 11 My Road, My Suburb, Manchester M11 1AA, specifically a notification of the change in the law following the introduction of the Improper Mailings Scheme.

Mr Previous-Owner has not lived at this address since October 2006. Your letter states that you will be in touch with him again to remind him of the November 2010 deadline. Please don't bother. He's not here. We would be grateful if you would send no further mail for him here.

Thanks in anticipation.

john beresford

Weird & Wonderful takes shape

We held our third recording session for the new album last night, and the first where Annie was doing the singing.

We've had a bit of a hiatus since the second session what with one thing and another, but Annie's been busy in the interim with overdubbing, mixing, and adding various other new elements to the music to make it REALLY sing. Those first two tracks now sound awesome, although the first still needs me to fill in the final chorus, which we originally thought we could cheat on, but realised later that it's in a different key to the first.

With two tracks in the can, we had to decide whether to release these or wait until the whole album is finished. In the end we plumped for the more traditional approach, so apologies to anyone who was hoping for a sneak preview of the new stuff, but by way of sweetening the pill we've both been doing some work on our joint venture song-writing website, and you can now stream any/all of the tracks from our first album there if you fancy a listen, as well as accessing the lyrics and reading something about how I came up with the ideas for them.

Last night though, was all about Annie, and we'd chosen what turned out to be a particularly difficult track for her to start with. A real test of the vocal gymnastics, and after what I went through on our first recording, having not done any serious singing for quite a while, I really empathised with her struggles to find *exactly* the right note. We stuck at it though. There was an element of jokey rivalry to it, sure, revealed by her terse reply to my observation that it's not written down anywhere we have to finish a song every night: "You did." So we kept going. Us against the song. And we won.

Well, Annie did. I just ran the desk. Thankfully, it has a "simpleton mode." So rather than getting to grips with the one-hundred-and-fifty-million menus, sub-menus, sub-sub-menus, normalising, compressing, envelope shaping, pitch correction and all the other magnificent gubbins this software is capable of, all I had to do was hit "R" to start recording, and "space bar" to stop. Oh, and scroll backwards and forwards a bit. Simples!

Three down; nine to go. Still more production work for Annie to do on tonight's recording. Adding reverb, six-part harmonies, effects, maybe rerecording the odd bit of backing track or adding another guitar line. She puts hours of effort into the production of each track, but the end result is worth it. Not only is the original material much stronger on this second album - both musically and lyrically - but the things she's learned about production, along with her much greater proficiency with drums and guitar, is promising to make Weird & Wonderful live up to at least half its name!

July Wednesdays. Number 3: A subdued stag do

Some people seem destined never to meet the right partner. If you're into "people watching" (like I am) you might gaze at them in a reflective moment and wonder what it is about them that is holding the world at bay. They're witty, clever, got a reasonable job, personable. They wash in all the right places and with the right frequency. But somehow, they're still on their own.

Sometimes it's through choice, obviously. Not every singleton is constantly on the search for someone to turn them into a couple. Other times it's simply that they've had other stuff to do. Stuff which, to them, is more important for now. Until the world turns, and Cupid catches up with them.

Well, Cupid finally caught up with an old colleague of mine. Someone who these days I only see about once a year, but for whom another old colleague organised a small get-together of similarly well-dispersed friends. I didn't know he was getting married until the email arrived to invite me to tonight's event which I guess we can call a stag do, even though it didn't involve strippers, or large quantities of alcohol, or being chained naked to anything. Thank God. But, you know, despite my somewhat jaded view of marriage, good luck to him. The statistics may be against him (1 in every 2 marriages in the UK now fail, apparently), but they're probably skewed by all those hotheaded youngsters rushing down the aisle before they really know who they are, never mind who each other is. Having left it this long before "settling down" I'm sure he'll be fine.

Anyway we started off at the Bollin Fee in Wilmslow, which can apparently get a little wild at weekends but which, at 7pm on a Wednesday night resembled a doctor's waiting room in the middle of a swine flu epidemic more than it did a shopping mall on the first day of sales. The six of us were - almost - their only custom. So the landlord must have been a little disappointed when we packed up after only two pints and headed off to Garlic Spice, a small Indian restaurant tucked away around the corner on Bank Square.

What a find this place is! "Summer Special" on the menu gets you a poppadum, a starter, a main, a side dish, rice and naan, all for £8.95. And a gut-busting £8.95s-worth it is too. I almost couldn't finish it. Almost. Once again, we were their only custom. Denizens of Wilmslow apparently don't venture out much in the week. Maybe that's why they go so mad on a weekend? Still, we weren't complaining. Having the place to ourselves just meant the service was excellent, as was the food, and we could relax and enjoy a whole load of catch-up conversation and wit, discuss the issues of the day, and offer Simon some handy tips on matrimony. Which, if he's any sense at all, he will totally ignore.

5th Annual Chorlton Beer Festival

Hard to believe tonight saw the opening night of the FIFTH annual Chorlton beer festival. Once known as "ZestQuest Beerfest" but now simply the "Chorlton" beer festival, this is a must-go entry on the annual social calendar and has grown every year since those innocent days back in 2004. Last year they ran out of beer halfway through Saturday and have ordered 50% more, but judging by the rapidity with which the signs were being turned around on the 30+ real ale barrels adorning the... um... bit of the church where they were racked, I still don't know whether that'll be enough.

Anyway it won't bother us. Friday was always going to be "our" night, not least because it's forecast to piss down tomorrow but mainly on account of experience telling us to get there early to be certain of securing our favourite tipples.

An innovation this year: branded glasses. Very nice. Previous years have suffered from the use of plastic glasses but this year we were treated to proper glass glasses with this rather attractive logo. £2 a pop and you could either keep them, or return them on your way out for a refund. There was never any question that ours would be coming home with us. A nice memento of the evening and the slow and gentle quaffing of Alchemist, Snowdonia and Kodiak Gold in the company of good friends and some traditional, live, music.

What I was really there for

My heart wasn't in that drinks reception at the awards ceremony last night. I'm not a huge one for small talk with strangers. I drained my Peroni as fast as I deemed polite, bid a professional farewell to Mr Commended with whom I'd struck up that brief conversation, and left.

As I walked out through reception, the real reason for me being there was made plain. The universal reason, I mean. The Serendipity.

For there at reception, a small wheeled travelling bag at her feet, stood a young lady holding a single sheet of A4 and wearing a worried expression. The security man at the reception desk called out, "does anyone know where Handforth is?"

And I, of course, do.

What's more, I know how hard it is to reach Handforth from Oxford Road by public transport. "How much would a taxi cost from here?" enquired plod. I reckoned on about thirty quid, given that my regular journey from home to Piccadilly was around a tenner. Young Lady turned her deepening worried expression on me. "I 'ave come from ze airport," she announced in a charming French accent. "Ze bus driver said it was ze right one for 'Andforth."

What choice did I have? Beyond seeking out the bus driver and beating him to a bloody pulp, I mean. I offered her a lift. It was the least I could do. Some small recompense for being dumped 11 miles north of her real destination by a bus driver who couldn't have given the faintest toss where she needed to be. A way of showing her that not all British men are ignorant oafs.

The young lady - I never did ask her name - put aside any worries she may have fleetingly had about accepting lifts from strangers and picked up her suitcase. The plod on reception tried to reassure her. "He's alright," he said, "he's come from the BBC." Which clearly is no reassurance whatsoever, as I was only visiting.

The journey to the Pinewood hotel in Handforth passed pleasantly enough, with me pointing out local landmarks en route and her explaining that she was from Lille, worked for Tate & Lyle, and was here inspecting food ingredients (or something). I thought it best not to make any quips about EU food regulations. You know. Cucumbers, bananas, that sort of thing. As we drove down the Kingsway a plane overflew us on its final approach and I pointed out how close she had been to Handforth while still at the airport. How we laughed. Who says the French have no sense of irony? No-one. That's the Americans.

"You 'ave no idea 'ow you 'ave 'elped me," she enthused as we pulled up at reception. The right one this time. I smiled. No worries, my dear. It's all good for my karma.

July Wednesdays. Number 2: The Alfred Bradley awards ceremony

As I mentioned last week, where Wednesdays are concerned July is a pretty hectic month. I did have one free, but not for long. Anyway here we are at number 2, and off I set to BBC Broadcasting House as one of the long-listed playwrights graciously invited to sit in the audience and watch those who beat us receive their prizes.

The ceremony itself was held in Studio 7. I'd never been in a studio before. Never been one of those who apply for tickets to watch shows being recorded, laugh on cue, or participate in... participation... events. As far as I could tell the main reasons for using a studio in this case were because they didn't have a meeting room large enough to accommodate the expected audience (of between 50 and 100 people) and because we were to be treated to a "script in hand" performance of selected scenes from the bursary winners' plays.

We were handed a programme as we arrived. For some reason, and completely out of character for me as someone pathologically early to events of all kinds, I'd interpreted the billed start time of 5.30 as the *earliest* I should turn up. In truth I couldn't have made it much earlier anyway, having not picked Nikki up from work until 5. Even so it was quite a shock to walk in at 5.33 and find the tiered seating already two-thirds full. A few even-later-comers drifted in after me, and we finally got underway a few minutes later.

A brief glance down the programme, which contained short synopses and bios of the finalists and their writers, revealed a truth which in my naivete I had not grasped until that very moment. The Alfred Bradley Bursary Award is open to first-time writers for radio. Writers who have not had a play produced for radio. Not, as I had assumed, writers who have never had anything produced at all. Here was my second shock of the evening. Reading passages such as

"X studied screenwriting as a post-graduate at the Northern Film & TV School..."
"Y holds... a MA in TV & Video. His first writing commission was from BBC Scotland and his sitcom won..."
"Z studied English at Oxford and his first play was produced earlier this year..."

brought home to me that this is very definitely a competition for serious professionals. Which meant two things.
1: I did well to be long-listed as an untrained, unlearned writer at my first attempt.
2: I never had any chance of winning.

Sorry if #2 sounds like sour grapes. It's not intended to be. I'm just trying to be realistic. Would any judging panel allow a complete novice to win over entrants with degrees in related arts and established track records of success in other media? Well, maybe. I guess if the writing was stellar they could claim "an amazing find." But the cynic in me says (loudly) that writing is turning out to be just one more of those cliques where success depends on ticking the right boxes and hanging out in the right crowds, and that part of the judging process would involve a close examination of previous achievements.

Six prizes were awarded in the end, out of the nine finalists. Two "Commended"s, who got a six-month mentorship with a BBC Radio producer to help develop their scripts; a Highly Commended (twelve months' mentorship); two Runners-Up (£1,000 bursary and a mentorship); and the Winner (£3,000 bursary, a mentorship, and a guaranteed production).

And here comes the third shock of the night. Because I well remember the clear directions we were given in the Christmas workshop, about how Radio 4's afternoon audience were sensitive little flowers to whom one wasn't even allowed to say "shit" let alone any of the edgier four-letter words we're all familiar with. And I remember the struggle I had trying to force dialogue to be dramatic, and violent, and powerful, without using those words.

And here's the winner. A monologue about, among other things, wanking.

"And we don't do wanking on Radio 4," says the commissioning editor (one of the judging panel), "so we're trying to get it commissioned by Radio 3, for The Wire. They do a lot of wanking over there. If that fails we'll do our damnedest to get it on Radio 4."

So the winner is someone who wrote what he bloody well wanted, bugger the rules and the guidelines, and the panel ignored their own rules as well and selected him the winner! I think there's a lesson there for all of us.

The runners-up and the winner each had a brief performance (looking like all those clips you've ever seen of radio drama in the making, with actors standing in front of microphones, their scripts in hand or on stand) and then it was time to head off to the bar, where the "drinks reception" proved to be a selection of wine or bottled beers (two varieties) and some bowls of nuts and crisps. As many of the attendees appeared to already know each other (long-term Alfred Bradley contestants, perhaps? Or all members of the same writing group?) I grabbed a beer and headed for the back of the room to people watch. Eventually I struck up a conversation with one of the Commendeds. One of the least qualified of the finalists, even he's had a play on at the Edinburgh Fringe, but he seemed a very nice chap. Also one for ignoring rules, I discovered, as he had brought his wife along when the invite had clearly stated "due to limited seating... there is no opportunity to bring a guest."

See, there's a pattern here. I'm just too rigid.

The fastest rejection on record

One of the six queries I sent out over the weekend was to a New York agency who promise to reply within a week, interested or not.

I emailed them on Sunday afternoon, got a robot reply that they were out of town for the holiday weekend and I should try again next week.

I came home from the office yesterday to a very politely worded rejection. Thanks, this sounds interesting, but it's not what we're looking for right now.

It's always nice to receive a personal note rather than a form letter, but it was the timestamp of the email that impressed me most. 13:36. That's 8:36am New York time. He can't have been in the office much more than half-an-hour. If I'm going to be rejected (and I am), I wish it could always be like this. Swift and painless, rather than hanging on for weeks wondering if the email got through. Brilliant.

Novel news

Calm down, it's not that kind of news. Trust me, if I'd found an agent or publisher the title would have been positively hyperventilatory. I can use words like that. I'm an author.

I remembered that yesterday; hence the title.

No, I hadn't really forgotten it, but the lack of any positive response to my early submissions had, if I'm honest, taken the wind out of my sails. I knew the beginning of The Novel needed reworking, and I had no enthusiasm for the task. So there it sat. Gathering dust on my hard drive. Going nowhere.

As is so often the way of things I had no conscious grasp of how much time had gone by since those first submissions. September LAST YEAR! God. And my last reply? November 12. That's not bad actually. Only about eight weeks after the query. All told I had 15 responses from 20 submissions. All negative, naturally. The five no-shows were all from agencies whose guidelines say "we'll only contact you if we're interested." I hate that. How do you know if they're still looking at it, or they haven't even started looking at it, or they've binned it, or they're passing it round inside their firm to find the right agent? Even a form rejection is better than listening to static.

Anyway, that was then and this is now. Over the past week or so I've been building up a head of steam to get that rework done and honestly? There wasn't that much to do. The first few pages were grossly over-written. A result of me knowing that they are the Really Important Pages and had to be Just Right, so of all the 100,000 words in the book those few hundred had been written and rewritten so many times there was no energy left in them whatever. They needed a fresh start.

I cut out the waffle. Always a good idea. Tell the story, the whole story and nothing but the story. Don't try to impress with flowery language and long words (like hyperventilatory, for example). Cut to the chase.

That was the second problem. The first three chapters waffled on endlessly about the personal life of the main character, but never got around to introducing the conflict. After reworking, the conflict parachutes into the story in the second scene. So with a few hundred words of self-indulgent waffle stripped out, and four key scenes of conflict distributed liberally around the first three chapters (agents often request chapters 1-3 in their submission guidelines) I was much happier with the start and felt ready to restart submitting.

So I did.

Just a quick job

In an attempt to beat the rain which had been forecast for 10am, I went out early today to cut the lawn. While I was out there I thought I'd finish trimming the edge of the grass. There was still a big "peninsula" of grass sticking out into the border where the pond had been, and in her marvellously non-nagging way, Nikki's been gently suggesting I get rid of it for the past few weekends.

An hour and a half later, sweating profusely and with my breath coming in huge panting gulps, I came in for breakfast having finally succeeded in removing that patch of grass, which couldn't have covered more than a couple of square feet.

Only it wasn't just grass, was it? It was full of bloody bamboo roots left behind from the patch beside the pond. Snaking their way inexorably along the edge of the grass, held in check only by the lethally sharp pieces of slate tile with which the previous owner had edged his lawn, and occasionally breaking through the slate and heading off across the grass for a new life on the other side of the lawn.

One patch of roots was easily as thick as my arm. A tangled mass of eight individual rhizomes travelling together for a foot or more and then taking off in different directions. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever be rid of this stuff!

Where the old rub shoulders with the young

One of the side-effects of growing older having spent your entire working life with the same company, is that you're invited to a rapidly increasing series of retirement parties for friends.

Tonight saw one such event, for a guy I've known on-and-off for 30+ years, and actively worked with for about a year of that. For some unknown reason he chose what must be one of the trendiest bars in Manchester to hold it in: Dukes.

"Do you hang out here often, Iain?" I asked him, astonished.
"No, I didn't even know it existed."

Turns out he picked it on recommendation from a (much younger) colleague.

The terrace was packed when I arrived, with easily two hundred bright young things occupying every chrome table and chair, lapping up the evening sunshine along with their vodka shots, Archers, or whatever it is twenty-somethings drink these days. I found Iain inside, sat at a tall table with three others, already half-way through their first drink of the evening. I ordered a drink for myself and joined the lively conversation.

Occasionally a full-breasted, short-skirted, tanned and lovely young lady would stroll past, dressed for the catwalk and, as if all the oxygen had temporarily been sucked from the room, conversation at the table would die. Apart from the occasional sotto voce delivery of an appreciative "fucking hell" or "Jesus" from one of the others, obviously. It must be very disconcerting - not to say irritating - when you're a full-breasted, short-skirted, tanned and lovely young lady, to be stared at by a small group of grey-haired, saggy-bellied, wrinkled old men dressed in something from south Manchester's finest charity shops. High fashion we ain't.

Evidence of the credit crunch would have been hard for even Sherlock Holmes to find. As I was driving I stayed on pints of cranberry and soda (£3 a pop) and the bar remained three deep from when I arrived shortly after 6 to when we sat down for a meal around 7.30.

For yes, much to my surprise, Iain had booked a table. In the end a dozen of us stayed for dinner. Dukes isn't exactly haute cuisine, but that's not what it's about, nor is it what we were after. Just a plate of pleasant chow, a few drinks, and an evening reminiscing. Retelling the war stories of a working life in the computer industry. Remembering those ridiculously huge 8 megabyte exchangeable disks, PIDs, green screens and early mobile solutions. And of course the inevitable polite inquiries about his plans for the future. Gardening and converting all the home PCs to Linux, apparently. Mad fool. Absolutely and emphatically no intention to come back next Monday as a consultant. Which is, as it happens, quite rare. There's something about the computer industry that makes it hard for some people to let go.

Not me. When my time comes, you won't see me for dust.

Special offer

If you've been reading regularly you may have picked up on the fact that we've paid a few visits recently to our not-so-local garden centre, principally to buy an incinerator and a bird feeder.

Whoever is in charge of marketing at this place - or at least, whoever came up with the "membership" scheme - is a genius. For a tenner a year gardeners can become "friends of the garden centre" which guarantees them 10% off all purchases, year round, two free coffees in the restaurant per month (you get one of those Café-Ritazza-esque stamp cards for this) and "privileged" access to a few events throughout the year, such as the summer special, where the discount is raised to 15%, and the Christmas event where, presumably on account of there being not much doing gardenwise, the discount reaches an eye-watering 20%.

Now even for a tightwad like me, the prospect of a couple of free coffees isn't going to provide sufficient incentive to make the 20-minute car journey to the other side of town, but it does sit there on your shoulder, whispering in your ear like the cartoon devil from Tom & Jerry. "If we're going to the garden centre we may as well stop for coffee," can easily turn, as it did on our last visit to "we could have breakfast there."

Which is where the marketing genius comes in. Because when "two free coffees" turns into "breakfast for three" the restaurant finds themselves almost twenty quid better off, and I'm left thinking something's not quite right. As I mentioned in the incinerator post, £5.25 for a bacon bap is taking the piss somewhat. Free coffee my arse.

So after that experience, why were we fooled into trekking over there tonight for their "Summer Special" event? 15% discount and the offer of a free drink and some nibbles aside, there was in fact nothing we needed for the garden. So why go to a garden centre? But we did. Exhibiting astonishingly lemming-like behaviour we drove over there after dinner, arriving 30 minutes after the posted start time of 6 o'clock. There, by the door, a low table was adorned with half-a-dozen plastic wine glasses, stacked near the front with their few remaining drops of wine clinging to their immaculately smooth surfaces, and a plate containing a few crumbs along with three pieces of french bread spread with sweet chilli hummus (or something).

They really pushed the boat out, huh? Oh... yeah... the counter held a few pots of olives too, along with a cocktail stick dispenser.

We wandered around the indoor part for a few minutes, marvelling at how similar it all looked to the last time we were there, picked up a couple of pieces of french bread spread with paté (the first plate had been replaced, but the wine hadn't) and... umm... left.

For the first of the July Wednesdays (*) we agreed it had been a total waste of time. But from a garden centre profit perspective? Genius.

(*) In a rare explosion of sociability, all my Wednesdays are occupied for the rest of July. Next week I've been invited to the Alfred Bradley Bursary Award ceremony at the BBC, the week after drinks and a curry in celebration of an ex-colleague's forthcoming wedding, followed by a week where our normal recording session has been brought forward a day on account of a diary clash, and the last Wednesday of the month is, as always, book club. Never mind "nearly famous" - I'm almost popular!

Sometimes I even impress myself

Been working on an official movie site for my mate, hot shot movie writer/director/producer Colleen Patrick recently. Well, I say "official." It's official at the moment. With the film in pre-production they needed a web presence. Initially a quick-and-dirty web presence just so that anyone paying a visit to the official URL wouldn't get one of those impersonal hosting pages.

Once the film was in the can and slated to have its premier at the Seattle International Film Festival, "quick and dirty" needed to become a little more polished.

Once the film finds a distributor, they'll swing into action with their army of Flash/PHP/Java programmers and dump all over my work, but for now I'm the official webmaster. Go take a look. We're at http://www.thewholetruththemovie.com.

Recently, to follow up the trailer on YouTube, Colleen and her fellow producers and tech crew have been releasing interviews from the EPK - the kind of thing that will eventually find its way onto the "extras" DVD. Now originally, The Whole Truth website featured just that one trailer, on its own page. About a week ago, Colleen emailed me asking if I could put up all the rest of the interviews.

Problem was, the website was conceived as a fixed space. The list of interviews from the EPK is already 14 long and increases by one a day. I have no idea where it will end. I needed a way of displaying YouTube videos in a kind of gallery, where you could pick from a list, and see the result in a "display area." A few minutes' research uncovered one way of doing this that YouTube themselves offer. A YouTube Custom Player. Associated with a playlist, this can be embedded in a site in exactly the same way as a single video file, but offers a selection panel containing all the videos on the playlist. It has the advantage that any additions to the playlist are immediately reflected in the custom player, so updating the site with each new day's interview would involve just a single operation on YouTube.

I tried it out, and it worked fine, but it wasn't exactly the image I wanted. What's more, the available colour schemes are quite limited and didn't match the livery of the site. I needed something more configurable.

As always when I'm stuck for a solution, I turned to Stu Nicholls' marvellous CSS Play site. Browsing through his list of inventive galleries, I came across this one, which was uncannily close to what I'd envisaged for the YouTube gallery. I downloaded the code and read through it quickly.

Obviously, the main difference between this and what I was trying to do is that Stu's gallery handles img tags, and the standard YouTube embedding code uses object tags. But the simple Javascript array handler seemed eminently editable to handle object instead of img, so I set about fiddling with it to see if I could make it work.

With remarkable ease, I proved the 80/20 rule. I got 80% of the way to what I wanted in the first half-hour. That last 20% proved a little more tricky. For a start, the left and right arrows, which remained as imgs, were not being picked up as part of the array. It looked certain this was screwing things up somewhere. If they weren't part of the list that could be "clicked" then they would remain dormant and there'd be no way to access videos beyond the visible elements of the list.

I reasoned that since images ARE objects of a sort (indeed the CSS/HTML standards body intended object to replace img, although most browsers still handle img tags better than objects and they have much wider currency) I could replace the left/right arrow img tags with object declarations. Immediately things started to work a little better. The main problem remaining at that point being that YouTube videos are considerably wider than Stu's original photos, which required some pixel-counting and adjustment of widths and array limits to get the main functionality working as intended.

It was then only a simple matter of positioning the whole gallery correctly on the page, and amending the text and background colours to match the site. In fact the hardest (well, most tedious) part of the whole exercise proved to be the creation of thumbnails for each of the 14 YouTube videos.

The final result can be seen here. And yes, as the title of this post implies, I impressed myself. You might think I'm easily impressed; I couldn't possibly comment.

The editing requirements for this version will be slightly more onerous than for the YouTube Custom Player, involving the creation of a new thumbnail for each new video, adding an entry to the array and adding a new item to the HTML list that forms the basis for the gallery. But that's all mechanical stuff. The gallery is unlimited in capacity and looks much more a part of the site than the nearest Custom Player livery - a rather dangerous looking cherry red.

It's true to say that if there were hundreds of entries it would become very tedious scrolling through them one at a time if you knew you wanted #93, for instance, but I doubt that will be a problem in this case and if it does turn out to be an issue I can always add extra left and right buttons to skip an entire section (8 entries) at a time.