One of those things

Whenever you visit another country, you see things that are better than back home, things that are worse and, just occasionally, things that make you scratch your head and say: WTF?

For me, from the very first time I saw one 10 years ago, to the most recent time today (and every day of this trip so far), one of those "wtf" things is the All-Way (or 4-way) stop.

In the UK, and as far as I can remember in every other European country in which I've driven or been driven, whenever two roads cross there is the concept of one of them being the "major" road, and the other the "minor". So you get something like this:

Cars on the horizontal road *always* have priority; those on the vertical roads have to wait if there's traffic on the horizontal, or at least slow down to check and "give way" before turning out/crossing.

However, in North America, while this system applies to "really" major roads, in general it isn't extended to the vast network of roads around local suburbs. Here, there is no concept of a 'priority' road. All roads are equal. And because of that, when two equal roads cross, you get an All-way stop.

What a crazy, outmoded idea! Self-explanatory I'd hope, but just in case: everyone approaching this crossroads has to stop. Always. Even when there's no other traffic around at all. And because the roads and verges here are so wide, mostly you can see down the approaching roads for anything up to 100 metres. Easily far enough to tell that nothing is coming. And of course two cars coming from opposite directions and intending to go straight on would have NO effect on each other whatsoever. But both still have to stop, and then set off again.

What is even more surprising to me, as someone who spends a lot of time bemoaning how everyone ignores the rules of the road in the UK (especially cyclists), is that everyone rigidly obeys this rule. No traffic cops around, no cameras, and yet everyone stops. Always. What a waste of fuel, wear and tear on brakes and clutch, and time. And on suburban streets it's not unusual to have one of these every couple of hundred metres. You're not even allowed to "give way" (a concept that doesn't seem to exist here) - i.e. slow down, check, and proceed. No, it's a mandatory full stop. Does my head in every time.

How did this happen?

Something about our flight to Toronto yesterday triggered one of those gestalt moments for me. A chilling realisation of a modern truism. And it's this:

When I was young, the world was geared around older people. Us youngsters had to defer to our elders, treat them with respect, shut up and get on with doing as we were told, and not make a fuss.

Now I'm older, the world is geared around younger people. Us elders(*) are invisible. Virtually ignored by marketeers, shoved out of the way in queues and generally not given as much respect as people of our age commanded in "those days."

So it seems, or at least yesterday it seemed, as if somehow everything had flipped 180° and I'd missed that crucial nexus - if it ever existed - when I was the "right age" for the world.


(*)OK, 54 isn't THAT old, but... you know... sometimes it FEELS as though it is.

Vinyl: Making Movies

Artist: Dire Straits
Owned on digital media: No
Want to replace: Yes

This is the one. The album that first really got me into Dire Straits. The album I remember listening to lying on the floor of a Lake District living room, cans firmly fixed to head, trying to ignore all the point-scoring shit that regularly flew around that particular bunch of in-laws. I immersed myself in the music for as long as I could. Which turned out to be until Momma In-Law burst in and ordered all the "children" (the youngest of us was, at that time, 23) out so that the "adults" could sit in comfort with their "adult" conversation.

Interesting to reflect with my traditional 30-year perspective that the behaviour that was soon to follow that event was not what anyone could pretend deserved the tag: adult.

Even with such uncomfortable associations, the music's still good :o) I've marked the "want to replace" flag as 'yes' above, but a closer look at the track list shows there's only a couple that I don't already have on various digital compilations (Alchemy, Very Best of...) so I'm not convinced it's worth it.

How's your geography?

Sorry that the scoring bot was apparently out of action after I played this, so there's "no score" to beat, but I thought it was worth posting anyway as the game itself is a bit of fun. I had two goes, and my highest score was something a bit over 20,000.

First round you're given a choice of blobs as the target city. Second round you only get the countries. Third round you're left alone with just the landmass to play with.

How can you do?

Random last-minute jobs

Most of the time, procrastination is my middle name. Just occasionally though, those little niggly jobs that I usually put off forever have to be done RIGHT NOW. Today was a day for jobs like that.

1. The keyhole cover.
After decorating the hall, I replaced the brass keyhole cover on the front door. Trouble is, I didn't get it *quite* right. I reckon it was somewhere around 5° off the vertical. Not much, and not enough to make it impossible to lock/unlock the door (or I'd have had to fix it right then), but just enough to require a bit of key jiggling and make opening the door harder than it should be. Reason for procrastination? Initially, annoyance at myself for getting it wrong in the first place. Subsequently, not being arsed.

I took it off and spun it those 5°.

2. The shower light.
Our bathroom has 10 spots. Eight covering the main area of the room, on one switch. Two above the shower cubicle, operated off a separate switch. One of those two blew a few weeks ago. Reason for procrastination? In the 4 years since the bathroom was reconstructed, I've not had to replace one of these bulbs, so I don't know the type and I've been constantly forgetting to (a) bring the stepladder upstairs and (b) pull one of the bulbs on a shopping day so we can be sure of having spares.

I pulled a bulb from the eight and swapped it with the blown dude, checked our extensive collection of random spares, found a match and replaced it.

Umm... that's it. Fish will need a 50% water change on Wednesday which will last them until we get back, at which point I'll do another 50% change. But other than that we're all set.

The rest of the morning was taken up with lawn mowing and a spot of digging, leaving the afternoon free to watch Glorious 39 and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Handkerchief. I'd not seen Glorious 39 before. Definitely one for the eBay pile - we won't be wanting to watch it a second time!

Book Swap

Chorlton’s "Big Green Festival" today and the book club were invited to man a book swap stall again. I did this once before, at our first book swap back in 2007, but hadn't been involved the last couple of times. This year the previous organisers of the book swap table weren't available, but this coincided with us having rather a lot of books we wanted to get rid of, so I volunteered. I turned up this morning with one plastic crate full and another containing half a dozen hardbacks.

The festival proper opened from 11am to 6pm, but that's a long time to be stood behind a table full of books smiling politely while passersby sift through the multiple copies of book club cast-offs looking for a good read. I never intended to stay for the whole afternoon, but I'd assumed - since several other book club members had volunteered to help man the stall - that I wouldn't be the "last man standing" and could hand over to someone else. This cunning plan also hid the main reason for leaving early: not to be left with piles of books to look after.

We may have only done four of these, but that's enough experience to know that we always end up with way more books than we start with, and I was under strict instructions not to bring the remainder back home. But at 4pm, having been left on my own since my only two helpers had to leave around 1.30, I had no option but to pack the books back into my plastic crates (which were now BOTH full to the point of books falling off the top) and start to carry them to the gate.

In between carrying off one box and returning for the second some generous individual had come along and dumped FIVE carrier bags full of books on the table. My reaction by that stage was "you have got to be joking." Less than two hours before the event closed? I left them there.

Even so, returning home with two full crates is not the most popular move I've ever made :-/

AI & EQ

American Idol Season 10 is well under way now and I've been thinking for some time that I should comment on the changes that were rung for the 2011 version.

Indeed, regular readers may remember that I predicted, around this time last year, that 2011 would be the end of Idol following the departure of the man Cowell. Well there comes a time when all good bloggers have to eat their words and for me, this is that time. I have to say that the choice of judges to replace Cowell, along with Ellen Degeneres and Kara Italianame, has been nothing short of inspired.

Randy Jackson was always my favourite judge anyway so I was delighted he stayed. The other two empty seats were filled, as the entire televisual world must by now know, by Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler. I'm not going to pretend I had a clue who Steven Tyler was before AI started this year. I mentioned a little while ago that I've never been one for learning, or even finding out about, the names of bands I listen to, although naturally (?) I had heard of Aerosmith. Didn't matter though. His unique blend of empathy, honesty, and mad-crazy wacko otherworldliness soon had me hooked and converted to a fan. He just seems to be permanently enjoying himself, which I find totally infectious.

As for Jennifer Lopez, what's not to like? Recently voted the world's most beautiful woman, not only is she easy to look at she talks a lot of sense too, so she's easy to listen to. It's sense that comes from years in the industry, a successful career on stage, and a heart that seems genuinely to want the best for the contestants and wants them to be able to produce their best work too.

So: judges? Tick. Seacrest? Tick. Well come on he's been doing it ten years. He's part of the woodwork. Production values? If anything a slightly bigger tick than before. And when you couple all that with a set of contestants that include a handful of real originals, Idol is once again back on track as far as this household is concerned. Admittedly when compared to last year's dire choices it didn't have to go far to be on a whole other level, but it could have gone either way. Now, it looks like it might be around for a few years to come.

I just have two issues left. One, it's getting harder and harder to avoid the spoilers. I've had to "hide" two or three Facebook friends for the time being, because they insist on posting the results the day before the show even airs here.

And two, there's another show that Cowell left last year. Britain's Got Talent. It starts its fourth run here this coming weekend. So with Cowell and his cohort Piers Morgan both taking the US shilling - er, nickel - and leaving us for the West Coast, how does the UK measure up in the Judge Replacement stakes when compared to the success of American Idol? Well, we got David Hasselhoff and Michael McIntyre. FFS.

What's going on?

Dunno what's happening recently with the spooky bedroom clock, but after yesterday's marathon spookiness my first time check last night was 12:34!

Crikey.

Spooky overload

Almost managed a hat-trick last night...

First time check: 2.02
Second time check: 4.04
Third time check: 5.04 - OHHHHhhhh... missed it by a minute!

Vinyl: Dire Straits

Artist: Dire Straits
Owned on digital media: Yes
Want to replace: n/a

Like pretty much anyone who was listening to music at the end of the 70s, I'd heard "Sultans of Swing" and revelled in the fresh new sound of Dire Straits, but it was some years later that I bought my first DS album, and it wasn't this one.

Only later, when the completist in me began to assemble their back catalogue, did this album find its way into my collection. With 30 years of perspective it still seems incredible that BBC chose not to play Sultans on its first release, but then they've never been particularly smart about their music choices. Well at least, not until the advent of 6music.

Bee hive yourself

Amazing what you can learn while ripping up privet. Yesterday, on my return from carrying a chunky stump to the discard pile, I found a bumble bee sitting quietly on the soil beside a bumble-bee-sized hole.

She looked pretty dopey. I thought how lucky she had been to avoid being squashed while I was yanking the privet stump back and forth to dislodge its roots, but until then I hadn't realised that bumble bees hibernate (a fact later confirmed by our resident Keeper of the Zoological Knowledge - aka Nat).

Their post-hibernation warm-up routine was fascinating to watch too. A few minutes of abdominal exercises (a slight pumping action visible) followed by a couple of tentative - and very short - hovers, only a few millimetres above the ground, to warm up the flying muscles. And then a lazy figure-of-eight flight, gradually increasing in both height and area as the long-unused wings remember their skill and strength, until eventually sufficient altitude was gained to make it over the low wall (see photo on previous blog entry) and cross the lane to the conifer hedge on the other side which at that time of day was in full sun.

The bee sat on that hedge for well over half an hour, soaking up the rays. Clearly a much easier way of warming up than all that tiring flying, especially when you're running on the food reserves that have brought you successfully through a few months hibernation.

Nature in the raw - in our front garden! Brilliant.

Getting preprandial with privet

The brilliant forecast for this weekend turned into a gorgeous reality, and after months of being cooped up in the house and the almost endless decorating it was good to be outside, making a start with the traditional first gardening jobs of Spring.

But our small lawn takes less than 15 minute to mow, so it wasn't long before I was casting around for something else to do.

The remnants of next door's raspberry canes were starting to make themselves known again around the roots of our copper beech hedge, in various parts of the border, and popping up in the middle of the lawn, so I spent an hour or so trying to tease their roots out from around all the other roots. I managed accidentally to bring up a chunk of the lupin that had become totally enveloped by raspberry tendrils, but 80% of the lupin remained, so not too much damage done.

I was in the mood for a larger challenge than this though. Like digging up the privet in the front garden. I'd cut this back in late summer last year as it was up to about 15 feet, and starving all the trees of light. Cutting them back revealed the size of the main stumps. Comparing them to the trunks that I'd helped my Dad pull out of the front garden in Nottingham 30 years ago, I reckon that hedge must have been there as long as the house. But, you know, privet? It's a bit 1950s isn't it? So we wanted rid.

I didn't feel like breaking my back on the privet trunks back then, but I was up for the task now. It's funny how those jobs that you dread tackling, and put off for the longest time, usually turn out to be nowhere near as bad as you expect. The first three stumps were so shallowly rooted that all I had to do was grab them and pull, and they came up in my hand. Admittedly it began to get tougher after that. The further away the privet stretched towards the road, the deeper the soil in the bed, and consequently the deeper the roots. Some of them even headed off under the wall, requiring the application of a bow saw.

Even so the whole job took a lot less time than I'd expected, and left behind quite a wide bed, filled with lovely rich loam, that I'll be able to fill with some nice dwarf rhododendrons once I've dug in a few bags of peat.

Let there be light

We continue to tick off the final few finishing flourishes in the (almost) never-ending saga of hall and staircase refurbishment. Today's instalment: a new light fitting in the hall.

I say new, but this particular fitting has been with us since our previous home, where it hung in the dining room. It was reasonably expensive, but more importantly I really liked it, so it came with us when we moved and in the four-and-a-half years since it has lived in various boxes, cupboards, and most recently spent almost a year under my desk in the study. All this procrastination had two main causes. We couldn't decide where we wanted it (and even if we tried, it was odds-on that particular room wasn't "done" yet, so it would have had to wait anyway); and since the ceilings in New Barns were considerably lower than these, it being a new build, the light fitting had been shortened. Made too short, in fact, for the Edwardian ceilings we now have.

In an unusual spurt of enthusiasm several years ago, I had ventured out to B&Q (Home Depot for my transatlantic readers) and secured a length of decorative chain and a roll of electric cable of the right hue with which to recable the thing, but at that point the procrastinatory shutters came down again. The chain and the cable have followed the light fitting around the house from box to cupboard to under-my-desk, unused, ever since.

Finally, with the hall newly skimmed and painted, we decided that was the best place for the light. I began taking it apart to find out how hard a job the recabling would be. The answer? Hard. It wasn't so much the disassembly/reassembly, or the convoluted path of the cable, but once I arrived at the business end of the fitting - a small space in the innermost cylinder in which the cables from all five lamps, and the incoming power cable, all came together with thermal sleeving and industrially-crimped clips - I realised I wasn't going to be able to get the darned thing apart electrically, let alone put it back together again.

A professional was called for.

And, in the way of professionals, he took a Gordian Knot approach to the problem. "Why don't I just splice on an extra length of cable, and hide the join inside the top cup?" Why indeed.

Vinyl: Derek & Clive Live

Artist: Peter Cook & Dudley Moore (aka Derek & Clive)
Owned on digital media: No
Want to replace: Good question

So we arrive at "D" in our occasional journey through my old vinyl collection and happen across this oddity from 1976. My list originally had "no" in the 'want to replace' flag, but while researching what to write about it I found the track list on Wikipedia. Even that was enough to make me chuckle.

There's no getting away from the fact that I'm still singing the whole of "Jump" at any suitable opportunity (and quite a few unsuitable ones) to this day - 35 years on - and there are other tracks similarly dear to my heart that crop up in conversation from time to time, such as Squatter and the Ant.

Any description of mine concerning the actual content of this album is either totally superfluous or liable to get me in trouble with the Blogger police, so I'll leave those of you unfamiliar with Derek & Clive to your own research. Suffice to say that finally, following links from the original Wikipedia article to the second instalment in the D&C catalogue (Derek & Clive Come Again - which I never owned but listened to several times at various mates' houses), the track list made me laugh out loud. I think it's a fair bet that I will be replacing this one at some stage. It's clear that my toilet humour is still alive and well somewhere under this thin veneer of sophistication (*cough*).

Reject!

I sent a partial. It came back. Although I usually get form rejections with no requests for material (we're busy, we're not taking on new clients, it's not really what we're looking for. This last despite my carefully researching all the agents and ONLY querying the ones who say they take what I've written), this is now the third partial I've sent out which has eventually come back (months later, on account of agents being incredibly busy people) with the same message. Basically, we love the idea but we "just didn't fall in love with your writing" or words to that effect.

And they're right. Really. With the perspective of the almost three years since I finished the manuscript and the experience of those three (main) rejections in my pocket, I admit that the first 30-50% of the book is nowhere near as good as the last half.

It's not a good place to be, but it's hardly surprising. It took me seven years to write and I was a better writer at the end than I was at the beginning. Not surprising, no, but no excuse either. I finished the book, but then I supposedly revised it half-a-dozen times. But each of those six times was cosmetic surgery when what was really required was amputation. Ditch the chunks that don't work. For God's sake if you're going to have ANY parts that don't hang together very well, don't put them at the beginning! Duh!

While I'm baring my artistic soul, I should also admit that it's two stories jockeying for ascendancy. There's the headline story, and then there's the thinly-disguised personal catharsis. You probably heard that a fair percentage of first novels are at least partly autobiographical. I think this one could happily ditch that second, struggling, semi-autobiographical story, along with 20,000 words or so, and emerge leaner, fitter and with a better chance of publication.

Guess I'm going to have to grit my teeth, dust it off and rewrite that first chunk if I've to have any hope of it ever seeing the world. >sigh<

All the world's a carpet

Well, all the stairs anyway. And the landing.

Yes, the stair carpet arrived this morning as expected, and fitting completed inside two hours. I know there's a knack to fitting carpets, and obviously it's one that can be taught, but it still looks like magic to me. A very nice job they made of it too, with a complete avoidance of the type of problems we had with the other lot. Carpet was the right size, they didn't forget the underlay, etc.

So here's how it looks, and I couldn't be more pleased. As a handy side-effect the carpet muffles the last few remaining creaks (stair fitters did a reasonable job of screwing and gluing the bits they didn't replace, but there were still a couple of squeaky treads) as well as looking good and feeling very comfy underfoot. Luxury!

More spooking

Last night was a bumper crop as far as "significant times" goes.

Bathroom visit time: 3.21
Next wake-up time check: 4.44

I began to wonder whether this would be one of those occasions where things come in threes, but when I did eventually get up, it wasn't at a 'notable' time.

Bargains and hot new music

Had one of those marketing emails from Amazon, or Play, or HMV (frankly, they arrive so frequently that they all blend into one) this morning entitled, rather breathlessly, "bargains and hot new music."

The first linked entry in the body of the email? Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits.

Well at that price it wasn't a bargain, and I hardly think it qualifies as "hot new music" either, with a release date of 1972 :-\

Diamond geezer

Fresh from the completion of the stair refurb, we were keen to get them carpeted as soon as. The garish red-and-white stripes which we've lived with for 4+ years seemed even less appealing now they were surrounded on all sides by that lovely new oak.

After the fiasco of the front bedroom carpet last year we decided to keep it local, and set off this afternoon for a jaunt to Diamond Millennium carpets which, as we soon discovered, is no longer situated in the rather seedy looking shed opposite Chorlton Park, but has moved to much more salubrious accommodation closer to the cemetery (and, in this incarnation, has employed a sign writer who knows how to spell 'millennium').

We couldn't have been in the shop more than ten minutes before we happened across a remnant in the colour we were looking for, and were assured by the friendly and helpful owner that it would be more than big enough. This soon turned into one of those "too good to be true" moments, as we scoured the showroom for something that fitted our needs more closely. Surely it can't be as easy as this? Half an hour of looking, deep contemplation and talking around the subject later, we finally decided that at that price, if we didn't like it once it was fitted, we'd rip it out and buy another! Yes, the deal was THAT good.

Fitting has been arranged for Friday.

Stairway to heaven

Refurbishment of the stairs started promptly as planned on Tuesday morning shortly after 8am.

I say "refurbishment" rather than "replacement" deliberately, as we're not having the entire staircase replaced. This particular company don't do that in any case, but it would have been (a) far too expensive - more than double what we eventually paid - and (b) unnecessary, as the main carcase is still sound. The bits we don't like are the more visible and slightly less structural items, like newel posts, rails and spindles. As it happens, these guys also work on the external and internal stringers, but only to encase them in new wood, rather than replace them entirely.

The project stretched beyond the original estimates of either the designer (a full day, maybe two) or the surveyor (definitely two days, possibly a few hours on a third day), which was strange because when it was booked in, they said they had two other jobs to do the same week. During a break in proceedings on the first day - with all the hand rails sawn off and only two of the original newel posts still in place - one of the joiners admitted that they "never do these in less than three days" and in the end, for one reason or another, one of them had to come back for an hour or so this morning for some finishing touches.

Still, the end result is definitely worth it. You'll have to wait for pics until a carpet has been chosen and fitted. The original stairs were painted red and white, and since they're the only bit that remains unchanged they don't really set off the lovely warm oak to its best advantage!

New newels a-coming

Our mental schedule had the new stairs being fitted after May Bank Holiday, so it was a surprise to receive a phone call last week to say all the "product" was ready and they had a fitting appointment free next week.

Fortunately I'd been pressing on with the decorating so that we would stand a chance of being ready whenever they were, and the intervening weekend gave ample time to complete the last phase of the painting - the top coat on the woodwork (at least around the stairs area) - before the joiners arrive on Tuesday.

I set to yesterday morning with a brand new tin of Dulux Satinwood - my "gloss" of choice for many years owing to its classy satin finish, but by teatime I was beginning to worry that it was taking an awfully long time to dry. A tentative touch in an out-of-the-way corner gave a surprising result: it was dry already. Dry and glossy. Not what we wanted at all.

At first I thought Dulux had suffered a manufacturing wobbler and packaged regular gloss in a Satinwood tin, but as usual Google is your friend, and a quick search threw up several references to DIY and professional decorator forums where everyone was bemoaning the new paint mix - light on volatile organics as per new EU regulations, and consequently taking much longer to dry out properly than it used to.

"Don't worry," wrote one professional long-time user of Satinwood, "you'll see the difference after 24 hours, but it can take a couple of weeks before the satin effect is completely there."

Sure enough this morning the high gloss sheen is already toned down a couple of notches. Phew.

Greek Night

As regular readers will know, we have a tradition of "safari nights" on our street where we journey from house to house for each course of an n-course meal (depending on the number of houses involved in that particular safari). Each one has a different theme, tonight's being Greek.

As you'll have seen earlier this week, tonight's safari was only organised last Friday, so we've not had long to arrange a costume. I was thwarted at every turn, as I wanted to do something a bit more original than a draped sheet (no offence to draped sheets, or those who wear them!) but every costume I found was either out of stock or not available in my size.

Until I found this. Which gave me the idea I was looking for, and was do-able in the time remaining. Especially since we still had a large cardboard box lying around from the last flat-pack furniture delivery which was the perfect size for the top and bottom plinth.

Cannibalising an old fitted sheet sufficed for the both the column (with Nat's help to spray-on some suitably Doric fluting) and the drapery around the "bust", white body paint turned my exposed body parts to stone and the whole thing was topped off with a "gold leaf" laurel from an online costumier.

Here's the final result.

With a little more time and thought I could probably have made a better job but even so I was quite pleased with it, and the surprise (or even shock in some cases) of the arriving guests was well worth the effort. I chose to stand over in a corner, unmoving, until each group of guests realised it was me.

Walking was somewhat hampered, and sitting impossible, so once everyone had enjoyed the full effect (i.e. shortly after we arrived at the second house) I removed the bottom half of the costume, but remained in "bust mode" for much of the rest of the evening, even though it made negotiating doorways... interesting. Chalk up (haha!) another successful safari night, with buckets of stifado, moussaka and ouzo thrown in. Brilliant.

Statue of liberty

The liberty being our neighbours - Torsten & Keith - who are shortly to depart these shores for a new life in Portugal. The statue being my chosen costume for the forthcoming Greek-themed safari night in honour of their leaving, for which we had less than a week's notice. It's happening on Friday, and I'm trying to pull together a statue costume in time.

Thank God for Internet shopping, rapid order fulfilment, and first class post. My body paint arrived today (successfully tested for wear, smudging, washability and skin reaction) and I'm hopeful that the laurel wreath will arrive tomorrow. The rest is all bodged together from old cardboard boxes, sprayed with B&Q project paint, and an old fitted sheet that was surplus to requirements.

First stage assembly of the top and bottom plinths of a mock-Doric column was completed today. Now I just have to figure out the best way of spray-painting the fluting on the column and I'm all set.

The last coat...

...is in sight.

For today, a bonus: I finished before 2.30pm. Second coat of undercoat on the front door (that's the last of the undercoating) and cutting in the second emulsion coat on walls and ceiling, leaving only the rolling to do. That'll be a quick job, so I'm on track for an early finish tomorrow too :o)

Another thing that came to mind as I carefully cut in around the dado rails and skirting: this job marks the final demise of the rag-rolled flame-effect colours that used to dominate the whole house; a legacy of the previous owners. Flame yellow in the dining room, orange and red in the living room, blood-red in the bathroom. One by one they've been built over, plastered over, painted over, or all three. The last bastion of rag rolling was the sub-dado area in the hall and stairs. Orange and yellow, it was. Now it's only visible as a slight mottling of the first coat of white emulsion in the photo here. The second coat, coming tomorrow, will be enough to see it off for good.

I researched the Feng Shui-ness of these colours. Knowing a little about those previous owners I'm pretty certain the colours were chosen for a reason - along with the copper, gold and bronze paint they used on all the picture rails. Sure enough, they're all "Yang" colours. All associated with vitality, ambition, joy and optimism. Interesting to note during my research that white - now the predominant colour of the hall - is the "colour of ultimate purity." It is, allegedly, "an all around colour of protection, bringing peace and comfort, alleviating emotional shock and despair, helping cleanse emotions, thoughts and spirit."

I think that's a pretty good choice for the first room you enter after an exhausting day at the coalface of life. All we need now is to add in a little gold. Because it is "related to abundance and power, higher ideals, wisdom, understanding" and is "mentally revitalising, energising and inspiring." Just what we need.

Stunning Lines

I've written almost two dozen original songs, so I know from personal experience that some lines stand out as being especially memorable, poignant, apposite, meaningful, moving, or beautifully crafted. And unless you're a particularly gifted songwriter, those really good, stand-out lines are few. I reckon probably three in my case, so far, and I'm probably being generous to myself. I bet everyone can think of at least a couple from their favourite songs that really grab their heart and give it a squeeze.

Never mind, I'll find someone like you.

Adele has been all over the UK and world media for the last four years or so, but nothing quite prepares you for the quality of the songs - all the songs - on her second album: 21. For me though (and apparently, since 21 has only been out a little over a month and sales are already in the hundreds of thousands, for many others too), even among the many gems on this album that single line from the chorus of Someone Like You is one of the most breathtakingly, heart-achingly powerful I've ever heard.

So few words to crystallise the loss of hope, the final realisation that love has gone, but even while it's leaving you don't wish any hurt for the other even though you're hurting. You loved them that much. Never mind. Don't worry about me. All I need to do is find another you. Simple.

The power of the words is, of course, multiplied by Adele's amazing performance. If you haven't seen it I suggest you get yourself over to YouTube sharpish. You'll be glad you did. But it is the words that do it for me every time. The album insert credits Adele Adkins and Dan Wilson as co-writers. Top job guys. It really is a line I wish I'd written.

Vinyl: Airborne

Artist: Curved Air
Owned on digital media: No
Want to replace: No

During that eventful year when I was the student union Socials Secretary, one of the bands I most enjoyed putting on was Curved Air, mainly because it gave me chance to get close to lead singer Sonja Kristina; every inch the young man's dream.

I can't honestly claim to have been a huge Curved Air fan - this was the only album of theirs in my collection - and with the passing years the memory of how it sounded, or even what tracks it held, has faded to almost nothing. So I was grateful to Wikipedia (and the *real* fans who maintain copious detail of the music) for some insight into what was on this particular album, and also for the unexpected memory jog that the title "Hot & Bothered" gave me, bringing back as it did the recollection of sitting in my garret room in halls, spinning the vinyl and singing along while pretending to write out my lecture notes for the day.

That Wikipedia page held a few more surprises. You can tell I've never been much of a "fan boy" when it comes to music. Never really followed many bands to any great extent (apart from the obvious Caravan and Genesis), or got to know the names of the band members much beyond the lead singer. So I never realised Stewart Copeland was their drummer before he went on to The Police, or that he later married Sonja Kristina. Following her Wikipedia link (purely in the interests of research, naturally) uncovered the revelation that at the age of 61 she is still touring, still making music, releasing a (compilation) album as recently as last year. Good onja, Sonja!

Book Review: If On A Winter's Night A Traveler

Well-respected author, renowned for his "experimental" style and inventive short stories and novels, Wikipedia introduces Italo Calvino thus: "Lionised in Britain and America, he was the most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death, and a noted contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature."

So it's perhaps unfortunate that my first exposure to him came through possibly his most inaccessible work. A book about a reader trying to read a book, where the odd-numbered chapters are written in the second person and attempt to tell you what you, the reader, are doing and thinking, and the even-numbered chapters are chapters from the book "you" are trying to read. So, the first question that might come to mind is "Why?" closely followed by "What?"

If you're sufficiently interested you can do some research on the concept of metafiction. This book is widely reviewed as being "fresh, original, clever, inventive, masterful," etc, etc. But there are almost as many negative reviews where you'll find words such as "boring, too clever, tedious, impenetrable."

So, the ultimate Marmite book, then? Possibly. I guess it very much depends on whether you're looking for something different and potentially intriguing, and prepared to wade through chapter after chapter of nothing much happening to get it. And, if and when you finally do "get it", was it all worth it? I firmly believe there's a reason so few books are written in the second person. It doesn't work. Or at least, it doesn't work for a fair percentage of readers (me included), and why would an author contemplate using such a device when it's guaranteed to limit his or her audience? Personally, I don't like being told that "I" am doing this or that, or thinking this or that, when clearly I am not. Suspension of disbelief doesn't even come into it, as there is no belief created in the first place.

Apparently those sequential first chapters, while initially appearing to be random and unconnected, are in fact connected in some nebulous way and contribute somehow to the eventual resolution (inasmuch as this novel can be said to have a resolution - when it comprehensively fails to end in another explosion of "cleverness") but you'd have to really want to hunt for these clues and quite frankly I was so bored with the whole thing I gave up halfway through, as have a number of reviewers before me. A handful of bookclub readers said they had given up in the past but found it easier to read at the second attempt. Maybe knowing in advance how the book "works" gives you some protection from the tedium.

But for me, I'm happy to agree with an Amazon reviewer who asked why, when there are so many other books out there to read and so little time in which to read them, would you bother wasting any of that precious time on this?

I have always had a problem with books that are too clever for their own good - Cloud Atlas being the most often mentioned example. But this takes cleverness (and hence problem) to a whole other level. It is overtly cynical and manipulative of the reader. Yes, fiction in general does this. Obviously. Stories are intended to move you, transport you to other worlds, other lives, other experiences. Have we learned anything new by having that fact rammed down our throats by Calvino? Is it really "playful" as some reviewers put it? Or is it exploitative? I don't care. I just don't want to know.

Sand(ing) in my eyes

It's done!

In the end, power tools were the answer. Or, a power tool, to be precise. A detail sander:

A recent purchase intended to speed up the task of smoothing off large areas of unfinished purlin (at which it excelled), I was always going to use it on the front door panels. They stretch the entire width of the hall and would have taken an age to do by hand. Once I got started with this little wonder and a pack of 25 sanding sheets, I thought I may as well carry on. It made short work of the dado, skirting, and door frames, allowing me to finish in a single afternoon an area almost double that which has already taken two weekends to do manually.

Power tools. Always the answer. Yes, I did wear a mask.

More acreage to paint

And just like that, the plastering is all done. It only happens "just like that" from my perspective. The other perspective - that of a plasterer balancing on a plank that is resting between a rung of a ladder and another plank, with the second plank itself stretched between a second ladder and a set of steps, holding a hawk loaded with plaster in one hand and applying it with a trowel held in the other - doesn't bear thinking about!

Two men yesterday, and three men today. Five man days. It's a big job.

For my part, after two weekends of sanding the landing is ready to paint. Four doorways, skirting and dado rail. Only I won't start painting until the rest of the sanding is done. Prep first, paint last. So still to come, there's the dado down the stairs. Apron. Window on the stairs. Front door (all wood panels, the width of three doors), five more doorways. More dado and some picture rail thrown in for good measure. Oh, and the cornice in the hall. Then I can paint all that, together with two ceilings, stair well, and all the walls that'll need two coats of high density white emulsion, and then a couple more coats of the mid-gray tone we've chosen for the sub-dado area.

And this, don't forget, is not the aforementioned Large Decorating Project. Oh no. This is just the Piddling Little Decorating Project That Will Do To Be Going On With.

Here's some "before and after" pics to keep you occupied while I finish sanding. The "before" ones are post-wallpaper-stripping. The "after" ones show the new plaster in the process of drying out.

Time slips by

One thing that's always bugged us about this house is the stairs. They're quite narrow but there's not a lot we can do about that without an extortionately expensive and invasive replacement. Width isn't the main gripe though. Worst is the newel caps, which are large and square, and just the right height to catch your upper arm as you climb past, leaving you with a sore arm at best or occasionally a bruise. Next: the creaks. Pretty much every tread creaks, some much worse than others. And finally there's the look. Tatty, old and cheap. Painted pine. Very definitely a bargain basement kind of staircase.

So we found a refurb company and decided to go ahead.

Couple of days later, I got to thinking. It's always best, I find, to do your thinking after the major decision has been made. That way any additional work created by said major decision has to be done. Immediately. It can't be put off. My thinking went something like: "the whole hall, stairwell, and landing needs redecorating. I don't want to be splashing paint everywhere when we've had thousands of pounds worth of staircase installed." My next thought was even more buttock clenching: "If we strip this paper off and the walls need replastering, I definitely don't want that doing post-staircase."

We got started with the stripping the next day, the walls did need skimming, I called the builder and he's coming tomorrow. But all of that isn't really the point of this post. It's just the background to why, this morning, the central heating timer/thermostat was balanced on the bottom newel post.

In preparation for the plastering, I'd removed everything removable from the walls. Since it's a wireless transmitter, that included the timer. But it's also the thermostat, and we soon discovered that position was critical. I stuck it on top of the burglar alarm unit at first. The small amount of heat rising from that was enough to keep the thermostat from activating the boiler. We sat shivering in the lounge until I realised what was going on, and moved it onto the microwave. But the kitchen is by far the coldest room in the house. The boiler fired constantly but the stat never reached its target. In the lounge, we sweated.

After several more attempts, we found just the right non-wall position for it. On top of the newel post. The perfect place for me, coming downstairs in the dark and reaching for support, to send it flying.

It hit the hall floor and with that unmistakably expensive sound of shattering electronics, broke into a million pieces. Well, fourteen. Only I didn't know that when I turned the light on. I only found 11. The case, the circuit board, the display, its mount and its clear plastic window, the battery trays (2 off), three of the four batteries, and a little rubber thingy. I had no idea what that was.

I carried the bits into the kitchen where the light was better and took stock. The first thing obviously missing was the fourth battery which I found, after a very brief search, under the hall radiator. Then I panicked. I'd only ever seen this device - it's called a digistat - looking like this:

It didn't look much like that now. But how damaged was it really? I took a closer look. The circuit board was still in one piece. No cracks, or displaced components. The display didn't appear to be broken, and its connector - a single strip protected by a rubber sleeve - was still attached. I discovered two other rubber thingies on the circuit board. The shape of a leprechaun's hat but only about four millimetres tall, they have a tiny carbon plunger inside. Sitting beneath the switches, when pressed the rubber deforms allowing the carbon plunger to touch the circuit board and make a connection between two half-moon shaped gold contacts. Clever stuff. I attached the third rubber dude and then panicked again. The unit has four switches.

I went back and searched the hall. Amazingly, since the gaps in the floorboards are easily wide enough for these guys to drop through, I found the fourth hat. It was then I noticed there was a hole in the case where the fourth switch should be. The one with the "+" symbol was missing. Until then I hadn't even realised the switches were separate pieces, as the "-", "SET?" and "SELECT" buttons had stayed with the case. Another search of the hall failed to turn up the last switch, but I caught sight of it under the coffee table by the living room door. It had bounced six feet further than any other piece.

OK. Battery trays slid into place. Rubber hats all attached. Display contact positioned above gold contact strip, and plastic insert in place to keep the display level. Window clipped over that whole assembly, switches all pushed into their holes, and... align... and... press. No click. Ah. You can't close the case when the battery trays are inserted. Remove battery trays. Replace rubber hat that's dropped off. Replace switch that's fallen out again. Align. Press. CLICK!

Breathe an initial sigh of relief. Now for the real test. Insert batteries.

The display lit up and showed 12:00. Setting the time worked. Setting the temperature worked. Switching the mode to "timed" made the boiler fire up. Success!

Later this morning our plumber arrived to service the boiler and I told him the story. "You did well to get that back together," he said. "I've never seen one out of its case - I wouldn't know where to start."

"And they cost about £120 to replace."

Simple Things

Stress. There's been a lot of it around lately. After a blissful couple of months following the last round of construction where not very much was happening (although the thought of the Large Decorating Project loomed... er... large), things have been hotting up both at work and at home.

I don't often write much about work. There's a few reasons. I hate it. It's government work, so I can't really give much away in any case. And it bores me, so I always assume it would bore the heck out of you too. But in recent weeks we've been reaching the end of an 18-month project and that means... it's RELEASE TIME. Anyone who has ever worked on a computing project will recognise the stress involved, as all the designs become real, all the bugs are flushed out and run scurrying around the place before they're stamped on by the right fix, and all the managers call endless review meetings and micro-manage the hell out of us to make themselves feel better about approaching deadlines and growing bug counts.

And us architects and designers scratch our heads and wonder why on Earth it is behaving like THAT when our designs say it should behave like THIS.

On the home front - well, more about that later - but Other Projects have been occupying us there too, so between looking forward to the weekends all week, and then spending all weekend on Projects, it's all go go go.

Unlike the totally unreasonable Work Managers, who demand more and more from less and less, I am blessed with a wonderful Home Manager. Nikki makes sure amid the hustle and bustle of home improvements that we always enjoy some down time at the weekend. Even when we're working to a deadline we can always take time out for a nice meal, watch a movie, and relax in the evenings. Even when we have to go shopping (yuk!) we grab a breakfast panini and a coffee at Starbuck's. She makes it fun, whatever we're doing, so it's never a chore.

There's one more thing that I find helps to de-stress me in these cold, wintry months of short days and dark mornings. A simple, natural thing. Bird song in the morning.

When I was a kid I lived a few minutes walk away from a small copse. The remnant of a larger wood that had mostly been cleared to make way for housing in the late 40s/early 50s, the copse covered only about an acre, but was full of mature trees, well-worn mud paths, the odd "secret" clearing and an abundance of wildlife. I used to love walking there on summer days, with the sunlight shooting luminous con-trails through the canopy and the birds chattering and peeping from the treetops and bushes.

The first time we viewed this house, I was immediately attracted by the huge trees all around. They support a healthy population of the usual British garden birds - finches, tits, sparrows, etc - as well as a large number of magpies and woodpigeons. We have occasionally spotted something a little more exotic - a woodpecker or a sparrowhawk - but it's the common birds kicking up their morning chorus that I love. All that bickering and calling back and forth takes me back to those boyhood days in the copse and puts a smile on my face to start the day.

Scrape sensitive

A month on, and I continue to be impressed and pleased with our new wheels. I skim-read the handbook, but after a couple of surprises I decided it was worth a closer read.

First surprise was the automatic hill start. The new Astra is equipped with an electronic handbrake - something I've not encountered before. I found it reasonably intuitive, but the salesman had been extra diligent and made sure I was familiar with both ways of using it. It has a operational interlock with the foot brake for safety purposes (you have to depress the foot brake before releasing the handbrake - avoids accidental releasing by (e.g.) kids messing about in the car) but it will also release automatically if you try to pull away when it's engaged.  Releasing the clutch slowly will allow the car to move off after a brief pause.

I don't expect I'll use that feature much, as it increases wear on both clutch and rear brake pads, but it'll probably come in handy from time to time.

What I hadn't immediately realised, but revealed itself the first time I pulled up at Nikki's workplace to drop her off, is that the car has an incline detector. If it's in danger of rolling, the car applies the handbrake automatically for a few seconds, effectively giving you a hands-free hill start. Maybe I'm easily impressed, but I thought that was pretty cool.

I like the rain-sensitive wipers too. The wipers don't have an "intermittent" setting in the traditional sense - where they flick on and off after a set number of seconds. Instead, the intermittent position on the wiper stick activates a sensor behind the windscreen which detects when a certain number of raindrops have landed, and triggers a wipe. It's possible to increase or decrease the sensitivity, but once set the wipers automatically react to changes in the rate of rainfall, all the way from full-time wiping to almost no wiping at all, as required.

I guess this is all very mundane to anyone who's had a new car in the last few years, but stuff like this wasn't even an option in 2003 (our last purchase) on the kind of model we were looking at.

The wipers caught me out one frosty morning last week though. I'd left them in the "auto" setting, turned the motor on to get the various demists going, and set about scraping the frost off the windscreen. The sensor interpreted my scraping motion as rain and set the wipers off. Didn't half make me jump I can tell you. I leave them switched off now!

Vinyl: Magic

Artist: Billy Cobham
Owned on digital media: No Yes
Want to replace: Yes

I mentioned last time that Crosswinds was for a long time the only Cobham in my collection. Eventually I added Magic, but it wasn't until I researched that previous post in my vinyl series that I realised how prolific an artist Billy Cobham is. The man whose Wikipedia entry quotes another artist saying he is "generally acclaimed as fusion's greatest drummer with an influential style that combines explosive power and exacting precision" is SO prolific that his discography warrants a Wikipedia page all to itself, running to 42 sections - one for his solo albums (of which there are 44!) and another section for each of the artists with whom he collaborated between 1968 and 1998. Wow.

The second surprise arising from my last Cobham post was that someone I've known for 11 years is also a fan, and in all that time our mutual fandom has never come up in conversation. Her collection is more extensive than mine (although still barely scratching the surface of Cobham's output) so as a result I am now the proud holder of a digital copy of Magic and that's another one crossed off my list. Thanks Annie!

Book Review: Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife

The book club choice for January. Usually a fairly relaxed read, because we don't have a book, or a meeting, in December. Unfortunately I ordered it, without paying much attention, from an Amazon marketplace dealer in New Jersey, so it took most of December to arrive.

After the first couple of chapters I began to think this would be one of those books that I'd abandon. Firmin -- you can read extensively about him online but briefly the runt of a litter of 13 rats who develops a taste for eating books and discovers that this leads to enlightenment through some weird process of absorption through digestion -- takes, I think it is fair to say, a while to get going.

Many of the online reviews revel in the slow pace of the start. The detailed description of life as a young rat living in a bookstore, the trials and tribulations of being the 13th rat born to a mother who, as nature dictates, only has 12 teats. His discovery of books and his long-distance, always doomed, relationship (or attempt at one) with the bookseller. I just found it hard going. By the time I'd read a third of the novel I was convinced I was going to give up, but I've abandoned so many book club books. I decided to press on and see what happened. So for me the story didn't really take off until the second half when Firmin meets, and eventually starts to lodge with, the writer Jerry. And unlike many of my book club contemporaries I found Firmin's sojourns to the cinema, and his surreal encounter with Ginger Rogers, added to the story. It ended up being, if not exactly a fulfilling read, then at least quirky, original, and reasonably entertaining.

While researching other readers' views on Firmin prior to writing this (more to see whether the idea another book club reader had -- that Firmin is, in fact, the alter ego of Jerry the writer -- was really as inventive and original as it sounded during the meeting), I came across an interview with the author, Sam Savage, from 2008. Savage wrote Firmin when he was 67, and this extract from the interview I found unexpectedly moving:

'He pauses, then says: "Of course, everyone asks me now why I waited so long to write. And I give different answers. I had always wanted to be a writer: I'd written a lot of poetry, which I didn't like then and don't like now. I used to publish it every now and then, but I found it very unsatisfactory.

"Anyway, when we moved up here, we had to clear everything out, all our books and papers and everything. And I found fragments of novels, whole chapters that I've written over the past 35 or 40 years, and I'd read them, and I'd think: this is not bad. I thought I'd abandoned these because they were terrible. But not only did I not remember writing them, I couldn't recognise the person who did write them.

"So I suppose that in one sense the person who wrote Firmin didn't come into existence till later, and I couldn't have written it at any other time. But also, Firmin's essential experience is of failure - failure to write, failure to complete - and I'd had that experience. You can't have that at 30, because you think it's going to happen: you have to reach a certain age before you realise that it isn't.

"I thought I'd give classes on writer's block," he continues, "because I know the solution: it is to give up. Not pretend to give up, but really give up. I'd stopped writing for several years, I had a sailboat and I was going to sail around the world, and I thought that that was what I'd do before I died. I'm not going to be a writer, I thought, I'm not going to write.

"Now there's something in Buddhism - called, I think, the great death - where people go to the master, and they struggle, and they memorise the texts and the sutras and so forth, and they meditate and they meditate, and they don't achieve it, and then they give up. Right? Ain't gonna come. And then you have all those Zen parables, where the old man goes off, and he's sweeping, and he knocks the pebble into the bamboo, and - there it is. Enlightenment.

"And you can't give up like that when you're young," he sums up.

"You can only give up like that when you realise your life is approaching its end. I did, and it just came. Like a miracle."'

(You can read the full review and interview here.)

For someone (clue: it's me) who's been struggling to find the impetus, the energy, the motivation to write another novel after having spent 7 years writing the first and not having any success with publishers in the three years since, Savage's words felt something like a blessing. The cynical side of me laughed a hollow laugh and thought "Christ! I can't even give up properly!" but the small boy who always wanted to be a writer? Well, his ears perked up (well, OK, I was reading rather than listening, but I don't like the image of eyes perking up. Even if they can) and he thought Yeah. This guy didn't make it until he was 67. I'm only 54. There's time.

A long, hard slog

Anyone who has been around the Internet for even a short while will be familiar with spam. Even after the well-publicised fall in spam in December of last year from its historic highs of around 80 billion emails daily, it still accounts for almost 80% of all email traffic, and signs are that it's on its way back up again, as new botnets compete to fill the gap opened up by those that have been shut down.

But this is all going on in your Inbox, right? And in the hidden wars over at your ISP, with ever more sophisticated spam filters that can get rid of 99% of the crap before you ever see anything?

That's what I thought, until I received a letter recently offering me longer harder erections. Yep - POSTAL spam. Incredible.

Temporarily floored and carpeted

One of the unfortunate side-effects of the construction work we endured in the second half of last year was that the landing floor, already in a pretty poor state, became even more chewed-up than before.

Over the years - both before we moved in and since - alterations have shortened what was once the corridor leading to the small back bedroom to probably less than half its former length. The original door at the end was removed and boarded up when the two back bedrooms were knocked into one (before our time). Our bathroom conversion removed another door and the subsequent installation of a linen cupboard at the end of that corridor-to-nowhere has left us with a landing that is little more than the confluence of doors to remaining rooms.

As you might expect in a house of this age (100+ years) this landing has been used over and over again as the conduit space for each installed service. Central heating, electrics, phone, alarm, central heating extensions, additional wiring circuits - all pass along and across the landing, and all have involved lifting and replacing the floor.

Which brings us to today, the most recent set of work, and the parlous landing we've endured for the last three months or so. A floor board outside the study which is not so much floor board as floor shredded wheat. A board between bedrooms and bathrooms which has been left loose, and knocks against the heating pipes with a resounding BONGGGGG every time it's stepped on. And several other boards which no longer fit properly, or whose ends have been sawn off adjacent to a beam so that they dip and bend and creak when anyone walks past.

Long overdue for some DIY magic.

Which is how I spent (the working part of) yesterday and today. Sorting out something that's not as straightforward as it sounds, once you realise that 21st century floorboards from B&Q are (a) narrower and (b) thinner than their early 20th century counterparts, hewn (as they undoubtedly were) from the living tree by swarthy journeyman joiners who cared not one jot (nor, I'll warrant, a tittle) for cost, but only for quality. Or at least, width.

Anyway, this disparity, along with the fact that the modern materials are tongued and grooved, meant I had to assemble a kind of jigsaw piece of flooring, roughly 2 metres long and three-and-three-quarter boards wide, with edges that resemble a refugee from Tetris. That was yesterday. Today involved the complex assembly of four pieces off carpeting off-cut (one from the spare bedroom and three from the lounge) into something vaguely reminiscent of a Tangram.

Although it has a small hole in one edge, and falls short at the top of the stairs, it's decidedly more comfy than bare boards, and it no longer goes BONGGGGG. It'll do for now.

Continuous Improvement

While we're on the subject of shelving from the Underworld IKEA, I thought I'd share with you my appreciation of a couple of little innovations I discovered while I was assembling it. Here they are:

I suppose I should have added something to the photo to give an idea of scale, but as one of them is an Allen key that should help.

Tightening Allen bolts to their right tightness (which, as any Yorkshireman will be able to tell you, is called being "right tight") was always a bit tricky, and I'm guessing that for many of IKEA's customers, the tool itself was a little uncomfortable for their soft, pampered, 21st-century hands. So they've included a holder! This unassuming length of strong black polypropylene takes a standard IKEA Allen key, and provides (a) a comfy grip and (b) exactly the right length for delivering the correct torque to the business end, ensuring a perfect assemblage of your bits.

It gets better.

The plastic is stamped with a bold "5" on one end and a "4" on the other, suggesting that it is in fact an Allen torque wrench with two settings. The instructions accompanying the Hemnes called for the key to be inserted in the 5 end, which is where it remains (although I've pulled it out a bit to make it more obvious. When fully inserted it doesn't look all that much like an Allen key). How cool is that?

So what - I *know* you're wondering - is the other little guy?

If you've ever struggled to hold those fiddly little panel pins that are supplied with many of IKEA's shelving units to hold the back panels in place, you'll be more than impressed with this. It's a nifty little panel pin holder. The sharp end is ribbed to provide extra grip, the round end has a little hole in the middle to take a panel pin, and the whole thing is split down the middle, so once you've knocked your panel pin into the wood a few millimetres you just give it a tug and it comes away, leaving the pin standing proud, ready to be knocked in the rest of the way. Flippin' brilliant.

This is what I like about IKEA. Already market leaders in affordable flat-pack furniture for the masses, they could easily sit around and bask in their greatness. But no. They continue to add cool innovations like this to make their customers' lives that bit easier. Thanks IKEA! 

There's just one thing though. Being just lowly items in the bag of bits that come with - for example - Hemnes, these little guys don't actually have IKEAse names of their own. I think we should invent some. Here's a starter for ten: the pin holder chap could be PLONKIT, and the Allen-key-holder TORK (see what I did there?). What do you think?

Shelving of the Underworld

Quite why the IKEA marketing department thought it was a good idea to name this after a Greek god escapes me for the moment. I mean, I could understand it if Hermes had been the God of Storage, but as it is, he's, according to Wikipedia, "... the great messenger of the gods [and] a guide to the Underworld."

He was, apparently, "... the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of the cunning of thieves, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics and sports, of weights and measures, of invention, and of commerce in general."

Hmm. Absolutely nothing there about storage. I guess if you chose to keep books in the unit there'd be a tenuous link to literature, but that's about it.

Wikipedia continues: "His symbols include the tortoise, the rooster, the winged sandals, the winged hat, and the caduceus." Not a cupboard then?

So I'd written the whole of this (extremely witty, I think you'll agree) post about our new shelving unit when my gaze alighted on the empty box propped up against the wall and I realised what a complete waste of wit it had been. The damn stuff isn't called Hermes at all. It's HEMNES.

Our new baby

If we'd waited a day, we could have picked her up on 11/1/11, which would have been even more memorable. As it is, we couldn't wait! The lifelong addiction to that new car smell proved too much, and we collected her from the dealer yesterday.

Truth be told we hadn't exactly planned to replace the old one, even though it was beginning to look a bit beaten up and had long since passed the 130,000 mile mark. That mileage, and seven-and-a-half years, still isn't exactly old for a modern car, but a combination of circumstances - the cancellation of the GM Card scheme and consequent time limit on "spending" the points; some good VAT-increase-beating deals; the sudden availability of some spare cash - all came together at once and nudged us over the edge. Only 50-odd miles in, and I'm already loving the ride, the handling and some of the whizzy new features, which I'm sure I'll be blogging about sooner or... well... sooner.

Something fishy going on

Why is it that it takes a "celebrity" to tell us something is bad before there's even the ghost of a chance that anything will be done about it?

The European Union regulations about catching and landing fish have been broken for years. In an effort to "protect" species whose populations are either on the verge of crashing, or have already, they limit fishermen to a given number of thousands of tons in a year, after which it is illegal to land any more fish of that kind.

Unfortunately, none of the massed intellect of the EU agricultural and fisheries policy units was capable of realising that there are no nets in existence that can differentiate what they are catching. The nets go down, the fish come up, spill out onto the deck, die, and then - if they are "over quota" - they're thrown back into the sea. Dead.

How is that protecting populations? It isn't. How long has it been going on? Years. What's been done about it? Nothing. Until along comes Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, kicking off a campaign very much in the vein of Jamie Oliver and his Turkey Twizzlers, designed to wake everyone up to the problem and do something about it.

Laudable, and I can hardly complain about him or his campaign since he has already - allegedly - secured Tesco's agreement to moving to 100% rod-and-line caught tuna (as opposed to trawled tuna) by the end of 2012. Now, if you were a cynic, you might think "well, yes, that's two years away. Who's going to be monitoring their progress? Who's going to be shouting the odds if they don't quite manage it?" But at least something is happening. Something more than could be achieved by consumers alone.

And that's my beef, really. How is it that something so patently ludicrous, that doesn't achieve the protection it was intended to and at the same time affects the livelihoods of every European fisherman for no benefit whatever, has been allowed to carry on for so long? And why does no-one pay any attention until a bloody TV chef steps in?

In among all the posturing and self-congratulation there are some interesting statistics. 50% of the fish we all eat comes from three species - salmon, tuna & cod. Add haddock and prawns and you're up to 80%. Is it any wonder the populations can't sustain themselves, faced with automated, computerised trawlers pulling hundreds of thousands of tons of them out of the sea every year, and then throwing half of them back dead?

Over a million tons of fish a year are thrown back. Caught, dead, and unable to be landed, sold or eaten. Meanwhile stocks of sardines, herring, and white fish like whiting, hake, coley - that you really would be hard pushed to tell from cod, especially in fish fingers - are plentiful and ignored.

Well, I guess any progress is better than no progress. If you want to sign up to help his campaign (I have), it's at Fish-Fight.net, and the TV programme begins for those in the UK (or those who can watch online) tomorrow night at 9pm on Channel 4.

The -painted- Alcove

Hard to believe it's two months to the day since I last posted about The Alcove. In that time there has been priming, there has been undercoating and there has been glossing. There has also been, as predicted back in November, a deal of colouring in with a tin of Redcurrant Glory, as well as the sourcing of some hard-wearing clear matt varnish ("Diamond Hard" as it's called on the tin) to protect the colour on the shelves from scuffs and scratches. There has also been the intervention of Christmas, which partially explains the extreme delay in what is essentially a simple job. Still, it's done, and I can finally reveal the result:

As predicted there's enough Redcurrant Glory left for the fireplace on my side, so we'll (sort of) match, eventually. Happily (I didn't check this before I fitted the lining) the top shelf is still large enough to accommodate our memory jar, while the larger bottom shelf will hold a stunning ornament of some sort, as soon as we can find one.

The best part, naturally, is that we can finally bin that awful Japanese parasol. Oh, and since I stuck to my plan to complete other priming/undercoating/glossing tasks at the same time, the linen cupboard is now painted out and in use too. You could be forgiven for thinking that things are coming together. Still a long way to go though.

4K2K

Over the past ten years we've built up a fairly large DVD collection. 443 titles at the last count, although to be accurate approaching 100 of those are in the "eBay" pile. We like movies, there have been some irresistible deals during that time, and we actively enjoy watching well-loved films over. Something, incidentally, that my mother could never understand. To me, a good film is like a good piece of music. If you can listen to the one over and over again and enjoy it every time, why not watch the same film more than once? Fair enough if it's something - like Unbreakable or Sixth Sense - that pretty much relies on the shock value of a single scene for its impact, then subsequent viewings will not have the same impact. But the story is still there. The cinematography, the dialogue, the plot, etc. And for many of our favourites the emotional journey remains unabated after several repeats.

We were late onto the High Def, BluRay bandwagon. Having lived through the VHS/Betamax wars of last century I didn't want to be bitten again by backing the wrong technology, and it was pretty clear from early on that one of them would win, eventually. In the end I think that win was brought forward by the manufacturers' realisation that the uncertainty was causing most consumers - like us - to avoid purchasing at all until there was some clarity in the market.

Once BluRay won, we did start to buy the odd High Def version. Not exclusively - the picture quality from an upscaled SD disc is still perfectly acceptable - but for blockbusters where HD really makes the action pop; and for well-loved movies that had not yet been added to the collection and were available on a deal, then we would opt for BluRay.

But wait! What's this? I hear we may as well all abandon any attempts to replace our DVD collections with BluRay no matter how relaxed an approach we were taking to it. They're already obsolete. Or, if not quite "already" then soon. For here comes "4K2K" - the adopted handle of the next level of definition, offering 4096 x 2160 pixels (so an alternative nomenclature comparable to the current 1080p would be 2160p) on screens of increasingly ridiculous size.

So as well as allowing, for instance, Panasonic to develop a mind-boggling 152-inch plasma screen to exploit the new definition, it will allow crisper images on more prosaically-sized sets, although there is some debate about whether the difference will be noticeable on home-sized screens. More philosophically, the availability of the next technology curve always implies a reduction in price for the "old" technologies, so those who've waited for their HD 1080p screens may soon get their chance to pick one up much cheaper.

At the moment, and predictably, the format is not compatible with BluRay, and for us, with probably another 10 years life left in our 50-inch plasma, it's a technology leap too far. We will be watching interestedly from the sidelines though :o)

Sorry?

I was due a broadband upgrade before Christmas, but at the eleventh hour the upgrade was postponed owing to some technical glitch or other.

The email informing me of the delay was very polite, until it came to the final sentence.

"Sorry for any incontinence," they wrote.

The green challenge

Some time before Christmas we were watching a programme about how easy it was to "green up" your life by taking small steps such as making sure you separate your trash (paper, card, cans, bottles, etc), compost your garden waste and - a first for programmes like this in my experience - take more care in the retail environment about how much "stuff" you buy, and where from.

The presenter, who was clearly well into the whole green agenda, announced "I challenged myself to go a whole year without buying any new clothes."

We looked at each other for a split second and then both fell about laughing. I must be about the greenest person on the planet in this respect as I seriously can hardly remember the last time I bought any new clothes. Had it not been for our recent trip to Toronto, it would certainly have been more than a year ago. Fashion victim I am not.