All station service to somewhere

Keep on running

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:48:49 GMT

Jesus. March 2008 was my last post apparently.

Many and profound things have occurred in my life and the lives of my (few) virtual and (er... very few) real friends since I last posted. You might imagine my first post for moons would, therfore, be profound. You'd be quite, quite wrong.

This particular LJ has just realised what a terriffic rhythm section Joy Division had. Decades after everyone else was aware of that fact. Yes. Told you it wouldn't be profound.

'R'sing about

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:03:05 GMT

Thanks to bagrec for this meme. He gave me the letter ‘R’ – the deal is that you list 10 things you love starting with the initial letter assigned to you by the person you pinch the meme from, and provide an explanation for your choice. Clear?

I haven’t thought about this at all, as I thought a stream-of-consciousness response might be more interesting. Armchair Freudians get yer notebooks out.

1. Radio

It’s just marvellous isn’t it? My first radio was a transistor from Boots that an aunt bought me for my 8^th birthday, and I remember the anticipation of going to collect a parcel from the post office in town, and my joy at opening it and having this present that seemed to me to be the first ‘grown up’ thing I had ever had.

There’s stuff like the World Service, speaking peace unto nations, which is one of those things that make you think, ‘yeah, we Brits do get things right sometimes’. I love channel surfing and discovering exciting new things, and most of all, I love radio because of when I was 16 and living in a foreign country, and feeling miserable and isolated, and teen-agey, and being filled with desire for a girl I didn’t even speak the same language as, and all that angsty crap. But through all that I used to listen to that same transistor at night, and the summer of 1988 for me is defined by Lou Reed’s Dirty Blvd., Hendrix’ Castles Made of Sand, Cowboy Junkies’ Sweet Jane and most jaw dropping of all, The Clash’s London Calling, all of which I heard for the first time that summer. I hated being 16 and I hated my life, it was all so damned unfair, but those songs meant it was still a good summer. The girl is another story, and her name didn’t start with an ‘R’ anyway.

2. Ricochet

Although I am the right age, being from a military family, my brother and I didn’t have any of that PC crap where toy guns were banned. So we spent our childhoods living out homicidal fantasies with impunity. Whether you were a cowboy, a cop, a robber or a soldier, all bullets had to make that ‘Pee-owwww!!’ noise like on telly.

3. Redemption

I ~~spent~~ wasted my first year as an undergraduate obsessed with the idea both of love and redemption. I was listening a lot to Bob Dylan’s Desire album (subtitled ‘songs of love and redemption’) at the time, and also not getting enough sleep. I was a strange teenager. Also, Easter is coming up, and it feels very spring like, so it’s a good time to contemplate redemption and maybe to try to get some. And God knows I needed it when I was 19 and I need it even more now. I need a new copy of Desire too. My vinyl version and I are currently separated. Sara is indescribably lovely.

4. Rorschach

Another memory from my first year as an undergraduate. getawaywithit loaned me his copy of The Watchmen, because I had said something dismissive about graphic novels. As has so often been the case, he was right and I was wrong. I was quite taken with the character, Rorschach, in it. It was also the first time that I learned the proper word for those funny pictures that trick cyclists use. They always look like female genitalia to me. I am not sure what that says about me but I am damn sure that a) it is not good and b) I will regret mentioning the fact on LJ.

5. Radar Love

The Golden Earring song. Simply because, while Dylan’s Sara is great, you need big, stupid songs once in a while. Stuff like this, the ‘Chinnichap’ songs, Free’s Wishing Well and other big, loud, dumb songs make me grin like an imbecile. In a good way.

6. Robert Herrick

I like 17^th Century poetry and 20^th Century English and American novels. Nothing else. Unbelievably one can get a degree in Eng Lit on that basis, apparently. Herrick is marvellous, especially the very short, slightly fetishistic poems about various ‘bits’ of Julia and/or her clothing. I had occasion a few days ago to look up the poem that he wrote upon the death of his spaniel. It’s a miniature masterpiece. Unfortunately I had mistakenly thought it was by Jonson, so I wasted a bit of time trying to find it, but reacquainted myself with some of the works of the Cavalier poets in the process, which is no bad thing probably.

7. Rain

When it is lashing down outside and you are safe and warm in bed. Or, preferably, about seven years old and snuggled inside a sleeping bag on a family holiday in North Wales, as howling gales threaten to blow your caravan onto its side.

8. Red Robbo

The public enemy no. 1 of the trade union world, before Scargill took over the title. I know nothing about Derek Robinson really, but it seems unfair to me that the unions always get the blame for running down British industry. Specifically, Red Robbo is always blamed for running British Leyland into the ground, which seems to me a bit of an injustice when they were making things like the Austin Allegro, the Morris Marina and the Austin Princess. Presumably the decision that it was a good idea to make those pieces of crap was a management one, so why does management never get any of the blame?

9. Retrospect

It all seems so much clearer in retrospect, doesn’t it. Bugger.

10. Richard Thompson

He’s just marvellous. If he had only done the guitar part on Shoot Out the Lights and written King of Bohemia and Beeswing and achieved nothing else he would still be great. But I also love the way that he can play guitar in just about any genre and sound like he is one of the best guitarists in that genre, even ones he is not normally associated with. Damn it, I need to replace my vinyl version of Shoot Out the Lights as well.

Route 59

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:42:49 GMT

I was on a bus this morning. Two seats away from me, a woman suddenly exploded "it's just stop, start, stop, start!"

On a bus.

What the media and the scientists aren't telling you

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:14:17 GMT

Gosh, there’s a bit of a fuss about antidepressants isn’t there? And a fair amount of guff being written as well. I quite enjoy it when a ‘science’ story makes the front pages. Trials get conducted every day, literature reviews get conducted every day and scientific papers get published every day. Normally no-one cares. A lot of the time, I suspect even the scientists involved don’t really care that much. But every so often a scientific paper makes the front pages of the newspapers, and a lot of guff gets written, and everyone has hysterics.

It’s hard to get a real feel for why it is certain scientific papers rather than any other that capture our collective attention, but as a general rule of thumb the ones that excite both the media and Mr and Mrs Average seem to be the ones that confirm widely held prejudices, and appear to reveal ‘science’ to be conducted by a shady cabal of people who are trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Excepting, obviously, the authors of said paper, who are among the few scientists who wield the simple sword of Truth and are prepared to speak out about the conspiracy of lies that (it is imagined) otherwise surrounds so-called science.

Nonetheless this antidepressant malarkey is front page news, so you’ve got to find out what the actual facts are, right? So I did not trust the mainstream media to provide the actual facts – I went straight to my impeccable source. It’s not hard as we live together.

I can now reveal what I actually learned about fluoxetine, which as any fule kno is the active ingredient in Prozac and all the rest. Rats dosed with fluoxetine masturbate a lot. That is it. That is what I learned. All of what I learned.

I hope this will make a useful contribution to the ongoing debate.

High Society

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:21:45 GMT

I went to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain last week, to go to a lecture about cannabis held by the British Society for the History of Pharmacy.

None of the above is, strictly speaking, my natural domain, but life is a rich tapestry, is it not?

The headquarters of the RPSGB is near Lambeth Bridge, and its upper storeys provide what must be one of the best views of the Houses of Parliament I’ve seen. It also contains a museum of pharmacy, and some of the artefacts are on display in the foyer. I especially liked the large, dark blue ceramic urn with Leeches written across it in large lettering. If I ever needed a place to keep leeches, I would certainly want to seek out a similar antique. There were also a number of examples of packaging of medicines across the ages, my favourite of which was a tin of Eucalyptus Oil & Cocaine Throat Lozenges.

There were several jars containing things like dried toads, snakes and sea horses. I didn’t have time to actually read what ailments these might have been intended to treat, but I wouldn’t want to suffer them.

The members of the British Society for the History of Pharmacy were not the most youthful and spry group I have ever seen. When we walked in we were asked if we were students. Since all of us in my small group are in our 30s, and J, the youngest, hasn’t been a student for several years even taking her PhD study into account, we all felt a bit flattered.

The lecture was fairly interesting, with not so much tricky science that my feeble brain was overtaxed, and I had J and our friend N on hand to explain hard bits to me anyway. The main message, at least by my layperson’s understanding, is that the World Health Organisation concluded years ago that cannabis has no therapeutic value. Since Britain is a signatory, along with many other countries, to the 1961 Convention which says so, very few studies appear to have taken place to test that assertion. So it may have therapeutic value in the circumstances that some users claim, or it may not, although, perhaps slightly depressingly, (especially if you are a particular type of legalisation campaigner) the claim that it has therapeutic benefit for people with MS appears not to be borne out by the British trial which has been conducted.

I also found out that Queen Victoria is reputed to have taken cannabis for menstrual cramps, and that, according to one gentleman in the audience (who may well have seen it first hand) it was once used as a treatment for corns. I have no idea how you would administer cannabis as a corn treatment. Or indeed why.

I sloped off to the pub after with J and N, cheered by the thought that next time some boring old hippy roped me into a legalisation debate, any comment I made would no longer be from my traditional stance of ignorance, presumption and prejudice, but on the basis of my now having a little knowledge, however dangerous a thing that is in my hands. It’s one step forward at least.

The coastal town that they forgot to close down

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:18:26 GMT

Well over a decade ago now I got fed up with Radio 1 and, (ironically as it will turn out) finding Virgin too AOR, started fiddling with the tuner dial trying to find a station that played popular music, but which I thought was actually good. Miraculously I alighted upon it. Most of the music was pretty old – a lot of ‘60s stuff, but really, that suits me fine – and I swear I thought it was the coolest radio station I had ever heard. At least I did until the mood of the cool, atmospheric playlist was shattered by something like Bachelor Boy, alerting me to the fact that for a good quarter of an hour, and way before my time, I had firmly believed that Radio 2 was magnificent.

Fast forward some years to Sunday night. There was nothing worth watching on television, even by my low standards*. And so I ended up watching Antiques Roadshow. I attempted, initially, to persuade myself that I was watching ‘ironically’. I was an undergraduate in the early ‘90s after all, a time when you could get away with any childish or uncool behaviour by claiming you were being ‘postmodern’ about it.

The thing is, it was recorded at the beautiful, Modernist De La Warr Pavilion at Bexhill on Sea, and I kept delightedly exclaiming things like ‘look at those lovely handrails – soooo elegant!’ As I tuned in an ‘expert’ was coming to the end of a discussion and valuation of a collection of Ladybird books – bagrec is not, in my view, free of blame for his influence in this matter – including those that were, for example, Welsh language. There was even, within the collection, Jen Londono!, a Ladybird title in Esperanto (go here if you don’t believe me: http://www.ladybirdflyawayhome.com/pages/foreign_lang.htm). I found myself regretting deeply that I had only caught the end of the discussion.

I was consoled only by the fact that the item was followed by a look at some plywood chairs that had been restored alongside the pavilion itself, an Austin Seven and a piece with a slightly pervy man (but slightly pervy in a harmless, eccentric, English way) and his collection of saucy seaside postcards and one of those ‘What the Butler Saw’ machines where you put in a penny, crank the handle (so to speak) and watch a mildly pornographic loop of film (his had a sign which said something like ‘For Use by Gentlemen Only’). All of which, in my view, are good things. I loved every minute. I enjoyed watching Antiques Roadshow.

The conclusion I draw from this is that I am, and possibly always have been, spiritually about 25 years older than my chronological age.

How I dearly wish I was not here.

*How low are my standards? I bet I am the only person with an IQ of over 10½, and possibly just the only person ever, to have watched Nuts TV’s Fit and Fearless, with the exception of Charlie Brooker, and he only watches this stuff because he is paid to write amusing, incredulous bile about such dreck, whereas my only ‘benefit’ is to feel morally tarnished and despairing of humanity.

Monday night entertainment - a sense of mortality

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 23:20:00 GMT

I didn’t bother writing anything about David Attenborough’s new series, Life in Cold Blood, last week because the world and their dog were already doing that, and they're all better writers than me.

As a consequence of reading what everyone else was writing, I discovered that this is likely to be his final major series. I find this saddening.

I have fantastic memories of being a small boy and being allowed to stay up late to watch his programme – I think it would probably have been Life on Earth at the time – on the basis that it was educational, and also that I made a big fuss to be allowed to watch it, because it fascinated me.

Part of his appeal I suppose is that he’s been around for moons, and so is depending on your age either a kind of favourite uncle or a cool grandfather – or even great grandfather – to a considerable proportion of the population. Another is that natural sciences probably seem more accessible and more compelling to most people than other programming based on scientific content, however ‘popular’ in touch, and so makes us feel better about ourselves for watching something educational instead of some crap about property, or Katie Price, or whatever, as usual.

But that’s just petty really, because the real reason is his infectious enthusiasm and genuine sense of awe about what he is talking about, his charm, and his ability to engage and therefore to educate, whether we like it or not. It’s a well known pedagogical technique, but not many people are actually that good at it. I’d swap about 10,000 Robert Winstons or David Starkeys for one Attenborough, for example.

Watching his very early broadcasts is fascinating now, because they were so basic. I’m sure I’ve seen programmes he made decades ago where it was just him in a studio, sat with an animal, talking about it – ‘yes, this is it’s tail you see, it’s very interesting, because…’ and you still find yourself getting sucked in, however low-rent it seems now. Incidentally if you watch old comedy sketch programmes like Not the Nine O’clock News now, they often aren’t that funny, because too many of the cultural references have disappeared into the past, but a sketch that references Attenborough and Gorillas still makes sense because it’s one of the things from that era which is still emblazoned on people’s minds, because it so captured our imagination.

Even more extraordinary to me is the size of the budget and production values his programmes attract now. I can’t imagine even the most Reithian head of the BBC granting anything like the time, resources and budget that have become the norm in natural science programming were it not for the specific popularity and all round wondrousness of Attenborough. That makes us all richer.

I quite like the short ‘making of’ codas that he has included in more recent series as well. There he was, tonight, tracking down a striking bright orange thing called a golden frog, in Panama, with a biologist who was making frog call noises, which Attenborough was trying and failing to imitate himself. Again, the strength of Attenborough is to make you think this is a noble pursuit, rather than a thing that makes you think biologists are a bit mental. If you have ever spent much time with biologists then you’ll know, as I do, what a tremendous achievement even that fact is.

The thing about these frogs is that they use specific gestures as well as calls when they are attracting a mate or despatching a rival male. Attenborough was in full-on jovial grandfather mode, provoking a male frog into variously waving, calling or fighting with a small plastic model frog to illustrate the point. It was really a small point in the whole programme, but the significance within this coda was that you’d just watched the best hour long advert for preserving biodiversity and treating our natural environment as a precious asset that I can think of, excepting possibly another programme by Attenborough, and these frogs were seemingly literally on the edge of extinction as a consequence of the environmental impact of human development, such as a local road-building scheme, and the advance of a fungus.

So In Attenborough’s (possibly) last big series of programmes, we had just been introduced to a species of frog that the tiniest percentage of us would have even heard about before we’d started watching, and we were made to care about its plight, and dwell on the significance of its imminent loss, in a very brief lecture, utterly lacking any hectoring quality, but no less powerful or significant for its brevity or its tone. And a substantial part of the nation, I hope, felt privileged to have seen this waving orange frog, if only on television, before it is lost to us forever, and to muse on what that means not just for a locality in Panama where they had once been numerous, but what the threat to biodiversity means around the world and to us all.

It is easy to be cynical about tv in an age of Big Brother, Nuts TV, and possibly (though I hope not) even worse – and believe me I often am – but I think the kind of tv David Attenborough has been responsible for making may be about the finest justification for the BBC imagineable.

Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover (Simpson, H)

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:13:27 GMT

I seem to be wanting to go to sleep somewhere around 2 am lately. I presume this is because I had a long Christmas holiday and feel well rested and relaxed, and my body clock is desperately seeking to readjust to normal, ie being oppressively sleep-deprived.

The ‘advantage’ of this is being able to watch late night/early morning tv. There isn’t usually much good on after the witching hour, admittedly, but for some reason I love tv that is so bad it is really bad. I can’t explain why. I am just odd.

As a consequence of my late night/early morning viewing habits, I can confirm the top 5 worst films ever are quite possibly as follows. I was fortunate enough to watch those shown in bold in a single night.

Jaws 3 (special mention for the bit where the attacking shark is seen off by two dolphins. FFS)
Anacondas: the Hunt for the Blood Orchid (I haven’t actually seen this but it must surely be worse than Anaconda, unless it is like Godfather Pt II in not conforming to the usual sequel/diminishing of returns law)
Anaconda
Freddy vs Jason
Hannibal Rising

I particularly like those adverts which first appeared a few years ago, where you can text a number to chat to girls who’d really like to get to know guys like you. These ads mystify me. Where do the girls come from? I have never seen any corresponding ads that say things like ‘text this number now to be inundated with texts from sad, ugly, insomniac, onanistic, lonely guys who are so stupid that they really believe a hot blonde girl like in the ads, or indeed anyone, may honestly want to flirt with them by text’. I know that I am not the target audience for such an ad, so maybe they do exist on a special channel that beminiskirted blonde babes like the ones in the ad for us sad blokes watch. But I doubt it.

This is one of the mysteries of life that have most consumed my time in recent weeks.

The others are:

what is the difference between a spire and a steeple?
what is the difference, if any, between an omelette, a frittata, and a tortilla?

Any answers to the comments box please. Ta.

Latest news from the Lambeth Primary

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:06:59 GMT

Via fellow political animals getawaywithitand suzanne219, a meme to play with:

93% Barack Obama
92% John Edwards
91% Chris Dodd
90% Hillary Clinton
88% Joe Biden
87% Dennis Kucinich
87% Mike Gravel
82% Bill Richardson
41% Rudy Giuliani
26% John McCain
22% Tom Tancredo
20% Ron Paul
19% Mitt Romney
15% Mike Huckabee
8% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

I have no idea who many of these people are. And you know what, I don't much care*. Although admittedly if I was a US voter I might have paid a bit more attention to anyone other than the ones who have been the front runners so far. Who is Chris Dodd for example? Apparently I should like him more than I do Hillary, and perhaps I would given the opportunity. I do know who Fred Thompson is: he is the District Attorney from Law and Order, and I probably wouldn't vote for his Law and Order character, though I do like Jack McCoy a lot. I have no idea what his real life policies are, and I'll probably never find out either.

If I really was a 93% match for the policies of Mr Obama I would be applying to emigrate to the US right now. I can't imagine that any politician anywhere** matches my aspirations so precisely outside the world of a meme.

What really surprises me is that I have as much as a 41% match to anyone from the Republicans - although I know Rudy is a bit 'different' in that regard - let alone no less than 82% for any democrat, in a coutry that doesn't really do 'left' as such. I must have a quiet word with myself about my politics if this thing is actually any indication of reality. Although overall the low match to most of the Republicans better signifies the terror I have of any of them actually winning than the high scores for the Democrats accurately reflect the degree to which my enthusiasm for any of them is unbridled, although I have to say I am more animated by the Democrat contest this time round than last, and last time it was to try and beat Bush....

If I had my way that nice Jed Bartlett would be allowed to stand again.

*I will probably care a little bit more if one of them actually, y'know, becomes POTUS.
** With the possible exception of Nye Bevan, in my idealised imagination. Or Sam Seaborn in the West Wing.

Fast Cars

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 10:37:49 GMT

Further to bagrec's post about his favourite Hot Wheels car, a photo of the Matchbox Speedkings Lamborghini Miura. Speedkings were larger scale than 'ordinary' matchbox cars (and hence wouldn't fit in a matchbox), but everyone knows that when it comes to sports cars, size matters.

Look, it has an opening engine cover and everything! And is therefore cooler than bagrec's Hot Wheels toy. 'Beatnik Bandit' indeed.

My own one remains one of my most coveted possessions, but sadly along with other of my most coveted possessions, such as my LP collection, is currently sitting in a storage unit in Battersea.

New Year, new post, usual pointless crap

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 15:05:05 GMT

Happy New Year to all.

J bought me a digital camera for Christmas, which was nice as I hardly dropped any hints whatsoever, even though it was the thing I most wanted in the world this year, with the exception of world peace, which yet again Santa failed to bring me.

Unfortunately for J, this being our first Christmas together she failed to realise how annoying me playing with said camera would become. So I thought it would be best to bring my camera activity over to LJ – consequently here, uninvited, are two of the first photos I have taken with it, and - yay - my first ever in an LJ post! They haven’t really got much of a common theme I don’t suppose, but no matter.

First of all, a picture of the Blackmore Vale viewed from Thomas Hardy’s fictional village of Marlott, childhood home of both J and Tess Durbeyfield.

Hardy describes the Blackmore Vale thus, although you’ll have to adjust for the fact that this photo was taken in December so some of the qualities of light and colour aren’t quite as he portrays them:

…an engirdled and secluded region…the hills are open, the sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed*, the atmosphere colourless. Here, in the valley, the world seems constructed upon a smaller and more delicate scale; the fields are mere paddocks, so reduced that from this height their hedgerows appear a network of dark green threads overspreading the paler green of the grass. The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is of deepest ultramarine. Arable lands here are few and limited; but with slight exceptions the prospect is a broad rich mass of grass and trees , mantling minor hills and dales within the major. Such is the Vale of Blackmoor.

*This means 'having their branches densely interwoven', as I am sure you already knew

This particular view extends from the end of J’s parents’ garden. In the autumn I took a series of photos of pubs, the church and the churchyard which are all described in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, but as these were on old skool film my readers (if there are any) are spared any more until such time as I work out how to use a scanner or manage to persuade J to let me drag her around the village again.

The second photo is of Portman.

Portman and I arrived in what was then J’s flat during the course of 2007, almost at the same time, both as refugees from the fallout of relationships that didn’t work out as had once been hoped, and it looks like we’re both staying. We also have in common indolence and a fondness for celery, sweet peppers and fish, the latter possibly a weirder fact about him than it is about me.

He looks quite cute here I think, but just look at those claws. They are the claws of a vicious killer. He can deliver quite a nasty nip, too, which is why he has to live behind bars. As yet I don’t.

In which I eat some mushrooms and dispense vigilante justice to a cyclist

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:13:27 GMT

Given that, when I am at work, the majority of that little effort and planning that I put into anything at all is working out how to get away with doing as little as possible, I am slightly surprised to find myself feeling mildly bored into my first day of a holiday.

It’s been an odd year in one way or another, and I haven’t had a proper holiday which has allowed me to relax for quite some time. Somewhere along the line I’ve evidently forgotten what I like doing, possibly owing to not having enough time to do it, with the exception of going to the pub with J. I remember I like doing that. But she’s at work so that idea’s scuppered.

It’s also really chuffing cold today, which reduces the pleasure of being at home on a Monday a bit. Our flat offers only mildly more protection from the elements than sleeping under a hedge, and at considerably greater expense. At least at work I get centrally heated on the company shilling. At least I do now that they have fixed my radiator. I probably should have taken this holiday when it was broken, and capitalised on the warmth on the run up to Christmas. That would have socked it to The Man.

On the plus side I have taken advantage of being home alone to cook mushroom risotto for my lunch, which I do really well and is by far the best vegetarian thing I can cook, but which I never get a chance to make because J has a violent allergy to mushrooms. Being able to eat mushrooms more often would be one of the single things that would most improve the quality of my life, so I figure I have to take my chances where I get them. I’m slightly concerned about sending J into some kind of anaphylactic shock through cross contamination or something, but I really do have a craving for mushrooms so I’m going to have to risk it. Anyway, she’s a toxicologist, I’m sure she’d know what to do. There’s bound to be an antidote to mushrooms, surely?

Mushrooms aside, the most entertaining part of my day so far was on the way to the supermarket to get said mushrooms, and encountering a cyclist. On the pavement. I don’t know why it should be so, but I am pretty convinced that Lambeth has the greatest incidence of cyclists on pavements of anywhere in the world. I truly despise people who cycle on the pavement. I am a very tolerant person and can probably, in the end, forgive most people most things, but I would seriously consider the death penalty for people who cycle on the pavement. And I won’t hear any of that crap about how dangerous it is for cyclists on London roads. I couldn’t care less. It’s bloody dangerous on London pavements as well, because of all the bastards cycling on them. Cyclists should get a fucking backbone and cycle on the road, or catch the bus, instead of giving me all their crap about being kind to the environment.

I digress slightly. The entertaining bit was that I, as usual attempted to describe through my body language the fact that I was not going to move an inch to assist the course of the cyclist’s journey, and that if he rang a poxy little bell at me in the hope that I would, I would most likely seriously maim the fucker. Actually I did alter my course fractionally, but only to move to the middle of the pavement, all the better to get in his way a bit more. As usual for one of these wheeled wankers, he carried on towards me with a look of grim determination that suggested I’d better move or he would mow me down. It was a bit like a spaghetti western showdown, only infinitely more petty. Fortunately I proved I was made of sterner stuff, causing him to swerve at the last moment. And crash into a lamppost, and become entangled in his shopping. How I chuckled to myself all the way to Sainsbury’s.

Now that I am middle aged I am finding I can take great delight in being a petty, grumpy old git. So I also shouted at someone for jumping the queue to the checkout. I would have bellowed something offensive at the police car that jumped a red light when I was trying to cross the road as well, but I hesitated and the moment was lost. Probably just as well though, it may not be wise to bawl at The Filth for traffic infringements. Bloody outrageous though, they ought to be locking up cyclists who ride on pavements, not playing free and loose with the highway code.

Anyway, that was all very boring I suppose, but it does mean I have broken weeks of almost total ElJay silence. Feel free to wander into the comments box and welcome me back. Or don’t. I don’t care.

Opinion leaders

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 12:10:00 GMT

The fact that I haven't posted on here for weeks probably acts as a suitable metaphor for the excitement that is my life and the enthusiasm with which I have embraced it, so I'll leave it at that. I'm sure the blogosphere has been fine without me.

Next week I will be receiving policy advice from a variety of people, as I have in recent weeks, and will attempt to do as little with it as possible until I can take the holiday which I really, really need to happen.

Just before the weekend I was drafted in to record policy advice that was being received on a controversial area which provokes much debate and strong opinion on all sides of the argument within my union. We are bound to report a policy recommendation to the union's annual conference in a few short months, and it will be a genuine challenge to state a position which doesn't infuriate anyone too much, without being so bland as to be pointless.

I'll have to refer back to my written notes on Monday to draw out every nuance, but off the top of my head the most noteworthy points that were made are as follow. I record them here for any readers who are not fotunate enough to be at the cutting edge of policy formation, and so lack in their own livesthe roller coaster of excitement and challenge that it represents .

"I am the elephant in the room. And I am not going to go away."

"My vicar is evil."

"I am from Wales. And I make no apologies for that."

I can't begin to tell you what a privilege it is to work with people with this level of political sophistication.

Help. I am being held prisoner in a suburban family home.

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 16:50:27 GMT

From the point of view of an adolescent boy who has just started to notice girls, and probably for some time thereafter, a girls’ sleepover is the most wonderful and magical place you can imagine finding yourself in the middle of. All these years later I can confirm that they are less than they were cracked up to be. Or maybe my interests have just changed a bit.

My sister in law sensibly went away for a weekend of debauchery (or at least that’s what she told me she was planning) and, with my brother working abroad at the moment, she left me in charge. She claims she is coming back sometime on Monday but I have my doubts. She’s been threatening to run away and leave me in permanent charge for years.

My overwhelming impression of girls’ sleepovers is that they are very high pitched and loud during the bits that are going well, and during the bits that are going less well they are sulky. I preferred the latter: at least they were quiet. I had a half-hearted go at mediation during the sulky bits, but since everyone insisted there was nothing wrong, when clearly there was, I decided it was easier to lapse back into my usual, borderline irresponsible, slack uncle modus operandi.

M, my nephew, sensibly steered clear as much as possible – once he had eaten his fill of their many, many doughnuts. I swear, I have never seen a 13-year old boy voluntarily go to bed before 10pm, especially when he is well aware that his uncle is so damn slack that he can practically stay up watching slasher flicks ‘til the dawn chorus starts before said slack uncle thinks to consider sending him to bed or questions his viewing material.

As well as the disappointing nature of girls’ sleepovers, another illusion which was shattered for me was the extent of the fear of ‘stranger danger’ among parents. I keep reading that parents will barely let their children out of the house nowadays for fear of the evil that lurks around every corner, but apparently, given the last minute nature of the arrangements for said sleepover, there are at least two sets of parents in South West London who will happily leave their beloved daughters to the supervision of a man they have, in one case, never met, and in the case of the other, met for long enough to say something like ‘hello and good luck – you’ll need it’ as they shove their offspring through the door and turn and sprint for the car. Perhaps I have a reputation for trustworthiness that goes before me, but more likely they were just glad for a Saturday night and Sunday morning of peace. So thanks to them for that.

My theory that anyone who actually has any idea about what young adolescent girls are like would go to any length to avoid spending time with them to get a few moments peace is borne out further by the decision of J (who was a young adolescent girls once after all) to cower out of coming with me at the last minute once she heard the extent of the horror, leaving me to face my fate alone. Thanks, J. I managed to get through it ok, nonetheless, by giving in spinelessly to most of their wheedling, including taking them out to the off licence in the middle of the night to get goodies for a ‘midnight feast’, especially as I drew the conclusion that it would give me the opportunity to get a few cans of strong continental lager to dull the pain. I am aware that this means I have terrible ‘parenting’ skills, but then I am not a parent, so someone else has to pick up the consequences of any damage my line-of-least resistance strategy causes, and that suits me just fine.

The short term benefit of non-refusal to allow the girls to stay the night and relatively – ahem – liberal attitude thereafter was that S, my niece, told me she loved me and that I was ’great’ and ‘well nice’. I understand this to be among the highest forms of praise that an adolescent girl can bestow upon an adult male who is nominally in a position of responsibility. Sadly this perception of me did not survive beyond mid-morning, when I forcefully demanded that a clean up operation to rectify the previous night’s carnage ensue.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth which followed was only exacerbated by my exemption of M from the tidying up, on what I thought were the reasonable grounds that it was the girls who were responsible for the vast bulk of it, and probably all. He also had the insouciant air of a slack male at the time, and I thought that I should encourage this, out of solidarity. He had suffered enough the night before, anyway, having been unfairly hounded by three girls for ‘showing off’ just because his younger sister’s friends were present, when in fact the situation was the precise opposite and he was just minding his own – well, at least after he’d had enough doughnuts. M was thus free to continue watching videos of his favourite kind of music, which like his elder brothers’, appears to be mainly about celebrating the joys of ‘hanging’ with one’s ‘bitches’ as the girls cleaned round him. I am aware that allowing this scenario to occur may well have negated anything I have ever achieved in my professional life in an attempt to further gender equality and counter negative gender stereotypes. But as in all things, some sacrifices must be made on the altar of my indolence, and there is no way I was going to do any of the tidying up myself, although I do seem to have ended up doing the –many, many, many very dirty – dishes after a lengthy battle of wills with S. It seems after all these years I still haven’t formulated an adequate response to counter one of her full-on sulks. I’m proud of the girl.

The one positive benefit of having a small army of young adolescent girls unexpectedly being thrust into my care was that I got to see the rather excellent Mean Girls, starring paragon of virtue and role model for young women everywhere, Lindsay Lohan. It’s main benefit was that it was one more thing that kept the girls quiet, except for the odd laugh. I generally found the same things funny, thus earning me cred points (which obviously didn’t last beyond the cleaning up thing either), since they were clearly of the view that adult men were from another galaxy and the cultural differences would be too great for me to understand the subtleties of girls’ favoured teen flicks. Although I did note that I was the only one who laughed at a line, delivered by the teacher in the film, which went something like ‘that was a joke. Believe it or not even adults make jokes’. Oh well.

I think I was meant to go to bed and leave them to watch the film by themselves, but my cunning ruse was that if I stayed up long enough, by the time I did retire they would probably be too tired to do much of whatever it was they intended to get up to. Of which I was guessing that I would have been obliged, as the nominally responsible one, to disapprove. I was less bothered about the thought of what they might get up to than by the fear of having to disapprove of something in a responsible manner, if I am honest. My first hint of this was when S said ‘but it’s got some quite rude bits in it!’ in an appalled voice, when I refused to leave the room.

The look that instantly crossed her face revealed that she realised she had blown it, and that having blurted out this fact I would now forbid them to watch it. I saved her from the effort of backtracking by pointing out that being made aware of this fact only strengthened my resolve to watch it (I know… ‘parenting’ skills weak there again. I’ve never sought to make great claims for them you know). I was quite intrigued to see what she would consider ‘quite rude’. Probably fortunately, given her age, she has a very low threshold for ‘rudeness’ on the evidence of the content of the film. I am well aware that they may have been horrifically embarrassed by me being in the room during any scenes which they imagined to be a ‘bit rude’, but with no children of my own, I saw it as a rare chance to make adolescents cringe, which is surely one of the things that adults are actually for.

Mean Girls has a heart-warming message that, ultimately, it isn’t whether you are in the right clique, or have the coolest clothes, or are the most popular which matter. What really matters is who you are inside, and that you realise your actions have consequences, and that it is better to be nice to people than to be, well, a mean girl in pursuit of acceptance into the popular girls’ clique. Most gratifying of all was that by the time all the kids had moved to their senior year, they were all chums, cliques were uncool, and they accepted each other on their merits, whilst watching the new kids in the junior year about to learn this the hard way, as they themselves had. It was quite sweet really, though not as good as Breakfast Club, which is a masterpiece of the genre with the exception of the fact that it incredibly expects us not to realise that Ally Sheedy was totally hot until such time as the school prom queen-type gave her a makeover. Incidentally, I saw Ally Sheedy in an episode of CSI or something recently, and time has not been kind. A little piece of my own adolescence died.

Mean Girls also made me a little emotional – not in a big way of course – partly because it reminded me a bit of my own secondary school days, which as everyone who wasn’t in the ‘right’ clique knows, can be pretty appalling, but more than that because S and the two girls who stayed over last night had been best mates in primary school and were now all in different schools, in S’s case at least having moved into a school where she didn’t know anyone. And that must have been hard for them, you know? I felt quite paternal for a moment, at which point I self-corrected into indolent mode and decided it was time to go to bed and leave them to whatever mischief they were going to get up to.

For my next trick I am meant to get them up for school tomorrow morning. Apparently I will have to respond to their inevitable reluctance in the appropriate adult manner. Anyone who has seen the reluctance with which I face work on a Monday morning – never mind the concept of getting out of bed to get there on time – will appreciate that this will be my biggest childcare challenge yet.

Aside from that, if S has forgiven me for the whole tidying thing, and making her go to her play rehearsal (a rare burst of proper ‘parenting’ skills – a lecture on taking responsibility for our choices [to be in the play] through accepting the consequences [going to rehearsals] and recognising that we have a responsibility to others as well [all the other people in the play]. I also got a chance to use one of those dread, smug, adult phrases [‘we’ve discussed this before’]. She was distinctly non-appreciative) she is making dinner tonight. So I expect to be doing it myself.

M has gone off for the day, I presume to seek adolescent male company. I think he is still a little traumatised. He is in the middle of one of life's transition moments. He’s got past the stage which most boys have of not socialising with girls, and is willing now to hang out with girls as part of a mixed group, which he did yesterday, when a group of his friends went swimming. He announced to me that the girls were ‘rubbish’ at it. Sometime very soon he is going to begin to alter his opinion on girls still further.

At least the fact that he has a younger sister will stop him wasting time wondering what girls get up to on sleepovers when he does.

Everything dies, baby, that's a fact.

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:55:11 GMT

I'm largely keeping quiet about politics on here just at the moment because I am so enraged with everyone it is hard to know where to begin, but I do just want to mention the fact that the Conservatives have made Jimmy Cliff’s You Can Get it if You Really Want the theme music to their conference this year.

I know this isn’t quite up there with the inappropriateness of Reagan hijacking Born in the USA for his own nefarious ends, but really, have the Tories seen The Harder They Come? Surely the music is still linked inextricably with the film in many people’s minds, and it neither promotes traditional Tory values (well – looking after yourself by any means necessary, whatever the cost to others, possibly) nor is it easy to imagine many Conservative frontbenchers as hardened and desperate gunslingers like Ivan is at the end of the film. Although it would appear some have had approaching his involvement in drugs in their own way.

To be fair I can see the appeal to them of the lyric “Rome was not built in a day/Opposition will come your way/But the hotter the battle you see/It's the sweeter the victory”. I can also see the more traditional appeal to the Tories of the line “win or lose you’ve got to take your share”, but what should we make of their association with the previous line, “persecution you must bear”? What persecution do the old Etonians and chinless wonders who governed the country for the bulk of the past century imagine themselves to suffer?

My real objection of course is that I love the soundtrack to The Harder They Come and I’m annoyed with them for 'stealing' a part of it.

It also raises the question for me as to whether all music, or indeed any other form of "artistic expression" (ugh - but I'm too lazy to reword it), loses its power and impact over time.

During the course of wondering whether I want to see Control (see previous post) it’s occurred to me that Love Will Tear Us Apart has almost entirely lost its impact on me. All through the 1980s, and for a good part of the 1990s, it seemed to me so bleak and desolate that I was pretty much unable to listen to it. I don’t exactly find it uplifting these days, but it doesn’t have anything like that effect on me now, I suppose because successive years have made it more and more familiar.

The one that always gets me though, is The Clash’s London Calling. I remember being a teenager and hearing it for the first time, as I was drifting off to sleep with a transistor radio playing softly next to my pillow. It sounded utterly apocalyptic, and not only did it shake me awake but it was one of the few songs I’ve ever heard that has ever genuinely startled me because it was just that good, in a kind of a wild, untamed, to my mind quite radical way. And it was a decade old even then.

The thing is, I still really see it that way, but I seem to be the only one. It’s used on soundtracks of tv programmes all the time now, to signify ‘the focus of this programme has moved to London’. No matter how banal the programme – I’ve seen it used on Blue Peter for example (though god knows why I was watching Blue Peter) and for all I know the The Antiques Roadshow and Songs of Praise use it in the same way. This continues to mystify me.

Please, please, though, gods, don’t allow Boris to appropriate it for his mayoral campaign.

Control

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:25:42 GMT

Is any of my extensive El Jay readership going to see Control, based on the life of Ian Curtis? I know bagrec has a new-found philosophical objection to Joy Division based on the trainers episode for example.

I think I'd quite like to see it and it has a rave 'film of the year' review in The Grauniad today, but... well. It's just not very life affirming, is it, as a story? I think the story of New Order possibly is, or could be made out to be. But I'm not sure there is any way you could say the same about Curtis' life, and the fairly horrible circumstances of his death.

On the other hand, apparently it is a very good 'period' piece. I had meant (but failed as usual with me and cinema) to see This is England for similar reasons. My memories and perceptions of the early to mid 1980s are very contradictory and confused, with the result that I am always intrigued to revisit the era in films, documentaries, music, and other such things, to attempt to piece it back together again in a way which makes some kind of sense. I've still not succeeded. I saw my parents last night and part of our conversation underlined the fact (how do you make sense of an era that included visiting Native American reservations one minute and going to a very traditional boarding school in a damp Welsh town the next?)

I need to stop seeing films that drag me down, though (the last was Atonement two weeks ago, which was a bit of a misery in its own way). I saw The Simpsons movie recently, and I think laughter and silliness is what I need more of in my life. Ho hum.

This post ends here as this El Jay does not do 'emo'. Or not any more than it just has, anyway.

Cos I get bored too

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:09:08 GMT

Thanks to suzanne219 for helping me waste some time with this meme. She made me pick song titles starting with an 'O', which is all but impossible - so she obviously hates me, though I don't see why. Thank god for Neil Young who supplied more than his fair share. There may be some others that I like more than these, but these are the ones I could actually think of and do at least like a bit:

No point in doing the 'leave a comment and I'll give you a letter' bit as I appear to be the last person on LJ to have done this.

1. Out of Time: The Rolling Stones
2. Ohio: Crosby Stills Nash and Young
3. One: U2
4. Oliver’s Army: Elvis Costello
5. Oh Sister: Bob Dylan
6. Only You: Yazoo
7. Our Town: Kate Rusby
8. Over and Over: Neil Young
9. Oh Boy: Buddy Holly
10. Only the Lonely: Roy Orbison

Honourable mentions to:

11. Out in the Street: The Who
12. On Broadway: Neil Young (or The Coasters and presumably numerous others)

MP3 Serendipity

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 13:15:05 GMT

Being half asleep and feeling miserable about the prospect of Monday morning in the office, and how weekends are too short.
Being turfed off a bus at Holborn - again - even though the sign at the front claimed it was going to Euston.
Striding through Queen's Square, hardly anyone around, huddled into your collar against the cold, grey damp.
Walking past the Brunswick Centre as falling leaves swirl around you, dodging the spray from white vans and black cabs as they cruise past through puddles.
For this reason Suede were invented.

Conference season musings

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 17:46:54 GMT

I’ll be quite glad when parliament is recalled and some proper politics start happening again. At the moment, with the conference season still going on, there is a series of pointless speculations, where far too much is read into politicians’ every utterance by political commentators who feel they have to say something.

I hope that one thing which will turn out to be no more than pointless speculation will be the concept of Brown calling an early election. Apparently, if you listen to the pundits, about 98% of everything said at the Labour conference last week was a gearing up for a general election campaign.

I see no case for an early election. Brown should respond to any calls for him to seek a ‘personal mandate’ by giving the country a robust civics lesson. Labour received a very firm mandate in the last general election. Brown is now Labour leader and inherits that mandate. Any suggestion that it was somehow Tony Blair’s mandate is nonsense. The only people who voted specifically for Blair in the last election were the voters of Sedgefield, so that was his only ‘personal’ mandate.

Labour still has half a term of office to go, although you would never believe it from the media coverage. I see no advantage to Brown calling an election which he has no guarantee of winning, whatever the polls are saying at the moment. He hasn’t really had a chance to set out his government’s policy stall or aspirations, because most of the time that he’s been PM, Parliament has not been sitting. I think that, if his government shows some proper leadership over the coming year that it will only strengthen his position. One could make the point that in doing so, ‘events’ could occur that will erode or eradicate his poll lead, but dealing with those 'events' effectively is all part of leading a party and a country, and he has already demonstrated that he can respond to ‘crises’, as there have been several over his 3 months to date.

I’m bored also with the talk of historical precedent, as though Brown should be bound by the experience of Wilson or Callaghan. For good or ill, the circumstances of the party and of politics generally are very different to the 1970s which people are referring to, as though it sets out some kind of prophecy or destiny. And anyway, what should Brown do based on history? The lessons that he is being asked to heed are contradictory: Callaghan hesitated and was lost; Wilson didn’t look before he leapt. So the choice being set out by the commentators, in combination, seems to be to hold an election now and lose, or don’t and lose. But it’s rubbish. Callaghan lost because, in his own words, there was a generational ‘sea change’ in politics. I always thought his analysis was perfectly workable. There is no such sea-change towards the Conservatives or anyone else of the type that nascent Thatcherism offered. Wilson lost, as far as I can see, because election results were all over the shop in the late 60s and early 70s, and perhaps reflected the political uncertainty of the times. The early 21^st Century isn’t really like that.

One interesting question that does arise is whether we’d be better off with fixed terms of office, in the way that all presidential terms in the US are 4 years. At least the electorate knows where it stands.

I expect no government ever to introduce such a change. But I am beginning to find it quite damaging that every utterance from senior Labour politicians is pored over for clues as to what it means for the chances of an election rather than, well, what substance, if any, it may actually contain as a policy announcement, or whatever. From a partisan point of view I am mildly entertained by the Conservatives in disarray, boldly calling for an early election that I don’t really believe they can possibly want, so that people don’t think they are panicking about it when in fact they are. On the other hand, if the uncertainty continues, that very disarray is itself damaging, because the job of the opposition correctly is an important one, and the Conservatives won’t be able to do their job properly if they are stressing out about an election which may or may not come.

Another reason that Gordon Brown shouldn’t call an election right now is that the love-in that the Labour conference appeared to be isn’t necessarily all it appeared. As an example, I saw an incredulous reporter at Bournemouth talking about how ‘even the unions’ appeared to ‘behave’. Well, yes, because they were for a large part glad to see the back of Blair, who was hardly their best mate. And, contrary to mythology, union leaders are not simply guided by some kind of narrow, sectarian, knee jerk reaction on every single issue and are capable of a little political strategy. First of all, they recognise that there is a possibility they can get more out of Brown over the next few months than they got out of Blair in all his time as PM. Most specifically they are hoping that Brown will deliver, finally, on some of the aspects of the Warwick agreement that, as far as they are concerned, Blair promised and then reneged on. Missed by almost every correspondent at Bournemouth, who was busy trying to guess when the next election would be called, was a clear hint that the government is open to calls from the unions, on which there was considerable unity at TUC Congress a few weeks ago, on the rights of temporary and vulnerable workers. So they’re still trying to work with him rather than against him at the moment.

Secondly, they are aware that there remains a need for the appearance of the Labour movement to show some kind of unity of purpose at a time when there is still a very new leader – and indeed when the Conservatives keep threatening to dissolve once more into damaging internal conflict.

Thirdly, as one of my colleagues returning from the TUC earlier this month reminded me, the stuff that happens at Congress and the Labour conference that really matter are the agreements and understandings arrived at behind the scenes, rather than some fantasy-fest from Jack Straw on the conference floor in which he attempts to portray himself as Blackburn’s answer to Batman, or the competition between ministers to appear really, really British, with all the best values that apparently entails, but not in a xenophobic or racist or non-inclusive way.

So the unions and government appear to be thinking that they can find some common ground at the moment, and work positively together. The thing is, before Brown calls an election, he will do well to deliver on this at least sufficiently to earn the benefit of the unions’ doubts more securely than he perhaps has already. Delivering, finally, on what trade union leaders believe they were promised at Warwick is one thing he can do.

Secondly, he needs to sweeten literally millions of workers over the issue of pay restraint. At the moment he is asking the unions to accept real terms pay cuts for the sake of the economy. There is a lesson from the Labour governments of the 1970s in this respect, and that is that you can get the unions to swallow pay restraint, sort of, but only if you scratch their back a little as well. Callaghan’s failure to recognise just how much he was asking of the unions without being perceived by them to deliver on a social agenda which they backed, and believed he had promised, came back to bite him on his behind in no uncertain terms. The media has already been over-exaggerating the threat of a ‘winter of discontent’. It isn’t going to happen, at least not in the same terms as happened in the late 70s, but a couple of one day strikes could still be enough for Brown’s enemies to have a field day about a return to the perceived dark days of Labour.

Further, Brown is demanding pay cuts from very often ill-paid public sector workers (a surprising number of whom are paid so little that they are recipients of the tax benefits he introduced as Chancellor, and who in many cases remain substantially victims of pay inequality between men and women. Since people have been invoking the 1970s so often recently, it is worth noting that it was the decade of equal pay legislation, and that Brown is asking people who still haven’t seen pay equality in all the intervening time to take a real terms pay cut.) Labour politicians in the 1970s at least had the good grace to recognise that those who were the highest earners exercised no pay restraint on their own salaries, and at least implicitly referred to them as the grasping, cynical bastards that they were, whereas there is little if any indication from Brown that he is that bothered by the obscenely wealthy continuing to cut and run with as much money as they think they can get away with, if not more. Voters unsurprisingly see that as unjust and Brown shouldn’t be complacent about that fact, however much he wants also to encourage enterprise and entrepreneurship.

Brown actually needs to work with these people he is seeking to impose pay cuts upon, through their unions, before he calls an election. Anyone who has had the misfortune to spend lots of time in trade union meetings over the past decade will know that there is a massive army of people who used to go out in their constituencies and work hard to get out the Labour vote, but who simply stopped doing it, or did it increasingly reluctantly and half-heartedly. If Brown wants to maximise his chances of victory he ought to try and get them back on his side, unambiguously, but that will only happen if he begins to engage properly with unions again on social and employment issues. He was able to a decade ago as shadow Chancellor and then Chancellor, so he ought to remember the routine. Additionally, if he can do enough to get a sizeable number of people who abandoned his predecessor’s parliamentary party to renew their party membership, he’ll boost his campaign fund when the election does come.

Like all Labour PMs, Brown will be asking the unions to fund any election campaign to a substantial degree. They are likely to be more generous if Brown engages properly with them, as I believe he can. They won’t demand that he does everything that they ask in return for the money, but they will probably want something in return – they got fed up with Blair happily taking their money and then ignoring, or worse, attacking them – and legislation on temporary and vulnerable workers would be a good start, as it will be seen not just by union members but by many of the electorate more generally as being in tune with his passion for social justice. Employers will fuss about red tape, but it is high time Labour governments were bold enough to stand up to their lobby again. They did it successfully a decade or so ago with issues such as statutory holiday entitlements, parental rights and, more importantly still, the minimum wage. The apocalypse predicted by the CBI then never happened, nor will it over some basic and decent rights for our most vulnerable workers who remain open to appalling exploitation by unscrupulous employers that the wider employers’ lobby can surely be shamed into distancing themselves from.

Brown needs to set out a clearer vision for a social agenda which is more fleshed out and detailed than the rather vague pronouncements he has outlined so far, and he should do so in parliament, where he can act on it, not on the election campaign trail where it would exist only as yet more rhetoric which may or may not find itself living beyond a manifesto pledge. Only once he has begun to deliver on such an agenda should he go to the country and ask us to judge him on it. He may find that if he does so, a number of lapsed and ambivalent supporters among trade union and former constituency party members, frustrated by Blair at being asked to pay for a party that they had long since ceased to be invited to, return their support to the parliamentary party more enthusiastically than they did in the last election.

Finally, Brown should be aware of what neither Blair nor Cameron have appeared to be: while you need to move beyond your ‘core’ support to win elections these days, you won’t continue to win elections if the cost of your new votes is to be deserted by your traditional supporters.

Stupid old Fart (slight return)

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 10:43:11 GMT

I think I may be the first person to have ever created an MP3 file which includes an accordion and krummhorns. In the future, when we are all taking energy pills instead of eating meals, I will most likely want a spam fritter-flavoured one. And then I will ride my jet pack down to the bingo.

Wearing the bottoms of my trousers rolled

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 10:32:43 GMT

35 is the official start of middle age according to some sources. Others tell me it is the new 25. I prefer to believe the latter unsurprisingly. My friend Andrew also reminds me that I have a new box to tick for the 35-44 age range in any forms I fill in so that should be exciting.

I thought I was coping with middle age quite well really. Today I've been awaiting a delivery from Argos: a sensible wardrobe with 3 drawers; a pedal bin; and a shaving mirror. I've been considering getting some slippers, and perhaps a pipe. Soon I am going on a wild long weekend break to... Bournemouth.

J unfortunately has put a fly in the ointment by giving me an MP3 player. I have been staring stupidly at it, and a computer half the morning, a slow, stupid old fool. So far I have uploaded from CD such hip sounds as Atlantic Soul, various blues things, Fairport Convention, The Clash, The Who, and The Byrds to my harddrive and within a week or so I feel confident I will have worked out whatever hocus pocus is necessary to get it from there to the MP3 player. I feel old and useless and that the world is passing me by.

Still, hopefully I can now re-acquire bits of the enormous collection of olde worlde music on vinyl and cassette which I have been forced to abandon, for now, to a storage unit in Battersea, which by virtue of being all the stuff I bought in my teens and early twenties is the music I own which I most love. At the moment I live an existence with little if any Beatles, Stones, Dylan, or Jam music, for example, and that can't be right. If I can ever work how this damn technology works.

Only double entendres will keep the loneliness from devouring me from the inside out

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 15:35:40 GMT

Hurrah for the BBC. The leader of the free world has presented our PM with the gift of a USAF fighter pilots' jacket. And links to the story with the question 'what fur-trimmed gift did Gordon Brown receive from Bush?'. Hmmm... fur-trimmed, brown, bush.... If only I had the wit there would surely be too many places that I could go with this. Thank god, frankly, that I do not.

J keeps saying things like 'I did anabolic steroids all morning' and 'I'm off to the library to do drug abuse today'. This is because she is doing important editorial work at the British Library. Thank god for her new job, though. She hardly ever talks to me about over-active bladders these days. I found out at lunchtime that she is checking out journals which, because they are about analytical science, are abbreviated to things like J Anal Toxicol and Anal Chem when referenced. For Billy Connolly, an intellectual is someone who can hear the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. For me it is now someone who can read references like that and still engage with scientific research. NB: J, if you are reading this I don't mean you. I don't doubt you have been sniggering helplessly like a schoolgirl all day.

More serendipitously, she tells me that the Journal of Caffeine sits cheek-by-jowl with The Journal of Cake in the British Library.

Everyone in the whole wide world seems to be just about to disappear on their holidays. I am the only person on earth who seems to have a job where I have stuff to do in August. I have just enough work to keep me in the office throughout August, but not enough to keep me from going out of my mind with boredom. Next week I will be sat by myself in an office with no human contact. Each year, all through August, the only time I can be sure I am not in fact the last survivor of a nuclear holocaust/plague/pestilence/etc is to leave my office and go to the pub, which is where everyone else is. That's my excuse anyway.

With a couple of days free of rain I am disappointed that it rained just now. I am hoping that, if it doesn't rain this August I can amuse myself counting the days until the hosepipe ban is announced, with a water board spokesperson earnestly explaining on BBC Breakfast that the biblical torrents throughout the summer so far had been 'the wrong kind of rain' to fill aquifers or somesuch. I still wouldn't rule it out.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:37:51 GMT

It’s probably a bit early to assess Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip just yet, as I’ve only seen the first episode. And it’s possibly not worth bothering either, since it’s already been cancelled.

Firstly, it’s very, well, Aaron Sorkin. How many people working on Studio 60 didn’t work on The West Wing I wonder? W G Snuffy Walden wrote the music for example. Well, fair enough, if I could get a guy with a name like that to write music for me, I would. Surely at least some of the people who do all the visual stuff (apologies for using the television insiders’ technical term here) came from West Wing as well – very WW camera work for example. Even the lettering of the titles is in exactly the same font.

The writing is unsurprisingly recognisably Sorkin: office politics, crises, ideas for dealing with the crises that are pretty crazy... but they just might be crazy enough to work, et al. But I didn’t think the dialogue sparkled. Hopefully this is because first episodes are all about setting the scene and introducing the characters and are otherwise often fairly dispensible. Because I really want to like it.

I wondered, on watching it, whether it is Sorkin who has a genius for casting or whether the people he works with do. The West Wing had some of the best ensemble acting I have ever seen, anywhere. Obviously it was not least down to the writing and great characters, but I don’t think WW would have been half as good without such a great cast: CJ, Josh ‘n’ Toby, Leo, all of whom were played by strong but I would guess previously relatively unknown actors, combined with the genius of casting people we used to like but had largely forgotten about, like Rob Lowe and Martin Sheen. Studio 60 shows some early promise in this by casting Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitfield in central roles – who I hope will get some really good scripts to work with, because I think they could be a fantastic bit of casting – combined with, hey! Isn’t that the guy that used to be in Taxi?

Like I said, I really want to like it, and I hope I will, even if it has already been cancelled. But I also have a nagging feeling about the difficulty of following something that was so popular, critically praised, and in its own way, a cultural phenomenon. It reminded me a little of those difficult ‘follow-up’ albums by rock bands that are all about the misery and hardship of fame, fortune, success and oceans of cocaine. The central theme so far seems to be ‘you little people might think it’s great working in tv, but guess what, it’s really hard and often cutthroat. You shouldn’t envy me, you should pity me. I’ve written a series about it, but the evil tv execs will probably axe it, because it’s all just a business to them, they understand nothing about my art.’

As soon as I started thinking that, the Felicity Huffman cameo started to look like a terrible omen. Celebrity cameos are like having Eric Clapton ‘guesting’ on guitar on your new album, or calling Kate Moss onto stage to sing a quick song. It very possibly means you’ve lost your way a bit.

Open letter to Charles Kennedy

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:32:36 GMT

Dear Mr Kennedy

It is nice to see a well known politician using public transport just to get from one place to another, rather than as a photo opportunity.

Well done with the final, long drag on the cigarette before the bus doors opened (I know the feeling - they always come along just after you've first sparked up, don't they?) and then extinguishing your 'smoking materials', as TfL call them. I'd have hated to see you have another 'traingate' moment.

I don't really have anything useful to say apart from an observation. I know it was sunny, but you should try not to 'do' shades. They will just make people assume you are hungover. That's why I never wear them.

Anyway, cheers then
2somewhere

Capital Ring - Crystal Palace to Streatham

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:27:45 GMT

God I've been a bit rubbish at updating this recently. I am sure the internet has been missing me.

2 weekends ago I continued my bid to walk the Capital Ring. I've only been trying for about 4 years now. My quest is not aided by the fact that I've started doing bits that I have already done again. So I have still walked as much of it as I had done two summers ago, ie everything south of the river from Woolwich to Richmond, plus a bit of East London because it was where I lived at the time.

Last time I did this part it was as part of a 16 mile stint, starting at Falconwood. But I felt the need to aim smaller this time, especially as I was dragging J along with me.

The best bits for me are the foundations of Crystal Palace itself, which must have been enormous; Norwood Grove, with its garden and the remaining part of the impressive mansion, built for one of the co-founders of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company; and Biggin Wood, part of what used to be the Great North Wood, before it was lost to creeping suburbanisation.

Why was the Great North Wood so called? What is it North of, for pity's sake? Well, Croydon, actually, but since it is south of the Thames, most of London, and a hell of a lot of the rest of England besides it strikes me as an odd name. But it's lovely, the bits that are left, and coming across parts of it is one of the best parts of the Capital Ring for me... well, the half I've done.

The view is quite impressive as well, because Crystal Palace is so high. But only quite impressive, because for a lot of the walk your view is of Croydon. Still, I would rather look down on it than be in it. J suggested that The Great North Wood was so called because it is North of the important landmark, the twin towers of IKEA, but I am not convinced.

But it's the little things that stand out for me. Near Crystal Palace, there is a Belvedere Road that actually has belvederes in it. Thus it doesn't wind me up. There are some allotments near Biggin Wood, which seem to be well used. It still cheers me to see allotments, because councils built over so many of them in the 80s and 90s. It used to really infuriate me, I think because I saw it as part of some kind of war on the working class perpetrated by Thatcher. Perhaps best of all is the rockery garden at the house next to Norwood Grove. It's truly impressive. Well done the people who live there.

Finally, according to the guide, there is meant to be a stream marking the boundary between the boroughs of Croydon and Lambeth as you near Streatham Common. Well I have done the walk twice and I haven't seen the bugger. Fair enough, last time I did the walk it was really hot, but this summer the bloody thing should have been a raging torrent. Where is it?