I wanna be better than oxygen

There's a song that I've been hearing on the radio recently. "Oxygen" by Willy Mason. A young chap from the US of A. Other than his geographical location, I have no other knowlwdge of him.

After a brief but failed attempt to find the track to download, I've ordered the CD from some American website. I'm loving the strength of the pound at the moment. I hope it gets here quickly.

When I was down to see the nephew recently, I recorded a few pop videos with the Brother-in-Law. I haven't got round to editing them yet, but here is one of the highlights - a dialogue between me (R) and BiL (K) before we attempted to do "Laid" by James:

K: This here would be "Laid" by Jago if you're Cornish or James if you're English.
R: I'm not actually Cornish, I'm "Rich" or "Rago" which you might like to call me if you subscribe to my sister.
K: [with odd Cornish vibe] Rago.
R: [with failed Cornish vibe] Rago. Hello Rago, I'm Rago.
K: Rago!
R: Sh-shall we play some song?
K: You're not wrong.
R: Can I just grab some beer? Oh, that's the wrong can. [Unintelligible sentence]. Oop, I'm ready.
[R drinks beer. K drinks beer]
R: I've got a joke. I've got a joke. Eh, Why did the fly jump off the cliff?
K: Dunno - why did the fly jump off the cliff?
R: Because it could FLY.
K: What do you call a fly without wings?
R: [long pause] a Fly.
K: A walk.
R: Shall we play the song?
K: Yeah.
R: Ok.
K: "Laid" by Jago. If you're Cornish.
[This is followed by an utterly fantastic version of the song.]

In other music news - I did find "Vienna" by Ultravox. When examined, the file claimed that its genre was "Darkwave". I say... Eh?

Welcome to the non-existent seats

When I woke up this morning, I thought I was going to go and see The Wonderstuff tonight. It turns out I wasn't because the ticket person had decided to not get tickets and not remembered to tell me. Potentially no great loss. I'm tempted to give them an AR(SE) score of zero... but that would be unfair - there must be thousands of bands that I haven't seen this year but I haven't given a zero rating to.

Imperative Obeyance

There was a sign in our canteen area earlier saying "Wet Floor". So I did. Strangely they didn't seem happy and I was asked to leave.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

Missing you...

Are there many things sweeter than an old friend's voice on your answerphone?

(or in Haiku form:

Are there many things,
Sweeter than an old friend's voice,
On your answerphone?)

That was unintentional. Only when reading it back did I spot the cock-on sylabillic structure.

Inconceivable!

Here's another instance of me being really bad at recognising famous people. I just started watching Season two of "Dead Like Me". And it struck me that the actor who plays grumpy old Rube is called Mandy Patinkin. Which is a bit of a coincidence since although that is not a very common name (not round here in York anyway), there was a man with a very similar name in "The Princess Bride", playing Inigo Montoya (as in "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father - prepare to die"). But clearly they can't be the same person since Inigo had a long hair and a slightly foreign accent whilst Rube has short hair and a gruff American accent. I suppose techincally American is a foreign accent to me, but I'm sure you get my meaning.

After watching him for many hours in each of these two roles, maybe I should have put two and two together, or at least overlayed two triangles to find they were congruent. But I didn't. Today though the coincidence finally struck me as strange, and I checked up on IMDB and yes: They Are The Same Person. Bugger. Should have got that one sooner.

I had been fooled by a wig and a vague accent.

I'd like to think that I'm not the only one who does this. But I think that most people probably look at faces and then recognise them in the future. Isn't that something that even babies can do? It's not like it's the first time I've been misled this way. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to work out which one was Brad Pitt in "Troy".

If any of you ever want to avoid me, just put on a hair-piece and speak in a Spanish accent and I'll be convinced that you're a complete stranger and totally ignore you. Or perhaps you could try just being in a different room. Or country. Oh - you are already.

Anyway, if you haven't seen "The Princess Bride", then go and watch it (don't confuse it with "The Princess Diaries" like a certain friend of mine did). Then read the book. And then go and watch the film again. Because the book and the film are are fantastic.

The Ascot Finale

Ascot is arguably the most famous horse racing course in the UK. It's more popular than Newmarket, better selling than Pontefract and more controversial than Carlisle. Spot the incredibly weak H2G2 reference there.

I went there on Saturday. It was the last meeting of the year, and indeed of the ever in Ascot's current incarnation. For soon, they are going to drive a great yellow bulldozer through it to make way for a bypass... um sorry, I've gone hitchhiker again. Smack me if I do it again. But they are going to rebuild the whole thing. Whilst they are doing this the course will be closed for a year or so. It was therefore a "historic weekend of racing".



The biggest meeting of the year at Ascot is Royal Ascot which the queen goes to and where everyone wears really big hats. Or the ladies do at least. Due to the demolition of the stands and rerouting of the course, Royal Ascot is being held in my hometown of York in 2005. Which means that the city will get shed busy. I could rent out my flat to some people for the week for several thousand pounds. But they'd no doubt turn out to be drunkards who'd trash the place. Or worse!

As we entered the race course, a woman from train company GNER accosted us and made us enter a prize draw - we'd made the mistake of standing still for thirty seconds. I wouldn't mind this but the prize was a return trip on the train from wherever you lived in the country to... York. Wooh hooh! I'd be able to get on the train through one door, walk to the next carriage and get off again! Fabulous. I entered the competition anyway, because she gave us all a free pen that was shaped slightly like a train.

My betting did not go too well so I shan't dwell on that. It was hard to feel too down though, because what Ascot did have was FREE DODGEMS! How cool? I had to have a go, and it was loads of fun. I could have stayed on for hours, but that would have been unfair on my friends who were deprived of my company whilst I was driving. I wish York Races had free dodgems. Hell, I wish my office had free dodgems. I wouldn't need any encouragement to go in early then.

It also had two other advantages over York. There were escalators in the stands. And they let you take beer into the main trackside betting area. It had one major disadvantage over York though, apart from being several hundred miles away: The horses go the wrong way! They race Clockwise, which is just plain wrong. It's complete insanity. They should at least put a warning on the race-cards or something. "WARNING: You may become mildly annoyed by the unusual direction in which the horses here will run.". Like they do on cigarette packets.

I'll end with another in the possibly completely new series of "Things which in retrospect it's best not to say out loud so that everyone nearby can hear you". We has wandered over to the paddock before the last race to watch the horseys walk round in circles. Initially they were riderless. But at some point I didn't quite notice, they all suddenly had jockeys on them. I said "Ooooooh! They've got little men on them now!". Some people turned round and gave me a look. But they are really little tiny men! Like pixie men! On horses instead of mushrooms.

I'm the King of Bolivia!

Limousines are fantastic. In fact any kind of transport that comes with champagne in it is fantastic. Put me in a leaky, plastic, motorbike sidecar, on my own, in the depths of winter and if there's a bottle of champagne there then I'll be happy.

There must be inherent dangers in opening a bottle like that in a fairly enclosed space. If it's a lively one, then there's a risk that the cork will fly upwards and ricochet off the roof and walls before embedding itself in my skull. Or perhaps instead it will smash through the window, leaving a gaping hole that causes the limo to depressurize and sucks all passengers out to their doom. This second option is worse. You can recover from an embedded cork, or perhaps sell yourself to a freak-show as "The Amazing Human Champagne Bottle: Watch him Pop!". It's hard to recover from being sucked out of a window. I've seen the films.

What actually happened was that the bottle went *POP* and the cork remained safely in hand. Not my hand, obviously. I was staying well away, for safety reasons.



The driver was a bit scary, but in a different way to the previous day's minicab driver. He looked more like a bouncer than a driver - big build, long black coat and heavy East-London accent (possibly). Looked like he'd happily bounce you off the nearest bridge if you put a foot wrong. He was no doubt involved in organised crime and I think this could be what he was doing in the afternoon whilst we were at the races. Probably something involving illegal bouts of boxing. Friendly though, despite his connections to the crime lords. And more than happy for us to stay out later than we'd organised at no extra charge. He wouldn't have got to bed himself until very very late. But then maybe he doesn't need sleep as he has one of those chips in his head that they implant in supersoldiers. I've seen them in films too.

The other great thing about limousines is that although passengers can see out, people outside can't see in (unless the lighting's right (or wrong depending on your point of view (possibly literal point of view))). This means that they don't know that you are not famous. They assume that the car is carrying rock stars or the King of Bolivia. Not just a few young men on a stag do. If someone decided to follow us in the hope of getting autographs, or maybe to assasinate us, then they'd be quite disappointed to see what came out of the car.

Maybe the would-be assasin would kill us anyway, just out of pure disappointment.

It's only writing this now that I'm realising how many potential ways there are to find your death whilst travelling by limousine. I started by saying "Limousines are fantastic". I think I'll caveat that now: Limousines are fantastic, but they are really f***ing dangerous.

Beware the minicab, my son.

I've been away on a stag do for the last couple of nights. I can't talk too much about it due to the Law Of The Stag (the saying of which should always be accompanied by raising your pointed index fingers to each side of your head. Like a moose. Or indeed a stag). I am able to speak of some things though. This is lucky, as otherwise this would be a very dull and short post. It could still end up being dull, but I promise it won't be too short!

On arrival in Hayes, the town where we were staying, I had to get a taxi to the hotel. It's possible that I could have got a bus instead, but it would have been too much like hard work to find the correct bus and then get off at the right place. I had expected to find a taxi rank outside the train station. My expectations in this respect arose mainly from one thing: Every Train Station Has A Taxi Rank Outside It. This is a fundamental rule of train stations, because travellers need to get from the station to where they are going, and they often do not know the way.

If you don't have a taxi rank outside the station then what will happen is that travellers will arrive in your town and then just stand in confusion by the road. Their numbers will increase steadily and eventually you'll have to bring them food and water. As more people arrive, they'll start to spill into the road itself, and will be a hazard to traffic. Ultimately the road will become blocked and the town will grind to a halt and slowly start to die.

Hayes does not have a taxi rank outside the station. This is complete insanity. And the only conclusion I can draw is that it doesn't need one because nobody visits the town. Because it's a bit rubbish. I'd never even heard of it until last week. In my head it was a quaint country village. In reality it's a small dull town, just like hundreds of others all over the country (just without the taxi rank). This did then pose me something of a problem: I needed a taxi to get to the hotel, but there were no taxis! Arrrghhh! Don't panic...

I even walked round the town centre a bit, but there were none there either. I had found a minicab shop near the station, but it looked both dodgy and closed, so I had ignored it initially. However, I spotted someone going in to it, so I figured that it wasn't closed and was going to be my only option. It was very scruffy inside. I very rarely order a cab from inside a little shop - I normally use a phone. I wasn't really sure what to do. I worked it out, and I've put together a little guide for the rest of you in case you are ever in the same situation:

1. Find a minicab shop.
2. Enter the shop.
3. Look through the slit in the wall which separates the waiting area from the place where the mad woman sits. It's about a metre off the ground, so you may have to bend down a little.
4. Ignore the scary girl who is sitting in front of the slit.
5. Say "I'd like a taxi to the Travel Inn on Uxbridge Road" please in your best understandable voice. Feel free to use different words here if they would be more appropriate.
6. Give the mad woman your name when she asks. Or use someone else's, it doesn't really matter.
7. Go outside and get in the car that has no indication anywhere on it that it is a taxi.
8. Repeat where you want to go to the driver several times. Eventually get the piece of paper from your wallet that has the hotel name and address on it and point at it.
9. Be a bit scared through the journey because the driver might be a psychopath and you have no idea whether he is taking you to the hotel, or to a field where he will kill you and chop you up and jump up and down on the pieces.

That's it. Following these steps should mean you have successfully ordered a minicab.

I got to the hotel eventually. My fears that the driver was a serial killer proved to be unfounded. And it was only five pounds, which wasn't too bad.

Another Friday Haiku ('cos I'm short of time)

A haiku's like life:
Sometimes tragic, sometimes dull,
But always quite short.

The resolution of Cannibal Bob (pt 1?)

It was the dawn of the 21st century and Cannibal Bob woke up feeling sick and hungover. He'd had a big old meal the previous night - it had been a cold, snowy New Year's Eve, and Bob and his friend Cannibal Douglas had dined on a couple of sleeping vagrants that they'd found huddled under the railway Arches at the end of Jackson Road. Rather conveniently, the vagrants had been sat next to a metal bin full of burning trash - this had acted as a convenient brazier and impromptu barbecue.

The vagrants would have put up more of a protest at their becoming man-food, but they were both rather sloshed on high-alcohol lager, and consequently dead to the world. Initially, just metaphorically, but by half past ten that night, completely actually. Bob, being a down to earth cannibal, didn't hold with all that new-fangled Chianti nonsense, so he'd washed down the char-grilled tramp leg with an unopened can of lager he'd found in a plastic bag nearby. He felt that the leg was cooked to a decent standard, but that it would have benefitted from a decent wash first. Douglas enjoyed his meal too, and the conversation over dinner was upbeat, with the two cannibals contemplating the upcoming year.

After dinner, they'd headed into town, and then it all got a bit hazy. Bob had vague memories of arguing with the doorman of a particularly upmarket bar, but whether he was attempting to argue his way in or convince them to not throw him out, he was unsure.

But that was yesterday, and today was the 1st January. A time for New Year's Resolutions, headaches and perhaps later some vomiting. Bob was tempted to resolve to give up the cannibalism, but he'd tried that last year and managed only four days before a passing boy scout troupe proved too irresistable. That was when he'd first met Douglas. At that time, Doug was a reformed cannibal and full time scout-leader. Bob had been able to recognise the signs of people-eating-abstinence: sweaty forehead, lank hair and a disturbed look whenever humans were spied. All it took for Bob to turn Doug from scout-leader to scout-eater was the smell of one roasted school boy, which Bob had purloined from the pack whilst Doug was collecting some knot-tying badges from the van. Doug hadn't looked back since, and they were now firm friends, regularly meeting for meals and 10 pin bowling.

So this year, a different resolution was needed. Bob went to his kitchen grabbed some paracetamol, swallowed them without the benefit of a glass of water and headed straight back to bed to do some thinking. Give up smoking? He'd have to start first. Learn a new language? Not much use to him, as he never went abroad due to not liking foreigner-food. Write a book? Hard to do without any ideas. Well, "never mind" he thought. It was only half past eleven in the morning - still plenty of time to make a resolution of some kind. And at least he didn't have to go to work today.

Bob stayed in bed for another six hours, sometimes awake, sometimes asleep, always with a mighty headache. He considered putting on some soothing music, but the CDs were all downstairs and he couldn't face the walk to go and get them. He wished his girlfriend was around to help him out in these situations. Well, technically she was still around. Mostly. Sometimes when Bob was lonely he'd go to the chest freezer in his garage and chat to her frozen TV-dinner remains. These conversations tended to be quite one-sided, but Bob still always got the feeling he was doing something wrong.

Then, as afternoon started to turn to evening, Bob finally had an idea for a a resolution. It was one that he'd be able to keep, that would improve his self-image and would, as a bonus, benefit Cannibal Doug too. It was a fantastic idea, and to make it real and a proper goal, Bob pulled an old notepad from his bed-side drawer and began to write.

Have a break...

There was a time when you knew where you were with a Kit-Kat. Two varieties: Two-Finger and Four-Finger. Wrapped in shiny malleable foil, and finished with a loop of a red wrapper.

But over the last few years, this has all changed. There are Chunky ones, Chunky Max ones, minty ones, orange ones, small cubic ones and ones that are filled with dog-food (maybe). There are no doubt various other types that I have forgotten about. I think they still make standard ones too, though possibly now in a more modern but less exciting wrapper.

I find it really hard to get excited about Kit-Kats. As far as I'm concerned, the normal ones are pretty much the most boring chocolate bars money can buy. Their chocolate covered wafer style manages to taste less interesting than a chocolate bar that is just chocolate with no filling at all. That's an impressive trick. Even the different varieties manage to generally maintain the Kit-Kat dullness. I'm falling asleep here just thinking about them.

The new chapter in the Kit-Kat book appears to be Kit-Kat: Editions. Two flavours, Caramel (yuck) and Seville Orange. I tried the orange one - it's a kit kat with some marmalade in it. And quite sweet. Whether you like this or not will depend on what you like. I thought it was ok, but once was enough. I think I'd be quite happy if they just completely gave up on Kit-Kats, UK's number 1 chocolate bar or nay.

This was going to be more of a rant, but it's too hard to have proper opinions or even to get worked up about a dull dull dull piece of choc. Best just end it here and move on. Move on everybody, nothing to see here.

A review of a gig what I went to tonight (16)

Later on I will answer the following question: What happens if you mix The Electric Soft Parade with British Sea Power? But first, why I am crap (volume 84).

I am a complete doofus. If ever evidence was needed, consider the following. I have been to a gig this evening. I'd aranged to meet a girl prior to the gig in a nearby pub. The pub in question has two whole rooms - one front, one back. I got there early and sat in the front room on the basis that I'd see everyone who entered. Then sat there on my own for a long time. After about twenty minutes, Chris turned up so I chatted to him. Just before we left, about another twenty minutes later, young lady emerged from the back room where she had been on her own the whole time, having got there earlier than even me. Her room had been better than mine, since it had decent music and other people, compared to the complete silence and no other people in mine. Doofus.

On to tonight's music:

Three bands tonight. First up, all the way from Los Angeles, Goldn. Not great spelling there for a first impression. Musically ok, although hinging on the side of 90s poodle rock slightly. The singer was a bit hot, bless, and had to first remove a jacket, and later a shirt. Sadly he was a boy.

Then, Four Day Hombre. What can I say about FDH that I haven't said before... That they have single-handedly written every number one single of the last three years (false)? That they were the first band to eat sherbert fountains on Top Of The Pops (false)? That their drummer is the only person to have been sacked from Oasis twice (also false)? That their singer has grown some facial hair (true but not hugely exciting)? No, nothing more can be said. They're great though. And tonight was the first time I've seen them where they haven't played "The first word...".

Headlining tonight, we have The Brakes. Made up of Tom and Alex from ESP, Eamon from British Sea Power, and Another Bloke On Bass. Some observations: Eamon is not the artist whio recently had a hit by swearing a lot (-5 points). Alex was wearing a Terris t-shirt (+30 points). Eamon looks like a thin Phil Collins (-10 points). They are 15 points up before they start playing.

I do respect any band who are both lazy enough and brazen enough to do really short songs. Two tonight came in at around 30 seconds, including one that they billed as the current single. One song was around 5 seconds long. What was the music like you ask? I'd say I enjoyed it on for the most whole part. Not as good as either of the component bands, but Tom ESP looked like he was having a good time. If you really want to know what they sound like, I'm sure the old internet can aid you.

Tonight in Fibbers there were 3 actuaries and 1 actuarial trainee who could potentially have qualified, but she still only counts as a half. The Brakes score 3.5, a score now officially as popular as "1.0".

5.0: Puressence
4.5: Trachetenburg Family Slideshow Players
3.5: Easyworld / Snow Patrol 1 / Graham Coxon / Keane / The Brakes
3.0: The Open 2 / Thirteen Senses
2.5: Four Day Hombre 1 / Snow Patrol 2
2.0: Delays / Athlete / Dawn of the Replicants
1.5: The Ordinary Boys
1.0: The Open 1 / Jonathan Richman / Four Day Hombre 2 / Simon & Garfunkel

Next up will be The Wonderstuff over in Leeds. Cow Size!

Oh Frabjous day!

I'm told that we can expect an exciting announcement at work this morning concerning a departmental restructuring exercise that is currently underway. I'm not sure in what sense the word "exciting" was being used. However, to prepare myself for this, I am sporting slightly asymmetrical hair.

Baby walk

I went down to see Barney, the nephew at the weekend. As expected, he was very excited about meeting me, and he had made a special baby effort to be awake when I arrived. He'd put on his best clothes, shined his booties and practiced saying my name. He wasn't very good at this last, which was slightly disappointing. He was however quite cute in a baby way. As opposed to being cute in a "stupid ass" way like Jacky in the eponymous song.



On Sunday, we took him out for his first ever walk in the countryside, along a canal where the longboats were long and the narrowboats narrow. The little 'un didn't actually do much walking, as he claimed he was tired after a long feed, so he was carried around in a front mounted baby carrier attached to the daddy. This seems quite a pleasant way to experience the great outdoors - all the fresh air with none of the effort. Since I am a Good Uncle, I used my camera to prepare clips with which to make a home video. Just like the ones people used to make in the seventies, but with better music and better editing. It wasn't a hugely long home movie, but I've never made one before, and I think it turned out pretty well.

There were a lot of people out fishing. Including some young people in their early teens. I don't see the attraction of angling myself, but it must be one of those activitites with long quiet periods that are followed by short, intense periods of excitement. A bit like CNPS I suppose! We witnessed one young lad catch a... stick. About a foot and a half long, so an impressive catch. We didn't hang around long enough to see whether he kept it or whether he threw it back into the water.

English law dictates that after every visit to the countryside, you have to visit a local pub before going home. So we visited a local pub. This is a true law - it was enacted so that the rural economy benefits from people visiting. Without this they would have had to introduce tolls on stiles over fences, or possibly a tax on good weather. These measures looked they would have been difficult to enforce, so you now have to visit a hostelry and get a special ticket with your drinks. This then allows you and your vehicle to exit the huge mile-high domes which now cover some of the UK's national parks.

Barney and myself shared a pint of Bombardier, a brew which I don't think I've had since university. They used to serve it in the college bar, though I think I was mostly drinking Guinness back then. I think he liked it, though it did appear to give him a touch of wind. But it's hard to tell with young babies, as everything seems to give them a touch of wind. I definitely enjoyed it (the beer, not the wind).

Then it was time for home and sleeps.

The regular early morning yell of horror...

It's always surprising that if you just sit back, wait and be patient, that things that you've been waiting ages for just creep up on you like Jack the Ripper. Although I'm sure whenever Jack is portrayed in movies he makes tapping sounds with either his cane or his shoes. Unless I'm thinking of someone else. So what I meant was: blah blah...creep up on you like a caneless Jack the Ripper wearing comfortable slippers. I think I am excellent at carefully crafting similies.

I've been waiting for this particular thing for either 24 years or 22 years, depending on when you start counting from. Either way, that's a pretty long time, and a pretty high proportion of my short life on this not-yet demolished planet. The thing I've been waiting for is the third radio series of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (The Tertiary Phase). The final three Hitchhiker books have been dramatised into two radio series, the first of which will start tonight on Radio 4. I don't know whether that works out as two books in the third series and one in the fourth, vice versa or with some mixing up between them. I'll find out soon enough.



I'm really hoping that this isn't going to be the The Phantom Menace all over again... I always thought that the third book, "Life, the universe and everything" was the weakest one in the five book trilogy - the cricket themed plot always seemed silly even by Hitchhiker's standards. Maybe it's because it started life as an abandoned Dr Who script (true!).

I'm optimistic though. Dirk Maggs (who did some excellent superhero radio dramas in the 90s - Batman: Knightfall was especially excellent, and better than the films) has adapted it, which is a decent pedigree, and most of the original cast are back. Not Peter Jones, sadly, as he has now gone beyond the great curtain - this means that The Book now has a new voice, explained away as a software upgrade.

If nothing else, it gives me an excuse to listen to the first two radio series again. Though I'm going to find it hard to get through them by half six this evening. I haven't planned this well.

All in all, today I am quite excited.

Blockage on the tracks

I've just got back from Reading, where I was visiting my new nephew (we exchanged the old one, it was rubbish). For non-Brits amongst you, Reading is pronounced with a hard "e" sound rather than an "ee" sound. So it's not the same as what you do to books. They have a big music festival there every year, so if you had mispronounced and misunderstood the town's name, the loud rock bands may be not quite what you had hoped for (Try Hay & Wye for an actual reading festival).

Travelling back up today, my train hit a slight snag south of Sheffield (nice illiteration there). We stopped and the driver informed us that he did not know the reason for the stoppage, but he could see some policemen on the line, so "they could be a clue". I hadn't realised that it was going to be a guessing game, I assumed that the drivers just got told why we stopped. But guessing game it was, if only for a few minutes. I had to play the game on my own though, as I was travelling alone and the carriage was fairly empty.

A few minutes later, all was revealed. Apparently there were some breeze blocks on the line (I hadn't managed to guess this - I was going for "woman tied to tracks"). These had been placed there by vandals, and we had to wait until the nice policemen removed them. I was pretty impressed that the driver didn't attempt to put the blame on Al Qaeda, since they seem to be blamed for most things at the moment. Have the bad terrorists stopped blowing hurricanes at Florida yet by the way?

So it was probably just kids. Kids with breezeblocks. Do young vandals just pop down to their local branch of Wickes to get these? "You're a bit young to be building a house aren't you small sirs?". "Yes - actually we thought we'd have a fun afternoon attempting to derail trains". "Oh that's alright then. Have fun!". It must happen all the time. Breezeblocks are quite heavy though, so at least the kids are getting some good exercise whilst attempting their mayhem.

But since I am here now, I have deduced that the blocks were removed and that our train was able to finish its journey and bring me safely back to York.

Sanitation Creation

Yesterday I spoke on the phone to an old friend from university whose wedding I will be attending next month. It was quite exciting to get a phone call, as I don't get many on the mobile. I've been trying to contact him about a couple of things for a while now, but he hadn't been returning my messages or answering his phone. I had assumed he was just being crap. But it turns out that he'd been digging toilets in Ghana. I'm assuming that mobile phone reception isn't too good out there, so I let him off.

A Friday Haiku

Like a drunken tramp
My mind wanders aimlessly
On Friday PM

"Removing the head or destroying the brain"

I think this post is spoiler free...

I've just finished re-watching what is probably the best film I've seen in 2004: "Shaun of the Dead". The world's first Rom-Zom-Com. It's more violent than Troy, got better dialogue than Kill Bill 2, scarier than Farenheit 9/11 and I haven't seen Spiderman 2 yet. Ok, I should maybe watch more films. Oh, incidentally, I'm writing this whilst watching the commentary (the Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright one) so apols if I get distracted and forget to finish any of my

If you haven't seen the film, it may be because you are a girl. If this is the case, don't worry, it's all romantic, it's basically a love story. Boy goes out with girl, girl dumps boy because he can't quite get out of the hanging down the pub with his mates cycle (note: no apostrophe in "mates" there - an apost. would really bizzarify the sentence), most of London turn into zombies, boy and girl end up... well that would be telling.

Alternatively, you may not have seen the film because you don't like gore. That's fine too. There's only one part where a character's guts and innards are torn out by ravenous zombies. And it's not nasty, because it's too funny. Yes: Gut eating is always funny.

Some notes about the cast: It has the chap who was the voice of Darth Maul. In Star Wars ep I, you didn't see the actor. In this film, you see the actor naked (see the contrast there?). It's got Dylan Moran (who wasn't in Father Ted, despite what I once thought). A zombie with one arm pulled off is played by a real one armed man - that's dedication to detail (or possibly just saving money on special effects). And it has Jasper Carrot's daughter in it. Despite being a British film, Hugh Grant makes no appearance.

The film does make some valid points about zombies and how most of the people in today's world are indistinguishable from zombies. Or possibly how most of the zombies are indistinguishable from people. People shuffle along in their hum-drum everyday lives, wondering only where (or who) their next meal is coming from. I normally know where my next meal is coming from. Today, due to a cock up with the plastic forks in Marks and Spencers I've actually known where both my next meals were coming from. But I don't want to get into that here.

Look around you as you walk into work next time you walk into work. If you don't walk into work, perhaps you catch a bus? Or ride a skateboard? The people around you - are you sure they are fully human? How do you know the "people" are still fully human and that they haven't been turned? I could list guys from work that I'd put good money on them actually being undead in some way. I'm not sure what my point is here, just be aware of those around you and never, ever, let anybody bite you. Seriously. It hurts, always, and there's a huge risk that you'll become a zombie.

Whilst on the subject of biting causing infections - why is it always one way? How come it's always the bitten that takes on the characteristics of the bitee? (why does bitten have two t's and one e, and bitee has one t and two e's?) eg Vampire bites man leads to man becoming vampire. Zombie bites man leads to man becoming zombie. But if man bites back... it's never a two way street. Say I go out tonight and find myself a zombie girl (I won't really do this as it's pissing it down). Her neck looks tasty, and she's kind of cute so I figure that if I could turn her back to human, she'd be eternally grateful and marry me and have both my children. So I bite her and... I go zombie! It's not fair!

If I did go zombie though, I'm pretty good at doing the zombie walk. I consider it a skill of mine. Here's how:
1. Stand with legs about a foot and a half apart.
2. Loosen your whole body: relax.
3. Move your arms forward to an angle of about 30 degrees to the vertical.
4. Loll your head.
5. Let your eyes go wild.
6. Stagger forward and bite anybody that lets you.

Try it in the supermarket if you're bored. Even better: try it with friends, and have a race to see who can get thrown out first!

A thought that occurred to me whilst on the way home earlier was whether horror films would have any negative effects on babies? I would generally agree that young kids shouldn't be allowed to watch scary gory films. I don't agree with the whole movie violence leads to real violence thing, but I think it's almost certain that movie violence can give kids bad dreams. But that is only because they understand the context. A 5 year old sees a man's brains being ripped out and eaten and understandably can be a bit upset. A baby sees the same thing and... I'm not sure. They probably just gurgle in a baby way, not appreciating the horror of what they are seeing. It's probably like a French-speaking Fench woman describing to me how she tortured a man for seven straight days in a boucherie. Rather than taking in the evilness of what she's saying, I just hear the language of love.

And a measure of how a film commentary can spoil things a little... they tell me it's not a real pub!!! It's just a set. I mean obviously, it's bound to be just a set, as it's a bloomin' film. But it's such a real looking pub, I believed it. Darn.

The bit where they beat up the pub landlord with pool cues is maybe the best film moment in the film world ever, ever filmed. Don't stop me now. Except... I've now just stopped.

The main benefit is to the world

Like an over-enthusiastic fence-maker, the average length of my posts seems to have been increasing recently. I don't think this reflects me having more to write. It just reflects me writing more. Well, this is a short one, so Hah!

10 Things I Hate About York

Hate is such a strong word. I'd have gone with "Mildly Annoy Me", but then the title wouldn't have been a variant on a popular Julia Stiles film. So just bear with it, people.

1. I have to work here
I don't mean that I dislike having to work in York, merely that it is the only city in the world that whilst I am in it, I generally have to spend eight or nine twenty-fourths of five-sevenths of my week in an office. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy my work (most of the time). But sometimes it would be nice to be a man of leisure. I could take up lacrosse, pony trekking or astro-engineering.

2. Late meetings where Thomas the Tank Engine is a Discussion Topic
This one should speak for itself, really. I'm in a meeting with some boss-types at around half six in the evening, I blink twice and the conversation switches to old Thomas for 5 minutes. These are minutes that I could have spent at home later, but now I can't. I wouldn't mind, but I don't have anything to add to that conversation. I don't have a favourite train or favourite episode, and I don't have kids that watch it on video all the time, annoying me with the irritating-yet-curiously-catchy theme tune. Dee dee dee dee, dee dee deeeeee...

3. The Whistle Men
Recently in the centre of town, two men have appeared. They sell really obnoxious little whistles which you can secrete in your mouth and then make noises like a diseased bird. One of the men wears an Alice band and looks like a scruffier version of Stuart from Big Brother 5. The other is probably his friend. They are always together, selling the darn whistles to kids who can then spread round town and annoy me in places where Scruffy-Stuart and his friend aren't. People like them should be selling Proper Strong Drugs to kids, not silly whistles. Oh hang on, maybe the whistles are just a front...

4. Tourists With Cameras on Lendal Bridge
It's just a bridge! You don't really want to take a photo of your friend standing on it. Go over there and take a photo in that corner instead. It's much nicer. You're lucky I'm a tolerant citizen that will stand and wait whilst the photo is taken. Some people would just walk right through your picture, not caring whether your camera was digital or not. -*-click-*- Ha! Now you've snapped me you foreign person, you. Stop it!

5. The York Caravan Festival
At this time of year, the Knavesmire fills with caravans and motorhomes. Millions of the buggers. This doesn't really annoy me too much, but it does cause problems for a couple of colleagues at work, who find their bus journeys home to be much slower due to the heavy mobile-home type traffic. So this one was for them. Incidentally - don't get me started on caravans.

6. A Lack of a proper City Centre Supermarket
And no: Budgens still doesn't count, it's too small. M&S doesn't count, it only sells one brand. The Cornish Pasty Bakery doesn't count (for most of us), it only sells pasties.

7. Bears
There are bloody bears everywhere. Just walking round York like they own the place, like they belong here. It's been a long time since I dared carry a picnic basket around town.

8. The Sun, In My Eyes
As I walk down the Leeman Road of a morning, the sun is low in the sky. It shines brightly there, pouring its deadly rays into my eyes and all over the rest of my body. Sometimes this makes it quite hard to see the road, the path and the cars. It makes it quite hard to read car number plates consecuively. Even if I have my sunglasses with me (which is less and less likely at this time of year), it is still uncomfortably bright. I say we should just put the bally thing out for good and just go round carrying torches like the cavemen used to. This might also trick the bears into going into permanent hibernation. Ha! Two birds with one stone there, I think.

9. Coffee Shops in Non-Coffee Shops
This started in bookshops, but is spreading. An otherwise normal shop wakes up one morning and realises what it has been missing all these years. A coffee shop! Doh! How could they have been so stupid all these years? Yes, WH Smiths, I'm talking about you. It's bad enough that there's a Starbucks on every single side street and a Costa Coffee on every cobbled corner, but they surely don't need to be inside proper shops too? What would really increase sales is a proper licensed bar. It has to be much easier to sell special offers to a drunk person than a sober person. Mind you, I think the shops'd be better off spending the money on bear-traps instead.

10. Hotmail as a Common Noun
Somebody at work today was referring to their web-based email account as their "Hotmail". But: it wasn't the Microsoft owned idiot service, it was a completely different one. They were using "Hotmail" as if it meant all web-based mail services. Has Hotmail really become a genericized trademark like Hoover, Tippex, Walkman or Death Star? I really hope not. Sorry that this one isn't very York-Specific, but I've never been annoyed by this anywhere else before, so it counts. Especially as it was really, really pissing me off!

Ok, I've finished complaining now. Thanks for staying this long. And watch out for the bears.

Baby talk

I just got an email from my nephew (really!). I hope he won't mind me posting it up here:

--------------------------------
Hello Uncle Rich,

Thank you very much for the card you sent me - I got it this morning. Sadly, I don't have the co-ordination yet to open it myself, but Mum did it for me.

Guess what, this is my first ever email!

I hear you're an actuary? So you may have a reasonably good knowledge of mathematics?

I couldn't sleep well last night as I was pondering over a few problems that are based on the infinite. Mum thought I was just hungry, but at one point, I was specifically crying over whether Zeno of Elea's argument that motion is impossible was true or not? He seemed to think that if a body moves from A to B then before it reaches B it passes through the mid-point, say B1 of AB. Now to move to B1 it must first reach the mid-point B2 of AB1. He thought that continuing this argument shows that A must move through an infinite number of distances and so cannot move.

This is probably basic to you, but being only in my 6th day of life, I'm sure you won't mind explaining this to me some point soon.

Anyway, looking forward to meeting you,

Love from Barney

--------------------------------

I'm sure that you'll agree that he seems to be quite advanced for his age, and his spelling and grammar are both really spot on.

Here is my response to the wee Barn:

--------------------------------
Hello Barney,

I'm glad you were able to find help opening your card - I realise that hand to eye co-ordination is difficult, but it's a skill that I hope you'll be able to find time to learn. And well done on sending your first email. It's good to see that you have your own email address - that should give you some element of privacy in your dealings with the rest of the world. Hey, maybe you'll be blogging soon!

You're correct in assuming that as an actuary I have a good grasp of mathematics. In fact I have published many volumes of mathematical texts and am generally reputed to be one of the most intelligent evolved monkeys on this planet (which is called "Earth" by the way, in case you haven't come across the name yet). You have come to the right person for help with your problem.

You are not the only one who has lost sleep by pondering the infinite. Infinity is such a big thing that it can sometimes take nearly half an hour to accurately visualise it all at once. However, it seems your lack of sleep is caused not by the infinite, but by the infinitesimal. This is like the infinite, but much much smaller.

Zeno was born in around 490bc and as such, lived most of his life before the invention of Proper Maths. Also, people were much less evolved in those days, and his brain, unlike yours, ill-equipped to deal with the notions he was thinking about. You have been losing sleep since it seems totally obvious to you that bodies can move through space. You see your mother's arm do this all the time, as she moves the gin bottle to and from your mouth.

The resolution to Zeno's paradox is actually quite simple: Zeno was supposing that space is infinitely divisible, that you can take a length and split it in half as many times as you want. Modern science has shown this to be complete nonsense. In fact, if you start with any length, it is not possible to divide it in half more than around eight times. This is exactly analogous to attempting to fold paper in half lots of times. As an experiment, why not take your birth certificate and fold it in half, then in half again. You may need to get Mummy to help you with this unless your co-ordination has improved over the last few days. Count how many times you can fold it. Not as many as you thought, eh?

Well, space is exactly like that. As a body moves from A to B, it does indeed first have to pass through B1, and B2 before that. But if you keep dividing the space, you hit the space-splitting limit (at around B7) and then the body does not have any further checkpoints to hinder it - it will zip straight through. Since then there will only be a finite number of distances to travel, the body has no problem moving from A to B in finite time.

I hope this helps your understanding of the world in which we live in. If you have any further questions on the topic, then do not hesitate to write again - that's what uncles are there for! If you have trouble sleeping in the future, then I recommend getting really "hammered". You'll drop to sleep as soon as your little head touches your cot.

I look forward to meeting you soon,

Lots of love,

Uncle Rich

PS - don't try and understand how gyroscopes work - that will really f**k your mind up.

--------------------------------

Hopefully the little lad will sleep better tonight.

A review of a gig what I went to last night (and one a couple of days ago) (15)

Two gig nights in one post, so I'll take them day by day, band by band.

Friday Night
Kid Carpet
Totally barking. A bloke on his own, playing anything and everything he had to hand. Which include various samplers, guitars, toy guitars, keyboards etc. You can download some of the songs from his website, if you have the inclination. He started a bit slowly, but once he got into the set it was highly entertaining.

Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players (henceforth: TFSP)
For those who don't know them, TFSP are Daddy (vocals/guitar), Mummy (more guitar/slideshow) and 10 year old daughter, Rachel (drums). They are an actual family from America, who go round yard sales and buy up sets of slides. Then they go home and write little songs about them. Finally, they go out on tour, display the slides and play the songs to paying audiences. I do not know why they do this. I do not know which ways of life they considered and rejected before settling on their chosen way. And what they are mainly doing is writing songs about dead people, probably without permission from the relevant estates. To further verify the relative lack of sanity, Father Trachtenburg is currently sporting really awful facial hair.

However, I do like them, though they'd benefit from a venue where you could see the slides better. And too many of the songs were very short. "Eggs" is good though. At the end of the gig, Rachel was on the merchandise stall selling stuff and signing things, so I got her to sign my ticket. I expect it was the highlight of her evening.

Sunday Night
I nearly had an unused ticket for this one. When buying them I had a moment of confusion. I was supposed to be getting two tickets plus one for me. Which totals three tickets. So with the number "three" in my head, when I went to actually get the tickets, my head translated this into three tickets plus one for myself. Which was one too many. Luckily I met Dom hanging round outside the venue like a tramp, so I let him have the spare one. It's lucky for him it was sold out, otherwise he'd have been able to pay to get in earlier and I'd have been left with a redundant spare.

It's good to see Fibbers sold out on a Sunday night - often Sundays can be quiet even for the better gigs. Tonight may have been benefitting from the return of Students. Also, it looked like some of the Radio 2 audience may have been in (ie older people). It doesn't thrill me that I have to class myself as being at least partly in this category. Onto the bands themselves then:

Sixty6
Are there any nights when these guys don't play at Fibbers? Well, yes obviously there are, and Friday springs to mind as an obvious one. But a quick count tells me that I alone have seen them at least four times this year. I've been less than complimentary about their Feeder inspired tunes before, but they are quite growing on me now. Decent power-pop.

Thirteen Senses
I wanted to see this lot when they played York back in May, but due to having an actuarial dinner (more fun than it sounds) I had to pass. It's good to see them back here so soon. I think so far they have at least three songs in my top twenty of the year. The songs have obvious comparisons to people like Keane, or maybe Starsailor, but the vocals are much more fragile. Mew are a good reference point. Keyboard led, with guitars, lots of arpeggios. If they'd had wanted to play another hour, that would have worked for me. You can hear some songs on their website.

I bought my first t-shirt for quite a while. I've cut back a bit on band t-shirts recently, but I couldn't not get one here. They were also giving out little CDs (about 3", the size of a Gamecube Disc) with an album sampler on them. Nice idea in principle, but I don't really see the advantage over normal size CDs - I'd be surprised if they were any cheaper to produce. And they definitely have a disadvantage if you try to play them in a slot loading CD player. Don't try it kids. They are even slightly too small to make a really good coaster.

The Open
The Open still aren't quite as good as they should be, or indeed as good as large portions of the music press say they are. I'm always up for a bit of epic-indie-rock, but I can do with out the extended guitar sections. It's ok for your final song, for a bit of a big finish, but if you do it in every one it just gets boring. But I like "Just want to live".

AR(SE)-wise, TFSP have scored well, but not quite well enough to take the lead. The Open have done less well, but have tripled their previous score, so they would have to be happy with that. I think it's going to be hard for anyone to topple Puressence during the rest of the year.

The AR(SE) table now looks like this:
5.0: Puressence
4.5: Trachetenburg Family Slideshow Players
3.5: Easyworld / Snow Patrol 1 / Graham Coxon / Keane
3.0: The Open 2 / Thirteen Senses
2.5: Four Day Hombre 1 / Snow Patrol 2
2.0: Delays / Athlete / Dawn of the Replicants
1.5: The Ordinary Boys
1.0: The Open 1 / Jonathan Richman / Four Day Hombre 2 / Simon & Garfunkel

I'm starting to wish that I'd done something more sensible than just reprinting the table each time I update it. Can't be bothered to change it now, and it's not coming back next year (maybe) so just live with it people.

Next gig is going to be The Needles on Thursday. Unless I get a better offer.

Incidentally - sorry that all the last few posts have been music related. It just happens that way sometimes. I'll write about something different next time.

Mando-lint

I blame REM.

I passed by a second hand shop yesterday. In the window, looking longingly at me was a little mandolin. Well, technically I suppose it was a normal sized mandolin, but they are small in comparison to a guitar, whose size I am more used to.



Now there is no way that I can claim that I needed a mandolin. I haven't been waking up in the morning and looking at my blackboard To-Do list, wondering if today would be the day that I can cross "Purchase Mandolin" off it. In fact until yesterday, I had never even touched a mandolin. I certainly had no idea how to play one. But why let a little thing like that end my dreams? Even if there was no dream to end?

So I looked through that window, thought "right, I'm having that", walked right into the shop and demanded, nay, asked politely if I might go about exchanging some of my money for the shiny instrument. And they said yes straight away. Perhaps I should have haggled.

Once I got it home, I had a bit of play, and rapidly realised that it needed tuning. Now since I had no idea how to play the thing, I certainly didn't know how to tune it. Initially I thought it would be just like the top four strings of a guitar. But they are not. It's more like a violin or a fidlle. I know this now, because I had to resort to the internet for tuning instructions. It's tuned now.

My second assumption was that a mandolin would be played the same as a guitar - but again no. Guitar chords don't work on it in general, so I've had to learn some new fingerings. I know 5 whole mandolin chords now! And I have pretty much learnt to do a passable version of "Losing My Religion", everyone's favourite jaunty mandolin-based tune. Not passable in the sense that someone might want to buy a recording of me playing it, or even that they'd wish to be in the same room whilst I played it. Passable in the sense that they'd potentially recognise it and then ask me to stop please.

So although my musical talents are not really growing in any way, I now have two guitars, a mandolin and a harmonica. I probably shouldn't buy any more instruments - I am running out of walls to lean them against (though the harmonica is not much of a problem).

Pie and Peace

I have kind of built my own music festival here in York this weekend. I'll call it "Yorkstock '04" because I lack imagination. Bands on Friday night and tonight (Trachtenburg Family on Friday, and Thirteen Senses/ The Open on Sunday - "reviews" to follow soon) and yesterday I went to York Peace Festival followed by York Pork Pie Festival. There really is a festival of pork pies here.

The Peace festival was entertaining, especially if you are partial to sitting in the sun watching singers & bands, whilst drinking a crate of beer. That is a fine way to pass an afternoon. And in a fine touch of festival irony, the people playing on The Acoustic Stage were delayed because the electricity generator was broken. Go figure.

Just to give you an idea of the sheer scale of the Peace Festival, here's a photo of the stage:



It got a bit busier later on.

Could have happily stayed there all afternoon, but we had pies to visit. The PP festival is an annual event, in the Tap and Spile. Ticket holders each get a plate of half pork pies, around 10 different ones, and then they can eat them and also score them against different categories on a scoring sheet. A bit like Eurovision, but with pork pies rather than European singers. I am unsure what the point of the scoring is, maybe they congratulate a champion pie-maker at the end of the day.

Sadly, because the pie-eating is ticket only, and we had no tickets, we could only watch and smell the pies. No tasting possible (unless you steal somebody's leftovers). So this part of Yorkstock was slightly disappointing. Had some more beer though, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

I finished the day with a mini film festival (ie we watched a dvd). Blade 2. Not exactly a fantastic film, but I was heartened to find out later that the main bad guy was none other than Luke Goss (ex of Bros). Good to see he's finding work. Or at least that he has a career that doesn't involve him putting out records any more.

All these things that I've heard

Something I just heard:
On the radio, Nancy Sinatra covering Morrissey - "Let me kiss you" off the new album. I knew she liked him, but was surprised to hear she was doing cover versions of his work. It took me a few seconds to work out where the song was from as the juxtaposition was quite unexpected. I'd love to hear Frank doing a version of "I know it's over", but I guess that isn't going to happen.

Something I'm now hearing:
The new REM single. I downloaded it from iTunes a couple of days ago. One of those songs that starts a bit too slowly, but builds to a great final chorus. And some classic Stipe overdubs.

Something I'm looking forward to hearing soon:
I've ordered the remastered DVD 10 year anniversary edition of "Definitely Maybe". It's a fantastic album. And strangely, I don't think I've ever heard "Sad Song", which was originally only on the vinyl release. I wonder if it's any good?

Dead Pigeon Society

One of the great unsolved mysteries of life is not in fact the Riemann Hypothesis. In fact since mathematicians are currently unable to decide whether that has been solved or not, that was a particularly bad example. Start again.

One of the great unsolved mysteries of life involves dead birds. Pigeons specifically. The mystery is this: Pigeons do not appear to die, or at least they leave no bodies when they do die. I have (as usual) several theories about this:

1. All pigeons are immortal. The have lived since the dawn of time, or at least the dawn of pigeons, and will be with us until after the last man has passed on to a better place. Like the Highlander, they can only be killed by decapitation in duels with other pigeons. And since pigeons can't wield swords, this does not happen very often.

2. Similar to theory 1: All pigeons are vampires. This would explain why there are no bodies, as they crumble to dust on death. However, it does not fit well with observed sightings of pigeons in daylight or churches. Don't think this theory has legs.

3. When a pigeon feels the onset of his (or her) final minutes, he (or she) uses the last bit of energy to mount a bid for Pigeon Heaven. This is really really high up. The pigeon flies up and actually achieves escape velocity. And eventually reaches pigeon heaven. The Kuiper Belt is entirely comprised of dead pigeons.

4. There are dedicated crews of dead pigeon cleaner uppers in every major area of pigeon populace: Trafalgar Square, London: St Mark's Square, Venice: The Railway Tunnel on Leeman Road, York. People are employed in these places to find, collect and give proper Christian burial to all deceased ex-pigeons.

5. "I can see dead pigeons". Like Haley-Joel-Osmond, I see the dead. Unlike him, I see only dead pigeons - everyone else in the world is stepping over decomposing dead bird bodies all the time. I am too, but I don't see the bodies, I see living, vibrant, pigeon ghosts.

So I think it must be one of those. In an attempt to make some money, I've done extensive research and developed a series of pigeon actuarial mortality tables. They are based on data from the early 90s (mainly from Sheffield where I lived then) and there are currently two tables - Pigeon Bird 92 (Blokes) aka PB92(B) and Pigeon Bird 92 (Birds) aka PB92(B). I'm hoping to be able to sell them to some of the many pigeon life insurance societies of Great Britain, who so far have been struggling as they do not have a good model for pigeon mortality.

Here's an exclusive extract from PB92(M):

x qx
1 0
2 0
3 0
4 0
5 0
. .
. .

I can provide full copies of both tables, for a small fee. Let me know. I'm also working on a Select version, which I hope to have ready by the end of this year.

Yesterday I think I may have actually seen a dead pigeon by the Post Office. However, since he was in one piece, and I was hardly going to look for a pulse, I just assumed he was not dead, and just in fact, resting. Or maybe passed out after a heavy session of binge drinking. But I'll keep my eyes open for more sightings. I am not too proud to, in the future, come out and say "I was wrong - pigeons do die and they do leave bodies".

I'm a nuncle!

Back in February, I wrote about how my sister was expecting her first baby and my first niece or nephew. Well, after a long wait, last night the baby was revealed to the world ie it was born.

"It" has now become "He", and his given name is Barnaby. Sounds slightly Dickensian, but I like it. I saw some photos this morning, thanks to the magic of electricity, and he looks quite cute. He's got a little white hat on, which I assume he must have changed into after being born. Sis' looked to be happy and smiling, but she was probably still high on Birth Drugs at the time the photo was taken.

I'm going to go and visit them all in a week's time, so that little Barney can meet his Fantastic Uncle for the first time. I suspect that he will still be too young for me to discuss the Riemann Hypothesis with, but we might be able to get started on a spot of the calculus.

Whither the businessman?

I saw a businessman whilst on my way to work this morning. I call him this as he was dressed pretty much in the traditional manner of a businessman - dark grey suit, he carried an umbrella and a briefcase, and he wore a bowler hat upon his head and glasses upon his nose. His age was in the late middle-aged bracket.

He had been walking along the river towards the city centre. As he passed under the city walls, he made a right turn heading away from town, towards the train station. This is unlikely to have been his destination however, since the route he had traversed would have not been an efficient manner to reach the trains. He would have wanted to take an earlier right turn along the edge of the Memorial Gardens (where the tramps hang out to drink cider and super-strength lager) in order to do that.

I would have liked to have followed him to find out exactly where he was going. Perhaps although he wasn't going to catch a train, maybe he was a senior manager on the railways, and was heading for the Train Office Building rather than the Train Station. But why then the bowler hat? Our trains may be something of an anachronism, but surely the staff do not all dress as if they work in the City of London in the 1930s? And in any case, the sun had got his own hat on (as they say) and so the man had no need of his own.

A similar argument could apply to any local office based job - so rule them all out. Perhaps instead, he was the supervisor of the small ice cream cart that served me a bottle of water at weekends. The one that was operated by children. Perhaps he has a chain of child-slave-labour operated ice cream stalls around York. And maybe even as far afield as Selby. I sometimes read about child-slave-labour in the Sunday supplements. Seems like a good idea to me, you can completely bypass the trade unions with their wacky ideas about “fair wages” and “clean working conditions”. But I don’t think that the cart was his destination either. Mainly because I had passed where it would have been a few minutes earlier and it was not there.

So if he wasn’t a local senior manager (on the railways or not) and he wasn’t a child-slave-labour magnate, then I could think of no other possible career he could be following. Except for one… There is another group of men who dress in suits and bowler hats. They are the men we call: Secret Agents! Not your Vin Diesel, ex-con makes good, style of agent, but your traditional British type. The type who sits on park benches and looks through eye holes cut in his open newspaper and who uses secret pass-phrases such as “My, the squirrels are lively today” when he meets his informants. The type personified by Avenger John Steed (from the original TV series, not the daft Sean Connery film with the Evil Teddy Bears).

Yes, clearly he was a secret agent, maybe it was even Steed himself! There must be something going down in York today. A big secret operation, maybe even greater than the time they caught the international orchid smuggling conspiracy that operated from the crypts beneath York Minster back in ’02. That headed up the local newspapers for months afterwards. I am glad I chose not to follow him - I might have ended up becoming embroiled in a deadly worldwide conspiracy, and that could have scuppered my plans for this evening.

I can only pray that the mere act of writing this has not jeopardised the agent and his mission. Good luck to you, Sir, the city could use more men of your calibre.

She turned me into a newt...

At the weekend I discovered that one of my friends, Witch Helen, was actually a witch. I could tell she was a witch fairly easily because she had built a bowl of Gin Jelly which had not only set reasonably well but had also become Fizzy. It was Fizzy Gin Jelly. Since this is not something that naturally exists in nature, it must have been created magically in a witch cauldron. And as the only people that own witch cauldrons are witches, I deduce that she must have been a witch.

I guess in retrospect, her name was a bit of a giveaway, but I'd always assumed it was ironic, like "Little John" (really quite a big chap), "Angry Anderson" (a calm musician) and "Scott Bakula" (actually an American). I mean, if you're a witch it can't be normal to go round calling yourself "Witch Helen". I very rarely call myself "Actuary Rich" as it would not only sound daft but it would also get me into the whole explaining what an actuary thing is which, as has been established many times in the past, I can't do for toffee.

So, she's officially a witch. But evidently not an evil witch, as the FGJ was pretty tasty. I think in colour, it was green, like witch slime, but in taste it was more lemony/lime. And it had an alcoholic content that I would not have liked to give to a small child. Don't misunderstand me - I'm not against giving alcohol to small children, I just feel that booze is wasted on the young and is much better suited inside of me.

It occured to me that you might want to try some Fizzy Jelly too, so I tried to find a recipe on the internet. I found one, but the recipe contained cream and the website made my browser start acting very strangely afterwards, so I shall not direct you there. Instead, I (eventually) found the following recipe which appeared to exist only in Google's cache. I suspect that the original site may have been deleted by the coven that spawned it in order to keep the heathen secrets erm.. secret. It requires some slightly specialised equipment, but why not have yourself a go anyway. And let me know if it's good. And if your friends accuse you of witchery afterwards.

RECIPE FOR FIZZY VODKA JELLY

Ingredients:
- A fridge.
- 1 bottle of cheap vodka.
- 2 packets of jelly per litre of finished jelly (Lime works well with the vodka).
- Lemonade (or similar fizzy drink) in a 1.5 to 3 litre plastic bottle.
- A screw on pressure lid (with a pump) to fit the fizzy bottle's thread.
- A measuring jug (with a spout, or a separate funnel.
- a container (for excess fizzy liquid).
- A saucepan.
- Some Stirring tools.

Method:
- Break up the jelly into cubes, add to 1/3 of a litre of the fizzy drink in a saucepan and bring it all up to a temperature so the jelly melts (keep the temperature as low as possible and don't stir all the carbon dioxide bubbles out). Put the mixture into the jug and allow it to cool slightly (so it won't melt the original bottle).

- Pour 1 litre of fizzy drink into the spare container. Add 1/4 litre of vodka (per litre of finished jelly) to the original bottle. Now add the warm mixture to the original bottle very slowly (so as to keep the fizz in the liquid).

- Top up the bottle with the excess fizzy drink and fit the pressure top. Pressurize the bottle so it's firm when squeezed. Keep the pressure up as the liquid cools. It should set after about 4 hours.

And Hey Presto! Fizzy Vodka Jelly. I'm guessing it works with other spirits too, though I think I remember from my youth that jelly made with whisky is kind of foul.

Mercury 2004: Prediction

The winner of the 2004 Mercury Music Prize is announced today. I haven't been in the habit of making predictions on these pages, which may seem strange given that actuaries tend to do that sort of thing for a living, at least where it involves finance. However, I'm feeling lucky today, so here's my analysis of the contenders. Remember: This is to pick the "album of the year", and just in case you're worried that I have insider knowledge, let me assure you that I don't. Honestly, I don't. I barely have any outsider knowledge.

I'm going to rate their winning chances with either *, ** or *** where *** is "Good chance" and * is "no chance". ** is "a middling chance".

Amy Winehouse - Frank *
Basement Jaxx - Kish Kash *
Belle & Sebastian - Dear Catastrophe Waitress **
Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand **
Jamelia - Thank You *
Joss Stone - The Soul Sessions **
Keane - Hopes and Fears **
Robert Wyatt - Cuckooland **
Snow Patrol - Final Straw ***
The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free ***
Ty - Upwards *
The Zutons - Who Killed...... The Zutons **

I'd thought about writing about each album individually. But since I haven't heard half of them, that could be slightly biased. And I've never been sure what criteria the Mercury judges use to vote, but I am fairly sure it has nothing to do with what I like. Despite this, I am thinking that this year we will be in tune somewhat so I think that it's between Snow Patrol and The Streets. The bookies disagree slightly, they currently think it's between Franz Ferdinand (who are 5/2 favourites) and The Streets.

If I'm forced to jump off The Fence, I'll go with The Streets to win.

Going Nowhere

I'd been wanting to head over to Leeds tonight to see Motu One do their first headline set in that city. But last night I slept like a fish, ie barely. Maybe an hour. Not really sure why it wasn't working, just one of them things maybe. So I was dog-tired when I headed off to work and ended up having a couple of Pro-Plus to tide me over. Don't know if they helped, but I didn't fall asleep under my desk.

Reasons why your bank account looks far too healthy number one: You've forgotten to pay your credit card bill. I've never done that before. Whoops.

So instead of Leeds, it's time to skip the Monday pub quiz and have an early night. I had a quiz yesterday anyway. We didn't win, but that was no surprise as we were just two people. Beating the adjacent team of eleven people by three whole points was something of a result. Idiots, they must have been. I realised how little I know about how cheese is made. What flavourings go into it? How does Double Gloucester come out differently from Red Leicester? Why is Wensleydale crumblier than Cheddar? And what is the point of Brie?

Reasons why your bank account looks far too healthy number two: You still haven't paid your Institution of Actuaries fees. But six hundred pounds... It's daylight robbery. Even when it's getting dark outside like it is now.

The days do seem to be drawing in more quickly than normal this year. I expect it's that global warming that they keep going on about. Whatever happened to acid rain? I remember back in the 80s that acid rain was a real problem. It was going to dissolve all the churches and corrode every monument. But they still seem to be here. Did they just put a special alkaline coating on everything? Perhaps all the churches did dissolve, and all we have now are replicas. Filled with replica priests doing replica sermons to replica congregations of people with authentic replica digital watches. Too much fake piety.

Reasons why your bank account looks far too healthy number three: You are still too lazy to attempt your 2003/2004 tax return. Come on laddo, it takes half an hour. I think it's just the knowledge that it's going to cost me money this year. That and good old-fashioned laziness.

Lying awake last night did have a couple of advantages. Radio 2 seems bizzarely good in the early hours of the morning. A mixture of great retro stuff and great new stuff. They played the new REM single a couple of times, and the new one from Thirteen Senses, who I am finally going to see live at the weekend. That was live with an "eye" sound, not a "little-i" sound. But I expect they will live too.

Apparently my brother-in-law knows the drummer from Razorlight. Just thought I'd share that one with you.

In the charity shop

It's been hot today. Really hot. So hot that when I walked into town I was compelled to buy a bottle of water from an ice cream stand. Strangely, the stand was being run by two children who appeared to be around 10 years old. Wasn't a problem though, they were perfectly able to serve me a cold bottle of water for £1. Slightly on the expensive side, but I was hot and thirsty enough to not mind too much.

Later on, I decided to pop into a charity shop to look at second hand books. One never knows what one will find in charity shops. I suppose that isn't strictly true as you can always be certain of finding jigsaws and floral dresses. But you never what the picture will be of, or what kind the flowers will be. Likewise, you never know exactly which books will be available. It's a very different situation to visiting Waterstones, where you know exactly which books will be available (mostly the complete works of Dan Brown it seems at the moment). I didn't buy any jigsaws or floral dresses, but I did buy a couple of books.

What were the books? I'll tell you. I'll tell you now. Yes I will. First book was a short kid's novel by the normally fantastic Stephen Baxter. It's called "Gulliverzone" and looks pretty rubbish, but at 113 pages long, it doesn't promise to waste too much of my life. Second novel was "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood. It won the Arthur C Clarke award when it was released, so is probably ok. The edition I found is a fairly strange one - it's a hardback one, seemingly intended for a school library. It's got one of those really awful covers that you only see in libraries. It's most strange.

Anyway, I took the books to the counter and tendered my money to the slightly doddery old man who was serving. Then he started to reach under the counter to get me a bag, so I said, that it was ok, I didn't need a bag, thank you. However, I had only assumed that it was a plastic bag he was reaching for. It could in fact have been something else entirely. Maybe that's where he was keeping his cup of tea. Or perhaps he didn't like my manner and he was reaching for a cudgel to berate me about the head with. Or even a shotgun or a death ray. If these things had been what he was reaching for, then me saying that I didn't need a bag would have just confused him. And maybe made him angry enough to reach for his cudgel even if it had been the cup of tea that he was originally intending to pick up.

You have to be careful with assumptions. In the event, I will probably never know what he was reaching for because he stopped reaching for it when I said I didn't need a bag. I expect it was a bag. But I really didn't need one, as I had one already. I hope he wasn't too upset.

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(added 07/09/04)
Here's a picture of the book itself:



See how truly awful it is?

Sometimes the world looks perfect, nothing to rearrange

It's nice when you find perfect strangers out in the wide blogosphere, that have decided to link to you just because they like what you're doing, rather than because you've sent them a large cheque. Even better if their grammar is better than certain friends of mine. It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling, like someone's giving me a big hug.

And then there is this blog. It's owned by a British born resident of Sydney, they are an actuary, they've linked to me (possibly mistakenly thinking that I mainly write about actuarial things) then written 12 words, none of which are longer than six letters, and given up. Thanks anyway! It may qualify as currently the weakest actuary owned blog that I've found. If you know any weaker ones, please let me know! Maybe I could start a list of rubbish actuarial blogs.

Oh, and if you know where the title of this post is from, without having to use Google, you probably should get out more.

Holiday Photos

Okay, the previous post was "likely" to be the last holiday-related post, and so is this one. I've just stuck up a load more holiday photos for any of you who are interested. You can see them in this gallery.

I've also put up a few other photos, including the now infamous Gay Rice, Dog in Peaked Hat and Nick Licks The Ear Of Chris. There are a few others too if you feel like having a search around my Flickr site.

Should you wish to, you can leave comments on any of the photos, just like you can on here. Think of it as borrowing my photos, turning them over, then scribbling words of your best wisdom on the reverse side using a leaky biro. Maybe I won't notice what you've written - I mean, whoever actually turns a photo over on purpose?

The Quality of Merci

Sadly this is likely to be the final post from the European Tour. I've been back a month, and it has to be time to move on and write about new things. And I've covered most of the places.

Holi-days 10 and 11: Gay Paris. Which sounds silly if you pronounce it "gay pa-ris" rather than "gay pa-ree". Paris is the one city visited on the coach that I have been to before, albeit many years ago and not independently. So it was pretty much like going there for the first time. Possibly, nay, undoubtedly the most famous landmark in Paris is the Eiffel Tower. Here I am at its base:



I took that one myself. Nearly got the whole tower in. Nearly. I think it's painted in "Eiffel Tower Brown". I don't remember ever seeing that one in small metal tubs in model shops, but that could be because I have never painted a scale model of the Eiffel Tower. Thinking about it, that would be a real bitch to assemble - all those tiny little struts and beams. Maybe ideal for the Strange Ones who build things from matches.

Paris also has much art, much of which is in The Louvre, former palace to the French Monarchy. The Louvre is a big place. 800km long, and it would apparently take more time than there ever will be in the universe if you drove round it and spent a half second looking at every work of art. Even if you drove on a motorbike. A fast one, like James Bond would have. Hidden in there somewhere is the Mona Lisa, a painting of a woman with bad hair. When we were there, they weren't letting people take photos of it for some reason, even without a flash. I tried to take one anyway (see, I told you I was a rebel) but a security man rushed over and physically pushed my camera hand away and made us move on. Utterly pointless thing to take a photo of, as there are perfectly good pictures of it all over the web. Here's a huge one. But I mean, really, look at that hair. Hasn't she ever heard of conditioner? Bet she smells too. They probably called her "Smelly Lisa" at school.

On the second night, we drove over to Montmartre for a French Cabaret. Here we are outside the Moulin Rouge:



Before going on this holiday, I hadn't realised that the Moulin Rouge was a real place. I thought it had just been made up for the over-excitable movie. But evidently not, as my camera does certainly not lie. For all I know though, it could have been just a facade, with nothing behind the windmill. For we went instead to The Nouvelle Eve just down the road. Cabaret was fantastic. We were sitting near the stage so I was able to experience the twin delights of excellent steak combined with topless pretty girls dancing just metres away. It's not easy eating steak without looking at it. Plus, there were other acts too - the kind of things you used to see on The Paul Daniels Magic Show on a Saturday night. Unless you don't live in the UK. Dunno what you used to watch.

Later on, I was "chosen" to go on stage and take part in a dancing competition with three late-middle aged American gentlemen. I was clearly the best dancer. I even finished with a combined star jump and 180 degree rotation. Pure class. I was glad I'd had a few glasses of wine beforehand though, a bit of French courage. I reckon I'd have won too, if more of our group had come along to the cabaret and then cheered dead loud for me. It was actually less scary than it could have been as the bright stage lights meant that I could barely see anyone in the audience. It was like being alone, dancing around my living room to ABBA. Probably. On the negative side, I realise now that means the audience would have been able to see me really well (the lucky, lucky, people).

But eventually, all topless girls must come to an end, and it was time to head back out into the barmy Paris night for some last-night drinks. And it was the end of a totally fan-dabby-dozy holiday. Well, it wasn't really the end, as I decided to stay in London the following night rather than going straight back to York. One final set of beers and some tearful goodbyes. But then that really was the end. So Goodbye, Auf Widersehen, Ciao, Au revoir, it's been swell guys, stay in touch.

Now! Do it Now!

I'm sitting at work just after lunchtime, about to get on with something useful, and my boss wanders over and asks me to do a quick piece of work for somebody "now". And also a second piece of work "now". But the second one is more "now" than the first one. Tricky for me. I can do things "soon", or "later", or preferably "next week", but having things ready "now" generally requires a certain amount of prescience and/or preparation. And I don't have the former and hadn't done the latter.

Neither of the tasks is in any way hard, and each will take me approximately 1-2 minutes. But they are needed for a meeting that starts "now" - there seems to be a lot of now about today.

Okay, best get started at the two tasks. To emphasize that I'm about to devote my entire attention span to them, I write on a post-it note what I have to do, and then write "NOW!" in big capital letters beneath. Clearly I mean business if I've used capital letters and an exclamation mark. Satisfied that I am about to do said tasks, boss man sits down.

Task 1 is quite straightforward: print three pieces of paper on a different printer to the normal one, as the toner is running out on the normal printer and it's easier to go to a far away printer occasionally (approx 60m) than learn how to change a toner cartridge. As a bonus, I don't even have to pick the printouts up myself - bossy-wossy will do it for me.

So time now to start on task 2? Not quite. I'm not going to sit down and take all this "now" crap. I don't perform tricks for biscuits. I am not a... oh wait, biscuits you say? Ok, what do I do next? Just give me the biscuit!

But wait - something's not right. Yes, that's right, no biscuit was offered. So without an incentive it's time for me to raise merry hell. Time to kick some ass. Time to protest in the time-old manner. Whilst boss is at the printer, I... get drinks for the team from the drinks machine and take several minutes to do this. Ha! How do you like this kind of "now"? Hey! At least notice my protest! See what I've done? I've deliberately extended the time until the second task is completed. On purpose. Because I am a REBEL. Yeah!

Oh fine. Be like that then. Here's the completed second thing that I can't even remember what it was at the time of writing, as it was so quick and trivial to do. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and he asks me to print some sheets of paper. call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't.

White Rabbits

Welcome to September everybody. Two thirds of 2004 have gone already. Zzzooooom.

Now I, and most other sane people, make a point of trying to say "White Rabbits" (or even "White Rabbit, White Rabbit, White Rabbit" - I guess "White Rabbits is an abbreviation?) at the start of each month in order to bring good luck. I believe that it's been scientifically proven to work, by scientists in laboratories. Strange how laboratories (nearly) brings the UK's two main political parties together in a single word. But not relevant.

I have said "White Rabbits" aloud this morning. It was the first thing I said aloud so I think that is my luck sorted for this month. I didn't say it really loudly - that would just make me look silly. I have attempted to do this every month for like, ever, since I was little. Sometimes I manage it, sometimes I don't. It was always harder when I used to see other people early in the morning before I'd had a chance to wake up properly. Or if I had a huge hangover.

What I don't have is any proper record of what has happpened in months when I have said it, and what has happened when I haven't. One might say that I suffer from Lacking A White Rabbit Diary Journal (LAWRDJ). But I'd prefer it if one didn't, as it makes me sound like a mentalist.

That will not be so this month. I now have a record of having said "White Rabbits" first thing this morning - this post. So I will attempt to monitor any particularly good or bad luck that I experience. If by 31 September the good outweighs the bad, then the theory is proved even more (yes, pedants, I know something is either proved or not proved, leave me alone) and I will officially be a scientist. If the bad outweighs the good, I will officially be miserable and sulk a lot.