And don't forget the Cornflakes...

I think it's about time there was some widespread defiance of the Sunday Trading laws. Again.

Years ago, when it was still illegal to open your shop on Sunday, the shops opened anyway. So many of them opened, that it was not practical for the local authorities to prosecute them and so, despite the self-righteous bleatings of collected "family" and religious groups, the laws were changed to mirror practice. Well, almost.

Only six hours of shopping allowed, though, so that I still have time to go to church and watch the Antiques Roadshow. Otherwise the fabric of society might crumble. In enlightened Scotland, I could be in John Lewis for ten hours and B&Q for twelve.

Anyway, back to Tesco earlier today, and I would like to say a special Christmas thank you to the woman who let her five year-old son do the scanning at the self-service checkout, even though there was a queue ten deep, and then looked surprised when she had to pay, dithered for five minutes more, reached into her jeans pocket for money, carefully unfolded the notes one by one and tried to feed them into the slot, which steadfastly rejected them because they were too mangled.

I would have gladly sacrificed Clubcard points for security to ship her off somewhere like Aber-bloody-deen, where she and her son would a) be a long way from me and b) have between 6am and 10pm on a Sunday to do their shopping.

That said, Tesco in Mansfield is good if you need breakfast cereal...

Christmas Repeats....

Penguin...
Reindeer...
Owl...
Polar Bear...
Penguin...
Owl...
Reindeer
Polar Bear...
Polar Bear...

One would have assumed that, with a John Lewis advent calendar, one was investing in quality and, perchance, a little bit of variety.



Seemingly not.

Oooooh!! Ahhhhh!! (A Little Bit More...)

I'm not sure the fireworks were any better this year than last...



...but we were standing closer...



...and I have a better camera...



Plus it was loads warmer, which was a bonus.

Immerse yourself in the atmosphere...



And now...

Not all it's Cracked up to be..

Right, I can't claim to understand all modern art, and I'm from the same school of aesthetic criticism as are many people from the Midlands, (chief amongst them my sister and Paul), where we speak as we find. ("Well, in't it just some bits o' metal and teabags?")

But I do try. After all, I have a degree, and so by law I must spend some of my down time being cultural and nodding sagely at stuff.

And so here is Shibboleth in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall, an installation by Doris Salcedo.



It's a big crack in the floor. Quite deep, and running the length of the building, it starts off very thin...



...and widens...



...splits...



...goes off down dead ends, presumably to get that woman's shoes...



...and finally disappears under the wall at the other end.



It's meant to make us think about racism and colonialism. Which it really doesn't, because it's exceptionally easy to step from one side to the other, in precisely the way that I imagine it's not if you're on the receiving end of racism. It was, of course, impossible for anyone in a wheelchair to cross it at certain points, but she doesn't claim it's about that.



Maybe I missed something.

What it was making people think about (me and all the snatched conversations I heard while I was there) was exactly how she did it. Pneumatic drills? Moulds? Poured concrete? Screeds? (and how will they fill it in again afterwards?)

And of course, if it is supposed to say something about modern society, what it really says is "How stupid are people these days that an army of guides has to hand out leaflets telling them not to fall down it?"



And how to get your camera back...

At last!

Wishes can come true...

Long, Long Ago in Sherwood...

I suppose I'd be looking grumpy too if I'd been on pause for 14 and a half days...



My Sky+ obviously has issues and clearly I have a lot of catching up to do before I can watch X-Factor...

A Choice of Spiritual Experiences...

Having looked at the Nottingham Arena website - not for any particular reason, just because it was less than three random clicks away from something I really was looking at - I now have to decide which of these events I want to go and see...

But hang on...

Does one of them seem like the odd one out? Has one of the over-25s gone solo? Perhaps one of them will help me understand my higher purpose in life? *

If so, I think it's more likely to be Bill Bailey than any of the others.

* Apparently, 50 Cent realised his higher purpose in life after being shot in the face nine times. I didn't get as far as reading what it was...

Back at the Bison...

...but this time as a Panther!

And also this time with Paul and Nikki (who are fellow official Midlanders who had been promising to come along to the blood-and-violence-fest for a couple of years and have finally got around to it...) and Tina and Chris (who aren't, and hadn't...)

My sports reporting is not brilliant and not really knowing the few rules there appear to be don't make it all any easier to understand, but anyway, first there was an almighty punch-up between two of the players, then they scored and then we did. That's how it ended, and five minutes of fairly fast and furious extra time made no difference, so it was down to penalties. Of which we got more in than they did and that's how you win.

You can't take pictures while they're playing because they move faster than the shutter does and the photos look like this:



...but if you wait till they've won and they get presented (for some reason) with their honorary pack of Fosters, you get them to stand still long enough while they look smug and victorious...



...to get a photo of the whole team.

* Well, the whole team apart from the one who punched a member of the other team in the face and had to go home. Good, wholesome fun.

Is that an iPod in your pocket...?

I am seriously not making this up....

I knew that Marks was trying to be a bit more up to date and trendy, but do we really need this?

I suppose it's only the next logical step after integrating your iPod with your kitchen, your car, your running shoes (not my running shoes, obviously) and your toilet roll holder (!)

But as they might say... "This is not just the future. This is the M&S future..."

This could be Rotterdam, or anywhere....

It's actually Amsterdam.

Not from my recent visit there, but passing over on the way to Berlin.

Compared with Google Earth's version...



...I don't think it's bad.

But I bet they're not panicking.

PS This is Rotterdam...

Nosh'n'Go...

Didn't see much evidence of corporate health and safety when I was in Amsterdam, but clearly the Dutch giant Unilever thinks we are all capable of stupid mistakes...

(By the way, the conditioner is not mine...)

Gone Dutch...

I got back from Amsterdam yesterday.

Didn't have time to blog anything while I was there. Actually that's a lie - the one time an internet cafe was immediately apparent, it was also shut due to technical difficulties. Maybe it was waterlogged. Amsterdam is 6.7m below sea-level, so they spend most of Holland's environmental research budget on working out how not to spend their entire lives underwater. (Something which the UK will probably have to start doing after this summer.)

Anyway, here are your Top 10 Dutch Icons as seen over five days...



Bikes and Flowers...
(Millions of bikes everywhere. Where's Katie Meluiliulia when you need her to write a bloody song...)
(Not appreciably more tulips than anything else...)



Canals and Windmills...
(Some canals are crossed by these swingy-style bridges. Water doesn't go foetid or smell as clever Dutch hydrologists have worked out how to refresh it every three days...)
(Windmills are just tourist attractions nowadays. These three have been moved on the back of lorries from various parts of Holland to a kind of Home for Retired Windmills ...)



Heineken and Clogs...
(They don't brew it in Amsterdam any more, they just charge you €12 to go in and look at some old adverts sitting in a Star Trek chair...)
(Man does not spend days hand crafting clogs now, he just puts a big block of wood into big version of machine that copies keys and that makes them for him...)



Red Light District and Narrow Canalside Houses...
(Admittedly a very general, daytime shot of the Red Light District. If you try to take anything more specific or at night time, you might get killed...)
(On bus tour, canal barge tour and cycle tour, three different guides pointed to three different houses and said they were the narrowest in Amsterdam...)



Anne Frank's House and Cheese...
(Never having read her diary, and been berated for not having done, I thought she hid on her own in a tiny attic room. Turns out she hid with quite a large number of family and friends in quite a sizeable granny-annex. I'm not saying that made being Jewish during the occupation any easier, or made her story any less tragic, just exposing my ignorance...)
(Two for the price of one here - the cheesemaker is wearing clogs...)

(I suppose Van Gogh should be in the Top 10 as well. And Rembrandt. But Van Gogh was a miserable bugger by all accounts and Rembrandt was a bankrupt, so they can be 11 and 12 and not worthy of further comment.)

22:30 (Post lectum)

Finished the book.

Don't worry, I won't give anything away... Was it any good? Well, it was an entirely satisfying ending, with lots of loose ends tied up.

Loose ends tend to be tied up with the in-yer-face italics of lines from the previous six books (and earlier in this one) in case you had forgotten. Or were remembering the films, rather than the books, which is probably more likely.

What there's too much of...

There's too much Polyjuice Potion, too much apparating and disapparating and way too much Invisibility Cloak. So much so that when they come to make the film, Daniel Radcliffe will probably only have to turn up for a couple of days.

There's too much that's convenient for purpose but which doesn't quite sit right in terms of believability. And believability has to be important, even in fantasy.

What there's not enough of..

There's not enough Hogwarts, but what there is, is spectacular.

As a result of there being not much Hogwarts, there's not much Hogwarts' students - beyond the main three - or Hogwarts' teachers either, and some of the fun in those interactions is missing as a result.

But it's still a great read!

Of course, you get to know about the remaining Horcruxes and you get to find out what the Deathly Hallows are (they're on the cover of the book...); you get the back stories of a couple of very important characters and you also get the deaths that J K Rowling promised - in fact you get lots of deaths. So many more than the two she alluded to that it's a veritable bloodbath.

And while the ending of the book didn't make me sad, the ending of the books is quite sad. It will leave me at a loose end for a day next July. I shall just have to Potter around.*

* That's such a bad joke, I'm glad it wasn't mine...

00:01

Because it was the last day of work, and because it was the last time we'd be able to, and because there's a Starbucks, and because we actually wanted to read the book, Cesia and I went to the Harry Potter Launch Party at Borders in Southampton.



Surprisingly, the books were not in this large packing box, which had been in the shop for a number of days, but it does show that the staff at Borders had really made an effort. Bits of the shop were labelled up in "Harry Potter" font, they were playing the soundtrack and they said "Good Evening, Hogwarts" every time they had to use the tannoy. (Which got a bit irritating after a while, especially as the things they said afterwards - "Good evening Hogwarts! Could Rob please call extension 204?" - were, like, totally off-role.)

And they dressed up.



Mad-Eye Moody, very effective; Hagrid, on stilts and not in any way fat enough, less so.

Anyway, we made the dreadful mistake of going to Starbucks to have coffee (which they weren't serving hot, because you need a licence to do that after 11pm, which they didn't have, but were serving iced... ) and then browsed round books which weren't Harry Potter for the best part of an hour, so that when we finally joined the queue to get served, it snaked round the shop, like a snake, right back into Bargains and Romance.



No matter. The countdown to midnight came and went and Minerva McGonagall and a fat bloke with greasy hair (who would have been better as Hagrid) wheeled the real palette of books through to general burblings of excitement...



...and then it must have taken them bloody ages to get the plastic off because the queue steadfastly refused to move for about another half an hour, leaving us stranded with nothing to read but yards of Georgette Heyer.

Past crime and travel and Diana, reverential pause, Princess of Wales, 10-year anniversary remembrance gift books and we finally got there...



...which only left the decision about whether to buy the children's cover or the adult cover. Being as anyone seeing you reading it with an adult cover still knows that you're reading a children's book (even if you don't), this decision was easy.

Back home by 1.30 and read four chapters before dozing off...

Hello Auntie...

I went on an official tour of BBC Television Centre yesterday.



Well, some it.

There are bits you don't get to see. You don't get to see the Blue Peter garden. Presumably in case you vandalise it, or dig up the time capsule or tell everyone about Petra. And you don't get to go inside the news studios, in case you are a lesbian and Nicholas Witchell has to sit on you. (This was the official reason given by the tour guides, Simon and Debbie *)

We start with the very low budget Walk of the Dead Entertainers...



Dame Thora, Arthur Lowe, Ernie Wise, Marti Caine, Jon Pertwee... Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly **

And then on inside, where no-one could accuse them of cashing in on recent remakes...



Actually, the last one is Gordon the Gopher. They keep him in a glass-fronted cage now. Perhaps they could do the same with Andi Peters.

We got to see TC1, which is a really big studio where they were rehearsing for Dance X, and TC8, where they were recording the Catherine Tate Christmas Special. In July. "Whadda f***in' liberty!!"

It's all a bit pedestrian. These days no-one really needs the whole "don't wear blue if you're a weather forecaster" thing explaining to them...



...but they do it anyway. And they let you read the news...



(Lisa Kaplinsky)

...of course they show you where Roy Castle did the tap dancing...



...and you get a good look at the Holby Plastic People (don't look if you are of a nervous disposition...)



Now... dinner time!

* Simon is what happens when you're no longer convincing sitting on a bar stool in the background of the Queen Vic, and Debbie is what happens when you're too old to present CBeebies.

** Well, it can only be a matter of time for one of them, and the Strictly Tragic Accident where the other gets a good kicking and falls forever into Len Goodman's handbag is not far off.