Saturday is Nottingham

Speaking to colleagues over the last week, I have learned that, during half-term, one was off to the Red Sea, one was going to Iceland (the country, not the shop), one was on a mini-break to New York... you get the idea. My performance management assessor was telling me about his recent holiday to Cuba. The Chappell family are bathing in the temperate waters of some estuary in Australia and the Streets are off to Devon, where it will probably rain, but at least it's touristy.

I am doing the Tour of Urban Population Centres of England, to which the soundtrack is probably National Express by The Divine Comedy. Southampton, Northampton, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, Birmingham, Reading and back to Southampton - between Friday and Tuesday I shall have passed through all of them.

Saturday is Nottingham.

I went on the tram for the first time:



Much better than queueing for ages to drive into the Victoria or Broadmarsh Centres, paying the best part of a tenner to park and then finding out that someone in their yellow Smartcar opened their door and knocked your wing mirror off.

The tram even has a conductor who chats jovially and sells you your ticket. And it has one of those "elevator voices" which tells you when you are stopping, saying helpful, calming things like "The Next stop is High School, for the Arboretum" and "The next stop is Nottingham Trent University, not really a proper University, it used to be Trent Poly."

Anyway, it drops you off in Slab Square (or Old Market Square as it's more properly known), which used to look like this:



...at the moment looks like this:



...and in a few months time, apparently, will look like this:







...but don't hold your breath, because it's being done by the same people who did the Diana (comma, reverential pause...) Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain Ring of Water Thing in Hyde Park which broke down and had to be closed.

But some things never change, and it's nice to know that people still sit around, eat their sandwiches and shout at their children near the Victoria Centre Clock. People stand around and text near it now too.



Whatever they are doing, they all ignore it when it goes off - all birds-a-flapping, frogs-a-jumping, squirrels-a-squirrelling and harpsicord music-a-playing. It's nice to know that some things don't change - people ignored it 20 years ago too. After all the effort Rowland Emett probably put into designing and making it, it seems a shame. But as he's been dead since 1991, I doubt he minds...

Bruno (Really Does) Chart the Future...!

I suppose it's worth pointing out, briefly, that I actually own two "records" which are in the top five of the singles chart.

This hasn't happened since about 1982 and has only happened now because Dead or Alive and Leo Sayer have been re-released and remixed (why does one have a hyphen and the other doesn't? Chris Purnell?) and both original "tracks" are already shelved up somewhere in the photo on the previous post...

It could easily be coming up to 7pm on a Sunday evening and the chart rundown with Bruno Brookes and his Mullet. I should be waiting for Annie Nightingale's request show to come on the Stereo Sequence, when Radio 1 was allowed to be on FM for a few hours before giving the frequency back to Radio 2...




...and reverting to mushy medium wave (yes, youngsters, that did happen... and Paul will know what I'm talking about even if no-one else does...) and I probably should be getting on with my Chemistry homework for Mr Fletcher (Beaker), or I might fail my O Level...

Near a tree, by a river, there's a hole in the ground...

Right, time to respond to Andy and his comment about people feeling it necessary to advertise what they have been listening to on their blogs.

I have a last●fm profile which gives you personalised charts showing what you have just listened to. It works by installing a plugin (Audioscrobbler) to Windows Media Player (or whatever other player you are using) which watches your playlist and uploads it to a server somewhere. It's all "opt-in" so it bypasses the hassle which Apple has just had spying on i-tunes users' listening habits.

You can then use an RSS feed to add this information to a website, and that's how it appears on this blog. I've chosen to show you only the most recent three tracks I've listened to:

a) because you then can't see the full horror of my listening habits, and...
b) last●fm classes "recent" as about 24 hours, so even that disappears soon.

But... it only tracks what you have listened to on your computer... and so provides a completely false record of what you are actually listening to. I listen to most of my music in the car or on my i-river (like an i-pod, but better...) or around the house.

The music I listen to on my computer tends to be very random and it's often stuff that I have downloaded (legally!) or tried to find online for a specific reason. I listen to so little on the computer, despite having nearly all my CD collection on there, that if I listen to an artist twice, they appear at the top of my weekly charts. The other week it was Tears for Fears, because I had been talking about Donnie Darko. You make the connection.

Anyway, Andy got me thinking about my vinyl collection. My singles are all in the loft, about 500 of them (some of them picture discs and flexi-discs and 33rpm EPs) but my LPs are still on shelves in a spare room, even though I no longer possess anything to play them on. Most of what I still want to listen to, I now have digitally in one form or another, but I had a fun half hour looking through the gatefold sleeves and feeling the static as I took the albums out of their inner sleeves for the first time in about 16 years.

Not being in the least bit ashamed of my wide (and sometimes crap) taste in music, I am quite happy to share that the last piece of vinyl I ever bought was The Riddle by Nik Kershaw...



...which is in here with the rest of the stuff - a real slice of naff 80s!

Postscript...

In replying to Andy's comment, I asked What's wrong with Shalamar?

I believe I now know...

Hole in the wall...

Have discovered a new (and not particularly convenient) feature on my Chip and PIN card which has not been very well publicised by my bank...



HSBC Call-centre wage-slave: "Don't worry, they will just swipe it and you can sign..."

The Anti-Bunnies gather....

I breathed a sigh of relief this morning, and put an end to a slight element of internal confusion, when I discovered that there are other people, people I respect and trust, who don't get Donnie Darko...



I fell asleep several times during the film and had to rewind lots, but had previously kept very quiet about this, for fear of being pronounced thick or lacking in culture, but now it can be said...

Donnie Darko is rubbish.

And I refuse to be persuaded differently... "When people run in circles, it's a very, very mad world..."

Now all I need is to find someone else who agrees with me about...

They've Gone :-(

One hour and thirteen minutes late, the Chappell Family has gone! (Initially to Dubai, but then on to Australia... and I suppose 1hr 13 m is not bad when the journey is 24 hours and they're staying for a year...)



This is Tina in Heathrow doing her Julie Andrews impression which, I think you will agree, is rubbish.



Tina and Chris smile after their success in taking all the unwanted (and untransportable) Christmas presents back. Smiles soon fade as they realise £217 worth of Sock Shop vouchers will be useless in Australia. Even if they need socks...



...and here they go into Departures! Having done the journey to the other side of the world and back earlier this year, I would give long odds on the smiles still being there after about India.



Bon Voyage!

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, etc

There are other advantages to being up north for Christmas (other than getting to see my niece) - one is that is snows! (Which it never does in Hampshire...)



However, taste and decency can be noticeable by their absence in all parts of the country...



This particular crime was captured by my sister in one of the rare moments she is not currently spending at the hospital.

Well, it beats going to the sales...

Well, if it's Boxing Day, it must be the Raft Races. (Actually, it might be the Raft Races - it's a sort of on-and-off family tradition...)

Here's a general view as the (not very sturdy) rafts come floating down the River Derwent at Matlock Bath.



Here are the regulation Santas...



Some people hadn't spent much time making their rafts, but had brought their lunch along with them...



Fortunately, the firemen were handy in the next raft if the barbecue got out of hand...



This was the HMS Victory - spot Nelson if you can...



Now, there is audience participation. Many of the thousands of riverbank onlookers who had braved the cold and had a bacon roll and a coffee in polystyrene cup had brought flour bombs to chuck at the rafters (not us, obviously). This is hilariously funny until they start chucking them back, not differentiating between the guilty and the innocent, and then sending oarfuls and, in some cases, bucketfuls, of water crowdwards aswell...



...and in rare cases (not joking), baked beans came our way...



...and then off they went down the river towards Cromford...



...until Boxing Day next year!

* Finished The Da Vinci Code well before the Evans Spoiler! Kept wanting Wincey Willis to appear and stop the clock. And Velma out of Scooby-Doo is a better cryptographer than Sophie Neveu.

Is it Christmas yet...?

Well, I think it might be. Here is my evidence...



Yes, it's the final candle on the Blue Peter Advent Crown.

I can hardly believe that they are still making it. But they are. I suspect the quality isn't as high as when Val, Pete and John made it, but it's nice to see these traditions continued.

Especially by my brother-in-law, Roger, who has his unique take on these things...



Despite the fact that Blue Peter is now presented (seemingly) by Poor Man's Liberty-X (three women with their midriffs out and two vacuous blokes), the Christmas episode is reassuringly timeless...

• Christmas Cards from Viewers (although I suspect as the years go by, they are showing all of them, not just a selection...)
• Brass band playing medley of carols
• Margaret Parnell Make ("I'm using double-sided sticky-tape, for speed...")

• Cast of West End musical (in this case, Mary Poppins) performing in studio, all wearing Blue Peter badges
• Presents for the pets

• Christmas Appeal Totaliser (done up like a mobile phone in a passing mention for all-things-modern...)
• Nod to religion

I think Biddy Baxter may be dead but, probably by retaining editorship from beyond the grave, still seems to be ensuring some degree of quality.

The same cannot be said for (the immediately following) Newsround, the title music of which now sounds like a bad ringtone. *

And if you're wondering how I have time to do this in-depth analysis of festive children's TV...

1. "Ah've finished all me main shoppin', ah've only bits to do..." © Peter Kay, Paul O'Grady Show tonight
2. I have started reading The Da Vinci Code because I think I should and because everyone else has, have got to page 88 and couldn't really care less about the other 504. Please can someone tell me what all the fuss is about?

* Text NEWS to 86543 for your own version. Textseses cost £1.50 each. We will send you 2 textseses a day forever and you will not be able to stop them. Please tell a parent or guardian if you are under 18, as when the bill comes through, they will want to kill you. Please also tell someone over 18 if you think the past particple of "to text" is "text".

Hello Uncle Ian...!

I finally got to meet Zoe yesterday.

Here I am, holding her hand and leering in at her (I don't think she found it too traumatic, (a) because she has to put up with everyone, including my Dad (in background), leering in at her and (b) she had her eyes shut).*



She's back on the tiniest oxygen mask in the world and has a feeding tube in, but is doing very well. She drank 13ml of milk while I was there last night - well, she had it syringed down the tube by my sister with one hand through each of the holes in the incubator like one of those games off the Crystal Maze.

She's linked up to about 20 different hospital playstations...



...which keep beeping and clicking, but within perfectly acceptable limits, apparently. If you are not used to that happening though, it's bloody scary!

Raced up north yesterday to see her, and now have several days of lying on the sofa watching naff ITV 9.25am sub-Disney cartoons about puppies or mice that save the world in a Christmassy fashion. Bliss.

*Sorry about all those embedded parentheses...

Niece to see you...

I am an uncle and I am very excited about it!

My first niece arrived a bit unexpectely at around 1.20pm on Wednesday 30 November. This was a little inconvenient of her as she was actually due on my birthday, but she obviously didn't want either (a) to share or (b) to wait until the end of February.

She was delivered by section and weighed in at (or just "weighed", as she isn't a boxer) 2lb 2oz. (Google Calculator says that's 0.963883786kg, just in case European law applies to blogs.)

Here she is...



...with Mum and Dad.

I think she looks a bit like Great Grandad Hayes did. Compare...



This would be unsurprising, as she has already demonstrated herself to be an awkward Saggitarius!

Roger (Zoe's Dad) firmly believes in his Scottish roots, thinking he is, in some way, William Wallace reincarnate...



...so it's quite fitting that she should be born on St Andrew's Day. She shares her birthday with:

• St. Gregory of Tours, chronicler/bishop (538)
• Mark Twain, author of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn (1835)
• Winston Churchill, never, in the field of human conflict, etc (1874)
• Ridley Scott, director, Alien, Blade Runner (1937)
• Billy Idol, nice day for a, white wedding (1955)
• Ben Stiller, actor (1965)
• Des'ree, rhythm and blues singer with stupid name (1970)

...and loads of other people you've never heard of, because they are American, and therefore unimportant.

She's a Rooster, according to the Chinese Calendar (Obliging, pioneering, brave... well, definitley the last one, if not the first!)

Her birthstone is Citrine (which I have never heard of, and sounds like lav cleaner...) although it might be Topaz, depending on which highly reliable, based-in-fact, scientifically accurate website you look at.

News on her birthday suggests she will have to work until she is 69...



(which at least she will get to three months before she was supposed to) and important things happened on her birthday in the past too. Madonna was number one in the singles and album charts, the moon was the last day of a waning crescent, this is what the weather was like, and no-one got voted off I'm a Celebrity.

An auspicious day indeed.

Grandad Taylor already has her driving round in this...



...and at £799, she has 17 years to save up.

I will be meeting Zoe for the first time in a couple of weeks, and won't be thinking of anything else till I do. Not even Christmas!* Until then I'm keeping up-to-date with her autobiography. She's very technologically literate already, as are we all our our family. Even Roger, who I suspect has something to do with it.

*Well, maybe Christmas a bit!

Bah! Humbug! "Political Correctness gone MAD", etc

When I came back from New Zealand in August, I mentioned being somewhat surprised that in Boots, I was handed my purchases in this...



...the point being that, as it was still summer, this bag was far, far too Christmassy and inappropriate.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Christmas, but now we are halfway through November and all the shops have their decs up and are full of "Evil Carol Vorderman's Interactive Family Christmas Sudoku" stocking fillers, a mere carrier bag seems not Christmassy enough.

Which brings me to Tesco, and my point.

Tesco has obviously decided it doesn't want to upset anyone of a nervous and non-festive nature this year by rebranding its advent calendars thus:



This would appear to be some kind of over-the-top Lambeth-esque move and I advise you as follows:

1. Buy an Advent Calendar - making sure it's promoted as such;
2. Make sure it has Jesus or Santa or both on it;
3. The countdown stops at 24. Don't buy one which has a "25" on it - that's when you open your presents;
4. Especially don't buy one that counts through Christmas as far as New Year;
5. In deference to Jamie Oliver and Christmas Dinner, avoid ones with chocolate behind the doors and lobby manufacturers for ones with Brussels Sprouts instead.

Remember, Remember...

...the fifth of November.

But this year make sure you call it Guy Fawkes' Night. That title has been reclaimed, because it's the 400th Anniversary of the attempt he and a bunch of Catholics made to murder the king and blow up parliament. What we have been celebrating all these years with a bit of bonfire toffee and some sparklers has suddenly become a shed load of serious, with people on News 24 talking of "regime change" and "terrorist assassination plots" as if it were Iraq.

There's actually a "stop the terrorist atrocity" game on the BBC Website.

Anyway that doesn't dwell in your mind if you go to Mayflower Park in Southampton for Bonfire Night. The first issue being that there is no Bonfire, so scrub that and let's call it Firework Night instead.

Pre-display there's a fair you can have a go on. I failed to win a cuddly bulldog from one of those grabber machines. Surprisingly, the dog seemed slightly too heavy or the grabber jaws were just not tight enough. I wonder if that always happens?

I also failed to have a go on Froggit, probably the least thrill-seeking of all the rides. Paul and Dominic had a go though..



(Well, you try getting a decent photo. I deleted twelve others of people I didn't know because I had counted wrongly...)

Nikki and I decided to be officially "soft"...



It's not that I mind fast moving boisterous rides, but I tend to avoid seeking the additional thrill of the ride having being bolted together off the back of a lorry that morning by whatever the politically correct term for gypsies is this month.

(There is a spelling mistake above, as is, of course, mandatory on fairground notices and on pub menus.)

Still more excitement before we get to the fireworks. Annoying local radio Wave 105 was there too with annoying local radio DJ, whose name escapes me. He was broadcasting from a very small trailer in which there was hardly room to swing a cat, never mind room for the very awful ABBA tribute band he had brought with him to do symmetrical dance routines. But they tried, bless them...

At least it wasn't The Cheeky Girls, like it was last year.

Finally to the fireworks. Regular readers of this blog - yes there are some - will be aware that my camera is really bad at taking photos at night time where I have to use settings other than the completely automatic ones. But here goes...



Oooooooh!!! (A bit blurry...)



Aaaaaahhhh! (A bit colourless...)



Hmmmmmm... (Not really all on the picture...)



Ouch! (A bit overexposed...)

And then they were all over. It was universally agreed that it wasn't as good as last year, not because of the absence of The Cheeky Girls, but mainly because the fireworks were a bit rubbish. Even the tea was weak and not very hot. But the Russell's overpriced bacon butty was good! I include the photo below to celebrate that one piece of good news, and also to mention the man who stood in front of us for the whole display, talking into his mobile phone telling his friends he was standing near Russell's Burger Grill. He missed most of the fireworks looking for them.



They never did turn up...