Not posted here for a week or three, but encouraged by a glass or five of brandy and lovage on ice (my new drink, beats the shit out of scrumpy. And sophisticated? Yes, and then some - I could have sworn Simone de Beauvoir has just walked through the kitchen) I have decided to put digit to keyboard and churn out a few hundred more words while I can still remember my name.
A good joke was made as I was making my farewells from work last Wednesday. As I pulled out the plug of my phone charger from the socket, someone remarked that there would probably now be a power surge as all my gadgets were turned off. An exaggerated claim, of course, but one unfortunately just a little too close to the truth for comfort. I am, I have to admit, something of a gadget queen. Or, to be a little more honest and a little fairer to myself, something of a gadget princess (as in princesses being queens in waiting).
It all started with my penchant for hoovering up cheap mobile phones when and if I ever came across the opportunity to buy one. I like to think, and I often claim, that my collection is not quite as irrational as it sounds, and I can, indeed, recite chapter and verse as to why a particular phone was bought at a particular time. So, for example, a year or two ago, my car broke down in the car park of Asda, Bodmin. And as Sod’s Law always operates on such occasions, I didn’t have my phone with me. So off I went into the store and bought the cheapest pay as you go phone I could find in order to summon the RAC to help me out of the shit.
So far, so rational. But if I count up the number of mobile phones in the house, most of which belong to me, it does sound just a tad wacky. My daughter has a Blackberry, and when I organised it for her - she got a half-price deal on a 12-month contract which was more ‘cost-effective’ than remaining PAYG - she gave her old Blackberry to my son. And because he now has a Blackberry (which he never uses - in fact, I think he has yet to make a mobile phone call in anger as they say), he gave up ‘using’ the Sony Ericsson I had passed on to him. That’s three.
My wife has a Sendo (one of those obscure brands who briefly went into making mobile phones several years ago when the future looked brighter, but quickly lost interest and went back to making wheelbarrows or whatever their particular field of expertise is). I had given it to her for Christmas. That’s four mobile phones accounted for. Now comes the difficult bit.
I own two Huawei G300 Ascends, one Samsung and one Nokia. Then there are knocking about the house somewhere about six other phones, all except one owned by me at some point. The two Ascends are useful (and a damned sight more useful than the Samsung Galaxy Ace one of them replaced) because they are rather fine phones which can hold their own against any smartphone twice their price. I have two because I like to use one hitched to the car radio to listen to Five Live on the net (3G) when I drive home from London to Cornwall on a Wednesday to listen to football. Five Live is still on medium wave and if you don’t live in London reception is bad to atrocious, especially if you are speeding at 70mph on the A303 down to the West Country. On the net it is far better. However, in Britain the Ascend G300 is restricted to Vodafone whose 3G coverage is not as good as 3’s. So I bought another (a snip at £99, honestly), got it unlocked and slipped in a 3 sim card, and now I don’t lose a signal half as quickly.
So you see ‘owning several hundred mobile phones’ isn’t quite as mad as it sounds. But that, dear reader, is not even the half of it. All the above is just a preamble to a confession I am about to make. And I shall be revealing details which do make me feel every so slightly foolish. But get yourselves off and put the kettle on and make a cup of tea before you settle in to Part Two: The Tablets.
. . .
My love affair with tablets has not been going on for long but even in that short time has been decidedly rocky. It’s like falling for a woman who is a bloody good shag, but otherwise a pain in the arse, and you just can’t make up your mind what to do: to ditch or not to ditch, that is the question. That observation, however true, might offend some, so my apologies in advance to all new men and male feminists who feel it is beyond the pale and that I should be ashamed of myself for making it.
Several years ago, I bought an iPad. I rated and still rate them, but I didn’t need it. What could I do on the iPad what I couldn’t do on a laptop and iPod combined? (That is a rhetorical question, so no emails, please.) So I sold it again, and as my timing was, as usual, quite atrocious, I sold it just as the iPad 2 came out and sent prices for second-hand iPads tumbling. But that was it for a while. I managed, quite successfully, to live without a tablet. And even sitting here now, concentrating, I really can’t remember why I bought a 8in Ployer Momo8 IPS.
Somehow, of course, the seed had germinated. I know that because I spent some time ‘researching’ Android tablets (Android being more or less the only viable alternative to Apple.) I settled on the Momo8 because - well, I can’t really tell you why. It is one of what seems to be several thousands Chinese iPad clones, none of which is as good as the iPad, but some of which, on paper at least, are better than others and all share the virtue of being a damn sight cheaper than an iPad (and then some). So I ordered one and a leather case to stick it in from a site called Ebellking and waited for it to arrive. And waited and waited.
Finally, after a week or two, I emailed the company asking whether or not it had been sent off. They said, no it hadn’t, because they were having trouble getting hold of a case to send me. That struck me as odd, but I gave them the benefit of doubt and emailed back saying to send the tablet anyway and either to send the case when they found one or two forget about it completely and refund the money for it. Then I came across a website ‘reviewing’ Ebelking, and it didnt’ make happy reading. So I decided to play it safe and as I had paid for the tablet and case through PayPal, I asked for a refund, pointing out reasonably enough that as nothing had yet been sent, the matter should be simple: just refund my money. And they did.
By now, of course, the bug was well and truly in my blood and I ordered the Ployer Momo8 from another site, iPadalternative. It, too, was based in China. Within days I received a cheery email informing me that my tablet had been dispatched. A day or two after that I decided I wanted to track the progress of the tablet from East to West and asked iPadalternative to give me a tracking number. Ah, they said, we can’t do that because we haven’t actually sent it yet. So I said they had 12 hours to dispatch the bloody thing and send me a tracking number or I would ask PayPal to refund my money. Twelve hourse wasn’t long enough, they said (although they didn’t explain why) so they would simply refund my money. And they did. So I wasn’t actually out-of-pocket, but I didn’t have a bloody tablet either.
To make matters worse, my brother had bought himself a Google Nexus 7 and just couldn’t stop himself from showing it to me and demonstrating just what a fabulous gadget it was.
The third Chinese website I used to get my Momo8 was Chinistore. And to be fair, they were as good as gold. I bought one online on Nov 26 and it arrived in London a week later. And it was not a bad little tablet. The build quality wasn’t up to Apple standards (or for that matter Samsung standards) but it was nippy and did the biz.
Or rather it did half the biz: it came with (this might get a bit technical for the girls, so why don’t you take five and do your nails or something?) Jellybean aka Android 4.1. It is a great operating system, but not all the apps I wanted to use on it - especially BBC iPlayer - yet work on it. What was worse, though, was that the micro USB port (not yet, girls, I’ll give you a shout) packed up rather suddenly. It worked a treat and then it didn’t. I suspect that I had somehow - somehow - damaged it by putting in the USB cable the wrong way around before realising my mistake, but to be honest I was not aware ever of using force, and I rather think the port was just a tad too flimsy. I took a look at it and it seem to have been pushed back a bit. Confirmation, if confirmation were ever needed, of the wisdom passed down from parent to child through the ages then promptly ignored that ‘cheap means cheap means cheap’.
I could, of course, have lived with it, but I didn’t want to live with it. And as I decided the 8in was just a little too small, I sold it again on eBay (and didn’t take too much of a hit as it happens.) So then the hunt was on to replace it and scrutinising Chinistore’s site, eliminating this and that tablet - and believe me there are almost 100 different brands - I hit upon the 9.7in ‘Cube 19UT’, not least because it still uses Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich). I use the same OS on both my Ascends and know that it will work the BBC’s iPlayer. I paid up, received my tracking number, and it arrived last Monday afternoon.
It looked OK coming out of its box, if again the workmanship was not quite up to pristine Apple and Samsung standards. But, dear reader, it was fucking hopeless. The wifi was quite simply bloody awful. If I was able to connect to the router - if! - and if I was able to keep the connection for more than two minutes - if! - the speed of transmission was slower than the worst bloody dial-up connection you have ever had the misfortune to use.
I googled the problem and found an American site which pointed me to a ‘firmware update’ (almost there, girls, promise) on the Cube website. I followed it but found the site was all in Chinese. Needless to say (though I’ll say it anyway as does everyone else who uses that utterly pointless phrase) I didn’t have a fucking clue as to what was what. I mean, you can’t even guess. I like to think that had the site been in French or Italian or, at a pinch Spanish, I might have had a sporting chance of sussing out what was what and downloading the ‘firmware upgrade’. But it was in Chinese. I clicked this and I clicked that, but all I could do was open new windows taking me to either sites selling online games or sites selling online soft porn.
Enough was enough. First, I emailed Chinistore and told them about the problem. They were very understanding - why wouldn’t they be as they now had £150 of my money - and emailed back a link to the same Cube website were I should be able to download the firmware upgrade to make the bloody thing work. But not an hour later I had had enough. I asked myself why, after paying 150 good, honest British pounds, I was doing all the pfaffing about trying to get a tablet to work as it should when it should have worked as it should straight out of the bloody box. And I decided I shouldn’t be doing the pfaffing around. So I applied to PayPal for yet another refund (they must surely by now have filed me under ‘fucking loser, why doesn’t he give up?’).
Chinistore were offended by this (though I understand it ain’t that difficult to offend and East Asian) and said I should have given them more time to sort out the problem. To which I replied they weren’t doing anything to sort out the problem I was. The one slight irritation is that I shall have to fork out between £30 and £55 to ship the bloody thing back to Shenzen before I get my refund, and I also run the risk that some bloody-minded herbert in Chinistore will decide the tablet didnt’ come out in the condition in which it was sent and try to refund less. But what the hell.
There is, however, dear reader, even more to this saga of ‘tablet or no tablet, does the guy have no shame?’
. . .
You see, in the meantime I got my regular emailed newsletter from Lidl (the German chain like Aldi which sells German food and other goods in Britain and elsewhere) that one of its ‘specials’ last week would be a 7in Versus Touchpad for just £79.99. Ooh, I thought, ooh, and bought one. Examining it, I realised that an iPad it wasn’t and would have a long way to go before even using the same toilet as an iPad, but notwithstanding several - OK, many - drawbacks, it was at least useful.
But then came my downfall. I had googled the tablet for further info and come across several sites selling it for between £109 and £129. Why, I asked myself, the stout little capitalist which slumbers in every man’s heart coming alive, why didn’t I buy up another three and sell them on eBay? If I charged £10 for ‘p&p’ and £99 for the tablet I could make a tidy profit of more than £60.
I hoovered up the three last Versus Touchpads for sale in North Cornwall - literally - I was in Launceston and wanted three, but the only had one, which I bought and they phoned through to Bodmin where they still had another two, so I drove down Bodmin and bought those. I then listed them on a three-day auction eBay. And had no takers at all. Finally, I panicked at reduced the price to £79 and sold two. I relisted the last and that auction is due to end at just after 5pm tomorrow. The way it looks, I shall not make £79. Moral: Don’t Get Clever. And if the stout little capitalist slumbering in your heart does wake up, slip him a Mickey Finn.
. . .
Now the postscript: I have been using the first Versus I bought and, after a fashion, it works. To say euphemistically that ‘it’s not the best’ is an insult to euphemisms. It works OK if you make sure that only one app is running at any given time. But it has a tendency to go off at a tangent and ignore you, the user, completely. If it were a person, one could even describe it as ‘other worldly’. It somehow drifts off, does its own thing - and you have no idea what it is doing - before it rejoins your company and then carries on as though nothing had happened. It is, in short, a deeply bloody irritating tablet. And that is why, dear reader, I have bought yet another, a brand-new Samsung Tab with wifi and 3G.
The price is quite low and even though the listing claims it is new in a sealed box, I don’t know. At the price I bought it? Once I have it - and have survived the inevitable spat with my wife about why I I keep buying such electrical trinkets when we need the money to feed and clothe the children who are runnng around in rags and are starving (women do go on so, I keep telling her to look at the bigger picture) - I shall kiss the Versus goodbye and sell it, and I don’t care for how little.
There is just one last lingering concern: once I had bought the Samsung - brand-new in sealed box - and paid through PayPal, I checked my PayPal account. And I found that payment had been made to a ‘Ricky Ching’. Hmmm.
One final point: between us in our household we have (I won’t say ‘own’ as one is from work) six laptops, four of which are ‘official’, that is my wife knows about them. Sounds bad, doesn’t it? But look at it this way: we are living in the 21st century and if it were not for spendthrift fuckwits like me, the electronics industry would be on its knees, thousands would be out of work and, no doubt, the country would grind to a halt. It’s always useful to put things in perspective.
Friday 14 December 2012
Saturday 24 November 2012
A father writes (though not this one), and parents the world over might understand
It is by no means the world-stopping story of the month and most certainly few people living outside Britain will have heard about it and even fewer living outside Britain, but it is worth mentioning here, not least because it might ring a chord with parents throughout the world.
It concerns a retired Royal Navy submarine commander, Nick Crews, who lost patience with his three children and told them a few home truths. And having written that, I can already sense that some readers might already be jumping to conclusions: reactionary old buffer goes ballistic because he is out of touch with modern life. But it was nothing of the kind. Crews has three children, two daughters and a son, and feels all that, given the start they had in life, all three failed to make anything of themselves. But again what I have just written might well give the wrong impression.
Crews didn’t rant and rave at them, but, by his own admission, bit his lip and told himself that it was not for him to interfere. He says his own father had been rather remote and that from the start he had decided to - in his own words - be a friend to his children and not be as remote. Each went to boarding school - not necessarily the advantage it is made out to be by many here in Britain but it cannot be denied that it does give many an additional step up in life - and given his career in the Navy, it is reasonable to assume the they didn’t want for anything while growing up. What did for Crews was the misery he saw his children put there mother through: they would ring her up and moan, moan, moan about their lives and their lot in life. One day he snapped and sent all three an email in which he finally spoke his mind (you can read it below). It didn’t go down well.
All three had been married and divorced, one daughter had remarried and the son was about to marry again. All three had been to university, but professionally had not achieved much. But Crews stresses that it was not their lack of success in life which got to him, but how - as he points out in his email - they would dump all their woes on their mother, who was getting more and more unhappy. All three were upset to get the email, but then home truths do usually upset us, and so far Crews is only reconciled with one, his eldest daughter, who now admits she feels he has a point.
In follow-up pieces in the media, I came across this by Crews which I feel resonates far beyond the matter in hand and sums up rather neatly - at least for me - much of the ethos of the western world. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph columnist Christine Odone (which you can find here) Crews describes ‘contemporary society’ as offering ‘a cancerous cocktail where on the one hand everyone is supposed to be free to do whatever they wish, but on the other we all expect protection from the consequences of our actions’. Anyone who reads this blog regularly will not be surprised that I agree completely with that description.
OK, so Nick Crews is a Brit, a reasonably prosperous middle-class chap from a certain background - he went to Sherbourne - but I am sure parents, from whatever ‘class’ and from other backgrounds, throughout the world might understand his frustration and disappointment.
The text of his email:
Dear All Three
With last evening’s crop of whinges and tidings of more rotten news for which you seem to treat your mother like a cess-pit, I feel it is time to come off my perch.
It is obvious that none of you has the faintest notion of the bitter disappointment each of you has in your own way dished out to us. We are seeing the miserable death throes of the fourth of your collective marriages at the same time we see the advent of a fifth.
We are constantly regaled with chapter and verse of the happy, successful lives of the families of our friends and relatives and being asked of news of our own children and grandchildren. I wonder if you realise how we feel — we have nothing to say which reflects any credit on you or us. We don’t ask for your sympathy or understanding — Mum and I have been used to taking our own misfortunes on the chin, and making our own effort to bash our little paths through life without being a burden to others. Having done our best — probably misguidedly — to provide for our children, we naturally hoped to see them in turn take up their own banners and provide happy and stable homes for their own children.
Fulfilling careers based on your educations would have helped — but as yet none of you is what I would confidently term properly self-supporting. Which of you, with or without a spouse, can support your families, finance your home and provide a pension for your old age? Each of you is well able to earn a comfortable living and provide for your children, yet each of you has contrived to avoid even moderate achievement. Far from your children being able to rely on your provision, they are faced with needing to survive their introduction to life with you as parents.
So we witness the introduction to this life of six beautiful children — soon to be seven — none of whose parents have had the maturity and sound judgment to make a reasonable fist at making essential threshold decisions. None of these decisions were made with any pretence to ask for our advice.
In each case we have been expected to acquiesce with mostly hasty, but always in our view, badly judged decisions. None of you has done yourself, or given to us, the basic courtesy to ask us what we think while there was still time finally to think things through. The predictable result has been a decade of deep unhappiness over the fates of our grandchildren. If it wasn’t for them, Mum and I would not be too concerned, as each of you consciously, and with eyes wide open, crashes from one cock-up to the next. It makes us weak that so many of these events are copulation-driven, and then helplessly to see these lovely little people being so woefully let down by you, their parents.
I can now tell you that I for one, and I sense Mum feels the same, have had enough of being forced to live through the never-ending bad dream of our children’s underachievement and domestic ineptitudes. I want to hear no more from any of you until, if you feel inclined, you have a success or an achievement or a REALISTIC plan for the support and happiness of your children to tell me about. I don’t want to see your mother burdened any more with your miserable woes — it’s not as if any of the advice she strives to give you has ever been listened to with good grace — far less acted upon. So I ask you to spare her further unhappiness. If you think I have been unfair in what I have said, by all means try to persuade me to change my mind. But you won’t do it by simply whingeing and saying you don’t like it. You’ll have to come up with meaty reasons to demolish my points and build a case for yourself. If that isn’t possible, or you simply can’t be bothered, then I rest my case.
I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed.
Dad.
I have no idea about any of those, around 30 a day these days, who read this blog (except three). I don’t know whether you are a man or a woman, young, middle-aged or old, what your ‘background’ is and whether or not you have children. But I’m pretty certain that those of you who do have children will feel for Crews. Of course it would be easy to make him out to be some kind of snob who feels his children are letting him down in the eyes of his friends - his son works for a taxi service and one daughter works in a ship chandler’s.
But, rightly or wrongly, that’s not the impression I get. One thing almost all of those who, like Crews, have gone to sea, is a lack of airs and graces. The sea is a great leveller. Crews is not being snobbish, he is speaking from the heart.
It concerns a retired Royal Navy submarine commander, Nick Crews, who lost patience with his three children and told them a few home truths. And having written that, I can already sense that some readers might already be jumping to conclusions: reactionary old buffer goes ballistic because he is out of touch with modern life. But it was nothing of the kind. Crews has three children, two daughters and a son, and feels all that, given the start they had in life, all three failed to make anything of themselves. But again what I have just written might well give the wrong impression.
Crews didn’t rant and rave at them, but, by his own admission, bit his lip and told himself that it was not for him to interfere. He says his own father had been rather remote and that from the start he had decided to - in his own words - be a friend to his children and not be as remote. Each went to boarding school - not necessarily the advantage it is made out to be by many here in Britain but it cannot be denied that it does give many an additional step up in life - and given his career in the Navy, it is reasonable to assume the they didn’t want for anything while growing up. What did for Crews was the misery he saw his children put there mother through: they would ring her up and moan, moan, moan about their lives and their lot in life. One day he snapped and sent all three an email in which he finally spoke his mind (you can read it below). It didn’t go down well.
All three had been married and divorced, one daughter had remarried and the son was about to marry again. All three had been to university, but professionally had not achieved much. But Crews stresses that it was not their lack of success in life which got to him, but how - as he points out in his email - they would dump all their woes on their mother, who was getting more and more unhappy. All three were upset to get the email, but then home truths do usually upset us, and so far Crews is only reconciled with one, his eldest daughter, who now admits she feels he has a point.
In follow-up pieces in the media, I came across this by Crews which I feel resonates far beyond the matter in hand and sums up rather neatly - at least for me - much of the ethos of the western world. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph columnist Christine Odone (which you can find here) Crews describes ‘contemporary society’ as offering ‘a cancerous cocktail where on the one hand everyone is supposed to be free to do whatever they wish, but on the other we all expect protection from the consequences of our actions’. Anyone who reads this blog regularly will not be surprised that I agree completely with that description.
OK, so Nick Crews is a Brit, a reasonably prosperous middle-class chap from a certain background - he went to Sherbourne - but I am sure parents, from whatever ‘class’ and from other backgrounds, throughout the world might understand his frustration and disappointment.
The text of his email:
Dear All Three
With last evening’s crop of whinges and tidings of more rotten news for which you seem to treat your mother like a cess-pit, I feel it is time to come off my perch.
It is obvious that none of you has the faintest notion of the bitter disappointment each of you has in your own way dished out to us. We are seeing the miserable death throes of the fourth of your collective marriages at the same time we see the advent of a fifth.
We are constantly regaled with chapter and verse of the happy, successful lives of the families of our friends and relatives and being asked of news of our own children and grandchildren. I wonder if you realise how we feel — we have nothing to say which reflects any credit on you or us. We don’t ask for your sympathy or understanding — Mum and I have been used to taking our own misfortunes on the chin, and making our own effort to bash our little paths through life without being a burden to others. Having done our best — probably misguidedly — to provide for our children, we naturally hoped to see them in turn take up their own banners and provide happy and stable homes for their own children.
Fulfilling careers based on your educations would have helped — but as yet none of you is what I would confidently term properly self-supporting. Which of you, with or without a spouse, can support your families, finance your home and provide a pension for your old age? Each of you is well able to earn a comfortable living and provide for your children, yet each of you has contrived to avoid even moderate achievement. Far from your children being able to rely on your provision, they are faced with needing to survive their introduction to life with you as parents.
So we witness the introduction to this life of six beautiful children — soon to be seven — none of whose parents have had the maturity and sound judgment to make a reasonable fist at making essential threshold decisions. None of these decisions were made with any pretence to ask for our advice.
In each case we have been expected to acquiesce with mostly hasty, but always in our view, badly judged decisions. None of you has done yourself, or given to us, the basic courtesy to ask us what we think while there was still time finally to think things through. The predictable result has been a decade of deep unhappiness over the fates of our grandchildren. If it wasn’t for them, Mum and I would not be too concerned, as each of you consciously, and with eyes wide open, crashes from one cock-up to the next. It makes us weak that so many of these events are copulation-driven, and then helplessly to see these lovely little people being so woefully let down by you, their parents.
I can now tell you that I for one, and I sense Mum feels the same, have had enough of being forced to live through the never-ending bad dream of our children’s underachievement and domestic ineptitudes. I want to hear no more from any of you until, if you feel inclined, you have a success or an achievement or a REALISTIC plan for the support and happiness of your children to tell me about. I don’t want to see your mother burdened any more with your miserable woes — it’s not as if any of the advice she strives to give you has ever been listened to with good grace — far less acted upon. So I ask you to spare her further unhappiness. If you think I have been unfair in what I have said, by all means try to persuade me to change my mind. But you won’t do it by simply whingeing and saying you don’t like it. You’ll have to come up with meaty reasons to demolish my points and build a case for yourself. If that isn’t possible, or you simply can’t be bothered, then I rest my case.
I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed.
Dad.
I have no idea about any of those, around 30 a day these days, who read this blog (except three). I don’t know whether you are a man or a woman, young, middle-aged or old, what your ‘background’ is and whether or not you have children. But I’m pretty certain that those of you who do have children will feel for Crews. Of course it would be easy to make him out to be some kind of snob who feels his children are letting him down in the eyes of his friends - his son works for a taxi service and one daughter works in a ship chandler’s.
But, rightly or wrongly, that’s not the impression I get. One thing almost all of those who, like Crews, have gone to sea, is a lack of airs and graces. The sea is a great leveller. Crews is not being snobbish, he is speaking from the heart.
Saturday 10 November 2012
Let’s hear it for the Fourth Estate or why Kim, Kourtney, Jen, Em and Jess are keeping democracy alive. Then there’s the rekindling of a love affair: me and Don
Here are some spiffing items of news you might well have missed over these past few days. But be reassured that throughout the Western world dedicated man and women are beavering away around-the-clock as I write to make sure you are always up-to-date. So did you know that Jennifer Garner has a bit of trouble carrying her child and a rather heavy handbag? Bet you didn’t. Well, there’s another reason to read this ’ere blog.
Here are some further items which it is essential you should know if you are planning on meeting a friend for coffee or considering having your hair done: Kourtney Kardashian takes her son shopping to Hamleys in London; her sister Kim - remember her? - wears a jumpsuit in rather chilly weather; Pippa Middleton - remember her? - has the same hat and dimple as Cheryl Cole and a rather similar dress; Helen Flanagan - no, I don’t have a clue who she is, either - vows to eat anything during he stint in an Australian ‘jungle’ for a TV show; Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez might have split up! Lordy, can it really be so? Rihanna wears a flame-coloured jacket on a night out; Van Diesel takes his daughter to the beach; Rose McGowan - no, I don’t have a clue who she is, either - decides to wear rather warmer clothes as the weather in Los Angeles gets a tad nippy; Jessica Alba goes shopping in patterned trousers; Miranda Kerr and Alessandra Ambrosio relax (separately, apparently); Emma Roberts - no, I don’t have a clue who she is, either - buys three iced coffees; Ashton Kutcher holds open a door for Mila Junis.
To put all that vital stuff into some kind of perspective, since the beginning of the year 21 journos have been killed in Syria, 12 in Somalia, five in Pakistan, three in Brazil, and one each in Thailand, India, Nigeria, Lebanon, Ecuador, Phillipines, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Cambodia and Indonesia. That’s 52 altogether, all of them, one hears, rushing around getting the latest lowdown on the Kardishian sisters, Ms Garner, Ms Kerr, Ms Ambrosio and the rest of them.
You thought only fuckwits in the West can’t breathe without knowing how many iced coffees Ms Roberts likes buying. Well, think again: in 2012, 52 hacks and hackettes gave their lives trying to find out and bring you the latest ASAP. Or not, as the case may be.
LATER UPDATE: Anyone really anxious to hear the latest about the Kardashians, you can find out what happened when Kim and Kourteney went shopping in London.
. . .
I was planning to write a piece on how we, almost inevitably, fall out of love, whether it’s girlfriends, boyfriends, gobstoppers, sherbet lemons or, in this case, our former music heroes. The hero in question was to be Donald Fagen, who has just released his fourth solo album, Sunken Condos. He might be better known to many as the other part of Steely Dan, and they were - are I suppose - one of my fave bands. The trouble was that after his first solo album, The Nightfly, which he released in 1910, his next two didn’t really set my loins alight. Each - Kamakariad and Morph The Cat - had one or two good tracks, but the rest . . .
Then, a few weeks ago, I was in touch with a friend who asked whether I had heard Fagen’s most recent solo album. Well, dear reader, I didn’t even know he had realeased on. So I bought it and had Amazon deliver it and listened to it. And I was exceptionally underwhelmed. Many pieces of music take a while to grow on you, but I didn’t even think that was going to be the case. It seemed to me that Fagen was almost parodying himself, what with those ‘sophisticated’ (I think that’s the word they use) chord changes and cynical lyrics. In fact, I happened to go for a drink with the friend who mentioned the new release and I said as much.
Well, last night, for some reason, I decided to listen again. And I am glad to report that this particular story has a happy ending. I now think it’s rather good, better, in fact, than solo albums two and three.
On the lines of falling out of love, though, I must admit that where Prince was also once a big favourite of mine, he does, of late, seem to have lost the plot. Once he was original and interesting. Now he just seems to settle for interminable funk workouts. Now, I happen to like those, but if it’s funk workouts you want, it has to be said you are spoiled for choice.
Here are some further items which it is essential you should know if you are planning on meeting a friend for coffee or considering having your hair done: Kourtney Kardashian takes her son shopping to Hamleys in London; her sister Kim - remember her? - wears a jumpsuit in rather chilly weather; Pippa Middleton - remember her? - has the same hat and dimple as Cheryl Cole and a rather similar dress; Helen Flanagan - no, I don’t have a clue who she is, either - vows to eat anything during he stint in an Australian ‘jungle’ for a TV show; Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez might have split up! Lordy, can it really be so? Rihanna wears a flame-coloured jacket on a night out; Van Diesel takes his daughter to the beach; Rose McGowan - no, I don’t have a clue who she is, either - decides to wear rather warmer clothes as the weather in Los Angeles gets a tad nippy; Jessica Alba goes shopping in patterned trousers; Miranda Kerr and Alessandra Ambrosio relax (separately, apparently); Emma Roberts - no, I don’t have a clue who she is, either - buys three iced coffees; Ashton Kutcher holds open a door for Mila Junis.
To put all that vital stuff into some kind of perspective, since the beginning of the year 21 journos have been killed in Syria, 12 in Somalia, five in Pakistan, three in Brazil, and one each in Thailand, India, Nigeria, Lebanon, Ecuador, Phillipines, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Cambodia and Indonesia. That’s 52 altogether, all of them, one hears, rushing around getting the latest lowdown on the Kardishian sisters, Ms Garner, Ms Kerr, Ms Ambrosio and the rest of them.
You thought only fuckwits in the West can’t breathe without knowing how many iced coffees Ms Roberts likes buying. Well, think again: in 2012, 52 hacks and hackettes gave their lives trying to find out and bring you the latest ASAP. Or not, as the case may be.
LATER UPDATE: Anyone really anxious to hear the latest about the Kardashians, you can find out what happened when Kim and Kourteney went shopping in London.
. . .
I was planning to write a piece on how we, almost inevitably, fall out of love, whether it’s girlfriends, boyfriends, gobstoppers, sherbet lemons or, in this case, our former music heroes. The hero in question was to be Donald Fagen, who has just released his fourth solo album, Sunken Condos. He might be better known to many as the other part of Steely Dan, and they were - are I suppose - one of my fave bands. The trouble was that after his first solo album, The Nightfly, which he released in 1910, his next two didn’t really set my loins alight. Each - Kamakariad and Morph The Cat - had one or two good tracks, but the rest . . .
Then, a few weeks ago, I was in touch with a friend who asked whether I had heard Fagen’s most recent solo album. Well, dear reader, I didn’t even know he had realeased on. So I bought it and had Amazon deliver it and listened to it. And I was exceptionally underwhelmed. Many pieces of music take a while to grow on you, but I didn’t even think that was going to be the case. It seemed to me that Fagen was almost parodying himself, what with those ‘sophisticated’ (I think that’s the word they use) chord changes and cynical lyrics. In fact, I happened to go for a drink with the friend who mentioned the new release and I said as much.
Well, last night, for some reason, I decided to listen again. And I am glad to report that this particular story has a happy ending. I now think it’s rather good, better, in fact, than solo albums two and three.
On the lines of falling out of love, though, I must admit that where Prince was also once a big favourite of mine, he does, of late, seem to have lost the plot. Once he was original and interesting. Now he just seems to settle for interminable funk workouts. Now, I happen to like those, but if it’s funk workouts you want, it has to be said you are spoiled for choice.
Saturday 27 October 2012
Four pieces of music you might enjoy (and absolutey nothing about the bloody euro, the EU or anything of that ilk)
It’s odd when you hear a piece of music and, although you have never heard it before, you seem to know it, it seems to be far more familiar than is at all possible. To put it another way, if you were able to compose and perform music in the the same idiom, this would be it. If I can go out on a limb and risk some of the more cynical among you who might happen to be reading this thinking me as the pretentious pillock you always suspected I was, I would say that the music ‘speaks to me’. It’s uncannily as though it were my music.
I have had that sensation several times over the past years, and it happened again a while ago with a piano sonata by Scarlatti (Domenico - there seems to be a whole tribe of them, his dad, his granddad, his brother, two uncles, a chap down the road, old Guiseppe who used to run the bar and compose in his spare time, loads of them, but the one I am referring to his Domenico). The piece is K466 in F minor. I was idly listening to Radio 3 one Saturday morning (and having just written that, I’m beginning to wonder whether one really can ‘idly’ listen to the radio, but there you go) and it was played by some Japanese pianist or other. And it was as though I had known the piece all my life. I ‘understood’ it immediately. It was as though I had composed it. It seemed to describe me and what I felt.
Then there is the music of David Fuiczynski. Same story. I first heard his playing when I bought my first (or second, I can’t remember) MP3 player and with it came a voucher for 20 free downloads. I opted for some jazz guitar and Mr Fiuczynski was one of those playing. And it has to be said that the piece he played was utterly atypical of the the work I later came to know. But on the strength of that one track, I looked him up and, on spec, bought an album called Amandala and exactly the same thing happened: if I were a good guitarists that was exactly the kind of music I would like to create. (As far as I am concerned, Fiuczynski’s music is indefinable - not jazz, not rock, simply itself.)
Most recently it has happened with a composer called Kenneth Leighton. I really can’t remember where I was or how I came to hear it, but I heard a piece by him on Radio 3 and I was hooked. So far I have bought his second and third symphonies.
Similarly, but not quite, is a piece by jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans called Young And Foolish. There is something about it which goes right deep inside me and then towards the end seems to touch a part of me which I feel no one had ever seen for the simple reason that I have tried not to let anyone see it. Sounds like a load of wank, I know, but what the hell.
Here are four pieces, one by each of the above. First up is the piano sonata K466 in F minor by Scarlatti. If it doesn’t sound too daft, I should like this piece played at my funeral.
Then there is a piece by David Fiuczynski. Given his varied output, all I can do is simply choose one of the many pieces by him I have on iTunes, and one of the main reasons I choose this is rather banal: it’s not too long and a good-quality Quick Time movie of it would not be too big to upload.
Here is the fifth movement of the Symphony No 2 by Kenneth Leighton. There is just something about this music I - ahem - adore. Sorry, for that, but that’s how I feel. And it shouldn’t be Sarah Cox, but Sarah Fox. I didn’t realise until a few seconds ago while listening to the piece once it was here on the blog and it’s too bloody late to do anything about it. Well, actually, it’s not too late - I could go back to the original iMovie movie, correct it, re-save the Quick Time movie, upload it again and get it all square but, dear reader, I at this point I really can’t be fucking arsed (and if there are any virgins reading this, make that bloody arsed. Can’t upset people, can I?) So an apology to Sarah Fox will have to do, though I doubt she will ever find her way here. But if you do, Sarah, sorry.
Finally, here is the piece by jazz pianist Bill Evans called Young And Foolish. UPDATE - Feb17, 2013: No it’s not, it’s called Peace Piece. Sorry about that. My mistake. It is also posted on You Tube and some punter called Geoff Rowe put me right. Oh well, lose some, lose some. It is quite simply beautiful, though not exactly in the way you might originally think. I would also like this piece played at my funeral. When I hear it, I feel someone is looking into my soul, especially the discordant bits towards the end. Thing is, that’s me and everyone else who was once young and foolish. More wank, I’m afraid, but there you go.
I trust you like some, perhaps even all of them. If you are interested in other videos, you can find them here.Oh, and as I have gone out on a limb in this entry and laid myself wide open to ridicule in some of my descriptions, I might as well add that apart from the Scarlatti sonata and the Bill Evans track a third piece I should like played at my funeral is Mozart’s Symphony no 41, and if time is a little short and the undertakers are getting restless to get me down under sooner rather than later so they can bugger off and get home before dark, I should at least like that symphony’s last movement played.
I have had that sensation several times over the past years, and it happened again a while ago with a piano sonata by Scarlatti (Domenico - there seems to be a whole tribe of them, his dad, his granddad, his brother, two uncles, a chap down the road, old Guiseppe who used to run the bar and compose in his spare time, loads of them, but the one I am referring to his Domenico). The piece is K466 in F minor. I was idly listening to Radio 3 one Saturday morning (and having just written that, I’m beginning to wonder whether one really can ‘idly’ listen to the radio, but there you go) and it was played by some Japanese pianist or other. And it was as though I had known the piece all my life. I ‘understood’ it immediately. It was as though I had composed it. It seemed to describe me and what I felt.
Then there is the music of David Fuiczynski. Same story. I first heard his playing when I bought my first (or second, I can’t remember) MP3 player and with it came a voucher for 20 free downloads. I opted for some jazz guitar and Mr Fiuczynski was one of those playing. And it has to be said that the piece he played was utterly atypical of the the work I later came to know. But on the strength of that one track, I looked him up and, on spec, bought an album called Amandala and exactly the same thing happened: if I were a good guitarists that was exactly the kind of music I would like to create. (As far as I am concerned, Fiuczynski’s music is indefinable - not jazz, not rock, simply itself.)
Most recently it has happened with a composer called Kenneth Leighton. I really can’t remember where I was or how I came to hear it, but I heard a piece by him on Radio 3 and I was hooked. So far I have bought his second and third symphonies.
Similarly, but not quite, is a piece by jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans called Young And Foolish. There is something about it which goes right deep inside me and then towards the end seems to touch a part of me which I feel no one had ever seen for the simple reason that I have tried not to let anyone see it. Sounds like a load of wank, I know, but what the hell.
Here are four pieces, one by each of the above. First up is the piano sonata K466 in F minor by Scarlatti. If it doesn’t sound too daft, I should like this piece played at my funeral.
Then there is a piece by David Fiuczynski. Given his varied output, all I can do is simply choose one of the many pieces by him I have on iTunes, and one of the main reasons I choose this is rather banal: it’s not too long and a good-quality Quick Time movie of it would not be too big to upload.
Here is the fifth movement of the Symphony No 2 by Kenneth Leighton. There is just something about this music I - ahem - adore. Sorry, for that, but that’s how I feel. And it shouldn’t be Sarah Cox, but Sarah Fox. I didn’t realise until a few seconds ago while listening to the piece once it was here on the blog and it’s too bloody late to do anything about it. Well, actually, it’s not too late - I could go back to the original iMovie movie, correct it, re-save the Quick Time movie, upload it again and get it all square but, dear reader, I at this point I really can’t be fucking arsed (and if there are any virgins reading this, make that bloody arsed. Can’t upset people, can I?) So an apology to Sarah Fox will have to do, though I doubt she will ever find her way here. But if you do, Sarah, sorry.
Finally, here is the piece by jazz pianist Bill Evans called Young And Foolish. UPDATE - Feb17, 2013: No it’s not, it’s called Peace Piece. Sorry about that. My mistake. It is also posted on You Tube and some punter called Geoff Rowe put me right. Oh well, lose some, lose some. It is quite simply beautiful, though not exactly in the way you might originally think. I would also like this piece played at my funeral. When I hear it, I feel someone is looking into my soul, especially the discordant bits towards the end. Thing is, that’s me and everyone else who was once young and foolish. More wank, I’m afraid, but there you go.
I trust you like some, perhaps even all of them. If you are interested in other videos, you can find them here.Oh, and as I have gone out on a limb in this entry and laid myself wide open to ridicule in some of my descriptions, I might as well add that apart from the Scarlatti sonata and the Bill Evans track a third piece I should like played at my funeral is Mozart’s Symphony no 41, and if time is a little short and the undertakers are getting restless to get me down under sooner rather than later so they can bugger off and get home before dark, I should at least like that symphony’s last movement played.
Thursday 25 October 2012
In which, for no very good reason I can make out, I go to bed without supper...
Well, an interesting 24 hours which at the point of writing - 8.45pm - is soon to culminate with me going to bed with no supper. Not that I have done anything wrong, it’s just that I am married to a rather odd woman who insists on doing things her way however daft, not to say utterly and bafflingly incomprehensible, her way might be.
Finished my Wednesday shift at 6pm as usual last night, but instead of taking myself off down the M3, then the A303 as usual, with my usual stop-off in South Petherton in Somerset or Sticklepath on the edge of Darmoor for a pint or two of cider and a cigar, I headed out to a little village a few miles north of High Wycombe to visit the widow of an old friend of my father’s.
When my stepmother had her stroke five-and-a-half years ago, Susan, by then already widowed for a few years, took on my stepmther’s two dogs, two springer spaniels called Daisy and Puffin. Daisy was already a grande dame and died not long afterwards, but Puffin was in her prime and proved to be excellent company for Susan. Sadly, Puffin had to be put down a month or two ago because of bad health (I think it was cancer) and when I heard, I rang Susan and gathered (although she never said a word) that she was feeling very bereft and lonely.
So I decided to visit her and take her out for a meal, a deed made far, far easier and extremely pleasant to boot in that Susan is very good company and, although by now over 80, still very girlish and young in the way that some folk miraculously remain young in spirit and thus give the impression of being far younger than they really are. Susan lives in a cottage which was once two semi-detached cottages, and walking into the house is like stepping back into the Fifties, with books and papers and a variety of pictures and paintings everywhere. Before she retired she taught art and is still active.
Rather than drive home after supper, I slept at Susan’s and took off down here to Cornwall in the morning, dropping in on my mother’s grave at the cemetery at Lower Assendon near where we once lived on the way home. At the end of last week, I took a picture of my two children, then printed it out at work and got Ron (at work about whom I could write several thousand words) to laminate it. I left this with a pot plant at my mother’s grave. I have not been there for several years, but I think I am the only one of my family to visit it. Perhaps my sister does when she is here in Britain, but I know neither of my two brothers do. In fact, I would be surprised if they knew where it is. I left the picture of my two children because between us all, my mother, were she still alive would have six grandchildren but died before any of them was born. And she was the kind of woman who would just loved to have been a grandmother and spoilt her grandchildren rotten (as is, of course, exactly as it should be).
After that I headed off west through Reading, but taking the A34 south to Newbury to join the A303 (such details making essential reading for all the nerds who do me the honour of reading the crap I write), took a wrong turning and found myself heading south for Southampton, although far. This is where I made a mistake: rather than retrace my tracks and rejoin the A303 I ‘got clever’ (a perpetual flaw of mine, and despite long ago realising the certain dangers of ‘getting clever’, I still fall for it.)
In this case I decided that, courtesy of my satnav, I would just keep ‘heading west’ and ignore its instructions. The upshot was that I criss-crossed most of west Hampshire and east wiltshire, getting nowhere closer to Cornwall than had I been exploring the Gobi desert. That
meant that a journey which should have taken me just over four hours took seven, although one of those hours was taken up with stopping off at the Taw River Inn in Sticklepath for a pint of cider (at just £1.90 - fuckwits in London and especially the Scarsdale Tavern take note) and a couple of bags of cheese and onion crisps. Oh, and to oogle Shona, who is not in the slightest bit pretty and a tad dumpy to boot, but who I could give one just like that. Furthermore, I get a slight impression she wouldn’t mind being given one). Then it was on homewards.
Here my daughter has buggered off to some school function, my son went off to football and my wife announced she ‘wasn’t hungry’. And nothing had been prepared. But I am hungry. I drove off up to The Old Inn, but that has been taken over from the two woofters who used to run it (and used to have a reasonably decent pub food restaurant) by someone who likes to attract the punter with ‘all you can eat and then some’ offers, which is not really my kind of thing (although he gains a brownie point or two for having reinstated the pool table which the woofters had got rid of to make way for more restaurant tables). I came back home and toyed with the idea of an Indian in Wadebridge, then a visit to the Blisland Inn (in Blisland - now there’s a surprise), but finally can’t get enthused about much. I finally decided to settle in, finish off the bag of Kettles salt ’n cracked pepper crisps (how is ‘cracked pepper’ different to ‘pepper’ I wonder?) feel sorry for myself that I shall be going to bed hungry. But don’t worry, we Scorpios have long memories and my wife really hasn’t heard the last of this.
Enjoy your supper.
Finished my Wednesday shift at 6pm as usual last night, but instead of taking myself off down the M3, then the A303 as usual, with my usual stop-off in South Petherton in Somerset or Sticklepath on the edge of Darmoor for a pint or two of cider and a cigar, I headed out to a little village a few miles north of High Wycombe to visit the widow of an old friend of my father’s.
When my stepmother had her stroke five-and-a-half years ago, Susan, by then already widowed for a few years, took on my stepmther’s two dogs, two springer spaniels called Daisy and Puffin. Daisy was already a grande dame and died not long afterwards, but Puffin was in her prime and proved to be excellent company for Susan. Sadly, Puffin had to be put down a month or two ago because of bad health (I think it was cancer) and when I heard, I rang Susan and gathered (although she never said a word) that she was feeling very bereft and lonely.
So I decided to visit her and take her out for a meal, a deed made far, far easier and extremely pleasant to boot in that Susan is very good company and, although by now over 80, still very girlish and young in the way that some folk miraculously remain young in spirit and thus give the impression of being far younger than they really are. Susan lives in a cottage which was once two semi-detached cottages, and walking into the house is like stepping back into the Fifties, with books and papers and a variety of pictures and paintings everywhere. Before she retired she taught art and is still active.
Rather than drive home after supper, I slept at Susan’s and took off down here to Cornwall in the morning, dropping in on my mother’s grave at the cemetery at Lower Assendon near where we once lived on the way home. At the end of last week, I took a picture of my two children, then printed it out at work and got Ron (at work about whom I could write several thousand words) to laminate it. I left this with a pot plant at my mother’s grave. I have not been there for several years, but I think I am the only one of my family to visit it. Perhaps my sister does when she is here in Britain, but I know neither of my two brothers do. In fact, I would be surprised if they knew where it is. I left the picture of my two children because between us all, my mother, were she still alive would have six grandchildren but died before any of them was born. And she was the kind of woman who would just loved to have been a grandmother and spoilt her grandchildren rotten (as is, of course, exactly as it should be).
After that I headed off west through Reading, but taking the A34 south to Newbury to join the A303 (such details making essential reading for all the nerds who do me the honour of reading the crap I write), took a wrong turning and found myself heading south for Southampton, although far. This is where I made a mistake: rather than retrace my tracks and rejoin the A303 I ‘got clever’ (a perpetual flaw of mine, and despite long ago realising the certain dangers of ‘getting clever’, I still fall for it.)
In this case I decided that, courtesy of my satnav, I would just keep ‘heading west’ and ignore its instructions. The upshot was that I criss-crossed most of west Hampshire and east wiltshire, getting nowhere closer to Cornwall than had I been exploring the Gobi desert. That
Here my daughter has buggered off to some school function, my son went off to football and my wife announced she ‘wasn’t hungry’. And nothing had been prepared. But I am hungry. I drove off up to The Old Inn, but that has been taken over from the two woofters who used to run it (and used to have a reasonably decent pub food restaurant) by someone who likes to attract the punter with ‘all you can eat and then some’ offers, which is not really my kind of thing (although he gains a brownie point or two for having reinstated the pool table which the woofters had got rid of to make way for more restaurant tables). I came back home and toyed with the idea of an Indian in Wadebridge, then a visit to the Blisland Inn (in Blisland - now there’s a surprise), but finally can’t get enthused about much. I finally decided to settle in, finish off the bag of Kettles salt ’n cracked pepper crisps (how is ‘cracked pepper’ different to ‘pepper’ I wonder?) feel sorry for myself that I shall be going to bed hungry. But don’t worry, we Scorpios have long memories and my wife really hasn’t heard the last of this.
Enjoy your supper.
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