Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Monday, November 28, 2005
The whole thing went over my head...
I forgot to say that the momentous meeting with Jane Asher was preceded by the National Home Improvement Council annual awards. No, really, this is the kind of thing I go to for a living. I shouldn't really knock it too much as we obviously have an awards ceremony ourselves that to the external* observer is pretty absurd, but even I had to wince at some of these.
Best Value in Window Replacement
Gas Safety in the Home
and my personal favourite, Roofing Excellence
The only saving grace was the misprint in the brochure that went with it. Look at it this way, if it really had been an award for the the Best Value in Widow Replacement, the afternoon would've been much more entertaining.
*And the internal too, there's no point denying it
Best Value in Window Replacement
Gas Safety in the Home
and my personal favourite, Roofing Excellence
The only saving grace was the misprint in the brochure that went with it. Look at it this way, if it really had been an award for the the Best Value in Widow Replacement, the afternoon would've been much more entertaining.
*And the internal too, there's no point denying it
Brimful of Asher
A new showroom opening last Thursday down near Waterloo saw the presence of cake and Crossroads legend Jane Asher. As desperate as I was to ask her about Alfie, Paul McCartney, the Maharishi and the fact that some of the Beatles' best love songs were written about her, she was unfortunately more interested in talking about her kitchen. A case of Here, There and Betterware.
No, you're right, that didn't really work.
Anyway, she had, predictably, baked a cake especially for the occasion but I'm sorry to report that it was also a let down. Does anyone actually like fruit cake with marzipan? Hmm? Anyone? No, of course not. If you're doing a cake for an occasion involving the consumption by a group then you go with chocolate or a sponge, any cake-baking fool knows that. Shame on you Asher.
No, you're right, that didn't really work.
Anyway, she had, predictably, baked a cake especially for the occasion but I'm sorry to report that it was also a let down. Does anyone actually like fruit cake with marzipan? Hmm? Anyone? No, of course not. If you're doing a cake for an occasion involving the consumption by a group then you go with chocolate or a sponge, any cake-baking fool knows that. Shame on you Asher.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Travel chaos
I commute everyday to work - I am an official Imperial class London commuter. To get to Harrow from Beckenham, I get a mainline train from Beckenham Junction to Victoria, then a Victoria line tube one stop to Green Park, followed by the Jubilee line to Finchley Road, and then the Met line to Harrow-on-the-Hill.
Christ, even writing it makes me angry and exhausted.
I've been doing this so long now that I just put my head down and travel on autopilot, it's not unknown for me to carry on reading my book walking between platforms. This does cause the occasional stamped foot or elbowed face but, well, they'll get over it.
The worst part of the journey is not so much the number of trains and changes, but the number of people. I'm jammed in like a vaccuum sealed pack of hot dogs and don't actually sit down until I get on the Met at Finchley Road, about an hour after I get on at Beckenham.
A full train, especially the tube, usually means people moaning and complaining that they can't get on and one thing guaranteed to get commuters shaking their heads and tutting it's not getting on but being able to see through the windows that there's space inside between the seats.
This leads to a phenomenon I've classified as Annoyance Dependent Emphasis Shift, or ADES. This is, I believe, part of the small print in Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle* and goes something like this:
THE LEVEL OF IRRITATION IS PROPORTIONAL TO THE POSITION OF EMPHASIS
The standard test sentence for commuting, and it's very specific, is: "Can you move down please?"
So, for example, the first time it's uttered it will be "Can you move DOWN please?". This may perhaps be accompanied by a face at the glass, with a hand shielding the glare to really make it clear the non-movers have been rumbled.
This usually results in some embarrased shuffling within the carriage but little attempt at moving. Hence the move onto: "Can you MOVE down please". Knock on the window.
Then, perhaps unexpectedly, we shoot straight to "CAN you move DOWN please?" Even in their anger, their Englishness is still preventing them from singling out specific people.
Annoyance and anger then turn to exasperation and our final plea of "Can you move down PLEASE?" hits in. We've all been there son, we've all been then son.
*Probably written on the back, in pencil
Christ, even writing it makes me angry and exhausted.
I've been doing this so long now that I just put my head down and travel on autopilot, it's not unknown for me to carry on reading my book walking between platforms. This does cause the occasional stamped foot or elbowed face but, well, they'll get over it.
The worst part of the journey is not so much the number of trains and changes, but the number of people. I'm jammed in like a vaccuum sealed pack of hot dogs and don't actually sit down until I get on the Met at Finchley Road, about an hour after I get on at Beckenham.
A full train, especially the tube, usually means people moaning and complaining that they can't get on and one thing guaranteed to get commuters shaking their heads and tutting it's not getting on but being able to see through the windows that there's space inside between the seats.
This leads to a phenomenon I've classified as Annoyance Dependent Emphasis Shift, or ADES. This is, I believe, part of the small print in Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle* and goes something like this:
THE LEVEL OF IRRITATION IS PROPORTIONAL TO THE POSITION OF EMPHASIS
The standard test sentence for commuting, and it's very specific, is: "Can you move down please?"
So, for example, the first time it's uttered it will be "Can you move DOWN please?". This may perhaps be accompanied by a face at the glass, with a hand shielding the glare to really make it clear the non-movers have been rumbled.
This usually results in some embarrased shuffling within the carriage but little attempt at moving. Hence the move onto: "Can you MOVE down please". Knock on the window.
Then, perhaps unexpectedly, we shoot straight to "CAN you move DOWN please?" Even in their anger, their Englishness is still preventing them from singling out specific people.
Annoyance and anger then turn to exasperation and our final plea of "Can you move down PLEASE?" hits in. We've all been there son, we've all been then son.
*Probably written on the back, in pencil
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Good head
Writing a good headline is a black art in any field of journalism. It has to pull the reader in, tell them enough to grab their interest but not enough to make them feel they don't need to read any of the story below it. It also has to not be shit.
It's one of those parts of a newspaper or magazine that everyone thinks is very clever when they see a good one, but believes they could've come up with something better when they read something poor. What they don't realise of course is that not only do they have to come up with the witty pun, they have to come up with a witty pun that fits exactly into space on the page. It also has to not be shit.
I bring this up because there's been some great examples floating round lately of how to, and how not to, do it. Commuter's cobbled together rag The Metro, for example, is particularly good at being exceptionally bad. I can only think that they must write the page one lead the afternoon of the previous day as nine times out of ten it usually has nothing to do with whatever the actual main story of the morning is.
This morning's main headline, for example, was the dodgy "Partying their way to mouth cancer". Which is not only confusing, misleading and uninformative, it's also broken rule number one of not remembering to not be shit. It's a story about high levels of alcohol and smoking being a major cause of the painful sounding mouth cancer, the trouble is though that this headline makes it sounds really, really fun. Yesterday's was the even worse "Teachers target pencil sharpeners". With what? Guns? Bow and arrow? Elastic band on the end of the thumb?* They also tortured the entire population of London's train system with the excrutiating "Owls it feel to be my best friend?". A dog has befriended a baby owl you see. Jesus.
The Harrow Observer is a classic local paper, on the other hand, and passing its offices on the way to work means I always see the hand written** posters that the street vendors use. This week it's the fantastic "Latest on stabbed vicar". Now that's a local paper headline. Firstly, it's the 'latest' on the unfortunate clergyman, which makes you want to know what the previous story was, then we know someone's been stabbed, always gruesome and therefore brilliant stuff, and finally, who's been stabbed? A man? A woman? No, a vicar. Perfect.
Headline of the week though? In The Sun following the England victory over Argentina the sublime "Senor not singing any more". They thought of that and then came up with the story didn't they?
The worst crime a sub can commit though is to refuse to let an idea go and try and crowbar and squeeze it into the space they've got by tweaking it. Trouble is, tweaking tends to cause trouble. This is what leads to the classic headlines "Man found dead in graveyard", "Police comb Shepherd's Bush" and "Stadium fire: Manager grilled". My favourite though is the local paper story of a business man stranded overseas during the Xmas holidays thanks to a baggage handlers' strike, therefore missing his child's first festive season. The headline? "Man stuck in Turkey for Christmas".
*Or 'lazzie band', see previous entry
**Actually printed using a font that looks like handwriting, therefore making the art of printing come a rather pointless full circle
It's one of those parts of a newspaper or magazine that everyone thinks is very clever when they see a good one, but believes they could've come up with something better when they read something poor. What they don't realise of course is that not only do they have to come up with the witty pun, they have to come up with a witty pun that fits exactly into space on the page. It also has to not be shit.
I bring this up because there's been some great examples floating round lately of how to, and how not to, do it. Commuter's cobbled together rag The Metro, for example, is particularly good at being exceptionally bad. I can only think that they must write the page one lead the afternoon of the previous day as nine times out of ten it usually has nothing to do with whatever the actual main story of the morning is.
This morning's main headline, for example, was the dodgy "Partying their way to mouth cancer". Which is not only confusing, misleading and uninformative, it's also broken rule number one of not remembering to not be shit. It's a story about high levels of alcohol and smoking being a major cause of the painful sounding mouth cancer, the trouble is though that this headline makes it sounds really, really fun. Yesterday's was the even worse "Teachers target pencil sharpeners". With what? Guns? Bow and arrow? Elastic band on the end of the thumb?* They also tortured the entire population of London's train system with the excrutiating "Owls it feel to be my best friend?". A dog has befriended a baby owl you see. Jesus.
The Harrow Observer is a classic local paper, on the other hand, and passing its offices on the way to work means I always see the hand written** posters that the street vendors use. This week it's the fantastic "Latest on stabbed vicar". Now that's a local paper headline. Firstly, it's the 'latest' on the unfortunate clergyman, which makes you want to know what the previous story was, then we know someone's been stabbed, always gruesome and therefore brilliant stuff, and finally, who's been stabbed? A man? A woman? No, a vicar. Perfect.
Headline of the week though? In The Sun following the England victory over Argentina the sublime "Senor not singing any more". They thought of that and then came up with the story didn't they?
The worst crime a sub can commit though is to refuse to let an idea go and try and crowbar and squeeze it into the space they've got by tweaking it. Trouble is, tweaking tends to cause trouble. This is what leads to the classic headlines "Man found dead in graveyard", "Police comb Shepherd's Bush" and "Stadium fire: Manager grilled". My favourite though is the local paper story of a business man stranded overseas during the Xmas holidays thanks to a baggage handlers' strike, therefore missing his child's first festive season. The headline? "Man stuck in Turkey for Christmas".
*Or 'lazzie band', see previous entry
**Actually printed using a font that looks like handwriting, therefore making the art of printing come a rather pointless full circle
Friday, November 11, 2005
Christmas Omnipresents
When I graduated from the University in Birmingham* way, way back many centuries ago (1994 or so to be vaguely precise), I decided that now I had finished my education and avoided the dog shit illuminated by the single lampost in the rite of passage, I looked out towards the future with ambition and imagination.
Having spent some time looking out that way, I decided I couldn't be arsed doing anything about it so moved to Coventry instead.
It wasn't as much as a whim as it sounds, my bezzie** mate Al was at Cov University and I had spent a lot of time there. I hadn't really enjoyed the social life at Birmingham, I'm no working class hero but the vast majority of students there were from the kind of places that didn't require your house to have a number. Coventry, on the other hand, was full of smelly bastards with vague pretensions of a future in music and specific pretensions for drinking as much watery lager out of wobbly plastic pint pots as possible. My desire to not get a job and somehow elongate my elapsed time as a student led me to Coventry and a shared house with Al and three others.
But rather than being a utopia of student fun, long hair, and booze, the 12 months I spent there descended into a depressing malaise and once our lease was up I ran away, cut my hair, and got a job in a bank. Trust me, that made me the Spartacus of Earlsdon. This Midlands melancholy was amplified ten-fold by the fact that Coventry is more depressing than the statistician who discovered that Sweden is the suicide capital of Europe.
The reason for this ramble is that I found myself in Cov yesterday for, brace yourself, the "Kitchen and Bathroom Specialists Association Corporate Members Networking Forum". Suddenly living in Sweden seems quite cheery.
As I cabbed my way through towards the hotel, trying to keep my eyes shut and pretend I was in autumnal New England, I glimpsed a sign at the front of church. Now I'm a committed and practising aetheist as you know but even if I was wobbling in my conviction I don't think I'd be swayed by:
"I'm the only one who knows the real time and it's getting very late - God"
Now, let's assume for a moment that I believe there is a God***. Firstly it's not that much of a boast to say that he knows the time, surely he can afford a decent watch, what's interesting is that he knows the REAL time. This does go some way to explain God's omnipresence, presumably all he's done is make sure his earth-bound subjects are unknowingly working a couple of minutes behind him, that way he can get everywhere before they do. This supposed quote direct from God is also, I'm guessing, meant to inspire passing Coventarians to stop and enter the church for a quick pray, but all it seems to do is tell everyone that they should probably hurry up and get home sharpish. Even God wants to get out of Coventry as qickly as possible.
*There was a real thing at the time about how we should refer to the University we went to in Britain's second city. It was nothing short of heresy to describe it as "Birmingham University", no, no, no, it was "The University of Birmingham". The Metallurgy department (which I relunctantly attended) had special dispensation to call it Birmingham University for the single reason that "Birmingham University Metallurgists" spelt out BUM when printed on a sweatshirt.
**Scousers have an uncanny ability to abbreviate most words with the addition of a 'z' or 'o'. If you're as lazy as we are we can't even be arsed forming whole words. So, for example, "I'm off to visit my best friend in the hospital to give him his Christmas present" slack-jaws its way into "I'm off to see me bezzie mate in the hozzie to give him his chrizzie prezzie".
***Which I don't
Having spent some time looking out that way, I decided I couldn't be arsed doing anything about it so moved to Coventry instead.
It wasn't as much as a whim as it sounds, my bezzie** mate Al was at Cov University and I had spent a lot of time there. I hadn't really enjoyed the social life at Birmingham, I'm no working class hero but the vast majority of students there were from the kind of places that didn't require your house to have a number. Coventry, on the other hand, was full of smelly bastards with vague pretensions of a future in music and specific pretensions for drinking as much watery lager out of wobbly plastic pint pots as possible. My desire to not get a job and somehow elongate my elapsed time as a student led me to Coventry and a shared house with Al and three others.
But rather than being a utopia of student fun, long hair, and booze, the 12 months I spent there descended into a depressing malaise and once our lease was up I ran away, cut my hair, and got a job in a bank. Trust me, that made me the Spartacus of Earlsdon. This Midlands melancholy was amplified ten-fold by the fact that Coventry is more depressing than the statistician who discovered that Sweden is the suicide capital of Europe.
The reason for this ramble is that I found myself in Cov yesterday for, brace yourself, the "Kitchen and Bathroom Specialists Association Corporate Members Networking Forum". Suddenly living in Sweden seems quite cheery.
As I cabbed my way through towards the hotel, trying to keep my eyes shut and pretend I was in autumnal New England, I glimpsed a sign at the front of church. Now I'm a committed and practising aetheist as you know but even if I was wobbling in my conviction I don't think I'd be swayed by:
"I'm the only one who knows the real time and it's getting very late - God"
Now, let's assume for a moment that I believe there is a God***. Firstly it's not that much of a boast to say that he knows the time, surely he can afford a decent watch, what's interesting is that he knows the REAL time. This does go some way to explain God's omnipresence, presumably all he's done is make sure his earth-bound subjects are unknowingly working a couple of minutes behind him, that way he can get everywhere before they do. This supposed quote direct from God is also, I'm guessing, meant to inspire passing Coventarians to stop and enter the church for a quick pray, but all it seems to do is tell everyone that they should probably hurry up and get home sharpish. Even God wants to get out of Coventry as qickly as possible.
*There was a real thing at the time about how we should refer to the University we went to in Britain's second city. It was nothing short of heresy to describe it as "Birmingham University", no, no, no, it was "The University of Birmingham". The Metallurgy department (which I relunctantly attended) had special dispensation to call it Birmingham University for the single reason that "Birmingham University Metallurgists" spelt out BUM when printed on a sweatshirt.
**Scousers have an uncanny ability to abbreviate most words with the addition of a 'z' or 'o'. If you're as lazy as we are we can't even be arsed forming whole words. So, for example, "I'm off to visit my best friend in the hospital to give him his Christmas present" slack-jaws its way into "I'm off to see me bezzie mate in the hozzie to give him his chrizzie prezzie".
***Which I don't
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Gym'll fix it
Yes, I know, posting every four months is hardly a document of my uninteresting life but it's better than nothing. The alternative is me sitting here every day and typing "watched several episodes of the West Wing" over and over again. Still, I like the West Wing so don't get lippy.
Today is yet another of those first-days-of-the-rest-of-my-life days where I resolve to change myself. manage to do it for a few weeks, and then just go back to the West Wing. I joined the gym today, well, I joined last week but had my induction today. I went over at 1pm expecting a run through of the machines but instead Dean, my personal trainer for a grand total of 40 mins, insisted I actually did some excercise. Dean was a nice guy, but far too fit for his own good. It's a strange struggle for gyms, if the staff are really fit then it will make the vast majority of gym goers feel like leathery gelatinous blobs, but if you employ yoghurt-faced Milky Ways then the gym-goers will think your gym is shit.
I'm inducted though, I know how the machines work and how I don't. I even did some sit-up things on a big rubber ball, not only does it look like I'm diddling a space hopper, it also bloody hurt. No pain, no gain though - which I believe is Newton's sixth law.
Dean assured me that I'd burn off the wobbling mass of goo orbiting my belly and tit "in a month at the most" if I go to the gym three times a week. That's sounds promising, but then so does Extreme Makeover, the proof of the low-fat pudding is in the not eating.
Today is yet another of those first-days-of-the-rest-of-my-life days where I resolve to change myself. manage to do it for a few weeks, and then just go back to the West Wing. I joined the gym today, well, I joined last week but had my induction today. I went over at 1pm expecting a run through of the machines but instead Dean, my personal trainer for a grand total of 40 mins, insisted I actually did some excercise. Dean was a nice guy, but far too fit for his own good. It's a strange struggle for gyms, if the staff are really fit then it will make the vast majority of gym goers feel like leathery gelatinous blobs, but if you employ yoghurt-faced Milky Ways then the gym-goers will think your gym is shit.
I'm inducted though, I know how the machines work and how I don't. I even did some sit-up things on a big rubber ball, not only does it look like I'm diddling a space hopper, it also bloody hurt. No pain, no gain though - which I believe is Newton's sixth law.
Dean assured me that I'd burn off the wobbling mass of goo orbiting my belly and tit "in a month at the most" if I go to the gym three times a week. That's sounds promising, but then so does Extreme Makeover, the proof of the low-fat pudding is in the not eating.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)