A homage to loading screens.
Or, fun with compressed air
Life has many simple pleasures.
One of my favourites at the moment: cleaning keyboards. Take one can of compressed air, hold can and keyboard at arms’ length, push the nozzle, and be amazed as a huge cloud of dust* is blown before you. FSSSST. FSSSST. It’s great fun, it really is.
* and biscuit crumbs, if it’s mine.
In which things are expanding
As it was a nice weekend, I went off for a random amble around the neighbouring county, half just for fun, and half with an eye to shopping, to get a nice outfit for the next time I go out. And so, I found myself in a little independent clothing store near Cleckheaton,* the sort which still has a large part of the shop taken up by a big dressmakers’ workbench for alterations, repairs, customisation, and that sort of thing. That’s one of the good things about indie shops: they will often be happy to do that sort of thing for you, if they have skilled staff.
Anyway, I’ve been a bit suspicious of my waistline lately, so I asked the resident dressmaker if I could borrow her tape measure. Quickly, I slipped it around myself.
That can’t be right.
I am starting from the zero-mark, aren’t I?
I can’t have put a whole FOUR INCHES on since the last time I measured myself???
Breathing in, I shuffled the tape around a bit, trying to convince myself that I must be measuring in the wrong place. Even at the narrowest point, though, I was two inches above what I thought my measurements were. I didn’t realise I was getting that flabby.
* Well, it wasn’t quite near there, but Cleckheaton’s a nice name so I’m saying it was.
In which we wonder if things should be more regular
The other day, I wrote a post that essentially said: “today was a Thursday, but it felt like a Friday“. The next day – when it was still the top post on the page – Gordon replied: “hang on, it is Friday!”
I know it’s hardly a serious thing, but it set me thinking: should I try to stick to a more rigid posting schedule? After all, it’s convenient for the readers if I’m nice and predictable: posts coming up at the same time every day, not just maybe one a day, at some point. The Plain People Of The Internet,* the theory goes, are used to, say, predictable telly scheduling,** and would like predictable blog scheduling too.***
As it is, the blog is updated when I can think of something. Usually, this means late at night, which (in turn) means that, say, a Thursday entry doesn’t get read until Friday. Sometimes, though, it means lunchtime. Occasionally, I post something early in the morning: this means I have been Organised, and drafted something properly. Most of the time – like now – I write whatever’s on top of my head, and press post straight away. Should I be a bit more organised about it?
* apologies to the late Myles na gCopaleen, whose column in the Irish Times was often visited by the argumentative Plain People Of Ireland.
** Presumably apart from the ones who watch BBC 2.
*** I think I originally read this in something by Nielsen, but I can’t find the quote right now.
In which we watch the Tenth one
I hate to say it, but I’m still not convinced.
I’ve been a David Tennant fan ever since Takin’ Over The Asylum, one of his very first telly jobs. I was, therefore, expecting to love Doctor Who with him in it. But, I have to say, I’m still not convinced.
His moods are all very good; but they flip very very quickly. In one second he’s his usual playful self; in the next he’s invoking divine retribution, or rather, Docterly retribution. The quick-change makes him feel rather too capricious, although there is the occasional reminder that when the Doctor is being playful he’s still alert, and paying attention.
I’m going to keep watching, of course. For one thing, I want to know if he’ll ever start using his natural Scottish accent.
In which it’s the weekend already
I like bank holidays and long weekends. I especially like pairs of bank holidays, and extra-long weekends. Today really felt like a Friday at the office, particularly as The Secretary* was handing out buttered hot cross buns (albeit cold).
Getting home, The Mother had been baking ready for breakfast tomorrow, so the house smelled of warm cinnamon. Hot cross buns for breakfast: the one thing Christianity really has going for it.
* no, she is nothing like the film
In which we wonder about the motives behind sacrifice
As it’s Good Friday, good Christians everywhere should be eating fish and following the Stations Of The Cross. I’m not any sort of Christian, good or bad, but even so it’s a good day to think about self-sacrifice for The Cause, whatever that happens to be.
Of course, whether that’s what Jesus did is a moot point. It’s debatable whether the crucifixion even happened; even if you believe it did, was it more an act of self-sacrifice or self-promotion? An awful lot of Jesus’s acts in Scripture have an air of deliberate planning about them. The prophets had said: the Messiah will go out and do X; therefore, Jesus went ahead and did those things. He was like some modern evangelicals and millenarians, deliberately trying to push history into a sudden new phase by carrying out others’ prophecy.
So, self-sacrifice, self-advancement or self-promotion? You could ask the same question about Malcolm Kendall-Smith, dismissed from the RAF and sent to prison yesterday after he declared that as he thought the Iraq was illegal, he would not fight in it. The judges at his court-martial, however, ruled that by the time he received his orders the legality or otherwise of the original invasion was irrelevant.*
Kendall-Smith has sacrificed himself, and his career – he said himself that the RAF was one of the great loves of his life. The judge, however, accused him of being more interested in self-promotion: of trying to make himself into a martyr for the cause. I’m not in a position to judge this myself: my own best guess is that he wasn’t, but he should have realised that that accusation would be made. Whichever is closer to the truth, it’s a strangely apt story to appear in the headlines on Good Friday.
* The Guardian article suggests in one paragraph that the judge ruled that members of the services aren’t allowed to dispute something’s legality: if the government says something is legal, those orders must be followed. However, that wasn’t something that the ruling itself relied on.
In which we talk about poverty, diet, and the deep-fried pizza
I often don’t agree with the writing of Julie Bindel, the left-wing feminist who apparently believes that everyone should have full control over their own body, unless they were born male, or want to prostitute themselves. Today, though, I thought she was along the right lines when she wrote about diet and classism: it’s easy to criticise poor people for being unhealthy, when they don’t have the time or the money to eat well.*
She falls down, though, by jumping on something that’s a common Scottish stereotype. The Deep-Fried Mars Bar.
Having lived in Scotland, I can assure you that hardly anybody actually eats these things. They do exist, usually in about one chip shop per city. I’ve had one myself, from Pasquale’s in Edinburgh.** I’ve had one. That’s my point – nearly everybody who has had one, has only had one, just to try.
Everyone in England thinks the Scots survive on the things, but hardly anyone down here has heard of something that’s almost unhealthy, but far more common. The deep-fried pizza. Hard, greasy, fat-soaked, they sound just as horrible but they do exist. They’re real. People eat them regularly. People live on them. People get fat on them; they’re more than just part of a national stereotype.
* And this isn’t a new problem, of course: the British government originally brought in compulsary school PE lessons because they were worried about the poor health of Army recruits. That was during the Boer War.
** I’m not sure if Pasquale’s is still there – it was on Clerk St, near the old Odeon, and opposite the greengrocer’s that’s now a vintage clothing shop.
In which tastes keep changing (again)
When Belle and Sebastian released their last album, a couple of months back, I wrote that clearly I’m not a *true* fan any more, because I didn’t buy it until the second day of release.
Well, it took me an entire week to realise that they’d released another single. By today, when I finally bought “The Blues Are Still Blue”, it was already in the charts.
Of course, I still had to buy it, on lovely blue vinyl. Apart from being a sad geek, it’s one of my favourite songs on the album, with a particularly glam feel to it. The sleeve is blue, of course, but it’s a warm, dusky, beautiful shade. All round, it’s a great piece of work.
In which tastes seem to be changing in a worrying direction
Because without it, I’d still be laid on the sofa with blocked sinuses and an awful headache.
Yesterday, whilst I was in that state, I was listening with my Dad to Radio 2,* to Arthur Smith‘s comedy clip series The Smith Lectures. And, during the show, he played Ford Kiernan‘s cover of the Coldplay song “Yellow”, done in a swing style.**
I was laid there listening to this, this annoying ballad redone as a nice cheerful piece of easy-listening swing, and I couldn’t help thinking: this is actually rather good. Certainly compared to the original: it has verve,*** it has wit, and it doesn’t have Chris Martin’s horrible whining all over it. But it’s swing. It’s Easy Listening! Am I getting old?
* it was his choice, I’d like to add, not mine.
** according to The Internet, it was released on his charity album Swing When You’re Mingin’.
*** but not The Verve, of course
Or, I may have caught something
Bleurgh. Cold. All blocked up. Runny nose. No appetite. Can’t stop sneezing.
Don’t think I’ve been near any seabirds lately, though…
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