New Things

Number 5

Problem: Mucky iron soleplate leading to ironing clothes feeling like Russian Roulette.

Solution: Clean it.

Ingredients: Special stick from ebay, improvised probes + half a bottle of wine.

Event: 1 hr tedium balanced by irritatingly thin French wine and unbearably tense snooker quarter final.

Result: Clean iron with scrubbed steam holes (excuse my language). No longer need to buy 2 of every piece of clothing. Risk of injury clearly increased as the bottle of wine progressed.

Assessment: Pass with reservation: never again. Buy new iron next time.

Good News?

Why do I get the feeling that the only good news that I might get from BBC3 involves the cancellation of Russell Howard?

 

And his crappy TV series. 

Slo-mo

When did we dump the term Action Replay?

 

When did transmission policy dump the little R in the corner of the screen?

 

Playback is incorporated in the language of the event nowadays. I'd try to force an analogy to life, but it would be a squeeze. I'd be pinching the pocket, bending in it off the bar and would likely end up going down in the box.

New things

Number 4
Task: Replace naughty iPod battery
Method: Various cyber instructions, ebay battery and tools
Time - 1 hour - (in expert hands 5 minutes!)
Trickiness - Tricky opening it in the first place
Assessment - Good pass.

Life in the tickbox

Yesterday I had my annual appraisal.

To say that my appraiser did not appreciate my career choices thus far would be a massive understatement.
She redefined dismissive disdain.
Which, when she's holding something over me, is at the very least mildly irritating.

The two glorious hours are best summed when she told me about two thirds of the way through the exercise - "You don't have to change the world, you know!".
There were many things I could have said at this point.
But I said nothing.

No, I thought.
I don't have to.

New things

Number 3
Event: Live snooker
Execution: Visiting the World Snooker finals in Sheffield to watch Graeme Dott and Ali Carter miss as many balls as they can.
Verdict: Loved the earpiece commentary. Long frames, so nearly dropped off. Great venue. Seeing a tense final or a Higgins/O'Sullivan game would be a doozee.
Why I shouldn't be allowed in: Clapping stupidly after every point
Assessment: Pass with merit

Going out on top

It takes a lot for a news story nowadays to take your breath. But I lost an intake tonight at the death of Elisabeth Sladen.

It is too incomprehensible in a woman who barely aged in 30 years and returned from the wilderness to her own series and unfettered acclaim to the children of her home country (including my brother's kids).
And with not so much as minimal warning in Heat magazine.

I have never thought it is best to go out on top. It is usually too cowardly. Unless it is forced on you.

Don't tell the marathon runners who run mainly for personal challenge (and because they like running) rather than a huge love of the Alzheimer's Society or the latest gene defect of the week.
But cancer does not bow to positive affect and happy success.

It may wave occasionally before flipping the bird. But it doesn't bow. Unless it feels like it.
Or unless it is misdiagnosed by a useless pathologist or an equally useless radiologist. They prefer the term 'cure' to put to their mistakes. It is so much cheaper.

I can't rationalise it because I don't get it.
But it takes someone with the articulateness of Steven Moffat to say something like,
"When people say you shouldn't meet your heroes, they weren't referring to Liz Sladen"

Carry On

Life is about baggage.

It's a 2-crude term for experience and texture.
Some have carry-on only and some are heavy Samsonite.

(This reminds me of the only decent line of Schwarzeneggar's movie Eraser - "You're luggage!". He'd just killed an alligator. Or as they call them in the US - gators - giving him the sort of treatment that would presumably need Gator-aid).

So as you mature you will acquire more baggage.
But worse, you may even inherit, or choose to adopt, someone else's baggage.
And that may not be your bag.

So as you wander through life making yourself nice to have around, think it over.
And maybe take a tip from a journeyman....

Travel light.

New Things

Number 2
Prep: Desire a plasma globe for 20 years
Fallout: Mental damage from not having a plasma globe for 20 years
Solution: Buy plasma globe today
Results: I own a plasma globe and can now control the entire street with my brainwaves alone as well as getting it to dance along in time with my Chris De Burgh renditions.
Assessment: Belated pass.

The Great John Williams

New Things

Number 1:
Removing my car radio and fitting an AUX cable.
Prep - 2 hours on the internet getting tips, parts from ebay price £10.
Fallout - one minor electric shock; a couple of abrasions; taking 2 hours to do a 10 minute job.
Secret: A bit of improv to get the job done.
Results - Can now listen to Adam and Joe podcasts in the car.
Assessment - Pass.

Here I Go Again

It's a funny thing.
I find myself occasionally putting pen to paper over the years.
Most of the scribbles are on scraps of paper that become hills of paper.
And while anyone can express opinion, who cares?
Particularly in the blogosphere, who cares?
There is a danger here of course:
Vanity.
Surely it can't just be that. Vanity?
As Al Pacino said in the final line of Keanu Reeves's second greatest film: "Vanity - my favourite sin."
I hope that it isn't any of these things but I have to say one thing...........
If I'm putting something together ...I do like titles.

Titles come quick.

I spent 15 minutes writing yesterday's blog but when it came to publishing I needed a title.
I have found myself at this point a number of times in the past few years and the juncture never exceeds 3 seconds.
It's something of a disappointment because I really love thinking of titles.
But I suppose that, in some cases at least, 3 seconds of pleasure has sustained entire marriages.

I suppose that sometimes there is a beauty in the instant obviousness of what appears out of necessity.
I hope so.
So for one night only, let me explain.

Enemy Mine was a movie.

And for reasons I can't articulate it made a huge impact on me in the 80s.
And it made more of a hero of Louis Gossett Jr for me than did An Officer and a Gentleman.

You couldn't see his face.
His black face.
It was covered in green scales demonstrating the greatest beauty of science fiction.
Of Equality.
Fraternity.
And equivalence for all.
(In all of entertainment, this is surely done definitively in television rather than movies but nevertheless ...)

I think I need to watch it again.

I hope it is half as good as I remember.

Because I just caught a whiff of Back To The Future 2 and that was a pile of ......
(character numbers exceeded)

Enemy Mine

There is a possibility that I may have freed up a bit of time.
Quitting two full-time jobs in the last 18 months and putting aside a part-time job or two should have led me to this Nirvana.
But instead of breathing in and hearing the beating wings of a butterfly, I've inherited violence.
And it is directed at a singular entity.

It is directed at a heartless canvas.

It is directed at a calendar concertina - an expanse of opportunity suppressed by a squeezebox of happenstance.
It sits to my left.
And (because I've never got on with diaries), it is my 2011 year planner. A set of boxes. Boxes of delights.
But I eye its boxes with malevolent energy.

I treat this otherwise sub £1-01 item with a disdain I would otherwise reserve for Jeremy Kyle, Russell Brand, Adolf Hitler or Michael McIntyre. Although its crimes are less severe.

Perhaps if it was coloured with a daisy sunset yellow rather than a haemoglobin red I might feel more charitable.
Nevertheless.
An empty canvas is a thing to be destroyed. Or at the very least, replaced, subverted.
Ask any Van Gogh.
Attacked.
Like a 14-year-old paintballer.
Like an Amazon gift wrapper.
Like Rambo.
Too much?
Well sorry, I ain't apologisin'.

It's an overgrown piece of A4 that deserves to be assassinated like that frigid Army Private whose image became every shooter's paper practice target. Have you never heard of tearing up the place?

And why Rambo? Because of the great line in his final movie:
"You got guns?"
"(No)"
" You're not changing anything"
Grunting. Macco. Bravado?
No.
Just a brilliant line of drama lost in an action film.

Treat your diary like a weary soldier squares off with his enemies.
And let me know how you get on.

Flighty Pigeons

I am resolving to have a few new firsts from now on.
I was going to set the target at one a day but I'm not looking to kill myself so I think one per week would be perfectly adequate.
The minor hurdles that I have jumped today would barely qualify even by my own watered-down rules.
But for one thing.
I got my first bird at my bird table today.
He was a chubby fellow.
Or she.
But she munched on my windblown mealworms that had fallen to ground and then, as I willed and egged her on, she presented herself to my table.
I watched hoping that she would realise that the glass (uPVC) separating her from my vantage point would prevent me from being any threat.

I hoped she would nibble on my lardy cake.
She was a fat bird.
I suspect she had eaten at the table of many other men.
I can live with that. I understand enough about the harshness of life to let that pass. But after she had pecked at another of the under-hydrated mealworms, she was off and away. I thought perhaps to gather more friends to the bounty that she had unearthed. But no.
It is two hours later and, although in a weakened state, I would like to believe that this still may be true. But as I say, I understand the harshness of life.
I shall continue to lay out my bounty.

Maybe in time it will be her taste of paradise.

Or maybe he was a bloke after all.