The Gallery

 The Twenty-Fourth of April Two Thousand and Twelve. Tuesday.

Gahh. Not feeling very well today. Time to turn toward the small things that give me comfort: lists, categories and catalogues (as mentioned in this earlier blogette).

The next best thing to leafing through a vacuum cleaner leaflet was picking up a paint catalogue. The pleasing symmetry of all those little squares of colour on the page, each with their own oblique name (it was never red or blue, was it?). I've just had the boys' bedroom painted, finally, after the mushroom incursion, so this is at the forefront of my mind. I think it's time for another hot cordial, some paracetamol and touch of the old Left Bank Two.

Biscuit

This is available in Matt or Silk.

Blue Steel

One for the Zoolander fans there. This is the Quick Dry Gloss version.

Boudoir

This cheeky number is best as a Chalky Flat Matt.

Cardamom

 I once got a cardamom stuck in my throat - horrible things. But the paint is a very pleasant One Coat Gloss.

Devon Sun

Happy memories of Torquay there, rendered in Quick Dry Gloss.

Fondant

Paradoxically, this is comes in a Durable finish.

Hot Fudge

Rather brilliantly, Hot Fudge Gloss is Non Drip. Ah, would that were true outside the 2D world of emulsion. Careful now...

Unicorn

Fittingly, this is a One Coat Satin.

Wolf

Time to worry now. This is also a Chalky Flat Matt.

Enjoy.

More soonliest.

LDS

The Twenty-Third of April Two Thousand and Twelve. Monday.

I think my first memory of Leeds is as a boy trainspotter. Oh, I was fearless then. Expeditions to the far flung reaches of West Yorkshire and Merseyside. Apart from the thrill of seeing Inter City 125s in their natural environment (it was all electric in Manchester - although cabbing thyristor controlled loco 87 101 STEPHENSON (and yes, all capitals is important cos all the other 87s had lower case nameplates) at Piccadilly is not to be sniffed at) what I remember most of all is that I'd taken a Pot Noodle (plus ça change) and a flask of hot water but had to ask for a plastic fork from the buffet as I'd forgotten to bring one. It was curry flavour, since you ask.

York is the nearest city to Scarborough and is just under an hour away. Ideal for a post work pop to the comic shop or to see an indie film that won't be on in Scarborough for a bit. But for a proper three shop comic mooch it has to be Leeds.

I've been doing an online British Sign Language course - very handy for someone who works shifts. The tutorials and assessments have taken place over Skype. But the body responsible for the examinations changed the rules so that now you have to meet the tutor in person to be assessed. Since the tutor is based in Bognor Regis this is a bit tricky.

Nevertheless, a grand tour of England was arranged and the nearest the came to Scarborough was - you've guessed it - Leeds. The stage was set for a very pleasant day out.

I didn't want to take any time off work do I asked if I could go in the afternoon. No problem, but this did mean that I was up at 5 and pretty much going on nonstop until the evening. A positive side effect of this was that sleep deprivation, my old friend, worked its magic once again. My mind experienced a near-drunk state of consciousness that eliminated any of the nerves I had been feeling in the run-up.

It all went well - not sure when I get my results but the mood while chatting gave the necessary reassuring signals. In fact, it was pleasing to hold a conversation in (very basic!) sign for a few minutes. I learned the signs for 'Forbidden Planet' and let them know I was off on a hunt through the bargain boxes for 50p comics.

Comics are expensive. There's a huge debate going on right now about their future with the rise of digital throwing the role of bricks and mortar comic shops into question. There aren't that many shops in the UK and the USA has a few clusters in places like New York and Chicago but its size means they're spread pretty thin throughout the rest of the country. As a rule people - and, more importantly, kids - don't buy comics from newsagents any more - these specialist shops are the only outlets. That's why in Scarborough I enjoy buying the reprints you get in the Marvel Collectors' Editions and Clint from WHSmith - it's a bit of a flashback to the days when American style comics were readily available on the high street (that's pretty much the joy of rooting through the bargain boxes - reliving the searches for odd issues from my earliest comic shop visits).

So that's a typical day out in Leeds for me. I love the journey back - music in, reading comics and tucking into my own modest version of Orient Express dining. On this occasion it was a meal deal from Boots - sweet potato flatbread, snack-a-jacks and cream soda. I live like a king!

One last observation about Leeds. It takes about 2.5 hours by bus to reach Scarborough from there by the fabled Yorkshire Coastliner. This leads to queasy passengers, having travelled on their free passes but not realising how long it would take, coming into the railway station and asking how much it would be to go back on the train. Invariably, what little colour they have left in their cheeks drains away when they are told it's £24.90 - 20p more than they would have paid for a day return in Leeds (don't ask...). In fact, the last people I explained this to were deaf, testing my signing and neatly tying up this blog entry.

More soonliest.

It's Frothy, Man!

The Nineteenth of April Two Thousand and Twelve. Thursday.

Every day is just a spoke on the wheel of time. No, really. I've been struck by the similarities of blogging to the plight of Scheherazade, the heroine of 1001 Nights. Haven't read the book in its entirety (there's a sixteen volume version available on Kindle that was translated by Richard Burton. Not that one. Although I do like the thought of him convincing Jeff Wayne to do a musical version for lp release on the proviso that he be allowed to narrate it. Then years later recreate the role after his death in the form of a gigantic floating holographic head. Can't believe I didn't go to the live version of War of the Worlds to see that. They've retired the head now, replacing it with Liam Neeson. Liam Neeson? Why would you want to see the worst ever Jedi instead of a decapitated floating version of two of Elizabeth Taylor's husbands?) but famously it features a framing device where each of the stories within is related by a woman who is under threat of death by this Sultan. She's caught telling a story to a relative by the Sultan and what she cleverly does is stop when it gets interesting promising to finish it the next day. This she does over and over - a thousand times in fact - until eventually she has three children by the Sultan and he falls in love with her. Oh, and decides not to kill her. Ain't love grand.

But the thing about 1001 Nights I find interesting is the way that it is a story about stories. Tales are nested within one another. Some of the most famous, the stories about the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, are actually told after the fact by Sinbad. To recap: we're reading a story about Scheherazade telling a story telling a story about Sinbad telling a story about himself. Eat your heart out Inception. Anyway, I'm not under threat of death (not for this, at any rate) but this did start me thinking about the linky way of the blog. 


For example there is a beautiful orchestral piece, Шехерезада, written by the Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov based on the tales. Here's the beginning of it - there are four more sections on You Tube.

However, I can't think of the name 'Rimsky Korsakov' without thinking of the adverts for Cresta pop from the 70s. And so, in one fell swoop, we go from high culture to low and end up listening to a polar bear extolling the virtues of additive-rich fizz.

All well and good. But then my brain inevitably starts looping back on itself. Thinking of old adverts and 1001 it vaguely remembers the jingle for 1001 Dry Foam carpet cleaner. Not the famous slogan from the sixties, though. No, it took the great Frank Sidebottom's Frank's Favourite Ads #1 to introduce me to the astonishing claim that '1001 cleans a big, big carpet for less than half a crown'. So I try and find an advert featuring this claim, but all I find is this from a few years ago.

I have never seen this ad before, yet it features someone I went to college with (not the monkey). What does it all mean? Tales within tales...


And so the wheel continues to turn.


More soonliest.

Electrickery

The Eighteenth of April Two Thousand and Twelve. Wednesday.

Blimey, it's gone a bit cold again. We're on that strange cusp at the start of spring where it hasn't completely decided whether you should remove the unzippable inner lining of your anorak or not. For the record, mine came out but has now gone in again! Imagine if they were to do something that chaotic with daylight savings time. It would be bizarre, randomly gaining and losing an hour depending on whether it looked/felt as if summer had started or not.

I don't have gas (ho-ho, anybody who knows me knows I do...). That's why for the cold months of the year I use a phenomenal amount of electricity with the barely effective wall heaters that just about take the chill off the air but do little else (actually, the smaller bedrooms don't do too badly, but it's pretty much a non-starter in my trés moderne kitchen/lounge thing). In the 'summer' I use next to no power, but the rest of the time I might as well just heat the place up by burning a pile of fivers.

I'm on one of those prepayment meters. What it does have going for it is I can budget very clearly how much I spend in power (even if that amount is more than if I was on a contract). But I have to use a special space key to top it up (cue visual).

The one I inherited with my luxury flat has always been a bit wobbly. I always felt embarrassed when a nice person half my age in the local Sainsbury's convenience store would blow and wiggle my key when it wouldn't work in the pay point machine.

I've mostly been on top of my usage - there was some confusion when I first moved in and tried to get the meter changed. The whole place was plunged into darkness when the money ran out. The only other time I've had a power out was when I lent No1 son the keyring that had the smartkey on it and the telly went off in the middle of cBeebies. No2 son and I entertained ourselves in the lauderette until the key was returned. What a crazy day that was!

You know, every now and then it's nice to have a blog that's as boring and mundane as this one, isn't it? Isn't it? Ah. Ok.

So it's not very interesting, but it is topical. My smart key gave up the ghost yesterday and I anticipated more problems while the bloomin' thing was sorted out. Well, I rang up, spoke to a nice man and picked up a new key from a newsagent this very afternoon. Hmm, it's not much of a story when everything goes smoothly.

And that's what this blog is really about. It's a demonstration of the need for conflict in order for drama take place. Congratulations if you made it to the end of this - you are a better person for it.

More soonliest.

To Serve Man

The Seventeenth of April Two Thousand and Twelve. Tuesday.

Oh, man I'm going to have to clean my microwave. My porridge is beginning to taste like the vegetarian hot dogs I regularly zap therein. Why is cooking so hard?

Nacho kit, why have you forsaken me?

I'm going to have to learn to cook properly, aren't I? It always seems like a really hard thing to do. Thank goodness the best cooks are attractive women!

I've already detailed my failed romance with Katy Ashworth.

She caught me borrowing her boots, and then it was all downhill from there. Yeah, that's right. She's got unexpectedly large feet. Stop trying to point out the implausibility of my story. Nobody likes a smart alec.

So I got out the Yellow Pages (the book - I'm having nothing to do with Yell.com after they let me down with my last enquiry) and looked up attractive female cooks and got hold of the email of Rachel Khoo off of The Little Paris Kitchen.

We began to correspond and she kept sending me recipes to try out. This one sounded good: oeufs en cocottes.

I got into all sorts of a panic! I couldn't find my ramekins! I knew I'd seen them recently but for the life of me I couldn't find them. I started to lie to Rachel, saying I was making stuff when I was really just knocking back the pot noodles (pots noodle? (actually they're not pot noodles, they're Golden Wonder 'The Nation's Noodle' cos they're on offer at Tesco. They've gone up a bit now, but a couple of weeks ago it cost £1.10 for one and only £1.00 for two! How mad is that? (and here's a bonus: the last one I had had two sachets of mango chutney in it!))). There was no way I was going to be able to knock up Nids de Tartiflette! What was I thinking?

I did have a go at the oeufs en cocottes but somehow I ended up with egg in soup like Doctor Sanchez makes in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, my Sixteenth Telly Recommendation.

 'Here, let me cut up your pork pie...'

Anyway, I think she's cottoned on to my mendacity cos she doesn't respond to my emails anymore. And she's blocked me on Twitter. And then there's the restraining order...

But one of the things I do enjoy about British Cuisine is that we are spoiled with the largest selection of crisp flavours of anywhere in the world. Depending on my mood I can dine on a Prawn Cocktail crisp butty or a Roast Beef Monster Munch sandwich. Maybe I don't have to clean that microwave just yet.

More soonliest.

Next day bonus edit! In an example of the sort of synchronicity you get in these blogs the Radio Times posted a gallery of Rachel here. Bit disappointed about the lack of crisp butties.

The Arms of Morpheus

The Sixteenth of April Two Thousand and Twelve. Monday.

I need to get to bed. Sleeping used to be so easy - I was hoping they were going to introduce it at this year's Olympics. I could sleep for England (or I suppose it's Great Britain really, but that's not what people say, is it? You don't say 'I could eat pies for Great Britain', you say 'I could eat pies for England'. When making unsubstantiated boasts about achievements that are not normally recognised as sporting it's important to specify which of the Home Nations your would be representing if it does become an event. Obviously.) once upon a time, but now I'm lucky if I get all the way down into REM sleep. It doesn't help that I drink too much tea and pop in the evening. My loo is just next door to my bedroom, but it is always so cold I don't want to get out from under the covers and so end up staying awake for an hour or so working up the courage to make a dash for it. Oh for a more sensible attitude and a stronger bladder.

Unhelpfully, I can fall asleep with great ease during the day. A wedding isn't considered a success unless I have managed to fall asleep during the evening do. I have been invited to receptions and the like purely to fulfil this function. I manage to fall in and out of slumber during films, missing whole chunks of the plot whether I'm enjoying it or not. It doesn't matter if I'm at home or at the cinema either. I managed to drift off toward the end of The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists the other day even though I was enjoying it immensely. I had to ask No1 son to fill me in on the gaps in my knowledge, which he managed to do admirably despite No2 son distracting him while he was in full flow. I think I know what happened now, but at the very least I'm likely to get a lovely surprise the next time I see it when I discover which bits I missed.

I very rarely remember my dreams. The last time I did was a week or two ago, and while I can remember remembering my dream I can't remember what it was about. That's not the point. The point is that when I do have a dream it feels like some form of spring cleaning is going on in my mind. I always feel a bit more refreshed if I've gone through some sort of nocturnal narrative in my slumbering hours, even if sometimes I can feel on edge if it's been a bit odd or distressing. I'd drink warm milk to get into that peaceful state of mind if it weren't for the fact that I think the effect it would have on my bladder would undo any good it might do me. A better diet would probably help too.

Ever since I've had children I've found it more difficult to have a lie-in too. And I love a lie-in. There's that unfortunate sensation now that when you get up in the morning you should stay up. There have been all-too-rare occasions when I have clambered back into bed and they have been blissful. But it's surprising how set against that sort of thing my mentality seems to be.

Ah, that's better. Just as I hoped. Talking about my night time problems has bored me sufficiently that I think I might be able to get to sleep now. Hmm, I do need to pop to the toilet first. Mind you, it is very cold. I don't think I'll throw back me covers yet. But I can't quite nod off until I've been. Cue another restless night...

More soonliest.

In Search of the Invisible Man

The Thirteenth of April Two Thousand and Twelve. Friday.

What's the real difference between a day off and an off day? I keep feeling the weight of the myriad things I have got to get done, both domestically and in the Grand Scheme of Things. This means that the little things, the tiny steps on the road to enlightenment (or indeed, basic hygenic living) sometimes get put aside, overlooked during all the fretting about more important stuff. Fortunately, today I managed to redress the balance somewhat and have begun focussing on the small stuff with a view to it all forming part of some indecipherable puzzle of which I am at present not fully aware.

The first revelation came from doing me washing. I've probably spent enough at the launderette in the last couple of years to cover the cost of my own washing machine. Not that I'd want one in me flat. I've spoken before about hermit-like existence of the machine I have as a neighbour. Relations have deteriorated further since I discovered it was responsible for the leak that caused this to grow in me guest bedroom:

  

That's all been fixed now, but it was all very unpleasant for an unnecessarily long amount of time because the maintenance bods couldn't figure out what was causing it. So I am naturally wary of washing machines in the wild.

In captivity, in a well-run lauderette, they are harmless enough. They have to be fed tokens in order to be coaxed into working for you. But their associates, the tumble dryers, will happily work for cash. I was short of pound coins today so while the washer was in the middle of its cycle I popped over the road to the Saint Catherine's Hospice shop with a view to buying something cheap and cheerful to get some change. I came across this:


 

Twelve episodes of the 1950s Invisible Man TV series for a piddling £1.50. Aren't charity shops brilliant? And to think, I'd almost spent twice that on a railway magazine in the Costcutter (the rail publications placed tastefully on the top shelf next to the porn. There was a crossover point between the two that was marked by a title called Hornby - I think that must be a form of rail-based porn, nudes draped across diesel engines, that sort of thing. Not really my bag. No, really).

The St Catherine's shop was rife with incident. While I was browsing the unwanted biographies downstairs a woman was attacked by a stand in the shape of a swastika that was overburdened with handbags. It turned out there was a castor missing from one of the 'feet' causing the stand to topple over and strike this woman. As I prepared to pay for my DVD I overheard the lady on the till saying "of all the people it could fall on it had to be her". The injured party was obviously an unpopular regular. Fortunately, she took a shine to me, impressed with my domesticity when I told her I was in the middle of washing my shirts. I confessed to her that she wouldn't think me domesticated if she saw the state of my flat. There's another journey of a thousand steps that needs to start earlier rather than later.

I have a favourite washer and dryer, so back at the launderette I transferred my load from one to the otherwhereupon I discovered 25p loose in the drum! This day was getting better and better. I then took the time to enjoy reading Saga by Brian K Vaughn (author of Ex Machina and Y - The Last Man) and Fiona Staples (haven't come across her artwork before, but it's very good). In fact I'm happy to make it my Sixth Comic Book Recommendation. Well worth a read.

And then I went to the pictures in York to see The Cabin in the Woods, my Eighth Film Recommendation. It was showing on Screen 5 at the Reel Cinema, which was tiny, having only 30 seats. The screen was quite small too, small enough that you could see the pixels of the the digital projection. This didn't spoil the film, though. No, that honour was taken by the irritating woman who had a hysterical laughing reaction to a particularly jumpy bit and then proceeded to laugh on and off for the next couple of scenes. Could have predicted that, mind. They were told off in the first few minutes for having their phone screen glowing away while they gawped at some no doubt hilarious meme photo. And they were chatting. Grr.

The film was great though. I can't tell you anything about it, though. Suffice to say it was good enough to elicit a comment from someone sat behind me that went something like: "Oh my God, (SPOILER REDACTED)", which I am sure is exactly the response the film makers wanted.

I started the week using one of the two new pedestrian/cyclist entrances to York station. It seemed fitting then that the week should end with me exploring the other one. Of course, if I had realised where it was on my way out of the station I could have used it and not had to go around the houses to get to the cinema. At least I found it on the way back.

So to summarise: In not having anything to do today, I ended up getting a lot more done than I usually would. Have done. Or something. And that is how you find the Invisible Man. Or something.

Look, just go with it - it's all a bit Zen.

More soonliest

In Future

The Twelfth of April Two Thousand and Twelve. Thursday.

Oh, hi there! Glad you could make it. You know, I was just chilling here, enjoying this very refreshing mug of red bush tea (no milk, thank you) and reflecting on this modern world of ours. Yes, things such as jet aviation, instant noodles and satellite navigation (or 'stnv' for short) are everyday miracles and sometimes it's too easy to take them for granted.

I had a vegetable finger and cheese sandwich earlier and I left half of it because I wasn't that hungry. But as soon as I've finished pondering life's imponderables through my keyboard I'm going to pop it into my microwave and 30 seconds later - biff! boom! pow! (or whatever it is Will.i.am says on The Voice (other 'talent' shows are available...)) soggy but warm grub. It's amazing! My only disappointment is that we don't have those pizza rehydration things they promised us in Back to the Future II. I don't give a monkey's about the hoverboards - I could never get the hang of the wheeled variety anyhoo (I had a rubbish rubber-wheeled one that my Mam and Dad bought me when we were on holiday at Butlin's. A redcoat asked to have a go, but mindful of what my parents said about strangers I refused (and just to reiterate what a miraculous wired up world we live in now, five mins googling has found a picture of it:

Oh, man. I tell you, all this time-travelling is making me dizzy...)). I seem to remember coming a cropper on the steep hill near the hothouse in Buile Hill Park. Even with a board as cheap as this I couldn't afford knee pads.

A bit of an aimless meander, this one. I think what I'm trying to say is that it's brilliant living in the future (although I don't know where my Legion of Super Heroes flight ring is. It was pretty cool - I got it to work once). Although there was that problem with the robotic uprising of the mid nineties.

And now the artificial brain stimulants are wearing off and as a cyborg I must go into sleep mode.

More soonliest.

Time Dilation

The Fourth of April Two Thousand and Twelve. Wednesday.

I have 50GB left on my TV recorder's hard drive out of a possible 500. How in the world am I going to find time to watch all that stuff? It's not going to happen, is it? There's just not enough time to see, read and smell everything I want to - measuring out my life in Afternoons and Coffeespoons (ho, that sounds like the cue for a song. Ladies and Gentlemen: The Crash Test Dummies!)

To put it another way: I have become completely disconnected from the flow of time. Unstuck like Henry the time traveller in The Time Traveler's Wife (read the book, haven't seen the film - is it any good? Oh blimey, there's something else I have to get around to watching). It's a tricky business. My pocket watch has stopped. Every time I pick up a timetable the ink is erased and the pages go blank - a bit inconvenient in my line of work. Worst of all, things that I have recorded on my DVR get shown on TV again before I've actually watched them the first time round. Or they become no longer relevant.

Back in October I recorded a programme off of BBC2 that looked into the claims of the scientists who claimed they had measured neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light.

It has sat there so long on my telly that those claims have now been disproved before I even got around to watching it. Whether those neutrinos were actually warping the fabric of time or not something has clearly happened to cause events to overtake my viewing of this programme. It's not like I'm a serial procrastinator or anything.

All of which perfectly explains why there hasn't been a blog entry for ages. Doesn't it? It now makes sense why I still haven't finished that novel-type thing either, I think. I'm glad we managed to clear all this up.

Hopefully there won't be any more relativistic side effects in the near future...

More soonliest.