What You Would Have Won

The Fourth of September Two Thousand and Fourteen. Thursday.

Hallo. I know that you've been feeling tired. I bring you love and deeper understanding.

Hi Gang. So many things to tell you. I really should write stuff down. But instead I'll let them percolate inside my noggin and maybe they'll find their own way out over the years.

I've just watched that Kate Bush documentary that was on BBC4 a bit ago. I'm not a big fan, but I had a copy of The Whole Story, listened to my sister's copy of Hounds of Love regularly and caught up a little bit last year with Director's Cut. Consequently, I didn't make much of an effort when the tickets for Before the Dawn, her current live concerts were released (not that I would have had much of a chance considering how quickly they sold out). I have always had issues with pursuing things that might give me pleasure, something that seems to have become more acute in later years.

Then I heard that she performed The Ninth Wave, the haunting, basically all-round fabulous b-side (Hah! b-side!) of Hounds of Love, in its entirety and my constantly clicking regret counter spun round a few more times.

I haven't written a blog for a while now, so I turned to my colleague, top photographer and Boost bar afficianado, Jeves, to suggest a possible topic to get the ball rolling. This he did, quide liderally by suggesting I give my thoughts on Scarborough Athletic's eight-goal (plus pens) FA Cup thriller vs North Shields last night. However, he quickly revised that choice when he realised I wouldn't treat the beautiful game with the respect it deserves and would instead harp on about the Tyne and Wear Metro station at North Shields (here it is, by the way).

It's due to be refurbished, apparently, and have ticket barriers installed (it's a fare-dodging hotspot, you'll be intersted to know). I think he was also concerned that I might just go on about the Shields Ferry that takes you across the Tyne to South Shields instead of giving in-depth analysis of a match that saw both sides reduced to nine men and five penalties awarded (four successful, one missed) even before the deciding shoot-out took place. So he suggested I should talk about game shows instead.

Which made me think of Bullseye's famous, often-mocked, climactic tease where losing contestants were shown what prize they would have won if they'd been just a bit better with the arrows. Which, naturally, led me to be thankful that the technology doesn't yet exist to enable us to look into all those parallel worlds where we could see all the results of all the better decisions we didn't make. Bowen cruelly pointing out the version of myself that got off its arse and got Kate Bush tickets. Or was kinder, or cleverer, or both. And yet, as diffuse as my own moral code is, the central tenets of fairness and justice that I observe are inspired by game shows. When William G Stewart used to allow an answer even if it was given just after the buzzer went I thought 'it's important to have rules, and even more important to know when to ignore them'. And when Leslie Crowther let one of the tenants of Contestant's Row have the prize despite guessing wrong because the thing dropped down to reveal the price as if they'd won even though they hadn't I knew that doing right is better than being right.

And hey! Look! I was talking about Kate Bush and game shows three years ago! That's a bit of a coincidence, isn't it?

More soonliest.

The Five Nations Week O' Trams

The Seventeenth of May Two Thousand and Fourteen. Saturday.

This post about trams comes to you courtesy of an old Miranda Sex Garden CD playing in the background.

Weaste tram stop opened on 12 June 1999. I had left Salford the previous November, so, consequently, I missed the tram. Three months later I went and had one of those children things (well, my pre-ex-wife did most of the cooking, but I contributed a few molecules at the start) and as you know tiny people come with push chairs. So, whenever I visited No1 son's grandparents the tram, with its level access, was the easiest way to get from Piccadilly station to their house.

It had nothing whatsoever to do with being an anorak who loved anything that runs on rails. Oh no.

I've always been a sucker for a rail map - different coloured lines and interchanges and all that nonsense. Harry Beck's Underground map is, of course, the chef d'oeuvre of this particular genre. Here's the current one for the Manchester Metrolink.

Not a classic by any means, but a map is a map. And maps need to be explored.

The idea for the Five Nations Week O' Trams (incorporating The Metro and Subway Jamboree) came with the news that Edinburgh's beleaguered new tram route (over budget, inappropriate design, etc, etc) would be finally opening this May. I started wondering when I would be able to visit. 

This then led to the idea of visiting all of the UK tramways that had opened since the revival of Light Rail in this country at the end of the last century. So that would be Manchester, naturally. Sheffield, Nottingham, West Midlands, the new Blackpool trams and Croyon would all have to feature. Then I read a Facebook post about how a friend's dad had paid host to train-hopping TV Tory Michael Portillo at the Wirral Tramway. Could a few heritage tramways be included too? So as well as Birkenhead there would have to be the Crich Tramway Village, natch. Off to Wikipedia to see what other trammish delights lay about the country.

There were a lot more than I realised. That was when the idea to go further afield, to Belgium and to Ireland began to crystallise. Add a visit to the Great Orme Tramway in Llandudno and a theme and a title was born. Next Tuesday, the 20 May, marks the first (and possibly the only - let's get this one out of the way first, eh?) Five Nations Week O' Trams. Here is the itinerary:

Scotland

The inspiration for this tour was the announcement of Edinburgh trams starting in May. The most convenient time to take off work was around the May Spring Bank Holiday. Surely that would be in time for the trams?

Well, last month they announced the start date and while it was definitely in May it turned out to be the 31st - four days after FNWOT concludes. I was livid. In fact my first thought was to boycott the trams when they finally arrived, a response completely against the ethos of FNWOT, but which I felt would convey the level of disappointment I felt. Not that anyone would have noticed, but it's the principle of the thing, you understand.

A Brussels tram at Summerlee!

Would this become the Four Nations Week O' Trams? At least I wouldn't have to change the hashtag. But no, rescue came in the form of Summerlee - The Museum of Scottish Industrial Life in Coatbridge. They run a heritage tram daily and look well worth a visit. The first day of the tour will also take in the Riverside Transport Museum in Glasgow (which I will be visiting via the Glasgow Subway) to see the trams housed there too. And I've calmed down a bit now, so if there is time I will pop over to Edinburgh and look at the trams while they're running on test!

England (Part 1)

The next day takes in Blackpool (just regular modern trams - I couldn't time it for the heritage services), the Parry People Mover at Stourbridge -

- the Midland Metro, the Underground, the Docklands Light Railway, the Overground and the London Tramlink! Phew! Then we're off to...

Belgium

Eurostar to Brussels where we have a bit of a tram about town. If I've time I'll take in the Atomium and the Comics Museum.

Again, timing has worked against me. There is a fab tram museum here, but it's only open at weekends and there was other weekend-only stuff I wanted to see back in Blighty. Just means I'll have to come again. There's also a restaurant on a tram! But it's a bit expensive and you can only book tables for 2, 4 or 6. I'll just be sticking to frites and mayonnaise, I think.

On the way to the airport we'll also have a quick mooch on the trams in Charleroi before we fly off to...

Ireland

Only a very brief visit to Dublin, arriving one evening and departing the next afternoon - maybe an early lunch at the Temple Bar pub. But we should be able to get a quick trip on the Luas.

Then we set sail across the Irish Sea to...

Wales 

There's time enough for a stop off in Llandudno and a trip on the Great Orme Tramway.

It's tempting to go one way on the tram and the other on the cable car (me and the boys did this a couple of years ago), but I think it's going to be just the tram on this occasion.

England (Part 2)

After Llandudno it's off to Birkenhead and the Wirral Tramway.

Another busy day though, as we quickly head across the Mersey to Southport and ride on the Pier Tram, before heading back to the ancestral home in Salford.

If I was a bit peeved about missing the opening of the Edinburgh trams, then that was more than made up for by a fortunate bit of scheduling. On the morning that I am in Manchester there is to be a special farewell tour for the T68 trams that formed the original Metrolink fleet.

That this should be taking place during FNWOT on the very day that I'm in Manchester is a very welcome coincidence. I'll be receiving a commemorative ticket that'll be the perfect souvenir for this tram-mendous (sorry!) week. If I've got time that day I'll be popping up to the Heaton Park Tramway before heading toward Sheffield for a quick go on the Supertram. The last night of the tour takes place in Nottingham where I'll be having a brief bash on the NET and then taking the train the next day Whatstandwell and a short walk to the Crich Tramway Village. The perfect finish to FNWOT, especially since there's more than one mode of transport on show there...

Then that's that for FNWOT but there will be more international tram action later in the year with visits to Paris and Barcelona. For now though, all thoughts are on Tuesday and the adventure ahead. No doubt there'll be the usual blurry selfies of me stood in front of various vehicles, so look out for that on Facebook or wherever. 

Hah. Actually getting a bit excited about this now.

More soonliest.

Gray/Grainer

The Thirtieth of April Two Thousand and Fourteen. Wednesday.

I see they've brought back Comedy Playhouse, complete with a quick snatch of the original theme music: Happy Joe by Ron Grainer. Which reminded me that I had put 'Gray vs Grainer' as a tag on this blog entry here. And seemed to tie in nicely with the fact that I bought a CD of Ron Grainer's music last week.

And all this confluence of nonsense reminded me of the time I was witness to the Grand Final of the Theme Tune Composer Deathmatch XXIII.

Everyone else had fallen by the wayside: Hawksworth, Hazelhurst, Goodall and the like. Only the two giants were still standing: Ron Grainer and Barry Gray.

Appreciation of the Thunderbirds theme has gone through a phase of kitsch appreciation, but lets not lose sight of the fact that it is just a blooming good tune. The crowd gasped as Gray played it as his opening gambit.

Grainer always had a sense of humour though, and so he ironically replied by saying he hadn't expected that.

Gray simply said that 'anything could happen in the next half hour'.

But Grainer just thought that was a load of old junk.

Grainer was getting cocky - he didn't even bother with Doctor Who, confident in the depth of his oeuvre. But then Gray punched hard with UFO.

Grainer was reeling. He knew he had to finish this fast. First he took the mickey, doing his version of one of Gray's themes.

And then, while The Ron Grainer Orchestra were on fire, they finished Gray off with their own interpretation of the theme from The Prisoner (which for some reason I can't embed from Youtube so I'll have to do a link instead. Here it is).

Kapow!

Grainer wins! Next he travels to New York for the international final against Mike Post.

(PS, as a bonus here are the Japanese opening titles to several Gerry Anderson series)

More soonliest.

Un-On Demanding

The Seventeenth of April Two Thousand and Fourteen. Maundy Thursday.

Just a quick update for the lovers of irony out there (and when I say 'irony', I mean it in the same way that Alannis Morrisette does, which is to say it's not really irony but it almost sounds as if it might be and until they come up with a word that means 'near-irony' I'm going to say 'irony'. I mean, you could argue that there's nothing wrong with saying 'near-irony', but you can't really have near-irony, can you? So they need a word for that thing that would be near-irony if there was such a thing). After making a big fuss about how my viewing habits were tending toward streaming here, circumstance has conspired to return my telly-watching to something like it was when I was a boy.

Maybe it's when you reach a certain age, you start to revisit themes and ideas you'd long since abandoned. I buy most of my comics digitally now, but with a few shops having 50p boxes with titles from a year or more ago I've returned to making more eclectic purchases. Do any Manchesterfordians here remember the name of that second hand bookshop on Peter St? I used to rifle through the comic boxes there and find all manner of nonsense, from the 60s and 70s (this was in the 80s) in there. I'd buy whatever I fancied, rather than following a particular writer or artist. I feel I've recaptured some of that reckless excitement when I root through the bargain boxes now. An hour or so flicking through them all and pocketing stuff that catches your eye. At ten bob a throw you can't go wrong. The search is part of the enjoyment.

I actually had this telly!

And now I find I'm going back to those heady pre remote control days with my TV viewing. I found out that my Nineteenth Telly Recommendation, Community is having its fifth season shown on the Sony channel here in the UK. Now I don't have any access to Sky or Virgin (but if you do, tune in. They're showing older episodes at teatime and the new series is on at 10 on Thursdays) but me Mam and Dad do. And since they're not bothered about using Virgin TV Anywhere on their mobile device of choice, they've let me log on to this service so that I can watch the Sony channel and catch up with it! However, since I'm not connected to all their Tivo gubbins I can only live stream channels. In other words, I have to make sure I'm not doing anything when the programme airs and have that one and only chance to watch it. In order to fully recreate the TV watching experience of my teens I intend to make up a cup of tea during the ad break and come back too late so I miss the first two minutes of the second half. I wonder how long it will take before the novelty wears off?

I'm guessing just the one episode.

More soonliest.

Washing Machines Last Longer With Glycon

The Sixteenth of April Two Thousand and Fourteen. Wednesday.

This writing a blog thing is a right lark. It's easier than doing proper writing. You just put down the first thing that comes in to your head and hope for the best. No wonder everybody's doing it.

Alan? Alan, is that you? What are you doing here?

I can't come up with something original every time, Alan. I've got a job and I have very few opportunities to write. Sometimes I have to just coast a bit.

I can't remember, but I've a feeling you're going to remind me.

Easy for you to say, Alan. You worship Calgon, the god of dishwashers.

Alan, I'm scared. I don't want to be a writer. I just want to be a nerk who goes round looking at trams and eating breakfasts.

Oh blimey, I've given Alan Moore dialogue spoken by Dungeon Master off of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. In fact, why am I wasting time writing this nonsense. I think I'll put the DVD on right now and watch that instead.

Sorry, Al. I missed that. I was making a crisp butty. I'll catch you later. I've just got to rattle off this blog and it's nearly taken me five minutes already. Oh well, I suppose you've got to put in the effort sometimes.

More soonliest.

On Demanding

The Ninth of April Two Thousand and Fourteen. Wednesday.

I don't think I'm what you could call an 'early adopter'. In fact, I have a knack of persisting with old tech when clearly better alternatives exist due to some sort of fear-based inertia. Hmm, fear-based inertia, that's probably been the defining characteristic of my life.

Nevertheless, inertia is resistance to movement not an absence of it and eventually I end up getting swept away, not usually by choice. In the past I have meticulously combed the listing magazines (usually the Radiotimes (pronounced 'raddy-ot-imez', of course, as per Victor Lewis-Smith)) and programmed me recorder to catch everything I want to watch for the week well in advance. Oh, the thrill of getting my first VCR. That was also in the late eighties - funny how often that period is cropping up at the mo. I knew the day was inevitably coming. I asked my Then Girlfriend to record Doctor Who on pristine VHS knowing it wouldn't be too long before I actually had a machine to play them on. My Mam and Dad had steadfastly refused to buy one, having no truck with this unnecessary contrivance in much the same way they had resisted the TV remote control longer than was necessary. When a friend (whom I shall refer to as Baron Moorside) offered his old video for £20 I bit his hand off. Even now I'm getting a slight frisson at the memory of being able to rewatch programmes as much as I wanted. Blimey, it used to be only once, didn't it? Hoping something you liked would be repeated - oh, those summer repeats of Doctor Who. What a treat.

This is exactly what it looked like when I went there. Ish.

Anyway, the next thing you knew me Dad had a big pile of Gardener's World tapes - funny how quickly he came round. The skill of programming the timer. I remember my best friend's Gran used to get around that nonsense by setting off an E240 before we all went out to the Pendlebury Miner's Club for snooker, darts and cheap lager so that she had Prisoner: Cell Block H taped without having to worry what time it came on (and the fact that Cell Block H was further along depending which ITV region you were in. During that brief stay in Leicester I was seeing Central episodes, while at home - due to our house being near the park and needing to point the aerial in the other direction - it was HTV, with post Miner's Club episodes being on Granada). And hovering over the Pause and Record buttons to catch when you thought a good trailer was going to be on - I was still doing that in 2005 when Doctor Who came back.

That was all fine for recording, but then there was all the film and telly stuff you bought on VHS - the tab broken to prevent recording over. They were soon enough replaced with DVDs - instant access, commentaries, extras and all. Like most of this history, it was Doctor Who that nudged me to take up the next innovation. When it moved into HD I invested in a laptop with a Blu Ray drive, eventually inheriting my Mam and Dad's old HD telly (by now they were dedicated technophiles, upgrading their equipment as and when) in order to watch on a larger screen.

I eventually went all digital with me recording, as I have chronicled here and here. In other words, I did what everybody else more or less did with their tellies over the past 20 years. Was there some point to this meandering nonsense?

Yes. I wanted to declare that broadcast television is dead.

I've gone and bought a Now TV box - I thought I couldn't go wrong for a tenner. As well as on demand access to the good Sky stuff (Game of Thrones, Girls, This is Jinsy, Mid Morning Matters, etc, etc) it has a slightly less convoluted interface for iPlayer than my PVR as well as access to 4OD and Demand 5. The Wii that I inherited has You Tube and Netflix on it and so I'm now finding that instead of trying to preplan my viewing, I'm now simply waiting until somebody says something good is on and watching it on demand or on catch up. Films I have on DVD I am calling up on Netflix instead, rather than going through the taxing task of opening a box, switching on a machine and putting a disc in it. With BBC3 moving entirely online and iPlayer about to shift to 30 day catch up I think I will be spending the rest of my TV days in a perpetual lag. Which suits me fine. That said, it's too much of a faff trying to watch On Demand stuff from other countries, so I'm still ordering DVDs from the US and Australia which undermines everything I was saying!

That said, I think there must be something in my unconscious that tries to recreate that feeling of 'see something once, then it's gone' from my youth as I always seem to put off watching stuff until the day before it's about to disappear from the menu. There's two things I've managed to miss that I kept putting off and off, so I guess the moral of this story is you just can't help some people.

I'd worried before that my modest Talk Talk broadband connection wouldn't be able to handle all this, despite their claims of unlimited data. So far, it's worked ok - but I know the day of the cloud crash is coming (I've only just got the hang of Dropbox and iCloud). But like the wobbly switch on my bedside lamp I'm going to keep on using it until it finally packs in.

More soonliest

Nothing Ever Happens (And I Guess It Never Will)

The Eighth of April Two Thousand and Fourteen. Tuesday.

That odd little period in my life at the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties seems to be bubbling up out of nowhere at the mo. Christmas 88 I'd just come back from a term at Leicester University after realising that I wasn't going to make it as an astrophysicist. Three months where I spent more time at Another World Comics on Silver Street rather than lectures, paid a visit by train to Bedford in the middle of the night (I remember being stopped by the police on my way to the station, checking I wasn't up to anything nefarious. Oh, and the swans having a moonlight paddle on the Great Ouse) and bumped into my vegan housemate shoplifting in a vegetarian shop. It's when my brief career as a civil servant began (as mentioned in the last blog) with stints at the Social Security Appeals Tribunal (in charge of a giant photocopier!) and the DSS (updating inmates NI contributions), thanks to my mate Steph's dad (sadly no longer with us) putting in a word for us. I'd tootle round to his house of a morning for a lift, late more often than not (plus ça change). My God, pub lunches. I haven't had a job with pub lunches since then. I used to have two plain baked potatoes (just butter) and a pint of Heineken at the Land o'Cakes on Great Ancoats St. I wish they'd let us go to the Railwayman's Club on our dinners now, like the old guard (old guards?) used to do. Nostalgia is intoxicating.

Anyhoo, the reason that era is looming in my memory is a Facebook update from someone else from that time. One of the odd jobs I had around then was at the comic shop (with an odd shift at the neighbouring SF bookshop) outside the corn exchange. One of my colleagues back then is now the booker at the Blue Lounge in Manchester so upcoming gigs there pop up in my Facebook timeline. The Brilliant Corners are playing there in July after recently reforming.

Now, I'm not very musically inclined, but I remember that my then girlfriend's best friend was a fan so we went to see them at the Boardwalk in Manchester and they were great (I've just done a quick Google on the fan, who was brilliant and Cambridge-bound at the time and is now a published Doctor in Clinical Psychology. Sous-performant, moi?). I didn't know a great deal about them other than they were from Bristol and their trumpeter had recently left. So, in this internet age, finding out they had reformed led me quickly to iTunes and me downloading a tiny chunk of my youth. I still find that odd, that little bits of your past have been backed up in the cloud on your behalf, as if a stranger had the foresight to keep a journal for you, knowing there'd come a day when you'd need this stuff.

All of which leads us to Teenage, which was my favourite track. Take it away, OoToobay!

And then, suddenly, we're back in 2014, listening to this on the headphones on the way to work.

More soonliest.

Every Day is Like Sunday

The Sixth of April Two Thousand and Fourteen. Sunday.

Fire up the Half Man Half Biscuit on the Spotify and see what comes out of yer keyboard.

"The nauseating bashfulness of early Diana makes me want to set fire to commemorative tea towels." Poetry, sheer poetry. Lets have a track from Achtung Bono to kick things off.

It can't be a coincidence that soon after I worked out the secrets of the universe with Tarrantism, I went into a spiral of decline. Hasn't happened for a while, but at the rear end of this week I revisited the halcyon days of my early twenties when the thought of interacting with other people would send me scurrying to my bed. Oh, the horror of ringing in sick to whatever terrible job I had at the time. I worked for Customs and Excise for a very short while, adding new rules to ring binders every morning. When you do that for Dungeons and Dragons they call you a weirdo, but this was the bedrock of our tax system. There was a boss who expected you to make cups of coffee for him, a man, Vince, who would use, Vince, your name an inappropriate number of times in a conversation, Vince. And someone I vaguely knew from school. I was spotted, one day, sat on the kerb outside with my head in my hands, prompting concerns about whether I was depressed. I was not - just isolated and bored. When I stopped turning up for work (in the days before I became a responsible parent) they sent folk round to check I was ok, and when they were convinced that I was they let me off the leash and essentially told me I would never work for the civil service again. I don't think that was intended as an act of mercy, but I took it as such.

Hmm, this is all a bit downbeat. Best perk it up with a quick reference back to my Nineteenth Telly Recommendation, Community, and a throwaway gag that took them three years to set up. This compilation of short clips come from the first, second and third seasons respectively.

This is the sort of stuff I seek out when left to my own devices.

I've always been something of a hermit. I enjoy the company of others and certainly don't want to let them down by being miserable when I'm out and about, but sometimes I do shy away from being social. Case in point - this weekend there has been a Science Fiction convention in Scarborough. I booked tickets for it and was even offered some comps for helping out with some of the publicity at the station. But the weekend also coincided with a Family Signing session that had been organised months ago. The conflict of two social occasions put me in a spin and I've ended up attending the Signing session, but then withdrawing to my humble abode with the curtains drawn. I know I'd enjoy it if I went, but I really want a break from other human beings, just for a day or two at least.

Which brings me to Sunday. I'm only just starting Season 3 of Game of Thrones in advance of Season 4 starting tomorrow. It is a Brit-actor-a-thon, isn't it? Blinking Dame Diana Rigg has just shown up!

I haven't been watching Ripper Street, although I've seen the buzz about it, so I didn't know Jerome Flynn was out and about. He's great as Bronn the sellsword in this and I have a lot of time for a bloke who is a patron of the Vegetarian Society and got to Number One with Unchained Melody (a song that has been very kind to me over the years).

 I've been reading some Stewart Lee and AA Milne and catching up on the Richard Herring podcast. Slowly, I can feel my hard drive finishing the last of its updates and coming out of Safety mode. I'll be ready to face the world again tomorrow.

But for today it's back to the telly...

More soonliest.

The Java Jive

The First of April Two Thousand and Fourteen. Tuesday.

When did I become a coffee addict? It wasn't that long ago that I was saying I was back on the tea, but the stuff I've been drinking recently (PG Tips for the record) isn't really doing it for me. And yet I've stuck to it for the most part as I've overdone it somewhat with the coffee recently.

A few weeks ago I was on a late shift at work so I would spend my mornings downing a cafetiere of coffee and enjoying a couple of bagels while watching Game of Thrones. Yes, I've only recently got on that particular bandwagon and for the most part I am enjoying it. I did literally spit out a mouthful of sesame, Philadelphia and proprietary brand Marmite substitute when a horse got decapitated, but other than that it has been very entertaining. Never been much of a connoisseur so my coffee of choice was Sainsbury's half-caff, which might be a bit gimmicky, but I like the way Sainsbury's have a wire strip thing that makes it easy to reseal your packet.

I used to scratch my head trying to figure out how they managed to take out only half of the caffeine. Did they stop the process half way through? Did they take decaffeinated coffee and add some of it back? I had to actually read the label before I realised what actually  went on. The obvious does escape me with alarming regularity.

Add to this all the instant coffee I drink at work. Drinks often go cold as we busily serve the Great British Public with all their ticketing needs so when a fresh brew is on offer I tend to neck the cold dregs and start the process all over again with a full mug. And the week just buzzes along quite merrily until circumstances change and then the crash occurs.

Last Saturday I attended a Family Sign Language day at our local children's centre. Dehydration from various central heatings, plus squinting through my glasses for a couple of hours at the signed presentation, plus a sudden removal of caffeine after a couple of weeks of submersion all conspired to give me the mother of all headaches. Forgive my imperfect understanding of biochemistry, but as I understand it it's the dehydrated body's demand for various chemicals that it nicks from the brain that causes the pain. I'd heard that the potassium et al in bananas could help to mitigate this, but all I had on hand was an apple so I gave that a go instead.

It's fair to say that my body took on some of the qualities of an exciting FA Cup tie - that is to say it opened up at both ends. The pain made me nauseous and an acidic apple didn't help either. After the family signing day I was lucky enough that my pre-ex-mother-in-law could look after Number 2 son for a short while enabling me to get some rest. When she finally delivered her charge to my pale, washed-out visage she was suitably taken aback by my corpse-like appearance that she even offered to stay overnight (at the big house, not my modest flat) to look after her grandson. It was a very kind offer, but I knew the symptoms of my 'caffeine hangover' wouldn't last too long. I returned to my bed, placing a fiver in Number 1 son's hand telling him to sort out chips for tea for him and his brother. This he did, sorting out teatime nicely, only falling down when trying to coax the DVD player to work. I am proud to say that even in my absence, the boys attempted to watch Doctor Who with their chips.

I haven't touched proper coffee since. I really don't want to go through all that again. But...

The tea isn't really doing it. I would kill for a really nice mug of coffee (the best coffee I've ever tasted was from D'aiuto's bakery in New York - home of the Baby Watson cheesecake. And I've just googled it to find it closed last year. Rotten 'eck.). I never used to like coffee. The tide turned with a combination of Twin Peaks and my Then Girlfriend's love of black coffee. Tea is the English eccentric's drink of choice, to the point where it's become something of a cliché now (although I do like an Earl Grey with me cheesecake). One of the many genius things Russell T Davies does when reintroducing the world to Doctor Who in that first episode just about nine years ago is have the Doctor ask Rose for a cup of coffee. He already travels in time and has two hearts - he doesn't need any tawdry quirks (cf with him messing with a deck of cards). Love that episode.

I've been knackered all week too. The weather's getting nice now. Maybe it'll be ok to ease back in with a frappuccino...

Maybe.

More soonliest.

What is Tarrantism?

The Thirty-First of March Two Thousand and Fourteen. Monday.

'Is it something to do with spiders?' asked my pre-ex-wife.

No, it's not. Since I failed to make any money out of VINETICS!, my earlier attempt at forming a c̶u̶l̶t̶   r̶e̶l̶i̶g̶i̶o̶n̶   g̶e̶t̶-̶r̶i̶c̶h̶-̶q̶u̶i̶c̶k̶ ̶s̶c̶h̶e̶m̶e̶   working philosophy, I have found myself pondering the great questions of morality and trying to come up with a code that has some real practical benefits.

To this end I was sprouting no end of nonsense at work on Saturday. It all came about from a discussion that took in the Orange Parade, gay marriage, the futility of war and mature students' eligibility for 16-25 railcards. Out of this potent brew came a few ideas that were immediately tested by a series of dilemmas on that very day. That these ideas all came through is testament to the incipient potency of what I'm calling Tarrantism.

Like VINETICS!, Tarrantism is founded on three basic ideas. The first of these gives Tarrantism its name.

1) Is That Your Final Answer?

Any decision you have to make, just pause dramatically before finally execute it. Ask yourself if you are absolutely sure that it is the right thing to do. If you are still convinced, then good luck to you. Go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine. If you are not, then change your mind! It's fine. It's allowed. It's in the rules. Just give yourself that last opportunity to check if what you're doing is what you really want. Ignore any coughing from the crowd. There may be more than four buttons to choose from (this metaphor has passed beyond breaking point now, hasn't it? Won't stop me, though), but even up to that very last second your course is not fixed. Until the figurative light goes orange. Or something.

2) Meeting Halfway

Look, I'm steeped in gulliblity. You're not going to have to be Derren Brewn (that is how he spells his surname, you know) to convince me of your hare-brained scheme. So I tend not to consider whether I'm being taken for a ride or not. That said, I am unlikely to give you, unknown person who has merely materialised now in order to provide an example, time of day unless you have made at least a bit of effort toward achieving your goal. Or failing that, you show some consideration when you are making your request of me.

Money's the most obvious way of illustrating this, though it isn't always as straightforward as putting numbers on things. For example, I am more likely to give you £10 toward something that costs £20 that you're willing to put up half the cash for than I am to give you all the money for something that costs £10. I might be just as much a mug in either case, but I am content in my own mind with the first scenario. See also: housework, errands and favours.

3) No Fretting

Goodness me, the untold hours I've spent fretting over stuff. Not worrying - worrying is legitimate. Hoping people are ok, that you'll be able to pay the bills, that there's still enough Philly left for your bagels in the morning. Those are things that cause you to act - emotional responses that push you do stuff that has to be done. Fretting is unnecessary concern over things that you cannot affect. Mainly, this is about stuff you've already done. Once it's done, once the light has gone orange, you can't undo it. There's only this one life, this one dimension (if you want me to get all parallel worldsy on your ass) and there's nothing you can do to change what's already done. Oh, you can repair what you've done, you can build on what you've done, you can explain what you've done, but it's done. Past tense of do. And any energy spent on it - especially if it's distracting you from what you could or should be doing - is a waste.

A Thal: post Castle-thump

Now, mention of the name Tarrant always makes me think of the way Terry Nation would try and get someone of that name in his scripts (I'm thinking more Doctor Who here, but I know there was a Tarrant in Blake's 7, it's just that I didn't watch too much of that). So I can't help but think that there should be something in here about how even if you're a pacifist you're allowed to hit Roy Castle if they try and steal your woman (even if they're only trying to make a point) or something. I can't remember if the same point is made in the TV version, but the film is in colour so I think that must be more relevant. That part of it probably needs a bit more work, though.

Enjoy your lives now that I've solved them!

More soonliest.

Having a Day Off

The Twenty-Eighth of March Two Thousand and Fourteen. Friday.

How lovely to have some time off. I will be working all weekend, but here are some of the things that I have enjoyed today instead of doing all the chores I should be doing while I have the time.

I follow Rhodri Marsden (@Rhodri) on the Twitter - no relation. Only found out today that he is a member of a the band Dream Themes who do covers of top TV themes. They've just released their first double A side on iTunes: News at Ten and BBC News. Here's the video for News at Ten:

That's fabulous enough in itself, but then I find out that they used to play with Frank Sidebottom which led me to discover this:

"I've got a good idea; you are absolutely bobbins!" Joy, just pure joy.

Dan Slott is the man responsible for Doctor Octopus' mind being in Peter (Spider-Man) Parker's body this last couple of years or so. Along with artist Mike Allred, he is also responsible for the new Silver Surfer comic that launched this week.

Slott is a big Doctor Who fan and he admits to that being one of the influences on this series. An odd cosmic being sharing the sights of the universe with a human being? It seems such an obvious fit for the Surfer you wonder why no-one thought of it before. Not that this is slavish copy of Who - it's unmistakeably a Marvel comic, just that it shares that same sense of fun and wonder particularly associated with the 21st Century iteration of the series. I think it ought to be my Seventh Comic Book Recommendation.

Had a haircut. That wasn't particularly fun, but it was overdue.

Lunch was egg and chips at the Contrast cafe, just round the corner from my flat. I had an iced finger for afters.

I'm struggling with the level 6 dungeon on The Legend of Zelda. At Christmas, Number 1 and 2 sons were fortunate enough to get a Wii U. This meant that their old Wii was sent into my care. But rather than buy a load of game discs for it, I downloaded the original 1980s version of Zelda from the online store. This is about my speed and although I am not much of a gamer, I'm proud of the fact that I've got this far without any cheats. Seem to be stuck on this dungeon, though. It's very frustrating.

I've been catching up on True Detective today as well. Ah, it looks gorgeous (I'm going to watch ep 4 after I've finished this, with a 6 minute tracking shot that everybody's been raving about), but there is this slightly po-faced "Hey kids, these are quality HBO shenanigans" air to it that is faintly ridiculous. It's very watchable, but it certainly has a very high opinion of itself. The next few episodes will reveal if that's deserved.

I tell you what, those microwave rice packets are a godsend. Tea took three minutes to make tonight.

So, back to work tomorrow. Just thought I'd share a little of what's been occupying my time today. Of course, this has taken a chunk out of my evening, which is a bit annoying. I think I'll put the kettle on.

More soonliest.