Pay close attention to the Google pages. Thanks to Ashley for this.
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Channel 4 used to show stuff like this - Robert Ashley’s ‘opera for televsion’ called Perfect Lives. In 1983 this blew me away. I watched every minute. I think I might have to get the DVD - even on YouTube it looks like the remastering has worked well.
Mind you, they also had Countdown. And now, ironically, New Countdown has become a regular fixture on the office TV.
The other day after 2 hours helping to keep a radio show on air, I stepped out for a breath of air and some shopping.
In Tesco’s a man was struggling with the coffee vending machine whilst barking into his mobile phone: “Yeah, right, the thing was Barry, I had a f***ing cluster bomb, right, yeah a CLUSTER BOMB, all ready and you’ll never guess what this c*** did…”
Then I walked along Strutton Ground. This post may seem like a gratuitous attempt to mention Gabby Logan, but it’s not. It’s a gratuitous attempt to mention Strutton Ground. I like saying ‘Strutton Ground’. Try it yourself.
Anyway, I was walking along the street and a gust of wind caught a market stall with lots of glassware hanging up. It fell over. Smash. Smithereens. Shards a plenty. (There’s another word I’m using gratuitously - ’shard’). Then a man in his 60s walked past barking about God and Satan and the other market stall holders (the ones not mourning glassware) parodied his gutteral voice and barked back that he should effing well be quiet.
There’s a street near Strutton Ground with an even better name. More on that soon. Continue reading ‘Random lunchtime oddness’
I was rather ineffectually spreading dishwasher salt on the pavement infront of my house the other day; it was really icy and slippery and I was worried we might not get the car back on the drive. A woman pulled up and wound down her window. I assumed she was about to ask directions but instead she offered me some pukka road grit that she’d picked up from the side of the road in Catford. She got out, spread it around, got back in her car and drove off. A lovely random act of kindness.
I feel a bit like I did when I finally replaced my original 1st generation iPod with a 4th generation Nano - I just replaced our Dyson DC01 vacuum cleaner with a DC24.
The DC01 has lasted well - perhaps almost 15 years - and had various bits replaced… the sole plate a couple of times, new brushes, new wand and a new motor. 
The cover where you put your foot is broken now, though, and that coupled with the fact that the replacement wand has never fitted properly and keeps popping out made me just think, soddit, I’ll get a new one. (Dyson just called me back - the hood normally requires a £70 engineer visit to replace, they might sell me one for about £20 with no instructions and replacing it is ‘tricky’ - and no that does NOT sound like a challenge to me…) So I skipped 22 generations of Dyson cleaning technology and got a DC24 from Amazon. So far, so good. I like the way you can empty it without getting a face full of dust, and it is tiny and light enough to carry upstairs. Mains flex is just not long enough for our house, though - not because it’s a big house but because we have no sockets in the hall…
This is a lovely Straight8 film. (Straight8 involves shooting a film, in sequence on one roll of Super 8 film - no editing!)
http://chillibean.net/perl/sohosoho/player/player.pl?token=CKVC34LS&source=WR
In work early. Open locker. A tin of ground coffee falls out, showering the carpet outside the office. I call the cleaners to get it cleared up. They email me a reference number. As I am going to be working in studios in the morning, I forward the email to the first three people who are likely to find the coffee. They all congratulate me on the wonderful aroma of freshly-spilt coffee grounds. One asks me if I can do the aroma of freshly baked bread tomorrow. I say don’t worry, soon the aroma will be replaced by that of aerosol deodorant from one of our colleagues who thinks that her locker, rather than being in a corridor, is actually in a locker room.
Then a friend tells me some very, very bad news about his wife.
There is some other crap of a work-related nature. And it is still 29 degrees celsius in our office.
On the way home I try to take a faulty Nintendo DS game back to HMV. They refuse to give me my money back. At the exit a man - it’s not me, but it could be me soon - is being told by security that they “never, ever want to see your face in this area ever again.”
At home I cannot get the car off the driveway - I have to shift huge rubber blocks designed to stop people parking on the corner.
I have to visit the after school club and a relative’s house to collect children. Road closed, policeman waves me away. I park a block away from my destination and set off on foot. Normally busy main road closed and oddly quiet - in the middle there is a smashed up motorbike and a pair of sunglasses that clearly belong(ed) to a very small girl. Nice policewoman allows me across the crime scene tape several times to do my errands as the accident scene is right between the two places I need to visit and my sister-in-law’s house is right by the crash scene in the inner cordon.
Go to collect daughter. Reach in pocket and discover I have lost an envelope containing a large amount of cash. Want to cry, want to scream. Swear loudly. Retrace steps with children in tow. No luck. Go back to scene of accident. Speak to policewoman - hello, you again. Yes me again. I need to look for an envelope… The one we picked up in the middle of the road? Yes that one.
I could have kissed her.
When I got home I took consolation from the fact that at least in this heat it is - a rare thing in England - legitimately warm enough to drink pastis.
Nice item on BBC News about corporate gobbledygook. Well, it momentarily lifted my gloom at the prospect of everyone dying imminently from pig flu. I know two people who are about to go to Mexico and I hope they change their minds.
Anyway, my pate hate is “going forward”, especially when used in the phrase “progress this going forward” which I heard in a meeting once. Well, ducks, we can hardly progress it going backwards, can we?
As for “drilling down going forward”, it’s become a bit of a cheeky mantra (like ‘Blog My Wiki!’) so I can’t actually remember if it’s something we really heard or not. But I like to think we did.
“There are no coincidences
but sometimes the pattern is more obvious.”
‘Keynsham’ - The Bonzo Dog Band
And maybe sometimes coincidence just doesn’t come into it.
So The Fat Duck is closed because of a food poisoning scare.
I guess it would be pretty galling to get food poisoning after stumping up a hefty amount of dosh to eat there, but it does all seem very odd. I’ve peered into the kitchen in The Fat Duck and it was… a bit dull to be honest, it’s just a kitchen, albeit a very clean and well-organised one, and one that produces wonderful and magical food. I hope they get to the, er, bottom of this mystery.
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