Plum's plums

The Chaos

2012-02-02T17:14:00.000Z

Just before Christmas, The Poke published the text of Gerald Nolst Trinité's poem about the idiosyncrasies of English spelling and pronunciation called The Chaos, misattributing it and spouting a certain amount of spurious bullshit about the significance of being able to read it all.

Their suggestion to share readings of it went viral and now there are loads of versions of it on Youtube and elsewhere.

Being interested in this kind of thing, and after a little research into the text and its history, I've recorded my own reading. I have used the author's much longer version as the basis for my own, and have made a few changes, subtractions and additions.

Here it is, my contribution to The Chaos:

I'd love to hear other people's attempts, and i can share the slideshow I used (either in the form of a Powerpoint presentation or a series of PNG graphics) , so if you want to do that, leave a comment ;-)

Plumella

2011-09-04T04:22:00.002+01:00

While recently searching for ways to use up the sack of damsons I was given by a friend, and tired of making chutney and jam, I re-discovered this amazingly easy-to-make but seriously tasty spread. I find Nutella much too rich and I've grown an aversion to vegetable oil in various products. This is less greasy (the only fat comes from the cocoa), and considerably less sweet. The damsons replace the greasiness of the nuts and oil with a more grown-up after-taste of fruity tartness, and the genuine taste of chocolate dominates and means that delicious as this is, you're not going to eat huge quantities of it before feeling sated.

There's a bit of political history attached to this recipe.

Back in the 1970s when Nutella hazelnut and chocolate spread was conquering the world and kids' palates, one part of the world it didn't reach was Eastern Europe.

While some rough chocolate did get through to that market, there were chronic shortages of almost all of the other ingredients, and of course of the branded product itself. However, those inventive and improvising Poles came up with a replacement for the hard-to-find nuts and sugar, and developed an alternative. it was never sold in shops and doesn't have a brand name, but most Polish families with children in 70s were aware of this.

I made this last week and as usual with my experiments took photos of the process but something went wrong and I've lost all the pics. I've managed to find some some replacements online which will have to do...

Ingredients:

2.5kg damsons, bullaces or plums, or combination thereof

1kg sugar (plus potentially another 500g for taste)
200g quality cocoa powder (or 300g high cocoa-solid [70%+] chocolate)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract (NOT "flavouring")

Optionally:
Handful of nuts of your choice
1 stick cinnamon or one teaspoon ground cinnamon

How to make it

First pit your damsons. this is going to take a long time, as the stones are proportionately quite large, and the flesh is usually fairly tightly stuck to them.

Put the damson flesh through a mincer, grinder or blender until finely puréed, together with chopped nuts (if used).

Empty the purée into a thick-bottomed 5-litre stainless steel saucepan.

Stir in 1kg sugar, mix well.

Add cinnamon stick or ground cinnamon, if using.

Put on low simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally. Surprising as it may seem, this will not stick to the pan and can be left for extended periods without stirring. The stirring is just to keep the liqiuid and solids well mixed.

After 90 minutes, take out a spoonful of the mixture, allow to cool and taste for sweetness, tartness and texture. (Beware, the liquid out of the pot will be around boiling temperature!) Depending on the ripeness of your fruit and your own taste preference, stir in up to 500g more sugar.

Continue simmering for another 30 minutes if you did not add sugar, or 60 minutes if you did.

Add cocoa powder or chocolate broken into pieces, and stir well with a whisk until completel dissolved.

Stir in vanilla extract.

Continue simmering for another 10 minutes until the cocoa has cooked through and lost its raw bitterness.

In the meantime, wash, sterilise and dry six 500ml jars (see instructions provided in eafrlier blogs, or look them up online)

If desired, put mixture through blender/liquidiser again to make it super-smooth, return to pan and simmer for five minutes.

Pour into the sterilised jars, cover with cellophane circles and tighten covers.

Ready to eat immediately, warm or cold, as a spread on bread or cakes, as a filling for doughnuts or spooned on pancakes!

This spread does not want pasteurising/proofing (boiling would ruin the chocolate), and will keep for up to three months in a cool dark larder or cupboard. Once opened, store in fridge (unlike Nutella, which should never be refrigerated!) and use within two weeks.

Enjoy! I certainly do!

It's been a while....

2011-09-04T01:46:00.000+01:00

While preparing a new entry, I noticed that I've not written anything here for ages.

I've taken the opportunity to make a few changes, mainly to remove all the adult content and consequently the adult tag (I have tumblr for that).

I'll also make a couple of other changes in the near future, mainly changing the title of the blog, and devoting it more to cooking and preserving food though I hope to continue making odd comments on other subjects too.

Look out for a new recipe in the next few hours!

Oops

2011-07-08T23:53:00.000+01:00

I just relised while reading a couple of other blogs that I've not written anything here since before Christmas.

It's probably time for a new cooking blog, and so I might throw something together in the next few days as I have a load of gooseberries and cherries to preserve.

Any ideas?

Christmas Greetings - in Legalese

2010-12-24T03:06:00.000Z

I've published these legalese and politically correct Christmas greetings once or twice before, but that's no reason not to share them here as well.

BE IT HEREBY DECLARED THAT

1. I would like you to accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for:

a) An environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious or secular practices of your choice without prejudice to the religious and/or secular persuasions and/or traditions of others or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all;

b) A fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated passing of the calendar year 2010CE, without prejudice to the calendars of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our (or your) country great without implying that our (or your) country is greater than any other country or is the only great country, and without regard to race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith (or lack thereof) or sexual orientation.

2. The wishes expressed in Part 1 are granted on the following terms:

a) they are to be considered extended to all members of your family or other social unit, including but not limited to:
i) other persons directly or indirectly related to you by blood or otherwise and any such persons to whom you consider yourself to be related regardless of biological, legal, religious or other process,
ii) any person or persons not included in paragraph 2a)i) hereof with whom you enjoy regular (or otherwise) consensual sexual activities regardless of gender, race, age or sexual orientation with or without the possibility for procreation,
iii) other animal and/or vegetable organisms (or inanimate objects) you or anyone else may consider part of your family or other social unit;

b) they are freely transferable with no alteration to the original wishes to any person in your wider social circle not included in paragraph 2a hereof;

c) they are limited to a period of one terrestrial solar year or until the issue of subsequent holiday wishes, whichever occurs first;

d) they are subject to clarification or withdrawal and are revocable at my sole discretion at any time, for any reason or for no reason at all;

e) no promise to implement any of the wishes or responsibility for the consequences which may arise from the implementation or non-implementation of same is or may be implied.

3. These wishes are void where prohibited by law and are specifically not extended to any extra-terrestrial or other beings who bear ill-will towards any or all members of the species known as Homo sapiens or any other life-form on planet Earth.

4. In accordance with environmental policies, procedures and practices, no trees were directly harmed in the preparation or transmission of these wishes although a significant number of electrons was slightly inconvenienced.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto applied my signature, seal or other personally identifiable mark this 24th day of December 2010CE

France or England? French or English?

2010-11-05T17:04:00.000Z

I received an interesting question on formspring yesterday (yes, it does happen, not every question is about sexual habits), a full answer to which required a bit more space than is reasonable on formspring, so here it is. I've left the question verbatim.

In what ways are france better than england? And in what ways is french better than english as a language?

To all intents and purposes, France is three different countries: there's Paris, there are other big cities, and there's rural France.

In that respect, England is not dissimilar, with London, other big cities and rural England presenting quite distinct characters.

I prefer to live in London rather than Paris (I've done both), but I prefer Paris to visit rather than London (I've done both). Paris is quite horrifyingly expensive (especially now, given the poor £/€ exchange rate) and the stereotype about Parisians being rude and aloof towards foreigners is generally a deserved one. They also consider themselves better than most Frenchmen, though, so there's no need to feel TOO aggrieved.

As a place to visit as a tourist, Paris is quite exceptional: it's small and compact, and all the famous sights are relatively close to each other (except perhaps for Versailles which is still a lot closer to Paris than, say, Windsor is to London). Public transport is a damn sight cheaper and easier to use. And there are always a million interesting things to see in countless small museums and galleries.

In London, everything is spread around and hard to get to. And it's all far more commercial, with all the sights selling the same tat just with different logos.

Large cities in France have a different attitude to those in England: Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and a few other places are resentful of London and want to be London. French cities know they aren't Paris and delight in their own identity, and are much more easy-going for it. I've spent time in Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and a couple of other places, and they're much better than their English counterparts.

I adore rural France with a passion. French farmers have an odd reputation on this side of the Channel as intransigent, money grabbing xenophobes but they're really just trying to make a living. Of course they're often not very highly educated and rarely speak a foreign language so you're better of speaking French with them.

If you do take the trouble to converse in their language, you'll get an honest opinion about most things and they'll point you in the right direction to get the best produce and wine at the best price. And one real advantage of rural/small-town France over village life in England is that you can be accepted very quickly, if you take the trouble to integrate yourself and play a part in village life.

By contrast, small communities in England are famed for their reluctance to accept strangers. The owners of holiday homes in small villages who price the locals out of the property market and are hardly ever there are generally seeen as intruders and are not very welcome. Small-town French people feel honoured that people from outside their community pay an interest and are aware that thanks to new residents, local craftsmen and traders can earn an honest living. They are simply far more pragmatic.

Of course, any British tourist to small-town France will complain of the complete lack of any sense of punctuality, that arranging for a tradesperson to call "on Tuesday" actually means "any time between Monday morning and Friday night". And most places (even large ones) close down for several hours at lunchtime and it can be a right pain.

But it's a more relaxed and convivial mode of life which it's actually easy to get used to.

Village and rural politics are a nightmare in both cultures but the thing to remember in small-town France is that the Maire (mayor) is a truly important person. They are the foot of the pyramid of French democracy and of the national political system, and they can make life very easy for you, or - if you get on their bad side - very hard. The Mairie is the first stop for pretty much any administrative matter or local dispute. But not only - it is also your first port of call for things like utilities, so you make a personal enemy of the Maire and his staff at your peril. And in most small towns and villages the Mairie is also the post office, telephone exchange, police station and local information centre so knowing when it's staffed is a Very Important Piece Of Information.

On the subject of language, every language has its strong and weak points, its advantages and disadvantages.

English spelling is infamously horrendous, French is slightly lesss idiosyncratic but still full of potholes; English is good with expressing most technical things while French is generally more comfortable with matters of the intellect such as philosophy and the arts. (People say French is the language of love but I tend to disagree; Italian is MUCH better at it.)

The main strength of English is that whilst English grammar is a minefield and most native speakers know very few of the rules which govern our language, it is very easy to be perfectly comprehensible and relatively clear by stringing simple sentences together, as long you stick to a Subject - verb - object structure. Grammatical correspondence, pronunciation and very often spelling and punctuation are largely irrelevant.

In the musical My Fair Lady, Professor Higgins exclaims that the French never care what they do, as long as they pronounce it properly; this isn't entirely true - what's important is that the sentence is structured properly and the nouns and verbs correspond by gender and number, and the correct pronouns are used in the correct way to determine relationships. It's not fussiness or pedantry; the fact of the matter is that otherwise more than likely the sentence will literally make no sense.

So in short, I would say that the beauty of English (and probably one of the reasons for its popularity world-wide, it's not JUST because of the ubiquity of American culture and technology) is the fact that it is a very fluid language, in which it is extremely easy to make yourself understood. It is a very diffficult langauge to master because rules of correct syntax and grammar (if one wishes to be prescriptivist) are instinctive and intuitive rather than learnable by rote.

The beauty of French, on the other hand, lies in its precision and despite appearances, the sheer logic of it all. It is actually a fairly easy language to learn well out of a book of grammar, and speaking it idiomatically can be extremely difficult. Knowing which rules are relaxable and which are not takes much skill, experience and understanding.

I'd like to conclude by bringing together the language point and my love of rural France. It is almost impossible to understand a French farmer if you have learned your French at school from books.

There are so many regional variations where other influences from Spanish, Moorish, Italian, German, Flemish or various Old French varieties are so ingrained that you would need your interlocutor to speak slowly and repeat everything for you to understand him/her. Of course, they would understand you because the French media are Paris-centric and spoken in "proper French" to an even greater extent than English media are concerned with London.

Over the years, it's become normal in British television, for instance, to hear voices and accents from all over our country and we can all think of significant television presenters with a strong regional identity. This remains almost unheard of in French television - even though many presenters are proudly associated with wherever they may come from, they MUST speak the French equivalent of Received Pronunciation or they will simply never get a serious job in broadcasting. Some of them are famous for havig the odd foible, in the way they might pronounce a certain word or phrase, but by and large Parisian French is Comprehensible French.

I'd like to hear anyone's views on these topics, however well or badly informed, either in comments here (which can be a pain) or by way of a new question on formspring, which can be a lot easier (I do allow anonymous questions so you don't need an account or anything):

http://www.formspring.me/brumplum

Am I really THAT unlikable?

2010-11-03T17:32:00.002Z

Despite appearances, this isn't just wallowing in self-pity, and the questions aren't rhetorical. I am genuinely at an impasse in how I perceive myself.

When I was younger, I honestly didn't care about being the terminally-uncool fat friendless dweeb in the corner unliked by many but simply unnoticed by most. With my books and the few even dweebier friends I had, I escaped into fantasy.

Despite the hopeful image of countless books, films and TV shows (and indeed the biography of certain captains of industry in the real world), I didn't end up rich and powerful and manage to gloat at those who refused to give me the time of day when we were younger.

No, now as I approach (!) middle age, I grow increasingly resentful of those living happy lives in the full and certain knowledge that the fact I try to be nice counts for nothing.

Three friends, each of whom individually claims to like me as a friend and is happy to call on me for favours, arrange to go out together. I am pointedly (and, as far as I can tell, deliberately) not invited. They don't hide their plans, I drop hints about my interest in attending, which are ignored.

What should I conclude?

That I am unworthy of their company?
That their friendship is just a front, that they're happy to take what I can give but offer nothing in return?
That while each of them might be happy to be in my company, they're unhappy to be seen to be in my company?

All my life I've been happy to be "used" by those around me - I derive genuine pleasure from helping others.

Is it unreasonable to expect appreciation?

What's to stop me giving in to the urge to climb the top of the nearest tall building, shouting to all the world,

NO IT DOES NOT GET ANY FUCKING BETTER

and then throwing myself into the abyss?

(P.S. I'm not actually suicidal)

When can we get a Marmite 'n' anything stand?

2010-10-17T03:35:00.001+01:00

For convoluted reasons I don't feel like explaining right now, Nutella and Marmite are closely associated in my psyche (suffice to say, their main roile is to be spread on bread and some people like them, and some don't).

I found this rather magnificent picture of a Nutelleria stand in Italy which sells all kinds of things spread with Nutella:

When can we get something similar but with Marmite, not a Nutelleria but a Marmitery?

Once every 823 years?

2010-10-05T15:52:00.002+01:00

One of my favourite topics of rants in the real world is how gullible the internet is making us all.

Until fairly recently, we'd not have believed what people say to us unless they had some kind of reputation for telling the truth and/or knowing a lot about the subject upon which they are expounding.

Yet nowadays millions of people repeat "stuff" as if it was a fact with all the authority of a national academy of sciences, just because they saw it online.

I've been especially amazed over the last few days by a statement that keeps coming into my email inbox and has taken Twitter by storm:

The basic form is:

This month has five Fridays, five Saturdays, and five Sundays, and this only happens once every 823 years!

Well yes, October 2010 does indeed have five "long weekends". But is this really such a rare occurrence?

Think about it for a moment:

In order for a month to have five Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, it must be a 31-day month (January, March, May, July, August, October, December) and the first day of that month must be a Friday (so that it's Friday, Saturday and Sunday which are repeated rather than any other contiguous 3 days).

A 365-day year is 52 weeks and one day. As a result, successive years start on the day of the week after the year before (eg 1st October 2009 was on a Thursday, 1st October 2010 was a Friday and 1st October 2011 will be a Saturday). So in principle every seven years should be the same.

But we get leap years every 4 years (minus a few corrections) so the changes aren't all that regular. But on average every eight years we get the same days of the month on the same days of the week - nowhere CLOSE to 823 years!

Just so that you don't have to take my word for it, check any calendar (there are loads online), for how many Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays there were in October 2004 and 2010, and will be in 2021.

The basic numbers of days and months in a year (a 52 week year equals 13 4-week "months" rather 12 variable-length months) mean that, on average, every EIGHTH MONTH has five Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays which makes the event in general actually quite common. May 2009 and January 2010 were recent examples, and the next one after October 2010 is July 2011. Ask anyone who is paid every fourth Friday rather than calendar monthly for their experience.

Furthermore, the WHOLE of the 2010 calendar is exactly the same as 1999.

What has happened to the world and everyone's faculty for critical thinking if they accept this idiotic 823 years statement without a moment's hesitation?

Is it any wonder that the creationist/young earth movement is getting more and more adherents if people accept what's said to them without thinking about it?

Furthermore

I'm especially concerned by a variation on this meme which adds that years with a date which can written 10/10/10 only happen every 823 years.

How the FUCK can a decimal year (i.e. a year ending in 10) happen with a frequency other than 10 years apart? 10/10/10 happens every 100 years, the next time being in 2110.

I can't be bothered to do the exact calculation, but the combination of 10/10/10 AND the five long weekends in October happens roughly every 400 years.

In any event, it's NOT going to be a frequency ending on 3!

823 years from now is going to be 10/10/2833

Surely nobody even has to THINK about this for more than a millisecond? Surely it is self-fucking-evident?

Why the hell do people think that retweeting/re-emailing this kind of complete BOLLOCKS makes them appear to be anything other than illiterate, innumerate and incapable of rational thought?

Comments welcome, because I am really curious why being given a network connection seems to make otherwise intelligent people into gibbering baboons?

Cooking with Apples: Chunky Sweet Apple and Plum Chutney

2010-09-28T22:35:00.023+01:00

The further adventures of the non-perfect apples from the trees in our and our neighbour's gardens.

This was the day after the applesauce which was the topic of my last blog. This is the first time I've ever tried making chutney myself and I'm very curious how it'll come out, but I won't find out until Christmas!

I adapted this from several different recipes I found online and got some advice from my sister who's been making chutney for years. I changed a few things based on stuff I like (plums, cinnamon, cumin), stuff I don't like (star anise), stuff I had a lot of in the larder (onions, prunes) and stuff I didn't have and forgot to buy (raisins/sultanas).

Ingredients:
4kg apples
1kg ripe plums (3 different types)
500g prunes
1.5kg onions
350ml cider vinegar
350ml white wine vinegar
500g muscovado sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon pickling spices
1 tablesoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
6 sticks cinnamon (which had been used in the applesauce the night before and reserved after cooking)

And in a separate photo because I forgot to pull them out of the fridge when I took the above:
juice and grated rind of two lemons

Method

First, a trick I picked up from somewhere: when using unpitted prunes (i.e. with the stones intact): refresh them by simmering them for a short while in whatever liquid you'll be using, and then the stones will come out a lot more easily.

So I halved about half of my plums and added them to a saucepan with the prunes and the white wine vinegar to cook for a few minutes

In the meantime, wash, clean, core and roughly chop the apples (I didn't peel them, the skins add texture and flavour) and finely chop the onions (I suspect I didn't chop the onions finely enough):

Put the apples and onions into a large thick-bottomed pot with the cider vinegar and start to cook on a high heat

In the time it takes to boil, remove the stones from the prunes

Pit and roughly chop the remaining plums, and add them, the prunes (with their vinegar) and all remaining ingredients to the apples and onions:

I think I should have left the apples and onions to cook and soften a little more before adding the sugar (as learned when making goooseberry jam a couple of months ago, the fruit isn't going to disintegrate a lot more once the sugar is added) . I therefore helped the apples to soften while I stirred (I wanted a fairly chunky consistency anyway so I'm not complaining).

As pointed out when making the applesauce, the cooking pot should never be more than about two-thirds full, and this was pretty much brimming over, so I poured part of the contents into a second pan until it reduced enough to be re-integrated:

Leave simmering on a very low heat, uncovered, stirring very often with a wooden spoon. Beware: this is VERY hot and VERY thick and when it bubbles, it spits like molten tar, so make sure your hands and arms are covered when stirring!

There will come a point about an hour later (it might take longer), when the contents quite suddenly start caramelising and turn dramatically darker.

(The greyness is just steam coming off the chutney, this indicates how hot it is, considering the stove is barely burning.)

Leave to cook for another half hour after that point, stirring frequently all the way to the bottom, to stop the contents sticking to the pan.

I did it by feel, but apparently the way to know the chutney is done is if you run the spoon across the deepest contents of the pan to leave a trail, it doesn't immediately spill over (of course I couldn't see the bottom of the pan)!

While it's cooking, prepare and clean jars and lids (this is a 7-litre pot so I prepared jars for seven litres) - see the gooseberry jam blog for instructions. The one difference here is that because this recipe includes vinegar and onions, there's a lot of acid around so you'll need vinegar-proof seals or inlays to prevent the lids rusting to pieces before the chutney gets a chance to mature!

Empty the chutney into the clean jars, insert a piece of vinegar-proof sheeting, and tighten the lids. In the absence of a proper jamming boiling bath, half-fill the deepest metal saucepans you have with clean boiling water, fully immerse the filled jars and boil on a high heat for five minutes (you'll note that most of my jars are too tall and aren't fully immersed). If using modern jar lids (I have no proper preserving jar lids, these are just from various jarred products we buy) you'll hear the little lid buttons click one by one as the pressure inside the jars drops to seal the contents.

Use jarring tongs (one of my many nicknames at school was asbestos-hands for a reason) take the EXTREMELY HOT jars out of the pans of water and set aside to cool.

The next day they'll be cold, so trim the vinegar-proof sheets, label with contents and date.

Put into a a cool dark place for three months to mature and then enjoy. Don't even think about eating sooner! In theory, if made properly and properly sealed, this chutney should be perfectly safe for a couple of years at least. (My sister's chutney made in a similar way has been known to last three years - not that it usually lasts that long without being eaten.)

I made this batch on 23rd September, in full knowedge that it'll be Christmas in three months, and what we don't eat will be given away as gifts. Clever me!

I have six large jars and three smaller ones, and all it cost me apart from gas and stock ingredients, was the sugar (about 70p), the vinegar (about £1.30) and the prunes (£1.60, though they came from our larder where they'd sat for six months), so all inclusive that's about 50p a HUGE jar. You'd be lucky to get chutney like this for less than £2.50 a SMALL jar.

New food blog/recipe/idea: Applesauce

2010-09-27T15:05:00.005+01:00

I've been tweeting about the glut of apples from our tree and that of our neighbours this autumn (their house has been empty for the last 8 months and I had permission to help myself), and this is one of the things I did with them: Apple sauce. There'll be another blog along shortly regarding apple and plum chutney.

I had a previous applesauce session using about 4kg of windfalls from our tree which involved loganberries and not a lot of sugar and I think I learned a couple of lessons.

Note: Our tree is a child of the one next door. It grew from a windfall about 15 years ago and was nurtured by my dad, and transplanted about 10 feet to be out of its parent's shade. The apples are something like a cross between a Cox's Pippin and a Braeburn. The flesh is very white and very juicy, but really quite tart and barely edible raw. (Certainly eating more than one a day is guaranteed tummy upset, or worse!)

The word "recipe" for this apple sauce really is overstating the case!

1. Core, peel and roughly chop up 4KG raw apples (I left the peels on about half of them to add more textrue to the sauce) and put in large heavy-bottomed cooking pot.

2. Add about a cupful of water (these apples are very juicy and the water's only there to stop sticking/burning during the early cooking), 500g of sugar (I used about half that in my previous batch and it wasn't enough) - I'd've preferred all brown but I only had a little so I made it up with white - and a few cinnamon sticks to taste (in my case, 1 large stick per kilo of apples plus another couple). Note that my large cooking pot was too small to start with so I had some cooking in a second smaller pot. When cooking this kind of thing, NEVER fill the pot more than 2/3 to 3/4 full because the sauce is going to spit and bubble while stirring!

3. Turn on heat and as soon as it starts to boil, cover and reduce heat to a simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally until softened (about 15 minutes). (About halfway through, the volume had reduced enough to pour the contents of the smaller pan into the large one)

4. Leave to cool, remove cinnamon sticks and pour into plastic containers with lids. Freeze. It should keep for up to 3 months in a domestic freezer. Use for cakes, desserts or whatever takes your fancy! My 4kg of raw apples yielded 2x 1litre ice-cream containers plus 1.2litre ready-made soup containers (880ml + 4ooml).

Gooseberry Jam!

2010-07-21T14:37:00.023+01:00

I've been going on on Twitter about our gooseberry harvest this year and my attempts at making jam. Some people have asked for instructions, so this is how I did it! These pictures are from my second attempt - the first had been the day before and I learned a few lessons from it.

Step 1: Gather your gooseberries

Step 2: top and tail the fruit - it's easiest to use scissors!

Step 3: wash well under running water

Step 4: weigh. In my case, remove and eat excess so there's an even 1kg left!

Step 5: The normal rules of jam-making with soft fruit is to use at least the same weight of sugar as fruit (1kg - 1.2kg sugar to 1kg of fruit). I discovered the night before that these gooseberries are sweet and ripe enough, and the jam came out too sweet and sickly, so I reduced the amount of sugar to 800g. Also, I like the smokey flavour of unrefined sugar so I used 50/50 white and demarara.

Step 5: Measure 80% in litres of cold water of the weight in kilos of fruit - in this case 800ml.

Step 6: Put fruit and cold water into a heavy saucepan, and bring to boil. Also turn on your oven, on its hottest setting.

Step 7. While that's happening (about 2 mins) start washing enough jars with lids to take 150% of the weight of raw fruit (in my case, 1.5kg) in the hottest soapy water you can muster, in a clean bowl. Leave to soak.

Step 8. As soon as mixture starts boiling, bring down to a slow simmer and keep stirring until the fruit starts falling apart (another couple of minutes)

Step 9. Check all fruit has softened, and then add sugar while slowly stirring - preferably with a wooden spoon (and it's still barely simmering)....

... Continue stirring until you can feel absolutely absolutely all the sugar has dissolved (a minute or so).

Step 10. When all the sugar has dissolved (and not a moment sooner) bring the mixture to a rapid full boil, as hot as possible. When it starts boiling, set a timer for fifteen minutes.

Step 11. While the mixture is boiling, complete washing the jars and lids as scrupulously as possible and rinse out in the hottest water you can manage (in my case, straight from the kettle)

Step 12. Do not wipe the jars, but shake off excess water, switch off your (hot) oven (you DID switch it on earlier, didn't you?) and put your jars and lids inside upside down to dry out and keep warm.

Step 13. Cookery books and jam-making recipes make a big deal about temperature. And it's true, the mixture should boil at over 100-110°C but you should be OK by keeping it rolling for 15 minutes. Also, there are things like the wrinkle test to ensure it's ready, but I've not bothered during my past jam-making experiments and I've been OK.

Step 14. If desired, seive the boiling mixture into another clean saucepan if you want clear jam/jelly with no "bits". I'm going to make one 300g of clear jam and leave the rest with the bits...

... Return the seived clear liquid to the boil for another minute or two. Remove any scum that forms from the top of both saucepans before...

Step 15. ... pouring it into jars. Fill jars to the very brim so that there is no air in there to create condensation - condensation causes mould!

The clear/bitless jar is at the back on the left. I couldn't take any pictures of the bottling process as I only have two hands and it needs to be done quickly! Do not be surprised if the jam isn't very thick straight away, it might even need several hours after it's completely cold!

If I had any expectation that my jam would be standing around for any length of time I'd do the right thing and seal them with a waxed circle and a cellophane membrane before putting on the lids, but I fully expect none of my jam to be standing around for more than a couple of months - it will be fine in a fridge for that long! (I have now found homes for all but one of the jars!)

Last but not least, I didn't take a picture, but put a label on your jars listing the contents and date of production (for stock rotation purposes).

I hope this has been helpful - please let me know if you've tried this recipe and whether or not it worked!

Chrzan

2010-07-07T14:42:00.011+01:00

I love the word chrzan - it's Polish for horseradish. I leave you, dear reader, to take a guess at pronunciation!

We have loads of horseradish growing wild in our garden so while cleaning up today I dug up a small fraction of the mature roots to make some horesradish sauce/paste. Here's some photos from the process!

freshly dug-up roots in the middle of the lawn.

Discarded leaves

1.1kg of roots after they'd been cleaned of soil and given a scrub

Looking better: washed, peeled and roughly diced

First blitzing in small doses. Only additions: 1 glass boiling water, half glass white malt vinegar and half glass white wine vinegar, one tablespoon salt, one tablespoon sugar

The effect of the fumes on my poor eyes!

1.4kg of finished paste after second blitzing (Yes, I DID recalibrate the scales!)

Shops sell horseradish in little 50g jars like the one in front. How long will my 2 x 600g gherkin jars last, I wonder? (the two smaller ones are going to my sisters) Honest proposition: would anyone within travelling distance like some for free? Otherwise it's likely to go to waste, and I'm guaranteed at least a similar harvest in November, and again in the spring!

The sadness of infirmity in old age

2010-03-23T01:08:00.005Z

I've never written about this is public before because.... it's complicated.

My life for the last few years has revolved around catering for the needs of my elderly parents, and over the last year or so, especially those of my dad.

He was 95 a couple of months ago and after an active, virile life of the usual masculine achievements for someone of his generation, his health and appearance have taken a series of major blows over last couple of years.

This has been most visible in our garden: it's not really something I'm into or very good at, but for all my life planting things to eat, look at or smell has been a passion of my dad's, with varying degrees of success, but nevertheless with unbridled passion. The spring of 2009 was the last time he was able to get involved in it in any way, preparing seedlings and giving me instructions what to do. I am reminded of this now, looking out of my bedroom window and seeing the wreck of our vegetable plots which I haven't even cleaned up or dug over since last year's harvest.

Creepy-looking dead runner bean plants haven't been uprooted, potato plants lay where they they grew, dead flowers have been unpruned, the apple tree needs attention, etc, etc. Until last year, these are all things my dad would have done either himself or organised me to see to doing. And yet now, he's not even been in the garden since September (the practicalities of getting his wheelchair out there and back in have caused him to lose interest) and for the last few months he's rarely even looked out the back window.

He last left the house about a month ago to see his doctor and for the last two weeks he's been permanently bedridden. He has had a bad knee for as long as I remember, he developed a hernia a couple of years ago (which is the immediate cause of much of his current distress) on which doctors refuse to operate given his age and his history of a couple of strokes about 20 years ago, he was recently diagnosed with a cataract in his left eye and he has a burn wound on his right ankle which has refused to heal properly since last October. And he's borderline Type II Diabetic.

He's also suffered from chronic constipation since before his strokes (which the strokes just made worse) and ever since Christmas we've searched for foods he is able to eat, digest and evacuate without TOO much pain. He's currently managing mushy rice in milk with stewed prunes and lots of fruit juice.

It is incredibly sad to watch a man who in his prime could eat a whole loaf of bread over the course of a single day along with a mound of fresh fruit and vegetables and manage a whole chicken or half a cow if he had it available, but was so active that he'd burn it all off.

My abiding memory of his first stroke is not the circumstances of the stroke itself, but the fact that two days after being discharged from hospital, he was 25 feet in the air at the top of a ladder fixing a leaky roof, having been ordered to take it easy for a minimum of a month.

It's sad and frustrating to watch someone who has spent his entire life not having to count on anyone's help or assistance, and indeed refusing it when it was necessary, to be dependant on my 86 year-old mother and me for absolutely every need, and the pain in his eyes is obvious.

A baby requires constant care and attention, needs to have its bottom cleaned and can do very little for itself. But it knows no better. An adult in the same situation, with all mental faculties present but a complete inability to express them, is a different matter entirely. A baby doesn't feel shame or embarrassment, an elderly adult does.

I don't know how long my dad has left. There's every chance that when I wake up in the morning, I'll discover that he never will again. Or he might last another week. The chances he'll survive until Easter are remote. As a religious man that is probably the only hope he has left, of meeting his Maker in the glory of resurrection rather than the dark gloom of Lent.

I've lost all vestiges of my catholic religious upbringing myself but it's got to the point where leaving this life is really his best option. I don't believe that anything awaits him on the other side, but his own over-riding conviction that he is going on to something better and without pain is all that sustains him, and I'm not going to take that away.

I don't really know why I'm writing all this and I doubt it'll be of interest to anyone, but I just needed to get something down and empty these thoughts out of my head before the inevitable happens.

incompetent gas fitters

2010-02-26T15:02:00.003Z

I've just written the following letter. The contents will tell you everything you need to know. If anyone has any comments, please let me know ASAP, I have about 2 hours before I post it ;-)

001 ReactFast Solutions
Jubilee Centre
130 Pershore Street
Birmingham, B5 6ND
United Kingdom

26 February 2010

Dear Sirs,

I am extremely disappointed in the level of service I have received from you this week and will be taking legal recourse to recover from you the cost and inconvenience of having to wait for you to install the new boiler at my parents’ property as above. Please bear in mind that my father is 95 and in frail health and my mother is 86, and easily confused. Both are naturally susceptible to cold.

On Sunday night 21^st February their boiler broke down and on Monday (22^nd February) your engineer Shane visited their house to inspect their faulty boiler and agreed to make an unguaranteed temporary repair pending a decision to get a new boiler installed for which he quoted £1,850 plus VAT.

On Wednesday morning, just as the boiler died completely, I phoned you to make arrangements for the new boiler to be fitted, and after having to spend all morning chasing your staff and being passed from person to person, from department to department, at least four times each on five separate telephone calls, I finally got through to someone called Kevin from what appeared to be a sub-contractor company whose name I did not note, to look into it. The end result of this was that he promised me that as it was after 1pm, it was too late to order a boiler for delivery in time to be fitted the next day (yesterday, Thursday) but that it would arrive in time to be fitted as the first job this morning, Friday. I was instructed to pay a deposit of £900 by debit card right there which I did, and he confirmed that the boiler was on order.

I made arrangements to remain with my parents this morning to oversee the work and waited. At approximately mid-day I phoned to get an update, as I had heard nothing. Apparently the fitter was indisposed, and I was told I’d be called back immediately.

Having heard nothing by 2pm I called back and spoke to [name deleted] who was very understanding but unable to help immediately. She made an internal call and told me that the boiler had not in fact been delivered, and would not become available until Monday morning.

I have the following specific questions to which I would like an answer:

Why did I need to chase people all around your company (and, it seems, in other companies) to arrange for you to make a sale?

Why did nobody tell me on Wednesday that the boiler would not be delivered on time?

Why did nobody phone me today that the fitter would not be visiting?

Why did I have to chase around your company today to find ANYTHING out?

Why does your staff appear not to have the faintest idea what is going on with the jobs you have agreed to carry out, despite all the modern equipment they have available?

If I had been informed on Wednesday that the boiler would not arrive in time, I could have made arrangements to get someone else to do it, or to make another temporary repair. I do not need to tell you that I am not going to meet with any success in buying and having a new boiler fitted before the weekend in the short time available on a late Friday afternoon. I simply cannot fathom that Kevin or his colleague Ahmed did not think it important to call me back as soon as they found out the boiler would not be delivered.

I therefore hold you and your irresponsible lack of communications entirely responsible for the fact that my parents will be uncomfortable over the weekend, and the extra cost of having to use inefficient electric heaters to get ANY kind of warmth, and the inconvenience of lack of hot running water. Not to mention my day wasted in pointlessly waiting for your fitters to arrive.

I place a monetary value on this of £800 and if I do not hear back from you by return of post I will be instituting an action in the Small Claims Court.

Just as importantly, I also hold you morally and legally responsible for any possible deterioration in my father’s condition due to the cold and confusion of having to spend the entire weekend with no heating (especially as the weather forecast is for icy conditions). At the VERY least I expect a full and complete apology for this mess. Please note that in his condition, the cold could prove terminal for my father.

I also want an assurance that the new boiler WILL be fitted before mid-day on Monday 1^st March.

I look forward to your proposals of how to deal with this by return of post.

Yours faithfully

The Plumster

Internet fads

2010-01-19T13:07:00.002Z

One of the banes of my existence are the latest amusing emails doing the rounds in big offices being sent to me by friends. Let's get this clear, I don't have a problem with being amused. What I have a problem with is someone trying to amuse me with something that wasn't especially funny when I read it for the hundredth time ten years ago.

Since the dawning of the internet age I've worked in a big company only once (and that was a 3-month fixed contract) and was astonished by the amount of shit constantly flowing into my inbox to the extent that it actually stopped me being able to do my job properly. I am often quite grateful that I don't work in that kind of environment now.

Today I got two emails from completely unrelated directions with the same text (though formatted very differently). This got me wondering what caused this text to become trendy again, given that I've seen it several times in the last few years already?

A Google search on an extract unlikely to have beeen used in any other c0ntext resulted in 164,000 hits , a lot of them recent blogs reposting the same thing over and over again.

This also makes me wonder, not for the first time, how many bloggers ever consider, when repeating material they've read elsewhere, whether it's been reported before? After all, if it's doing the rounds as a "funny email", it's got history, doesn't it? And is NOBODY interested in what that history might be before repeating it, YET AGAIN?

Thanks to a tip from @fueledbyregret I discovered just now that you can sort Google results by date, which saved me the trouble trying to find earlier versions, and it got me to 31st January 2001 on http://www.lightbroker.com/. So this has been going on for nine years, is repeated on over a hundred thousand pages on the internet, and people are STILL repeeating it as if it's fresh news?

Is it any wonder that urban myths get spread around so quickly and easily nowadays when people don't seem to have the mental capacity to question what they read from some anonymous source and accept it as the truth and or/original? There are sites out there which specialise in debunking this shit, so use them, folks!

I understand that we all find stuff for the first time and want to share our enthusiasm for it. But links to previous iterations work just as well as presuming that nobody else has seen it before!

Blatantly fishing for encouragement

2010-01-13T00:24:00.007Z

I took a photo of myself at the gym today, to compare with one I took about five months ago. The improvements aren't as marked as I'd've hoped, but I think there have been SOME? Haven't there?

(taken 25 July 2009)

(taken 12th January 2010)

Review of the Year in Questions and Answers

2010-01-01T21:54:00.003Z

Happy New Year!

I stole this from someone else's blog. Sorry, I'm not sure whose it was but some of the questions had American spelling so I doubt it was any of my close friends!

1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
This is naughty, but it meant a lot to me at the time: I fulfilled a sexual fantasy by having a mutual sounding session!

2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I've not made resolutions since I was kid cos I know I'd never keep them, so there were no resolutions to keep. However, I did manage to keep free of smoking and maintain my attempts at losing weight!

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Two friends of friends, but nobody closer.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
The father of a schoolfriend - he was also my first boss after leaving university so although I'd not seen him for over 15 years his death hit me fairly hard.

5. What countries did you visit?
I was very badly travelled by own standards this year. France, a couple of times.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
A sex life with a steady partner rather than random one-night stands which makes me feel just a little squalid.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
11th January: I met the Stigs for the first time (having known them online for almost 3 years)
8th May: release of the new Star Trek movie
15th December: spent a very pleasant day with @squawkbox. He might not thank me in the long run for introducing him to Pączki :-p

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I'm not big on achievements (or setting goals, hence lack of resolutions). I'm proudest of having not only signed up for introductory German lessons, but doing the whole course without missing a single lesson, and even arriving late (10 mins) for only one. (I got 100% in the exam!) I'm also pleased about losing more flab (dropped two trouser sizes) and not smoking a single cigarette (not even a single drag), despite being tempted very hard in three moments of crisis.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not getting ANYWHERE with the closest thing I ever make to a resolution every Christmas and every birthday, to finally get a driving licence.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I had a very bad year for dental problems and as I write this, my jaw is in agony from having a tooth pulled yesterday morning (it cracked in half on Christmas day). I also had two bouts of tonsilitis, which was extremely painful! (The first bout wasn't even diagnosed at the time, I just thought I had a particularly sore throat)

11. What was the best thing you bought?
I'm not big on material possessions, but I finally got around to getting a modern mobile phone which includes internet capabilities, and a phone contract to go with it. I lost the handset, three months into an 18 month contract. I since bought an even more up-to-date one!

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Hmmm... not sure. Off the top of my head I can't think of any person or organisation which led a blameless existence throughout the year.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Alan Davies on Twitter.

14. Where did most of your money go?
I made two significant loans to people; in one case with the expectation that it will end up being a gift (I'm fine with that), in the other I hope it will be repaid over the course of 2010.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Lots of movies, but apart from Star Trek none of them lived up to the hype I'd built up in my head. More than that, meeting several online friends either for the first time, or for the first time after a long break.

16. What song will always remind you of this year?
Lady Gaga: Pokerface. I don't listen to music radio and my main exposure to current/chart music is at the gym and stuff my online friends talk about. Gaga was absolutely EVERYWHERE!

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? The same
b) thinner or fatter? Thinner (YAY!)
c) richer or poorer? in terms of my current account, the same! In terms of my "life savings", significantly poorer, for the time being (see Q. 14)

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Everything.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Procrastinating.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
Very quietly. Apart from phone calls from family, most of the days over the holidays were just like normal ordinary days. And on Christmas Day I broke a tooth which meant I spent much of it in agony!

21. What was your favourite TV programme?
Nothing really stands out without thinking about it very hard, but I was impressed as usual with Doctor Who, and FastForward started well. I had high hopes for True Blood but it was much to soapy for my tastes and I lost patience.

22. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I don't hate anyone; I find it a wasted emotion. Alan Davies has gone down in my estimation quite significantly.

23. What was the best book you read?
I've not read much this year and of what I did, nothing really stands out.

24. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Nothing stands out.

25. What did you want and get?
Thinner and fitter, but not quite to the degree I'd hoped.

26. What did you want and not get?
A proper long-term relationship.

27. What was your favourite film of this year?
I think I'd have to say Let The Right One In, AKA Låt den rätte komma in. Creepy, heartbreaking and beautiful. I bet Hollywood remakes it before too long, and I bet they'll royally fuck it up.

28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
It was a day just like any other. I got two cards, both from close family members. Which leaves a lot of close family members who forgot. This has made me sad in the past and so I don't celebrate birthdays at all any more.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Someone to wake up alongside, just once, without a shadow of a doubt.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Clean clothes that don't have more holes in them than they are meant to have.

31. What kept you sane?
That question makes an assumption I feel is unwarranted. :-p

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I've never had any celebrity crushes but I can only answer the same way I answered a similar question once before: every time Eric Szmanda comes on in CSI I can't help but smile ;-)

33. What political issue stirred you the most?
Too many to mention, but prevarication over climate change issues (including establishing whether or not it actually is our fault) angers me.

34. Who did you miss?
Nobody in particular. Just the lack of Somebody to miss!

35. Who was the best new person you met?
Lots. Most of the people I follow on Twitter, if "met" includes virtual meetings. If not, then I shall have to remain coy. ;-)

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.
"People" as a nameless crowd are generally far more easily led than I ever thought it possible.

37. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
"Talking 'bout my generation"

Please feel free to ask any other questions and I'll be happy to answer!

All you need to know about 2012

2009-11-17T01:31:00.010Z

For those who aren't afraid of spoilers for films, my attitude towards 2012 can be summarised in one statement. Well, two.

For those who thought that the way Roland Emmerich blew up the White House in Independence Day wasn't over-the-top enough, skip to 2 mins 18 seconds into the trailer (the last effect shot included):

Worse yet, corny as it was, Independence Day had the President's Henry V-inspired battle speech with David Arnold's music rising to a climax behind it.

The best 2012 can manage is an "everyone deserves a chance" speech delivered by 2012's everyman-scientist (imagine him being played by Jeff Goldblum) which fizzles into nothingness. The only way it tugged at my tear ducts was the extent to which it made me want to cry with laughter!

Armistice Day Thoughts

2009-11-11T02:57:00.009Z

As the clock strikes eleven on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the world commemorates Armistice Day, the silencing of the guns of the First World War and the start of an uneasy peace.

Well, let's be honest, "the world" mainly means Great Britain, its Commonwealth, France and the Low Countries, those nations which lost more of their young men to the conflict than any other.

We don't normally think about the Germans because, well, we acknowledge they started it, and we don't normally think of the Russians because by the end of the war, they'd been through the October Revolution and the birth of the Soviet state, which had much more of a monumental effect on their future. And we don't think of the other two empires whose collapse the War precipitated, Austro-Hungary down the east of the Mediterranean sea, or the Ottomans, still further away.

Although proudly British, my cultural and genetic roots are far from here. Looking upon the seas of white crosses marking the Allied killing grounds of northern France and Belgium you won't find my surname or many like it. In fact, look at any statistics and you'll find there were no great numbers of Polish casualties of the Great War.

It's not because there weren't tens of thousands of Polish young men involved in the fighting. It's just that (and this is news to an alarming number of people), there was no Polish state at all during World War One and so the fallen don't count as Polish nationals. The country had been wiped off the face of the European map by the end of the 18th century and its territory divided up between the Russians, Prussians, Germans and Austrians. Thousands of young men, ethnically Poles, were forced to fight in the armies of their occupiers against their natural allies, or simply taken into slave camps or became prisoners of the state, partly to prevent the development of the Legions .

For Polish people, while 11th November remains an opportunity to remember the war dead lying in unmarked and forgotten graves across Europe and the Russian steppes, it is primarily the festival of the rebirth of a nation, the restoration of a physical entity whose existence had been denied for over 120 years.

My father was born at the start of the Great War and while he never talks of these things, I am always conscious, every 11th November, that he had been born in a country that didn't exist, but by the time he started school, he was one of the first children in three generations in his area allowed to go to a Polish school, run by Polish people, and taught in his own language completely openly without fear of repression or abuse.

So yes, I bow my head at 11am and think of tens of thousands of dead young men and their distraught families and I thank them for their sacrifice, but I also think of a country reborn, of hope that the future must be better than the past, and that a better future is always worth fighting for.

The red poppy has become the international symbol of Armistice Day and in the UK more than any country, we are encouraged to buy a facsimile and wear it with pride in memory of those who gave their lives for ours. For Poles, however, that symbol has a very slightly different meaning and is emblematic not of the killing fields of World War One, but the Allied operation to liberate Italy in World War Two (which is not to undermine its being the symbol of the fallen of all wars).

Every Polish-speaking child knows by heart Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino (The Red Poppies On Monte Cassino), a hymn to bravery, honour and sacrifice, written during the battle for Monte Cassino not far from Rome in May 1944. Read about the background of both the battle and the song on Wikipedia .

Oh and my dad was there, too, and it's something else he chooses not to talk about.

Every time I see the seas of red poppies in the first half of November on British streets and look down upon the one I wear myself, it's invariably this song I end up thinking about and singing to myself. And by the end, my eyes are never dry. There are several versions floating around online and I'm not really that taken with any of them, and there are also various translations into English, but I have problems with all of those two.

Please persevere with the song, and here is my non-poetic, non-scanning translation (I'm not a poet in any language) of the words:

Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino
The Red Poppies on Monte Cassino

Do you see those ruins on that hill?
Your enemy's hiding there like a rat!
You have to! You have to! YOU HAVE TO
Grab his neck and drag him from his heights!
And they moved on, mad, heedless,
And they moved on to kill and avenge,
And they went as stubborn as ever,
In honour's name, to fight.

The red poppies on Monte Cassino
Fed not on dew, but on Polish blood...
Polish soldiers crawled over and died on them,
But their anger was more potent than death!
Years will pass and the ages will dull memories,
Only traces of bygone days will remain,
But the poppies on Monte Cassino
Will be redder
From the Polish blood on which they thrived.

They charged through fire, the condemned,
Countless were hit and fell,
Like the cavalry at Samosierra,
They charged with furious momentum
Like those at Rokitna years ago.
And they persevered. And they prevailed.
And planted their white and scarlet standard
In the ruins in the clouds.

The red poppies on Monte Cassino...

Do you see this row of white crosses?
Polish soldiers did honour there wed.
The further, the higher you go forward,
The more of them you'll find at your feet.
This soil belongs to Poland,
Though Poland is far away,
For Freedom is measured in crosses -
This is History's curse.

The red poppies on Monte Cassino...

(25th Anniversary verse, not included in any recordings)

A quarter of a century, friends, has passed us,
The battle's dust has blown to the winds
And the monastery's white walls
Again reach to the sky.
But the memory of those terrible nights
And the blood which was spilled here -
Echoes in the monastery's bells
Rocking the fallen to their rest!

The red poppies on Monte Cassino...

Later in the day... While sorting through some old bits and pieces of paper, totally by coincidence I found a photograph of myself in a group at the Monte Cassino war cemetary while on a school trip to Italy. See if you can find which one's me! ;-)

Stephen Fry returns to Twitter but the @brumplum controversy continues

2009-11-03T03:21:00.005Z

About half an hour ago (it's now almost 3.30am UK time) I was about to close down my laptop and go to bed having finally had a fairly normal day in both the real world and on Twitter, when all of a sudden the "mentions" column in Tweetdeck suddenly sprang to life, with several people posting the same link (actually, the same title, but different abbreviated links every time).

The link was to an article on an Australian tech blog called Blorge.com (never heard of them before, sorry). I tried to leave a comment, but this resulted in an error message which said that my comment looked like it might be spam and that it would have to be approved by an admin (I don't hold that against them, as long as an admin actually does get to see the comment, and hopefully approves it, and it's not just been sent into a black hole).

Here's a link to the blog and a slightly re-written version of my comment:

Stephen Fry returns to Twitter but the @brumplum controversy continues

The topic has actually been all but dead for the last 18 hours or so (certainly nothing controversial, although I have picked up on a few jocular comments here and there). I have spent the day able to treat Twitter the way I always have and have resumed my usual activities and normal inane rambling and sharing pointless information with my (now-enlarged) group of friends. Mentions of my username have come from either those friends or other people with questions or comments which are generally unrelated to the controversy.

Until several people starting linking this article about 20 minutes ago, the @brumplum controversy was no more, and it is this article which resurrected it!

I'm not making any kind of moral judgment about it (I find the whole thing rather amusing), but I hope you realise that by publishing this now, its title has actually become a self-fulfilling prophecy?

(I hope that people reading this will draw appropriate conclusions and let this matter drop now; I am posting this blog mainly for the benefit of those who've already seen and retweeted the Blorge article)

The Fry débacle, Addendum: #envioushomo and Alan Davies

2009-11-01T03:59:00.008Z

I have two things to say which are effectively replies to comments on my last entry but I feel are significant enough to highlight, and not lose them in what is effectively a stream of footnotes.

Firstly, several people have picked up on a hashtag which appeared very early on in the day and caused some to shower me and others in outrage. I understand that it has been the cause of a certain amount of bad blood during the day (there was just FAR too much going on for me to get a handle on it), and a topic for at least three comments on my blog.

I am talking about #envioushomo

This was a term of fondness not addressed to Stephen Fry and it wasn't even addressed to me! As anyone who can use the Twitter search function (i.e. every-bloody-one) can see (check out the link I have provided above), it originated with a tweet from my friend @w00dRabbit who is gay, and called himself... an envious homo!

Here's his tweet:

@brumplum oh my! you got a reply from @stephenfry ! #envioushomo

I replied to him and because Tweetdeck, my Twitter application of choice, automatically appends any hashtags when replying, it showed up in my timeline. I thought it was fairly amusing and didn't consider for an instant that anyone could misconstrue it - after all, it's there for anyone to get the original context, isn't it?

EDIT: A comment has just made me realise that @woodRabbit's tweets are protected, which means he needs to approve his followers and this tweets don't show up in the general timeline. (I've always found the concept of protected tweets a bit odd, between you and me.) Because we already follow each other, I see his tweets normally and thus made nothing of it.

It was therefore unfair of me to have a go at anyone in the previous version of this blog for not knowing the source of the hashtag. My bad as the youngsters say. My turn to eat crow. Nevertheless, I hope the above has now cleared it all up.

So folks, please get off my back, or anyone else's, for being homophobic or anything else of that ilk, cos you're jumping to ENTIRELY the wrong conclusions!

The second item I would like to address is on a different level. I've honestly not had time to read through my twitter feed of the day. I've just picked up a few pits and pieces I've had pointed to me, mainly positive. I have no desire to see just how much vitriol people from around the planet could hurl in my direction.

A few friends, however, have pointed me in the direction of specific comments they felt were particularly egregious and in most cases I've laughed them off. One person, however, is in a very different category.

I am talking of Alan Davies, known in Twitter circles as @alandavies1. For the benefit of full disclosure, I should say that Alan Davies was probably the fourth or fifth person I followed on joining Twitter and I have, on and off, enjoyed what he's had to say. I've even replied to some of his stuff with positive noises.

He's Stephen Fry's friend, and along with Stephen, makes QI work as a concept and a show. I don't blame him for a moment for coming to Stephen Fry's defence. Several of my real-life friends came to mine, and that's only right. I fully expect they called each other tossers and wankers and twats.

But to my knowledge nobody who supported me has over a hundred thousand followers and called anyone else a c*nt. Yet Alan Davies considers this normal and acceptable behaviour, and it seems to me without having a clue about the background to the story or feeling the need to find out.

Much more important though is the tweet (which he has since deleted) in which he invited people to physically gang up on me, in "the Essex way".

Frankly, I expected just a little more class frrom the guy.

I have said that I expect no apology from Stephen Fry. But, BOY do I expect one from Alan Davies. Preferably to my face. That, or call me a wanker to my face, which is also, according to him, the Essex way. (He already called me a moron and a wanker on Twitter, so he'd just be following up on his own standards.)

Because I am more than wiling to call him an irresponsible idiot to his face, should anyone accord me the opportunity.

I really, HONESTLY, have no desire to drag this unfortunate misunderstanding out any more, but Alan Davies' part in all this leaves me with a particularly nasty taste in my mouth, and he's the only one who can take it away.

Similarly to my other blog entry which I ended with thanks to my friends, I would like to thank @lachance680 for being particularly tenaciously on Alan Davies's back and for saving some of his more ill-judged comments for me to see.

EDIT: After a few comments on the subject, I would like to explain that it's not because Alan Davies said something slightly foolish that I demand an apology from him. It's specificially because he has MANY more followers than anyone else in this argument and was agreeing with the idea of working up the internet mob to become a real-world one :

@Alandavies1 Anyone has a pop at your mates you stick up for them.Twittr needs to be more like Essex.If you wouldn't say it to their face then do shut up

Firequacker @alandavies1 followed by smashing their windows slashing their tyres and sending dogs muck through the leter box.. Grays Stylee ??

@Alandavies1 @Firequacker if needs be

(anyone who really wanted to could identify me from my online existence and work out where I live). This is bad enough coming from anyone, but for someone with a public face it is simply irresponsible. Recent events should have taught him that he has sway over people and this kind of talk is really not on.

The Fry debacle

2009-10-31T22:50:00.005Z

I've started writing about what's been going on today on Twitter from all kinds of angles. And several paragraphs or just sentences into each effort, I've decided that it's the wrong tack.

I've decided that until I've had a chance to sleep on it, I need to say fairly little.

I will say this though. Comments on this blog have always been "moderated" (i.e. Blogger sends them to me for approval before they appear). It's not something I've just instituted because of the kerfuffle. This has mainly been to stop spam and certain individuals being abusive. I have always accepted all valid comments made on my blog whether I agree with them or not. (Why wouldn't I?)

That said, I am refusing to accept "anonymous" comments. Regardless of whether you want to be positive or negative, I expect you to be open to a conversation. Your email address will not appear in public if you so choose, but should I need to clarify a point, I want to be able to contact you privately. I have no intention of being a defenceless punchbag.

In the meantime, here are some links to other blogs or online stories I've seen, with a word or two of comment where I think it's needed:

@brokenbottleboy:
Stephen Fry, depression and the rage of the Twitter mob
Regarding why I included the @ symbol bringing the conversation to Stephen Fry's attention (see comments section), it was simply force of habit. Specifically, two habits: when I see Twitter usernames, I immediately prefix them with @ as they otherwise seem "wrong" to me. Secondly, I feel it's fair that if I'm talking about someone, they have a right to know about it. I'm really not a fan of talking about people behind their backs.

I appended "sorry Stephen" on the phenomenally tiny chance that Mr Fry himself would see my tweet. I have replied to hundreds of his tweets or otherwise addressed tweets to him in the past with positive comments or attempts at humour, and have never been acknowledged. Ditto his own blog/website on which I have left many positive comments in the past. Why should I assume that this time would be any different? The "Sorry Stephen" was also addressed to those who disagree with me, to make it reasonably clear that I mean him no ill-will.

I have potentially much more to say on the subject.

@thoroughlygood:
Stephen Fry & @brumplum in the playground
To maintain the playground metaphor and the spirit of the final paragraph, "sir, sir, I've already said sorry, twice. I'm waiting for Fry Minor to say sorry now".

More seriously, though, Stephen Fry does not need to apologise to me for anything. On the infinitesimal chance that he, or someone who has his ear, sees this, I want to reiterate that I am truly sorry for any offence caused. I would, however, appreciate some sign of life from him because until then the loss of Britain's Greatest Tweeter will all be my fault. Unlike his theatrical experience several years ago, no individual was blamed, in public or in private, for breaking his spirit. In this case, the cause of his escape has a name, and that name is @brumplum. One of his last tweets indicated that he was about to travel to the USA so I fear I will be Twitter's flogging horse for a while. So be it, but please, Stephen, do come back.

@derekbarry
Stephen Fry, Twitter and the Fifth Estate
I'm so glad he brought up Stephen Fry's recent blog, which was, to an extent, about the fact that it's very easy to say stuff in the heat of the moment which one lives to regret. And so Stephen Fry should, perhaps, be mindful of the fact that I also regret elements of what I said and how I said it. An earlier draft of this very blog entry included reams of self-justification, but I'll let it drop for now.

For the record, I would like Mr Barry and others to reflect on this: if Mr Fry, after thirty years in the public eye, has difficulty adapting to his current position as a visible leader of people and maker of causes, then what about me, who after decades of obscurity, have been thrust into the international limelight for saying something no more objectionable than I have said before, and had said to me countless times too, the only difference being that I said it to and about someone famous.

Oh, and for the record, my own history includes the loss of three relatives of my father's in the same Auschwitz concentration camp in which Stephen Fry lost several of his. Catholic Poles rather than Jews, and two of them were condemned for having saved Jewish families - the third just for being related to the first two. So Stephen's "we know which side of the border Auschwitz was" has particular resonance with me. Even so, I don't hold it against him, and has not reduced the esteem in which I hold him as an entertainer, educator and all round Jolly Good Egg. (And said as much on his blog. )

The Times Online (as representative for the purposes of this blog of the traditional media)
Stephen Fry in a flutter at horrid tweeters on Twitter
OK, this is where things get seriously scary. For a major newspaper to pick up a spat between users of an ultimately insignificant glorified chatroom is absolutely mind-boggling. To make a national (and international) story of it is beyond silliness. I really would have thought that there were far more important things in news generally, and the tech sector in particular, to talk about?

To quote one of the comments under that story? W.T.F?

People threaten to leave websites and/or chatrooms every day of the week, several times over. I know of at least three (popular) Tweeters who've voiced uncertainly about their future presence on the site in the last week, and nobody's batted as much as an eyelid.

What's so different about this case?

To end this blog on a positive note. I would like to voice my sincere gratitude to everyone I know and don't know on Twitter who has said anything in my defence today, whether it was in public or in private. I have deliberately kept away from Twitter not because I can't take the vitriol, but simply because I've not had the time. It also means I've not had the time to see the wonderful messages of support, so I can just thank you all en groupe.

I hate to single anyone out, but just because they supported me on the phone throughout the day while I wasn't online, very, very special thanks to @stigblog, @stigsbf and @squawkbox for being real, genuine friends. It's people like them who make Twitter worthwhile.

Just a Minute Reloaded

2009-09-24T11:44:00.003+01:00

I've been a fan of Just a Minute on Radio 4 more or less since it started (yes, I am old enough to remember it, and yes, I was already a Radio 4 listener as a small child). Since his first appearance in the late 1990s (I'm not enough of a JAM spod to know exactly when) Paul Merton and his surreal sensibility has been a perfect contestant.

I've just discovered something the interesting creative folk at the BBC do, making animations to edited highlights of some of the rounds, called Just a Minute Reloaded and I can't decide if my own love of Sudoku puzzles, Paul Merton's verbal inventiveness or the way it's matched by the wacky visuals in this clip are what I like most about it, but I'm in stitches! (Your Mileage May Vary)

A day in the life of a dieter

2009-07-30T02:42:00.022+01:00

Well, Jae and Andy have diet blogs going so why shouldn't I?

Also, a while back, Stig did a picture blog recounting a day's activities and I've always wanted to do something similar, so I thought I'd combine the two ideas and provide a photographic record of a day's activities relevant to a guy trying to lose some flab.

The idea is to provide details of everything of nutritional significance that went into my mouth and every significant calorie-burning activity in one day, in this case Tuesday 28th July 2009.

(Nutrition details come from packaging (not that there was much packaged food involved) and an excellent site I found called Nutrition Data com.)

9.53am, coffee with dash of milk, approx 25 calories

12.12pm, bowl of Special K cereal (approx 120cal) with semi-skimmed milk (approx 120cal) and a chopped banana (approx 100cal) = 340 calories

2.10pm walk to my dentist to discuss my checkup appointment

2.51pm and from there to the Bull ring Open Market to do some fresh fruit and vegetable shopping.

and from there to my gym, a total of 2 miles or 3.2km. Burned approx 200 calories.

3pm arriving at gym.

3.32pm First exercise completed: 20 mins rowing, burned 220 calories

3.46pm Second exercise completed: stretching and flexing. Burned approx 10 calories

4.28pm Third exercise completed: 20 minutes (plus 1 min cooldown) on bike. Burned 200 calories

4.36pm Break in fourth exercise: resistance training (in all, 3x12 shoulder press, 3x12 chest press, 3x12 pecs, 3 x 3x12 leg resistance exercises). Burned approx 40 calories

5.17pm Fifth exercise completed: 13.30mins cross-trainer. Burned 200 calories.

5.20pm after a mad rush, sitting down for some R&R in the sauna. No calories burned immediately, but it feels good!

5.30pm More R&R in the hydrotherapy pool. No swimming today (big pool off shot to the right; note sauna & steam room straight ahead). No calories burned, but muscles well massaged!

5.55pm three small plums (what else!) bought earlier at the market as a prize to myself for completing the wortkout. Approx 25 cals each = 75 calories

I forgot to provide evidence of two apples eaten during the course of the evening once I got home, about 95cals each = 190 calories

9.08pm late dinner of mixed salad with cottage cheese and lemon dressing (approx 100 cals altogether) and grilled lemon & ginger & paprika chicken breat pieces (basically, home-made nuggets, approx 260cals) and watered-down sugar-free cranberry juice, approx 40 cals = 400 calories

9.33pm dessert, Flora pro-activ low fat apricot yoghurt, 71 calories

11.42pm mid-evening cup of blackcurrant tea (4 cals) and currant bun (which was a lot tastier than it looks!) 174cals with cottage cheese filling (approx 20 cals) = approx 200 calories

1.25am late-night cup of Rooibos tea with a splash of milk = approx 25 calories

I haven't recorded the 3 litres of water drunk at the gym and during the evening while sitting at the computer, with no calorific value.

The balance, though: 1125 low-fat calories in and about 870 calories burned with exercise.

Two unusual things about this day: normally there'd be a sandwich, salad or bowl of soup in the mid-afternoon/early evening with a value of about 300 calories, and I'd not walk to the gym so I'd burn about 200 cals less. Even so, I'm extremely surprised I'm not losing weight more quickly (OK, admittedly there are a few food sins along the way on a weekly basis, but I'm fairly consistent...).

Any comments, tips or hints are most welcome!

Family

2009-07-16T00:45:00.007+01:00

I am starting to write this at 1.46 local time having spent the evening drinking local French rosé wine (1€20 a litre from the wine cooperative down the road) with my sister (3l of said beverage has been drunk between us). I say that to explain why this blog is probably full of typos and non-sequiturs and drunken ramblings.

The evening and the conversation we had has made me think about and re-evaluate a few things.

For the first time in my life, at the age of 47, I uttered the phrase "yes, I am gay" to, and in the physical presence of, one of my siblings (I have 5 sisters and one brother).

It's not that I've ever lied about this rather important element of my life, or tried to hide it. The simple fact of the matter is that in our family, we don't talk about these kinds of things. Not about people we like nor about relationships nor about our deep-seated dreams and/or fears. Most of us will happily talk about these things to other people, but not to each other. We are, in short, a fucked-up family.

All my adult life I've assumed that my status as not-entirely-heterosexual was taken as read among my siblings. I've left enough clues through the years and said more than enough things that should leave them wondering. Through the years, several people outside my family have picked up "vibes" from me and asked me outright whether I'm other-than-straight, and I've never lied. And that's apart from circumstances in which people have known from the moment they met me for whatever reason.

From what my sister said to me during our drunken conversation, she is not aware that any of my other sisters suspect that I may be gay. This leaves me wondering whether I'm an idiot, or they are. Or alternatively, that conversations between my sisters go as I think they do, as I have most definitely outed myself to one of my brothers-in-law before (both of us were stone cold sober at the time, so forgetfulness doesn't come into it) and I'm open with another of my sisters about passers-by I find alluring.

Do most straight people REALLY find it that problematic that others in their midst might not be like them, that they need it spelled out?

Are streotypes in our society so entrenched that short of dressing in a skirt (of the non-kilt variety) or being as camp as Graham Norton, Alan Carr or their ilk, that being gay is just not a valid reasoning for most people? I've never talked about having a girlriend to any of my siblings, never presented a female as a potential girlfriend to any of my family, never talked about attractive
female celebrities (though VERY frequently about male ones) and what's more, I attended an all-boys boarding school.

HOW MANY HINTS DO YOU NEED, PEOPLE??

I might be oddd, I might be shy, or I might be gay. There are no other explanations.

I don't dispute that I display one or more or these characteristics at any time, but people who know me very well (as my siblings should, and unlike our parents, they should at least consider some things as "normal" which an older generation didn't and I know that none of my sisters are even slightly hompophobic) really should be able to addd one and one and get two.

I had no problem coming out to my sister and I didn't feel the weight lifting that so many gay people before have mentioned about their conming out. My primary emotion is wondering, as staated above, which one of us is the idiot? My sister((s) for not making (to my mind) obvious assumptions I'd make about anyone else, or myself for expecting them to make these assumptions?

On a completely different level, and this perhaps comes under the "blowing your own trumpet" heading, I had a kind-of epiphany this evening about the kind of person I am, regardless of my sexuality.

I need to say that reason I'm here in the first place is that my sister is in deep financial and emotional doo-doo and effectively needs to sell her house (which was bought with the intention of being a retirement home) in order to survive financially and emotionally, and I've paid my own way to come here to help her prepare it for sale (it needs a lot of work). She is currently completely pissed on wine, and so am I. By some fluke, I had the presence of mind to put her to bed, wash up after dinner, clean up the mess we'd made, lock up the house and wash all the tools we'd been using prior to our break for a drink (which ended in a lot more), feed her cats and basically make sure we're all safe, secure and in a position to carry on normally in the morning as if it had been an ordinary evening.

What I'm trying to say is, I think, I'm a good person, and I have my wits around me.

So why the fuck doesn't anyone want me? Or even answer my calls?

Am I THAT fucking ugly?

P.S. There are different kinds of drunks: merry ones, maudlin ones, violent ones, incoherent ones, philosophical ones, sleepy ones, etc. Normally, I am a merry drunk who then becomes a sleepy drunk. So what's happened this evening that I've gone through maudlin and philosophical (and, arguably, incoherent) insteead?

Angels and Demons

2009-05-18T18:50:00.000+01:00

I gave in to the hype today, as I knew I would.

Everyone whose opinion I respect and has seen Angels and Demons has one of three reactions: they don't want to talk about how bad they thought it was, they break down into fits of hysterical laughter, or they go off on a rant.

I've already displayed the first two reactions today, so here's my chance for the third, having seen it this afternoon. This little rant (I can't really call it a review) will be spoiler-free but of course if anyone wishes to engage with anything I have to say, it would help if you've seen it...

On my way home from the cinema, I starting developing a mental list of pros and cons about this movie. Regrettably the only pro I could come up with is that Tom Hanks has had a haircut since the Da Vinci Code (bearing in mind that his odd barnet was one of the LEAST ridiculous things about that particular movie).

In the meantime, the con column just got longer and longer.

Let's start with one of the first characters we encounter, Ewan McGregor. Don't get me wrong, Ewan's a decent actor and he's been called upon to play characters of all kinds of backgrounds from all sorts of places in his career, and has normally acquitted himself quite admirably.

Where this particular character comes from is fairly important, so it's a major disappointment that he was capable of five or six different accents within the same sentence at times, ranging from his native Scottish, through "proper" English, mid-Atlantic, generic North American and even a bit of several Mediterranean countries. By my count, through the whole movie he pronounced maybe half a dozen words the way he should have.

Also, I may be wrong here, but his character's name is only ever mentioned once in the two hours-plus running time although he appears in every second scene. He is generally referred to by his job description/title as if the dimmer members of the audience need to be reminded just who he is and what he does rather than gleam any symbolic importance from his rather bland name.

There's a principle in dramatic writing known as Chekov's Gun, which has two basic facets. These are generally summarised as: if a gun appears in Act One, make sure it's fired by Act Three; also, if you plan to fire a gun in Act Three, make sure we know it's been introduced beforehand.

In painting-by-numbers movies like this, the writers always remember that lesson from creative-writing class whenever they need to introduce a deus-ex-machina means of resolving a plot point. The problem is that it all becomes a bit simplistic and the introductions often come out of any rational context, perhaps even moreso than their use might.

For instance, it's only a question of time before we discover why we're shown during his otherwise pointless first scene that Tom Hanks's character is an EXCELLENT swimmer... Or when another character informs us that he used to be a helicopter pilot, you can bet your bottom dollar that at some point, he's going to be called upon to fly one!

There's an adjunct to the principle of Chekov's Gun, which is fairly basic to dramatic narratives: remember who's got the gun, and who knows how to use it! This is a big element of many thrillers or murder mysteries, along the lines of "ah, but how did you know she was throttled with a silk scarf, if you didn't do it?"

Regrettably, the writers of this piece of garbage seem to have forgotten those principles, such as for instance remembering which skills which character possesses.

Why, for instance, would Tom Hanks's eminent symbologist Robert Langdon, who is working on multi-tome analysis of Galileo, require assistance in translating Latin? I'm a multi-lingual kind of guy with a bit of academic textual analysis behind me, and if there's one thing I know, it's that at this level of scholarly discipline, you don't work from translations!

Langdon isn't the only one who seems to forget what he knows, as at least two other characters need to have Latin translated to them, when they'd previously shown more-than-adequate skills in that themselves.

This parallels one of the other shortcomings of this poor excuse for cinematic entertainment: no fact or argument is valid unless it's been explained to us in dialogue, at least a couple of times. It's not enough to show, for example, a montage of statues featuring very prominent arrows, Hanks has to shout "The Arrows!", before we're shown them all again. And then someone else has to shout "Oh, the Arrows!" before they all set off at speed to discover the next clue.

I don't like being patronised and even more than that, I don't like being patronised with a tautological and self-referencing script that thinks it's oh-so-clever when in fact it's dumber than it thinks its audience might be. I have no idea whether this is Dan Brown's fault (I never read the book, and I now have even less desire to do so than ever before) or the writers of the film. I really expected more of David Koepp, who has a fairly distinguished track record to date.

It became a running (ha ha) joke in the most recent season of Doctor Who that the Doctor and his assistant had to do a lot of running. Well, the running the Doctor & Co have to do isn't a patch on Robert Langdon and his friends. Angels and Demons should really be called The Running, Jumping, Standing Still and Pointing Film (as a vague tribute to this). He reads a map to find out where to run to, they run (or drive, which anyone who's ever been in a car in Rome will know is impossible) there, find something gruesome and then run again.

And frankly, the way it's all put together makes one not care one iota where they are running, whether they'll get there in time to stop the gruesomeness or, indeed, whether it means anything. At least the Da Vinci Code sparked a debate about whether the basic ideas behind the plot had any merit; this waste of celluloid doesn't even have the benefit of that.

About half an hour into the film, I suspected I'd worked out where it was all going, and cringed. An age later, about 15 minutes before the end, I was pleased because they threw a curveball and I thought I'd got it wrong. That didn't last long though, because the train got onto the tracks it had been on all along, towards the inevitable crash. Except that even then, I didn't care.

There are SO many more things I don't like about this film, but I've come to realisation that I don't care enough to continue. I needed to get off my chest a few ways of saying that is a pile of manure from which anyone with more than two grey cells should stay as far away as possible, and I've done that. I welcome anyone who disagrees with me about any of the facts, or who found this film to have kind of merit, to comment - I really don't bite.

Too many t-shirts?

2009-05-14T14:08:00.001+01:00

I've just folded up a load of t-shirts which I've washed over the last couple of days. Is it normal for a 40-something bloke to own this many? This isn't my complete collection by a long shot - this is just over a week's wear and wash.

Something one doesn't realise when embarking on a course of daily gym-going is just how many t-shirts one uses. In my case, it's three, sometimes four a day: one when I get up and do stuff around the house, one at the gym, a fresh one for the journey home and occasionally a fourth if I'm going out.

(BTW is it really sad of me that I rarely wear proper shirts any more?)

A small amount of kudos to anyone who can tell me exactly how many badly-stacked shirts there are in the photo (not as easy as it seems)...

Confusing your space opera franchises

2009-05-14T01:46:00.000+01:00

Confused about your space opera franchises? You will be!

Watch My Favorite Movie (Star Trek vs. Star Wars) and more funny videos on CollegeHumor

(I don't actually think that the comparisons are so close, but it's a comment I've seen in lots of places)

T shirt idea

2009-05-13T13:37:00.000+01:00

Oh, the things you find while Twittering!

Stats

2009-05-13T02:35:00.000+01:00

This has been around for a while and I've seen it before but I just happened across it again, and I hope the 2.5 people who see it here may find it as interesting as I did:

Oddness

2009-05-11T14:59:00.000+01:00

I have always maintained since before "e-commerce" was a reality, that the internet is a magnificent tool for anyone supplying a niche market (or indeed those within that market).

I don't think you can get more niche than something I just saw on the Facebook page of a friend of a friend.

Second-hand coffin, anyone?

What's Twitter Good For?

2009-05-11T14:28:00.001+01:00

I have finally found Twitter's Killer Use (TM).

Have spent the last half hour swapping ideas for Unlikely Film Sequel Titles with complete strangers and having a blast!

follow #unlikelysequels

Star Trek: the reboot

2009-05-08T11:54:00.001+01:00

(This still needs some work but if I don't put this up now, I don't think I ever will...)

I saw Star Trek yesterday at a preview yesterday. Twice.

Let's get my credentials out of the way. I'm not really a hard-core Trekkie, and although I don't know episode titles of stardates, I used to be prominent in the online fandom and ran a couple of websites. I'm not really all that enamoured of the original crew, although they were a presence in the background as I was growing up.

I've had a problem with the spinoff series and some of the movies, especially those presided over by Rick Berman - like a lot of modern science fiction, they got bogged down in the mechanics of the imagined universe with the actors having ever-increasing volumes of techno-babble to spout, and the stories were often about the technology rather than the people. If nothing else, I expected JJ Abrams' involvment to eschew that aspect, and he didn't disappoint.

When I first heard that a Trek "origins" movie was planned for this franchise reboot, I feared Star Fleet Academy hormonal teenagers invading the screen. I was ultimately delighted when the story skipped from Kirk enrolling in the Academy to to his (re)taking the Kobayashi Maru scenario we know from The Wrath of Khan, "Three Years Later".

The pre-publicity for this movie has stressed more than most that it isn't just for Trekkies but for a mass audience. In that, the makers have succeeded. The plot is really fairly banal and unoriginal - we follow Kirk and Spock growing up with Oedipal issues and like any buddy movie, they dislike each other on first meeting. What a lot of people seem to forget is that the original TV series wasn't just built around them, but included Bones too, as the slightly more world-weary figure who could knock theiur heads together when needed. And so Dr McCoy gets a fair amount of screentime too. Although only a bit-part in the series, Uhura's role gets expanded as it's always been painfully obvious that she's the only female member of the crew and in this day and age, that just won't do.

The need for a wider appeal is the backbone for the dialogue, offering a structure to hang those character-defining bits you don't need to be a hardcore fan to know about: Spock saying "Fascinating", Scotty saying "I'm giving it all she's got" (although "I cannae change the laws of physics" is only implied); McCoy gets gets an "I'm a doctor not a ... " joke, Chekov gets to mispronounce his Vs, Uhura shows her legs, and so on. We even get to have a red-shirt, a character with literally two lines of dialogue who has to get himself killed just to underline that space is a Dangerous Place where Bad Things Happen. And of course there's "Live Long and Prosper".

All the actors have the chance to offer their own take on the characters they play rather than being obliged to impersonate their predecessors - this is particularly tricky in Zachary Quinto's case as unlike the others, he has to share the stage with Leonard Nimoy for one scene and their slightly divergent aptitudes are revealed (as well as the fact that, frankly, Quinto is the better actor). Thankfully, Chris Pine doesn't make the slightest move towards Shatner's trademark faltering dialogue delivery but nails the swagger and bravado (and self-congratulatory smirk) every time. Sign of the times, though, Pine gets to do something Shatner never did, and that's to appear in nothing but a pair of baggy y-fronts at one point...

I must mention Karl Urban's Dr McCoy which stops just the right side short of an impersonation (physically, he and DeForrest Kelley have little in common) but keeps all the energy and permanenent indignation of possibly my favourite character from the series.

My enthusiasm shouldn't hide a few reservations I have. This new Star Trek has more in keeping with the current spate of superhero movies rather than space opera (a genre the original TV series created) in the way it's scripted, shot and also scored. But if James Bond can do it, why can't Trek? And that grated on me just a bit.

On to my main reservation, though. Like most buddy/superhero movies, the main characters start by hating each other and then grow to respect and perhaps even care for each other. But the final act is just a little too rushed for my liking and the Kirk-Spock relationship we know ultimately comes from nowhere, largely by order of future-Spock rather than any real natural character development. And that's a huge pity because it's the core of what the film thinks it's about.

17 Again

2009-04-22T20:43:00.000+01:00

I've been putting off seeing 17 Again.

Mainly because it's a formula that's been done to death and I wasn't really ready for a yet another American over-sentimentalised view of adult-teenager relationships. The second reason is that I am very conscious of being a 40-something bloke walking in to see movies designed for teenagers.

And when it's a movie designed around the charms of Zac Efron, it makes me feel like a stereotypical middle-aged gay man which is very far from how I like to see myself.

It's very churlish to nit-pick a piece of fluff movie-making that knows it's a piece of fluff, but one element of this film made me feel extremely uncomfortable.

Like every father, our hero is out to protect his kids and works wonders with their relationships with the school bully. OK, the fact that the bully would be dating the daughter while having the son as his favourite punchbag isn't very realistic, but I'll let that slide (it might be if we'd been given some context for the kids' relationship with each other, but we have none at all).

What I found quite distasteful is our hero's very different attitude to his kids' dating. The daughter's going out with a stereotypical airhead bad guy, but that's not why the notion that he may have taken her virginity is appalling to him and her. The sex-ed class makes it clear that the idea of an almost-18 year-old having sex is simply not on.

At the same time, however, our hero manifestly encourages his younger son to go after the cheer-leader he's too shy and tongue-tied to chase at the start of the story. Not only that, but in a very laddish way during the victory party, he wants them to go off and consummate their relationship.

I don't think I'm especially sensitive to issues of sexism, but the double standards of the film industry (and especially Hollywood fluff) that all young guys should sow their seeds as quickly and energetically as possible while all young girls should remain virginal until their wedding day is hardly constructive in today's world of promoting equality and sensitivity.

Sauce for the gander not being good for the goose somehow springs to mind.

(Sterling Knight, Zac's on-screen son)

A further thought...

Not because of my own sexual identity, what I think it would have made a magnificent plot element and counter-balance to some of the fluffiness would have been if the son had been gay, rather than simply too shy to chase the girl of his dreams. One of the plot elements was Zac chasing his grown-up wife while being chased by his daughter - add his son chasing him too (perhaps on the rebound), and Zac's character would have a REALLY interesting emotional triangle to deal with!

Oh, and for the record, everyone can keep Zac Efron (this was the first time I'd seen him in action and was only so-so impressed). I want to have his screen son's babies! The character's vulnerability has probably got a lot to do with it, but Sterling Knight is quite some stunner... SWOON

Frogs!

2009-04-21T03:01:00.000+01:00

I thought this looks prety kewl:

">

No gym today

2009-04-20T18:16:00.000+01:00

I had other things to do today so I gave the gym a miss.

That said, I've not been entirely indolent, as I spent three hours gardening. I much prefer this kind of physical exercise to gymming, because you can see the fruits of your labours fairly easily, and you can certainly feel them! And you use differnet families of muscles in a different way (digging in particular) so despite daily doses of resistance work at ther gym over the last several months, I still feel utterly shattered.

Until a year ago, I actually considered gym-going rather strange, given the opportunities we all have in our daily lives for physical activity. In particular, I was seriosuly amused by the need for a car park at an old gym I used to walk past fairly often: if people walked or cycled there, they'd save time on at least one workout element, and perhaps even the need for attending the gym altogether!

That said, the typical British inclement weather does make trudging to gyms on foot or bicycle rather disheartening, although I must admit that sitting on an exercise bike watching drenched passers-by on several days last week did provide an element of schadenfreude.

Talking of exercise bikes, not content with my gardening efforts, I've just come back from a 20 minute cycle ride - I honestly don't recall when I last took my bike out further than the bottom of our road or used the gears (they were literally rusty!).

It's interesting though that the effort required on even a moderate upward hill in the real world is considerably greater than that on an exercise bike in a gym. That said, there are few sensations which make one feel free quite as much as pedalling down a hill at full speed and feeling the wind tearing past!

The forecasters have promised us that the rest of the week should be similar to today (dry and sunny though not especially hot) so I might try something I've not done since I was a kid and cycle all the way to gym and back tomorrow! (it shouldn't take me much longer than public transport and I should save myself the warmup and cooldown on the gym bikes!) I am however, dreading the three rather steep hills I have go up and down to get there (and what's worse, get back!)

Getting excited

2009-04-18T02:19:00.001+01:00

When I was in the cinema yesterday the staff were putting these up all over the place.

I can't wait!

The devil's in the detail

2009-04-14T11:32:00.000+01:00

I have nothing to sayexcept take take a look/listen to this

Eek!

Families

2009-04-12T13:10:00.001+01:00

It's Easter Sunday, in theory the apotheosis of Christian life.

So why am I feeling like an angry bear with a thorn stuck in his paw, especially towards my family? We've just had significant quantities of Clan Plum round for Easter breakfast and to a man, woman and child, every one of them has managed to piss me off big time.

Thankfully, they've all gone and I've cleaned up the mess and put away the besty breakfast crockery until this time next year. I'm surprised I didn't break anything!

I suspect I should stay away from all forms of human communication because I'm likely to bite someone's head off...

(I'm off to the gym, maybe I can just tire myself out. I;ve not been for a couple of days and have eaten FAR too much junk on top of it. )

2009-04-07T00:16:00.001+01:00

Something just struck me.

Am I alone in thinking that this:

looks like Lisa Simpson giving a blowjob?

Odd advertising connections

2009-03-15T18:04:00.000Z

I suppose I should upload this to Failblog or somewhere, it's THAT odd.

I've just spent a few minutes wondering around my YouTube subscriptions.

Up popped a new video from Nerimon (AKA Alex Day) explaining (inter alia) that he's not gay despite what some people surmised from one of his recent videos.

For some bizarre reason, YouTube's advertising scripts decided to present me with possibly the least appropriate (and most unwelcome) adverts ever:

Branding confusion

2009-03-15T17:33:00.000Z

It struck me while taking my shoes off a few minutes ago that I am a marketeer's worst nightmare today, sending out too many mixed signals.

I am sort of trendily (though rather chavtastically) clothed but in all the wrong brands, I suspect.

Shoes by Reebok
Socks by Lonsdale
Trousers by Dunlop (they're actually designed for playing golf but I knew I was spending most of the day outdoors today and these trousers are really wind- and rain- proof)
T-shirt by Fila
Hooded sweatshirt by Umbro
Oh, and undies by Diadora

And for a while I had a Nike baseball cap on.

Just HOW wrong am I?

Especially for a 46 year-old?

Answering questions

2009-03-10T03:44:00.001Z

Stig just posted a blog with some answers to a questionnaire he'd found.

I thought some of the questions were rather fun, even if a bit random (this is clearly aimed at school kids), so here's my own answers. Rather spookily, Stig and his boyfriend, the Cameraman, make an appearance in several of my answers...

Do you have any pets? Not now. Growing up, my parents had a series of cats who were more practical than pets (as mouse catchers. Most of my sisters have cats though, and one has two absolutely huge dogs and three cats, all of whom are wonderful.

What colour of shirt are you wearing? A grey t-shirt with black shoulders and a maroon stripe around the chest.

Name three things that are physically close to you. PC, light, apple (well, the two remaining bites thereof).

What is the last book you read? Following a recommendation by Mr Stig, I'm about 2/3 through Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton, which is part two of his Commonwealth Saga (following from 'Pandora's Star').

Are you a good student? I've been out of formal education for more years than I care to remember, although I've recently taken up formal German classes (a long-standing ambition) and I'm usually the one the teacher looks at first to volunteer answers, so decide for yourself.

What's your favourite sport? Erm, I don't 'do' sports. I'm not very physically co-ordinated and I'm a very poor team player. I followed tennis back in John McEnroe's day, and nowadays the only sport I follow with any degree of continuing interest is snooker.

Do you enjoy sleeping late? Anyone who knows me even slightly knows the answer to that. Try calling me before 10am (and getting no answer) if you're in any doubt...

What's the weather like right now? It's 1.30am in the middle of March so it's dark and cold. From what I can see of the trees through the window, there's no wind.

(This was the view from this seat two weeks ago)

Who tells the best jokes? Generally speaking, the best comics are Irish or Scottish.

What was the last thing you dreamt about? I have about three or four notable dreams a week, most of them strange in some way. Last night I had a dream about my boss in my first proper job after leaving university. He was also my landlord (I was living in his house) and the dream was mainly about me going around his house looking for him (in the present rather than 20 years ago - he died a couple of years ago).

Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed? Nope. Getting lessons and passing the test is one of several ambitions I have for 2009.

Do you believe in karma? Not in any rational or organised way, but I have a general feeling that the cosmos has a way of getting its own back.

Do you believe in luck? Nope.

Do you like your eggs scrambled or sunny side up? Actually, I'll take an omelette, please.

Do you collect anything? If so, what? Bad habits? :-) (I have a fascination with a certain musician and collect recordings and other items reating to his career but I'm not prepared to name him right here.)

Are you proud of yourself? Depends what we're talking about: I am with some things; and am certainly not with others. To turn the question around, on the whole, I'm not ashamed of myself.

Are you reliable? Yes. Not very punctual most of the time, but I am reliable.

Have you ever given money to a bum? The UK has a generous system of help for people in difficulties and I like to think I already give money to deserving cases through my taxes and a couple of charities I support.

What's your favourite food? I have no favourites, apart from requiring that it's made properly, from quality ingredients.

Have you ever had a secret admirer? Nobody's ever admitted to having admired me from afar, no. And if they're still secretive about it, how would I know?

Do you like the smell of gasoline? An odd chemical smell to like. I don't. It gives me headaches.

Do you like to draw? It's not a talent I possess and I generally don't like doing things I know I'm incapable of doing to any kind of standard.

What's your favourite invention? The Internet?

Is your room messy? Yes. Very. (oops)

Which do you like better: oranges or apples? Depends what I'm going to do with them. But to eat raw as a snack, apples.

Do you give in easily? That all depends on the situation. Sometimes I will; sometimes I won't.

Are you a good guesser? What's a good guesser? If it's selecting the right thing at random, I suppose I follow the rules of probability and get things wrong roughly half the time. If it's making informed estimates, I'm pretty good.

Can you read other people's expressions? Generally I think I can, yeah.

Are you a bully? If you're asking whether I gain pleasure from belittling people, no I don't.

Do you have a job? Several, aksherly.

What time did you wake up this morning? My alarm clock went off at 9.40 and I promptly switched it off and went to sleep again. My phone was pre-set to go off at 11.30 which it did, and I switched it off before nodding off again. I eventually climbed out of bed at about 12.15.

What did you eat for breakfast this morning? I never eat breakfast: I can't eat anything within an hour of waking up. It's just a coffee or two.

When was the last time you showered? This afternoon at the gym.

What do you plan on doing tomorrow? I have empty kitchen cupbboards and an empty fridge to fill, so the morning will be spent food shopping. Then I have various jobs at home and I plan to visit the gym at some point.

What's your favourite day of the week and why? Because I don't have a normal lifestyle revolving around a five-day job, every day is, or can be, much like any other. But I normally visit friends on Sunday afternoons, and that's always worth looking forward to!

Do you have any nicknames? Apart from plum and variations, there are a few but because I use some of them as the basis for passwords, I won't share them...

Have you ever been scuba diving? Nope. If Mother Nature had intended me to spend any amount of time under water she'd have given me gills.

What's your least favourite colour? All colours have their uses, depending on context. So I have no faves and no non-faves. I wear brightly-coloured clothes but I'd probably go mad in a brightly-coloured room or car.

Is there someone you have been constantly thinking about? If yes, who? Not really, nope.

Would you ever go skydiving? I suffer from bad vertigo and would likely pass out from fear as soon as the door opened on the aeroplane, so no way. (I'm fine in passenger planes EXCEPT for coming in to land when I close my eyes and seize up.)

What toothpaste do you use? I have no toothpaste brand loyalty. I have a tube of Aquafresh in my gym bag washbag, a tube of Colgate in the bathroom and a tube of Macleans in the downstairs washroom.

Do you enjoy challenges? Intellectual ones more than physical ones, definitely.

What's the worst injury you have had? I sprained my right thumb and wrist seven months ago and they're STILL not working properly. I've sprained one or the other ankle several times and cracked my head a few times too. When I was 12 I was involved in a car accident (I was a pedestrian) and hurt my left thigh and knee. Very occasionally, my knee gives me trouble even now.

What's the last movie you saw? Watchmen, earlier today. Seriously unimpressed.

What do you want to know about the future? Next week's lottery numbers would be good.

What does your last text message say? Informing Stig and Cameraman how disappointed I was with Watchmen, "A bit pfft + a bit meh + a lot YAWN".

Who was the last person you spoke over the phone to? A taxi company.

What's your favourite school subject? I'm a bit old for school. I always liked (and was good at) languages and Maths, though.

What's your least favourite school subject? I didn't really have any. I just had least favourite teachers.

Would you rather have money or love? Either one would make me happy.

What is your dream vacation? Dream holidays are more about the company than the place, so as long as it's with people with whom I'm prepared to be completely open and unhibited, I really don't mind where we go.

What is your favourite animal? My sister's two dogs.

Do you miss anyone right now? Nope.

What's the last sporting event you watched? A bit of basketball while setting up a friend's satellite system.

Do you need to do laundry? Always. I have two elderly parents to look after and they're always needing something washing.

Do you listen to the radio? Not really. The old radio in my bedroom is tuned to BBC Radio 4 and I sometimes listen a bit when lying in.

Where were you when 9/11 happened? Sitting where I'm sitting right now. I was IMing with a friend who said "switch on the TV". "What channel?" "ANY channel". As the picture came on, the second plane hit.

What do you do when vending machines steal your money? It's only ever happened to me once, it was a coffee machine and I just walked away.

Have you ever caught a butterfly? When I was a kid, sure. Lots of times, to watch them up close for a moment and let them go.

What colour are your bed sheets? Right now, I have a pink bedsheet, a baby-blue duvet cover and white pillow cases.

What's your ringtone? For voice calls, "Who are You?" by The Who, and for texts, "Baba O'Riley", also by The Who.

Who was the last person to make you laugh? Stig. :D

Do you have any obsessions right now? Nothing unsual, apart from the usual obsession with getting laid.

Do you like things that glow in the dark? Yes. When I'm out in the countryside, I can stare at the night sky for hours and hours.

What's your favorite fruity scent? Depends on the context, but probably citrus.

Do you watch cartoons? I'm a sucker for classic Tex Avery (especially Tom & Jerry and Bugs Bunny) but I also like the Simpsons and Family Guy.

Have you ever sat on a roof? I have sat on more than one roof, yes. I have also been known to sit on them while fixing them.

Have you ever been to a different country? Of course. Even better, I lived in a different country for 10 years.

Name three things in the world you dislike. Intolerance, wilfull ignorance and thoughtlessness (especially when it's me displaying them).

Name three people in the world you dislike. I can't honestly think of anyone of the top of my head. Nobody's really pissed me off recently.

Has a rumour even been spread about you? When I was at school, a friend of mine and I were ill with something and cooped up in the sick bay, bored out of our heads. We deliberately started a rumour that we'd destroyed a local shop. Within four hours the whole school believed it and we had a visit from the headmaster asking for explanations. Apparently he'd phoned the shop who of course knew nothing about it... The only other rumour I'm aware of about me was several years later, according to which apparently I'd made a girl pregnant... Thankfully the only people who heard the rumour knew that the chances of my having sexual relations with a female were, well.... negligible.

Do you like sushi? Yummy. Love it. I had some wonderful raw salmon for my dinner today.

Do you believe in magic? Nope.

Do you hold grudges? Generally not, no. When people piss me off, the effects rarely last more than a moment. There is only one exception to that, but it's a pretty major one.

Happy Valentine's!

2009-02-14T09:32:00.001Z

As I really only have one regular reader, and you know who you are... ;-)

Gingeritis

2009-02-13T18:19:00.000Z

I had meant to blog about something entirely different today but I found an item on the BBC News website today which I think more people should see.

(More info about the exhibition here

Torturing the language

2009-02-06T00:22:00.000Z

I question I get asked a lot as a multi-lingual person is about the relative difficulties when learning various languages.

I invariably end up in a lengthy debate which includes the statement that whilst some elements of the English language (especially formal written English) are incredibly difficult to master, it's a perfect international language because it's very easy to make yourself understood with a limited vocabulary and no grasp at all of grammar.

This also makes English a wonderful language for advertisers and marketeers because you can throw words at the screen, page or other communication medium and they usually make sense.

I saw this product in the shop today. My brain hurts trying to work out what a meat-free meat product is...

Milking the Valkyrie

2009-02-02T11:22:00.000Z

It's odd how two completely different movies, just by virtue of being released at the same time, can get connected in a viewer's mind. I saw Milk and Valkyrie last week and I've got to the point that I can't think of one without the other.

Both are, of course, about real historical events. Specifially, they're about assassination attempts - one successful, the other not. In one case, we're rooting for the victim, in the other for the perpetrators.

Both films spare no trouble to re-create the environments of their times. Both used genuine locations for key scenes - in the case of Milk, staging his camera shop in the very premises he had occupied back in the 70s, and in the case of Valkyrie, dragging the German Ministry of Defence back 60 years.

Several of the players in the San Francisco gay scene of the 1970s take bit parts in Milk. None of the players in the Valkyrie plot are able to participate (mainly because all the key players were executed!), although I have noted one poignant piece of trivia - Philipp von Schulthess who plays Tresckow's aide, is the real Stauffenberg's grandson (in the film Mrs Stauffenberg is shown to be pregnant - the child she was carrying is Schulthess's mother...).

The events of both films should be familiar to most well-informed people, and have been the focus of high-profile documentary productions; The Times of Harvey Milk won the Academy Award in 1984 and the "Stauffenberg/20th July Plot" has had much said and written about it, most recently a major documntary production tied in with this movie, Valkyrie: The Plot to Kill Hitler.

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man elected to significant public office in the USA and thus an important figure to the gay community worldwide, and the Stauffenberg plot, at least in its bare bones, should be covered in any history of World War II.

Valkyrie tries to be a thriller, but regrettably fails miserably. It is incredibly difficult to present as a thriller a story whose ending we all know. The only way to pull it off is to make the viewer feel for the characters, feel their tension and pain. But there were just too many characters and too many grand=standing speeches to make any of the people involved even slightly human or worth caring about.

Milk takes a more interesting, if less populist, route, as a social and personal commentary, and tells in a series of flashbacks how Harvey Milk got to the point that he feared for his life. We all know that Harvey was shot and killed, so the movie tells us up front.

A weak element of both movies is that there are simply too many characters in both. In Valkyrie, this becomes a serious issue because by the end of the film we don't actually care about/for any of them. Perhaps oddly, the only one whose fate concerned me at all was von Schauffenberg's aide, played by Jamie Parker. Most of the characters get cameo appeareances at best and so to make them even slightly memorable from one scene to the next, the casting agents pulled out their Who's Who of British Acting - although I suspect that outside the UK most of them aren't such big names and thus the effect is a bit lost. (Although it must be said that seeing Eddie Izzard in a very dramatic and serious role was a real eye-opener!)

Whilst Valkyrie needed the large cast list to indicate the extent of the conspiracy (the end titles pointed out that over 200 people were executed for their involvement in the plot), the vastness of the Milk cast is probably due to the fact that most of those involved are still around and just wanted to see themselves on the screen... There was plenty of scope for some of the characters to be amalgamated or simply not included for what they added to the plot.

As is the habit with screen biographies, both films whitewashed their main protagonists a little and surrounded themselves with stereotypes to ease the story-telling. From all I've read about him (which admittedly isn't a lot), von Stuaffenberg was a nasty piece of work and not the heroic altruist as portrayed by Tom Cruise - he was apparently a big fan of gassing Jews and other undesirables and had his plot succeeded, the death camps would have continued their work. As far as I can tell, the main issue most of the conspirators had with Hitler was not his set of beliefs but the fact that he was losing the war.

Similarly, Milk seems to have overlooked some of Harvey's (and his circle's) less noble charactersitics - apparently Harvey was quite the drama queen and would go off on raging temper tantrums at the slightest provocation. He was also apparently something of a notorious bed-hopper and I find it a little difficult to swallow that in the mid 70s San Francisco gay scene, everyone else was so faithful to their partners! AIDS was still unknown and the SF gay scene was notoriously decadent. I actually found the disinfected view of that milieu quite insulting in a way - a more realistic portrayal would also have been a mine of dramatic possibilities! Then again, this was a movie that was trying to speak not only to gay viewers but rather admirably tried to paint a picture of the struggle for freedom and equality to a mass audience and showing our hero hitting on a string of rent boys was hardly going to endear him...

Nevertheless, as a record of a moment in time when all things were possible because a charismatic and intelligent leader was willing to draw attention to issues with which the population would prefer not to be confronted, this was a great attempt. We all owe Harvey Milk a debt of gratitude and the final scene of the movie, the genuine footage of the mass candle-lit silent tribute through the streets of San Francisco by the same people who had been rioting just days before says pretty much everything we need to know about what he achieved.

As for the Stauffenberg plot, much as the historical event ended in abject faiulre for all concerned, I don't see this movie leaving any of its participants crowned in glory, except perhaps for a very nicely judged performance by Bill Nighy.

Burn's Night

2009-01-28T19:52:00.000Z

This is by way of comment on Stig's Burn's Birthday blog (and probably won't be seen by anyone other than Stig and Cameraman anyway, but I'm fine with that).

Here's a couple of supermarket haggises for anyone who ISN'T Stig or Cameraman:

Popular!

2009-01-27T23:13:00.000Z

I'm not sure whether I should be pleased or not...

Perving on Sunday

2009-01-24T03:05:00.000Z

It's amazing what conclusions can be drawn from looking at statistical data...

BBC

Picture Post (Selfridges)

2009-01-19T00:14:00.000Z

(Blogger has done something strange with the picture links in this post. I'm in no condition to correct things right now so I'll leave things as they are for the time being. All my photos are on Photobucket)

All the blogs I follow on a more or less regular basis appear to be preoccupied with pictures of cocks this weekend, so I'm going to buck the trend.

This is sort-of inspired by Stig's exposé about his geekery. One of my own geekish weaknesses is architecture. I can't say I'm particularly knowledgeable about it, but few things are as likely to make me hold my breath or stop me short as a striking or beautiful building.

Well-designed, well-constructed and properly functional buildings really are works of art in the truest sense of that word. I live in a city which was famed for a lack of taste or foresight on the part of its planners and architects in the 1960s, which brought about some of the ugliest and badly-built major developments in the UK and wider.

More recently, the Birmingham skyline has seen some stunning additions to its skyline and this post is about one such building. It's famous in its own right, has won all kinds of awards, and is well-represented all over the internet (a google images search results in 19,000 pictures).

So here are some more pictures of Future Systems' Selfridges department store. I am particularly mindful of it this week, as its designer, Jan Kaplický suddenly died last week and this is my little insignificant tribute to a great man.

I fell in love with the idea of this building before I ever saw it, as various impressions of the designs were floating around long before construction began six years ago. One of the many wonders of this building is that there are no flat surfaces outside - everything is curved; sometimes very obviously, sometimes less so. At the time, one of the statements made about the building was the promise that the Selfridges name would never have to appear on the outside: the building would be striking enough for a name-plate to be unnecessary. Regrettably, a few years down the line the Selfridges people clearly decided that wasn't enough and they put a huge neon sign in the only street-facing window, which I think sort of spoils the effect.

Anyway, enough of my jabber-jabber, here's a load of photographs, all taken by me over a period of about two years, arranged more or less in order from the Moor Street point of connection with the rest of the Bull Ring Centre around to the St Martin's Square point of connection. It's built on a hill and of the many entrances, there are three at street level, and they lead to three different levels!

Hat-making your way out of poverty

2009-01-16T00:47:00.000Z

Last week, a film came out here in the UK which, despite technically being a UK production by most criteria, has been out for a while in several places around the world (most notably the USA, whose public acclamation precedes it here).

The film features a television game show from which it would appear that hat-making is a popular (but no less competitive) route out of poverty in India.

Or am I misunderstanding the show's catch-phrase title of Who Wants to Be A Milliner? ;-) (At least that's the way it sounds when Anil Kapoor says it!)

(For the record, I recommend Slumdog Millionaire very heartily)

If it swims like a duck and it quacks like a duck...

2009-01-12T01:01:00.000Z

I expect Stiginthemud to have something to say about this but I'd like to get my version of events out first! And so, rather oddly, to my first actual blog here despite having set up this account ages ago.

Stig and Camerman, with whom I have been communicating online for close enough to two years, are visiting my town for a couple of days and I finally got to meet them today. Expectations and/or preconceptions were met, shattered and/or exceeded as far as I'm concerned, but that's not why I'm writing this (although I am of course curious about their expectations and/or preconceptions; one thing I will say is that I don't think I have ever met anyone whose eyes SHINE the way Mr Cameraman's do. Then again, he could just be hitting the bottle more than he admits!).

We had a very enjoyable meal in Wagamama (first time for me, they are regulars back home; thanks for footing the bill, Cameraman!) but then we decided we'd like a proper pub drink. I asked whether they wanted the quick or the interesting route back to their hotel, which made Stig visibly perk up (not that he really needed perking up) and jump at the chance of having something interesting happen.

Little did any of us know...

I scratched my metaphorical head (I may well have scratched the literal one too) wondering where there might be an interesting pub somewhere fairly close. Most pubs in Birmingham have a reputation - Ale-drinkers' pub? Foodie pub? Gang pub? Chav pub? Rockers' pub? Gay pub? Cross-dressers' pub? Awful boring chain pub selling factory-produced donkey-piss and labelling it lager? All the pubs within walking distance are renowned for being at least one of those things, sometimes more than one, and none of those monikers is really helpful when all you want is a quiet, warm corner in which to sip a decent drink or two. And of course all the decent pubs would be full at 8pm on a Sunday evening, so I was limited to choosing from the second-best.

I settled on the Crown. I'd been there a few times before during the daytime and while the décor is a bit dated, it was clean, didn't smell, served a decent pint and was just enough off the beaten track to be fairly quiet and probably with space for three at a table.

We walked in and I got the drinks, while Cameraman and Stig chose a table, right next to the door. Clearly they had their doubts and thought we might need to effect a quick getaway.

I almost sprayed poor Stig with my Greene King IPA when as soon as I sat down, he surprised me with "Do you think she's a tranny?"

"Is WHO a tranny?"

"Her", pointing in a nonchalant non-pointing-kind-of-way towards the barmaid who'd just served me.

And then it struck me that he had a point. OK, admittedly I'd got a closer look at her ample cleavage than he had done, but, I had to admit that like Michael York's mum in Austin Powers, she looked rather mannish, despite her long flowing bottle blonde locks. And so for the next while, we debated, Stig, Cam and I, whether or not Lorraine Mills (I have since discovered that we were talking about the premises' licensee) had a cock or not.

Then things got more interesting and we made further observations. Such as the two gentlemen propping up the bar, hugging each other in a most unmanly fasion ("They're a couple, they are", volunteered Cam, rather unnecessarily). Or Stig's observation that the two middle-aged men at the bar behind me were having a snog.

Or the small of stature (but large of level of alcohol consumption) older gentleman whose English was heavily tinged with something I assume to be Portuguese who had gained control of the karaoke machine and seemed to be expressing undying affection to someone we couldn't see from our vantage point. But not before another man joined him on the stage and removed his shirt and t-shirt and then his trakkie bottoms, and started making provocative moves with his underpants-clad groin and was clearly up for removing them too.

Much to Stig's visible horror, the diminutive gentleman came over to us and started talking. I think that Stig was horrified not of what the man might do, but what he might say ("I can't understand anyone unless they speak R.P." - thankfully, I come pretty close, although strangely enough Cam is, well, let's just say he's not R.P...) because he'd appear rude by not answering properly.

How, indeed, do you communicate with a drunk Portuguese guy? The answer, is, it seems, you'll do fine if you have a Cameraman - although whilst Cam seems to have understood what the little guy asked him, I'm not entirely sure he was as successful in making his Scottish burr comprehensible to the poor Iberian...

The long and the short of it is that the little man assumed that Stig and Cam are a couple and whilst it's obvious to me, I'm not so sure anyone in a normal pub could jump to that conclusion without further information. He also assumed that I hunt for cock rather than clit, too...

Once we'd somehow managed to get the little man off our backs and Cam had translated their conversation for our benefit, all of this started a further debate between us: was this (shock, horror!) a GAY pub? Despite my protestations that as far as I am aware (and my awareness of these things is fairly accurate) the gay village is some way away and there's no real reason for a genuine, titled, gay pub at this location, they insisted that there's no other solution. And I must admit that yes, gay things happened there and apart from the rather mannish bar lady, there was only ever one other female (albeit also quite mannish-looking) on the premises at any point.

But, does that really make it a gay pub? Or is it just proof that Birmingham's reputation for tolerance, and our live-and-let-live approach to people with alternative lifestyles are well-deserved? Do we really need to have gay pubs? Or are pubs just pubs and anything goes?

Several hours later, I was talking to a friend who is local, is something of a pub connoisseur and happens to be gay. In his words, I don't know that it's officially gay but when I was in there it was decidedly gay-ish. So it seems our experience wasn't exactly an aberration, but the question remains, just what makes a pub a gay pub?