Caught Nick Hornby on Desert Island Discs. Talk about shifting the goalposts.
“So Nick, you've chosen eight records for us today.”
“Yes Sue.” Chuckles.
Eight records pass us by.
“And what about your luxury, Nick?”
“Well Sue, I would like to take a device which can store four thousand records. Would that be all right?”
“Er...”
Allowed = 8. Demanded = 4,000. So only out by a factor of 500 then.
Was this perhaps his clumsy way of asking for his own series? ‘Hornby's Island iPod’ - all over in a breathless 375 hours. Or is it that having reinvented literature he's now decided to remodel broadcasting as the next phase of his mission to get the planet running more to his liking? Of course I'm all for improvement when there is room for it but Desert Island Discs has survived from radio's Jurassic period.
Perhaps he'd like to appear on ‘Just A Minute’ which with his help could be relaunched as ‘Just Eight and a bit Hours’. Or replace Humphrey Lyttleton and chair a programme renamed ‘I'm Sorry I Missed the Whole Point’.
History may be the new rock 'n' roll and stupid is probably the new clever. Sadly in our house tofu seems to be the new steak.
I promised myself I would say no more about Pop Idol but last night I revised that pledge. I now promise not to mention the musical part of Pop Idol. There are things that still need to be said.
(Just to remind you. At the end of the last series, and after weeks of voting, the country chose Will but the music biz gave us Gareth. That to me is a scandal - ‘Gatesgate’ if you like.)
1. Let me be clear. I approve of democracy. Whenever possible decision making in our house is run on democratic lines - we don't believe transparency is just for rotisserie doors. We include the chldn and give them reasons why, whether they understand them or not. We don't give them a list of ten options and charge them 20p for their opinion.
2. As a nation we used to have a perfectly good interactive system for choosing our stars. It was impeccably grass roots in style, both unmediated and frank, and it gave us generations of much loved entertainers. It took place in pubs, clubs and dancehalls. It was a process of not canning them off.
3. And the sheer unnecessary nature of the thing irritates me. There may be a void to fill at the centre of the British music industry but we are not the ones who need it to be filled. Most of us already have enough records to last us a lifetime.
4. We are allowed to vote but it's about as democratic as asking someone who hasn't been condemned to death whether they'd rather be shot or beheaded. Option 11 ‘None of the Above’ does not appear at the end of the programme.
5. If the entire population abstained someone would still get to make a lame record at the end of the series. You have been warned.
6. Lastly and most importantly there is a pattern emerging here. First Popstars, then Pop Idol, which wasn't a feebly disguised format tweak oh no, then Fame Academy, Popstars The Rivals etc (no futher tweaks required). Now the ‘options + pay to vote’ package has gripped the middle classes too. They have ‘Restoration’ which is just Pop Idol for buildings.
What next?
Checked the family targets this morning and we are doing surprisingly well on ‘hours of TV watched’, my preferred measure. I suspect this is partly due to Jake's insistence that adverts don't count but I am still pleased. However we have dipped a bit on ‘completion of homework’. To improve we need to find a judicious mix of stick and carrot, which would be a lot easier if either of them liked carrots.
I'm not thinking drastic measures here but rather small touches on the family's tiller. I think I'll start a regular mini-feature called ‘Tweak of the Week’.
Jake's football team had their first league game of the season today chalking up an impressive 9-7 away win at Paddock Park Junior. He loved it even though he has come home with his legs as bruised as market stall bananas. He did seem v tired in the bath though so I think we might need to work on his stamina.
Tonight the homework diaries announced the launch of a school perfume (‘Class Act’, 50 ml, £14.99). We're keen as ever to support their efforts but Mel was concerned about the essences so she'll be asking questions come Mon morning.
There was also a press release about a proposal to create a local league table of School Play video sales. I applaud the idea as I feel it will drive up the standard of both the plays and the video presentations. Provided some safeguards are put in place to stop the pushier schools in the area rigging the results I'm all in favour.
Suggestions for appropriate punishments for Cyclists who insist on riding on the Pavement - that area of our road system traditionally set aside for those on foot; being a modest contribution to the crime and disorder debate that occurred to me last Saturday as I dodged my way back from the park.
1. Confiscate the offender's bicycle and replace it with a child's tricycle, thus reminding the offender of the last time it would have been acceptable to ride straight at grown ups on pavements.
2. Shackle the offender to his/her bicycle for a period of, say, one month, thus allowing them to understand fully that there are some places in which cycling is inappropriate. The experience of cycling in the bath would be illustrative and admirably chastening. Riding a bicycle up and downstairs for a few days would neatly make the point that some areas are best left reserved for persons walking.
3. If riding without hands, the offender should have said hands tied behind his/her back for three hours a day for a week, thus allowing them to appreciate that:
a) there are some tasks for which the use of hands is essential, and
b) with this in mind many common objects, including bicycles, have been cleverly provided with manual aids like handles, buttons etc.
Mobile phone addicts forced to fall back on the use of only nose and tongue to dial, text and answer would be very likely to take this point on board.
Tell me we wouldn't be living in a better world after that.
My irritability has not gone unnoticed. Someone suggested a biorhythm problem, which only served to irritate me even more. However I have just found this, typed in my birthday and there it was. In red. “Feeling an inner emptiness” it said. My only quarrel was that it was under the heading ‘Emotional’ and not under ‘Stomach’.
12.30 pm.
I think I may have got out of bed the wrong side this morning. I might as well put it to some use.
Bogus claims. I can't stand bogus claims. Especially when they come in pairs. Like News of the World. Which isn't. Of it.
Saudi. Why do people say Saudi? Saudi what? After all it's an adjective not a place. Saying ‘Saudi’ is like saying ‘New’ when you mean New Zealand. Or ‘United’ when you mean The United Arab Emirates.
And I hate it when people say ‘United’ too, when they actually mean Manchester United. It's just as descriptive of Colchester, Torquay, Southend, Carlisle, Nations, Biscuits etc.
Tunes. Call them tunes? Our burglar alarm plays catchier tunes when you set it than you find most weeks anywhere in the Top Ten.
1.40 pm
I'm still annoyed, but now it's because I'm wondering whether to remove para 4 above. I haven't yet decided whether I'm more irritated about loose talk now than I will be later at the flood of visits I'll get from googlers and mancophobic scallies who type in “I hate” + Manchester United.
1.44 pm
Close call but it stays. I'll risk it. Some things just have to be said. And I'll only get the ones who don't swear.
(Afterthought: has anyone started a team yet called Friendsre United?)
After ten days of ‘healthy’ food the only clear benefit I can see is that the batteries are back in the smoke alarms now that the low fat diet has ruled out grilling sausages.
As a parent I have come to recognise the positive value hidden within the occasional negative experience. Like, for example, our family visit to see the truly awful ‘Thomas and the Magic Railroad’. I credit that afternoon with the birth of Zoe's ambition to be a film director. I explained how and why the film was so bad, and in such detail, that from then on she saw film making in a wholly new light.
Anyway, Zoe didn't make it onto the School Council. She lost narrowly to the girl who was promising a wider choice of biscuits at breaktime. Naturally she was upset and I tried hard to soften the blow. I encouraged her not to take it too personally and reminded her that some very famous figures, including Churchill, had experienced rejection at times. This seemed to confuse her but with a little coaxing I found out that she thought I meant the cuddly dog who sells car insurance on television. So I instanced Darius from Pop Idol instead, which made the point clearer, but she remained disconsolate.
Next I told her that she could now spend more time with her family, but she wasn't over happy about that either, even when I pointed out that it meant more time to practice her directing skills on her Sylvanians and/or Jake. Then I suggested that she came up with some ideas for the school magazine, which could do with a thorough makeover. That one hit the spot.
Mel has continued to reassess our diet in an effort to minimise exposure to heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis and toxin accumulation. This involves avoiding so many food types that it seems to me we are now flirting with malnutrition into the bargain. The spider plants I placed all round the house after reading about the NASA research on toxin absorption do not seem to have mollified her.
Yesterday I did suggest that we could look for the foods with the highest preservative content and just eat those. We could call it ‘The Eternity Diet’ and start a web business. No deal.
The Butterworths came over for lunch today, invited on the spur of the moment by me when I bumped into Alan this morning in the corner shop. After a quick dash to Tesco we had real food in their honour (rather as I had hoped). The meal was lovely and only marred for me by the constant struggle I had with the chiller jacket, the microwave and two bottles of Chablis trying to get them both to exactly the right temperature.
Alan B is totally uncritical of the modern world and all the novelties it has spawned: he can't seem to distinguish change from improvement. We had a long discussion about falling standards and, to give him credit, he stuck to his guns like a veteran of the Superglue Artillery. In the end he called me a fuddy duddy. I replied “Better a fuddy duddy than a faddy daddy” and I'm pleased to say it silenced him.
Having reflected for half a day on last night's Top of the Pops I would like to return to my point (last Sat: re Pop Idol) about how singing ability is only one of the elements that make for a good record. Anyone who thinks vocal wizardry is enough to guarantee listenable music obviously hasn't heard any recent r&b. Take the current Lamar song. He was easily the best singer in that series of Fame Academy and I'm glad he got his break, but for me a tune to which fewer than five notes show up simply cannot be considered quorate.
I have just written out the cheque for the school Junior Department Year photo. £29.99 for a picture of about three hundred pupils. Taking the image as a whole and ignoring the trees in the background I reckon that pro rata I am spending roughly £29.79 on pictures of other people's children. I don't think I would resent paying 10p each for two very small portraits of our offspring but this option was not covered in the literature. Actually 10p is probably too much considering the awful face Jake is pulling.
Jake has discovered conkers and I must say I'm delighted. It's the first time he's ever expressed interest in a toy that doesn't have instructions or batteries and comes with completely bio-degradable packaging.
Having just re-read my last few posts I recognise that I may be in danger of giving the impression I dislke all current music. That is not the case. I'm rather taken with the Black Eyed Peas at the moment, as is Zoe. That is a good record and has an uplifting contemporary message of a kind sadly lacking in many recent offerings. It also proves that there is still life left in Pachabel's Canon. I've sanctioned the purchase of the album, which will make a pleasant and long overdue change from Avril Lavigne.
Three Beanie Baby birthdays have fallen in the last eight days and by tonight when I was being asked to suggest presents for a lobster I confess I was feeling unhelpful. I put it down to low blood sugar levels and lack of attention to our vanadium-chromium balance.
I was researching oatmeal in search of acceptable recipes when I found this. Hooray! We can now have a shower cubicle flowing with milk and honey. Unlike Moses I have lived to see it. I hope it was worth the forty year wait.
Did I hear Jeffrey Archer say “Solzhenitskin” yesterday? There again great literature isn't exactly his forte, is it?
I have been searched again. This time it was “ultrasonic ant repellants”. I came 19th. I am prepared to offer a prize to anyone who can point out these words in my entire blog.
But only if they can do so in less than the 0.21 secs it took Google.
OK OK. After a flood of entries for the competition above I see now that it was an ill judged move on my part. I've done it for myself and it takes 0.20 secs. I know.
I have also found out that both I the searchee and the searchor have misspelt 'repellent'. Thanks to so many of you for pointing that out. (In my defence there were ‘about’ 35 other spelling sinners.) I am officially closing the competition now. Chris gets a pint of his choice. Is this the first mass spell check in web history?
Bathed Jake last night while he complained about how much Spencer Butterworth cheats at garden golf. He was tired and rather grumpy after his Spanish and Karate clubs. Then he was suddenly back onto pets and this time he wanted a jellyfish. I told him that they were ocean creatures and not very cuddly either. He said that I could easily recreate the correct conditions in the downstairs bath with Mummy's Maldon salt, a wooden spoon and a hairdryer. Luckily I had to rinse his hair at this point otherwise it might have got a bit fraught.
I said ‘No’ and while I dried him he mumbled something he wouldn't then repeat. I think he said he'd settle for a scorpion. Frankly, for someone who has gone to sleep listening to famous actors reading stories virtually every night of his life I'm disappointed that his diction isn't a little clearer. He went to bed v stampy.
A proof of the School Year photo arrived tonight with price list and order form. Mel's currently keen on 13 x 8, colour, buff mount, with names, textured antique finish, unframed, one, £29.99. I think we should just pin up the proof on the corkboard.
At suppertime I realised how easily the whole can be much less than the sum of the parts. I like watercress. I like soup. I like main courses. I don't like watercress soup as a main course.
When I started blogging I used to be proud to be included in a Google search but over time it seems to me more like a dead end than an award - the search criteria seem to generate a new kind of surreal joke with the sites they select.
Based on my text I could be pinpointed exactly by something like “Christina Aguilera + desperately dull” but it hasn't happened yet. More often I get searches like “Pop Idol + bidet”, or “homework + YuGiOh + prawns”.
I keep hoping for one like “a+site+about+how+to+raise+a+family+with+dignity+and+due+respect+for+the+environment”.
None so far.
A quiet sort of day, mostly. Zoe had a Go Karting birthday party to go to which left Jake at a loose end, so I sent him to play with Spencer Butterworth three doors along. That way I could get in a few hours of serious research before the long threatened Dietary Review, during which I could construct a cogent case for my position, which was to be that radical reform was not necessary
It proved surprisingly difficult to get health information on the web without people trying to sell me things, but I did my best. I found a number of sites championing approaches to healthy eating based on regulating minerals and trace elements which appealed to me. I particularly liked the concept of Intuitive Eating I found here. It struck me as a much more flexible mentality than Mel's conviction that cholesterol is enemy number one and that fibre is the answer. To me that now seems as ill informed as declaring war on the Germans and expecting the French to come and help you.
We convened at 6.00 pm, myself and Mel present, chldn absent watching Simpsons. I outlined the personalised plan I had prepared.
Fortified by my researches I proposed:
1) To give M more magnesium (for stress) and less sodium (for blood pressure).
2) To give me more iodine (for energy) and a touch more zinc (for muscle tone and prostate maintenance).
This, I maintained, was achievable by a careful choice of fruit and vegetables.
She, however, advocated more drastic measures. She thinks we need less sugar, salt, fat and additives. I hinted darkly that this would probably upset our vanadium-chromium balance but unfortunately she seems set on some big changes.
I sat in on Pop Idol tonight but it only served to confirm my low opinion of the whole procedure. Like so much reality TV it lulls us not into a sense of false security but rather into a sense of secure falsity.
It masquerades as a ‘democratic’ process but it is in truth much nearer the communist idea of a closed list, i.e. no matter who you vote for you get the same result, just a different voice delivering the script. And isn't voting for singers just doubling up the original idea of a record chart, which is a list of votes made by people with their money? Isn't that democratic enough, and at a more appropriate stage of the process?
At the end of the first series we voted for Will who was declared the winner in front of us all on national television. But we actually ‘got’ Gareth, the Biz candidate, who has released about two records a week ever since - all of them bland at best and getting worse. I suppose you could think of him as the George W Bush of British pop.
And Gareth isn't even Gareth anymore. On his latest single he sounds exactly like Michael Jackson - the yuhh noise after each line is an exact copy of the Jackson patented cat-with-a-furball tic. More than that he is thin, white and looks like a girl so what precisely is going on here? Have Michael and Gareth ever been seen together? Or is it that after years of analysis the music industry has finally succeeded in constructing the perfect replacement for Jacko, a pop star who looks and sounds identical to him but is younger, saner and more compliant?
Finally at the end of this series we'll get a rubbish record from someone who can actually sing, and I can't see that as an achievement worth spending six months on. Can't we have one decent singer and fifty songs to vote for instead of fifty singers arguing over who is going to get to sing one feeble song that no one is accountable for choosing? It all seems to me to be a futile exercise in complicity and I call for it to be stopped.
I feel much better now.
I've been keen to get the chldn to learn chess for some time now. I was quite good as a child and I finally managed to get them properly started over the summer. Jake has been putting up some stiff resistance recently but Zoe, who also seemed to grasp the game pretty quickly, has been a bit reluctant to play me.
Until this evening, that is, when I had the bright idea of getting her more involved emotionally by replacing her king, queen and bishops with the Sylvanian badger family. She perked up considerably after that, but the concept did get a little out of hand. Before I knew it there were also eight Hamtaros out on the board as pawns. The game was well contested for a while but she made such realistic and sustained dying noises whenever I took any of her pieces that I rather lost concentration.
I'm not a bad loser, it's more that I think the sensation of losing is wasted on me, whereas it's quite good for their development for them to feel it. Which is why I gave up deliberately losing to them some time ago. Naturally I want them to know the pleasure of winning and to learn to win gracefully but I also want them to have a realistic picture of the world they will encounter when they are not playing me. Maybe they're ready for Poker.
Heard “I Walk The Line” on the radio for the first time in years today. Unfortunately it wasn't a piece of inspired programming but a tribute to the late Johnny Cash. Now there was a man with real courage - a man not afraid to sing all the verses of a song in different keys. And for his bravery he was rewarded with a No 1 hit. Today's contenders could take a lesson.
The dietary review has been set for Sunday.
Mel's stress levels have been rising again and since the weekend we've been back to the regime of camomile tea and lavender baths. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have helped much. I told her that maybe she had the right essences but the wrong absorption strategy and suggested that she drank the bath water and bathed in the tea. She ruled that out in a rather high handed manner. I then suggested a course of Kinesiology which as I understand it is a kind of Mr Muscle for blocked chakras. She said she'd prefer the psychic facial she had read about here.
Interestingly all of this has tested to destruction the herbalists' claims about the lifting of spirits and the promotion of relaxed sleep which, if true, should have rendered her both comatose and high as a kite, with lovely skin to boot.
Good news - the school has put the French teacher in charge of Jake's football team. They certainly know how to keep up with the times! I hope this heralds greater tactical flexibility and a move away from last year's slavish adherence to 3-5-2, which all too easily turned into 10-0-0 under pressure.
Zoe is standing for the School Council and seems to have developed a taste for power after last year's acclaimed stint as Form Captain. She has a manifesto ready on the computer and now only needs a killer campaign slogan for her posters. We discussed the merits of “Vote for Me”, which I think is hard to beat for directness, but she felt it ran counter to the pro-sensitivity personal development ethos of the school. She thought “Please Vote for Me” would be more in keeping. In the end she settled on “A Better Future and Nicer Smelling Toilets”.
Caught a bit of music TV this weekend to find Elton John and Elvis all over the place. What for? I know I'm a bit down on today's young popsters but even I don't want 25 yr old out-takes and warmovers. I just want new stuff that's as good as the old stuff. I've never said that all old music is better than all 00's music, but I am saying that if someone in a position of authority within the music biz prefers to release bad 70's music ahead of something new then the industry itself must have recognised that the game is up and that it's not worth making any new records. That saddens me.
A quiet Sun in early September seems an ideal moment to assess the holidays as a whole. Summer is not an easy time for a truly conscientious parent now that the traditional processes of stimulating and rewarding chldn are so fraught with dangers like sunburn, veruccas, additives, fillings, violent imagery or RSI. Overall I don't think we did too badly.
Plusses include several words of French learned by each child, a start made on chess and an admission that Blazin' Squad actually are awful, like I say they are.
Minuses include the amount of time spent discussing the relative merits of YuGiOh cards, the money spent on Hamtaros and the realisation that we had all read 765 pages of Potter 5 to get Sirius nobbled and one prophecy.
We must address the Attention Span issue though, and this is no easy matter - it's too short when it comes to cathedrals and too long when it comes to Game Boys. Any suggestions?
I have decided to try this Bloglinker system (see Sidebar). I still haven't sorted out a blog links section and this way I'll do that and more. I'll put the time I save towards finishing my music essay (well, starting it actually).
pm.
Regular readers will know me as someone reluctant to blow my own trumpet but I think I may have unknowingly invented a word. I noticed this link (I am a Thief - 28 Aug 03), clicked back and found that someone else had taken a fancy to a word I have used for years. Then I searched Google which revealed that the word appears over 1300 times on the web but only in what I take to be Polish. Finally I looked it up in Webster's Online. Not included. I think that makes it official, so I'm claiming ‘nidgy’ as my own, as in “nidgy, adj.; irritable, devoid of ideas, lacking pocket money [f Eng. niggly & fidgety]”. Help yourself.
Brockham Hill School's reputation as a hotbed of cutting edge ideas was one of the main reasons we chose to send the chldn there, and term after term they don't disappoint. They continue to slash at the envelope of modern educational merchandising and they've really come a long way from the days when the Form tea towels were their core business. I'm impressed by how well we are kept informed of new product ranges - we're only three days into the new term and already the first fliers have appeared in the homework diaries. The new edition of the School Recipe Book is now available (Meals From Many Lands, BHS Press, £9.99) and the popularity of official videos of the end-of-term concerts has encouraged them to announce the launch of a record label to develop the talent in the school.
This news has made Jake keener than ever to drop the recorder and he now wants me to buy him a drum machine. We are negotiating.
Back to school today. The stress levels in the house were noticeably higher this morning. I think that is what prompted the unfortunate contretemps this evening.
She said that if spatial awareness was supposed to be my strong point then why was I always getting in the way? Much to my shame I retorted that if her multitasking skills were so admirable then why did she only ever use them to forget four things at once?
When I've posted this I'll take her up a cup of fennel and cinammon tea and make peace.
Proud moment! I have a new American reader who has both quoted and linked me in his blog today. His first name is Chris - his middle name must be Trenchant - and his command of broad themes is impressive. He falls down a little on detail (I don't have a beard for instance) but overall his blog is well informed, current and entertaining. However I cannot fully recommend any site with quite that much swearing in it, so go there (01 Sept entry) but you have been warned.
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Update - Tues 2 Sept pm.
I have just revisited Chris's site and found this. In the circumstances I am prepared to overlook the swearing - just this once.