Who?

French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I've never heard of him.

Ted Giola has compiled "The Nobel Prize in Literature from an Alternative Universe".

Imagine a world in which such honors are exempt from pettiness, politics and tokenism. Imagine a Nobel Prize in which the contributions of Proust, Kafka, Nabokov and Joyce are not forgotten. Imagine a Nobel Prize in Literature in which genre writers have a chance. Imagine a Nobel Prize in Literature that doesn't bend over backward to exclude native born U.S. writers (only three honored during the last 52 years!).

Let's start arguing:

Year	Actual Winner	Alternative
2008	Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio	Don DeLillo
2007	Doris Lessing	J.K. Rowling
2006	Orhan Pamuk	Philip Roth
2005	Harold Pinter	Milan Kundera
2004	Elfriede Jelinek	John Updike
2003	J. M. Coetzee	Mario Vargas Llosa
2002	Imre Kertész	John le Carré
2001	V. S. Naipaul	V. S. Naipaul
2000	Gao Xingjian	Haruki Murakami
1999	Günter Grass	Tom Stoppard
1998	José Saramago	Roberto Bolaño
1997	Dario Fo	Hunter Thompson
1996	Wislawa Szymborska	Stanisław Lem
1995	Seamus Heaney	Isaiah Berlin
1994	Kenzaburo Oe	Stephen Sondheim
1993	Toni Morrison	Ralph Ellison
1992	Derek Walcott	Bob Dylan
1991	Nadine Gordimer	Muriel Spark
1990	Octavio Paz	Octavio Paz
1989	Camilo José Cela	Theodor Seuss Geisel
1988	Naguib Mahfouz	Salman Rushdie
1987	Joseph Brodsky	Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein
1986	Wole Soyinka	Eugene Ionesco
1985	Claude Simon	Philip Larkin
1984	Jaroslav Seifert	Italo Calvino
1983	William Golding	Graham Greene
1982	Gabriel García Márquez	Gabriel García Márquez
1981	Elias Canetti	Elias Canetti
1980	Czeslaw Milosz	Czeslaw Milosz
1979	Odysseus Elytis	Philip K. Dick
1978	Isaac Bashevis Singer	Isaac Bashevis Singer
1977	Vicente Aleixandre	Tennessee Williams
1976	Saul Bellow	Saul Bellow
1975	Eugenio Montale	Eugenio Montale
1974	Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson	John Lennon, Paul McCartney
1973	Patrick White	Lionel Trilling
1972	Heinrich Böll	J.R.R. Tolkein
1971	Pablo Neruda	Pablo Neruda
1970	Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1969	Samuel Beckett	Samuel Beckett
1968	Yasunari Kawabata	Yukio Mishima
1967	Miguel Angel Asturias	Vladimir Nabokov
1966	Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Nelly Sachs	Agatha Christie, Jorge Luis Borges
1965	Mikhail Sholokhov	Jack Kerouac
1964	Jean-Paul Sartre	Jean-Paul Sartre
1963	Giorgios Seferis	Giorgios Seferis
1962	John Steinbeck	John Steinbeck
1961	Ivo Andric	William Carlos Willaims
1960	Saint-John Perse	Ian Fleming
1959	Salvatore Quasimodo	Cole Porter
1958	Boris Pasternak	E. M. Forster
1957	Albert Camus	Albert Camus
1956	Juan Ramón Jiménez	Raymond Chandler
1955	Halldòr Laxness	Bertolt Brecht
1954	Ernest Hemingway	Ernest Hemingway
1953	Winston Churchill	Wallace Stevens
1952	François Mauriac	Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
1951	Pär Lagerkvist	Dorothy Parker
1950	Bertrand Russell	Ludwig Wittgenstein
1949	William Faulkner	William Faulkner
1948	T.S. Eliot	T.S. Eliot
1947	André Gide	André Gide
1946	Hermann Hesse	Hermann Broch
1945	Gabriela Mistral	George Orwell
1944	Johannes V. Jensen	W. H. Auden
1939	Frans Eemil Sillanpää	Robert Musil
1938	Pearl Buck	Virginia Woolf
1937	Roger Martin du Gard	James Joyce
1936	Eugene O'Neill	Eugene O'Neill
1934	Luigi Pirandello	Luigi Pirandello
1933	Ivan Bunin	Stefan Zweig
1932	John Galsworthy	Zane Grey
1931	Erik Axel Karlfeldt	G. K. Chesterton
1930	Sinclair Lewis	F. Scott Fitzgerald
1929	Thomas Mann	Thomas Mann
1928	Sigrid Undset	Edith Wharton
1927	Henri Bergson	Constantine P. Cavafy
1926	Grazia Deledda	Arthur Conan Doyle
1925	George Bernard Shaw	George Bernard Shaw
1924	Wladyslaw Reymont	Miguel de Unamuno
1923	William Butler Yeats	William Butler Yeats
1922	Jacinto Benavente	Franz Kafka
1921	Anatole France	Marcel Proust
1920	Knut Hamsun	Rainer Maria Rilke
1919	Carl Spitteler	Thomas Hardy
1917	Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan	Joseph Conrad
1916	Verner von Heidenstam	Sigmund Freud
1915	Romain Rolland	Guillaume Apollinaire
1913	Rabindranath Tagore	George Trakl
1912	Gerhart Hauptmann	William Dean Howells
1911	Maurice Maeterlinck	Henry James
1910	Paul Heyse	W.S. Gilbert
1909	Selma Lagerlöf	August Strindberg
1908	Rudolf Eucken	John Millington Synge
1907	Rudyard Kipling	Rudyard Kipling
1906	Giosuè Carducci	Mark Twain
1905	Henryk Sienkiewicz	Henrik Ibsen
1904	Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray	Jules Verne
1903	Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson	Anton Chekhov
1902	Theodor Mommsen	George Meredith
1901	Sully Prudhomme	Leo Tolstoy

Blood River

DR Congo is on on my mind, as inspired by MacKenna's posting I'm reading Tim Butchers's Blood River.

Things are getting desperate again in the East, on the border with Rwanda. See this BBC report including quotes from Alan Doss, Rod's boss.

I wonder if I'd even notice if I didn't know someone involved. I was barely aware of "Africa's World War" when it was going on there. (Did it ever really stop?)

That ignorance is quite an indictment of me.

The Phoenix

Wimbledon Bookfest 2008 is running this week, but what with one thing and another I've only been able to get along to one event; Leo Hollis last night on his book (deep breath now) The Phoenix: St. Paul's Cathedral And The Men Who Made Modern London.

I bought a copy for £20, but got him to write "IOU £20" as the dedication when he signed it, thus making the deal neutral.

Perhaps with innovations like that, I should be advising the Chancellor on his £500 billion bank bailout scheme?

Come to think about it, even though I've actually got a postgraduate degree specialising in international finance, I do find myself tempted to shout out "double or quits" whenever a talking head on the TV spouts one of these extraordinary figures.

The New Etiquette

Dear Miss Manners,

In these days of near ubiquitous body art, what are the rules on reading another man's tattoos in the locker room?

ALVY: 'Cause I don't like to get naked in front of another man, you know-it's, uh ...

ANNIE: (Laughing) Oh, I see, I see.

ALVY: You know, I don't like to show my body to a man of my gender-

ANNIE: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I see. I guess-

ALVY: 'cause, uh, you never know what's gonna happen.

What is most appropriate; peripheral vision, a glance, or a frank stare? What about spelling mistakes, or grammatical errors? Is it impolite to point them out?

Yours,

Perplexed: Virgin Active.

And all be turn'd to barnacles, or to apes

From a terrific Times review:

Many points are so beautifully made in this excellent spoof of a Hollywood memoir that it is honestly hard to know where to start. But one could usefully begin with Cheeta's incisive contribution to the “infinite number of monkeys” theory of probability. It's all very well hypothesising about those monkeys and typewriters, he says: isn't it time for human beings to look around? “You've had a million humans, at least, writing away for much longer than a thousand years, and only one of them ever managed to produce the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Only one! Well, well, what's the big deal?”
..............................
What we have here is a showbiz memoir from a star whose gilded cage was no metaphor; who views the great days of Hollywood in zoological terms. It's a brilliant idea. Naturally, as befits the memoir genre, Cheeta defines himself as an actor (“I'm a comedian, not an intellec- tual”). Naturally, too, modesty does not prevent him from pointing out that, in his great middle-period work on the Tarzan pictures, he was a pioneer of “simian thespianism”. How much of his success in films was down to him being an animal? Cheeta will accept it's as much as 10%; the rest, however, was talent. In common with every other showbiz memoirist, he claims never to read his reviews; he then quotes them extensively. He mentions several times that he never won an effing Oscar. He will recall a great star such as Rex Harrison by first calling him “that marvellous light comedian”, then getting down to the more interesting truth (“universally despised, impotent, alcoholic”), before coming properly out with it: “an absolutely irredeemable c*** who tried to murder me”. And, like many another stellar memoirist, he can't resist a vicious sideswipe at a fellow thesp. “For three decades I think I ‘phoned it in' a bit,” he confesses. “It happens to actors. Look at De Niro.”.

Straight in to the top five in my reading list goes Me Cheeta: The Autobiography

What I talk about ....

I read and finished Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running yesterday on the train to and from a Muay Thai promotion. I picked the book up as an offshoot the idiot-participatory-martial-arts strand of my recent reading, and was very glad that I did. It reminded me, with its deceptively simple but artful voice, of Kurt Vonnegut's non-fiction; and I revere Kurt Vonnegut's non-fiction.

Pleasure indeed to stumble on an author with a twenty year back catalogue for me to work my way through.

Reach

I contacted Urban Freeflow after we saw them at the Thames Festival, to see if we couldn't organise a lesson for the bomber and some chums as a birthday treat. Fate played the straight man, so here he is trying to run up a wall yesterday under the supervision of UF's Cali while his mates look on.

Cali was a real gent; a pleasure to deal with setting the thing up then really great with the kids on the day (which can be harder than it looks).

Good memories. Here's his show reel.

Thinking out loud

Nearly two years after I begged for it, Amazon have announced that "starting later this Fall, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) will offer you the ability to run Microsoft Windows Server or Microsoft SQL Server".

Potentially this is hugely attractive. The One Show has about seven million viewers. When the film about our auction system gets broadcast later this month, our servers are going to get absolutely hammered for a few days. I've got enough bandwidth for the job, but at the moment I'm scrabbling around trying to get hold of extra hardware to rent for the demand spike.

As I understand it (a cursory understanding at best), EC2 works by creating virtual instances of servers. You can boot new and destroy old instances instantly. I wonder how Microsoft's server scaling will map onto this environment?

You pay for the services (monthly in arrears) in instance hours; 40cents for a Large Instance (7.5 GB of memory, 4 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 850 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform) for example. Microsoft licenses will be more obviously.

Data transfer is $0.100 per GB – all data transfer in, and 0.170 per GB – first 10 TB / month data transfer out.

Persistent storage is in Amazon S3.

I may have got some of this wrong, and there may be US versus Europe wrinkles I'm missing but a watching brief is definitely in order.

Ian Blair Forced Out

Infuriatingly obscure note to self:
Speaking of skiing companions, I have to pay for the me and the bomber to join Bondy's 2009 jaunt by 25th of this month.

Update: Joe Kinnear for Commissioner

Here's how to run an old-school press conference :

Joe Kinnear: Which one is Simon Bird (Daily Mirror journalist)?

Bird: Me.

JK: You're a c---.

Bird: Thank you

JK: Which one his [Niall] Hickman (Daily Express)? You are out of order. Absolutely f------ out of order. If you do it again, I am telling you you can f--- off and go to another ground. I will not come and stand for that f----- crap. No f------ way, lies.

F---, you're saying I turned up and they f----- off.

Bird: No Joe, have you read it, it doesn't actually say that. Have you read it?

JK: I've f----- read it, I've read it.

Bird: It doesn't say that. Have you read it?

JK: You are trying to f------ undermine my position already.

Bird: Have you read it, it doesn't say that. I knew you knew they were having a day off.

JK: F--- off. F--- off. It's your last f------ chance.

Genius.

Every day in every way

I've now got my little linux AAA1 driving an external monitor at a decent resolution and running a variety of remote access software. This means that I can plug it in at work and access all my other machines from it. I've also managed to replace the cut-down front end that Acer load on the machine with the more useful complete Xfce desktop.

Next vague tasks are Microsoft interoperability tasks are network access to files (SAMBA?) and PPTP VPN access.

As a University College Swansea graduate myself, I have been delighted to find out that Alan Cox and the Swansea University Computer Society played no small part in the evolution of this operating system.

He sorted out the networking. Only connect.

Louie Knight

I finished reading "Last Tango in Aberystwyth" last night, and will now pass it on to The Profit Burglar who attended University College Aberystwyth back in the day.

The book had lain unread in my house for a long time, but I think I'm hooked on Louie Knight mysteries now. ("Last Tango" is the second book in the series. Poignantly, I remember sending the first to David when he was in hospital. He didn't come out, which may explain volume 2's forlorn languishing on my bookshelves. I bet I got it for him.)

The next installment will be out in 2009:

Hughesovka? Sure, private detective Louie Knight had heard the stories, he'd heard about the legendary replica of Aberystwyth built in the Ukraine by some crazy nineteenth-century Czar. But he didn't believe it. He thought it was all phooey, just a land for dreamers and romantics where every house was an ice cream castle in the air. But all that changed when the museum curator of the fabled Shangri-la turned up in his office with a wild and crazy tale of love, death, madness and betrayal. Forced to swallow his scepticism, Louie is soon adrift in the neon-drenched wilderness of Aberystwyth Prom, pursued by snuff philatelists and a renegade spinning wheel salesman, and clutching two most unlikely talismans - a ticket to Hughesovka and a Russian cosmonaut's sock.Aberystwyth's only private eye and his sidekick Calamity Jane return as they swap the train to Dovey Junction for the Orient Express and try to unravel a murder mystery that is bizarre, even by their own exceptional standards.

I'll stand by you

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Up to a point Sir Noel, but today is the New Ninja Bomber's eighth birthday and there is no better delineation of what I feel for him than what the world knows as a Girls Aloud hit single:

Hey, why d'you look so sad?
Tears are in your eyes
Come on and come to me now
Don't be ashamed to cry
Let me see you through
'Cause I've seen the dark side too

When the night falls on you
And you don't know what to do
Nothing you confess
Could make me you love you less

I'll stand by you
I'll stand by you
Won't let nobody hurt you
I'll stand by you

So if you're mad, get mad
Don't hold it all inside
Come on and talk to me now
Hey, what you got to hide?
I get angry too
Well I'm a lot like you

When you're standing at the crossroads
And don't know which path to choose
Let me come along
'Cause even if you're wrong

I'll stand by you
I'll stand by you
Won't let nobody hurt you
I'll stand by you

Take me in, into your darkest hour
And I'll never desert you
I'll stand by you

And when he night falls on you
And you're feeling all alone
You won't be on your own

I'll stand by you
I'll stand by you
Won't let nobody hurt you
I'll stand by you.

Shell Games

[user@localhost home]$ cd ..
[user@localhost /]$ cd usr/bin
[user@localhost bin]$ rdesktop
rdesktop: A Remote Desktop Protocol client.
Version 1.5.0. Copyright (C) 1999-2005 Matt Chapman.
See http://www.rdesktop.org/ for more information.

Usage: rdesktop [options] server[:port]
-u: user name
-d: domain
-s: shell
-c: working directory

You guessed it. I've had to go back to a command line interface to make any progress with linux on the AAA1. This, as much as anything is because the Live Update feature always seems to take the GUI back to the factory setting every time an update is downloaded.

My geek gene - though recessive or dormant - is still there.

Fecking Hull!

The Bomber turns 8 this week, and I was lucky enough to get a couple of tickets for the Emirates as an early present, so we took ourselves along, and joined the throng. Arsenal were sitting pretty at the top of the table, and had knocked six past Sheffield in the week so confidence was high ...... and yet it was not to be.

Hull won two one, inflicting only the second ever home defeat in a competitive match for the Gunners at the Emirates.

Ben certainly had a thorough tutorial in the manly art of swearing as the tension rose through the second half, confiding, "the man behind is spitting in my hair when he shouts".

I'm sure it was character building.

A Belter

Six months after it was shown in the US, and with the DVD already out over the pond, David Mamet's Redbelt has got a limited release in the UK.

Wimbledon being part of this limited release, I went along to see it yesterday.

Our beleaguered protagonist's struggles put me in mind of a Chandler quote, "down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid".

Sondra Terry: You think it was noble? The code of the warrior. You think it's noble?
Mike Terry: No, I think it's correct.

No Drugs, No Guns, No Slippers

I went to Manila once. It was like something out of the Wild West, everyone was packing heat. The Philippines is (are?) overwhelmingly Catholic and I have a vivid memory of an open air Mass in a park where most of the congregation appeared to be armed to the hilt.

I also treasure a sign outside a nightclub explaining its admittance policy: "no drugs, no guns, no slippers". Though we have drugs and guns in London we seem largely to have escaped the slipper menace, not that that is any reason for complacency.

All of which is a round about way of leading up to the fact that we went to Josephine's Filipino restaurant this week for pork, chicken, rice, noodles and vegetables.

Follow the links for our real and imaginary destinations as we eat our way around the world in London.

Airing Our Laundry

Chris: Please sir can I be let off reading "Daniel Martin"?

Myself: That my boy is a matter for you and your conscience. Looking through your records for this term, I also notice that you have asked to be excused "A Fighter's Heart". Very well, from my authorised list I assign you "Alexander the Great" by Robin Lane Fox. As homework, however, I expect an essay at http://grumunkin.blogspot.com/ on the rewards of the biography of a man who, among other things, introduced crucifixion and decimation across his empire. In particular, why should that be less disturbing than the tale of a comparatively guileless working stiff who merely trains for Muay thai in Bangkok, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in Rio, boxing in Oakland and MMA in Iowa?

Prodnose: It must be tremendously interesting to be a schoolmaster, to watch boys grow up and help them along; to see their characters develop and what they become when they leave school and the world gets hold of them. I don't see how you could ever get old in a world that's always young.

Myself: Silence! Silence! I'll have no more of it!

Prodnose: No more silence, sir?

Myself: I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.

Daniel Martin

As I opened my latest Amazon parcel today, I realised that - although I finished it some little time ago - I hadn't recorded my opinion of the 700 page Daniel Martin on the blog. Suffice to say I didn't like it. Mostly I imagine, as I did not share the eponymous character's high opinion of his own aesthetic sensibility. He seemed rather a tawdry figure to me.

I've adapted the book for the attention span of the MTV generation below. I don't think I've missed much out, for all that Daniel sits around interminably feeling condemned to pursue emotional dead ends:

Jane: Uggh, that woman in the reeds is like totally drowned.
Daniel: Gross!
later
Jane: I'm still like totally freaked out. D'you wanna like ... hook up?
Daniel: But I'm like with your sister and your like with my friend, Anthony. Isn't that a bit like gross? Um, alright, I s'pose.
25 years later.
Jane: I'm calling 'cause Anthony's got like cancer and wants to see you?
Daniel: What 'cause me 'n you got jiggy back in the day? Gimme a break! These days I pimp movie stars.
He flies to London never the less
Barney: Dan, remember when you totally nailed Jane in College dude? Now I'm totally nailing your daughter!
Daniel: Gross!
Anthony kills himself conveniently
Daniel: Jane, now Tony's dead do you fancy coming to Egypt you old tart? I gotta - you know - write like a screenplay exorcising the ghost of Imperialism and all that lot.
Jane: Sounds lame. Um, alright but no funny business.
They cruise down the Nile.
Daniel: Everyone except us is like a total loser man. Germans, Arabs, Russians, even the Yanks; everyone they're all total losers.
Jane: They can't help it, they didn't go to Oxford.
Daniel: Like that's my fault! Makes me think we oughta like ... hook up again? I'll tell that slapper in LA to sod off.
Jane: Um, alright, I s'pose. Whatevaaaah.
They live happily ever after

Bryn

Brinley ("Bryn") Newton-John was born in the New Market Tavern in the Hayes, Cardiff where his mum worked behind the bar.

He went to Cambridge, where he married Nobel Physics laureate Max Born's daughter with whom he had a daughter called Olivia Newton John, was an MI5 officer on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park and the officer who took Rudolph Hess into custody during World War II. The family emigrated in 1954 to Melbourne, Australia where he worked as a Professor of German and became the Master of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne.

That is quite a story arc. I must catch up with this BBC show.

Mal Aware

I may be a Linux novice, but I'm a Microsoft Systems Engineer who knows his way around Windows pretty thoroughly, and I'm always happy to help friends and acquaintances out with PC problems.

This weekend I was removing Antivirus XP 2008 using Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware for someone who had clicked unwisely in an email message.

The good people at bleepingcomputer.com tell us that:

Antivirus XP 2008 is a new rogue anti-spyware program that is advertised through Trojans and other malware. It is advertised in the form of fake security alerts and warnings on web sites that state you are infected with malware or are being attacked in some manner. When you click on these ads, it will automatically download the installer for Antivirus XP 2008 and install it on your machine. In some cases, this program is installed without any intervention at all from you.

Once installed, AntivirusXP 2008 will scan your computer and display a variety of security risks found on your computer that can only be removed if you purchase a license of the software. These risks, though, are all fake and are only being displayed to scare you into thinking you are infected and thus purchase their software. Another tactic that AntivirusXP 2008, and the accompanied malware, uses is to change your desktop background to be a message stating you are infected, popups and fake alerts stating your computer is being attacked, and a fake Internet Explorer page that states Google has found your computer to be infected.

Whoever us behind AntivirusXP 2008 is a monumental scumbag. People should go to prison for this sort of thing. It causes real distress to folk who aren't IT specialists.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is available as a free download and its what I used to kill AntivirusXP in this case. It hoses the infection away completely then politely and discreetly asks you to consider purchasing the professional version. This is model citizenship on the internet. I respect and praise the people behind it as much as I hate and despise the people who write malware in the first place, so I'm throwing this post out as an expression of goodwill to them,

Panache

I've had a long standing project in the back of my mind to translate Cyrano de Bergerac into English in heroic couplets. I took a first swing at it yesterday, starting at the end, and so:

Que dites-vous? C'est inutile? Je le sais!
Mais on ne se bat pas dans l'espoir du succès!
Non! non! C'est bien plus beau lorsque c'est inutile!
Qu'est-ce que c'est tous ceux-là? Vous êtes mille?
Ah je vous reconnais, tous mes vieux ennemis!
Le Mensonge? Tiens, tiens! Ha! Ha! Les Compromis!
Les Préjugés, les Lâchetés! Que je pactise?
Jamais, jamais! Ah! te voilà, toi, la Sottise!
Je sais bien qu'à la fin vous me mettrez à bas;
N'importe: je me bats ! je me bats ! je me bats!
Oui, vous m'arrachez tout, le laurier et la rose!
Arrachez ! Il y a malgré vous quelque chose
Que j'emporte, et ce soir, quand j'entrerai chez Dieu,
Mon salut balaiera largement le seuil bleu,
Quelque chose que sans un pli, sans une tache,
J'emporte malgré vous, et c'est. . . mon panache.

becomes

What now? It is not practical I know.
To cast a loaded dice for one more throw.
No, no; a beautiful, a hopeless stand
What is this horde? I shall not stay my hand.
I know you now, old foes, old enemies!
Dissembling, Prejudice and Treacheries!
Deception! Here's my sword's point, ask no truce.
I fight and will die fighting. No excuse.
Take what you will, you send me to repose.
Am I the prize, the laurel and the rose?
You've done your worst and yet I still retain,
Respect you cannot strip me of or stain.
And when I leave tonight to meet my Lord
May heaven's azure vault be my reward.
All I leave behind on earth is ash.
Despite you all I kept, and keep still my .... panache!

It was an interesting exercise. Google language tools did the grunt work on a literal translation but I had to loosen it up quite a bit to render 12 syllable French lines into rhyming iambic pentameter, including nicking a line from Joan Armatrading as I don't know what "the laurel and the rose" signifies.

I finish with an alexandrine to doff my cap to the original.

Bringing It All Back Home

There was a party downstairs last night as Tess - who introduced the Bomber to art - is shutting up shop and leaving the Mills. I gave her a copy of Bringing It All Back Home, as a going away present, track 2 seeming curiously apposite; Egyptian ring wearin', paint slingin', globe trottin' vagabond that she is.

She's got everything she needs,
She's an artist, she don't look back.
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black.

You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees.
But you will wind up peeking through her keyhole
Down upon your knees.

She never stumbles,
She's got no place to fall.
She's nobody's child,
The Law can't touch her at all.

She wears an Egyptian ring
That sparkles before she speaks.
She's a hypnotist collector,
You are a walking antique.

Bow down to her on Sunday,
Salute her when her birthday comes.
For Halloween give her a trumpet
And for Christmas, buy her a drum

One

I am off to Brighton this morning as BBC's The One Show is filming a report on our auction system for broadcast about a month from now.

It's all good.

Where's your head at?

Chris phoned me and Rob emailed me about the Aspire One. I've also been asked about it numerous times when pecking the keyboard in a public place with wi-fi connectivity.

So where are we at? Here's what I wrote to Rob ten days ago:

I am very happy with my Linux box. It is small enough to throw in a gym bag and take everywhere (note that there is no CD or DVD drive). I am using it to educate myself on Linux. Though there is a good range of applications, the box is pretty much tied down when it arrives. I've really had to get my head under the bonnet even to get the chance to play around with it. I'm not even sure if I can do drive mapping to Windows on it yet. I'll get there but it will take a while.

My advice to you would be that Windows (and your experience with it) is worth the extra forty odd quid when getting kitted out and I do recommend that hardware.

I still agree. You add applications like so, but though I've installed an RDP client to access Terminal Server I can't find it to run. Similarly I'm bemused as to how to set up a VPN connection. I've got a VNC client working but that is just by downloading and running an executable.

Next job: setting the resolution for an external monitor.

(While I remember I have installed a printer connected to a Vista box over a Windows network as well; Samba was involved.)

MacKenna sallies forth

Rod has lit out of my gaff on his way to work with Alan Doss (a Cardiff boy I am reliably informed) at the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Mission fatalities to date: 81 military personnel, 9 military observers, 2 UN police, 11 international civilian, 23 local civilian; 126 total.

A vast country with immense economic resources, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) has been at the centre of what could be termed Africa's world war.

This has left it in the grip of a humanitarian crisis.

The five-year conflict pitted government forces, supported by Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, against rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda. Despite a peace deal and the formation of a transitional government in 2003, the threat of civil war remains.

The war claimed an estimated three million lives, either as a direct result of fighting or because of disease and malnutrition. It has been called possibly the worst emergency to unfold in Africa in recent decades.

I take my hat off to him.

Potsticker Dumplings

The Bomber (now officially the world's coolest child) has introduced me to Wagamama, which has replaced the Ivy as foodies' favourite restaurant according to the Telegraph.

When there he eats gyoza, "five steamed, grilled chicken dumplings filled with cabbage, chinese leaf, chinese chives and water chestnut. served with a chilli, garlic, sesame and soy sauce".

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiaozi.

Sounds like Potsticker Dumplings to me.

I think we need to visit Hoo Hing and add a home-prepared version to our repertoire if only for the sake of my bank balance.

A bit parky

I was out of the house very early for a 9am meeting in wildest East Sussex this morning. I'm just back in the office and busy as a boy can be, so yesterday can only be linkblogged.

I took the Bomber and two friends to The Thames Festival Jubilee Gardens site where they very much dug UK beatbox star THePETEBOX, then the Urban Freeflow crew.

Bye bye. Work calls.

Infamy

Gordon Brown suffered a shattering blow to his authority today as one of his own whips called for a contest to replace him as Labour leader.

Siobhain McDonagh confirmed that she was among a growing band of Labour MPs seeking to trigger a leadership election in the party’s conference in a little over a week.

My MP is in the news. She has always been an ultra-loyalist. Brown must really be in trouble.

I wasn't keen on her at first, but she's grown on me over the years.

Benevolence

I was back on my old stamping grounds last night at Kneller Hall to see Ryhthm Force featuring Jools Holland in aid of the Army Benevolent Fund.

I was only too pleased to put my hand in my pocket, but reminded how deeply shameful our treatment of retired Gurkhas is.

They should all have rights of residence and to take British citizenship.

Digital Dining

Inamo is a pioneering Oriental fusion restaurant and bar where the control of the dining experience is placed firmly in your hands. Our mission is to provide delicious cuisine with charming and timely service in a warm and vibrant atmosphere.

At the core of Inamo is our interactive ordering system. Diners place orders from an illustrated food and drinks menu projected on to their table surface. You’ll set the mood, discover the local neighbourhood, and even order a taxi home. Our dedicated and friendly staff are always on hand to help with whatever you need.

Sounds rather impersonal, but it will have to be done.

Seeing Double

On a rainy day in Wales this summer (was there any other kind?); the bomber, his cousin and I went along to a matinée of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. I was surprised in one of the action scenes to see Maria Bello getting medieval on someone's ass with an old-school shoulder mounted drop elbow to head Muay Boran move (c.f. himself), but (hey presto) we see from the trivia section of her IMDB biography that she does Muay Thai herself.

Similarly when we saw Star Wars: The Clone Wars, it seemed to me that the idiosyncratic way that Ashoka wielded her light saber owed a lot to Krabi Krabong (c.f. himself). You can see it 1 min 46 secs into the trailer.

It makes me wonder what I'd be able to see if I knew about other styles.

Speaking of Thai action:

Chocolate is the latest from director Prachya Pinkaew, the man at the helm of Ong Bak and Tom Yum Goong/The Protector starring the inimitable Tony Jaa.

The movie stars Nicharee Vismistananda who has been training for years in preparation for this role.

This all kicks off 1 min 20 in.You go girlfriend!

Abdul Abulbul Amir

Considering geopolitical tensions and and a resurgent Russia flexing its muscles by the Black Sea, it strikes me that Percy French's 1877 lyric serves as a reminder from popular culture that there is little new under the sun.

The sons of the Prophet were brave men and bold
And quite unaccustomed to fear.
But the bravest by far in the ranks of the Shah
Was Abdul Abulbul Amir.

Now the heroes were plenty and well known to fame
In the troops that were led by the Tsar.
And the bravest of these was a man by the name
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

One day this bold Russian had shouldered his gun,
And donned his most truculent sneer.
Downtown he did go, where he trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.

"Young man," Quoth Abdul,"Has life grown so dull,
That you wish to end your career?
Vile Infidel, know, you have trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir."

Said Ivan, "My friend, your remarks, in the end,
Will avail you but little, I fear."
"For you ne'er will survive to repeat them alive.
Mr. Abdul Abulbul Amir."

"So take your last look at sunshine and brook.
And send your regrets to the Tsar.
By this I imply, you are going to die
Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar."

Then that bold Mameluke drew his trusty skibouk.
With a cry of, "Allah-Akbar!"
And with murderous intent, he ferociously went
For Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

They fought all that night, 'neath the pale yellow moon.
The din, it was heard from afar.
And huge multitudes came, so great was the fame,
Of Abdul and Ivan Skavar.

As Abdul's long knife was extracting the life —
in fact he was shouting "Huzzah!"
He felt himself struck by that wily Kalmyk,
Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

The Sultan drove by in his red-breasted fly,
Expecting the victor to cheer.
But he only drew nigh to hear the last sigh,
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.

Tsar Petrovich, too, in his spectacles blue,
Rode up in his new crested car.
He arrived just in time to exchange a last line,
With Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

There's a tomb rises up, where the blue Danube flows,
Engraved there in characters clear:
"Ah, stranger when passing, oh pray for the soul
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.

A Muscovite maiden her lone vigil keeps
'Neath the light of the pale polar star
And the name that she murmurs so oft as she weeps,
Is Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

Anthony O'Donnell was Abdul in the 1980's Worthington ad version; small world.

Evans the Atom

The man behind the world’s biggest scientific experiment, which critics claim could cause the end of the world, is a Welsh miner’s son who has admitted blowing things up as a child.

Dr Lyn Evans, who has been dubbed Evans the Atom, will this week switch on a giant particle accelerator designed to unlock the secrets of the Big Bang.

But the 63-year-old physicist revealed yesterday that his passion for science was fuelled by the relatively small bangs he had created with his chemistry set at his council house in Aberdare in the Welsh valleys.

We have a new Welsh Born Icon.

Name: Lyn Evans

Born: 1945, Aberdare

Educated: Aberdare Grammar; University of Wales, Swansea

Job: Director, CERN, Geneva; Large Hadron Collider Project Leader

trunkless legs of stone

I notice we've had Yeats, Kipling, and Shakespeare on these pagesover the last few days, so I guess now that "the head, right arm and lower legs of a huge statue of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius have been uncovered by archaeologists in the ancient city of Sagalassos in Turkey", we can have some Shelley too:

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The Emperor who wrote "soon you'll be ashes or bones; a mere name at most, and even that is just a sound, an echo" would approve.

I can't recommend the Meditations too highly:

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own... and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him.

BTC

Tension is rising in the Caucasus. I'm still reading The New Great Game. MacKenna - who has travelled through out the region - is licking his wounds in my gaff. And, at the risk of appearing frivolous, Wales beating Azerbaijan at footie yesterday while Ireland put Georgia to the sword kept the region prominently in my attention. As did the headline "Soccer diplomacy brings Turkey's Gul to Armenia".

This strip of land, sandwiched between Iran and Russia looks to our governments like the only practical route to get oil from the Caspian Sea, to market in the West, hence its significance. Did you think the concern was entirely humanitarian?

The attention of arm chair strategists is directed to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.

Georgia on my mind

Rod - who I've not seen for years - is staying with me for a few days after a domestic implosion on the continent.

It's been interesting talking to him about the situation in Georgia, as he worked for the FCO at the embassy there for a while, and has met Mikheil Saakashvili and other movers and shakers.

He has converted me to the philosophy of the Georgian table; of the tamada and the supra.

Would the world be a better place if we devoted ourselves more seriously to our pleasures?

How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!

Broken Arrow

Hotel barred soldier from staying night: UK 2008.

Kipling 1890:

I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, 'We serve no red-coats 'ere.'
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed and giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again, an' to myself sez I:
Oh, it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Tommy, go away':
But it's 'Thank you, Mister Atkins,' when the band begins to play -
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
Oh, it's 'Thank you, Mister Atkins,' when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Tommy, wait outside';
But it's 'Special train for Atkins' when the trooper's on the tide -
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
Oh, it's 'Special train for Atkins' when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?'
But it's 'Thin red line of 'eroes' when the drums begin to roll -
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
Oh, it's 'Thin red line of 'eroes when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that , an' 'Tommy, fall be'ind,'
But it's 'Please to walk in front, sir,' when there's trouble in the wind -
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
Oh, it's 'Please to walk in front, sir,' when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Chuck him out, the brute!'
But it's 'Saviour of 'is country' when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

Burning Chrome

I've just finished updating the spreadsheet that I keep in Google Docs with information on our Google Adsense income. I do that every day that I am in work, but this time I've done it in Google's browser.

My first impressions are that it is very fast, and that the "inspect element" option on the right click menu is a thing of beauty if debugging web pages is your thing.

Come to think of it I am composing this post in Google's Blogger and it will be hosted on Google's servers.

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.

Shoulder to the wheel

Back in the smoke and taking stock, nearly three years on, courtesy of the Colliers Tup wireless network.

A Pub Computer

I remember some time ago that The Burglar and I came up with a form factor for the pub computer; small and robust enough to take down the boozer, useful in the age of ubiquitous wi-fi, yet cheap enough not to break your heart if lost.

This is being written in GJs as I test the Aspire One against it. I've had to ask for the wireless network password behind the bar, but that should be a one-off now that the network is configured.

All seems well, though a pub computer is still not cheap enough to chance leaving behind on the bar when you pop to the gents.

This is being written on Friday, but I will set it to publish on Saturday as the bomber and I are off to Wales until next Wednesday evening.

I'll be offline until then unless I can ponce a connection somewhere.

Aspirational

I've finally come out of my Windows safety zone and I'm typing this on a dinky Acer Aspire One ultraportable running Linux.

The end of an era?

Legends

"Eat Your Way Around the World in London" got back on the road last night. We tried to go Ukrainian, but the restaurant was closed for a private function, so we wandered about looking for an alternative (a tricky exercise as we've already done 44 cuisines) until we found the Taiwanese Leong's Legends.

We had landed on our feet according to Time Out:

There’s something conspiratorial about the whole thing. Just when you thought the Chinatown dining scene was torpid, two outstanding restaurants – first Baozi Inn, and now Leong’s Legends, both boasting relatively unknown regional cooking – burst on to the scene with the stealth and cunning of bandits. Which, if you think about it, is a fitting metaphor for the title of this Taiwanese newcomer.

The name refers to the popular classical Chinese novel ‘The Water Margin’, which revolves around the rebel Song Jiang and his 107 comrades (sometimes referred to as ‘Liang’s legends’) who rise up against a corrupt government during the Song dynasty, while taking refuge on Mount Liang (aka Leong).

Good food, but I drank and didn't take any notes. Here is the skinny from Wikipedia (authenticity is implied by the fact that we certainly had the beef noodle soup from paragraph one).

Follow the links for our real and imaginary destinations as we eat our way around the world in London.

gross anatomy

The Daily Beast is raging:

A bizarre Government-funded campaign is being launched to encourage people to exercise while they’re waiting for a bus.

According to the campaign’s organisers, those minutes spent at the bus stop watching the traffic go by could be spent more usefully – by standing on one leg, pointing your toes or clenching your buttocks.

But the latest attempt to get Britain fit has been slammed by an MP as ‘a shocking waste of taxpayers’ money’.

As a regular exerciser, diagnosed by a personal trainer 30 months ago as mildly kyphotic, let me have my tuppenny worth.

I understand that it is important to clench your buttocks (or fire your glutes as we say in the business).

A common reason for lack of glute function is tight hip flexors. Tight hip flexors are easy to get, and extremely bad for glute activation. When your hip flexors are firing, they turn off your glutes, and make it very hard to activate them, and they end up pretty weak. This is known as reciprocal inhibition. When a muscle is tight (hip flexors) and firing when it shouldn’t be, the opposite muscle, the antagonist (glutes) tends to want to turn off and not work. If you are activating your hip flexors when you shouldn’t be, this is going a long way towards your inability to get the glutes firing. Your hip flexors get really tight from sitting down for a long time.

I'm a slouching desk jockey just like you, and to cut a long story short, we need to stretch our hip flexors as well as toning our derrieres. To do that why not combine a pelvic thrust with the buttock clench?

Next time you are at the bus stop, put your hands on your hips and then - as you clench your butt cheeks - drive and jerk your pelvis forward. Relax and repeat. Relax and repeat. Wave to anyone else at the stop, or even to passers-by, and invite them to join you.

Prodnose: Will you visit anyone who takes you up on this in prison?

Myself (holier than thou): When saw I thee hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

Prodnose: I give up.

Freebie and the Bean

I don't think I've written before of the Bomber's peculiar and precocious appetite for American indie movies. (He also likes European pictures and is currently pressing Pan's Labrynth on me though I haven't got round to watching it yet.)

Last night (as there was no Muay Thai on a Bank Holiday) we trotted off to the Odeon to see Steve Carell and Alan Arkin (from his beloved Sundance Film Festival breakout Little Miss Sunshine) reunited in the mainstream Get Smart.

We laughed like drains. There is a great cameo from Bill Murray that I recommend unto you.

There's also a supporting role for James Caan. In a scene with him and Arkin, I realised that it was a Freebie and the Bean reunion 34 years on.

Standard fayre on BBC2 when I was growing up, but unavailable on DVD for a new generation. The F&B revival campaign starts here.

Fedor

Trivial as it may be in the scheme of things I've been wondering if Fedor Emelianenko's huge popularity with MMA fans in the States may have some geopolitical implications.

He looks like a redneck's best friend who'd stop off for a few drinks after work, watch your back in a punch up, and never steal your girlfriend.

If the guys in the flyover states imagine a Russian Army made up of fellas like that, the new Red menace is gonna be a harder sell.

Hadrian

I went along to Hadrian Empire and Conflict at the British Museum yesterday.

Did you know that he were a gayer?

More seriously, it is fascinating and wonderfully curated stuff.

Comparing the Pantheon to the Round Reading Room in which the exhibition is mounted is a highlight.

The Emperor casts a long shadow. After the Second Roman-Jewish War, in an attempt to erase the memory of Judaea, he renamed the province Syria Palaestina.

The jury is still out on that one.

Babylon Bored

Babylon Wales

Babylon Olympics

Babylon Mammon

(That's enough Babylons. Ed.)

Roll of Honour

Nicole Cooke, Women's road race cycling - GOLD
Tom James, Coxless fours rowing - GOLD
Geraint Thomas, Cycling team pursuit - GOLD
Tom Lucy, eight-man rowing - SILVER
David Davies, 10km open-water swim - SILVER

These are turning into a fine Olympics for Wales. You can read the whole history at http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics/7531101.stm.

Leo Abse: F&M

Abse was a prolific author. His publications included Private Member: a psychoanalytically orientated study of contemporary politics (1973), which sought to relate MPs' behaviour and attitudes to their childhood and sexual experiences; Margaret, daughter of Beatrice (1989), a "psychobiography" of Margaret Thatcher; Wotan, my enemy: can Britain live with the Germans? (1994), which won the Wingate Prize from the Jewish Quarterly; The Man Behind the Smile: Tony Blair and the politics of perversion (1996) and, in 2003, a new edition called Tony Blair, the man who lost his smile.
In 2000 he published Fellatio, Masochism, Politics and Love, which purported to be "an analysis of the repressed homosexual components of the relationship between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair"; and in 2006 The Bisexuality of Daniel Defoe: a psychoanalytic survey of the man and his works.

Leo Abse - lawyer, politician, and brother of Dannie - has passed on aged 91. Strange to remark, not one of his books has a berth in my library.

O'Rooney McVoughtie O'Zoot

"Hipster, flipsters and finger poppin' daddies: Knock me your lobes; I came here to lay Caesar out, not to hip you to him. The bad jazz that a cat blows wails long after he's cut out, the groovy are often stashed with their frames; so don't put Caesar down. The swingin' Brutus hath laid a story on you that Caesar was hooked for power: If it was so it was a sad drag, and sadly hath the Caesar cat answered it..."

I'm off to An Audience with Lord Buckley - the last theatrical flourish of this year's AbbeyFest - tonight.

Pray silence for His Lordship's takes on the Bard of Avon (Willie the Shake), Jesus of Nazareth (The Naz) and Charles Dickens (Old Scroogy Scrooge). You dug him before, re-dig him now!

From what I recall of my (mercifully brief) Slim Gaillard period - around the release of Absolute Beginners - I am likely to be talkin' jive for the next week or so. Apologies in advance.

A prophet without honour

The Met have launched a beta version of a crime mapping site based on Google maps more than three years after I was mulling it.

This morning, the Telegraph is boosting "Predicting the future - with the power of betting", the same three years after I deprecated the US for dropping a plan to create a futures market to help predict terrorist strikes.

Strange how things come around.

Fruit Shoot

I took the Bomber and a couple of his mates to see Clone Wars yesterday at the Odeon.

For the first time in I can't remember how long there was no spoof Orange advert, so here for you viewing pleasure is the great Darth Vader episode from a few years back.

In the red

The Bomber and I opened his first bank account yesterday.

It was the first time he has ever had to sign a document, which put him in some sort of predicament has he hadn't designed a signature. I seem to remember that I was already practicing autographs at that sort of age, though no one has ever asked me for one.

Legends

Carlos from Jackapong is fighting on the Muay Thai Legends bill at Croydon today but I can't make it as the Bomber and I are long promised to a BBQ afternoon and evening. (I'm marinating jerk chicken, you have been warned.)

Boony vaguely alluded to the fact (and My Muay Thai confirms) that Somluck Khamsing who is on the bill, won a gold medal at boxing in the 1996 Olympics.

I'm staggered. This is exalted company.

Merde! He Wrote

A giant inflatable dog dropping created by the American artist Paul McCarthy was blown from its moorings at a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a window before landing in the grounds of a children's home.
The exhibit is the size of a house and has a safety system that is supposed to
deflate it in bad weather.
It is part of an exhibition called East of Eden: A Garden Show, which features sound sculptures in trees and a football ground without goalposts.

An exhibition curated by Dr Strabismus (Whom God Preserve) of Utrecht?

Enter Stage Write

After sitting the last production out, I went along to this week's AbbeyFest Theatre last night. It was a production of Two which (everyone's got a website these days) was written by http://www.jimcartwright.co.uk and featured http://www.danielcreasey.com/ and http://www.yviemagee.com.

It was good stuff.

Regarding theatre, the Wimbledon bookfest writing competition for this year is asking for scripts. Ideally I'd like to have a crack at it, but an August 31 deadline is a bit of a challenge given my workload and giddy social whirl

Jabber

I used to know MC Jabber (aka Scott Martingell), via his sister, way back in the day, and certainly at least a decade or so ago.

As I recall I gave him a lift to Victoria where he got a bus to the continent, and it seems in time hooked up with a band called Blue Foundation and ended up on the Miami Vice movie soundtrack. Fancy that.

Here he is in his solo beardy glory on YouTube. You'll have to follow the link, embedding is disabled. He looks unchanged since the 90s, as does his jumper.

"Every man's memory is his private literature".

Greenwich Mean Time

Here is a record of my little fella doing his thing in the ring last weekend for Thai @ Zero Longitude 2008 - the first Thai festival taking place in the oldest Royal Park(?) - just two weeks shy of two years training.

Just as when he first started it took encouragement to persuade him to climb in, but he had a great time once on board and spoke of little else yesterday.

Speaking of Muay Thai, The Contender Asia (renamed "The Contender: Kickboxer) is currently showing in the UK at 9pm Monday and Tuesday nights on ITV4.

Welsh Gold

By the time Nicole Cooke reached the Great Wall of China on her way to winning a gold medal in the women's cycling road race yesterday, it was raining cats and dogs. A thick mist mantled the sharply pointed hills above the Ju Yong pass and the temperature had dropped far enough to mock her decision to wear a thin Lycra skinsuit rather than the normal jersey and shorts. It was, in fact, just like home.

Cooke, 25, is from the Vale of Glamorgan, where wet weather is hardly uncommon. But the conditions had little to do with the Welshwoman's achievement in becoming the first British cyclist, man or woman, to win the Olympic road race. Two years ago, in baking heat, she was the first British rider to win the women's Tour de France.

Nicole Cooke is a gold-plated Welsh Born Icon

How do you find yourself this morning?

The corporeal instruments of action being strained to a high pitch . . . will soon feel a lassitude.

The New Great Game

The Caucasus go up in smoke and I haven't the foggiest.

I bought The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asiafrom Amazon a couple of years ago but never got round to reading it. I'll have to ingest at least chapter 3 " Stalin's Legacy: Georgia" and get back to you.

Caucasians eh?

The end of history eh?

Folly.

Diabolus in Musica

I heard an advert for a touring version of West Side Story on the radio this morning, which reminded me of something that has long puzzled me.

How can the diminished fifth (an interval with which the whole score is drenched - think "Maria") have been deprecated as "Diabolus in Musica" in the Middle Ages and caused controversy when Dizzie Gillespie et al started be boppin' it in the 40s, sound so innocuous to us today? It is at the heart of the perky theme to The Simpsons for goodness sake.

I do however promise not to worry about it excessively.

Will the circle be unbroken?

Back in 2005 I blogged a story about the Herculean labours of a guy called Peter Verney who worked for Save The Children in Sudan in the 80s.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the post, you will see that he left a comment on it in the early hours of this morning.

He's still doing what he can, and says "personally I haven't surrendered: a bit broke these days, maybe, but the resilience of the Darfur people I meet is still humbling".

I'm humbled to hear from him.

Save the children. What a world.

Stitched Up

I been planning to go to the AbbeyFest theatre tonight for Stitching, but I have been saved by Google.

From The Guardian in 2002:

Barely one day into the Edinburgh festival, audiences known for their cast-iron stomachs have staged their first walkouts on grounds of taste.

People left Stitching, a new play by the Scottish writer Anthony Neilson that describes a man masturbating over pictures of women being herded into a gas chamber in Auschwitz. A character fantasises about re-enacting the Moors murders, filming her partner sexually abusing the victims' mothers and putting the footage on the web. She mutilates and stitches up her vagina to the strains of "We will stitch it" from the soundtrack to the children's TV programme Bagpuss.

I think I can do without that particular catharsis, though it seems to be doing well in New York. How unsurprising to find that the useless Mark Ravenhill is a friend and fan of the author.

Festival sponsor I may be, but "include me out".

P.S. Regarding the play's needlework, I seem to recall Ornella Muti had the same idea in 1981's Storie di ordinaria follia, so it's not as if it's even particularly original. Gimme Ms Muti as Princess Aura in 1980's Flash Gordon any day.

Emirates

The Bomber and I attended the Emirates Cup on Saturday for the second year in a row, as illustrated by the photo above that he took from our seats (cf. my photo of the boss at the same venue).

Watching Aaron Ramsay (late of Cardiff City) running out for Arsenal against Real Madrid is a treat indeed.

Queuing up for half an hour in the pouring rain to get the tube home afterwards while being partonised and obstructed by mounted police; less of a treat. What would it have cost PC Witling just to be polite?

In brief

linkblogging some last week's adventures with the Bomber and fambly:

http://www.cardiff-festival.com/
http://www.chittythemusical.co.uk
http://www.ciemalabar.com/intro.php
http://www.gelynisfarm.co.uk/
http://www.kungfupanda.com/
http://www.velindrefundraising.co.uk/Velindre_Rose.aspx
http://thedarkknight.warnerbros.com/
http://www.farthingsofcowbridge.co.uk/farthings_restaurant/