El Grupo

In the interests of historical accuracy, let it be known that "El Grupo" convened last Friday in the White Rose in Mumbles, and then dined at Lal Qila. The books enumerated here were exposed to our collective sensibility, and "This Thing of Darkness" judged the winner by acclamation.

Next time we shall be considering:

• Winter in Madrid as nominated by Rob
  
• The Tenderness of Wolves as nominated by Dave
  
• Slaughterhouse 5 as nominated by Chris
  
• American Shaolin as nominated by me
  

As ever, ordering via one of the links above will get me a piece of the action; I have also created a new tag "El Grupo" that I shall use in future and retrospectively to gather my musings on the books we consider.

Chainsuck

I completed the Childline Challenge on Sunday morning, but had a bit of a 'mare to be honest.

Chris (who was riding shotgun with me rather than competing) and I seem to have taken a wrong turn after the Memorial and I found that I had to dismount and carry my bike up a few steps to get back on the main path.

I jumped on the bike again and changed down gears drastically while pedalling hard, with the - probably inevitable - result that my chain came off the chainring and got jammed. I tried to untangle it for what seemed like an age, then gave up and started to push the cycle to the stage end at Sketty car park, only to be saved by a Knight of the Road who got off his own bike and showed me how I could fix mine. (I was pleased to be able to thank him after the race and have made a vow to learn some maintenance myself.)

All these troubles - I learned later that Chris had encountered the same problem - meant that by the time I got in the pool - stage 2 of the race - I was way behind the group with whom I had started. It took all the will power that I had to complete ten 50m lengths rather than a sneaky catch-up eight as no one was checking, but I gritted my teeth and did it properly.

Subsequently, I girded my loins and ran the 3 or 4 miles back to Knab's Rock to finish last among my peers.

Same time next year?

Mais naturellement.

Afan Argoed

The two Robs were generous enough to lend me an appropriate ride and take me mountain biking in Afan Argoed yesterday. What an ideal way to rest and relax before this morning's Childline Challenge!

I wore my Garmin for the adventure, so here - as I promised them - are the links to our route:

• motionbased record
• Google Maps
• Google Earth

I didn't wear the heart monitor, but I wish I had because I was scared witless by the precipitous drops inches from the edge of some of the single track descents and I 'd like to be able to prove what I imagine: that fear made my heart beat more furiously then, than effort made it pound on even the steepest climb.

Ceci n' est pas une pipe

I can't get to a computer today, so I am writing this post with pen and paper.

The History of Mr Polly

The latest meeting of "El Grupo" is not until later tonight but, as Dave and Chris have already nominated their choices for the commingling after that, I may as well shoot my load.

Inspired by this article in The Times, I nominate American Shaolin:

P. J. O'Rourke 'I loved AMERICAN SHAOLIN. Reading it was like being abducted by an alien - a brilliant, funny and hospitable alien'
Dan Rather 'Tells more about what's going on in China, has more insights into the real China, than anything in recent years'

I'm already interested in the Bodhidhama, the Indian monk who seems to have been pivotal to the development of Zen and the Shaolin temple. so I may learn some more about that from the book, but I'm also partial to travelogues with jokes.

Rather sportingly, according to his website, the book's author Matthew Polly is "happy to answer a few questions by email or schedule a 30-minute conference by speakerphone when you’re reading American Shaolin!" That might be fun.

Serendipitously, given the amount of time I spend at Jackapong, here he is on Muay Thai - my boy's hobby - in Slate earlier this month.

Pros and Cons

When I pump "Tristart Children" into Google, the number one hit is something I wrote the other day. A salutary reminder about the shaky nature of authority on the Internet, as I know lickety-spit about kids endurance events.

Google's also allowed me to discover however, that there is Cardiff Junior Triathlon Club, that runs a Tristart event in June, so I guess that - even though we live in London - my little fella could do that next year if he wants. Even though the club meets on Wednesday nights at UWIC Cyncoed, a matter of yards from where we were cycling on Monday, there is no way I was ever likely to have found that out without the search engine.

Pros and cons of Google, or just the nature of the beast?

I've started so I'll finish

With Friday's deadline looming, I've finally put The Unquiet Grave to bed.

The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence

... asserteth Palinurus.

For my review, you must imagine my lips pursed in a fleeting moue, as my left eyebrow arches a quizzical but elegant millimetre.

As Sainte-Beuve would have it:

In most men there is a dead poet whom the man survives.

Oh really?

No, O'Reilly.

Reassuringly Expensive

I went to GJs last night for a debrief after driving back from Cardiff only to find that I was required to pony up £3.20 for a pint of Stella. Just a 10p rise I'll grant you, but it stuck in my throat after downing the same stuff at £2.55 a pint in Wales after football on Friday.

I've therefore transferred my affections to Venus where Stella may be had for £3.00. I realise the savings are paltry, but "you've got to be true to your code." (I am even seriously considering the £2.90 a throw offering in the bar at Frankie and Benny's.)

The other local dives rule themselves out as regular haunts by serving different brands of strong continental lager, whereas I request and require Stella:

The very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfxxxer in the room, accept no substitutes.

I wonder how long it will be before I look back on the prices in this post as bargains from a Golden Age of cheap drinking. In fact that is why I recorded them for posterity.

They tried to make me go to rehab
I said no, no, no

Yes I've been black but when I come back
You'll know, know, know

I ain’t got the time
And if my daddy thinks I’m fine

Just try to make me go to rehab
I won’t go, go, go!

Learning by doing

I bowed to the entreaties of my six year old yesterday and let him wear my GPS watch for a bike ride. We put the watch on the table in the garden and waited for it to pick up the satellites, then I set the watch to give him an alert after 800m (the Tristart cycling mark) and off we went along Penylan road and into the park for a few laps.

He took that watch off after the alert was triggered; "it's sweating my wrist" but uploaded the data to the PC and then the motionbased website when we got back.

As we were watching his route play back on Google Maps' satellite view - though he was surprised that the satellite had not photographed the dog that chased him in the park - I was struck by just how much education he had probably got from half an hour's messing about:

• learning that location devices work out your position from satellites
• getting good idea of how far 800m is
• learning what uploading to the internet meant (he showed off the map to his cousins at his aunt's later)
• seeing examples of photographs from space of his grandparents' house and environs.

Mabinogion, I hardly knew you

We took the New Ninja Bomber and four of his cousins along to Cwmcarn Forest Drive for a lark and a barbecue yesterday.

I wish I knew something about Welsh mythology.

Knees Don't Lie

I played 5-a-side football last night for the first time in 24 years, my last outing coming when I was a graduate trainee at Fluor doing the EP1 course in Twickenham.

I turned out yesterday to fill a gap in my brother's team. He plays every fortnight at "Cardiff 5 A Side". This, the home of Boca Seniors and Real Madras, is situated in the kind of semi abandoned warehouse district to which it would be a worry to be driven by Tony Soprano.

We had the pitch for an hour and I scored two goals, one in the ninetieth second of the game and one with the clock reading thirty five minutes. In other words in the very earliest part of each half. This gives you a good idea of the pattern of my contribution.

My wind was quite good from all my endurance training, but the stops, starts, twists, and sprints played merry hell with my joints.

Great night though.

Lucky Day

Due to a combination of stupidity and incompetence, seasoned with "Friday 13th" voodoo, I am to blame for a write-off level mangling of the New Ninja Bomber's pushbike, and I've had to take him to Halfords today to get a new ride.

It is a startling indication of the rate at which children develop that he his now aboard a 21 gear, 12" frame, 24" wheel machine. It would have been unthinkable that he could tame such a beast six months ago when I got him his last one as a birthday present.

He asked me this morning when I got back from training if he could compete in a triathlon as well. Googling round today I have found that there are indeed such things as Children's Triathlons and that there is a Tristart category of race that you can enter in the year of your eighth birthday, which means he could do it next year.

A Tristart race seems to average out at around a 50m swim, followed by an 800m bike ride, and a 600m run so it is a least a possibility for 2008.

vin-dit

I got an email from Chris telling me that Kurt Vonnegut has passed on.

A quick search reveals that I've made four references to Vonnegut here on my blog over the last couple of years: one, two, three, four.

Also the first conversation Chris and I had that I can clearly recall was about Cat's Cradle and Bokonism when we should have been listening to a chemistry lecture in 1979.

The last paragraph of the book seems appropriate today:

If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.

Big Night

A branch of Frankie and Benny's has opened round the corner so the Big Apple was our destination for "eat your way around the world in London".

The profit burglar had New York chicken. Chicken is Noo Yawked it would seem, by topping a breast with bacon, smoked cheese and barbecue sauce.

I had spaghetti with meatballs as a sort of tribute to Primo blowing a gasket when asked for it in Big Night - "sometimes the spaghetti likes to be alone" - and of course Clemenza in the Godfather:

"Heh, come over here, kid, learn something. You never know, you might have to cook for 20 guys someday. You see, you start out with a little bit of oil. Then you fry some garlic. Then you throw in some tomatoes, tomato paste, you fry it; ya make sure it doesn't stick. You get it to a boil; you shove in all your sausage and your meatballs; heh…? And a little bit o' wine. An' a little bit o' sugar, and that's my trick."

'Twas washed down with a Sangiovese Merlot blend.

Oderint dum metuant

Hold the front page! The Sun has exclusive details of David Beckham's latest tattoo this morning, and breathlessly confides:

The former England skipper now has the words of a Roman poem etched into his flesh above a picture of a guardian angel with wings, shrouded in flames.
And I can exclusively reveal the message means: “Let them hate as long as they fear.”

That would be Lucius Accius' invaluable "oderint dum metuant", a favourite saying of Caligula according to Suetonius who reported:

He generally prolonged the sufferings of his victims by causing them to be inflicted by slight and frequently repeated strokes; this being his well-known and constant order: "Strike so that he may feel himself die." Having punished one person for another, by mistaking his name, he said, "he deserved it quite as much." He had frequently in his mouth these words of the tragedian,

Oderint dum metuant.
I scorn their hatred, if they do but fear me.

He would often inveigh against all the senators without exception, as clients of Sejanus, and informers against his mother and brothers, producing the memorials which he had pretended to burn, and excusing the cruelty of Tiberius as necessary, since it was impossible to question the veracity of such a number of accusers. He continually reproached the whole equestrian order, as devoting themselves to nothing but acting on the stage, and fighting as gladiators. Being incensed at the people's applauding a party at the Circensian games in opposition to him, he exclaimed, "I wish the Roman people had but one neck."

Given the context, an odd commendation to have permanently inked on one's body I would have said.

In Excelsis Geo

The Merton Abbey page in Wikipedia has been updated by a bot which tagged it with a message saying:

This apparently location-related article appears to lack geographic
coordinates
You can help by adding them. Please don't be overly precise.

So I've pinpointed the location on Google Maps, and generated the Wikipedia code on World Wind, then updated the page.

The coordinates are rendered on the Wikipedia page as a link that takes you to this Wikimedia page which in turn plugs the location into all sorts of resources on the net.

There is definitely a lot of interesting stuff going on in the general area of geo-tagging.

It pays to increase your word power

I've discovered a remarkable new word.

Drapetomania was a psychiatric diagnosis proposed in 1851 by physician Samuel A. Cartwright, of the Louisiania Medical Association, to explain the tendency of black slaves to flee captivity.

It's easy to laugh, but I wonder how many contemporary syndromes will seem equally ridiculous to future generations.

It is often tempting to assume that something exists just because a name has been conjured up. This is a fallacy for which my limited vocabulary has no mot juste. Is there a phrase or word for it?

Aggregator

I fell off the wagon yesterday, my excuse being that it would have been churlish not to support the Replay Festival at GJs. Never mind, a new day dawns.

I've come up with a training related idea to give Yahoo Pipes a test run and built a quick pipe here.

It takes the RSS feed from Triathblog and filters out all the posts except mine, and combines it with my RSS feed from http://nickbrowne.motionbased.com/.

All very quick and easy. Graphical programming like this soon reveals its limitations but I've liked it ever since I tried Borland ObjectVision back in the nineties.

It is good to be able to gather training records together from different sources like this. I wish I could get at Virgin's Technogym records in a similar way.

It's all food for thought. I'm gradually coming over to Marc Canter's way of thinking vis-a-vis Digital Lifestyle Aggregators.

Point to Point, Point and Click

Maps.google.co.uk has been updated with the facility for us to create, save and annotate our own maps via an intuitive point and click interface.

I've had a quick go at the route for the Swansea Childline Challenge, you can see it here.

(Bear in mind when considering the inevitable inaccuracies that I haven't lived there for a quarter of a century.)

Madness? This is WATER!

The New Ninja Bomber has broken up from school for the Easter Holiday.

I taught him how to make water bombs from sheets of paper yesterday afternoon so that he could amuse himself. It was good to see him honing his motor skills and spatial awareness in their manufacture, and even better to launch the weapons from the gangway that runs between the first floor of The Apprentice Shop and The Coles Shop. We did go down, pick up and bin the remains, but I must admit that we have very indulgent neighbours in Abbey Mills as no one seemed to object. They were, if anything in fact, rather encouraging.

I've pinched an swf file from here to remind you how to construct these origami projectiles. Making a couple certainly bucked me up.

The Entertainer

I went to the Old Vic with Chris and Kim last night to see the 50th anniversary production of The Entertainer; references to Polish immigrants and trouble in the Middle East lent it a curiously contemporary feel.

The performances were universally excellent, but I'm still not entirely convinced by John Osborne. He had a great talent for dialogue, but I find the more declamatory portions of his plays can grate.

As a man, he seems to have been just as unpleasant as his creations Archie Rice and Jimmy Porter. That's not really an artistic judgement but it weighs heavily with me.

Good company and a good mojito fuelled night out though, Cubana - and its Happy Hour - being only yards from the theatre.

Replay

The Six Bells begat The Riverside; and The Riverside begat Baobab; and Baobab begat Blue.

I noticed on my way home from swimming last night that the troubled boozer at 222 Colliers Wood High Street has reopened yet again, this time as a "stylish new club/bar" called Blue. I popped in for a cheeky drink, but wasn't all that impressed. I hope the new management make a go of it, but on the evidence of last night the prognosis may not be good.

I did notice however that Blue has signed up as a venue for the REPLAY Festival that Surrey Strings are putting on over Easter to raise money for their instrument recycling charity.

But hey, enough of my yakkin'; whaddaya say? Let them explain:

Literature, my mistress

Channel hopping on digital radio over the weekend, I came across Kenneth Branagh reading a gem of a short story by Chekhov on Oneword. A little diligence with Project Gutenberg has revealed it as "Misery", you can read it here if you like. I'm familiar with a couple of the plays, but I've never read Chekhov's stories, so I need to add them to the enormous pile of things I intend to get around to.

Casting my mind back Chekovianly, I particularly remember Peter Hall's production of The Seagull at the Old Vic. That was ten years ago according to this Google-sourced snippet. It starred Felicity Kendall as Madame Arkadina. Reading her autobiography when I was in India, picking it up because I knew that she was raised there, I learned that her actor/manager father was dying during the play's run which for me added a sort of retrospective poignancy to her character's relationship with Konstantin. Dominic West of 300 and Voysey Inheritance fame played the son. Round and round and round it goes, and where it stops nobody knows.

Off the the Old Vic again tomorrow for "The Entertainer".

in vino veritas

I've had my traditional, morose drink in the pub at the bottom of the road today after dropping my six year old back at his mum's. As I've been dry for the last eleven days, and not felt the slightest desire for a sharpener, I can't help but wonder what light this sheds on my habits.

The Artful Dodger

By a strange coincidence, just ten days after I mentioned the Gordon Brown's decade old raid on the country's pension schemes, and hot on the heels of the former Cabinet Secretary's enumeration of his "Stalinist ruthlessness", documents released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that he was explicitly warned of the likely consequences.

Here's the coverage from The Telegraph, The Times, and The Guardian.

The BBC is downplaying it (there's a surprise) leading its coverage with, "the Treasury has dismissed as "abject nonsense" claims that Gordon Brown ignored warnings about his first Budget creating a £75bn gap in pension funds".

What an amazing coincidence that the Chancellor happened to be enhancing his image as a prime-minister-in-waiting by making an unannounced one-day visit to British troops in Afghanistan just as the documents he had desperately tried to suppress were released.

You can find the documents at issue here, if you want to make your own mind up.

The Memory Palace

The belt to the left was a new addition to the trophy cabinet when I took the boys to Muay Thai last night. It turns out that Woytek won the British Championship when he was fighting in Manchester the other weekend. This was exciting news for my six year old who had a lesson with the champ before Christmas.

I take "the boys" along to Thai boxing on Thursdays lately because two of my son's school friends have started as well. When I picked one of them up yesterday, I noticed a copy of "The Blind Man of Seville" on the kitchen table in his house, and said to his Mum that I had heard that it was a good book because Chris and Kim had recommended it to me in September 2005. When I brought his boy back after the class, the Dad gave me the paperback, saying that he had got it for free and was unlikely to read it himself.

Now I admit that these two stories (each an update of an earlier post) are not exactly earth shattering, but they do illustrate - in a small way - changes that I've noticed as a bye product of blogging every day, or perhaps more accurately thinking about my experiences in the context of writing every day.

I'm definitely remembering events and conversations a lot more clearly than I used to. Even if I haven't blogged them, my entry for the day they occurred can stir up the memories as an - often ironic - counterpoint.

Just looking at my archives for last April, I can see, for example, that:

• Dominic West had probably already wrapped 300 before I saw him The Voysey Inheritance; contrasting roles and styles indeed,
• the cherry blossom has bloomed a fortnight earlier in 2007 than 2006,
• and that this week's report that Police stations in Merton are the among the worst in London at answering the phone for non-emergency calls, shows that nothing has changed since scumbags poured paint over half the cars in our street.

GPS

Following my bike route on Google Earth yesterday, I was amazed to find that the data was accurate enough to show that I cycled out on one side of the road and back on the other.

That, and the importance of GPS evidence in the unfolding UK/Iran dispute, sent me to Wikipedia to ferret out more details of the Global Positioning System.

It is technically and historically fascinating stuff . Look at the section on Selective Availability for example. The paragraph that struck me the most however was:

The satellite constellation is managed by the United States Air Force 50th Space Wing. The cost of maintaining the system is approximately US$750 million per year, including the replacement of aging satellites, and research and development. Despite this fact, GPS is free for civilian use as a public good.

The ability to for ships, cars, emergencies and even joggers and cyclists precisely to identify their locations must be an enormous economic and social boon to the world.

Providing the underlying infrastructure free of charge is a noble deed, so I'd just like to say thank you very much to the USA.

Come Fly With Me

I've noticed that Motionbased.com automatically generates Google Earth tours based on data that I upload from my Garmin Forerunner 305.

So - if you've got the right software installed - this link will take you along last Sunday morning's cycle route; complete with detours.

This is truly astounding technology. There is definitely more to mashups than hype, and it's handy to have the blog as a scratchpad for them.

Small World Update

Here's the photo that the MOD released at this morning's briefing to prove that the 15 Royal Navy personnel seized by Iran were in Iraqi waters. I hope we get them back soon. It is strange to think that the Garmin device in the argument clinching picture probably uses the same chipset as my watch.

Humble Pie

The Commons Education Select Committee has issued a report on bullying in schools, about which - as it my wont - I found myself sneering over my porridge as I watched the coverage on the BBC's Breakfast show. I remember being particularly dismissive of the coinage "cyber-bullying".

Reading Scoble a little later though, I was horrified to read what Kathy Sierra has been subjected to:

As I type this, I am supposed to be in San Diego, delivering a workshop at the ETech conference. But I'm not. I'm at home, with the doors locked, terrified. For the last four weeks, I've been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that's not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs...

No one should have to put up with that sort of thing. I feel unworthy for dismissing the phenomenon.

By conincidence I think, Libby Purves talks about the issues in The Times today:

The internet is not evil. We who use it daily — for everything from news and banking to cinema listings and tracing quotations from forgotten poets — quickly learn how to navigate around the piles of rubbish, the lurking fraudsters, the lies and malice and vapidity and perversion. It is a vast teeming city, and you can choose whether to frequent cathedrals, theatres and Parliament or just the brothels and public hangings.

But we should accept the same rules of morality and decorum that govern solid, daily life. If shouting “Go on, kill yourself” to a stranger is not acceptable in the street, it is not acceptable in a chat room. Similarly, we do not allow the pushing of unsolicited obscenities through letterboxes, and so should not tolerate the clogging-up of private, often heartfelt e-mail traffic with repeated shrieks of “Ejaculate like a porn star!”. If it is illegal to print malicious lies, equal sanctions should face those who put them online; if it is stupid to leave your credit cards in a café with the PIN on them, it is equally stupid to ignore computer security.

There aren't any easy answers.

Not with a bang ...

A proposed merger of Wimpey and Tayor Woodrow is all over the papers today.

How are the mighty fallen. When I was first at Wimpey, it was a near £2bn a year construction colossus built from nothing by Sir Godfrey Mitchell but they sold off everything but the housebuilding more than ten years ago.

I can't see that there's much more to the housebuilding business than managing the land bank. A far cry from "Sir God's" buccaneering heyday.

Best Laid Plans

I had great plans last summer for long distance cycle rides. These were rather undermined by my utter lack of any sense of direction, as revealed when I got hopelessly lost just cycling up and down the Wandle Trail to Croydon.

I decided to put the GPS watch on the case this morning. Here is the result of my meanderings. I got lost a couple of times but at least I can start to work out where.

The Giddy Social Whirl

I went to see 300 last night and enjoyed it tremendously. I can see how some people might object to the film's portrayal of Xerxes as inhabiting a court essentially indistinguishable from a Prince video circa "Gett Off", but - hey - it's entertainment, read Tom Holland's 'Persian Fire' or even go back to Herodotus if you want instruction.

Massive parochial Welsh props go out to Swansea's Vincent Regan for his portrayal of Leonidas' right hand man:

We reinforced those who started with their own self-discipline but we could not give discipline to anyone who didn’t already have it. In the end Vincent Regan shed 40 pounds in eight weeks, and took his deadlift from less than bodyweight (205) to more than double-bodyweight (355). He could pull 85% of 1RM blindfolded and recite Shakespeare in the midst of the toughest training session

...... reported the guy who trained the actors. I have no idea at all of what pulling 85% of 1RM blindfolded while reciting Shakespeare is, but it does sound cool.

As for today, I've been for a run, I'm off to Dulwich to see the Canaletto in England exhibition this afternoon, thence to the Duchess Theatre for "Underneath the Lintel", before closing off the evening at Andy and Ollie's party.

Henry Morton Stanley

Sir Henry Morton Stanley, also known as Bula Matari (Breaker of Rocks) in the Congo, born John Rowlands (January 28, 1841 – May 10, 1904), was a 19th-century Welsh-born journalist and explorer famous for his exploration of Africa and his search for David Livingstone upon finding whom he famously stated, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume".

Another Welsh Born Icon as I begin to label our collection.

Obviously a man of some internal resources, his accomplishments came in spite of an inauspicious start:

He was born in Denbigh, Denbighshire, Wales. His parents were not married, his father died when he was two years old and his mother, a butcher's daughter, refused to look after him, so he was brought up in a workhouse (now HM Stanley Hospital, St Asaph) until the age of 15.

Rock The Kasbah

Things have been quiet on the "Eat your way around the world in London" front lately, but last night we checked out the Moroccan food in Clapham's Kasbah, which is conveniently situated opposite the Picturehouse.

The Profit Burglar and I shared a huge "Kasbah Combination" mixed starter of sardines, prawns, humous, aubergine dip, salad etc., then I had a lamb tagine made with prunes and grilled almonds and served with couscous, while the Burglar had the lamb brochettes.

We washed it all down with a couple of bottles of Moroccan wine, Ksat Bahai 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon. A last hurrah as I am going to give up drinking for the next month in the run up to my triathlons.

(Now that Blogger supports labels, I am going to start gathering together the details of all our restaurnat visits here. It will probably take a while to fill up as I will have to go back through the posts and apply the label. I'll probably do the same thing with the Welsh Born Icons as well.)

Bold talk for a one-eyed fat man

Budget day in the UK has rolled round again. I shall treat it with an inflexible rigour of disdain. Back in a previous life, when I was a Corporate Development Executive, I used to have to spend half the night producing an analysis of each budget's implications for the board to read over their cornflakes the next morning; an exercise I came to see as a complete waste of time.

As for Gordon Brown - our putative leader - I've considered him a boorish cad ever since he turned up for dinner at the Lord Mayor's Dinner in 1997 dressed in a lounge suit rather than the traditional full soup and fish. Not that it will go down in the annals of infamy above his pilfering the pensions of countless honest hardworking men and women, but it is and was indicative of the petulant nature that has become more and more obvious over the last decade.

Ever since I learned he was blind in one eye, I mentally subtitle his every utterance "bold talk for a one-eyed fat man" in a petulant Ned Pepper gesture of my own.

SPARTARRGH

I'm very much looking forward to 300 opening in the UK this weekend.

Iranian TV is unimpressed however by the "shallow script" (you must follow this link and watch the review) of the "production by Zionists and a group of American extremists".

As an olive branch, and a nod to the 700 Thespians who also fought and died at Thermopylae, here's an idea of what Teddington's Noel Coward might have done with the story (even though I gather he might well have been perfectly happy with the spectacle of muscular men in leather underpants exerting themselves):

---

A balmy ancient evening on a balcony in Greece. An agitated KING LEONIDAS strides centre stage followed by his beautiful, but long suffering wife QUEEN GORGO.

LEONIDAS: I'm in such a rage.

GORGO: There's no need to be nasty.

LEONIDAS: Yes there is, every need. I've never in my life felt a greater urge to be nasty.

GORGO: And you've had some urges in your time, haven't you?

LEONIDAS: If you start bickering with me, Gorgo, I swear I'll throw you over the edge.

GORGO: Try it, that's all, just try it.

LEONIDAS: Ever since the first moment I was unlucky enough to set eyes on the Persian Ambassador, my life has been insupportable.

GORGO: Oh, do shut up, there's no sense in going on like that.

LEONIDAS: Nothing's any use. There's no escape, ever.

GORGO: Don't be melodramatic.

LEONIDAS [laconically]: I can see us all strolling down in the morning for an early start.

GORGO [weakly]: Lovely, oh lovely.

LEONIDAS: Glorious!

[They both laugh helplessly.]

GORGO: Will you eat first?

LEONIDAS: Terribly important, a good breakfast.

GORGO: Where will you dine?

LEONIDAS: Hades

GORGO: Very hot, Hades.

LEONIDAS: So they say. They say it’s hot.

GORGO: Hotter than the Hot Gates?

LEONIDAS [tenderly]: Hotter than the Hot Gates, my dearest darling.

Balls to the Wall

Gordon has warned me of the perils of overtraining, so I walked - rather than ran - south along the Wandle Trail yesterday to road test my new GPS training watch.

I can blog the data above because I uploaded the it into http://www.motionbased.com/.

If you follow the links and look at the data in detail you can see that I didn't start recording data until I was past Wandle Park because the system took that long to pick up the necessary satellite connections.

You can also see that I finished my walk outside GJ's. I subsequently entered GJ's and drank too much lager watching the Everton Arsenal game and then continued with baddiwad behaviour.

Hmmmm. I think Gordon understands that my foot to the floor, balls to the wall* attitude is what makes me eat like a pig and drink like a fish as well as train every day. Yesterday, while he was encouraging me to fuel myself more sensibly he did acknowledge that my biggest problem with moderation would be boredom.

Never mind. It is better to wear out than to rust.

Public Activities Link: http://nickbrowne.motionbased.com
Public Activities Feed: http://nickbrowne.motionbased.com/rss

* Also delighted to learn that balls to the wall, rather in the manner of kicking against the pricks is not a rudery at all:

Originally a military term for pushing maximum G-Forces in a jetfighter aircraft, as in pushing the ball of a throttle as high up as it will go (virtually touching the wall of the dashboard).

"Jump" for Joy

I took the New Ninja Bomber to the Peacock Theatre for the matinee performance of Jump yesterday afternoon, because I thought we would need a laugh before a rugby game in which a win by England would condemn Wales to a whitewashed, played 5 - won 0, wooden spoon.

The show is absolutely brilliant, if you only see one Korean martial art/gymnastic/slapstick/sitcom hybrid this year make sure this is the one.

General: What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

Even better, when we got home for the rugby we found that the men in red, failing to realise that they were merely cannon fodder, were busily putting England to the sword.

I've dropped my six year old back for Mothering Sunday today, but as for yesterday:

Just a perfect day
Problems all left alone
Weekenders on our own
It's such fun

Just a perfect day
You make me forget myself
I thought I was someone else
Someone good

You're going to reap just what you sow
You're going to reap just what you sow
You're going to reap just what you sow
You're going to reap just what you sow

Every part of the Thai is blessed with venom

March 17th is celebrated as "Boxer's Day" or "National Muay Thai Day" in Thailand. Here's the story it celebrates.

My six year old has been doing Thai boxing for a little over half a year now. This obviously gives me a certain amount of reassurance in the "beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, bear't that the opposed may beware of thee" department, but I'm really starting to buy into the Blimpsh idea of it being "character building" as well. He's out in the garden skipping rope at the moment, something he'd be unlikely to do if he didn't think of it as a martial past time.

Voytek, of "good heart" fame is off in Manchester today fighting for a championship, so best of luck to him.

In Motion

My Garmin Forerunner 305 has arrived, so I can track my speed, elevation, position and heartrate as I move my training out of doors. A USB interface, bundled software, and online workout analysis suggest that too much information will be available in the run up to April 22.

Up to now I've been working out indoors, and over the last six weeks or so, as I've been building up my stamina, I've whiled away much of the time I spent exercising watching music TV on LCD screens built into treadmills and stationary bikes.

This is what I've learned from all that gazing at the idiot box: Gwen Stefani, while possessed of a billowing wheat field of golden hair and an enviably toned post-partum abdomen, has the style of a six year old let loose in a fancy dress shop and no discernible musical talent whatsoever.

Not much of a cultural return on the investment of my time, I can only hope that it has been worth while physically.

Human Growth Hormome

Has any other reader noticed the remarkable resemblance between Sylvester Stallone, 2007's superannuated Easter Island head, and Rocky Balboa, 1976's fresh faced contender? I wonder if they are, by any chance related?

Actually, learning that Sly was up before the beak in Oz accused of importing Human Growth Hormone sent me scurrying to Wikipedia. Here's the skinny:

Prolonged GH excess thickens the bones of the jaw, fingers and toes. Resulting heaviness of the jaw and increased thickness of digits is referred to as acromegaly.

Accompanying problems can include pressure on nerves (e.g., carpal tunnel syndrome), muscle weakness, insulin resistance or even a rare form of type 2 diabetes, and reduced sexual function.

A comparison of the evolution of his features with the symptoms described above furnishes pretty scary circumstancial evidence. (Hint: Muscle weakness and reduced sexual function is not a small price to pay for a stonger jawline and thicker toes.)

Jintoprin, the product in question, sounds like something out of a Chiba City black clinic a la Neuromancer

A mad world my masters.

Joey Pyle

Had they met on the streets of London in their 1960s heyday, the result would undoubtedly have been violence at its most extreme.
But yesterday a small yet distinctive group of superannuated gangsters and their henchmen put bitter old rivalries behind them and came together to mark the passing of one of their own.
They were among more than 1,000 faces who attended the funeral beneath leaden skies of 69-year-old Joey Pyle, a man who uniquely ran with both the Krays and the Richardsons.

Perhaps because 1960s gangland London has become so mythologised, it seems almost surreal to me that this postscript occurred last week practically around the corner by Morden Park.

Coverage here, here and here.

You See, Ennui

According to Scientific American, Chronically Bored People Exhibit Higher Risk-Taking Behavior. Really? You don't say.

The Ginger Geezer - no slouch at risk laden bad behaviour - knew it too. From 1967's Gorilla album:

At the local dance, whilst posing by the door
A lady begged: "would I come on the floor?"
Above the band, my voice was heard,
Quite suddenly it had occured to me:
I'm Bored!

I'm bored with everything I touch and see
I'm bored with exposes of LSD
I'm bored with Frank Sinatra's new LP
And so I roared
I'm bored.

Drinking different coloured wines or beers
(Chug-a-lug-chug-a-lug)
Just quite frankly leaves me bored to (CHOIR: *tears for souvenirs*)
And quite apart from what one hears,
I've been like this for years and years
You see? Ennui.

I'm bored with Mother Nature or her son
I'm bored with everything that should be done
And so, I just poke out my big red tongue and [raspberry]
I'm bored.

I'm tired of art!
(Drawing board)
Sex is a drag!
(In a bawdy house, I daresay.)
Awk! Australians bore me!
(You mean the a-bore-iginals, don't you?)
I'm bored to death!
(Like mortar bored)

I am bored.

This is boredom you can afford,
from Cyril Bored.

I hate each Julie Andrews film they've made,
I'm just a nasty narrow-minded jade.
Don't think that I will smile at it,
I'm not a weak-willed hypocrite,
I'll say: I'm bored!

I'm bored with with-it men in spotty ties
Who hum (hmm-hmm-hmm-hmm) tiresome tunes like Eidelweiss
I'm bored, and when I hear it in a trice,
I shout, I'm bored!

The only thing that ever interests me...
Is ME! (Me! Meee! Me! Me!...)

Reality Check

I took the photo above as I set off on the last run of the last day. It seems very far from SW19.

I got in the habit in Austria of relaxing in the sauna back at the hotel after skiing before showering, changing and hitting the town.

One afternoon I saw two beady eyes peeping at me through the window and heard a familiar voice saying, "I'm not going in there with some strange bloke".

"It's not a man," said Karen to Cath, "it's only Nick".

I can see what she was getting at, but it is not really encouraging vis a vis the potent yet effortless Bond-era Connery musk I imagine myself to be pumping out.

Fitzroy

Fitzroy:
Southwesterly veering northwesterly 4 or 5, occasionally 6. Rough or very rough, decreasing moderate for a time. Occasional rain. moderate or good.

I finished "This Thing of Darkness" on the way back from Austria.

Tragedy being " a form of drama characterized by seriousness and dignity, and involving a great person whose downfall is brought about by either a character flaw or a conflict with some higher power such as the law, the gods, fate, or society", the book is the tragedy of Robert Fitzroy.

The organisation and exposition is efficient rather than self-consciously literary, which is no bad thing given the quantity and complexity of the material presented.

The only jarring note was the genocidal General Rosas' justification of his wars of extermination. I thought when I read it that it sounded like a neocon pastiche, and in the "Author's Postscript", Thompson owns up to"having taken the liberty of drawing almost exclusively on the words of Tony Blair and the various self-justifications he produced to defend his foreign policy adventures with George Bush in the Middle East and Central Asia".

Ho ho very satirical.

Wooden Spoon

I've arrived back in the UK only to find that Italy beat Wales by twenty three points to twenty while we were in the air between Salzburg and London.

This means that in this year's Six Nations championship we have lost all four of the games we've played to date, and are staring a whitewash in the face if we don't beat England in Cardiff next Saturday.

A precipitous decline indeed from the played five, won five heroics of the season before last.

Who watches the watchmen?

I need a GPS watch, for running and cycling. Brendan brought one skiing and it is deeply great. Maximum speed so far 47mph.

More Link Blogging

http://www.kitzsteinhorn.at/en/

Link Blogging

I am staying in http://www.fischerwirt.com/

Crash

Heard this crash and saw the smoke : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6419729.stm

Hello World

.... from http://www.zellamsee.at

Backfill

Day one, and Steve has already established his HQ for the week here, an empowering forum where objectification does not exist.

Gatnick

Off to Gatwick airport this morning.

Theses guys have finally gone down, and we are selling the stuff that they stole that can't be returned on behalf of the police on www.bumblebeeauctions.co.uk.

What a tawdry crime stealing from peoples' bags is.

Zell am See

I'm off skiing first thing tomorrow morning, for the first time since a trip to New England between the conception and birth of the New Ninja Bomber. Fingers crossed I'll keep the blog ticking over, but no promises.

Zell am See in Austria - a country I haven't visited before - is the destination, and I'm travelling mob-handed with the same crew that I used to rampage regularly with all those years ago.

I've found my boots, but the rest of my gear seems to have disappeared in the last couple of years' domestic upheaval, so it looks like TK Maxx will have to take the strain lunchtime.

Jack those Jills, shake your Playtex
Rock 3 stripes not the asics
A.D.I.D.A.S
Old school cos it's the best -yes
TK Maxx cost less - yes
Jackson looks a mess bless

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant

Happy Saint David's Day. Let's do it in the Big Apple next year.

Wales Week is a festival held each year in New York around the national holiday of Wales - St David's Day (March 1). The festival is a week-long celebration of the best of Wales: the Arts; culture; food and drink; poetry and literature; business; film; and music.

Well I never! It seems agreeably prosaic:

Sox Wales’s range of cashmere and luxury socks can be bought at Daffy’s in Manhattan.

The Wrecking Horse Winner

The reviews of Daniel Radcliffe's wand in the revival of Equus are in, and - all in all - it seems that the boy done good.

Like Michael Rimmer and Captain Invincible, I caught the movie of Equus on late night TV once years ago. Unlike those overlooked gems, it is a risible self-important piece of tat and I forbid you to see it.

F'rinstance, Lord Richard of Burton (as Martin Dysart) rolleth his eyes and intoneth:

The normal is the good smile in a child's eyes. There's also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills, like a god. It is the ordinary made beautiful, it is also the average made lethal. Normal is the indispensable murderous god of health and I am his priest.

Oh dear (though it might be pretty cool to mishear it as "Norman is the indispensable murderous god of health and I am his priest").

Actually, I was first exposed to the work of Peter Shaffer at a tender age. In an episode I remember clearly but can scarcely credit, a group of us primary school children were taken to the cinema to see 'The Royal Hunt of the Sun' as a treat on a classmate's birthday.

It is certainly a far cry from the Wacky Warehouse where my six year old is going to a party after school today. I can still bring the scene where Christopher Plummer (as Atahualpa) is garrotted to my mind's eye and shudder at it again, though I must have been seven or eight at the time.

Turbans Over Memphis

I don't smoke dope
I don't drink bourbon
All I want to do
Is shake my turban.

Whatever happened to Pete Singh, the Rockin' Sikh? He sounds like an urban legend, but he was an honest to God, if larger than life, feature of my Swansea days.

Footprints and tracery via Google, here, here and here.

The Return of Captain Invincible

Congratualtions are due to to Alan Arkin for getting the nod for Best Supporting Actor from the Academy for "Little Miss Sunshine".

I haven't seen it myself, but it has dislodged a memory of "The Return of Captain Invincible", yet another movie that caught me unawares on late night TV years ago, that I've never managed to see again.

As I recall the plot Captain Invincible (Arkin) is a superhero who hits Skid Row after his contribution to World War II is twisted by the McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee who label him a "premature anti Fascist) ......

The Return of Captain Invincible [1983] (REGION 1) (NTSC) is available from Amazon, unlike Michael Rimmer, so I've added it to my wish list. Here's my new theme song:

20 Hours in LA

The Clinton-Obama brouhaha that blew up around David Geffen's fundraiser last week seems to be adding weight to my theory that watching the West Wing might make US politics a little less bewildering.

West Wing rerun day on More4, having come round again, the current controversy does seem eerily reminiscent of the 20 Hours in LA episode in series one in which a gay movie mogul tries to muscle the President by threatening to cancel a fund raising party. This seemed preposterous to me when I watched it on DVD. It's a bit less so now - not necessarily a good thing - but I wouldn't be without this extraordinary exchange from the party itself:

David Hasselhoff: I think there's a basic bedrock principle behind the First Amendment. That the government cannot prohibit the expression of an idea just because it's disagreeable. Justice William Brennan, writing for the majority--
Donna: I'm a real big fan, David, not just a Johnny-come-lately. It's not just Baywatch and Knight Rider with me.
David Hasselhoff: Well, thank you very much. My point is--
Donna: I mean, Nick Fury ... Panic at Malibu Pier ... The Cartier Affair. Pleasure Cove, for crying out loud!

Go the whole hog, Mog!

Although I'm not sure that I approve of staggering kick off times for the benefit of TV viewers, it doesn't mean that I won't take advantage of that fact that I can watch three games today as the Six Nations comes back with Scotland v Italy (kick-off 3pm) in Edinburgh, and Ireland v England (kick-off 5.30pm), leading up to France v Wales (kick-off 8pm).

I wish I could share the half of what we got up to in Edinburgh, Dublin and Paris back in the day when I used to travel to the matches following Wales in what was then the Five Nations championship, but, "what happens on tour, stays on tour" is a stern injunction.

You'll have to watch Grand Slam instead.

Raw, with laughter

Making the most of a last minute change of plans, the profit burglar and I took ourselves along to Roar with Laughter at GJ's last night.

This also gave me the chance to meet up with Simon Brunning, who I've known by blog for the last couple of years but never actually encountered in meatspace, as he is a regular attender of the comedy club.

When I emailed him to let him know I'd be there he replied by return to say that I could recognise him because he would be wearing his Sid James t-shirt.

The first guy we met in a Sid James T, looked at us as if we'd lost the plot when we asked him if he was Simon B, and then I began to wonder if I was the victim of an elaborate ruse when I saw two blokes in contrasting SJT's conversing at the bar, but I did ultimately track him down and discover him, over a beer or two, to be a gent.

As for the comedy, Frank Skinner was there again - perhaps he heard that I'd missed him last time - Wes Packer was Welsh and thus good, but as for the rest ....... if they weren't allowed to drone on and on about blow jobs I don't think they'd have fifteen minutes of material between the lot of them.

Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells.

Oh! j'ai fait mieux depuis.

Note to self:

Standing there and taking it as I'm patronised on the doorstep by an affected vulgarian (whose faux worldliness is merely a self-justifying, perhaps unconscious, rationalisation of the hard fact that her inner life seems unilluminated by any spark of intelligence, sensitivity, insight or culture) while bad for my blood pressure is still the best option.

Satisfying as it might be for me to indulge in a little repartee, it wouldn't do the third party likely to over hear it any good.

I feel a lot better for writing that.

Reunited, and it feels so good

Rock guitar icon Eddie Van Halen and his band's original lead singer, David Lee Roth, have spent the better part of 20 years bad-mouthing each over their bitter split in the mid-1980s. Yet last month, the band Van Halen posted a message on its Web site indicating that it would reunite with the flamboyant Roth this year for a 40-city tour.

...
As the concert industry revs up for the 2007 touring season, some of the greatest passion, among both fans and concert promoters, is reserved for bands that haven't been heard in live performance in years, if not decades. Comebacks or reunions have been announced by acts as disparate as Van Halen, the Police, Rage Against the Machine and a slew of smaller names. Genesis is also expected to mount a tour.

Something is definitely in the air, even the Anglicans and the Catholics are pondering getting back together.

Shrove Tuesday

A blog being the ideal place for in-jokes that perhaps only three or four people in the world can understand, I would like to announce that this year I will be mortifying the flesh by giving up gorgonzola cheese and Christmas tree lights for Lent.

Wonderful as pancake day is, I wish I'd known yesterday that the day before it is Collop Monday. I'll certainly be celebrating both next year.

Take This Sabbath Day

I managed to get back on my West Wing rerun odyssey last night after having missed two episodes due to "events dear boy, events".

It struck me when Bartlett told CJ that he went to college in Notre Dame rather than Harvard or Yale, "cause I was thinking about becoming a priest," that the show's treatment of religious inclination and affiliation as a natural, but not dramatically dominant, facet of character is an interesting illustration of cultural difference between the US and the UK.

In "Take this Sabbath Day" in the first series, for example, when the White House is agonising about commuting a death sentence, Toby Ziegler discusses it with his rabbi, and the President calls a priest. In a UK drama that sort of plot device would be a rhetorical or even didactic hint that we were dealing with weaklings or loons.

(Great Facts of Our Time: Father Cavanaugh, the priest Bartlett consults, was played by the veteran Karl Malden and the Bible he carries is the same one he used as Father Barry - the priest he portrayed in "On the Waterfront" in 1954.)

Under The Lintel

I've booked up the tickets for "Under The Lintel" inspired by my West Wing Jones to get a sight of Richard Schiff working on stage.

Pop quiz on the wandering jew: Did you know that Oscar Wilde assumed the alias Sebastian Melmoth after he got out of Reading gaol?

Fan Dance

I'va got my entry form for the Springfield Triathlon which is a forntight after the Childline Challenge now.

Anyone fancy the Fan Dance after that?

A load of Bellocs

A Belloc quote having popped into my mind when posting yesterday, I've been thinking about adding some verse - perhaps from his Cautionary Tales - to the New Ninja Bomber's out-of-school martial, fine and liberal arts syllabus. (My Dad used to read me poems from time to time in lieu of a bedtime story and they've stayed with me ever since.)

Something along the lines of this might be a good introduction to English metrical rhythms:

The Chief Defect of Henry King
Was chewing little bits of String.
At last he swallowed some which tied
Itself in ugly Knots inside.

Physicians of the Utmost Fame
Were called at once; but when they came
They answered, as they took their Fees,
"There is no Cure for this Disease.

"Henry will very soon be dead.''
His Parents stood about his Bed
Lamenting his Untimely Death,
When Henry, with his Latest Breath,

Cried, "Oh, my Friends, be warned by me,
That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, and Tea
Are all the Human Frame requires...''
With that, the Wretched Child expires.

Why no place for Belloc in the National Curriculum List of writers and poets? Here's a clue:

The world is full of double beds
And most delightful maidenheads,
Which being so, there’s no excuse
For sodomy or self-abuse.

Old School.

Hubris

I'm tired of Love;
I'm still more tired of Rhyme.
But money gives me pleasure all the time.

The very next day after announcing that there is no money in poetry, I find out that there is in fact $200 million in it.

To the rhyming dictionary!

Mending Wall

Do you know, or perhaps even shamefacedly remember, the way that adolescent boys find it difficult - in their pomp - to believe that anyone from a previous generation ever managed to pull a pint, never mind pull a girl?

I can smile at it now, but I do find that the phenomenon resonant today. Resonant with the ludicrous notion that - due to technical achievements - we live in a society that is more advanced than that of our forebears.

I don't agree. I think that we live in a peculiarly credulous, stupid and self -important age, regardless of Intel announcing an 80 core Teraflop chip.

We don't have poetry any more. There's no money in poetry - granted - but then again there was never any poetry in money.

But here are some lines from Robert Frost (1874-1963) that will repay study with more (human nature being immutable) insight into the eternal tensions that underlie the fan dance of blogs and social networks than any contemporary journalism or sociology.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer

The great Peter Cook wrote and starred - as the eponymous Michael Rimmer- in a film in 1970, that seems eerily prescient of the Blair era. I think I've only seen it once on late night TV decades ago, but I have found a precis of the plot here.

Toward the end of the film:

Once installed as leader of the country, Rimmer goes into overdrive, pulling off his greatest coup so far. ............ allowing everyone in the country the opportunity to vote in a referendum on every single issue. The genius of this ploy is revealed when the great British public, saturated with form-filling and ballot-marking, give up all interest in politics - leaving a clear path for Rimmer to announce his job upgrade to presidential status.

Has any other reader noticed the remarkable resemblance between this plot contrivance and No 10 Downing Street's e-petitions website. I wonder if they are by any chance related?

Actually, as I have been enjoying the Government's discomfort over the e-petition opposing road charging that has attracted so many signatures (the BBC put the figure at "more than a million" yesterday afternoon, but it is over one and a quarter million this morning) something that has struck me about the coverage is the lack of emphasis of the usual e-democracy, infomaniac, yada yada yada about the fact that it is an online as opposed to paper petition. The sotto voce, soft-pedalling of that angle of the story is actually an indication of a profound change.

I remember Bill Gates saying that we tend to overestimate the impact of technology in the short term, but underestimate it in the medium term. We still get Apocalyptic hoo-ha like the New York Magazine's 'Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy: The Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock and Roll', but real change reveals itself as gently yet relentlessy as the tide.

Jazz at Boaters

It isn't often, now that I've been in London so long, that I discover a new music venue, but I bowled up for Jazz at Boaters last night after Andy M told me that his brother Phil would be playing there.

The regular Sunday night session is apparently the labour of love of Simon Carter, a keyboard player and last night, he plus Phil on bass and Frank Tontoh on drums were backing Chris Stranding who is over in the UK for a short tour and was playing the Pizza Express Jazz Club last week.

What can I say? A top class gig for free this Sunday night, and another available every Sunday for the last fifteen years and for the foreseeable future.

Here is the who's who of the folk who have played there over the years.

For Your Consideration

As a rabid Christopher Guest follower - along the Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind axis - I went to see 'For Your Consideration' last night, the day after it opened.

(That it opened theatrically at all in the UK shows how much things have changed in the last decade. It took me years to track down 'Waiting for Guffman' which I'm pretty sure didn't get a UK cinema release at all, and came out in the DVD-less mid Nineties.)

'For Your Consideration' is funny and clever but more vituperative and mordant than Guest's earlier films, lacking their secret sauce of real affection for the delusional protagonists.

I saw the movie in the Clapham Picturehouse, the nearest venue that was showing it. I've never been there before and discovered that it had a bar, and that you can take drinks into the show. I will return.

When I was waiting to be served, a woman I recognised as Jenny Eclair gestured towards me and said, "I think this gentleman was here first" when the barman asked her what she wanted to drink. A couple of minutes later she turned up in the seat in front of me to watch the film and said "I'll try not to obstruct your view".

So for all that "her strong, aggressive, foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, chain-smoking persona can be too abrasive for some", she is a sweetheart in real life. That is a lot better than the alternative.

Anyway, back to Christopher Guest's genius, what is the alchemy that turns my favourite bit of 'Best in Show' to comedy gold? I have no idea myself:

I used to be able to name every nut that there was.

And it used to drive my mother crazy, because she used to say, "Harlan Pepper, if you don't stop naming nuts," and the joke was that we lived in Pine Nut, and I think that's what put it in my mind at that point.

So she would hear me in the other room, and she'd just start yelling.

I'd say, "Peanut. Hazelnut. Cashew nut. Macadamia nut." That was the one that would send her into going crazy.

She'd say, "Would you stop naming nuts!"

And Hubert used to be able to make the sound, he couldn't talk, but he'd go "rrrawr rrawr" and that sounded like Macadamia nut.

Pine nut, which is a nut, but it's also the name of a town.

Pistachio nut.

Red pistachio nut.

Natural, all natural white pistachio nut ................

Eat, Drink and Be Merry

Although according to the blog, I'm still four or five pounds heavier than I was this time last year, I'm five pounds lighter this morning than I was this time last Saturday as I've come to the end of a working week in which I tried to enhance my training by eating properly, but - truth be told - my heart's not in parsimonious dining.

I was delighted therefore to read this New Scientist review of a new book 'The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know about Food Is Wrong', by Barry Glassner.

From what I can tell from the review, the book's thesis chimes with my intuition that the best way to eat is to consume a wide variety of foods that you actually enjoy:

We have wrongly embraced what Glassner calls "the gospel of naught," the view that "the worth of a meal lies principally in what it lacks".
...........
"It appears more important to increase the number of healthy foods regularly consumed than to reduce the number of less healthy foods regularly consumed."

Right on. Justification at last of "eat your way around the world in London" on health grounds?.

I've found out this week by the way that the 805 Bar Restaurant is considered by the capital’s Nigerian community to be London’s best Nigerian restaurant, so I hope to be there this Wednesday demonstrating that "when it comes to healthy absorption of nutrients, taste matters."

Pipe Up!

More on Pipes.

Watch this space

Exactly a month after me, I see that Microsoft is to back Open ID. If only I had a clearer idea what it is.

I've also got a hunch that the new Yahoo Pipes might be important, though I'm similarly vague as to what use it might be to me.

Pipes is a hosted service that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment.

With any luck, I'll dream up something to try it out on over the weekend.

Up to my neck, or out of my depth? The jury is still out.

Comedy Central

I broke my vow of a teetotal week over a few Stellas and the England Spain match with the profit burglar at GJs after work last night.

GJ's has a comedy night called "Roar with Laughter" every other Thursday, and I was astonished to see that Frank Skinner is playing a low key gig there tonight, warming up for a national tour. I'm amazed at the acts they get. Harry Hill is headlining again later this year. The management must have great connections.

I can't get go along tonight as the New Ninja Bomber will be with me. Mind you, for a six year old, he is developing a dry and idiosyncratic sense of humour.

He has group guitar tuition school on Fridays. Last week when I asked him about his lesson he announced, "a girl in my class talks to her guitar".

"Really", I said, "does it answer back?"

"No" he replied. "I think it might be deaf".

He had his head examined

Alfred Russel Wallace (born Usk 1823) having failed to evolve into A Welsh Born Icon, I - most royally - hereby create him one.

How We Live Now

Star pupil found hanged after taking LSD

Sombre news from my alma mater. This is certainly not old school.

Help Find Jim Gray

Can you help? Follow this link.

Years ago Steve Jobs observed that a human being was one of the least efficient animals at converting energy into movement, but a man or woman on a bicycle was by far the most efficent and - to extend the analogy - a computer was a bicycle for the mind.

Maybe networks can be a bicycle for the heart.

Old School

On the day that the Six Nations kick off, here is a profile of Andy Ripley, the rugby and Superstars giant of yesteryear who is now going toe to toe with prostate cancer.

"I've had such a privileged life. I did sport when it was a window on a great world but not the only world you inhabited. They wouldn't want me to, but I feel a huge sympathy for professional sportsmen now. It seems such a narrow and narrowing life. It makes them fascists because they're special, they're continually being told they're special and mainly because they are so single-minded they have no room for compassion. They have to be like that because professional sport is about 'one-nil'. All the other stuff is just noise. You've gotta win.

"But I think, 'You're born. You die. And you've got to do all you can in between'." He has. He is. And no one can say more than that.

His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him that nature might stand up
And say to all the world “This was a man.”

thing to keep one's eye on

According to the Telegraph this morning

People who question the official history of recent conflicts in Africa and the Balkans could be jailed for up to three years for "genocide denial", under proposed EU legislation.

Unbelievable? All too believable, but good to see Deborah Lipstadt still fighting the good fight in the article. One of the great unexpected boons of my regular writing here is that she once left a comment on something I posted.

Compare and contrast the EU proposal with the undisputed fact the the Belgian UN peacekeepers stood by and did nothing during the actual Rwandan genocide. They're two sides of the same coin. What on earth have we done to deserve such prissy ball less wonders in our international institutions?

In a healthy society citizens need sufficient confidence to act as moral agents on their own responsibility not to see themselves as emasculated servants of power always having to seek permission. That is how to kill bad things before they grow. Every initiative of the establishment these days seems to attempt to destabilise that, by demanding that they grant us permission on what to think never mind what to do and, let's be clear, whom we may hate.

The ancient folk wisdon of this island race says "sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me."

What I wouldn't give for an Orwell these days:

These things really happened, that is the thing to keep one's eye on. They happened even though Lord Halifax said they happened. The raping and butchering in Chinese cities, the tortures in the cellars of the Gestapo, the elderly Jewish professors flung into cesspools, the machine-gunning of refugees along the Spanish roads — they all happened, and they did not happen any the less because the Daily Telegraph has suddenly found out about them when it is five years too late.

Not with a bang but a whimper

I think an era is ending. (In one era out the other? Ho, ho very satirical.) In the same week:

1. Microsoft has released its "five years in development", "all hail to the chief" Vista - the new wonder version of Windows - to widespread indifference.
2. I've let my company's Microsoft Certified Partner certification lapse from today because the rigmarole that you have to go through to demonstrate that your organisation is qualified for one or more of the labyrinthine, utterly impractical "areas of specialisation" that they have invented is just not worth the aggravation.

We were doing intranets on Windows NT using Edinburgh University's EMWACS software before Microsoft even had a web server. If Microsoft had had this type of half cocked specialisation system in those days we wouldn't have been able to qualify at all because we were ahead of the curve. We could qualify against one of the fantasy categories now because we have so much experience under our belts, but it is fairly telling that I can't be bothered.

It is as if Redmond has been taken over by New Labour. Include me out!