Watching a really painful X Factor, for no other reason than I'm counting down the seconds until I see Chelsea get brutalised by Wigan on MOTD.
The early rounds of X Factor were formerly joyful. The beautiful, the arrogant, the gay, the young, the old, the bitter and twisted... and that's just the judges. But it's become enveloped in its own overproduction, so there's about five backing songs that are ALWAYS played. Chasing Cars when Jade, whose dad was killed by her mum after she found him sleeping with her hairdresser's aunt's dog, staggers out with snot dribbling down her face after getting through. You raise me up - always the bit where the key changes upwards - as four immaculately coiffeured and oiled ponces with a combined age of 47 dash from the stage like a cloakroom attendant when Cheryl Cole walks in. Etc etc.
And what's with the names this year: Rozelle? Janeice? And the truly egregious TreyC. They sound like medicines more than titles. And the group "Trucolorz" should be imprisoned for crimes against the English language, and forced to spend the rest of their lives listening to Jamie Oliver reading Shakespeare, or something equally ghastly.
Why do the contestants cry after getting through the first round? It would be like blubbering after realising you've got a job interview, which would just be bloody stupid.
And why do so many of them bring a tribe of supporters with them from whatever petri dish they were lurking in before? I swear one of them had the whole population of Salford with him in that stupid white booth where they vent their poisonous spleens after the performance. In a perfect world the walls would then have started moving in on them all, condensing them into a luscious chav soup to be fed to the other morons who enter the competition.
At the moment, when the herd is being culled, the singers are ushered into four rooms, each with 25 people. The judges shuffle in through a side door and announce the decisions. Two rooms will go through, two will leave. Cue crying (on both sides) and scenes of wild abandon in one, and glum dejecture in the other.
Personally I would prefer the losers to feel more like losers. I would like them to be taken outside, into a wide alleyway. It will be raining, and dark, apart from two flashlights beaming onto them. The judges appear on a gangplank above in raincoats. The decision is announced. The judges disappear. The lights dim, and there is only the sound of broken dreams, and crying. The filming reverts to those "sped-up" sequences, usually used to show the queuing competitors entering the arena. On this occasion however it would show muggers and junkies who had been rounded up before the show encircling the husks that were once "performers", before total annihilation. While "You Raise Me Up" plays.
Anyway it's finished, so rant over. I might send this off the ITV to see what they say.
Saturday 26 September 2009
Friday 25 September 2009
Coventry deja vu
One for the old school - Note the resilient defending from the Sky Blues from an unassailable position.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLcVf_1NHpk&feature=rec-HM-r2
Feeling like absolute crap tonight. Emma has swine flu and I might be following her.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLcVf_1NHpk&feature=rec-HM-r2
Feeling like absolute crap tonight. Emma has swine flu and I might be following her.
Sunday 20 September 2009
Please leave my front garden alone
This straight talk appeared in this week's Spalding Guardian - enjoy!
THIS is a direct plea to some of the people of Spalding, some of whom can help, and some of whom are a hindrance.
On West Marsh Road there is a facility called the Household Recycling Centre. People can take rubbish of all kinds there. It’s good.
In addition you may have noticed the existence of small black receptacles strapped to lamp-posts that can accept items which once held substances such as food. These receptacles are known as dustbins. Many people even have them at home.
But my front garden, although unkempt, is NOT one of these receptacles.
I arrived back from holiday recently to find that some lowlife had deposited two cardboard pizza packages, complete with crust, in my pathway.
A can of partially-drained super strength lager embroidered the scene with extra quality, while white greasy paper of unknown origin fluttered casually from one of my bushes like some grotesque flag.
This is by no means uncommon. I often see one gentleman as I walk to work clearing detritus from his front lawn, and other notable incidents include a full takeaway meal and mayonnaise being cruelly spread across the bonnet of someone’s car.
Most of these deposits could be passed away as drunken hi-jinx or laziness, but they are still incredibly annoying, environmentally damaging, laborious for the council, and potentially dangerous to small animals.
Two or three times I’ve nearly caught the offenders in the act near my home; an emptied packet of Monster Munch fluttering in the autumn air suspended only by a chav’s claw, until that chav sees a furious little Victor Meldrew figure sat in his armchair, and moves on.
But we can’t keep an eye out all the time, so what are the options available to us?
Since CCTV is pointless, a taller fence is too expensive, and mantraps and armed guards too illegal, I am restricted to what I can do.
So I’m calling on you, the people of Spalding, to help me in my hour of need and tell me the ways you’ve come up with to stop people throwing rubbish into your garden.
You can email me with your ideas at john.baker@jpress.co.uk. We may even print some of the better or sillier ones at a later date.
And if you are one of these depositors take your waste back to your own cess pit and bury yourself in it!
Couple of other things:
*The first two stages of my five-way bet came off - Mayweather beat Marquez, and somebody called Pianeta beat Matt Skelton. It's worth about £120, so fingers crossed...
*X Factor this year is appallingly predictable.
THIS is a direct plea to some of the people of Spalding, some of whom can help, and some of whom are a hindrance.
On West Marsh Road there is a facility called the Household Recycling Centre. People can take rubbish of all kinds there. It’s good.
In addition you may have noticed the existence of small black receptacles strapped to lamp-posts that can accept items which once held substances such as food. These receptacles are known as dustbins. Many people even have them at home.
But my front garden, although unkempt, is NOT one of these receptacles.
I arrived back from holiday recently to find that some lowlife had deposited two cardboard pizza packages, complete with crust, in my pathway.
A can of partially-drained super strength lager embroidered the scene with extra quality, while white greasy paper of unknown origin fluttered casually from one of my bushes like some grotesque flag.
This is by no means uncommon. I often see one gentleman as I walk to work clearing detritus from his front lawn, and other notable incidents include a full takeaway meal and mayonnaise being cruelly spread across the bonnet of someone’s car.
Most of these deposits could be passed away as drunken hi-jinx or laziness, but they are still incredibly annoying, environmentally damaging, laborious for the council, and potentially dangerous to small animals.
Two or three times I’ve nearly caught the offenders in the act near my home; an emptied packet of Monster Munch fluttering in the autumn air suspended only by a chav’s claw, until that chav sees a furious little Victor Meldrew figure sat in his armchair, and moves on.
But we can’t keep an eye out all the time, so what are the options available to us?
Since CCTV is pointless, a taller fence is too expensive, and mantraps and armed guards too illegal, I am restricted to what I can do.
So I’m calling on you, the people of Spalding, to help me in my hour of need and tell me the ways you’ve come up with to stop people throwing rubbish into your garden.
You can email me with your ideas at john.baker@jpress.co.uk. We may even print some of the better or sillier ones at a later date.
And if you are one of these depositors take your waste back to your own cess pit and bury yourself in it!
Couple of other things:
*The first two stages of my five-way bet came off - Mayweather beat Marquez, and somebody called Pianeta beat Matt Skelton. It's worth about £120, so fingers crossed...
*X Factor this year is appallingly predictable.
Tuesday 15 September 2009
BBC scores own goal with lower league coverage ho ho ho I am funny
Has anyone seen the new football league programme that the BBC has offered? I was so looking forward to it before the season started. And I was unimpressed in my first viewing.
Let me point out that I didn't watch it live, because that would have meant staying up until 1.40am if I wanted to see the whole sorry thing. Ridiculous. Who wants to watch Accrington vs Hereford at 1.35am?
Evidently plenty of people, because the petri dish of inane texts was certainly bubbling over, as I will come to shortly.
Firstl Impressions.. seems to be in the industrial area of the Crystal Maze...dull,inane, vacuous host...Steve Claridge with awful overgrown thatch of hair...token BBC "we know we need women because Sky Sports have them but ours are never as good looking" piece of skirt...who is being framed through a doorway for no apparent reason as characterless androids siphon results in the background...not good.
Steve Claridge was a good player, but is a truly awful pundit. His voice fluctuates like that punk guy in the Police Academy films, and he refused to comment in typically banal fashion when skirt asked him if he would consider taking on a job at one of the clubs. What would have been the harm in saying "It's something I would consider", which is clearly what he was thinking?
Then there's the jokes. As we sweep around the various games we discover that there's one - possibly Bury - where there was no program. And hence we are bombarded with lines about how the manager's programme notes couldn't be heeded because the players never saw them because they were never printed. How my sides split.
The BBC's online coverage is very good, but they really are trying too hard, especially with the doorway bit. A few suggestions:
1)Put it on earlier - before MOTD would be great, if for no other reason than to piss off all the bandwagoners.
2)Get rid of token skirt - unless she looks like Laura Esposito, or knows football like Helen Chamberlain, or looks like and knows football like Rebecca Lowe, don't bother.
3)Get in fanzine writers
4)Get in someone who really cares - more Mark Clemmit, preferably as host.
On the first night at one point highlights of Torquay vs Chesterfield were rudely interrupted by a film of a woman going to the toilet. I won't make the obvious comment about where you could put the programme...
Let me point out that I didn't watch it live, because that would have meant staying up until 1.40am if I wanted to see the whole sorry thing. Ridiculous. Who wants to watch Accrington vs Hereford at 1.35am?
Evidently plenty of people, because the petri dish of inane texts was certainly bubbling over, as I will come to shortly.
Firstl Impressions.. seems to be in the industrial area of the Crystal Maze...dull,inane, vacuous host...Steve Claridge with awful overgrown thatch of hair...token BBC "we know we need women because Sky Sports have them but ours are never as good looking" piece of skirt...who is being framed through a doorway for no apparent reason as characterless androids siphon results in the background...not good.
Steve Claridge was a good player, but is a truly awful pundit. His voice fluctuates like that punk guy in the Police Academy films, and he refused to comment in typically banal fashion when skirt asked him if he would consider taking on a job at one of the clubs. What would have been the harm in saying "It's something I would consider", which is clearly what he was thinking?
Then there's the jokes. As we sweep around the various games we discover that there's one - possibly Bury - where there was no program. And hence we are bombarded with lines about how the manager's programme notes couldn't be heeded because the players never saw them because they were never printed. How my sides split.
The BBC's online coverage is very good, but they really are trying too hard, especially with the doorway bit. A few suggestions:
1)Put it on earlier - before MOTD would be great, if for no other reason than to piss off all the bandwagoners.
2)Get rid of token skirt - unless she looks like Laura Esposito, or knows football like Helen Chamberlain, or looks like and knows football like Rebecca Lowe, don't bother.
3)Get in fanzine writers
4)Get in someone who really cares - more Mark Clemmit, preferably as host.
On the first night at one point highlights of Torquay vs Chesterfield were rudely interrupted by a film of a woman going to the toilet. I won't make the obvious comment about where you could put the programme...
Sunday 13 September 2009
Straight talks
TO bring back my blog - which I will be updating much more regularly now after a two month hiatus - I've decided to put up three of the "Straight talks" which we are now encouraged to write. Two (moderately) humorous, one more serious...
I’LL tell you exactly what I’m doing at the moment you read this.
I’m on a £6 a night campsite in the Cotswolds, wrestling to insert a plastic pipe into a fabric hole that defies geometry, while cows chew nearby with that languid look on their faces which suggests they really aren’t impressed.
And I’m enjoying it. You would think that growing up on a campsite near Holbeach St Johns would imbue a love of tents, but it took me until my mid -20s to appreciate them. Before then I couldn’t understand why people would come all the way from Sheffield, or Lanarkshire, or even Croatia once, to stay on a little scratty patch of grass, and share their ablutions with overweight fisherman in a communal washroom before returning to the flap of canvas that they pretended was a home, as it waved wildy from a gale blowing across the Holland Drain.
The answer, of course, is obvious. Camping is fun. Turning up in a field in nowheresville is remarkably liberating and sudden energy reserves you didn’t realise existed are tapped.
You are physically putting up your barrier against the elements, but at the same time you’re becoming a part of it, constructing your own little den in the earth while the stars and beasts watch.
And tea tastes better brewed in an aluminium kettle with dried milk in a cracked cup. There’s no real scientific evidence for it, it’s just a proven fact.
Last year I walked part of Hadrian’s Wall, and on the first night I stayed in my single tent while Northumberland’s rain did its best to destroy me.
The next morning I went to the owner’s farmhouse to be greeted by a warm friendly face with a warm friendly bacon roll. Campsite 1, rain 0.
I suggest everyone has a go at putting up a tent once in their life. You don’t need to travel far. I’m not naming names but I can think of several campsites around Spalding where you could enjoy a weekend.
Maybe you could practise in your garden - you might just love it. That’s why I’m stood in this field, probably without vital tools such as a mallet, pegs or cooler box - but having a lot of fun.
THE plans for the Red Lion Street Project in Spalding, soon to be examined by South Holland District Council’s planning committee, look absolutely amazing.
But hidden among the promise of jobs, food experiences and business opportunities lurks a piece of news which filled me with even more joy than a juicy pork pie.
It’s a small but very important piece of news for anyone with a profound disability: The site will have the town’s first Changing Places toilet.
The Changing Places campaign aims to install public toilets across the country with equipment including height-adjustable changing benches, a tracking hoist system, and adequate space for the disabled person and up to two carers.
Around 40,000 people with profound and multiple disabilities, and their families and carers, need Changing Places toilets nationwide as they cannot use existing “normal” facilities.
There are also thousands more who may have suffered strokes, acquired head injuries, or are simply old and frail.
Without these facilities even simple trips out to the shops become potentially embarrassing or impossible for them but the campaign is gaining ground, with the 100th UK Changing Places facility recently opening in Sheffield.
Spalding is currently bereft of these facilities but their inclusion was obviously something Red Lion Street chiefs were proud of when they unveiled the plans at a public consultation meeting. Boston College marketing manager Mark Emmerson brought it up early in our conversation, and he was delighted that local campaigners’ concerns had been addressed.
My brother Christopher, who had Downs Syndrome, died shortly before his third birthday.
Had he lived he would have suffered greatly on outdoor excursions from a lack of facilities, as the signs were already clear that his mobility would have been severely comprimised.
Because of Christopher’s condition my late father and I moved into the caring profession and met hundreds more people who simply could not be taken out for any great length of time because of the lack of facilities.
So I am particularly happy at the news. We cannot expect these toilets at every town and village up and down the country - but Spalding is doing its
bit. For more information on the campaign go to www.changing-places.org.
WHEN I first heard about the idea to turn the much-missed Spalding Woolworths premises into a 90p store I had mixed feelings until I realised:
1)There are too many empty buildings in Spalding, and having something is better than nothing. 2)It could be worse: Primark is rumored to be moving into the Woolies building in Peterborough. Yes, that's PRIMARK. For those of you who missed it the king of chic, cut-price clothing may be lurching its way into Poshland.
I'm not against it in principle, as Primark has an incredible ability to make even the worst looking flotsam and jetsam of society look vaguely attractive.
Indeed, I retain a dainty pair of electric blue and slate grey shorts from a former beach holiday which still look the biz.
But what worries me is that while a £4.99 t-shirt for my girlfriend is £4.99, five t-shirts at that price are knocking on the door of £25.
Knocking very loudly and with threats not to do the house work if I don't buy them, in my experience.
And we all know that anything on offer, even objects that don't really fit properly or look any good, have to be purchased because, well, THEY'RE ON OFFER.
There must surely be a psychological term for the condition that makes seemingly rational creatures walk into a clothes shop to buy a hairbrush and come out with three new tops, four pairs of shoes, a hat, two handbags and a pair of leggings that Jessica Alba was seen throwing in a skip in Heat last week.
Boughtism maybe. Or buy-polar(neck) disorder.
I can still sit in a darkened room and relive my first journey into a Primark in Coventry.
It was a terrible netherworld where vampish assistants looked at me and bored into my brain, wallet and springy cylindrical basket with their greedy eyes.
They looked at me, and my partner, and me again, and relished my pain – the same pain I saw etched across other poor souls being dragged through the store.
So to recap the 90p shop is fine by me, because:
a) It's another business (that looks quite nice inside, by the way) and fills up an ugly gap at the end of town.
b) It isn't Primark, or a clothes shop of any kind, and that means I will not slide into financial oblivion, no matter what my girlfriend spends.
Of course if a gadget shop had moved in you could have ignored everything above...
I’LL tell you exactly what I’m doing at the moment you read this.
I’m on a £6 a night campsite in the Cotswolds, wrestling to insert a plastic pipe into a fabric hole that defies geometry, while cows chew nearby with that languid look on their faces which suggests they really aren’t impressed.
And I’m enjoying it. You would think that growing up on a campsite near Holbeach St Johns would imbue a love of tents, but it took me until my mid -20s to appreciate them. Before then I couldn’t understand why people would come all the way from Sheffield, or Lanarkshire, or even Croatia once, to stay on a little scratty patch of grass, and share their ablutions with overweight fisherman in a communal washroom before returning to the flap of canvas that they pretended was a home, as it waved wildy from a gale blowing across the Holland Drain.
The answer, of course, is obvious. Camping is fun. Turning up in a field in nowheresville is remarkably liberating and sudden energy reserves you didn’t realise existed are tapped.
You are physically putting up your barrier against the elements, but at the same time you’re becoming a part of it, constructing your own little den in the earth while the stars and beasts watch.
And tea tastes better brewed in an aluminium kettle with dried milk in a cracked cup. There’s no real scientific evidence for it, it’s just a proven fact.
Last year I walked part of Hadrian’s Wall, and on the first night I stayed in my single tent while Northumberland’s rain did its best to destroy me.
The next morning I went to the owner’s farmhouse to be greeted by a warm friendly face with a warm friendly bacon roll. Campsite 1, rain 0.
I suggest everyone has a go at putting up a tent once in their life. You don’t need to travel far. I’m not naming names but I can think of several campsites around Spalding where you could enjoy a weekend.
Maybe you could practise in your garden - you might just love it. That’s why I’m stood in this field, probably without vital tools such as a mallet, pegs or cooler box - but having a lot of fun.
THE plans for the Red Lion Street Project in Spalding, soon to be examined by South Holland District Council’s planning committee, look absolutely amazing.
But hidden among the promise of jobs, food experiences and business opportunities lurks a piece of news which filled me with even more joy than a juicy pork pie.
It’s a small but very important piece of news for anyone with a profound disability: The site will have the town’s first Changing Places toilet.
The Changing Places campaign aims to install public toilets across the country with equipment including height-adjustable changing benches, a tracking hoist system, and adequate space for the disabled person and up to two carers.
Around 40,000 people with profound and multiple disabilities, and their families and carers, need Changing Places toilets nationwide as they cannot use existing “normal” facilities.
There are also thousands more who may have suffered strokes, acquired head injuries, or are simply old and frail.
Without these facilities even simple trips out to the shops become potentially embarrassing or impossible for them but the campaign is gaining ground, with the 100th UK Changing Places facility recently opening in Sheffield.
Spalding is currently bereft of these facilities but their inclusion was obviously something Red Lion Street chiefs were proud of when they unveiled the plans at a public consultation meeting. Boston College marketing manager Mark Emmerson brought it up early in our conversation, and he was delighted that local campaigners’ concerns had been addressed.
My brother Christopher, who had Downs Syndrome, died shortly before his third birthday.
Had he lived he would have suffered greatly on outdoor excursions from a lack of facilities, as the signs were already clear that his mobility would have been severely comprimised.
Because of Christopher’s condition my late father and I moved into the caring profession and met hundreds more people who simply could not be taken out for any great length of time because of the lack of facilities.
So I am particularly happy at the news. We cannot expect these toilets at every town and village up and down the country - but Spalding is doing its
bit. For more information on the campaign go to www.changing-places.org.
WHEN I first heard about the idea to turn the much-missed Spalding Woolworths premises into a 90p store I had mixed feelings until I realised:
1)There are too many empty buildings in Spalding, and having something is better than nothing. 2)It could be worse: Primark is rumored to be moving into the Woolies building in Peterborough. Yes, that's PRIMARK. For those of you who missed it the king of chic, cut-price clothing may be lurching its way into Poshland.
I'm not against it in principle, as Primark has an incredible ability to make even the worst looking flotsam and jetsam of society look vaguely attractive.
Indeed, I retain a dainty pair of electric blue and slate grey shorts from a former beach holiday which still look the biz.
But what worries me is that while a £4.99 t-shirt for my girlfriend is £4.99, five t-shirts at that price are knocking on the door of £25.
Knocking very loudly and with threats not to do the house work if I don't buy them, in my experience.
And we all know that anything on offer, even objects that don't really fit properly or look any good, have to be purchased because, well, THEY'RE ON OFFER.
There must surely be a psychological term for the condition that makes seemingly rational creatures walk into a clothes shop to buy a hairbrush and come out with three new tops, four pairs of shoes, a hat, two handbags and a pair of leggings that Jessica Alba was seen throwing in a skip in Heat last week.
Boughtism maybe. Or buy-polar(neck) disorder.
I can still sit in a darkened room and relive my first journey into a Primark in Coventry.
It was a terrible netherworld where vampish assistants looked at me and bored into my brain, wallet and springy cylindrical basket with their greedy eyes.
They looked at me, and my partner, and me again, and relished my pain – the same pain I saw etched across other poor souls being dragged through the store.
So to recap the 90p shop is fine by me, because:
a) It's another business (that looks quite nice inside, by the way) and fills up an ugly gap at the end of town.
b) It isn't Primark, or a clothes shop of any kind, and that means I will not slide into financial oblivion, no matter what my girlfriend spends.
Of course if a gadget shop had moved in you could have ignored everything above...
Thursday 16 July 2009
Two brief nibs
We completed our challenge - take a look at the Spalding Guardian website to find out more.
Enjoying doing stuff on Tulip Radio, and you can hear me every night on 107.5 fm. Still learning the ropes a little bit on Myriad, but it sounds pretty good hopefully!
Enjoying doing stuff on Tulip Radio, and you can hear me every night on 107.5 fm. Still learning the ropes a little bit on Myriad, but it sounds pretty good hopefully!
Monday 29 June 2009
Tennislav
How weird is Wimbledon at 10.30pm? The Murray-Wawrinka (?who?) game seems to be a bit of a beast - I went out and strimmed the garden and came back and it still hadn't finished when I came in. Tennis under floodlights is really odd and unusual, like indoor football. You can tell it's getting late because the men are grunting now. With the women it takes about two games before they start wailing like demented walruses, each thwack of nylon on ball accompanied by an orgasmic yelp of pure energy. I watched one the other day where one tiny little creature had a high pitched scream and the other lumbering brute's voice was quite deep, so as the rallies progressed it sounded like sawing wood using one of those old double-handed blades.
As a matter of fact I've noticed I'm there (Ian Hislop) tonight as well, strangely enough. And what is it with all the (B) Eastern European players who are dominating tennis now? The quarter finals are spread between Serbia and Bulgaria and Poland and others, and it presumably won't be long before Kazakhstan, Kyrgszstan, Tadjikstan and my favourite Chinese Turkestan dominate the rankings, with rackets hidden in bison pouches and tops sewn from the intestines of mongol hordes. Hawkeye would literally be a hawkeye, torn from the face of Transyvanian bird as it tended to its young in a lofty perch. And the umpire would be an old-school communist dictator who can instantly send anyone who double faults to instant extermination in a SW19 salt mine, sipping Pimms mixed with cyanide tablets.
The same is happening in heavyweight boxing and football - how long before other sports like golf and cricket are the same. Interesting.
Murray just won, but while Borislav, Igor and Karel remain his challenge will be a tough one to complete. Oh, and there's a bloke called Roger as well.
As a matter of fact I've noticed I'm there (Ian Hislop) tonight as well, strangely enough. And what is it with all the (B) Eastern European players who are dominating tennis now? The quarter finals are spread between Serbia and Bulgaria and Poland and others, and it presumably won't be long before Kazakhstan, Kyrgszstan, Tadjikstan and my favourite Chinese Turkestan dominate the rankings, with rackets hidden in bison pouches and tops sewn from the intestines of mongol hordes. Hawkeye would literally be a hawkeye, torn from the face of Transyvanian bird as it tended to its young in a lofty perch. And the umpire would be an old-school communist dictator who can instantly send anyone who double faults to instant extermination in a SW19 salt mine, sipping Pimms mixed with cyanide tablets.
The same is happening in heavyweight boxing and football - how long before other sports like golf and cricket are the same. Interesting.
Murray just won, but while Borislav, Igor and Karel remain his challenge will be a tough one to complete. Oh, and there's a bloke called Roger as well.
Wednesday 17 June 2009
Censor this
Another day, another MP get nailed for expenses. There was a brief lull in sackings/resignations/news about claims for £8,000 televisions and duck ponds, but now the erotically named Kitty Ussher has bitten the bullet. Another case of home-flipping. I thought that these half-wit MPs had all been exposed by now, but it appears not. Although I think it has blown over to some extent, especially as new swine flu cases, fighting in Iran and North Korea qualifying for the World Cup is much more interesting.
Speaking of which, there's a fascinating blog on the Beeb website detailing how the football fixtures are computed. I knew that Everton and Liverpool could not play on the same day at home, but what I didn't know is that Dagenham's game can affect Norwich, through a chain of computations involving shared stewards and traffic congestion through Esses, Suffolk and London. Just bizarre that the home designation can affect another game 108 miles away.
Did you know Bobby Moore's middle name was Chelsea? Honestly.
Bad news in terms of media law today - the Times has convinced a High Court judge that a blogger has no right to anonymity, meaing that popular police blogger "nightjack" has been exposed and reprimanded by his unit.
Why the times did this I don't know. There are a lot of stuffy journalists who hate the blogging culture because it means jobs are being taken away. Also of course in the Times' case the Eton/Oxbridge educated posh twats frown upon anyone who doesn't reference Greek philosophers, 18th century history or other up-their-own-arse crap in their stories.
Of course my blog is a bit of fun. I can sit in my boxer shorts with pot noodle down my front, writing my nonsense about football, porn and anything.
But for some people it's a moral crusade, a genuinely insightful way of imparting information to people who would never see it. They can engage other anonymous sources to work together and critically comment on aspects of life that the Times would never trifle with. One day I might have to reveal a source against my will - I don't know how I will feel...
There are so many blogs around that I'm not going to recommend any. Easy to find good ones.
Speaking of which, there's a fascinating blog on the Beeb website detailing how the football fixtures are computed. I knew that Everton and Liverpool could not play on the same day at home, but what I didn't know is that Dagenham's game can affect Norwich, through a chain of computations involving shared stewards and traffic congestion through Esses, Suffolk and London. Just bizarre that the home designation can affect another game 108 miles away.
Did you know Bobby Moore's middle name was Chelsea? Honestly.
Bad news in terms of media law today - the Times has convinced a High Court judge that a blogger has no right to anonymity, meaing that popular police blogger "nightjack" has been exposed and reprimanded by his unit.
Why the times did this I don't know. There are a lot of stuffy journalists who hate the blogging culture because it means jobs are being taken away. Also of course in the Times' case the Eton/Oxbridge educated posh twats frown upon anyone who doesn't reference Greek philosophers, 18th century history or other up-their-own-arse crap in their stories.
Of course my blog is a bit of fun. I can sit in my boxer shorts with pot noodle down my front, writing my nonsense about football, porn and anything.
But for some people it's a moral crusade, a genuinely insightful way of imparting information to people who would never see it. They can engage other anonymous sources to work together and critically comment on aspects of life that the Times would never trifle with. One day I might have to reveal a source against my will - I don't know how I will feel...
There are so many blogs around that I'm not going to recommend any. Easy to find good ones.
Tuesday 16 June 2009
Nibs
Just seen that Miguel Cotto and Manny Pacquaio have signed to fight each other - wow! Tough to pick a winner on this. Very tough. So tough I'm not going to yet...I'm half way through a multi-bet that's worth £120, but it looks like I'm going to have to wait a bit longer for results as the other fighters are Mayweather and Amir Khan, both of whom have had their fights postponed.
Had a good few weeks. Several front pages, including a planning one which encouraged a lot of response from readers, a D-Day one which everyone seemed to enjoy, and also a really good piece about a girl who was abused for several years by her stepfather. Very rare that you get the oportunity to do this.
Fans in a van progresses - would like some more money but I have a feeling it's all going to flood in late. It had better do. I'm not driving a van to Scunthorpe and Plymouth and all these other backwater hell-holes for nothing.
Had a good few weeks. Several front pages, including a planning one which encouraged a lot of response from readers, a D-Day one which everyone seemed to enjoy, and also a really good piece about a girl who was abused for several years by her stepfather. Very rare that you get the oportunity to do this.
Fans in a van progresses - would like some more money but I have a feeling it's all going to flood in late. It had better do. I'm not driving a van to Scunthorpe and Plymouth and all these other backwater hell-holes for nothing.
Monday 25 May 2009
Fan van update
A quick update again on Fans in a Van - looks like we have the van sorted out via our fab new editor Jon. Also plenty of responses from various football clubs, but not many good ones I have to say - I will name and shame them all at some point.
One I have to point out in particular. I sent the same email out to 40 or so clubs to ask for memorabilia which will be auctioned to raise money for the four charities. A few have said no promptly, which I appreciate. At least I know where I stand.
But West Brom wanted my address (postal) to respond. Ok I thought, that means they must be sending something. So I gave them my address (which was on the original email, by the way). And they sent me a letter. Saying that they wouldn't give me anything.
What a complete waste of time and paper, when they could have just emailed me that several days before like the other non-participants did.
If I was feeling pseudo-analytical, I would compare their lack of crisp decisiveness and blathering, and their eventual lack of endeavour, with the team's defence. Maybe a vague, ambivalent nature runs through the Hawthorns from back room to back four. In any event, it's all a bit silly.
*Nothing to say about Newcastle - see my blog posting from last year on this.
One I have to point out in particular. I sent the same email out to 40 or so clubs to ask for memorabilia which will be auctioned to raise money for the four charities. A few have said no promptly, which I appreciate. At least I know where I stand.
But West Brom wanted my address (postal) to respond. Ok I thought, that means they must be sending something. So I gave them my address (which was on the original email, by the way). And they sent me a letter. Saying that they wouldn't give me anything.
What a complete waste of time and paper, when they could have just emailed me that several days before like the other non-participants did.
If I was feeling pseudo-analytical, I would compare their lack of crisp decisiveness and blathering, and their eventual lack of endeavour, with the team's defence. Maybe a vague, ambivalent nature runs through the Hawthorns from back room to back four. In any event, it's all a bit silly.
*Nothing to say about Newcastle - see my blog posting from last year on this.
Sunday 17 May 2009
Every time you read this I'm claiming expenses.
Still haven't got a van (see previous post) but got a month to go. Up to £35 so far, but haven't really started collecting yet. Good to see Milton Keynes Dons and Leeds crash out - nothing against them, and personally the thought of Millwall living in our division is as encouraging as rectal surgery followed by a dodgy korma - but the Dons' stadium would have been a rather large fly in the ointment, possibly one who's just enjoyed a meal of cowpats and rotten poo.
I don't think there's been a week like it for politics. Just as worrying as what was claimed is the fact that for a lot of these leeches it was perfectly legal.
My favourite was moat man Douglas Hogg, claiming £2,000 to have his moat dredged at his 13th century estate in Sleaford, about 40 miles away. Hilarious, especially the interview where he was pursued by rabid reporters. An old Eton toff caught with his snout in the trough.
I looks as if the speaker of the house is going as well. The speaker should be a representative of the MPS and nominally is the most important person in the house after GB. But Michael Martin has been berating those who want the transgressors punished, and what's more, appeared to have done his best to stop the expenses ever getting out.
What happened to the noble art of representing a constituency? It should be something anyone can aspire to, and yet it just seems to be a way now of making a quick buck and getting your Double Decker paid for. I don't begrudge them second homes - it's a logical step - but I do begrudge them £8,000 plasma screen TVs (for that amount I'd expect a TV that can watch programmes from 2013 and create pop up porn stars in my bedroom), hanging baskets and trouser presses that I'm paying for.
So what moves will be taken. Maybe we should be able to declare votes of no confidence in our MPs, but I'm not sure enough people care one way or the other. Maybe the independent expenses group will clear it all up, but these people will be regarded as corrupt no matter what now.
I do think the career politician is coming to an end.
Experts should be running our country. In a simplified form, scientists would advise on scientific matters, and lawyers would advise on legal matters, and doctors, architects, environmentalists, economists etc etc etc. When MPs have to vote on a contentious issue - MMR, adoption, abortion - they read papers from experts, that have been compiled on research, and informed knowledge. So why not cut out the political fat-cats and go for the experts? If we voted in 100 for each sector we'd have a fantastic bank of skill, knowledge and opinion shaping our country, presumably from a wide variety of backgrounds, ages and races. Sure, they would still get expenses - but we would get value for our money rather than old Oxbridge buffoons.
Let me know what you think.
I don't think there's been a week like it for politics. Just as worrying as what was claimed is the fact that for a lot of these leeches it was perfectly legal.
My favourite was moat man Douglas Hogg, claiming £2,000 to have his moat dredged at his 13th century estate in Sleaford, about 40 miles away. Hilarious, especially the interview where he was pursued by rabid reporters. An old Eton toff caught with his snout in the trough.
I looks as if the speaker of the house is going as well. The speaker should be a representative of the MPS and nominally is the most important person in the house after GB. But Michael Martin has been berating those who want the transgressors punished, and what's more, appeared to have done his best to stop the expenses ever getting out.
What happened to the noble art of representing a constituency? It should be something anyone can aspire to, and yet it just seems to be a way now of making a quick buck and getting your Double Decker paid for. I don't begrudge them second homes - it's a logical step - but I do begrudge them £8,000 plasma screen TVs (for that amount I'd expect a TV that can watch programmes from 2013 and create pop up porn stars in my bedroom), hanging baskets and trouser presses that I'm paying for.
So what moves will be taken. Maybe we should be able to declare votes of no confidence in our MPs, but I'm not sure enough people care one way or the other. Maybe the independent expenses group will clear it all up, but these people will be regarded as corrupt no matter what now.
I do think the career politician is coming to an end.
Experts should be running our country. In a simplified form, scientists would advise on scientific matters, and lawyers would advise on legal matters, and doctors, architects, environmentalists, economists etc etc etc. When MPs have to vote on a contentious issue - MMR, adoption, abortion - they read papers from experts, that have been compiled on research, and informed knowledge. So why not cut out the political fat-cats and go for the experts? If we voted in 100 for each sector we'd have a fantastic bank of skill, knowledge and opinion shaping our country, presumably from a wide variety of backgrounds, ages and races. Sure, they would still get expenses - but we would get value for our money rather than old Oxbridge buffoons.
Let me know what you think.
Wednesday 6 May 2009
A road trip and Ricky
Well here it is - a letter I have just popped off to the Coventry City press office.
Dear Sir/ Madam,My name is John Baker and I am a reporter for the Lincolnshire Free Press/ Spalding Guardian. I am planning a charity trek in the summer (July 10) with two colleagues from the newspaper, Adam Uren and Andrew Brookes, and would like your help.
We are aiming to visit all 44 club grounds from teams in the top two divisions in England, within 48 hours. This journey of around 1,600 miles will be done in a small van with a mattress in the back for four charities- Liverpool's official charity (Adam's team), Nott'm Forest's official charity (Andrew's), a local charity as yet undecided, and NSPCC, the official charity of my team - Coventry. (as a bit of background, I was born in Coventry, all my relatives are from the city and I went to University at Warwick)The reason we have chosen July 10 is that it is not during the season and is not a weekend when any of us will be working.
We will be asking all 44 clubs for any donations they might choose to make, and also a piece of merchandise of their choice - be it a badge, pennant, shirt, poster etc. The merchandise will be put together into a giant pot at the end and orphaned off, with proceeds going to the charities.
This is the first time any of us have ever done anything like this and will need a lot of planning and support from people and organisations. We aim to go to radio and TV stations, Hold the front page, and other media outlets.
End of email. We will be putting more on here as and when.
A few words on Hatton now the dust has settled.
No-one expected such an easy night. As you will know if you read my last blog I fancied Pacquiao, but did at least expect a few rounds or points. What I didn't know was the Hatton would steam in in such a naive and foolish manner. The way to beat Pacman was to utilise head movement, push him against the ropes and use body shots, tire him, wait until the handspeed dropped, and take him out late.
Instead Hatton tried to engage him in a wild shootout. Arguably the biggest pound-for-pound puncher in the world, and the Hitman engages him in a ballsy brawl. It was doomed to fail. What was more worrying was that he couldn't change it, even when he endured the worst first round of his career. He sat on his stool and just said "fucking hell". Quite.
Quite clearly Mayweather was of limited value. We forget that during the Malignaggi fight Ricky was caught quite a few times - it's just that Malignaggi only has five knockouts to his name. This time there was no room for complacency. I expect the truth of whatever happened in the gym will be revealed in the next few weeks, and there will be nothing but contempt for Floyd snr. Was the fact that his son is returning to the ring on his mind...?
My gut feeling is that Hatton won't retire yet. He's only 30, he could still beat virtually every other junior welter in the world, a fight with Amir Khan or Oscar De La Hoya would be a massive Wembley sellout, and most of all, he doesn't want everyone to remember him lying in the middle of the canvas with his eyes spinning wildly while his family wept at ringside.
Dear Sir/ Madam,My name is John Baker and I am a reporter for the Lincolnshire Free Press/ Spalding Guardian. I am planning a charity trek in the summer (July 10) with two colleagues from the newspaper, Adam Uren and Andrew Brookes, and would like your help.
We are aiming to visit all 44 club grounds from teams in the top two divisions in England, within 48 hours. This journey of around 1,600 miles will be done in a small van with a mattress in the back for four charities- Liverpool's official charity (Adam's team), Nott'm Forest's official charity (Andrew's), a local charity as yet undecided, and NSPCC, the official charity of my team - Coventry. (as a bit of background, I was born in Coventry, all my relatives are from the city and I went to University at Warwick)The reason we have chosen July 10 is that it is not during the season and is not a weekend when any of us will be working.
We will be asking all 44 clubs for any donations they might choose to make, and also a piece of merchandise of their choice - be it a badge, pennant, shirt, poster etc. The merchandise will be put together into a giant pot at the end and orphaned off, with proceeds going to the charities.
This is the first time any of us have ever done anything like this and will need a lot of planning and support from people and organisations. We aim to go to radio and TV stations, Hold the front page, and other media outlets.
End of email. We will be putting more on here as and when.
A few words on Hatton now the dust has settled.
No-one expected such an easy night. As you will know if you read my last blog I fancied Pacquiao, but did at least expect a few rounds or points. What I didn't know was the Hatton would steam in in such a naive and foolish manner. The way to beat Pacman was to utilise head movement, push him against the ropes and use body shots, tire him, wait until the handspeed dropped, and take him out late.
Instead Hatton tried to engage him in a wild shootout. Arguably the biggest pound-for-pound puncher in the world, and the Hitman engages him in a ballsy brawl. It was doomed to fail. What was more worrying was that he couldn't change it, even when he endured the worst first round of his career. He sat on his stool and just said "fucking hell". Quite.
Quite clearly Mayweather was of limited value. We forget that during the Malignaggi fight Ricky was caught quite a few times - it's just that Malignaggi only has five knockouts to his name. This time there was no room for complacency. I expect the truth of whatever happened in the gym will be revealed in the next few weeks, and there will be nothing but contempt for Floyd snr. Was the fact that his son is returning to the ring on his mind...?
My gut feeling is that Hatton won't retire yet. He's only 30, he could still beat virtually every other junior welter in the world, a fight with Amir Khan or Oscar De La Hoya would be a massive Wembley sellout, and most of all, he doesn't want everyone to remember him lying in the middle of the canvas with his eyes spinning wildly while his family wept at ringside.
Saturday 2 May 2009
Pacman and Parades
If you still want to find justification for refusing to choose Hatton or Pacquaio, go to www.eastsideboxing.com - different pieces by different writers with no clear consensus. Speed and power on Pacman's side, natural strength and size for the hitman. I tentatively lean towards Pacman, and it's one of those fights where I don't want either to lose.
On a completely different note, I took part in our flower parade today. Drove round Callum and Rebeca, our prince and princess. Long-time observers of this blog will know that I thought the parade had come to the end of its natural life when it was first announced that it would be scrapped. But today (admittedly driving the most luxurious car I've ever been in), seeing how happy it made people, seeing where people had come from to see it (my colleague Andrew found people from Leeds, Swindon, Brighton, Guatemala, Java, Mozambique and Sutterton) and enjoying the sunburnt journey around Spalding, I'm prepared to eat my words.
I know I promised the football item this time, but you're going to have to wait...until Ipswich have demolished us tomorrow x
On a completely different note, I took part in our flower parade today. Drove round Callum and Rebeca, our prince and princess. Long-time observers of this blog will know that I thought the parade had come to the end of its natural life when it was first announced that it would be scrapped. But today (admittedly driving the most luxurious car I've ever been in), seeing how happy it made people, seeing where people had come from to see it (my colleague Andrew found people from Leeds, Swindon, Brighton, Guatemala, Java, Mozambique and Sutterton) and enjoying the sunburnt journey around Spalding, I'm prepared to eat my words.
I know I promised the football item this time, but you're going to have to wait...until Ipswich have demolished us tomorrow x
Tuesday 28 April 2009
Bits
Well, I'm back.
*Been to Borneo for 12 days, which was amazing. Five different places that we stayed in were fantastic. We got nicely sunburned, released four turtles into the sea, saw the orangutans, bartered with street traders in Kuala Lumpur, chowed down with Iban tribesmen, and ate the equivalent of a Chinese takeaway every day. Fabulous.
If you wish to see photos of it go to my facebook page, find Emma Smith, and take a look at her photo albums. There's one of me with cancer-invoking red skin, which you might laugh at.
*Prediction for this weekend: Pacquiao on points.
*Annoyance for last weekend: I'm just watching Chelsea-Barca and have been told that the unbelievable fight between Carl Froch and Jermain Taylor will be shown this weekend. Again. The third time ITV have shown it. This is called shutting the stable door after the horse has been knocked out with 14 seconds to go.
This fight was not on live on any network, despite Froch's sensational scrap with Jean Pascal in December. Ridiculous.
*Despite pre-match predictions the office didn't fall apart while I was away, although it still feels strange how few people are there. It's changing again next week, just as we'd got used to it. And it's still a wonderful job.
*If I was asked to sum up Coventry's season in three words I would chose Same as ever. For the last eight years inbetween seasons, no matter whether it's Iain Dowie or Gordon Strachan or Peter Reid (shudder) or Gary Mac, I have always thought that the team needs massive alteration, with the retention of some stars (including this season Keiron Westwood and Dan Fox, both of whom scrambled into the PFA Championship team of the year.). And every year we sell the stars, shuffle the side and make a pig's ear of it. Please Chris, sort it out. Saturday's defeat to Watford was abject.
*Talking of football - we have a unique fundraiser coming up in July - will tell all next time...
*Been to Borneo for 12 days, which was amazing. Five different places that we stayed in were fantastic. We got nicely sunburned, released four turtles into the sea, saw the orangutans, bartered with street traders in Kuala Lumpur, chowed down with Iban tribesmen, and ate the equivalent of a Chinese takeaway every day. Fabulous.
If you wish to see photos of it go to my facebook page, find Emma Smith, and take a look at her photo albums. There's one of me with cancer-invoking red skin, which you might laugh at.
*Prediction for this weekend: Pacquiao on points.
*Annoyance for last weekend: I'm just watching Chelsea-Barca and have been told that the unbelievable fight between Carl Froch and Jermain Taylor will be shown this weekend. Again. The third time ITV have shown it. This is called shutting the stable door after the horse has been knocked out with 14 seconds to go.
This fight was not on live on any network, despite Froch's sensational scrap with Jean Pascal in December. Ridiculous.
*Despite pre-match predictions the office didn't fall apart while I was away, although it still feels strange how few people are there. It's changing again next week, just as we'd got used to it. And it's still a wonderful job.
*If I was asked to sum up Coventry's season in three words I would chose Same as ever. For the last eight years inbetween seasons, no matter whether it's Iain Dowie or Gordon Strachan or Peter Reid (shudder) or Gary Mac, I have always thought that the team needs massive alteration, with the retention of some stars (including this season Keiron Westwood and Dan Fox, both of whom scrambled into the PFA Championship team of the year.). And every year we sell the stars, shuffle the side and make a pig's ear of it. Please Chris, sort it out. Saturday's defeat to Watford was abject.
*Talking of football - we have a unique fundraiser coming up in July - will tell all next time...
Monday 30 March 2009
Hy-porn-crites
CLICK HERE FOR HARD CORE BONING.
How many of you followed the practical advice above? I'm watching a programme discussing the volume of porn available on the internet, shops, and my bedroom, and also the media has been flooded with the story of Jacqui Smith's husband ordering two blue movies - raw meat 3, no less - and then the tax payer being charged for it.
I think it's hilarious how hypocritical people are being.
First off, ignore the whole taxpayer thing. I'm pretty sure it's an honest mistake. And why the hell didn't he just go on the internet. Maybe he didn't know the sites, and if so: http://www.redtube.com/, http://www.xvideos.com/, http://www.tube8.com/ should help.
What I'm interested in is some of the media reaction from people who should no better. Her husband has been deemed as having a "porn habit." If two films constitutes a habit, I am in real trouble. BIG, neurotic, problematic, psychotic trouble. Two films is a breakfast, not a habit. And I know most blokes are the same, and many women.
But no, this poor sod, who was alone one night with an itch he just couldn't scratch without watching a cockumentary, is being villifed - willified, if you will - because of it. His, and Smith's mistake, was including it on a list which the Sunday Express got hold of with a firm grasp and still haven't pumped dry.
The first porn movie I ever saw was called "Heavenly Desires" and featured legendary blonde actress Seka, who had a spectacular physique. I can't really remember the plot other than the fact that she dies, becomes a ghost and shags some people - despite the fact that there were certain scenes which had become grainy through constant watching to the point where I could judge to the nearest millionth of a second where the first scratchy line would appear, and which part of the genitals would be obscured first as the shredded tape rasped through the desperate spools of the JVC machine to my left.
I loved it and watched it for years. And then thought, "no I've had enough", and recorded the fight between Lennox Lewis and Phil Jackson from Atlantic City in 1994 over the top of it. From a single fist to fisticuffs in one go. And guess what? I regretted it straight away.
Nowadays I barely ever watch porn/watch porn sometimes/watch it incessantly (note to self - delete as appropriate if you can be bothered). But whether watch it or not I know one thing - I won't think any worse of people who do.
How many of you followed the practical advice above? I'm watching a programme discussing the volume of porn available on the internet, shops, and my bedroom, and also the media has been flooded with the story of Jacqui Smith's husband ordering two blue movies - raw meat 3, no less - and then the tax payer being charged for it.
I think it's hilarious how hypocritical people are being.
First off, ignore the whole taxpayer thing. I'm pretty sure it's an honest mistake. And why the hell didn't he just go on the internet. Maybe he didn't know the sites, and if so: http://www.redtube.com/, http://www.xvideos.com/, http://www.tube8.com/ should help.
What I'm interested in is some of the media reaction from people who should no better. Her husband has been deemed as having a "porn habit." If two films constitutes a habit, I am in real trouble. BIG, neurotic, problematic, psychotic trouble. Two films is a breakfast, not a habit. And I know most blokes are the same, and many women.
But no, this poor sod, who was alone one night with an itch he just couldn't scratch without watching a cockumentary, is being villifed - willified, if you will - because of it. His, and Smith's mistake, was including it on a list which the Sunday Express got hold of with a firm grasp and still haven't pumped dry.
The first porn movie I ever saw was called "Heavenly Desires" and featured legendary blonde actress Seka, who had a spectacular physique. I can't really remember the plot other than the fact that she dies, becomes a ghost and shags some people - despite the fact that there were certain scenes which had become grainy through constant watching to the point where I could judge to the nearest millionth of a second where the first scratchy line would appear, and which part of the genitals would be obscured first as the shredded tape rasped through the desperate spools of the JVC machine to my left.
I loved it and watched it for years. And then thought, "no I've had enough", and recorded the fight between Lennox Lewis and Phil Jackson from Atlantic City in 1994 over the top of it. From a single fist to fisticuffs in one go. And guess what? I regretted it straight away.
Nowadays I barely ever watch porn/watch porn sometimes/watch it incessantly (note to self - delete as appropriate if you can be bothered). But whether watch it or not I know one thing - I won't think any worse of people who do.
Thursday 12 March 2009
Football - a matter of life and death? Hardly
My Father died on Monday.
I had been leaving the Coventry - Chelsea FA Cup quarter final and about to get on a bus into town when I realised I had a message on my phone. I listened to it. Sadie said ring me urgently. I did, and she said she would call me back. She did.
She had had to call me back because she was in a hospital. My Father had collapsed at a lecture in Lincoln and had been rushed to the County Hospital where he was in intensive care with a bleed to the brain. It wasn't good.
I put the phone down and just told Emma that we needed to go to Lincoln, a 75 mile journey. Emma, her uncle and his friend looked at me quizzically, and really I had no idea what I was saying. The enormity certainly wasn't entering my brain yet.
We got, eventually, to my car. M69, M1, A46, and we would be in Lincoln. The journey was gloomy and terminal as the thoughts rattled around. Would he live? If so, would he be damaged? Where were the rest of our relatives? Would he survive until I got there? Although I knew very little about what had happened and was really just floating along in the car with a painful lump in my throat inwardly I knew the answer to these questions.
The weather was bleak, the sky greying. My brother were outside when I arrived. I cried for the second time. David told me that he was under sedation and this would be taken off the next morning - if he didn't wake then, he never would.
We went in, through a security door were you had to ask to be let in. We would have to do this again probably 20 times in the next 24 hours. No other occasion would hurt me like this one.
Dad was on the bed, eyes closed but looking directly towards the curtain entrance. A huge tube was snaking from his mouth and two other smaller pipes crept from his nose. He was wearing a grotty yellow smock. Machines beeped and pulsed behind him. I cried again, a sickening, straining crying.
A nurse told me something or other about him having life-threatening injuries, which were inoperable as they were clustered deep into his brain where it meets the spinal cord.
This was not a surprise. She said that if he did come out of the medically induced coma - and this was no more likely than not - it was not likely that he would come out in an "appropriate fashion". That meant brain damage.
So we sat, and watched. He didn't move at all. Nurses came periodically to inject, and wipe, and swab, always addressing him by name before performing an action. Quite sweet.
Em and I were tired so we tried to imbibe as much caffeine as possible. The tea was fairly hideous but temporarily soothed a desperate pain, that of a swollen throat and a heart that knew, in its core, that my Father was going to die.
I didn't eat.
The nurses turned the lights off in the ICU as nightfall came. Other people were lying there. Another younger man was the only one like my dad who wasn't moving at all. Others breathed in a troubled fashion through oxygen masks, or slept. Dad didn't move. The nurses periodically asked us to leave so they could perform that action for him, rotating him, cleaning him, checking the padded machines conected to his legs were working and he wasn't suffering circulation problems in his inanimate, useless legs.
Who knows what was in that mind? Was it a mind? I circled the bed countless times, trying awkwardly to avoid the wires. Surely he could hear us. He knew our anxiety, and would react. Surely this figure, this 55-year-old lump of flesh and bone and sinew, was not how my Father would finish his life. Surely it was a matter of time before the 1/2 cup of blood which had leaked into his mind and was straining it to bursting point, would do the decent thing and evaporate or leak away. Surely.
I learned what the figures on the machines were. Blood pressure. Heart rate. Co2 output. Pulse.
At 10pm we went to rest in a Siberian room, on a sagging bed. My eyes evacuated a crumpled contact lens. I got six hours sleep, a whirl of thoughts on disability and my dad's reaction to it; selfish, guilty worries on the effect on our upcoming holiday to Borneo; financial worries; prayers for my stepmother and brother and sisters. I got up at 5.45am.
We went back and Gail and her sister Marlene were already there. There had been no change overnight. The sedative would be taken off in three hours. More tea. More cappucino. But no more hope.
The sedative was taken off. Within five minutes dad's blood pressure had rocketed, his throat gagging as blood surged around the body at an unsustainable rate, his head screaming crimson, until the sedative was replenished. I was not there and am eternally grateful.
The consultant arrived at 1oam, starting at the other end of the room, slowly gliding round the ICU and examining the other patients. I listened and learned nothing. Dad's blood pressure had crept up again after dropping off.
We were told to go out while he was examined, and sat in the front foyer.
We came back an hour later, perplexed. Maybe a new angle on his situation had been revealed. Maybe the blood had gone. Maybe there was hope.
The consultant called us into the relatives' room. A tiny room where terrible words would swirl and haunt.
They were to turn the sedative off, and one of three things would happen. His blood pressure might rocket to the ultimate, causing heart failure and death within minutes. Or somehow his body would stabilise and his blood pressure would lower again, and his heart would beat and he would breathe for a brief period as the ventilators were removed, until the part of his brain that was damaged - which controlled breathing - ceased to function. This could be brief. The third opetion was that he might breathe indefinitely until he died of an infection to the lungs, or even hunger. All three options - the only three possible - would lead to the death of my father.
Gail's crying will live with me forever. Emma cried. I just sat still. I asked why it had happened. We will never know the true answer. A weak artery from birth. An abnormal vein. Who knows.
I went back, and the same vacant shell was there. However where there was hope 21 hours before, now there was only despair. The same figure. The same beeps, the same bed, but with a human facing extinction.
I kissed him. Touched him. Touched his psoriasis, one of the things I would never normally go near but one of the things that made him him. I whispered in his ear small wisdoms which are not for this blog. And then Em and I left, and I turned and looked at him for the last time.
We left soon after and drove home, leaving Gail to be with him in the dying embers of his life.
He died at 4am on Monday morning.
The funeral is next Thursday at Gedney Church.
It was a weekend that will never be repeated, thankfully. How can you go from a weekend where you're going to kick the arse of a Premier League team of twats to sitting in a fruitless vigil at the bedside of your dying Dad? It still doesn't seem possible that someone who rescued me through my teenage years, and helped me through University, and always saw the best in me in those times, can never be there to see my children, or marriage, or career flourish.
Whether this blog is a catharsis or not, I don't know. It is not comedy. It is opinion, and thought, and reflection, and is a window into a hell that I hoped would come in 20 or 30 or even 40 years' time.
The odds of a tragedy such as this are incalculable and rest assured it will not happen to you. I hope to God
I had been leaving the Coventry - Chelsea FA Cup quarter final and about to get on a bus into town when I realised I had a message on my phone. I listened to it. Sadie said ring me urgently. I did, and she said she would call me back. She did.
She had had to call me back because she was in a hospital. My Father had collapsed at a lecture in Lincoln and had been rushed to the County Hospital where he was in intensive care with a bleed to the brain. It wasn't good.
I put the phone down and just told Emma that we needed to go to Lincoln, a 75 mile journey. Emma, her uncle and his friend looked at me quizzically, and really I had no idea what I was saying. The enormity certainly wasn't entering my brain yet.
We got, eventually, to my car. M69, M1, A46, and we would be in Lincoln. The journey was gloomy and terminal as the thoughts rattled around. Would he live? If so, would he be damaged? Where were the rest of our relatives? Would he survive until I got there? Although I knew very little about what had happened and was really just floating along in the car with a painful lump in my throat inwardly I knew the answer to these questions.
The weather was bleak, the sky greying. My brother were outside when I arrived. I cried for the second time. David told me that he was under sedation and this would be taken off the next morning - if he didn't wake then, he never would.
We went in, through a security door were you had to ask to be let in. We would have to do this again probably 20 times in the next 24 hours. No other occasion would hurt me like this one.
Dad was on the bed, eyes closed but looking directly towards the curtain entrance. A huge tube was snaking from his mouth and two other smaller pipes crept from his nose. He was wearing a grotty yellow smock. Machines beeped and pulsed behind him. I cried again, a sickening, straining crying.
A nurse told me something or other about him having life-threatening injuries, which were inoperable as they were clustered deep into his brain where it meets the spinal cord.
This was not a surprise. She said that if he did come out of the medically induced coma - and this was no more likely than not - it was not likely that he would come out in an "appropriate fashion". That meant brain damage.
So we sat, and watched. He didn't move at all. Nurses came periodically to inject, and wipe, and swab, always addressing him by name before performing an action. Quite sweet.
Em and I were tired so we tried to imbibe as much caffeine as possible. The tea was fairly hideous but temporarily soothed a desperate pain, that of a swollen throat and a heart that knew, in its core, that my Father was going to die.
I didn't eat.
The nurses turned the lights off in the ICU as nightfall came. Other people were lying there. Another younger man was the only one like my dad who wasn't moving at all. Others breathed in a troubled fashion through oxygen masks, or slept. Dad didn't move. The nurses periodically asked us to leave so they could perform that action for him, rotating him, cleaning him, checking the padded machines conected to his legs were working and he wasn't suffering circulation problems in his inanimate, useless legs.
Who knows what was in that mind? Was it a mind? I circled the bed countless times, trying awkwardly to avoid the wires. Surely he could hear us. He knew our anxiety, and would react. Surely this figure, this 55-year-old lump of flesh and bone and sinew, was not how my Father would finish his life. Surely it was a matter of time before the 1/2 cup of blood which had leaked into his mind and was straining it to bursting point, would do the decent thing and evaporate or leak away. Surely.
I learned what the figures on the machines were. Blood pressure. Heart rate. Co2 output. Pulse.
At 10pm we went to rest in a Siberian room, on a sagging bed. My eyes evacuated a crumpled contact lens. I got six hours sleep, a whirl of thoughts on disability and my dad's reaction to it; selfish, guilty worries on the effect on our upcoming holiday to Borneo; financial worries; prayers for my stepmother and brother and sisters. I got up at 5.45am.
We went back and Gail and her sister Marlene were already there. There had been no change overnight. The sedative would be taken off in three hours. More tea. More cappucino. But no more hope.
The sedative was taken off. Within five minutes dad's blood pressure had rocketed, his throat gagging as blood surged around the body at an unsustainable rate, his head screaming crimson, until the sedative was replenished. I was not there and am eternally grateful.
The consultant arrived at 1oam, starting at the other end of the room, slowly gliding round the ICU and examining the other patients. I listened and learned nothing. Dad's blood pressure had crept up again after dropping off.
We were told to go out while he was examined, and sat in the front foyer.
We came back an hour later, perplexed. Maybe a new angle on his situation had been revealed. Maybe the blood had gone. Maybe there was hope.
The consultant called us into the relatives' room. A tiny room where terrible words would swirl and haunt.
They were to turn the sedative off, and one of three things would happen. His blood pressure might rocket to the ultimate, causing heart failure and death within minutes. Or somehow his body would stabilise and his blood pressure would lower again, and his heart would beat and he would breathe for a brief period as the ventilators were removed, until the part of his brain that was damaged - which controlled breathing - ceased to function. This could be brief. The third opetion was that he might breathe indefinitely until he died of an infection to the lungs, or even hunger. All three options - the only three possible - would lead to the death of my father.
Gail's crying will live with me forever. Emma cried. I just sat still. I asked why it had happened. We will never know the true answer. A weak artery from birth. An abnormal vein. Who knows.
I went back, and the same vacant shell was there. However where there was hope 21 hours before, now there was only despair. The same figure. The same beeps, the same bed, but with a human facing extinction.
I kissed him. Touched him. Touched his psoriasis, one of the things I would never normally go near but one of the things that made him him. I whispered in his ear small wisdoms which are not for this blog. And then Em and I left, and I turned and looked at him for the last time.
We left soon after and drove home, leaving Gail to be with him in the dying embers of his life.
He died at 4am on Monday morning.
The funeral is next Thursday at Gedney Church.
It was a weekend that will never be repeated, thankfully. How can you go from a weekend where you're going to kick the arse of a Premier League team of twats to sitting in a fruitless vigil at the bedside of your dying Dad? It still doesn't seem possible that someone who rescued me through my teenage years, and helped me through University, and always saw the best in me in those times, can never be there to see my children, or marriage, or career flourish.
Whether this blog is a catharsis or not, I don't know. It is not comedy. It is opinion, and thought, and reflection, and is a window into a hell that I hoped would come in 20 or 30 or even 40 years' time.
The odds of a tragedy such as this are incalculable and rest assured it will not happen to you. I hope to God
Wednesday 25 February 2009
Why Facebook is losing face
Have to say - the initial humorous magic of Facebook has gone. Some people's status updates are so annoying it's untrue. Some are very clever and funny, others are as funny as eating poo-flavoured glass.
There's the odd bright spot. Interesting videos from people, intelligent comment, and the boxing debates me and one of my old schoolmates Tony have are amongst them.
And the funny, quirky things, like "John needs". If you haven't done it, go to Google, type your name + needs, and see what ridiculous things come up.
For the record, mine include: John needs father, Don John needs charisma, John needs badly to impress, John needs a map of Thailand, Terrington St John needs help in effort for new village hall, Elton John needs a helipad at the O2, and John needs to be visible on every issue a la Obama. That's one needy guy.
But some status updates are really boring. I particularly hate this type (all names are made up by the way; when I say made-up I mean I don't have friends with those names. They are real names. If I was going for made up names I would have said something like Banzagrew or Trenevere. I digress...) of message:
Jamie cannot BELIEVE what he has done. Trevor is SO excited about tomorrow. Darren has just discovered something. Enid is in a dilemma...etc etc etc
If it/that is so good/exciting/erotic/flamboyant then just say it! Don't try and expect people to ask you what it is and start a boring and ultimately flaccid conversation.
Because when you do this you tend to find the most mundane answers.
I would love to find out that Jamie has eaten his own weight in Haribo sweets and can make people diabetic just by breathing on them.
And Trevor is excited about going jet ski-ing with Jessica Alba along the Welland on the back of two giant Kraken
And Darren has discovered that his Dad, brother and dog are all one and the same.
And Enid's dilemma is which of the slowly festering corpses of the Cheeky Girls she should remove from meathooks in her garage first.
But I'm always disappointed.
I could go on and mention the annoyance of repetitive messages, obsession with partners, and repetitive messages, but I won't.
Of course, the irony of this is that I'm going to post a link to it on Facebook. Which makes me a hypocrite. Never mind, I'll be too busy flying to Thailand from my impressive helipad in London to care.
*Had a bloke in court yesterday called Tarzan. Genuinely. In for motoring offences. He was given a vine. Ho ho.
*Hope there are some Blackburn fans reading this. I should point out for non-football fans that my beloved Sky Blues beat Rovers last night, despite them being in the league above us. We now play Chelsea in the next round of the FA Cup. Bring it on.
*Just a quick message about David Cameron. The Tory leader lost his young son Ivan this morning. Ivan fought illness virtually from birth and because of this his father put in many hours of charity work for various causes and became a patron for several of them. As someone who lost their brother when he was young - a brother who also suffered from illness - my heart is with Cameron and family now.
There's the odd bright spot. Interesting videos from people, intelligent comment, and the boxing debates me and one of my old schoolmates Tony have are amongst them.
And the funny, quirky things, like "John needs". If you haven't done it, go to Google, type your name + needs, and see what ridiculous things come up.
For the record, mine include: John needs father, Don John needs charisma, John needs badly to impress, John needs a map of Thailand, Terrington St John needs help in effort for new village hall, Elton John needs a helipad at the O2, and John needs to be visible on every issue a la Obama. That's one needy guy.
But some status updates are really boring. I particularly hate this type (all names are made up by the way; when I say made-up I mean I don't have friends with those names. They are real names. If I was going for made up names I would have said something like Banzagrew or Trenevere. I digress...) of message:
Jamie cannot BELIEVE what he has done. Trevor is SO excited about tomorrow. Darren has just discovered something. Enid is in a dilemma...etc etc etc
If it/that is so good/exciting/erotic/flamboyant then just say it! Don't try and expect people to ask you what it is and start a boring and ultimately flaccid conversation.
Because when you do this you tend to find the most mundane answers.
I would love to find out that Jamie has eaten his own weight in Haribo sweets and can make people diabetic just by breathing on them.
And Trevor is excited about going jet ski-ing with Jessica Alba along the Welland on the back of two giant Kraken
And Darren has discovered that his Dad, brother and dog are all one and the same.
And Enid's dilemma is which of the slowly festering corpses of the Cheeky Girls she should remove from meathooks in her garage first.
But I'm always disappointed.
I could go on and mention the annoyance of repetitive messages, obsession with partners, and repetitive messages, but I won't.
Of course, the irony of this is that I'm going to post a link to it on Facebook. Which makes me a hypocrite. Never mind, I'll be too busy flying to Thailand from my impressive helipad in London to care.
*Had a bloke in court yesterday called Tarzan. Genuinely. In for motoring offences. He was given a vine. Ho ho.
*Hope there are some Blackburn fans reading this. I should point out for non-football fans that my beloved Sky Blues beat Rovers last night, despite them being in the league above us. We now play Chelsea in the next round of the FA Cup. Bring it on.
*Just a quick message about David Cameron. The Tory leader lost his young son Ivan this morning. Ivan fought illness virtually from birth and because of this his father put in many hours of charity work for various causes and became a patron for several of them. As someone who lost their brother when he was young - a brother who also suffered from illness - my heart is with Cameron and family now.
Thursday 19 February 2009
Paris Hilton in winter
Sorry it took so long to put another post on, but I've been having some problems with disabled cookies, whatever that means.
Not that I've done bugger all in the intervening weeks. We had a house inspection, which we passed. Few minor quibbles - Bit of mildew on the shower, rat faeces in the toaster, immigrants in the lounge, all the usual crap. I become really anal when I clean up the house. I vacuum the floor 15 times, I wipe the dado rails, sponge the radiators. I don't think I'm homosexual, but there are sometimes echoes of it.
What else... been to court four times. A comedy foot fetish story can be found here:
http://www.spaldingtoday.co.uk/news/Foot-fetish-man-admits-harassment.4977597.jp.
Several other good drink drive stories. Read the paper for God's sake.
Currently watching Paris Hilton's British Best Friend. I recommend everyone watch it. 12 or 14 absolutely soulless people competing to be Paris' best friend. All taking part in games and challenges, all of them actors, models, PR assistant, a screamingly gay office assistant.
It is sickening, revolting, ghastly television. I love Paris Hilton, who is what she is - a very pretty talentless person who has been given everything, including warmth and a heart. These plebians
don't even have that.
One of them actually had the job title Model/blogger. Model/blogger! Blogging isn't a job. It's where sad, warped people bleed their corrupted minds onto a computer screen for equally warped people top digest (present company excepted, of course). I would love to do this as a job, but would be arrested within hours. I can see it now; even as my index finger relaxes on the enter key for the last line of an expose of the crack cocaine and goat-buggering exploits of Spalding's celebrities, a team of SWAT soldiers gun down the door, slap me in handcuffs, and drag me off to the South Holland version of Guantanamo Bay. I'm too coarse, too troubled, too silly, to do this as a job.
On the other side is ten years younger: the challenge. A woman aged 29, whose "appearance age" is 42, will compete against a 52-year old (appearance age 62) to see who can be made to look younger. One will have surgery, the other will have new make-up, and a third -a 30 year old journalist who looks 379 when he watches brainshite like this - will let rabid lemurs nibble on his eyelids before he watches it again.
Let me know if you agree x
Not that I've done bugger all in the intervening weeks. We had a house inspection, which we passed. Few minor quibbles - Bit of mildew on the shower, rat faeces in the toaster, immigrants in the lounge, all the usual crap. I become really anal when I clean up the house. I vacuum the floor 15 times, I wipe the dado rails, sponge the radiators. I don't think I'm homosexual, but there are sometimes echoes of it.
What else... been to court four times. A comedy foot fetish story can be found here:
http://www.spaldingtoday.co.uk/news/Foot-fetish-man-admits-harassment.4977597.jp.
Several other good drink drive stories. Read the paper for God's sake.
Currently watching Paris Hilton's British Best Friend. I recommend everyone watch it. 12 or 14 absolutely soulless people competing to be Paris' best friend. All taking part in games and challenges, all of them actors, models, PR assistant, a screamingly gay office assistant.
It is sickening, revolting, ghastly television. I love Paris Hilton, who is what she is - a very pretty talentless person who has been given everything, including warmth and a heart. These plebians
don't even have that.
One of them actually had the job title Model/blogger. Model/blogger! Blogging isn't a job. It's where sad, warped people bleed their corrupted minds onto a computer screen for equally warped people top digest (present company excepted, of course). I would love to do this as a job, but would be arrested within hours. I can see it now; even as my index finger relaxes on the enter key for the last line of an expose of the crack cocaine and goat-buggering exploits of Spalding's celebrities, a team of SWAT soldiers gun down the door, slap me in handcuffs, and drag me off to the South Holland version of Guantanamo Bay. I'm too coarse, too troubled, too silly, to do this as a job.
On the other side is ten years younger: the challenge. A woman aged 29, whose "appearance age" is 42, will compete against a 52-year old (appearance age 62) to see who can be made to look younger. One will have surgery, the other will have new make-up, and a third -a 30 year old journalist who looks 379 when he watches brainshite like this - will let rabid lemurs nibble on his eyelids before he watches it again.
Let me know if you agree x
Tuesday 3 February 2009
OK Computer
IBM have unveiled a new supercomputer which is capable of 20 quadrillion computations per second, but still apparently crashes halfway through Redtube videos:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/03/fastest-supercomputer-ibm-sequoia
Also the word "petaflop" sounds a little but twee to me. For a machine of this magnitude it should be a word like "titancrax" or "midoplange".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/03/fastest-supercomputer-ibm-sequoia
Also the word "petaflop" sounds a little but twee to me. For a machine of this magnitude it should be a word like "titancrax" or "midoplange".
Monday 2 February 2009
Wankee Doodle Dandy
I'm tempted to say this was the only physical activity of the whole evening knowing how flimsy and boring Grid Iron is:
http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/02022009/58/nfl-porn-ruins-super-bowl-coverage.html
http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/02022009/58/nfl-porn-ruins-super-bowl-coverage.html
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow and let Britain fall to its knees
Snow is one of those things that everyone loves as long as they don't actually have to deal with it. Imagine going outside and trying to sort out the roads today. Or any electricity lines which are down. Because Britain's temperature is naturally muggy and grim, a lot like many of its people, we are always excited by the annual February snow.
A few years ago I managed to skid my car off the road and into a ditch after hitting a patch of ice in Gedney. I took a corner and literally started spinning. Turning the wheel exacerbated the problem, and only five seconds after realising there was a problem at all, I was sat at 45 degrees with the door of my new Peugeot 306 resembling broken meringue. I was unhurt and climbed out before a kindly farmer helped me. I sat in the back of his range rover, surrounded by recently slain pheasants, wondering what the hell had just happened.
And the crowning irony - the final turd in the waterpipe? There was no work that day. My journey had been pointless.
Since then I've become a lot better at driving in the snow, more careful and observant. Part of that is a function of what happened to me, part is the inevitable outcome of seeing so many cars wrapped around trees and lampposts through my job over the years.
One of the most incredible things I've ever seen was when I boarded a bus in Lapland to take me to Santa Claus Village. Rovaniemi is about 8 miles from the village but there were several buses throughout the day to take people to meet the great man, and thankfully there was a stop just outside my hotel. So I climbed in and handed over my fare to the driver, who extended a hand with precisely zero fingers. Now bear in mind the journey I was about to take. Eight miles of snow track, icy roads with drops into alpine abyss on either side, sheer walls of blizzard, in several tonnes of rectangular metal. And I was being taken on this magical mystery tour by a guy whose grip of the steering wheel would be comparable to that of Steven Gerrard tackling astrophysics.
But he was very good, and only left the road 12 times during the journey.
At least the Finns know it's snowy pretty much all the time. I heard the other day that the state of Montana, which borders Canada, has a highest recorded temperature of 121c and a low of around -50c. Imagine putting the wrong clothes on for that bastard.
Just watched Calender news and there are some hilarious photos of rabbits playing with snow, and a snowman with a pepper for a nose to which the presenters poked fun in that false, cloying way that only local newsreaders can. It's enough to make an educated and hilarious political commentator like myself turn off his computer. Adios snowsters.
A few years ago I managed to skid my car off the road and into a ditch after hitting a patch of ice in Gedney. I took a corner and literally started spinning. Turning the wheel exacerbated the problem, and only five seconds after realising there was a problem at all, I was sat at 45 degrees with the door of my new Peugeot 306 resembling broken meringue. I was unhurt and climbed out before a kindly farmer helped me. I sat in the back of his range rover, surrounded by recently slain pheasants, wondering what the hell had just happened.
And the crowning irony - the final turd in the waterpipe? There was no work that day. My journey had been pointless.
Since then I've become a lot better at driving in the snow, more careful and observant. Part of that is a function of what happened to me, part is the inevitable outcome of seeing so many cars wrapped around trees and lampposts through my job over the years.
One of the most incredible things I've ever seen was when I boarded a bus in Lapland to take me to Santa Claus Village. Rovaniemi is about 8 miles from the village but there were several buses throughout the day to take people to meet the great man, and thankfully there was a stop just outside my hotel. So I climbed in and handed over my fare to the driver, who extended a hand with precisely zero fingers. Now bear in mind the journey I was about to take. Eight miles of snow track, icy roads with drops into alpine abyss on either side, sheer walls of blizzard, in several tonnes of rectangular metal. And I was being taken on this magical mystery tour by a guy whose grip of the steering wheel would be comparable to that of Steven Gerrard tackling astrophysics.
But he was very good, and only left the road 12 times during the journey.
At least the Finns know it's snowy pretty much all the time. I heard the other day that the state of Montana, which borders Canada, has a highest recorded temperature of 121c and a low of around -50c. Imagine putting the wrong clothes on for that bastard.
Just watched Calender news and there are some hilarious photos of rabbits playing with snow, and a snowman with a pepper for a nose to which the presenters poked fun in that false, cloying way that only local newsreaders can. It's enough to make an educated and hilarious political commentator like myself turn off his computer. Adios snowsters.
Thursday 22 January 2009
Gloom
See my last link for the relevance of this:
http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/news/090119centralsub.shtml
The atmosphere in our newsroom can be but with a knife sometimes - and it seems like it's going to get a hell of a lot worse before it (ever?) gets better...
http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/news/090119centralsub.shtml
The atmosphere in our newsroom can be but with a knife sometimes - and it seems like it's going to get a hell of a lot worse before it (ever?) gets better...
Sunday 18 January 2009
Curry on puking
The last blog entry was a little bit sharp, a little abridged, mainly because my stomach was starting to declare war on my body after a particularly virulent strain of dopiaza which attacked my mouth and anus, forcing immediate evacuation. Not good for me or Em or toilet. Saturday was a complete write-off - I lay in bed all day, getting up only to moan, sweat, urinate, sip water, and read very briefly. I hadn't been ill like this in years. The last time was on a flight from Istanbul to London, where I managed to be sick three times in three different countries. but even that paled in significance to the curry carnage of last weekend.
The worst thing is that I couldn't even disguise it. When I'm sick my head explodes. My eye-lids and temples burst, leaving little specks of ugly blood across my face which remain for several days, like some sort of tribal warmask. They've just about gone now.
Random observations:
*At least my football team is doing well - a 2-1 come-from-behind win over Blackpool makes the City 5 games unbeaten, with a second-string defence. Torquay away next, the sort of nasty little cup game which Cov can always be relied upon to struggle through. In my lifetime we've lost to so many of these teams - Sutton Utd, Luton, Hereford, Cambridge et al. Plus life-and-death struggles with Woking and Wycombe. Setanta, helpfully, have produced a series of adverts based on FA Cup upsets to remind me of the Gandergreen Lane debacle, when Matt Hanlon scored against us for very non-league Sutton in '89, when we still had most of the team which had won the blasted thing two years earlier.
* A point I made last week worth re-iterating: How come Ronaldo can write-off a high performance sports car leaving debris littered all over the road and sides of a Manchester tunnel
and get out unscathed - and yet the moment an opposing centre-half taps his calf he goes down like he's been shot in the scrotum?
*The jobs situation continues to worsen. Everyone knows about Woolies and Adams, but we as journos hear rumours constantly about other businesses falling away, roles being terminated, lives being ruined. And now the changes are its affecting us. We were waiting for the announcement and it finally came on Friday; Subbing (i.e putting the stories on the page) is to be centralised to Peterborough, affecting three different zones across East England. 33 production posts will become 14, grouping people from Louth and Sleaford and Spalding and Stamford and elsewhere all into one office. It's horrible news and leaves a lot of people up in the air. Will keep you informed.
Take care
John
The worst thing is that I couldn't even disguise it. When I'm sick my head explodes. My eye-lids and temples burst, leaving little specks of ugly blood across my face which remain for several days, like some sort of tribal warmask. They've just about gone now.
Random observations:
*At least my football team is doing well - a 2-1 come-from-behind win over Blackpool makes the City 5 games unbeaten, with a second-string defence. Torquay away next, the sort of nasty little cup game which Cov can always be relied upon to struggle through. In my lifetime we've lost to so many of these teams - Sutton Utd, Luton, Hereford, Cambridge et al. Plus life-and-death struggles with Woking and Wycombe. Setanta, helpfully, have produced a series of adverts based on FA Cup upsets to remind me of the Gandergreen Lane debacle, when Matt Hanlon scored against us for very non-league Sutton in '89, when we still had most of the team which had won the blasted thing two years earlier.
* A point I made last week worth re-iterating: How come Ronaldo can write-off a high performance sports car leaving debris littered all over the road and sides of a Manchester tunnel
and get out unscathed - and yet the moment an opposing centre-half taps his calf he goes down like he's been shot in the scrotum?
*The jobs situation continues to worsen. Everyone knows about Woolies and Adams, but we as journos hear rumours constantly about other businesses falling away, roles being terminated, lives being ruined. And now the changes are its affecting us. We were waiting for the announcement and it finally came on Friday; Subbing (i.e putting the stories on the page) is to be centralised to Peterborough, affecting three different zones across East England. 33 production posts will become 14, grouping people from Louth and Sleaford and Spalding and Stamford and elsewhere all into one office. It's horrible news and leaves a lot of people up in the air. Will keep you informed.
Take care
John
Friday 9 January 2009
Beastenders
Eastenders tonight (Friday) -total, utter bollocks on a level that's sweaty and nasty and fetid.
1) THE most unrealistic job interview ever. A barmaid's job where the applicant is asked to add £3.17 and £43.67 and €67.32 and 13 guineas in her head. What a crock of shit. Then there's the young girl, with a face like her nose is being sucked into her arsehole, storming out after a banal discussion and argument about films and being chased by the interviewer like an exterminator chasing after an errant earwig. Absolute poo.
At 1 in the morning no-one cares about the mathematic prowess of the barmaid. They want boobs and a smile and the desperate, clinging hope that they may get lucky, despite the fact they've got as much chance of copping off as Vanessa Feltz has of becoming president of Haiti.
2) The Book club - every so often, when scriptwriters reach a wall thicker than Pat Butchers' hair lacquer, they come up with an unrealistic,sideshow, that somehow everyone seems to have a passion for but no-one has ever mentioned before. The blokes set up a football club and build up an inevitable grudge match to Ali-Frazier levels, despite the fact that no-one ever mentions West Ham or any London team, ever. I'm sure Dot Cotton set up an S/M club, and I know Ian Beale formed a hard right extremist group. All fallen by the wayside, as will this "saucy" book club within two weeks.
I honestly believe that if Eastenders started now it would be pulled within six months. It's awful, but people seem brainwashed by it. None of the characters are remotely believable - an example; over Xmas, Shaun , the grumpy, hopeless, lethargic, permanently unemployed basket case, was seen to set up speakers and sing a load of festive shite in the middle of Albert Square, in total contrast to his usual moody "I'm brooding but wearing a T-shirt that's got gravy and Pringles crumbs down it" sort of way that makes him the most uncharismatic twat ever to walk into the soap. It was a weak, lazy ploy to add extra emphasis and contrast to his Hamlet-esque wailing when he later finds out that the Garbage Pail kid that Ronnie has been parading round for several weeks did not spring from his sweaty loins. To suddenly make him happy so he would seem more sad later was weak, incoherent and crap.
I still watch it though.
1) THE most unrealistic job interview ever. A barmaid's job where the applicant is asked to add £3.17 and £43.67 and €67.32 and 13 guineas in her head. What a crock of shit. Then there's the young girl, with a face like her nose is being sucked into her arsehole, storming out after a banal discussion and argument about films and being chased by the interviewer like an exterminator chasing after an errant earwig. Absolute poo.
At 1 in the morning no-one cares about the mathematic prowess of the barmaid. They want boobs and a smile and the desperate, clinging hope that they may get lucky, despite the fact they've got as much chance of copping off as Vanessa Feltz has of becoming president of Haiti.
2) The Book club - every so often, when scriptwriters reach a wall thicker than Pat Butchers' hair lacquer, they come up with an unrealistic,sideshow, that somehow everyone seems to have a passion for but no-one has ever mentioned before. The blokes set up a football club and build up an inevitable grudge match to Ali-Frazier levels, despite the fact that no-one ever mentions West Ham or any London team, ever. I'm sure Dot Cotton set up an S/M club, and I know Ian Beale formed a hard right extremist group. All fallen by the wayside, as will this "saucy" book club within two weeks.
I honestly believe that if Eastenders started now it would be pulled within six months. It's awful, but people seem brainwashed by it. None of the characters are remotely believable - an example; over Xmas, Shaun , the grumpy, hopeless, lethargic, permanently unemployed basket case, was seen to set up speakers and sing a load of festive shite in the middle of Albert Square, in total contrast to his usual moody "I'm brooding but wearing a T-shirt that's got gravy and Pringles crumbs down it" sort of way that makes him the most uncharismatic twat ever to walk into the soap. It was a weak, lazy ploy to add extra emphasis and contrast to his Hamlet-esque wailing when he later finds out that the Garbage Pail kid that Ronnie has been parading round for several weeks did not spring from his sweaty loins. To suddenly make him happy so he would seem more sad later was weak, incoherent and crap.
I still watch it though.
Tuesday 6 January 2009
A week to forget
Even by Onion standards this one's incredible:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary
My highlight is the predictive text options - awesome.
On a more sombre note this has been the worst start to a new year I can remember. I'm sure you all saw the story of the 30-year-old woman killed at a crossing yesterday when her car was hit by a train. There are all sorts of things I could tell you but won't. However I can tell you this - my fiancee worked with the lady who was killed, and I met her several times. She was a very nice person - friendly and chatty, always calling everyone "mate" in typical Lincolnshire style.
On Saturday Emma and I went into Spalding to book our holiday. About three months ago we took out a loan to clear debts. Whatever would be left over would be put towards a fantastic holiday. Our choice was Borneo - a dream destination of tropics, Orang-Utans and jungle adventures.
The price was not small so we decided to take the rest of the weekend to consider it. And if any one incident could make us think that we should grasp life and take every opportunity we can. So we booked the holiday.
Just thinking of the chain of events that led to the accident fills me with dread. If we can believe the precise timings, if she had stalled her car on the way she would have survived. If she had taken a different route. If she had dropped her handbag on the way to the car. Much virtue in If...
With the Bakkavor news it's been an incredible, horrendous week.
Take care
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary
My highlight is the predictive text options - awesome.
On a more sombre note this has been the worst start to a new year I can remember. I'm sure you all saw the story of the 30-year-old woman killed at a crossing yesterday when her car was hit by a train. There are all sorts of things I could tell you but won't. However I can tell you this - my fiancee worked with the lady who was killed, and I met her several times. She was a very nice person - friendly and chatty, always calling everyone "mate" in typical Lincolnshire style.
On Saturday Emma and I went into Spalding to book our holiday. About three months ago we took out a loan to clear debts. Whatever would be left over would be put towards a fantastic holiday. Our choice was Borneo - a dream destination of tropics, Orang-Utans and jungle adventures.
The price was not small so we decided to take the rest of the weekend to consider it. And if any one incident could make us think that we should grasp life and take every opportunity we can. So we booked the holiday.
Just thinking of the chain of events that led to the accident fills me with dread. If we can believe the precise timings, if she had stalled her car on the way she would have survived. If she had taken a different route. If she had dropped her handbag on the way to the car. Much virtue in If...
With the Bakkavor news it's been an incredible, horrendous week.
Take care
Friday 2 January 2009
Celebrity big brother?
Sometimes I hate journalists. There wasn't a single person who went into Big Brother tonight who hadn't been predicted to enter in the pages of the Star, or Mirror, or Financial Times. I despise BB. Then I watch it and feel neurons and synapses which should be engaged elsewhere giving up the ghost.
But enough of the banter: Here's the lowdown -
Latoya Jackson: Sharing Michael's name and gristly little nose, this music megastar (what the fuck has she ever sung?) has got as much chance of winning as her brother has of frowning. And not fancying kids.
Mingya Buena (?): Super ugly total chav with skin markings like the back of my notepad during Gedney Parish Council. Leaving her child to waltz in is bad enough. She has an entire block of zinc instead of a head, and a voice that only a mother could love, particularly a council estate 13-year-old mutant inner city mother.
Verne Troyer: As a man of stunted proportions, I'm a fan. Giving him a suitcase the size of Norway didn't help. though.
Tommy Sheridan: Looks pretty slick. People booing him was quite funny, since they didn't a) know who he was and b) understand his politics. Booing him because he's a Scot is reason enough I guess. My pick to go first.
Lucy Pinder: Wonderful. Won't win but I don't care.
Ben Adams: Looks cute but...why A1 anyway? Why not A1073 or Wygate Road?
Some woman from Shameless: One of the most ghastly scousers since Robbie Fowler, this asteroid-like creature slimed its way in in a dress which looked like sweepings from the Woolworths stockroom. Apparently she has obsessive compulsive disorder , particularly where Toblerones and cheap chicken nuggets are concerned. And as butch as hell: If Michelle is in Liberty X, she's Liberty XY, if you know what I mean.
Coolio: As he walked through the shadow of the valley of death (otherwise known as Davina McCall's long term career) I noticed he had a pale, emotionless, bright white mask attached to his face, which was clearly a homage to Latoya's brother. A contender to win, but probably won't give a shit.
Michelle Heaton: Looked pretty damn foxy to be honest, and took the piss out of herself, so bonus marks.
Terry Christian: Dark horse to win it. Will be infuriating, controversial, and will say what he thinks.
Ulrika Jonsssson: Super Swedish Slapper who was the only one who could climb the steps in one stride, such is her groinal over-usage. I would say that no man will be left standing by the end, and even if they are, she'll no doubt be on her knees facing them at the time.
My first impressions are never right on BB or CBB. But it's still fun.
But enough of the banter: Here's the lowdown -
Latoya Jackson: Sharing Michael's name and gristly little nose, this music megastar (what the fuck has she ever sung?) has got as much chance of winning as her brother has of frowning. And not fancying kids.
Mingya Buena (?): Super ugly total chav with skin markings like the back of my notepad during Gedney Parish Council. Leaving her child to waltz in is bad enough. She has an entire block of zinc instead of a head, and a voice that only a mother could love, particularly a council estate 13-year-old mutant inner city mother.
Verne Troyer: As a man of stunted proportions, I'm a fan. Giving him a suitcase the size of Norway didn't help. though.
Tommy Sheridan: Looks pretty slick. People booing him was quite funny, since they didn't a) know who he was and b) understand his politics. Booing him because he's a Scot is reason enough I guess. My pick to go first.
Lucy Pinder: Wonderful. Won't win but I don't care.
Ben Adams: Looks cute but...why A1 anyway? Why not A1073 or Wygate Road?
Some woman from Shameless: One of the most ghastly scousers since Robbie Fowler, this asteroid-like creature slimed its way in in a dress which looked like sweepings from the Woolworths stockroom. Apparently she has obsessive compulsive disorder , particularly where Toblerones and cheap chicken nuggets are concerned. And as butch as hell: If Michelle is in Liberty X, she's Liberty XY, if you know what I mean.
Coolio: As he walked through the shadow of the valley of death (otherwise known as Davina McCall's long term career) I noticed he had a pale, emotionless, bright white mask attached to his face, which was clearly a homage to Latoya's brother. A contender to win, but probably won't give a shit.
Michelle Heaton: Looked pretty damn foxy to be honest, and took the piss out of herself, so bonus marks.
Terry Christian: Dark horse to win it. Will be infuriating, controversial, and will say what he thinks.
Ulrika Jonsssson: Super Swedish Slapper who was the only one who could climb the steps in one stride, such is her groinal over-usage. I would say that no man will be left standing by the end, and even if they are, she'll no doubt be on her knees facing them at the time.
My first impressions are never right on BB or CBB. But it's still fun.
Thursday 1 January 2009
New Year, old me
Firstly happy 2009!
Probably one of the best New Year's Eves I've had in some time. Had a good curry which was punctuated by one of the staff constantly coming over to adjust a dial or something or other which was located not a million miles away from my rump. Apparently they were having electrical problems and he was looking at fuses - a likely story when there's some prime ass like mine to be viewed. In case you're interested, lamb Dopiaza, Sag paneer (cheese and spinach, which is a lot nicer than it sounds) and copious amounts of Kingfisher lager.
And then on to the midnight celebrations with me girlie Emma and friend and colleague Adam in the Hole in the Wall. A few goths and teenage arseholes around, but overall a really-good natured night. Some sambuccas guaranteed that this morning was a total write-off but this afternoon was spent productively perusing Lara's pixels on tomb raider, eating Pringles and generally wasting my life.
A bad start then to one of my new year's resolutions - to lose weight. Another is to update this blog more regularly, because I know now that some people do actually read it. Thanks for comments and stuff - if you have a chance to post anything on it feel free. The more abusive and funny the better.
Speak soon.
Probably one of the best New Year's Eves I've had in some time. Had a good curry which was punctuated by one of the staff constantly coming over to adjust a dial or something or other which was located not a million miles away from my rump. Apparently they were having electrical problems and he was looking at fuses - a likely story when there's some prime ass like mine to be viewed. In case you're interested, lamb Dopiaza, Sag paneer (cheese and spinach, which is a lot nicer than it sounds) and copious amounts of Kingfisher lager.
And then on to the midnight celebrations with me girlie Emma and friend and colleague Adam in the Hole in the Wall. A few goths and teenage arseholes around, but overall a really-good natured night. Some sambuccas guaranteed that this morning was a total write-off but this afternoon was spent productively perusing Lara's pixels on tomb raider, eating Pringles and generally wasting my life.
A bad start then to one of my new year's resolutions - to lose weight. Another is to update this blog more regularly, because I know now that some people do actually read it. Thanks for comments and stuff - if you have a chance to post anything on it feel free. The more abusive and funny the better.
Speak soon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
