Books Books Books Books Books

Do you see those buttons over there? On the left. The ones entitled "currently reading" which link to Amazon ads for the books in question?

Well, I have to come clean. They're a bit of a fraud. Not a total fraud. Just a little bit of one.

In theory, I am reading those books. Trouble is, I started some time ago ("Calamity Physics" in August; "Book of Dave" back at Easter!). I was enjoying them OK. And they both seem like entertaining books which I ought to try to finish.

But, like lots of you out there, I do tend to read 3 or 4 books at once. So sometimes it's easier to concentrate on pulpy crime fiction, or Stephen King's latest, or a play (or ten), rather than putting in the effort to finish the more erudite novels.

[Oh, no, that's wrong. I've just implied that Mr King isn't erudite. That's not true. I do think that he is one of the best writers that ever lived. And I really hate the snobbery from "literary circles" which denigrate his work because it happens to be popular. No - he was just in the list because his books are easier to read than those on my "Currently Reading" list.]

Where was I?

Oh, yes. So, those books there. Over THERE! Those are reserved for my long-term reading projects, as I tend to polish off the intervening ones in a day or two. Three at the most. And it hardly seems worth amending the blog template for that, does it?

Five Things

Five Things I Like

Ice cream.
Television.
Music.
Chocolate.
MLYW.

Five Things I Dislike

Spiders.
Laundry.
Balancing accounts.
Headaches.
Housework.

There's been all of these the past couple of days. They haven't been productive...

And THAT's Magic!

To the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin a couple of days ago. An excellent interactive museum-y thing which was great fun to look around. And a free pint of the black stuff in the Gravity Bar at the end, with fantastic views around Dublin to the Wicklow Mountains.

However... The signage at the entrance to the exhibition invites you to enter and marvel at how Guinness stout is made by "the magic of fermentation".

Fermentation is magic is it? I could have sworn it was simple chemistry. And it must be because there was no mention of Arthur Guinness' magic wand at any stage of the tour.

Magic, my arse. But it was a great pint!

"A dingo ate my baby"

Jo's comment yesterday about the proximity of Monkey World and Tank World made me think of this great old Larsson "Far Side" cartoon:
He he he. I heard a very sick one today about Madeleine McCann, but I think that it's going too far to repeat it here. Even for me!

Wow. 3 days in a row. Is this a record...?

Whose Audience is it Anyway?

Sorry to be awful, but I'd really like to plug our play. Again.

For some reason ticket sales are much slower than usual. Despite people saying how much they like the plays we put on.

And this one is, in my opinion, as good as anything we've done.

Lighting, sound, acting, props, scenery. It's all fantastic.

So. Come along and see Whose Life is it Anyway? at the Rhoda McGaw Theatre, Woking.

Weds 6th - Sat 9th June, 2007, at 7.45pm.

Tickets £10 (or £8 for concessions). Call 01932 702091. Or 0870 060 6645.

Get there before 7.30 if you want to buy on the door!

A Mention

I feel privileged today.

My favourite blogger (the fantastic Diamond Geezer) has published a link to my blog.

OK, so it's only one among 200 links, but maybe I'll get some new visitors. I've just checked my referrals and so far, just 2 hours after Geezer's post, no-one's visited from his site. Current number of visitors is 6,899.

I'll check again at regular intervals and we'll see what happens...

Edit: If you DO arrive here from Diamond Geezer and you live in south-east England, I would encourage you to visit my other blog (click it, go on, then come back here) and then buy tickets to see Whose Life Is It Anyway? at the Rhoda McGaw Theatre, Woking, next week. The guys and girls in the show are fantastic, they've been working incredibly hard and they really, REALLY deserve an audience.

Edit2: 6.30pm. That's about 9 hours later. 17 visitors since I last checked. And 4 of them appear to have arrived from DG. And one even left a comment! Thanks Jon.

Argh!

Blimey. How much do I rely on my PC at home? Quite a lot, it turns out.

It started behaving abnormally and crashing the other day. Looked like a problem with either Windows XP or with the disk. So I tried repairing XP, which failed because the disk was having problems, leaving my installation ever so slightly knackered.

So, I had to try re-installing XP from scratch. Luckily I managed to keep it up long enough (stop it!) to back it up, but the re-install failed as the system disk was unable to format. Kaput!

Righty-ho. Off to PC world today to buy a new disk. Mission accomplished! And I found a 400Gb external USB2.0 hard drive for £85. Now that's a bargain.

So now I'm looking forward to endless hours re-installing Windows (again) and all the network (and IDE and AGP and CPU and video) drivers, and downloading all the service packs and patches and re-installing all my software and then restoring all my (our!) data.

God, I hope that backup worked...

How Much?

I've been away for two weeks. Obsessively dull details will follow in a day or two.

Just so you know why I haven't been reading/replying/blogging/commenting for a while.

Ciao!

Better Late Than Never

Good Lord, I'm useless. A whole week since I last posted. Trouble is, I have fantastic ideas for a post, but they usually occur to me when I'm driving home from work. I have no way of noting them down while I'm on the move, so 45 minutes later, when I'm back home, I've forgotten what the brilliant idea was!

Yesterday I bought a digital voice recorder. You know - a "Dictaphone"-type thing, though presumably "Dictaphone" is a registered trademark, so I should make it very clear that it was definitely not one of those that I bought.

Anyway, I bought it so that I can record the read-through for our next play. I can then copy the recording to my PC and isolate the sections I'm in and burn the recording to CD; all the better for learning my lines.

So maybe I should carry it around at all times, murmuring into it when an idea occurs to me. But then I have a mental image of Alan Partridge in a Rover and wearing driving gloves ("Idea for a programme entitled 'Yachting Mishaps'. Some funny, some tragic. Presented by that man who was trapped upside-down in his hull eating chocolate.") and it seems very foolish all of a sudden.

Too Darn Hot

That's my excuse for not having posted for 10 days anyway.

What have I been up to in that time?

Working. That hasn't been fun. Our company moved us into 'new' offices in April. So 'new' that they don't have air-conditioning. The interior of the office is usually as hot as it is outside (32 Celsius today, according to a colleagues desk clock/thermometer). Sometimes it's hotter, due to the lack of a breeze and the sun heating up the air behind the windows (most of which don't open). The company bought us fans and spent £8,000 on "air-conditioners" that don't. All of which is a good excuse for wearing t-shirts, shorts and sandals to the office, or for working from home.

Playing. I'm involved with both of Ottershaw Players' entries to this year's Woking Drama Festival. I'm doing sound for The Man In The Middle of the Road and stage managing Teechers. We've also had auditions for November's production of The Wind In The Willows - great fun! I think I'd like to play Ratty. But that's also got most lines, so I'm hoping for something smaller. On Monday I had a day at the British All-Winners Drama Festival. I was mentoring one of the competing groups Cytringan Players, so I spent the day helping them get unloaded and directing them to the right shops to buy props and set materials that they needed.

Dredged Up

A trivial conversation at a barbecue yesterday had me recalling a snippet of a singalong-type song from my youth.

I hadn't heard it for, oh, at least 30 years, but the lyrics (to the last verse) came back to me with no problem at all:

Oh, the nauseating witches who put scinitllating stitches in the breeches
Of the boys who put the powder on the noses of the ladies
Of the court of King Caractacus,
Are just passing by.

How does that happen? I'm sure Marcel Proust had something to say on the subject.

I recall that the song was on a Rolf Harris album. I'll have to search it out to see how wide of the mark I am...

Update:

Well, I was close. Apparently the ladies are from the Harem of the Court of King Caractacus. And the Witches were "fascinating" rather than "nauseating". If you're at all bothered, you can read the lyrics here.

No sign of a free MP3 link to the song. Which is a shame 'cos it was a corker!

What Would YOU Do?

I would love to be able to jack in my current job and do something else.

I've worked in the IT industry since 1988 and I'm fed up with it. Partly because I haven't really progressed much. Oh, my salary is handsome enough, but I've been doing more or less the same job for almost 20 years.

Friends and colleagues over this time have moved on to new and exciting challenges every 2 or 3 years - accumulating responsibility or new skills or moving into completely new arenas as opportunities are presented to them.

Somehow, though, those opportunities have passed me by and now I'm sick of doing the job I do.

My main reason for being unable to move is, unfortunately, debt.

For one reason and another, at the time of life that many people have almost paid off their mortgages, I find myself badly in debt and still renting. Don't get me wrong; some of the blame is definitely mine. But through a combination of bad-luck and bad-judgement I find myself wishing, most days, that the National Lottery will provide a way out.

Of course, being in-debt means that I need as much salary as possible, so I stay in my current career, because I know that a change in career will mean a huge drop in income, at least for a few years until I prove my worth in that new job.

So - for now I am unable to contemplate a move to my "dream job". Which is good because, ironically, I don't really know what that perfect job is - but here are my current thoughts on what I'd really like to do with my life:

• Theatre Director.
• Something in Graphic Design - because I really enjoy designing the posters, flyers and programmes for our shows - though my drawing skills are rubbish.
• Film, Video or Sound Editor.

So - unless you fancy offering me a job doing one of these things on my current salary, maybe you'd better tell me YOUR dream job instead?

"Go..."

"...And never darken my towels again" - Groucho Marx.

My Dad got me an Insult-A-Day calendar for Christmas. I thought it was going to be fantastic. A new word each day to use to insult some of my more cerebrally-challenged moog-like colleagues. Words like "twunt", "munger" and "spoon".

Instead it's full of witty epithets from the likes of Groucho, Dorothy Parker, WC Fields and Henry Youngman (who?).

Some of the insults though are crap. Not ineffectual or vapid. Just crap.

The worst I've come across was yesterday's. Not only was it rubbish as an insult, it could also be taken as a huge compliment. Which is a bit bad when you're trying to insult someone. Here it is now:

What can I say about Hilary Clinton? She is as honest as the day is long... in Antarctica!
-- Joan Rivers

Obviously the joke depends on knowing that the days in Antarctica are very short during the southern hemisphere winter. But during the summer, the days are very long indeed. So it doesn't work as an insult. It's rubbish.

You know - thinking about it, I'm quite concerned that I got so worked up about this. But it's got me back into the blogging saddle after a couple of weeks of inaction.

Lately, In Brief

Work.

Bikes.

Sleep.

Habeas.

Food.

That's all!

Dan Brown? Pah!

I've stumbled upon an enromous conspiracy, of global proportions. Check out the evidence:

Moon River.
The Pink Panther.
Peter Gunn.
A Shot In The Dark.

All songs by famed American songwriter, Henry Mancini.

But take the right words from these song titles and you get the following anagram:

'Thrive or Top-Rank, prankish demon.'

This, surely, can only refer to the huge number of cinemas which became Bingo Halls in the 1960s and 1970s.

Obviously, the US tunesmith owned shares in the fledgling Bingo industry and used his string-heavy arrangements to drive audiences away from the movies.

I know I must be onto something, so later this week I'll be flying to LA to talk to Burt Bacharach. He says he knows something, and I need to get the information from him before he talks to the mute, albino orchestrator (Andre Previn).

I'm taking the precaution of putting all I know in a manuscript, safe in a bank vault, in case I don't come back. You'll recognise it by the beige cover with the title in Times New Roman:

The Mancini Code

Pondering

Here are some questions that have been puzzling me this week:

• Why is the weather lovely each day when we're at work, but it pisses with rain at the weekend when we want to go out, cut the grass, hang the washing on the line, etc?
  
  
• Why am I able to get up in time to get to work for an early start (8am), but I always leave too late when I'm working the late shift (from 10am)?
  
  
• Why do window-cleaners put their cards through the door, touting for business, but when you ask them to clean your windows they never show up?
  
  
• Why are recruiment consultants deceitful, two-faced, workshy bastards?

Cor. Luvverly!

While we were staying with Martin and Tracey last weekend, we had lunch at the Globe & Rainbow in Kilndown. Fantastic food. I had liver. I love liver.

It's odd though. Loads of people detest liver. Jon spent most of the meal making gagging noises because he had to sit next to me. But I really like it. The best meal I've ever had was goose liver - on the 87th floor (I think) of the Jinmao Tower, Shanghai. Fantastic.

I also love Marmite. Which is on a lot of peoples' hate list.

But I can't stand various things that most people seem to love:

• Tomatoes.
• Broccoli.
• Coronation Street.

I like spinach, green beans and mange-tout. I can't stand peas. What's that all about?


I don't like scraping the bottom of the barrel. But it seems that's what I'm doing with this post!

Easter Weak End

Four days off work. Yippee!

So why do I feel as knackered now as I did on Thursday? Let's examine the evidence...

Thursday evening: off to Kent to spend the evening with Jon and Martin at the pub quiz. We came 2nd! I drank 3 whole pints of beer (count them) and that's enough to get me pissed nowadays.

Friday: Stayed over at Martin and Tracey's in the very dark and quiet village of Kilndown and spent the day larking about with them, their kids Wills and Hattie, and with Jon & Lin and their new arrival, Emma.

[OK - she's not that new; she's a year old: but it's taken us FAR too long to get down there for a visit.]

Friday night: back in time to watch Sunderland hand the league champonship to Chelsea by holding United to a 0-0 draw. Bloody Mackems!

Saturday: Up early (ish) for a bike ride. 14 miles to Staines and back. But I did stop for an ice-cream at Penton Hook lock. Then back to do my accounts and get showered before The Wife's parents arrived for dinner.

Sunday: Nothing to do. A long lie-in. Spoiled by a support call from work at 6am. Balls! Then lunch at The Castle.

Sunday afternoon: a long drive in the countryside. It's official - I'm now an old man. My trilby and sticky-out ears are on order from Saga.

Monday: Up early (ish) again for another long bike ride. 23 miles this time, to Kingston and back. Walking like John Wayne for the rest of the day. Then round to mater and pater's for a spot of luncheon. Then back home to spend too much time updating the family-tree again.

Today: back to work. Bum!

Confused?

Back in the 1970s (I think it was) Helen Reddy sang:

"I am Woman, hear me roar."

I think she was getting confused with lions.