Why Still Blog?

Well, it looks like I managed to do it: I've kept up this blog for a whole year! Over that time, I've read quite a few books (seemingly, lots of biographies by comedians), I've got into Jazz music in quite a big way (and can't understand how I never heard Charles Mingus before), a whole series of Doctor Who has been and gone, I've watched a few films, been bothered by driving, the World Cup happened and somewhere along the line we found ourselves with a new government and I found myself with a new job. The year seems to have flown past and yet I actually seem to have done more than I imagined.

So, is a blog a worthwhile exercise? When I started this I thought I'd try to do two entries per week and I do seem to have kept up with that. Keeping a blog can certainly be time consuming - and time is a commodity I find increasingly in short supply. I've also found that on occasion I've struggled to find something worthwhile to write about and yet on other occasions I've had more ideas than I knew what to do with. However, it's interesting to read through old entries to see what I was thinking at the time and I can see why many become addicted to their diary keeping. The trick is to keep it up - even if that does involve forcing ones fingers to the keyboard every so often. So maybe I won't write entries as often but I'll certainly keep going.

So here's to the last year and looking forward to 2011 - which, no doubt, I will start with a crippling hangover as ever!

Christmas at Home

Everyone has their own Christmas rituals although in our house, as this tends to be a mix of British and German traditions, it is probably fairly unique - although the British traditions are really just a muddled up version of the German ones (thanks to Prince Albert) with a good dollop of Americana in the mix (thanks to the telly).

One of the differences is that Santa delivers the presents in person on the evening of the 24th. In the past, this has tended to be a family friend (and Raymond never caught on to the fact that Santa would speak in German or Scots depending on where we were at the time) although in the last couple of years it has tended to be me in a Santa outfit and a suitably bass voice - probably resembling the grim reaper more than Saint Nick. As the Santa outfit was packed away somewhere and, irritatingly, I seem to have more of the physique for it these days, I decided that Santa would be involved in a road traffic accident and phone his apologies through to the kids.

Now this must make me sound like a right Ebenezer Scrooge type character and, in all fairness, you would probably be right. In fact, Scrooge is one of those literary characters I really find myself identifying with although not so much from the miserly miserablism but more from his Christmas redemption. I get the same every year. I really can't be bothered with the whole commercial thing, the excess of food, queuing up in the supermarket for a hellish hour at the checkout because the shops are going to be closed for a whole 24 hours and the sheer crapulence of an over-indulged Christmas evening. But, like Scrooge, once the real spirit of Christmas is upon me I do tend to enjoy it - possibly for no other reason than there is enough decent family entertainment for us all to watch together.

There was a good selection on the TV with the orphaned Christmas Top Of The Pops, a Shrek film and the now traditional Doctor Who special, A Christmas Carol, loosely based on Dickins' novella. Dickens' story and Doctor Who do have quite a bit in common as they both involve time travel and the latest incarnation of the Doctor seems to take great delight in messing about with the forth dimension - this is something that the show has tended to shy away from in the past. Of course, it's always difficult to pitch a Christmas Special as there will inevitably be quite a few people watching the show who are not regular viewers so using one of the best known stories in English literature as a basis is a pretty smart move. I think it worked well. It was always going to be more of a fantasy rather then Sci-Fi story but it functioned within it's confines and did, at least, feel "special". We then had Edward Sissorhands on Channel 4 which seemed remarkably in the same vein.

Of course, Christmas does mean that there will be plenty of food and we definitely went for the German side with this by having Goose, Rotkohl and Knödel. All very nice and an improvement on turkey and Brussels sprouts (tasteless dry meat and fart grenades as Michael McIntyre calls them). To top this off we even managed to have two German women arguing in the kitchen whilst pointing large knives at each other. Oh the joys!

So that was Christmas in the Maxwell household. Only 364 shopping days to go. Humbug!

A Christmas Tale

It's very difficult to convince children that, once upon a time, a piece of fruit, some sweeties, a shiny new coin and, maybe, a small wooden toy was all that children of my parents' generation could expect to find in their Christmas stocking on a cold December morning - and that was if they were lucky. In fact, there is one story from my Great Aunt Elsie that brings home the harsh realities of working class family life. She died in 2006 in her 101st year so I am guessing that this tale of woe originates from around 1910. Anyway, she never quite thought of Father Christmas the same again...

When Elsie was 5 or 6 years old there were two beautiful but expensive dolls in the local shop's window. She and her older sister fell for them immediately and asked their father if Father Christmas might give them the dolls for Christmas. He was only a tradesman and didn't have much spare money so asked the shopkeeper if he could reserve the dolls and pay instalments until he had the full amount saved up. The shopkeeper agreed and he made regular payments each week until he had almost paid the entire amount.

Unfortunately, the week before Christmas he lost his job and had no option but to cancel the order for the dolls and to spend the money on rent, groceries and fuel until he could find another job. He didn't know what to tell the girls and fretted about this until Christmas Day.

On Christmas morning he came downstairs to find the two girls in tears. He thought that they were disappointed about not getting the dolls until he saw that the family dog was lying dead in front of the fireplace. He thought quickly and then found an explanation...

He told them Father Christmas did it!

Highway Robbers

I'm actually rather used to the concept of being fleeced by motorway service stations. For that reason I tend only to use them for the car park and the toilets. For the most part, I just find them very expensive but, having actually bought something from one today, I think they are actually trying to kill people.

I've had lots of hassles with windscreen washer fluid lately. Once upon a time, it was possible to buy a bottle of "concentrate" which could be diluted down with water to create a washer fluid that would be protected from freezing down to the desired temperature. Now, the shops selling washer fluid have cottoned on to the fact that the profit margin is much higher if they are selling, for the most part, water. Increasingly, I am finding that the lowest undiluted temperature that washer fluid will work at "undiluted" is -5C. This equates to just 10% ethanol (or similar) to 90% water. This is all well and good but, when I regularly experience temperatures lower than this, it's about as much use as a chocolate teapot (just in reverse).

In fact, it is possible to use the -5C solution in lower temperatures as long as the washer jets are given a regular squirt lest they ice up. Of course, this does mean that you go through washer fluid at a rate of knots. Today I was travelling back up home to Scotland when I ran out of washer. Needless to say, I didn't fancy driving all the way home blinded so I stopped at the service station and spent a shocking £7 for a bottle of their ready mixed "winter wash". I felt somewhat ripped off by this but I wanted to get home and went along with it. To make sure the jets didn't freeze over, once I rejoined the motorway I gave the washers a quick squirt. To my horror, the "winter wash" instantly turned to ice on my windscreen.

What I appear to have bought for my £7 is just blue soapy water. Now, had this been in the West Country I could have just written this off as straight forward highway robbery but this was in Scotland and resulted in me making an emergency stop on the motorway hard shoulder to scrape my screen clean. I've heard of "unfit for purpose" but this is actually plain dangerous and nowhere on the bottle does it actually say what the freezing point is.

I really think something should be done about this but, in the meantime, I have found a solution. I've enhanced the washer solution with a bottle of meths.

Swans

Have you ever wondered what swan tastes like? I must admit, it's not something I've ever seen on sale at the local supermarket (unless LIDL have had it in as a special) but it is something I've considered purely on the basis that I have never been able to work out the point of swans. Just like nettles and midges, they are one of those species of living things that I am normally quite happy to be graced by their absence. If one ever gets anywhere near me they just take the chance to hiss, attack me and generally be obnoxious.

So, let's get this right. Swans are bastards. Some people go fawning over them as if they are some great majestic beast but, if I go to feed the birds at the local pond, swans are the last thing I want to see. I don't mind any of the other birds. I like ducks. Ducks are happy amusing creatures with a class A sarcastic laugh if anyone falls in the water. I can even tolerate the occasional pigeon or seagull which seem to cause vexing to many others. But swans are just bad-tempered, hulking, great, evil-minded beasts of the highest order.

So why are swans so lauded? Some say they are beautiful but this is also said of super-models. As far as I can tell they are both peculiar looking elongated birds of dubious mental capacity. They seem to be a common feature of popular culture. The Ugly Duckling is a fine example but then I suppose most of Hans Christian Andersen's stories have a miserable ending. They are a major feature of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake which is some justification, but then there is no reason for them to exist in real life just to feature in classical fantasy and I'd personally find a unicorn or troll more entertaining in the flesh.

So there we have it: Swans - avoid!

Emoticons

I found another great quotation from Oscar Wilde:

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit

Except I've amended it slightly. Did you see what I did? Yes, I added a smiley, because in this great information age of the Internet NO-ONE GETS BLOODY IRONY! When did this happen? From the great Wilde; through Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, PG Wodehouse and even to modern writers like Terry Pratchett, I've never seen them have to add an emoticon to get their meaning across and yet, once on the internet, everyone seems to need canned laughter to get the joke.

I've had some great ones lately. I received an emailed response of "Are you serious?" when I suggested that if we get snowed into the office we could eat the managers as no-one would notice the difference. I had howls of protest from a mad cat woman after I suggested that her plan to use environmentally approved earth in her cat's litter tray would be a great way of encouraging it to crap in her neighbour's garden. I even received a quizzical response from a right wing Euro-sceptic after I pointed out that they must be glad Gordon Brown kept us out of the Euro lest our economy be wrecked.

I appreciate a good facetious comment and yet it appears that if they are used by a politician, public figure or even a comedian (I see Frankie Boyle is in trouble again) it is enough to end a career. Well, I've had enough. I'm not going to start using emoticons - the rest of the world can get a sense of humour.

Weather or Not

"Oh blame it on the weatherman!" as Irish all-girl pop combo B*witched once sang. That might have been the refrain from the Scottish Transport Minister on Monday following the entire country going to Hell when it snowed. In fact, he apologised for the mess and took responsibility - which makes for a refreshing change from a politician. It appears that they took their advice from the wrong weathermen; although the BBC did forecast snow - just not as much as materialised.

I've always said that I regard the weather forecast with the same snide distain that I reserve for the astrology columns. In fact, this isn't quite true. The main amusement factor of astrology is the fact that one twelfth of the population will have the same vague nonsense happen to them. It's easy to poke fun at and, if you read some papers' "stars", you will find that the people writing them are taking the piss as well.

The thing with meteorology is that it is based on good solid science and they are very good at telling you exactly why the past day's weather happened but, as a predictive science, it suffers from the same hit and miss chance of any chaotic system - and the further ahead it gets, the worse it is at predicting things. What happened on Monday is that the line between a sleety shower, a fine dusting of snow and a full blown blizzard is a very fine one. In terms of coping with this, it would seem to be a good idea to plan for the worst but I can imagine that many people would get fed up very quickly if the police told everyone to stay at home at all cost and then have two or three snowflakes to show for their effort.

Apart from complaining that our politicians and council services should be able to counteract nature in some sort of Canute like act, the other thing I have heard people muttering is "Whatever happened to global warming" in the kind of Daily Mail reading smugness that deserves a solid punch on the nose. By this, they mean climate change and, if they had ever bothered to read up on the subject (which is both fascinating and densely complex), they would have found out that crappy cold Winters for the UK is EXACTLY the sort of thing their climate models have been predicting. Of course, one set of weather doesn't make a climate but it's not exactly unexpected either.

I suppose the lesson is: if you are a scientist, you can't win.

It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time...

Back in the beginning of November I bought some Winter Tyres for my Yaris. It was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time. I was very happy with how they improved the car's handling and, if we did get heavy snow, I would be well prepared for it. Now we have had heavy snow and I can make some sort of comparison as to how they actually behave on ice and snow. According to Continental:

Winter tyres are made from specially developed compound with more natural rubber so they don’t harden when it’s cold, which means increased grip on the road and greater safety

and

The innovative honeycomb structure of this tyre creates more gripping edges for outstanding traction on snow and excellent cornering performance!

There's not really much real technical detail there and I have been trying to fathom the laws pf physics that actually enable these things to work. I have come to the conclusion that they actually work by Voodoo. It's really quite surreal that what looks like a treacherous piece of snow covered road can be traversed as if it is just some slightly bumpy bit of dirt track - to be honest, I don't entirely trust it but it's rather satisfying to be able to drive around quite normally whilst everyone else is messing around with snow shovels and shoves to the rear to get moving.

In fact, I was so impressed with the tyres' performance in cool dry conditions that I bought a set for my wife's car. I had pre-ordered them for the 1st December so I could stick them on to next month's credit card bill - not the brightest of ideas as it turned out - but it did give me opportunity to do a direct comparison between one of ADAC's most highly recommended Summer tyres with their most highly recommended Winter tyres. In fact, it's hard to compare them in the snow because the Winter tyres worked and the Summer ones didn't. Once on to cleared road the Summer Tyres (Michelin Primacy HPs) actually worked reasonably well, particularly when warmed up, but it is still noticeable how much better the Winter Tyres handle in less extreme conditions. Also, if anything, the Winter Tyres felt smoother and quieter - they have come a long way from the knobbly Nordic tyres that I've used in the past.

I think anyone who isn't sold on the concept of seasonal tyres really needs to experience them first hand to realise that the difference is huge. Some credit has to go to Kwik Fit for making the effort of promoting these but it's rather nice that one of my whims that "seemed like a good idea at the time" actually was.

Here's one I made earlier...

When winter arrives it's always best to follow that old Scout motto and "Be prepared", whether this is bags of grit, ice scrapers for the car or snow shovels, by the time cold weather arrives it's too late - all the shops will rapidly sell out. Heavy snow has arrived particularly early this year and, whilst I had sorted most things, one thing I hadn't bought was a sledge for the kids. All the shops have sold out - even though what seems to pass for a sledge is actually a cheap bit of plastic. Anyway, ever the enterprising one, I looked online and found this article in the times from a couple of years ago How to build a super sledge.

They reckon on a cost of £15 to build it and the instructions are actually quite straight forward - they are definitely aimed at the IKEA novice rather than the skilled craftsman. However, I was wondering whether it was possible to do this for significantly less. Whenever I do some sort of DIYery I end up with odd bits left over - the odd plank of wood here, a bag of screws there - and I inevitably build up an array of tools. So, could I build this with the junk in my shed?

First of all the materials:

2 x 1.8 metre lengths 144 x 28mm pine. I had some barge-boards left over from doing a repair to the shed a few years ago. They are a little tatty but, handily, they are already weather treated.

2 x approximately 380mm length 50mm x 25mm pine. I have no idea what it was bought for but I do have a suitable length.

1 x 2metre strip of aluminium 20mm x 2mm. Would an old curtain rail suffice?

1 x 1.5 metre strong, brightly coloured rope. ...or an old pair of boot laces?

24 x 5mm x 80mm countersunk screws. Various with slot and philips heads.

48 x 5mm x 25mm countersunk screws. All sorts - well we'll see.

Cutting the wood was actually a doddle. Whoever wrote the article is as much of a botcher as I am and it's all rather nicely in terms of "cut a big piece of wood into equal pieces" rather than precision measuring. They have also used metric measures which make the sums that much easier. The only thing I didn't quite manage to complete was the aluminium rail. I think this is more for protection as it slides along quite nicely on its own. I'll have to see if I can find something more suitable.

I did notice that this chap has given it a go. It looks a bit posher than mine but then I did achieve this for a grand cost of nothing. Now I'll just have to shove one of the kids down a hill on the contraption to try it out. If it goes well I might be tempted to varnish it up.

Singers and Songwriters

I've been listening to three compilation albums by singer-songwriters which I bought using a works thank-you voucher for actions above and beyond the call of bedtime. The ones I went for were by Joni Mitchell, Billy Bragg and Bob Dylan.

Joni Mitchell's Hits was released in 1996 along with a companion album, Misses, which contained her worthy but less well known tunes. I think the odd thing about Hits is that I didn't know as many of her songs as I thought I did. Aside from Both Sides Now, Big Yellow Taxi and River, quite a few of the songs sound vaguely familiar without being the instantly recognisable "hits" of the title. However, that's not to say that they aren't worthy of being here and all of the songs are beautifully performed even compared to fantastic covers by the likes of Judy Collins.

Must I Paint You a Picture? is described as "The Essential Billy Bragg" although, at 40 tracks, this is actually quite an in-depth introduction to Bragg's works up to 2003. I was quite familiar with his early albums - mainly because I bought a book called Back To Basics when I was learning guitar in the mid-1980s. The problem with the book was that I didn't have much trouble with the guitar bits (I was actually quite good) but I couldn't sing to save my life. In fact, Bragg's voice isn't what I would really describe as "beautiful", in the way I would with Joni Mitchell's, but it is brash, confident and strident. He uses his Essex accent unashamedly and belts the tunes out in a manner that would be more at home on the football terrace than the local folk club and this actually works to his favour. Of the three albums I bought, this is the one that I really wanted (and could) make out the lyrical content and it's well worth listening to.



The songs vary between tales of unrequited love, Socialist anthems and protest songs. It kicks off with New England which was wonderfully covered by Kirsty McColl and contains one of my favourite ever daft lyrics: "I saw two shooting stars last night /I wished on them but they were only satellites/Is it wrong to wish on space hardware /I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care". The first disk continues with such classics as Between the Wars, Levi Stubbs' Tears and Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards. The second side starts with Sexuality, one of his best known songs, but then strays into (for me) unfamiliar territory; but it's a journey worth taking - the lyrical content is as strong as anything he did in the 1980s and the tunes and production values get progressively stronger; presumably he could afford more studio time as he went on. Brickbat and Boy Done Good are standout tracks as well as the album closer: Take Down the Union Jack - which is Bragg's lament of fallen empires and a call for English independence. He sounded angrier in the 1980s as he opposed Thatcher's government but given the antics of our current crowd he is a voice worth hearing again.

Bob Dylan is one of those oddities: a great songwriter who I have never rated as a singer buy whose style several generations have chosen to copy. I usually don't like cover versions as much as the originals but with Dylan the opposite seems true. The Essential Bob Dylan covers Bob's career from the early 60s through to 2000 but with a concentration on the 1960s when he was at his song writing peak. There isn't anything from his first album as this was mainly arrangements of traditional tunes which have been done better by others such as House of the Rising Sun (The Animals) and In My Time Of Dying (Led Zeppelin). Instead it kicks off with the seminal Blowing In The Wind (Peter, Paul and Mary) and includes most of his famous tunes such as The Times They Are a-Changin' (Simon and Garfunkel), Mr. Tambourine Man (The Byrds), It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Van Morrison), All Along the Watchtower (The Jimi Hendrix Experience), The Mighty Quinn (Manfred Mann), Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Eric Clapton) and Subterranean Homesick Blues which must have one of the most influential videos of all time.

The second disk contains his later work including a couple of tracks from Blood on the Tracks, the epic Hurricane and the achingly beautiful Blind Willie McTell - a track that Dylan does wonderfully and which inexplicably lay in a cupboard unreleased for nearly ten years. This later work is much more professionally produced but maybe lacks the bite of his earlier compositions. It's still worth listening to and although my previous comments may sound like I don't like Dylan, I do - but I rate him primarily as a songwriter. This album gives a great introduction to his work and provides the moment of birth for many great tunes which were to meet their maturity with other artists. It's essential listening to anyone with an interest in the music of the 20th Century.

Mementos

Football memorabilia is big business. From replica kits and scarves, through signed shirts and footballs, all the way up to the actual medals and caps that the players received; football mementos can trade for thousands of pounds. The problem is that most of these have no personal relevance for those buying them unless, of course, they actually met the players involved. There is one exception to this: something tangible that can be kept as a personal memory and which says that "I was there" - the humble football programme.

I've always tended to go to the extra expense of buying the match programme. Mostly they are full of the manager's meaningless drivel (probably ghost-written), a few news features, a page on the day's opposition, some stats, the team list and an advert for the local Volkswagen dealership; but they are there: frozen in time and a reminder of an afternoon spent on the terraces and one which will stay with you much longer than the weak cup of tea and indigestible mystery-meat pie. A case in point was a programme I picked up on 30th April 1988 for the Newport County vs. Tranmere Rovers match. Why should a Forth Division match from 22 years ago suddenly come to my attention? Well, for no other reason than the fact I just found the programme in a box of junk.

As far as important fixtures go it really doesn't feature very highly. I have been to matches where major trophies were won or futures secured but this match was between a mid-table Tranmere and a Newport County side who were destined for relegation from the league and would have ceased trading altogether within a year. It was a sad end for a club who were founder members of the League's Third Division and who had even made it to the quarter-finals of the European Cup Winner's Cup on the back of a Welsh Cup victory. The only reason I went to this match was that I was living in Cardiff at the time and my flatmate noticed that Tranmere were playing and that I "used to live somewhere near that neck of the woods". So, we push started his old Vauxhall Viva and made our way over.

The match itself wasn't that memorable. Tranmere won 3-0 but they had little to play for with a comfortable mid-table position and the Newport players had only pride and the hope of an attractive transfer offer to play for. In fact, due to Newport's perilous financial position, they had had to sell or release most of their first team regulars and were left with mainly journeymen or young hopefuls with a chance of playing senior football and trying to impress passing scouts from more financially secure clubs. I'd like to think they would go on to greater and grander things. I've had a look up based on the team sheet on the programme and the results are mixed and sometimes surprising. I'm assuming this was the team fielded but there may have been changes.

I couldn't find any details on Kevin Hamer, Glynne Millett, Robbie Taylor, Sean Bennett, Norman Parselle or Anthony Hopkins - I would hope that they were successful in what ever they went on to. David Abruzzese would end up playing with Welsh sides Merthyr Tydfil and Barry Town as did Richard Jones after a spell with Hereford. Richard Thompson would play for a variety of part-timers before becoming the long time and reasonably successful manager of Yate Town. Captain Steve Tupling would have some success with Hartlepool before becoming a teacher in the North-East. Andy Thackeray would go on to regular football at Wrexham and Rochdale. Goalkeeper Paul Bradshaw was one of the more experienced players and was coming to the end of his career but had been a regular at Wolves in the late 70s and early 80s winning the League Cup with them. Darren Peacock was the one big success of this makeshift Newport side. He would move on to QPR where he was picked up by Kevin Keegan's Newcastle and became a regular central defender in his successful mid-90s side (yes - it surprised me that Keegan had defenders in that team).

This Tranmere side had only narrowly escaped a similar fate to Newport in the previous season - in fact I had been at Prenton Park when they scored a vital goal against Exeter to avoid dropping out of the league. The 1987/88 season had seen them hover in mid-table but they had gained quite a few friends nationally following the leagues centenary tournament at Wembley and had a cult following due to über-fans and college favourites Half Man Half Biscuit. The team sheet has quite a few familiar names in it: Eric Nixon, Dave Higgins, Mark McCarrick, Dave Martindale, Ronnie Moore, Steve Vickers, John Morrissey, Jimmy Harvey, Jim Steel, Ian Muir, Steve Mungall, Eddie Murray, Gary Williams. At least half those names seem very familiar and in the next few years they would climb to the top of what was, by then, called Division One with the backbone of that side and the addition of some handy international players in the form of John Aldridge (himself a former Newport player) and Pat Nevin.

Time moves on and Tranmere are currently mid-table in League One (the old Division Three) although maybe starting to pull things together despite their cash-strapped state. Newport County went bankrupt in 1989 and a phoenix club was founded in the lowly Hellenic league. They have gradually climbed their way through the leagues and are currently 4th in the Conference - two divisions below Tranmere. It's a long and slow climb back from bankruptcy but, if they keep progressing, the Newport vs. Tranmere match may be in the programme's fixture list again.

The College Boy, The Angry Man and The Duke

I've made a few more Jazz purchases recently. For the most part these are recordings that piqued my interest from other CDs I've bought. As a result I've gone for Dave Brubeck's Time Further Out, Charles Mingus' The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, and a collection of Duke Ellington's works.

Time Further Out is a "sort of" sequel to Brubeck's Time Out album and contains the same experiments in weird time signatures. In fact, it's probably more experimental than the first album but that doesn't mean it is any less accessible. In fact it has two very familiar tunes in Kathy's Waltz and Unsquare Dance - one of those tunes that absolutely everyone knows: you may not recognise the title but you do know the tune... just believe me, you do. Aside from those there are various compositions which can be seen as a follow on to the earlier album including two in 5/4 time, Far More Blue and Far More Drums, which are like variations on a theme of Take Five.



The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is regarded as one of Mingus' masterpieces. I didn't find it to be as instantly catchy as Pithecanthropus Erectus or Mingus Ah Um but it's worth sticking with. After a couple of listens it becomes much less of a sprawling mess and works better as a whole. It's not background music, mind, and needs to be heard as a single dance suite - a jazz ballet, possibly. Also, the sleeve notes are extensive and contain both Mingus' thoughts and interpretations from his psychotherapist - of all people. He was known as The Angry Man of Jazz and sounded a complete psychopath by all accounts - he received a suspended sentence for punching trombonist Jimmy Knepper at the time this album was recorded. I wonder if the recording was intended as therapy?

The Final CD was The Essential Duke Ellington. This is part of Sony music's "Essentials" series which are remastered releases offering a considered selection of an artists entire career. I was actually torn between this and the recording of the classic Newport concert but I think this offers a better overall picture of his recordings from the 1920s through to 1960 with a concentration of the early Jazz of the 20s and 30s. The problem with recordings this old is that the old acetates and 78rpm records are very fragile and have usually degraded to some point. This does mean that some of the original sound will, inevitably, be lost but nowhere on this collection does background noise interfere with the music - although a couple of tracks sound like they are composites from several sources. The result is a historical record of one of America's greatest 20th Century composers. I have heard quite a few of these songs performed by other artists so it's interesting to hear the originals. Some songs are new to me but this does backfill quite a few holes in my knowledge of Jazz.

The Time Machine

I was looking for HG Wells' The First Men in the Moon after watching the Mark Gatiss adaptation on BBC Four. It wasn't on the shelf at my local library but I did find The Time Machine, a book which I first read when I was about eight years old. I thought it would be worth another read with older eyes. I suppose the first thing that surprised me is how slight a volume it actually was. When I read it at eight years old it seemed like a weighty tome but the version from the library was a slim 115 pages long. The other interesting thing is to compare it to the film versions.

There have been two major film adaptations of The Time Machine. One in 1960 with Rod Taylor in the lead and the second in 2002 starring Guy Pearce. Having re-read the book it's interesting how close to the original text the 1960 film was - although with some interesting embellishments. The 2002 remake wasn't bad either, and was actually directed by HG Wells great-grandson, but it did take some surprising liberties with the original - rather like George Pal did with his 1953 War of the Worlds film - maybe he learnt that lesson when he came to direct The Time Machine?

As for the book, it's interesting how Wells tries to use scientific ideas in his story. He makes reference to four dimensional time and space some ten years before Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity, but his concept of the lifespan and destiny of the sun still seems to be bedded to Lord Kelvin's predictions of a chemical furnace. They would need Einstein's theories to show how much potential energy the Sun really has at its disposal. However, the one scientific theory that pervades the book is that of evolution, bonded with Wells' own interest in socialist politics producing a horrific welding of the two. The chapters are nicely paced and quite episodic. I'm not sure whether this was to allow for magazine publication in the manner of Charles Dickens' major works but it frames each development of the plot well. I seem to recall that I struggled with the Victorian phrases when I first read this but it's actually fairly straight forward language. Maybe I've just read more Victorian literature since then.

I said that the 1960 film had some embellishments and these actually improve the story to my mind. The first, and most obvious, is that they actually give the Time Traveller a name: George. This is later revealed to be "H George Wells" which I thought was a nice touch. The second embellishment is that, as he travels forwards from the 19th century, we see the two world wars and a predicted third (in 1966 - possibly a warning from the film's producers). This hindsight adds to the believability of Well's steam-punk contraption. The film does miss out on the book's journey to the end of the world but the final additional touch is that, after the Time Traveller heads off back into the future, one of his friends notices that he has taken three books with him. We are not told which three books these are but it leaves the film on a rather philosophical note compared to the book.

Which three books would you have taken? If it was Desert Island Disks it would have been The Bible, The Complete Works of Shakespeare and AN Other. I'm wondering if this may have been what the film's producers had in mind; but if it was Wells himself I suspect that he would have taken Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, Karl Marx's Das Kapital and Thomas More's Utopia - the ideal society that is no place.

Thin Lizzy

I've never been much in the habit of replacing old vinyl recordings with CD unless I have to - it just seems like an unnecessary expense although I'm often quite surprised by how much the old LPs have degraded when listening to a newly remastered disk. However, this means that there are large swathes of music in my collection that I rarely listen to as I can't play records in the car. A case in point is Thin Lizzy - a band I really liked and listened to regularly - of which I have one solitary CD, Jailbreak, which I bought because the old album was broken. This changed a fortnight ago when I noticed that their first 3 albums had been re-released - not just in a remastered form but a vastly expanded one with additional tracks and extra material.

Lizzy were probably best known as a hard rock act with the success of Jailbreak and subsequent albums. However, that was their sixth album and their early career is often overlooked. Their initial sound was inspired in a large part by late 1960s power trios such as Cream and, particularly, The Jimi Hendrix Experience. However, this was not the whole story and there is a great influence from Phil Lynott's love of Irish Folk, Celtic Mythology and a general Joycean romanticism of life in working class Dublin. The mix is both intriguing and unique. Their debut album, Thin Lizzy, is a case in point although the influences had yet to meld together; hence we get the very Hendrix influenced Ray-Gun, the more Cream-like Return of the Farmer's Son and the folksy Éire. Only on the closing track, Remembering Pt. 1, do we really hear the whole thing come together into something that might be called Lizzy-esque. The additional tracks on the new CD include the "New Day" EP which I had never heard before: Remembering Pt. 2 and Things Ain't Workin' Out Down at the Farm are probably the most memorable of these. Additionally, there are four tracks which were overdubbed in the late 1970s by their then lead guitarists: Gary Moore and Midge Ure.

I was never that bothered with Lizzy's second album, Shades of a Blue Orphanage, but their third album, Vagabonds of the Western World, is a real surprise classic and the re-released version has lots of worthwhile extras. This was the album where their rock and Irish influences really melded into a coherent whole. Mama Nature Said, The Rocker, Vagabonds of the Western World, Little Girl in Bloom and A Song for While I'm Away are all worthy of a wider audience on their own but it is the bonus material which really stands out here. I've never been able to get a copy of these tracks before and have only ever had them as a taped version of a German-only released EP. Here I Go Again is a laid-back folky-blues, Cruising in the Lizzymobile is a daft funky song whereas Little Darling and Sitamoia are out and out rockers. Sitamoia, in particular, could have been a big hit in its own right; it's very Celtic influenced - somewhat like Emerald from Jailbreak: the track which provided the blueprint for Iron Maiden's twin guitar sound. The album finishes with the single version of Whiskey in the Jar which was a top 10 hit in the UK although disliked by the band - in fairness it was more of a B-side as it is a rocked up version of a traditional Irish drinking song. The second disk on the Vagabonds re-release contains recordings made for the BBC: a mix of John Peel and Bob Harris sessions and live performances for a Radio One concert.



Feeling inspired by these two albums (and needing another disk to fill out the order) I bought Lizzy's Greatest Hits album which was released in 2004. This is actually a very comprehensive collection of Lizzy's more commercial material but still misses some notable tracks from their earlier albums. In fact only The Rocker is featured from the first three albums and the Johnny the Fox album is only represented by Don't Believe a Word. This does mean that some really outstanding tracks are missed such as For Those Who Love to Live from Fighting, Sha La La from Nightlife and most of the Johnny album. Still, they make a good crack of the rest with a brilliant live version of Emerald (see the video above) but it is noticeable that the Irish influences drop off as time progresses until the tracks from the final Thunder and Lightning album are totally Metalled-out. They aren't bad tracks by any means but they do lose their distinctive Irish feel. However, I thought the inclusion of Black Rose from the album of the same title was a nice touch and shows the combination of Irish and Rock traditions perfectly.

It's almost 25 years since Phil Lynott died so it's nice to see that such a unique performer hasn't been forgotten. I'm hoping that they will do justice to the later albums next year.

Winter Tyres

I bought new tyres for my Yaris last week and, for the first time in years, I've gone for a set of Winter tyres. I've bought them before for our bigger cars when we have driven to Germany for Christmas (it's sort-of, but not actually, a legal requirement there). The last time I had them for a small car was on an old Mk2 Golf which ended up as shredded rubber when we were late for the ferry terminal in the Netherlands. I've needed to get new tyres for a while as the handling has felt increasingly tetchy but, as the tread depth has remained perfectly legal, I just kept putting off the decision.

I finally made the effort of buying them after I had to brake hard when a young man stepped out in front of the car in Airdrie. I stopped in time - although the ABS was thundering through my right foot. With my heart trying to exit though my chest for a good half hour afterwards, I checked out the local Kwik Fit for tyres and was surprised to see that they were stocking Continental TS800 Winter tyres in my size. These are actually meant for any cold weather - not just snow and ice - and the difference they have made in handling is like night and day. Cornering, acceleration and braking are all very assured, it feels very stable and sure footed at speed, and when a grouse ran in front of the car I came to a smooth halt with just a couple of minor ABS clicks. So, no-brainer then: Winter tyres are better. Well, yes - but it's not that straight forward.

During last Winter's heavy snow I didn't have any problems driving on it, but since then the Continental EcoContact3 tyres have become quite worn (down to 3mm) and the Goodyear GT2 tyres, although still with lots of tread, have started to perish with age (and I suspect they were a piece of rubbish 6 years ago when they were new). Had I simply swapped the tyres for a new set of quality all-weather tyres (Michelin and Continental are my usual favourites) I suspect that the handling would have been equally improved merely by having some decent new rubber.

That's not to say that the Winter tyres are not worth it. I have to drive to work over some variable quality roads including the A801 Avon Gorge: a laughably poor section of A road consisting of a 15% hill with a sharp right angled bend. It scares the Hell out of me in the best of weather so what it's like when there's a bit of snow and ice doesn't bare thinking about. But Winter tyres do have their downside. Apart from having to change them over in the spring, they are typically noisier, have higher rolling resistance and wear faster than standard tyres. In terms of noise, I haven't noticed much difference - if anything it seems quieter. That's not to say that they are silent as the Yaris isn't exactly the quietest of interiors at the best of times (I usually have the CD player on loud enough not to notice) but there isn't anything new noise-wise that is now bothering me.

In terms of rolling resistance, I've based this on my journey to work. This is a mixture of A and B roads, a stretch of motorway and some urban roads with roundabouts but not much in the way of stop-start traffic. Typically, I get mid 50s mpg but the biggest factor is seasonal as the consumption can vary as much as 20% between mid-summer and mid-winter. The last full tank with the old tyres measured just over 54 mpg. With the new tyres I just about got 53mpg. It's not much difference but it does mean it costs slightly more to run. Of course, this is not a strictly scientific test - the weather conditions were worse with the new tyres and I filled the car with ASDA fuel this time rather than Shell (do you believe their marketing?), so it's possible that the old tyres would have returned the same in the conditions I tested them in.

In terms of tyre wear, I won't be able to tell until the spring when they have had a bit of use. It does, however, present the other cost which is whether to get the tyres changed over or to invest in a second set of rims and swap the wheels myself. At the moment, the Winter tyres are on the original alloys and I don't mind having a set of steel wheels in their place. The only problem is that the conventional wisdom is to use steel wheels on the Winter tyres and alloys on the Summer. Of course, I could always go for some cheap (and not as tatty) alloys but that is another expense in itself. If I just get the tyres swapped over it would cost about £40 including balancing at the local fitters - so £80 per year to change in Spring and Autumn. It's not an insubstantial cost but it is good value for the additional safety it provides.

Overall, I'd say I was very happy with the Winter tyres and it is worth going for if you can afford the extra expense. If we do get heavy snow, the cost will be recouped immediately.

Graphic Novels

I've recently finished reading Neil Gaiman's Stardust. It's a fantasy story which was deliberately written in a pre-Tolkein style more reminiscent of Victorian fantasy literature with huge dollops of Gainman's humour and social satire. It's very enjoyable and there was a film version a couple of years ago which was just as much fun. It's only the second Gaiman book I've read, following Good Omens which he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett. I really enjoyed that one as well which raises the question of why I haven't read more Gaiman; and the answer is that most of his stories are graphic novels.

Graphic novels, and the greater comic book genre in general, is one that I've never been able to get to grips with. It's not that I don't regard them as worthy of reading - far from it; I've always found the genre to be intriguing and of high artistic merit. It's just that it strikes me as a very disjointed way of reading a story. I'm happy enough when it's an illustrated novel with pictures interspersed with narrative text but when it gets down to individual frames with speech and thought bubbles I start to lose the plot.

I have had a try at graphic novels. A friend lent me a couple and I was very taken with one of them, Watchmen, which falls into the alternate history genre. I have also tried a couple from the library - one of which was a graphic biography of Friedrich Nietzsche! However, I still find the same problem in that I can read through a whole chapter, put the book down and find I have no idea of what has just gone on.

It's a pity because there are graphic novels I would like to read, such as Gainman's The Sandman and Art Spiegelman's Maus as well as whole swathes of works by Frank Miller and Alan Moore. Really, I should just raid the library's graphic novel section and dive in as, like any other art form, the conventions and techniques need to be learnt and appreciated to actually get the most out of the genre.

However, I may be my own worst enemy. I've been trying to encourage my oldest son to try and read a biography to little avail and I think his resistance to that is the same as my resistance to graphic novels.

Burke and Hare

Last night, we went to see Simon Pegg's latest movie outing: Burke and Hare. This is a black comedy based around the notorious 19th Century Edinburgh serial killers who bumped off their victims to supply cadavers for the capital's anatomists. I thought it was very funny and it really appealed to my sense of the macabre but, judging from on-line reviews, I seem to be in a minority on this. I'm wondering if they actually saw the same film as me?

Black comedy works best when the subject matter is really beyond the scope of polite conversation - let alone joking. The murders committed by Burke and Hare are really up there, although I suspect that a comedy about the Yorkshire Ripper is still a good few years away. However, in Burke and Hare much of the humour is actually physical and slapstick in nature, rather than being simply morbid, and this is surprisingly effective. The other thing that works well is portraying Burke and Hare as likeable chancers rather then the evil monsters that they really were - this deflects the real blame on to the anatomists who were more than happy to pay for the bodies without asking any questions of where they came from. It makes a good point of their hypocrisy and the fact that Burke alone took the sole responsibility for the whole affair.

If I would have one complaint about the film it is the lack of Scottish actors. None of the leads were Scottish and of the supporting cast only David Hayman and Ronnie Corbett were from Scotland with a few familiar faces from BBC Scotland comedies in cameo roles - including a brilliant turn from Tom Urie as one of the victims. Burke and Hare were actually Irish immigrants but judging from many scenes you would think that the whole film is set in Ireland.

So, why the bad reviews? Maybe modern audiences are too familiar with brutal gore-fests like the Saw series to appreciate the physical side of the humour? Possibly, they were expecting something along the lines of TV black comedies like Dexter or Six Feet Under? Maybe if it doesn't come in as a 4 hour 3-D spectacular they do not regard it as cinema fodder - in fairness I do think this film would work just as well on DVD. I'm not sure, but the cinema in Stirling was quite full for a miserable Wednesday night and the audience seemed to have a good chuckle all the way though. Anyway, I liked it, so sod them.

Tritanopia

The motoring journalist, Quentin Wilson, once advised anyone wanting to chose the colour of a car to take a woman along as "men have the colour vision of vampire bats." He may well have a point as colour blindness is far more common in men than women. Certainly, I have always struggled with colours but, with me, it doesn't seem to be the standard red-green phenomenon that causes the colour deficient to become flummoxed by Ishihara tests.

The problem I have is generally concerned with telling blue and green apart. I've always been aware of this. It caused me problems when studying inorganic chemistry at school but it rather came to a head when I was at university and couldn't, for the life of me, tell the colours on electronic resistors apart. Green and blue looked the same, as did red and violet. Since then I've been bothered with colour coded charts and, from a distance, a green traffic light looks like a police or ambulance light to me (except it isn't flashing) but I've never actually been tested for this - the Ishihara tests at the opticians only test for red-green colour blindness. However, the condition does actually have a name: tritanopia; but I've always questioned whether I actually have this or whether I just have typically male "vampire bat" vision.

A few months ago, I was talking to my uncle about his time in the Royal Air Force. He served during the Malayan Emergency of the 1950's and I knew he suffered from colour blindness which does limit the roles available in the Air Force. However, when I asked him about this he said that he was fine with red-green but always confused blue and green - the same as me. This does indicate to me that there could be a hereditary role at play and, in fact, it is linked to a Chromosome 7 abnormality. Interestingly, I also have a Kell positive blood group which is also Chromosome 7 linked but I suspect this is merely coincidence.

I have asked myself whether I do see the full spectrum and whether anything is missing. This does rather invoke the question of qualia: the way things appear to us. The problem with this is that I don't go around thinking "ooh, everything looks weird" as everything looks exactly like it always has. Just occasionally, I do notice that people can see clearly things that I can't (or at least struggle with) like my university lecturer who thought I was being a bit vacant with the resistors. Recently, I have been trying some experiments on myself and some of the results are a bit odd.

The first thing I tried out was seeing if I could make out all the colours of the spectrum through a prism. I certainly can't make out all the colours of the rainbow but I do think this is a rather artificial concept. When Isaac Newton originally came up with his spectrum he chose five colours: red, yellow, green, blue and violet. He added orange and indigo to make it match the seven notes of a musical scale although there is no scientific equivalence between music and colour. Personally, I have no idea what indigo is meant to be, but there is some sense to having seven spectral colours. The eye has three colour receptors, or cones, peaking at wavelengths roughly equating to blue, green and red (although actually peaking around orange). This would make a more scientifically sensible rainbow as: red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, violet. In fact it was this realisation that led James Clerk Maxwell (he of the Maxwell's Daemon) to develop the first colour photograph. As for me, I can see clearly red, orange, yellow and green and then I get a bit lost. I can certainly see something, faintly, after that; which I suppose must be blue or violet. But does this mean I am actually tritanopic?

The next effect I have noticed is with rainbows. If I glance at one I can see clearly red through green but if I look more closely I can definitely make out the same faint glow beyond the green as I experience with the prism. However, what I have noticed is that if I cover one eye, this glow disappears. It doesn't matter which eye either. For some reason, I appear to have marginally better colour perception with binocular vision than with either eye separately. I'm struggling to think of a rational reason for this - the only thing I can think of is that I am making use of peripheral vision.

The cones, which help us perceive colour, are concentrated in the centre of the eye whereas the rods, which are more sensitive and help us see at night and detect motion, are very much reduced in the centre of the eye but more concentrated elsewhere - this is why it helps to look out of the side of the eye when trying to locate star clusters like the Pleiades. The rods are also most sensitive to light at a spectrum somewhere between the green and blue cones. If I am actually lacking in the blue cones, I am wondering if my brain has adapted to use information from the rods to increase the perception of colour? The problem with that is the medical consensus is that rods play no role in colour vision. For a normal trichromat there is no need for rods to be used, but for the tritanopic it could be a useful coping strategy and it does seem to be noted that tritanopia causes less day to day problems than other forms of colour blindness.

Out of interest, someone has altered the Sony advert where they blow up a Glasgow tower block with paint (it was blown up with dynamite a few weeks later) The first is with normal colour, the second is meant to reproduce tritanopic vision:





The odd thing is that the second video does look somewhat different - mainly it doesn't look as bright to me - but the colours I think I can see are actually red and blue. I don't know how this actually appears to someone with normal vision. I owned a TV years ago which had faulty colour in a similar manner but I didn't notice this. A girl-friend pointed it out to me and I could tell that the replacement TV set had a better picture. Irritatingly, I had been paying for a colour TV licence.

I suppose the answer would be to get some sort of test but the high street opticians generally only administer Ishihara tests if anything at all. However, I would be interested to know if anyone else experiences better colour perception with binocular vision.

Mellotron

I've always been fascinated by electronic music - just the sheer otherworldliness of it - but I haven't always been quite aware of the different instruments involved. However, there is one electronic instrument that I could listen to again and again; and that is the Mellotron. At first it can be mistaken for a rather stilted string section or a mysterious ethereal choir but it has, above all, a warm dreamlike quality that is quite unlike anything else.

The peak of popularity for the Mellotron was 1970s prog-rock. It's probably given it a rather tainted reputation as a result, which is a pity as some of that prog-rock was actually rather good - it's just a pity that so many of the musicians involved disappeared up their own backsides. Jean Michel Jarre described the Mellotron as the "Stradivarius of electronic music" and, just like a finely manufactured violin, in the right hands it is heavenly. These are five of my favourite Mellotron performances in purely chronological order:

The Beatles : Strawberry Fields Forever

The Beatles are often credited with popularising the Mellotron but they weren't the first to use it and Strawberry Fields wasn't their first track to feature the instrument. In fact it's more a case of how little it was used and that's why it has such a great effect. They used a woodwind sound on the Mellotron to give their guitars a slightly dreamlike quality for the first two verses. In fact the song was recorded twice and the second part features a string quartet arrangement that makes for a much harsher and aggressive sound - as if a fondly remembered childhood memory was suddenly seen in the cold light of day. It's quite unlike anything recorded before or since.



It is often imagined that this record was number one for weeks. In fact it was a double A-side with Penny Lane, a song of which I am very fond as it makes a grim bus terminus sound so cheerful and inviting; and also because in the 1960s my uncle actually was the banker in Penny Lane. The record was actually kept off the top spot by Engelbert Humperdinck's Release Me.

King Crimson : In The Court Of The Crimson King

King Crimson were a truly frightening band. This album started off with the distorted screechings of 20th Century Schizoid Man and really took the listener on a tortured journey of love and loathing from thereon. In The Court Of The Crimson King was the closing track and featured the Mellotron much more prominently than The Beatles did. It's a blessed relief at the end of the album and really shows the full range of the instrument.



Tangerine Dream : Mysterious Semblance At The Strand Of Nightmares

Tangerine Dream were often at the forefront of electronic music in the 1970s and Mysterious Semblance At The Strand Of Nightmares, in spite of its dreadful sounding title, beautifully shows how the Mellotron can be used as a lead instrument. I actually prefer this to Phaedra which was the lead track on the album of the same name.



OMD: Maid Of Orleans

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark were one of the leading innovators of British electronic pop music so it seems odd that they should opt for older technology for their Architecture & Morality album. In fact, I think it was a stroke of genius. At the time digital polyphonic synthesisers were becoming all the rage and the sight of a big haired dandy prodding at a keyboard would become an all too familiar sight on Top Of The Pops. The one problems is that these early digital synths sounded ugly beyond all belief. Hence, the boys from The Wirral chose to stick to the auditory delights of the analogue world. Maid Of Orleans shows the effect well but the whole album is worth listening to for the sweeping, eerie Mellotron sounds.



Radiohead : Exit Music (For A Film)

Radiohead have played around with allsorts of odd electronica. Kid A featured an Ondes Martenot although Exit Music pre-dated that album by a number of years. This starts out, and largely continues, as one of the most depressing songs I've ever heard. In fact it helps to know that it was written as the closing title music to Romeo and Juliet - at least the lyrics make more sense that way. The song begins as a melancholy guitar ballad and the Mellotron cuts in as it moves from suicide note to something of the afterlife. It's really quite beautiful in an ending-it-all kind of way.

Ricky Gervais

OK. Here's confessional time. This is probably going to put me at odds with the rest of the modern world but I'm going to stick my neck out here: I don't think Ricky Gervais is very funny. To hear some people go on about him you would think that he is a comic genius of the highest order but at best I have found him mildly amusing and at worst I think he is dying on his arse - that may make some people laugh but I merely find it excruciating.

The first thing I can remember him in was The Office. This was very funny for a couple of episodes. It worked initially because everyone will have had a smug, full-of-themselves, completely useless, total arse of a boss like David Brent. Had this been a one hour TV play I think I would have remembered it with great fondness but each episode largely followed the same format and leads the audience to sit at home feeling desperately embarrassed for the on screen characters. In the end the whole concept was just uncomfortable. It certainly wasn't belly laugh material - maybe because I've had to work in an office like that.

The next series I saw him in was Extras, which I did like. The central conceit of this series worked well: the "extras" are actually the central cast and the big name stars are really cameos and usually a grotesque parody of A-list stars rather than their real personas. It's been done before, notably by Garry Shandling, but I thought the characters in Extras were more rounded and appealing than The Office and the situations were genuinely amusing rather than embarrassing for the audience. The second series moved on to Gervais actually having some success - but not what he had anticipated. Again this worked as it prevented the series recycling the same ideas over and over again. It wasn't my favourite comedy of recent years but it was one I enjoyed.

I think it was on the basis of Extras that I ended up seeing his stand-up show, Animals. This was very disappointing. It took, to a point, the form of a lecture with his cringey, smarmy persona much to the fore but the material was really just rather crude. If he had actually done the whole thing as a full-blown comedy lecture I think it would have worked much better; and this is the point with him: I don't think he is a particularly funny man. He may be able to write amusingly - particularly when he is writing with Stephen Merchant - but he doesn't have the natural comic timing of the best stand-up comedians. In fact, if he was on the stand-up circuit I don't think he would last very long.

He has since moved on to films but his character hasn't progressed at all; he is still some sort of David Brent clone. This is possibly down to casting directors but he always seems overly self-aware whenever he is on screen. Some actors are always like this but then pull a blinder when they are cast against type - Robin Williams is a good example of this. Many great actors have had long careers playing the same sort of character but the "Ricky Gervais" character is one I've seen quite enough of.

Unicorn Milk

Tonight for dinner we had Marmite Spaghetti! It actually tasted far nicer than you would imagine. The inspiration for this culinary delight was Nigella Lawson - or at least her latest food porn programme, Nigella Camps It Up - or something like that.

TV cookery programmes can be quite a bit of fun but mainly because the things they knock up are completely off the far side for anyone actually trying to cook it. Heston Blumenthal probably takes this to extremes with his medieval delights of refried dung beetles dipped in liquid nitrogen, cooked by flamethrowers and garnished with radioactive waste. Delia Smith goes to the other extreme of knocking up frozen gunk that would put Kerry Katona to shame. Jamie Oliver looks promising until you see him put up against a professional mass caterer in which case he is reduced to a gibbering wreck. Of course, there is always Gordon Ramsay who has managed to set up several highly successful restaurants despite suffering from chronic coprolalia.

The one thing that seems to unite TV chefs is what I call the Unicorn Milk factor. They have seemingly feasible recipes (well, apart from Heston) that are made completely unattainable by requiring some weird fruit that can only be bought in a Moroccan bazaar; or an exotic spice that is exclusively sold in a backstreet Delhi market stall. For all the use this is to Joe Public it may as well be milk from a mythical creature.

The end result is everyone lives off frozen pizza and cornflakes - with a dash of Unicorn Milk, naturally.

In the Red

I've been taking a great interest at events unfolding in the High Court in London and the shenanigans in Texas as the RBS have been fighting over the future of Liverpool Football Club with their American owners, Hicks & Gillett. How did it get this far and does it really matter? For the latter question, I would argue that: yes, it does.

Looking dispassionately at things, it's very easy to dismiss a professional football club as a business like any other; and when looking at the team it's easy enough to view them as a bunch of foreign millionaires running an entertainment business. But there is an important difference between a football club and any other multinational business: it's a matter of civic pride. A football club may become a huge international concern with global shirt sales for the likes of Real Madrid, Manchester United or Bayern Munich; but regardless of the international stretch they are intrinsically tied with the community - after all, it's in the club's name. Unlike some sports "franchises" in the USA, these clubs will always be tied in with the communities of Madrid, Manchester or Munich. If the clubs management let the side down they also let their home towns down.

Liverpool have hit the buffers at an astonishing rate. It is only 18 months ago that they were pushing for the league title and less than 3 years ago that they were at the European Cup final. The mismanagement by it's American owners is astonishing and the long term damage has only been made worse by their greed in overvaluing the club when they had the option of still selling at a profit. Now the judge has sanctioned the sale of the club, it may provide some temporary respite from the risk of a 9 point deduction for a club already fighting relegation; but many things are still uncertain. I suppose the question remains as to whether someone should be left unchallenged to run a business into the ground? Should it be possible for stakeholders; whether it is suppliers, workers, creditors or anyone else; to force inept owners out of the door before they reach the verge of bankruptcy?

I think the judgement will, at least, send a warning to other foreign owners (Manchester United's predicament is similar to Liverpool's if not quite as precarious - yet) that clubs' owners have responsibilities as well as rights. In fact the High Court judge in London gave Hicks and Gillett such a pasting I'm surprised he didn't tell them to bend over and brace themselves. The fact that Hicks and Gillett went to a Texan court to try to stop proceeding was slippery and possibly a last ditch attempt to make some money from the whole affair. It's certainly an abuse of the legal system and, unless such practices are seen as acceptable stateside, it looks like a malicious waste of court time. In fact, the judge in Dallas surmised that they had "demonstrated record of gamesmanship in these proceedings and those in England." It looks like they may have actually committed serious contempt of court in the UK so if they show their faces in England they are likely to face sanction in the form of a prison sentence - or if they show their face in Liverpool, something in the form of a Wicker Man.

Liverpool's new owners are set to be another American consortium. Is this a case of once bitten, twice shy? New England Sports Ventures do appear to have been successful in managing the Boston Red Sox and they have brought some success. I don't think any fan should delude themselves that these are sugar daddy philanthropists. They intend to run the club as a profitable enterprise but the core of any professional sports team is its fan base and if they understand this and can keep the local community on side there is no reason why this couldn't be a happy arrangement for all concerned. However, I expect to see the cost of match tickets rising and some holy cows may have to be sacrificed to stabilise the clubs finances.

Liverpool fans need to start looking to the long term future. With proper management the club's future could look rosy but, whilst I think Liverpool will avoid relegation, I suspect that things will get worse before they get better.

Film 2010

The "Film" show has been going for donkeys' years (as long as I can remember anyway) and it is that oddity: a radio programme on the TV. That is, the format of chat and straight journalism is a format that is usually found on the radio, particularly Radio 4; except, of course, that film clips don't always work on the radio so by transferring it to television it allows those gaps to be filled out.

There have been a few presenters over the years including Michael Parkinson and , most famously, Barry Norman. For the past few years we have had Jonathan Ross and he has always been my favourite. Whereas Barry Norman always reviewed from the point of view of a professional (his father was a director), Jonathan Ross has always been the arch film fan. His love of cinema has always shone through but he was able to approach the films in different manners depending on the nature of the picture: so we had Ross the film buff, Ross the romantic, Ross the intellectual and, usefully, Ross the father. Above all, I always found his reviews were very accurate. When he announced he was leaving the BBC this was the one show I really thought I would miss him from. Last night I found out just how much.

The BBC announced Claudia Winkleman was going to be taking over Film 2010. I've nothing against Ms Winkleman as a presenter. She's easy enough on the eye and has a friendly manner but I didn't know exactly what her technique as a film critic would be. It turns out that she doesn't have one. The BBC, in their wisdom, have chosen to have a "team" of presenters on the show and, rather than have the lead presenter give a balanced appraisal of the week's films, she now "interviews" another film buff in what is little more than multiplex foyer banter. In fact, it is the same technique they have adopted on the news where instead of a reporter giving a concise piece to camera they are now interviewed by the studio based news reader. The result is very, very irritating. Film 2010 has gone from being a well presented Radio 4 style review show to a simple Radio 1 styled "slot". What were they thinking?

The other big change is that they have now gone to a live format so that viewers can "tweet" their views into the studio. Why? I don't give a damn about what some teenage Blogger thinks. I want a serious measured review. To make matters worse, they then went to a live interview at a film premier somewhere to be treated to 5 minutes of Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield breaking down in fits of giggles. Had they been smoking something funny before hand? I hope not but aside from being a classic piece of car crash television it's something I could do without. At least with Rossy it was all pre-recorded: just as well when he had to use phrases like "Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon." I have a horrible feeling that the current presenters wouldn't know who Akira Kurosawa was.

I sincerely hope this gets better but I have a horrible feeling that the BBC producers don't understand the concept of the show and will kill it off like old favourites such as Top Of The Pops. I suppose they could always try and get Jonathan Ross back - even the Daily Mail is suggesting this.

Child Benefit

The news this week has been dominated by the Tory's announcement that they will stop Child Benefit for higher rate taxpayers. Much of the fury over this policy seems to be generated by a sense of unfairness. The reasons for this unfairness vary but I do agree that the whole policy is remarkably ill thought out.

I think a great deal of this sense of unfairness is coming from Conservative supporters themselves. After all, this is their government and surely any benefit cuts should be aimed at those undeserving, asylum-seeking scroungers living in an expensive Knightsbridge townhouse with their multitude of offspring. Now, apart from the fact that this is a tiny minority of people, even if they do exist outside of the fevered imagination of Daily Mail journalists, the government has announced a benefit cap and, no doubt, a very special place in Hell put aside for anyone in that situation. I can only be thankful that I am not employed as a social worker because I really wouldn't want to pick up that mess. But I can understand the fury of the conservative voters - particularly as the politicians appear to have been very lax with the truth before the election.

The next group who have expressed a sense of unfairness are Labour supporters and politicians. On the face of it you may think that higher rate taxpayers are not the prime concern of Ed Miliband's new improved left-wing Labour; but I think there is a greater principle here and that is the concept of universal benefits. Universal benefits such as pensions, sickness benefit, child benefit and the free health service have proven hugely popular since they were introduced by the Atlee government. Originally, this was because most people could remember how awful the country was prior to their introduction but as the country has grown in prosperity they are maybe not as necessary as they once were. However, I heard an interview with Roy Hattersley a couple of months ago in which he defended universal benefits. His argument was that if everyone received a benefit regardless of income then they were much happier that everyone else should receive the same. If some people are excluded from this then there is growing resentment, usually amongst the chattering classes, that anyone receives these benefits at all. I think this is were Labour are coming from - if the middle classes don't benefit from Child Benefit then there is a good chance that no one will in the near future.

Another group who are outraged are feminists and women's rights groups. This is easy to see as it is, more often than not, women who will lose out on this - particularly stay-at-home mothers. In fact it was largely for this group that Child Benefit replaced Child Allowance as the aim was to ensure that it was the primary carer that would receive the money rather than the main wage earner who would be perceived to spend it all down the pub. This isn't exactly the first shot across the bows at the stay-at-home mother - a much maligned and undervalued individual and one that has been (and often still is) the backbone of the community. These are, after all, the ones that can volunteer for local good causes, help at school outings and parent support groups. All this extra work is unpaid - it will be paid even less now.

As for me, I will have to see how I am affected in a couple of years time. I haven't been a higher rate taxpayer for a few years. The last time I was, I switched jobs as the one I had was far more hassle than it was worth. That decision could only be made easier if I would be financially better off as a result. As I have three children I would have to be earning £4,000 per year more as a higher rate taxpayer to break even and this is really where the Tory policy loses the plot. Many people get stuck on benefits as they are in a poverty trap. The benefits are not generous but they allow families to scrape an existence. More often than not, any low paid work will result in the withdrawal of benefits to a greater extent than any extra income may bring in and, as a result, they are trapped in benefits dependent poverty. The Conservatives' Child Benefit policy will create a similar situation for middle earners. Taking a small promotion or pay rise, or even doing some overtime, will lead to families becoming worse off. That, I think, is really what is unfair about the whole idea.

There is one fundamental policy which I think all parties should adopt: work should always pay. It doesn't matter whether it is someone on a minimum wage or a millionaire - if they have done an honest days work they should be better off as a result of it. Unfortunately, when I look at our politicians I see very few who have ever done an honest days work in their life so I would never expect any of them to understand how people operate in the real world.

Conkers

Last Sunday I took the my two sons along to a nearby country park; ostensibly to walk the dog but actually to get the kids out of my wife's hair for an hour or so. It's lovely at this time of year with the leaves turning golden and the breeze cool but not too chilly. Amongst the autumnal foliage I discovered a horse chestnut tree had shed it's load of conkers and there were dozens of the things lying on the ground unclaimed.

We collected a few and I asked the boys if they played conkers at school. They looked a bit blank so I suggested that it was the game where you knocked them into each other to see who would win. My older son, Raymond, then brighten up and went into a great description of a game that he had played at school that, after half a minute or so, was clearly meant to be marbles. So, I explained the grand old tradition of the game of conkers and we set off home to find some boot laces and start a game.

Now, I had always assumed that young boys would naturally play conkers as a sort of genetic predisposition but everyone has to learn somewhere. The game started with the younger boy, Jake, having first strike. He missed. So did Raymond. Jake tried again and missed but managed to get the string wrapped around his hand. Raymond then managed to hit the string which lead to a brief Tug-of-War match. Jake then took a huge swipe at Raymond's conker, missed and shattered his own on the floor - this lead to a brief bout of tears.

Jake's conker was reloaded and this time Raymond took first swing. He hit the conker but rather than Jake's chestnut being obliterated it was Raymond's conker that broke. Apparently, this was unfair as Jake had cheated in some unspecified manner. We reloaded Raymond's conker. Jake then took a swing but Raymond moved at the last minute. This was determined to be cheating in a well specified manner so Jake had another swing but this time hit Raymond on the knuckles. This prompted him to retaliate and hit Jake on the head which led to a bout of crying all around.

I put the conkers back in the box. Maybe the Wii was invented for a reason.

From Heaven to Hell

I needed to buy a new deodorant stick this week. This might sound like a fairly straight forward thing to do but, as I have an allergic reaction to almost all commercially available smellies, I am reduced to buying Ammonium Alum crystals off the internet. This, of course, gave me a good excuse to fill out my Amazon order with CDs to take advantage of Supersaver Delivery (well, that was my excuse anyway). I thought I'd have a break from the Jazz so I went for a couple of disks that, at first sight, would appear to be poles apart.

The first selection I went for were some works by Gustav Holst. Holst's Planets Suite is one of the most popular orchestral works of the 20th Century and even the most modest classical music collections will tend to have a copy. My copy is conducted by Simon Rattle and it is an excellent performance from 1980 which is only let down slightly by the effects of early digital recording. However, despite a classical music collection of several hundred disks, that is the only work by Holst I have. I suspect that is the case for most people. I have heard the odd recording on Radio 3 of his other works but I suspect that most people know nothing else by him. I thought I'd put that right.

I went for a Decca "British Music Collection" set containing 2 disks and 10 works. The first disk contains mainly choral pieces and are mostly performances conducted by his daughter: Imogen Holst. The first two works show an interest in Indian culture, Rig Vida is a series of songs translated from Sanskrit and set to a female choir with harp backing, whereas Sávitri is actually an entire chamber opera in one act. It's notable that Holst seems to have written much of his work for female voices and small-scale orchestras. In fact, Holst was a teacher at an all-girls school in London so this may have been more out of expediency rather than preference but the effect is very pleasing. The Seven Part Songs and Evening Watch carry on in much the same vein but the closing piece on the first disk, Fugal Concerto, is a much brighter sounding neo-classical work which is very melodic to the point of sounding twee.

The second disk contains mainly orchestral works and is probably closer in style to The Planets. However, it starts with the St Paul's Suite which is a melodic work which he wrote specifically for his students to perform. The next three pieces show more of what Holst was capable of, The Perfect Fool is a suite of works taken from a failed opera whereas Egdon Heath is a tone poem based around the life of Thomas Hardy. It is meant to portray the writer walking across the barren landscape and it works very well. The next piece is another choral work, The Hymn of Jesus, which was written just after The Planets and is based upon apocryphal gospels and the disk ends with Moorside Suite - something of an anomaly as it is a piece written for a brass band but shows another side to the composer's talents.

I suppose the question I am left asking is why is Holst really only remembered for the one work? Many of the performances on these disks are at least as good as his magnum opus but, possibly, they don't quite have the obvious astrological imagery of The Planets' seven movements. The technical innovations of The Planets made this the must see event of the day. I think, also, that had Holst lived beyond 1934 he would have benefited from the newly arrived market for film scores. Maybe it's none of these things. The world of Classical Music can be a fickle beast.

I still needed a couple of pounds worth to fill out the Amazon order and one of their recommendations caught my eye: Iron Maiden - Somewhere Back in Time. Iron Maiden was a band that I really liked in the early to mid 1980s. I saw them live at the Liverpool Empire around this time (it may have been the Powerslave tour - I seem to recall that the T-shirt cost more than the ticket and that was under £5) but I rather lost interest in them after 1990 and, as I only have their albums on vinyl, it's ages since I listened to anything by them. I had a quick look around and they didn't seem to have anything better in terms of a compilation album so I added this to the order.


Somewhere Back in Time was released a couple of years ago and was intended to promote their World Tour - rather than back in the day when a tour would promote an album. It contains their "Best of" tracks from the 1980s period I liked and it's not hard to see what I liked about them - solid rock performances and decent tunes. It's also interesting to look back on them with older eyes. I think the first thing that stands out is that, despite them seeming raw and edgy at the time, they now sound decidedly old school. It's also very noticeable how much of a debt they owe to the twin guitar sound of Thin Lizzy - although without Phil Lynott's sense of Irish mysticism. Additionally, their lyrics stand out as "of a theme"; they largely borrow from literature, poetry, films, historical events and so on but there is very little of "them" in there. Bruce Dickinson's singing is impassioned and it's all intelligent stuff but there is no emotional or political involvement in the songs with the exception of the anti-nuclear 2 Minutes to Midnight and the empathy with native American peoples in Run to the Hills.

As for the choice of songs, at first I couldn't fault this album; until, that is, that I noticed that there are no songs from the first two albums featuring original singer Paul Di'Anno. Three of these early songs are represented in live form: Iron Maiden, Wrathchild and the technically brilliant Phantom of the Opera but this means that great tracks like Prowler, Running Free, Sanctuary and Drifter are all missed out. Also, I noticed that there was only one track from the Piece of Mind album. Having said that, there is nothing that is on the album that doesn't deserve to be there. It's the mark of a great band that, when struggling to whittle down to a "best of" album, the chop has to fall somewhere - and it's also evidence that they could really do with coming up with a definitive anthology of their whole career.

It does seem, at first, a bit odd to be buying both Holst and Maiden together but, even in the 1980s, I listened to both. It's an odd thing but many Heavy Metal fans seem to appreciate a bit of classical, possibly more to the bombastic end of things, but someone who likes the Iron Maidens of this world will often be partial to a bit of Wagner, Beethoven, Bach or Berlioz. As I was looking up the old Maiden albums on Wikipedia, I noticed that they actually used Holst's Mars from the Planets Suite as their entrance music on their most recent tour - from Heaven to Hell in one swift move.