Fashion

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months" - Oscar Wilde.

I hate shopping for clothes. I'm sure this is a universal bloke thing but I really do detest it with a passion. To this end, I am prone to wear the same clothes until they are so battered and threadbare that a tramp would turn their nose up at them. For a start, I'm slightly colour blind and any attempts that I have of choosing something colourful are normally met with howls of derision. To this end, I normally end up wearing clothes in varying shades or grey - preferably heading towards the black side of things. You see, it's not just because I'm a misanthropic, miserable bastard.

The first point of utter hatred is the sizes that the shops stock. There is meant to be an obesity epidemic but this only appears to affect those with an inside leg measurement of 31" or under. I assume the theory here is that anyone who has put on a few pounds will have their legs telescope down to an acceptably diminutive size under the pressure of their excessive mass. I'm not sure what the physiological basis for this phenomenon is, but it means that the clothes shops only cater for short, squatty people - or Peter Crouch. This is then compounded by the fact that shirt designers seem loathe to allow for their cloth to actually reach waist level. Exposed mid-rifts are seldom flattering on attractive, nubile, young people. On hairy, middle-aged gits it's a decided turn-off.

Having manoeuvred my choice through the miserable range of might-just-fit-if-I-put-my-mind-to-it garments, I am left with the horrific spectacle of what the clothing retailers have actually allowed me to chose from. I am talking, of course, of that dreaded, hideous abomination of society called "fashion". The latest trend seems to be that old favourite - the "distressed" look. Essentially, this translates to the clothes in the shop with a fancy price tag actually being in a worse state of disrepair than those rags I wish to consign to the fabrics recycling bin. This isn't a new idea. I blame Vivienne Westwood but I think they are all at it. Bastards, every last one of them. The other favourite is clothes that don't fit properly - by design. Apparently, this was the brainchild of the recently deceased Alexander McQueen. I don't want to speak ill of the dead but I'd rather people didn't walk around with their arses hanging out.

This then narrows things down those items designed for the yoof market - the only purpose of which is to supply a series of photographs for a future "honestly, did I really wear that" nostalgia trip - or things that 85 year olds would wear when they couldn't give a toss and may as well go around wearing an old tea cosy. There is nothing available for normal, somewhere-in-the-middle aged homo sapiens. So I try a few things on. It's always stilted - I feel like a bit of a dick and I look like a twit. I can also guarantee that anything I do buy will have some subtle unforeseen booby-trap, like pockets that lose all you loose change when you sit down or a shirt that shrinks three sizes when washed because it's "dry clean only" or, as I would put it, not bloody made properly. It's at this point that I contemplate whether my old clothes will survive another 30 degree woollen cycle without disintegrating.

"We are the goon squad and we're coming to town" - David Bowie.

Roadworks

Today has been a Perfect Storm of crap roads. It snowed last night. There's nothing unusual in that but there was an accident that closed the A9 heading North - somewhat ironically involving the gritter truck. That didn't affect me that badly but, as I headed off this morning, it transpired that there was an overturned lorry in the A80 roadworks and that was closed going South. This meant that the M80 and M876 had to rapidly merge from four lanes to one. I was delayed by half an hour even at my early journey time. In the rush hour this was tailing back for two hours. Interestingly, someone managed to crash travelling northwards as well.

I managed to drive through Cumbernauld easily enough and thought that would be the last of it but, as I arrived in Airdrie, I was stuck behind an HGV going at 15 mph. I presumed that he was either stopping or breaking down. There was a lay-by but he didn't pull over. Instead, he ground to a halt on a roundabout. I assumed that he had just broken down - admittedly, in just about the most inconvenient place he could find. I noticed a car from the housing estate to his left squeeze past so I realised that, driving a small car, I could probably fit past as well. I went left and did a quick U-Turn - I just fitted past. I looked up and realised the problem - he was staring at a map. The idiot hadn't broken down - he was lost. And also too stupid to be left in charge of a roller-skate - let alone a 40 tonner.

It took me over an hour and a half to get into work. I left early tonight as it had been snowing all day and didn't want to get stuck. As it was, I was home in just over 30 minutes. But as I was driving up our road, I saw a sign saying that our street will be closed next week for repairs. Now, I don't want to appear ungrateful, as the road really does need fixing, but it now means a 5 mile diversion for me. I am really, really sick of roadworks.

And the funny thing is, it's still better than the bleeding train ever was.

Children's TV

I have always loved Science Fiction as a genre - even from an early age. I suppose it's due to the times I grew up in - seeing rockets taking men to the Moon is bound to fire the imagination. There wasn't really that much Sci-Fi on the TV. We had Doctor Who and Star Trek, which appeared on the BBC, and the various Gerry Anderson series (Thunderbirds, UFO, Space 1999 etc) as well as The Six Million Dollar Man which were on ITV but not always watchable due to poor TV reception - often we would switch to an alternative ITV channel to find it would be something in Welsh.

Of those series, I liked the BBC shows best and was very taken with Star Trek although Doctor Who had to be my favourite - what it lacked in budget it made up for in imagination. However, these were not the first Science Fiction series I watched. My first Sci-Fi show was called The Clangers and featured a grey moon-like planet, inhabited by small, mouse-like creatures, who spoke in whistles and just happened to be knitted.

I picked up a DVD containing all The Clangers episodes a couple of years ago. My two youngest children are watching it now and they are absolutely transfixed. By the standard of modern children's programmes it's rather sedate but the stop-frame animation is still enchanting and the stories cleverly intermingle music with visual humour. All of this is narrated by Oliver Postgate's hypnotic story-telling voice.

It's interesting as to what actually entertains children. The BBC currently have two dedicated channels for children: CBeebies for the under fives and CBBC for older children. CBeebies, in particular, has had much thought go into it. Many of the programmes have a good educational content, without being patronisingly worthy, and they also introduce things like Makaton sign language in an inclusive manner - probably the first time that this has been done on mainstream children's programming since Vision On in the early 1970s.

Other children's TV varies greatly. Channel Five has some nice programmes but the adverts which surround them are clearly aimed at pester power and so would limit the amount of exposure that I would want to give to a child. Some of the other children's TV channels don't even have that distinction and the "programmes", for what they are worth, are really just half hour adverts for whatever toys they are trying to sell.

We also pick up a couple of German children's channels. KI.KA is made by the main state TV broadcasters and has a similar remit to the BBC's output but with a broader age range. They do seem to dig deeper into their archives than the BBC and still show programmes like Sandmännchen, another stop-frame animation, which was originally shown in the old East Germany (some of the hints at communist propaganda can be quite amusing). However, it is again the lack of advertising which appeals to me. The other main children's channel is Super RTL - a sister channel to Five - which does produce entertaining programmes - but has the disadvantage of being funded by advertising.

This seems to be the problem overall with children's TV. To be financially viable on commercial TV, it has to be funded by advertising and, usually, this will be for products that are either no good for the child's welfare or no good for their parent's finances. Either that, or the whole enterprise is one long hard-sell for whatever the next batch of Chinese produced plastic toys are. Inevitably, this means that quality children's programming is going to have to be financed elsewhere. I think the BBC does a good job - in fact I would say they do an exceptional job. Other media moguls seem to have the knives out for the BBC at the moment. The only reason for this is a short-sighted attempt to improve their own profit margins but I don't think we should be doing this at the cost of broadcasting for the young. Like public libraries, access to intelligent, unbiased, advert-free broadcasting is something we should be protecting. Commercial TV has it's place, but it's not in the heads of infants.

Project Gutenberg

After eulogising about the library reserve at Grangemouth I've been using another great repository of knowledge, Project Gutenberg.

Project Gutenberg aims to create digital copies of public domain books (at least by the US definition). It's a great source for old Victorian literature as well as a useful tool if you want to look up a particular quotation but can't be bothered to read through a whole book.

There are also some real gems on there. One of them is Flatland. Whilst science fiction is often used for biting social comment and satirical whimsy, mathematics is usually pretty dry. However, Flatland is an exception and pokes fun at the British class system by introducing us to the 2 dimensional Flatland in which different social classes are represented as geometric shapes. The more sides a shape has, the higher up the social order it is. Interestingly women are presented as simple lines and are repressed by the rest of Flatland's social order.

The book was written in 1884 so does that make it an early example of feminist literature?

Public Libraries

Public libraries seem to be going out of fashion. Whenever a local council wants to save some money it's the first thing they cut back on. I think it's a crime. Being able to store knowledge on mass, even after the author's death, is one of the things that makes human beings stand apart and the free access to this knowledge, regardless of wealth or social standing, has been one of the greatest achievements of our civilisation.

In Britain it dates back to The Public Libraries Act of the 19th Century but the idea of a lending library goes way back to the Islamic scholars of the Middle Ages. In fact, much of our knowledge of the ancient world came to us via these libraries - particularly through the Moorish academics in Spain. So keen were the ancient librarians to accumulate works that they would pay for original books in their weight of gold - one would want to make sure it was the large print edition if cashing in.

Unfortunately, this love and thirst for knowledge doesn't seem to be preserved with our modern library system. Some libraries seem to throw out anything that hasn't been lent for more than 6 months, leaving the shelves filled with popular fiction and mindless dross. At least that's what I thought. I kept finding interesting looking titles in the online catalogue for our local libraries but when I looked on the shelf I couldn't find them. Not wanting to appear completely inept, I just found something else to read but I kept finding many tantalising looking books marked GMB - On Shelf and eventually I did that very un-bloke thing and actually asked someone.

It appears that Grangemouth library, as well as having a fair old floor space, has a reserve section hidden down in the bowels of the building. To borrow one of these titles one has to ask a member of staff - so off I headed to Grangemouth. For those of you that don't know Grangemouth, it is the industrial area of Falkirk, lying on the Forth, with an oil refinery and various chemical plants flaring balls of flame into the night's sky, which gives it an appearance akin to the set of Bladerunner - just with more ginger people. I somehow imagined that they employed some sort of hideous hunchback creature called Igor to delve into the library reserve but it turns out to be rather a nice lady called Joan. She disappeared off and found the book I fancied reading - The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess - and returned a few minutes later. The book had last been borrowed in June 1991.

It is often said that authors die twice: Firstly, when they shuffle off this mortal coil; and secondly, when their books are out of print. I think there is actually a third death - or more of a slow fading. That is when the authors books are no longer read. The last lending stamp is probably a fair indication of this. Of Burgess's books, A Clockwork Orange and possibly Earthly Powers are still reasonably widely read. The Wanting Seed was written around the same time as A Clockwork Orange and is also a dystopian vision of a near future Britain. However, rather than a Britain overrun by gangs of feral youths, it is a Britain (and a world) which is overrun by people in a Malthusian apocalypse.

It sounds cheery enough but even after the first few pages I realised why I liked Burgess's books so much. He has to rate as one of the darkest, blackest humorists of all time. The first chapter opens with a grieving mother leaving her child's body for callously cheerful civil servants to extract phosphorous salts from. It sounds revolting - and it is - but it is written in such a wildly ironic tone to make it laugh-out-loud funny. I'm not sure how much over-population was a burning issue in the early sixties when this was written but at the time the world's population was around 3 billion - now it's nearer 7. Burgess doesn't make a claim for how many people are on his planet but it has come to the point where infertility is actively encouraged - both by Maoist style baby quotas and, in this case, by state sponsored homosexuality!

The other theme that runs through the book is the cyclical nature of history - there is a theory that governments will become progressively more authoritarian until the populace reaches breaking point and anarchy ensues. Eventually, a more liberal form of governance will take it's place. I'm not sure whether this holds true but the anarchy in The Wanting Seed consists of an outbreak of cannibalism and the more "liberal" government allows free fornication and procreation whilst arranging for conscription and war-for-war's-sake to deal with the excess number of people. It's actually this condemnation of war which is the most effective element of the book and leaves the most lasting impression. Overall, though, this is what Soylent Green would have been like if the BBC had made it.

I'm glad I've read this and I will have a good search through the Grangemouth library reserve for other forgotten gems. And at least I've extended Anthony Burgess's immortality a little longer into the 21st century.

All that Jazz

I like jazz. Well, at least, I think I do. I have pretty catholic tastes in music - I wouldn't say there was any particular style I dislike although I do have my favourites. And that's not to say that there are particular artists that I don't care for - in fact there are whole swathes of recordings that I regard as a cruel and unusual assault on my eardrums. But I like jazz - it's just that I don't know where to start.

I think the problem is that I have never really lived in a jazz rich environment. When I was growing up, my parent's record collection, for what it was worth, consisted of folk, classical and rock and roll - in that order. The radio was restricted to the 4 main BBC channels and local commercial radio which concentrated on contemporary pop music. Delving into the short wave bands would produce a smorgasbord of hissy, half-heard foreign exotica - or Radio Moscow. The only Jazz album I can recall was Dave Brubeck's Time Out - which I loved - and a couple of Acker Bilk singles which were pleasant - if not exactly my thing. When I was at college I used to wind up at the Jazz Cafe in Newcastle's Pink Lane and heard a whole variety of jazz without really knowing much about the history of the genre.

And that seems to be the problem. Jazz encompasses a huge body of diverse works spanning over 100 years. However, when asking anyone to make a recommendation they concentrate on the particular narrow field which appeals to them and will, no doubt, miss out a whole raft of artists that I may well like. Then there are those dreaded bores, the jazz aficionados, who will poo-poo anything that slips from the norm or dares to appeal to the masses. And, of course, there is always Jazz Club:



I suppose the answer is to start with a period and a group of artists I like and work from there. I have a couple of Dave Brubeck CDs which I love and I was given Miles Davies Kind of Blue as a present which I like and often listen to. Interestingly, both were recorded in 1959. Both artists worked with a great number of collaborators who have become major stars in their own right. So, I suppose the answer is to pick some anthologies from these musicians and work my way from there. I've just been given an Amazon token for my birthday so I'll take a stab at that - possibly Amazon's "customers who bought this item also bought..." feature will be a help.

And just in case it all goes Pete Tong I'll buy a Jonny Cash CD as well...

The Toyota Recall

I had our Toyota Verso serviced today. Both our cars are now Toyotas. They're not exactly the most exciting vehicles to look at but they have an unpretentious utilitarian feel about them, they are well built, generally reliable, remarkably efficient and I like the local dealership - actually the longest established Toyota dealer in the UK - who get most things sorted easily and with as little pain to myself as possible.

I was a bit concerned about the recall which has been all over the press lately but when I checked at the dealers it doesn't affect either car. I've had to have a couple of recalls done over the last few years. One issue was a possible fire risk and the other for a potential brake failure. These were actually on my Hondas - one UK and one Japanese built. These also have to rate as the most reliable cars I've ever had - over the seven years of ownership not a single thing went wrong - but, as with any vehicle, problems may come to light affecting the vehicle safety which have to be remedied. You can check for recalls via the VOSA website, and for an example take the current version of Britain's top selling model, the Ford Focus:

R/2006/092: engine may fail
R/2007/133: in low ambient temperature hard brake pedal may occur
R/2007/169: roll over protection may fail
R/2008/001: electronic cooling fan control module may fail
R/2008/045: rear hub bolt may become loose
R/2008/113: failure of power steering hose could result in an engine bay fire
R/2009/016: risk of fire
R/2009/050: hard brake pedal may occur during engine warm up

That's quite a list - and this is for a car that I regard as well made, safe and reliable. I have driven one, I would drive one again and happily own one if it suited my needs. So what makes Toyota different? It's not the problem as such which is a fairly run-of-the-mill safety recall and would mainly affect very high mileage cars. I asked the dealer what the issue was and the service manager said that the initial problem would be an engine overrun due to the throttle not releasing quickly enough - anyone who has driven a carburettor engined car will probably have experienced this at some point. If not remedied it would gradually get worse. On a scale of 1-10 of safety concerns it's probably a 3 or 4 - certainly nowhere near a brake or steering failure, a tyre blow-out or engine bay fire.

From what I can gather the furore stems from an incident in which a Lexus model was loaned to a driver in the US as a courtesy car. The vehicle had rubber mats fitted from the wrong model and jammed the accelerator pedal full on. This is serious but recoverable by braking, shifting to neutral or switching the engine off. However, the driver panicked and the car crashed killing its occupants. Toyota issued a warning and recall over the mats and it appears subsequent problems have become muddled in the public's mind (plus very poor reporting of the issues in the media).

The media, in fact, have been reporting all sorts of cases without checking any facts at all. Many of the incidents reported are for vehicles unaffected by any of the issues. So now every crackpot is recanting nightmare stories which are nothing to do with the vehicles and very much to do with owners who are either inept, attention seeking Münchausen's syndrome cases, unscrupulous lawyers or their corrupt clients. Amongst this there will be some people who genuinely do have mechanical issues with their vehicles. If a problem can be detected that's easy enough to deal with but, as the service manager at our local dealers pointed out - they can't really prove a negative. As for Toyota, it may end up as an inverse Ford Pinto case where they settle out of court as being a more cost effective than proving the drivers are blithering idiots or lunatics.

I don't think any of this would put me off Toyota. They have acted in a sensible and conscientious manner as one would expect from a major manufacturer but, given the PR disaster, I suspect that any future recalls will be done quietly via the DVLA.

They're After My Blood

Today, I went to the blood donation session at the local community centre so I'm now feeling all weak and anaemic. Still, I did get a cup of cocoa and a chocolate biscuit for my troubles. It's just as well because I bloody hate needles. I hate waiting for them to shove the thing in my arm and close my eyes at the relevant moment. They even ask if I'd like an anaesthetic. Well, lets see - do I want one needle stuck in my arm or two? It's a simple choice really.

I'm not quite sure how I got in to regular donations. I've been told that one is meant to have a sense of well-being and feel good about oneself. This is to with the feeling that one has altruistically helped one's fellow man. There may be something to this. Many people will give up great amounts of their time to help the local community so lying on my back for half an hour whilst someone sticks pointy metal objects into my arm doesn't seem such a great sacrifice.

I think, more importantly, that being fit and well enough to donate is reason enough to do it. We need regular blood supplies and it's much better that these come from a reliable voluntary source rather than a paid-for service which is likely to attract some people with a less than desirable life-style. Even so, the blood transfusion services are very picky. They have to be, but I do wonder whether the blanket ban on gay people donating is actually in everyone's interest. Some people in the gay community do put themselves at higher risk of blood born illnesses but that's not to say there aren't a significant number of straight people that do the same.

Anyway, I think I know why I keep on giving blood regularly - those nagging reminder letters really do work.