Doctor Who Day

The 25th December is Doctor Who Day. Now I know that many people will claim that this has merely hijacked the ancient pagan festival of Yuletide and I have to say that the timing, tinsel and general merrymaking do have a certain familiarity but if the Christians have been pulling this trick off for centuries then why not Whovians?

The Time Of The Doctor has been much anticipated – mainly because we have now known for several months that we are to get a new Doctor in the form of Peter Capaldi. However, this was really the last great hurrah for the outgoing incumbent, Matt Smith. Regeneration stories have varied greatly over the years. I would say my personal favourites are The War Games (where we actually only see the regeneration start) and The Caves of Androzani where we see the 5th Doctor turn into the 6th. This was actually rather unexpected as it wasn’t the end of the series but the story was fabulous and saw the Doctor sacrificing himself to save his companion – a common theme throughout the show’s history.

The central idea behind The Time Of The Doctor was a brilliant one – the Doctor has run out of regenerations and uses up his remaining life defending a town under siege from the Daleks (and many other assorted alien species). This was actually one element that I think could have been simplified. There was really no reason to have any other aliens in the plot – although the Daleks have become a bit rubbish and whilst they are very good at flying around and causing random explosions they don’t seem to be particularly good at exterminating. In the past, half the townsfolk would have been lit up like fairly lights, but now they are very good at saying “Exterminate” without carrying out the deed: all talk and no ray-gun.

The other one element I could have done without was Clara’s family who appeared to add nothing to events (although her Grandmother was good value – and did she indicate that she had met the Doctor way back when?) However, I think that is nit-picking and for me the real female lead was Tasha Lem as the Mother Superious and head of the good guys: sexy and commanding and probably not to be messed with (although one suspects that the Doctor has done.) I looked up Orla Brady to see what else I’ve seen her in and she does pop up all over the place – however her birth certificate appears to be 20 years out of step with her face: timey-wimey or what? I did rather like the disembodied cyberman head, “Handles”, which rather harked back to the 790 robot in oddball Sci-Fi Lexx. In fact Handles made for a perfectly decent companion - did the Doctor need Clara at all?

Given the break-neck pace of the last three episodes (Name, Day and Time of the Doctor) I do wonder whether Steven Moffat had anticipated Matt Smith staying another series. There do seem to have been many, many loose ends ties up in these episodes and it feels like an entire series arc has been squeezed into 3 hours. It’s a pity as I had really hoped that Matt would do at least one more season. I think it is possible for an actor to stay too long in a role and I found David Tennant’s Doctor to have become a rather repetitive pantomime towards the end. I even think Tom Baker made a series too many but it’s not something I could accuse Matt Smith of who has always remained a delight to watch: I really felt a lump in my throat when he dropped his iconic bow tie to the TARDIS floor.

In spite of the packed script with more loose ends to tie than a threadbare Persian rug, I think Moffat did pull this one off and it does feel satisfactory – not only because it makes sense within the shows history from the last 4 years but because it makes sense over the last 50. Quite what the casual viewer would have made of plotting that relies on knowledge of episode details from 1983, 1977, 1969 and so on is debateable. Again, I think this would have worked better in a series long plot arc but that clearly wasn’t an option. Possibly it’s just better to assume that the audience will remember the plot details from the other 799 episodes!

That just leaves our first proper look at Peter Capaldi. My god, that man has scary eyes! I think he might just be able to stare out a Dalek until the old dustbin implodes. From what I can tell he is going with a Scottish accent and I think the relationship between him and Clara will be more of a generational one – possibly a 3rd Doctor / Jo Grant type relationship (or even a 1st Doctor / Susan one?) Anyway, we now have a long wait until the next series comes on but I have high hopes for the future with old freaky eyes. For now, it’s goodbye, Matt, and thanks for all the fish fingers and custard.

The Office Party

I enjoy Christmas. I didn’t at one time but at some point I seem to have had an Ebenezer Scrooge type transformation from curmudgeonly, miserable bastard into someone who really likes the whole spirit of the thing. I think it’s because it comes right at the end of the year during the shortest, darkest days and is something to look forward to – along with an excuse for various forms of excess and general merrymaking. However, there is one element which I try my best to avoid, and it is the total humbuggery of the office party.

Over the years I’ve worked at a few places and the office party seems to fall into two categories – the freebee night out at the managers’ expense (generally experienced in the private sector) and the begrudgingly given two hours off to attend an overpriced, undercooked dinner at a local hostelry at one’s own expense. The latter is a particular favourite of the Civil Service and is something I avoided like the plague. Essentially this involves being crammed into a low rent eatery and serviced minute portions of something that may at a push be described as “Christmas lunch” but featuring minute slithers of cold turkey mixed with vegetables that have been boiled and bleached out of all recognition. For this “privilege” one is charged in the region of £25.

Such was my dislike for the corporate Christmas lunch that I conspired with fellow workers in Glasgow to establish an alternative revelry which involved going down to the blood donation centre and allowing them to suck out a pint of A+. At least with this tradition we didn’t have to have the horrible spectre of organised fun thrust upon us and it didn’t cost us £25. Also the Tunnock’s tea cake and cup of coffee was far more welcome than the cold meat and soggy Brussels sprouts.

I now work back in the private sector but I still don’t do a Christmas party. We are allocated a very generous £15 to put towards the cost of a festive meal but as the rest of my colleagues are spread around the four corners of Scotland we don’t have the option of meeting up. In the past we have just let this go - the company are welcome to keep the money provided we don’t have corporate hospitality inflicted upon us. However, this year someone had the bright idea of asking whether those who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) attend a Christmas meal could donate their money to charity. I don’t know why anyone hadn’t thought of this before and there has been no shortage of takers. In fact, at the last count the Macmillan Nurses should be better of by around £4,000 in January – and we can enjoy our festival of overindulgence in peace.

Music For Nations

My musical meanderings often seem to take me to the more obscure corners of Youtube searching out new and unchartered territory. Over the past year I have been fascinated by a genre of music that goes under the title of Folk-Metal : essentially music that combines elements of traditional folk music with Heavy Metal. It sounds like one of the most bizarre musical marriages but I think it actually works in a big way.

I’ve been a fan of the more traditional Folk-Rock blend for years – this is a fairly broad label that covers acts like Pentangle and Fairport Convention, through the likes of Lindisfarne and Jethro Tull and even on to more hard rock orientated acts like Led Zeppelin and Thin Lizzy. The latter are interesting as they incorporated melodies and lyrical ideas from Irish music into what was essentially a full-on hard rock act – not exactly a stones throw away from later Folk-Metal acts like Newcastle’s Skyclad.

What really inspired me to poke around the whole Folk-Metal scene was bumping into a video by Russian Folk-Metal band Arkona. They play a rather extreme form of (essentially) Death Metal with the machine gun drumming, massively overdriven guitars and death growl vocals. However, this is mixed with traditional, often medieval instruments and taking melodic inspiration from traditional Slavic music, all sung in Russian. The mix is infectious and they do vary their sound from extreme metal down to traditional folk arrangements all of this mixed in with lyrics harking back to Russia's pagan past.

I think what really makes Arkona stand out is that they embrace their own national music style, including singing in their native tongue. This really stands apart from the mainstream of popular music which more or less states that all songs must be sung in English, creating a rather dull monoculture of sound-alike artists. Moving rather closer to home I came across Týr from the Faroe Islands. They sing partly in English and partly in their native Faeroese and take their musical inspiration from traditional Scandinavian music with lyrics inspired by beer, blades, battle, butchery and various other activities which gave Vikings a rather poor reputation in the first place. Unlike Arkona, Týr don’t use traditional instruments in their music but rely on the standard drums-bass-guitar line up of hard rock music. However the traditional melodies and Faeroese language make them stand apart:

Finland has a great tradition of producing left-field music - this is the country that won the Eurovision song contest with a bunch of monsters. They have produced another such group in the form of Finntroll. They combine heavy metal with Humppa – a sort of frenetic Finnish dance music derived from early 20th century jazz. They actually sing in Swedish (I believe) rather than Finnish (which is linguistically quite different and more closely related to Klingon) and turn out music which is both ferocious and comic.
 I’m not sure quite how seriously to take Finntroll (not very) but just down the road in Perth we have Alestorm who play what they describe as “True Scottish Pirate Metal”. They play very much with their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks but what they have done musically is actually quite clever – they have incorporated melodic elements of sea shanties into a comic metal mix. Oh the joy of being this drunk.

what ties all of these acts is music that is from nations – rather than conforming to a single corporate standard for of popular music they have taken folk music back from fusty, Arran sweatered killjoys singing miserably with one finger planted firmly in ear in the name of authenticity and given centuries old musical traditions a very welcome 21st Century twist. Now we just need Arkona to enter Eurovision.

A Land of Iron and Steel

I’ve been trying a few new dog walking routes out lately. I try to keep things interesting and if I can include some art and artefacts along the way, so much the better. There are quite a few artworks dotted around the area and many of them are made from iron and steel – marking Falkirk’s history as a centre of heavy industry. I’ve been planning a long dog walk for a while and I came up with a route that would take in much of Larbert and Carron and on to the canal which provides a nice long (and very flat) off road path for the dogs to wander along. As for the art and history bits I’ve managed to tie up a few things and come up with a route that arbitrarily starts and ends at Larbert railway station (in fact it starts and ends at my house but I‘ve missed that off):

The route is a shade over 10 miles long and took me just over 3 hours to walk. After starting off from Larbert station (1) I headed east along Main Street to my first point of interest: the cannons outside the Plough Hotel in Stenhousemuir(2).

Just a minute’s walk from the carronades are the first of the art installations: Stenhousemuir’s iron highland cows (3). This piece represents two aspects of the town’s history: firstly as the location of the Tryst, a large field where highland cattle would be driven to be sold on to Lowland Scots; and secondly to mark the town’s history as a location of iron foundries. Evidence of these can still be seen in the street ironworks (storm grids and the like) but most of the foundries have now given way to high density residential housing estates. As it was December, the council workers had fitted them with suitable headgear.

Walking on from Stenhousemuir centre I cut through the Carron Dam (4). This was originally a reservoir to feed the Carron Works which produced the famous carronades but is now a nature reserve. This is the first place in which it is possible to let the dogs off the lead. There are two ways around the Dam (long and short) but both lead to a stairway on the far side.

Up from the stairway leads to a cycle path. Turning left leads to the back of the Carron works (and I would advise having dogs and children on a leash again as there is traffic). This is also the entrance to a landfill which isn’t particularly pleasant but it does have this magnificent iron Grahamston Gate (5), originally designed for an exhibition in Edinburgh.

The old Carron works clock tower is still standing on Stenhouse road (6) and can be seen with a short diversion. The are two more larger carronades behind the gates. Heading back down Stenhouse Road and over the bridge leads to the start of the Helix North entrance next to the church.

There are a few ways to walk through the Helix but I chose to follow the path next to the Carron. The next point of interest is the Love And Kisses sculpture (7) which looks like a heart from the end but is actually a very large pair of iron lips. It’s actually very clever once you can see what it is.

Just down from the sculpture is the human sun dial (8). It was completely overcast on this day so it just looks like a rather strange iron standing circle.

Walking down towards Grangemouth we get to The Kelpies (9). There still seems to be a lot of work going on about these but at this point the route is pretty much dictated by the Forth and Clyde canal. The footpath for this passes under the A9 and on back towards Falkirk.

I did find the next section of the walk a bit dull. There is a lock (10) which brightens things up but it is a reminder that whilst there is a lot of industrial history around Falkirk there is also still a lot of industry. For the most part the canal path keeps away from the road but I did put the dogs back on lead for a while.

The next item of interest is the disused Rosebank distillery (11). This is actually starting to look rather forlorn and I believe any attempts to restart production have failed. No doubt it will be converted to luxury flats at some point which is a pity as the whisky produced there was highly regarded amongst Lowland whiskies. Unfortunately the return on investment of micro-distillery is much longer than micro-brewery so starting production looks remote without a benefactor.

Heading off from the Rosebank there are a series of locks and also these three curious chunks of iron (12) representing Robert Barr (of Irn-bru fame), Dr Harold Lyon who established the Strathcarron Hospice and Reginald Adams, the swimming coach. Barr is the chap in the top hat on the right and Lyon is next to him.

Further down is the Falkirk Wheel (13) an engineering project that is also a stunning work of art. It seemed very quite on the morning I was there although it can be mobbed in the summer. At this point I put the dogs back on their leads although I think they were too tired to run off anywhere.

Getting back to Larbert I walked down through Camelon and up Lochlands Loan (which feels deceptively quiet until someone tears up in a truck). This leads to Larbert a spectacular piece of Victorian engineering in the shape of Larbert viaduct (14). It may be 19th century but this is arguably the most important bit of engineering still in use as it allows for rapid train travel to both Glasgow and Edinburgh city centres. After being a cattle market and a foundry town, “commuter village” is Larbert’s latest incarnation.

There is just a short walk up back to Larbert station (1) which does have it’s own, rather dark, historical note as it was from here that a train service departed to Liverpool in 1915 carrying soldiers en route to Gallipoli. It crashed at Quintinshill near Gretna resulting in 226 deaths and 246 injuries – by far Britain’s worst rail disaster. There is a commemorative plaque on platform 1.

I’ve tried to calculate the length of this walk and it is somewhere between 10 and 11 miles. There are also a few pubs and a couple of restaurants along the way so it would be easy to fit in a few breaks – not that the dogs care, of course.

The St Andrew’s Day Fondue

30th November is St Andrew’s day, the patron saint of Scotland. It has been recognised as a sort of public holiday but this year is the first time I’ve actually been able to take it off (I actually get the Monday off in lieu). It’s not particularly celebrated, certainly not as much as Burns Night and given the air accident in Glasgow this year I don’t think there would be much appetite for street parties.  However, Burns Night has its own ritual and traditional food with its familiar haggis-neeps-tatties supper so I thought it would be worthwhile coming up with something that would celebrate Scottish cuisine combined with my love of cheese. I hereby present “The St Andrew’s Day Fondue”:

For the fondue you will require:

• Green Ginger Wine 280ml (essentially Crabbies but I went for the cheapo version from Aldi)
• Lockerbie Extra Mature Cheddar 200g (see the note about the salt)
• Glen Lochy Vintage Cheddar 250g (this is the clincher – 15 months old and about as strong as a Jakie’s armpit)
• 30ml Whisky (I used Famous Grouse because I’m not wasting a £30 a bottle of single malt in the cooking)
• 2 tbl lime juice (not strictly Scottish but I suppose there are loads of lime trees in Glasgow)
• Pepper
• Pinch of mixed spice
• Salt (use with caution - the Lockerbie cheddar was full of this so I didn’t add any extra)

For dipping:

• Kilted haggis (haggis wrapped in bacon – another Aldi purchase)
• Potato Scones
• Crispy breakfast rolls

Preparation:

1. Grate the cheese without shredding one’s knuckles.
2. Pour a glass of whisky – this can be the good stuff because it’s just for drinking.
3. Simmer ginger wine and lime in saucepan and gradually add the cheese.
4. Mix the cornflower, cheapo whisky, spice and pepper in a glass. Once all cheese has melted stir the mixture into the saucepan and continue stirring until it has thickened and is bubbling.
5. Serve with kilted haggis, rolls and potato scones.

For the authentic touch mix equal measure of the cheap whisky and ginger wine to create a “Whisky Mac” – Caledonian rocket fuel that is deceptively stronger than it tastes and enables time travel as you won’t remember the subsequent 24 hours.

So how does it taste? Well, the fondue itself tastes fantastic. The sweetness from the ginger wine really compliments the other flavours and makes this something quite unique as far as fondues go. The other dips – particularly the meat stuff was rather overkill. In fact, when I got the kilted haggis home I discovered that this was kilted black pudding so I bought some battered haggis as well. This rather disintegrated when dipped. I also had to buy a baguette from the CO-OP as we had accidentally used the breakfast rolls for breakfast. At the end I thought I’d end up doing an impression of Mr Creosote so I gave the After Eights a miss.

I wouldn’t recommend this every day as it contains a huge amount of saturated fat, salt, alcohol, none of your 5-a-day and approximately two million calories per serving. In fact, if you chuck in a packet of Regal Kingsize and a bar of tablet you will have pretty much covered all of the major Scottish food groups. But as an occasional treat I really would give the fondue mix another go. Needless to say I went on a 3 hour walk the next day to try and burn off my excesses.

The Day of the Doctor(s)

Saturday night was Geekfest – a celebration of all things geeky but more specifically a chance to gather with friends and watch the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special: The Day Of The Doctor. I think my second Doctor outfit worked quite well, all things considered. I couldn’t get the hair to work quite as well as I’d hoped. It fluffed out slightly and it turns out that I was somewhat greyer than Patrick Troughton was in the 1960s. Nina thought I ended up looking more like Timothy Dalton’s James Bond than the Doctor – still, that’s better than ending up looking like an Ood:

Some of the other outfits were quite impressive – particularly this Weeping Angel which was genuinely quite creepy:

There was also a third Doctor at the party - although we managed to get on better than in the series:

It wasn’t all Doctor Who references as you can see from this Vulcan:

As for the episode itself, I was really taken with it as it managed to somehow fill the long gap when it was off-air and nicely tie up both the original series with it’s modern incarnation and somehow turn the whole thing into a coherent whole. Like many of Stephen Moffat’s scripts it really does need to be seen twice to appreciate all the subtle touches of dialogue. For an episode that delved so deeply into the mythology of the series I think there was enough to keep the casual viewer entertained but for a fan of almost 50 years worth of episodes there were clever references in abundance.

I suppose the problem now is how to top it – and also how to answer the question of limiting the Doctor to 13 bodies. Personally, I would rather that bit of mythology was gently swept aside but it seems to have gained such hard-coded centrality amongst fandom that it really does need properly explaining (like how come the Master keeps regenerating when he was the reason the limit was introduced to begin with?) Anyway, that’s for another day. Christmas Day, in fact.

Fancy Dress

This week we were told that our children would be going to school in their pyjamas as part of Children in Need week. This is a perfectly decent charitable cause but having children go to school in pyjamas, in Scotland and in the middle of November one can only assume that this should have been called Children in Need of a Bleeding Overcoat.

Dressing up is a fun thing for kids but there seems to be an increasing demand for them to have a costume for every occasion. A few weeks ago we were told that my daughter was meant to be going to school dressed as a pirate for “pirate party day”. Now I was tempted to send her with a replica AK-47 and tell them she was Somalian but we actually had a Captain Hook outfit which she looked rather cute in. Then we had the ritual of Halloween for which it is no longer acceptable to stick a sheet over the kids’ heads and tell them they are ghosts. The latest thing is that they have to go dressed as “a number” which can include a replica football shirt if so desired. I’m blown if I’m going to fork out for that and I’m very tempted to send them as π just to confound the school.

Fancy dress is something that can carry on into adulthood with fan conventions and dubious themed parties. I’m not a big fan of it normally but next week is the Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary and I have been invited to an event dubbed by my friend’s wife as Geekfest and I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to dress up for the world. I did mull over the idea as going as Roger Delgado’s Master which I think I could have pulled off quite nicely except that I couldn’t have survived the facial hair growth (Movember or not) which did make me wonder whether going as Christopher Ecclestone’s Doctor No 9 (or was he?) would be a good idea as I usually have a similar cropped haircut.

The key to the 9th Doctor outfit is his leather jacket. I did manage to find a suitable jacket online. It was £125 which is not cheap but I thought I could get some use out of a nice leather jacket. Unfortunately, my wife disagreed because whilst I think it would make me look like this:

My wife thought it would make me look far more like this:

At £125 quid I thought I’d knock it on the head. However, I did rather like the idea of going as Patrick Troughton’s 2nd Doctor. Like me, the 2nd Doctor was a bit of a scruffbag and the key to his outfit is to wear things that are slightly oversized. This worked for Patrick Troughton as he was quite a small man but unfortunately I tend to were the top size of everything (at least length-wise) unless I was going to buy a pile of clothes from High and Mighty.

The saving grace in all this is this rather fetching item which I found at Forbidden Planet:

It’s a T-shirt with the 2nd Doctor’s outfit printed on it. I did wonder whether it would look a bit naff but once I stick my (slightly) oversized black jacket over the top it looks quite fitting. Anyway, as of 19:50 next Saturday I don’t think anyone will be bothered with what I’m wearing.

The Sound Of Silence

Over the last few weeks I have been increasingly been bothered by tinnitus – mostly manifesting itself as a high pitched whistle, not entirely unlike the noise of a faulty CRT monitor. In fact it has been getting to the point whereby I have been actively distracted by it. Like anything else medical I have been loathe to make an appointment with my local GP. Hearing loss is one of those things that comes with age so I suppose I have rather been in denial about it for a while. My older dog, Eddie, seems to suffer from the same thing – at least he doesn’t seem to respond easily to his own name. This may be related to his wanton stupidity but I think he is genuinely suffering hearing loss, along with his blancmange for brains and failing eyesight. Still, he’s a wiz at the old pinball.

I eventually made the decision to see a doctor after taking the kids to the cinema a couple of weeks ago to see Monsters University. This was at the university cinema so it was more of an arthouse ambience rather than a blaring multiplex but I had quite a bit of discomfort in my ears from the sub-woofers. I thought it would settle down in a quiet room afterwards but was left with a persistent hiss and whistle reminiscent of the after-effects of a Motörhead concert. I had my doctors appointment on Tuesday and after a brief examination she diagnosed me with Otitis Externa – essentially an infection of the ear which leads to a thickening of the skin and a resultant itchiness, pain and hearing loss. The prescription for this was a simple antibiotic ear spray which I have been taking for the last five days.

So have I found an improvement? Overall I would say I have but it’s very difficult to determine quite how much. My ears still feel a bit itchy and the tinnitus is still there. In fact it is probably always there it’s just that it is not normally noticed – tinnitus is essentially the sound of silence. In the past I’ve even been able to make out segments of music in pure silence as a kind of auditory pareidolia. However, I do feel as if I am hearing speech more clearly. The real test would be to have a full hearing test but I have found a few online tests which at least offers a glimpse of whether my hearing is feeling the effects of middle age decrepitude.

One such test is http://www.actiononhearingloss.org.uk which can be done online and measures one’s ability to make out some spoken numbers over a background of white noise. It’s a fairly basic test but one which does give some sort of indication of hearing problems. After a week of medication I’ve taken the test and passed – which is a relief. In fact, I’ve noticed that my hearing does seem better overall. Music sounds clearer and I can listen to the TV without turning the amplifier up to 11. It does still sound much clearer through the Dolby surround, though. However, I think that is more a case of superior fidelity rather than a hearing aid – sending all the spoken words to a separate speaker helps no end.

I just wonder whether my choices in music may change a bit. I’ve been listening to a lot of heavy rock recently and not much classical or Jazz. If I can actually hear the music I suspect that might change.

The Mighty Torque Wrench

I noticed back in March that DIY is much easier with the appropriate tools but I had another example this week when I came to change my wheels around. I’ve swapped wheels before and I am quite capable of doing it with the basic tool kit that motor manufacturers (until recently) supply for the purposes of changing burst tyres but they are very primitive and removing wheels can be torturous. Putting them back on can be even more problematic as if the bolts are not tightened up correctly the wheel can fall off – on the other hand, apply too much pressure and the bolt can sheer off. It’s a stupid thing to do but I’ve managed it in the past.

Changing the wheels this week was much easier – largely because I’m a sucker for the “specials” that they sell at discount supermarkets such as Lidl and Aldi. It’s a cunning ploy – save a few quid on cheap fruit and veg and come out with £100 worth of power tools. Well I didn’t spend that much on this tool (just under £20, in fact) but I am now a convert to the mighty torque wrench.

The torque wrench is a fundamentally simple idea. It can be adjusted to limit the amount of pressure that is applied to a bolt – it also has a longer handle which means it is a lot less effort to turn the thing. However, it is simply the limit to torque that makes it so much easier because I can just twist it around like gorilla without worrying about shredding the bolts. Overall it took me just 30 minutes to change all 4 wheels: hardly formula one but every second counts when it’s cold and wet.

I just wonder what else might make the job easier. A proper jack maybe? I’ll have to see what Lidl stock next.

Fiddling with phones

Since I swapped my phone over to something I can actually use I’ve been calling and texting quite a bit more. In fact I’ve even had to top up the Pay As You Go (PAYG) which I hadn’t had to do for over a year. This rather surprised me as I was mostly just sending texts with the odd quick call and an update of the operating system. I had a look at T-Mobile’s website to discover that they were now charging me 14p per text, £1 for the privilege of using data and an eye-watering 35p/minute to make calls – in fact they even charge a pretty hefty 20p/min to phone “free” 0800 numbers. I hadn’t really noticed how high their costs had gone as I really only used the phone occasionally with the odd high burst when away from home or abroad (I originally chose T-Mobile for their German coverage.)

Mobile phone firms really try to tie people into monthly packages tied to “free” phones but this doesn’t suit me. I wanted something that was PAYG but with the ability to boost it to a more inclusive package for the odd month when I had more frequent mobile requirements. T-Mobile didn’t seem to do anything suitable but there are quite a few virtual phone providers such as Asda and Tesco that do this sort of thing. The one I picked up on was Giffgaff (prior to that I had just assumed was some bit of random advertising prior to The Big Bang Theory.) Anyway, it turns out that Giffgaff is a spin off from 02 that runs a reasonably priced PAYG service with the addition of “Goody Bags”: prepaid packs of free call minutes, texts and data downloads that apply for a fixed period. This seemed to do what I wanted…

Except it didn’t. I logged on to their website and tried to order a SIM. It threw up an error and suggested that it would work if I tried again. I did, it didn’t. The unique selling point with Giffgaff is that it is largely user supported. They have extensive help forums and I have to say that the people posting on these forums are both helpful and polite which makes a real difference in these days of universal internet rudery. I tried various suggestions such as using different browsers and clicking on links from the users’ signature banners. None of this seemed to work so I gave up for the day. The next day I received 20 emails telling me that a variety of SIMs were in the post!

The problem was I didn’t know whether the batch of emails were a computer brain-fart cleared by an eagled eyed ops manager or whether I really was going to receive a batch of SIMs. To date I haven’t received any but I ended up going down a different route which is related to me checking out the mobile coverage. There are two mobile masts at the end of our road. I know one of them is operated by T-Mobile but I didn’t know who ran the other. It turns out that it is operated by Three, one of the smallest of the mobile operators but also one with an offer that really appealed to me: 3p/min for calls, 2p per text and 1p per MB of data – all with the option of boosting with their version of the “Goody Bag”. I sent off for a SIM.

The SIM duly arrived and the coverage in the house is fine. It also seems to work at most of the other I’ve tried so it is beginning to look like a bargain (less than 10% of my previous charges). That just left the task of swapping my mobile number, something I’ve never done before. It turns out to be a really simple task and I have to give some credit here to T-Mobile whose call centre staff were very helpful and not in the least bit obstructive when I told them I wanted to leave and asked for the PAC code (possibly they saw how low my mobile usage is). I then put this into Three’s online transfer form and 24 hours later I was all switched over. If only swapping energy and broadband was that simple.

So that is me vaguely into the 21st Century with a phone that I like, can use and a mobile rate that won’t threaten to bankrupt me. I suppose the next thing is to get a PC that doesn’t run some ancient version of Linux.

All Creatures Great And Small

I’ve been spending the week off to coincide with the kids Autumn holiday week. I did have great plans to take them out to various places but my daughter decided to spend Monday doing an impression of Linda Blair from The Exorcist (which I now discover is actually the actress’s name – the character was Regan). Anyway, after spending a day removing pea soup from the furniture, carpet, local priest etc she wasn’t really in a fit state to go out on the fun filled week I’d planned. This was probably just as well as I was also looking after our friend’s dog which is a cross between a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Vietnamese Pot Bellied Pig and a tank. Needless to say I couldn’t walk the legs off the mutt and even after a five mile march he could still happily pull me over when I was holding his lead.

By Friday the weather looked reasonable enough and my daughter well enough to journey out. We decided to give Edinburgh Zoo a go. It’s a few years since I’ve been there and their big selling point is that they now have Giant Pandas. I was a bit worried about this as I thought it would mean that the place was packed out but when we got there the pandas had gone all Marlene Dietrich and weren’t on display. Good – I think they are useless blighters at the best of times. Apparently, some people had left on the spot when finding this out they couldn’t see them – I can only assume that these are the same people who turn up to the Louvre in Paris, head straight to the Mona Lisa and then bugger off having seen that overrated postage stamp.

Edinburgh Zoo is a reasonable size but possibly feels bigger than it actually is given that it is built on a steep hillside. There are a variety of animals there although some of the more iconic zoo animals are missing – there are no elephants or giraffes – but what they do have seem to be well housed and  for the most part look content in that idly-bored-with-proceedings look that zoo animals tend to have. I did try to take a few photographs but I am rather limited by my basic photographic equipment (just my 3MP phone) and the fact that the animals are either lounging far enough out of view to reduce themselves to a dozen or so pixels or moving so damn fast that they don’t stay in focus.

I did get a few reasonable pictures. The Rhea came out pleasingly well although it tried to peck the crap out of someone’s iPad which was hilarious.

I took a picture of this snake which was nicely in view and doing sod-all.





I was very taken with the one horned Indian Rhinoceros (or to use it’s pleasing Latin designation Rhinoceros Unicornis). These are magnificent beasts and they came very close to the viewing gallery.

I tried to get a decent picture of the lions. Just like a domestic cat they are very good at doing nothing much in particular. I did consider chucking a ball of wool at it but I zoomed this picture in to the point of pixilation.




Like any good zoo they have a colony of Meerkats. These ones didn’t have Eastern European accents or sell dodgy insurance products so I think our TV advertising creatives have been lying to us. In fact I don’t know why they gave them Eastern European accents in the first place. South African I could accept. Anyway, the buggers wouldn’t get any closer so I zoomed it to hell. Simples!

If there is one feature that I think is really fantastic with Edinburgh Zoo since I was last there it’s the penguin enclosure. Penguins are really good because they get into the whole being in a zoo thing – this chap was happy to pose for a photo.



This one also posed but I received a text when I was lining the shot up. By the time I sorted that out he had fallen asleep.

The penguin pool has glass viewing panels on the side which allows them to be seen swimming underwater. It’s absolutely mesmerising and allows them to be seen in their natural environment – birds that fly underwater. It’s really astonishing that evolution has pushed them in this direction and incredible to see. Unlike the pandas, of course, who appear to have lined themselves up for a Darwin Award with their inappropriate diet and aversion to reproduction.

Anyway, everyone seemed to enjoy their day out – even my eldest son who appears to have been possessed by the spirit of Kevin The Teenager.

Archives

I was really delighted this week when two (almost) complete Patrick Troughton Doctor Who stories emerged from Nigeria of all places. By coincidence I have just finished watching the last of Troughton’s stories with the kids. I haven’t seem The War Games myself for at least 25 years and it really was as good as I remembered it – a solid story, excellently scripted and never dragging in spite of it’s 10 episode span. I had been telling the kids that after that it was the last of the 2nd Doctor stories but now we will have Enemy Of The World and Web Of Fear to look forward to. The latter is a real treat as the last Christmas episode alluded to this and left me somewhat clueless as I’ve only ever seen the first episode (as would most people under 50 until this week).

The funny thing is that I discussed this with a colleague who works at the BBC earlier this week. He commented on the rumours indicating that this referred to a couple of old tapes that turned up a while ago. I assumed he meant the two odd episodes that surfaced in 2011 (he probably did). The conversation I was having with him regarded the deletion of old data. Some data has to be removed for legal reasons (for example the data protection act) but more often than not it’s for simple economic reasons to save on disk storage. This was largely the same reason that so many old TV programmes were wiped – the VT was regarded as a far more valuable asset than the content recorded on them. I can understand that it’s difficult to determine what will be of interest in the future but it’s small consolation that so many Doctor Who, Top Of The Pops and Wednesday Plays were regarded as ephemera: passing trivialities to be watched and wiped.

The economic arguments do make some sense in a hard headed accountant’s mind but the costs of archiving in some basic form are surprisingly trivial in the larger scheme of things. The problem is that it’s not always obvious exactly what will prove of interest to future generations. Pick an old newspaper up and the cover story may be intriguing with the sports pages providing a trip down memory lane but the biggest interest is actually the adverts and classifieds. What were people doing, what did they aspire to and spend their disposable income on? Turn to the letters page and it can be surprising at both what ordinary folk were concerned by and even what the prevailing received wisdom was.

The BBC did archive certain programmes, often quite haphazardly, for posterity and sometimes they hit gold. Purely by chance one archive from 1957 is the very first TV appearance of a very young Jimmy Page later of Led Zeppelin super-stardom. Of course, in 1957 the BBC had no idea  of how significant he would become (and not in the area of scientific research as he suggested.) It does make you wonder what else of significance was lost:


Deleting old TV programmes looks mindlessly myopic now but I believe we are doing the same again. This time the destruction of content is in the digital sphere. It looks like trivia but the comments sections on web pages, blogs (like this one), Twitter and the whole raft of social media are going to be the historians’ goldmine in the latter part of the 21st Century. That’s as long as we don’t idly hit the delete button for the sake of the cost of an extra disk drive.

Carron Dam

One thing I am often looking for is alternative dog walks. Whilst I have enjoyed walking through the Helix and I often go to Plean Country Park I do enjoy a little variety just so I don’t have to look at the same old scenery every day. I was planning on going through the Helix again this Sunday but the last time I went Sam rolled in something unspeakably smelly which resulted in me cleaning him with dry dog shampoo, followed by wet dog shampoo and finally Alberto Balsam coconut and lychee shampoo – after which he still had the aroma of vaguely stinky dog. Jake suggested going to Carron Dam which isn’t a bad idea as it has the advantage of being within walking distance of the house, it is off road, so I can let the dogs have a run, and it contains a sufficient array of bad smells to keep the mutts amused.

Carron Dam is one of those oddities – a nature reserve that is actually former industrial land: specifically it was used to store water for the Carron ironworks. Plean Country Park is similar in this respect as it is a former mine combined with the owners derelict mansion and grounds.


It took about 25 minutes to walk right around the dam but this did include a couple of stops for Jake to remove stones or something from his wellies. I did try to take a picture of some wildlife but the rabbit and squirrel that I saw were faster than the cheap photographic equipment that I had with me. I did take a picture of these mushrooms as they don’t move as fast.

Overall it’s a pleasant walk around even if Sam did find something vaguely disgusting to roll in. He now smells of coconut and lychee.

The Joy Of Shopping

I’ve been buying some things online this week. There is nothing unusual about that in this day and age, it’s just that I found the experience to be a little unsettling. I was actually buying a full set of steel wheels and winter tyres for the Golf (yes, that obsession again) and the only place I could find that would do them at a reasonable price was MyTyres.com which is the UK trading name for German firm, Delticom. This is actually a large European concern and a firm with a pretty good reputation so it did make me wonder why their payments handling system feels like that of a cottage industry or a VAT-exempt sole-trader holed up in a Welsh cottage somewhere.

Initially, I actually found the experience very good with them having a huge range of stock available in various combinations. I managed to feed in my exact specifications of car model and desired tyre and was passed through to the checkout. I entered in my credit card details and this appeared to take the order with little trouble and I received an order confirmation. Things then started to go a little odd the next morning when I received an email telling me that for the order to proceed I would have to transfer money directly into their bank account. This sort of smelt like a scam.

I decided to phone up the firm's helpline (checked from an independent source) and it turned out that the email was genuine. They claimed to have tried my credit card but had it declined. This is not the first time this has happened and it usually involves a quick call to the bank to authorise payment but they were determined that I should pay by bank transfer instead. I’m always a bit uneasy about this as credit cards, at least in the UK, do offer a fair bit of added security whether it is down to the banks vigilance or the statuary guarantees that are in place. After doing a quick trawl of a few motoring forums I decided that this was par for the course and made the payment. I had expected to receive confirmation in a few hours but I actually received a response saying that I would receive a confirmation of payment in “1 to 2 days”. I did receive this but it was after 2 working days (right over the weekend) that the payment confirmation was received. During that time I was left sweating as to whether that money had disappeared into the ether.

The next part of this interesting transaction has to do with their chosen couriers, DPD. Now the first thing I would say about them is that their online tracking system is excellent but it also highlights the somewhat bizarre methods of transporting their parcels. I had assumed that as all 4 tyres were being transported from the same warehouse to the same destination that they would all travel together. There were actually 4 different package numbers for them so I just checked the top code. Whilst I was out walking the dog I got a text from Nina: Did you really only buy 1 tyre? When I got home I discovered that each tyre was in a different state: one in my garage in Scotland, one in a distribution centre in Warrington, one in a hub in Bavaria and the other in Baden-Württemberg. Now I can understand that the logistics could warrant splitting the order to get it to the distribution centre but I really think they missed a trick by not making a single journey to my house.

The rest of the tyres arrived this morning and the delivery driver was as bemused at his extra journey as I was. So would I recommend MyTyres? They do seem to offer a unique selling point with the combined steel wheel and winter tyre and their prices are very competitive. However, I found the purchase experience from BlackCircles and KwikFit to be far less stressful. Having used them once I think I would be more confident about ordering again. I’d certainly consider DPD for deliveries as even with the odd delivery their tracking was very good. They said that this morning’s delivery would be between 11:00 and 12:00 and it arrived at 11:03 which is pretty remarkable. Anyway, I suppose this just confirms something I’ve known for years: Germans don’t like credit cards.

The Not-So-Smart Phone

I used to have a little Sony mobile phone. It was pretty basic but had a great music player and the battery would last for over a week on standby. It broke around 18 months ago so I went for a smart-phone. This was an Android based thing which I was convinced (by others) was the way to go. This, it turned out, was a big mistake.

When I first bought the phone I thought that it would take some getting used to – but I never have got used to it. The touch-screen interface is bloody awful and I should have been wary of this having tried and failed to use a friend’s iPhone previously. Unfortunately, I sometimes just have to learn the hard way. Aside from the interface I also found the screen very difficult to read with my middle-aged eyesight and the whole thing was bulky and cumbersome to use. However, the absolute killer was the battery life. If left on standby it would last less than a day so I ended up switching the thing off, rendering it largely useless as a mobile phone. Even then, I would forget about it and the battery could be flat in under a week, making it less use than a strategically placed public call box.

I’m not in the habit of scrapping things that are not actually broken beyond repair but on occasion I just have to admit that I made a duff purchase and buy a replacement. I don’t think my requirements have changed as such. I need to make and receive calls on occasion and sometimes text; I like to have a decent MP3 player and camera but I also now realise that a half decent battery life and a vaguely useable interface help no end. As such I’ve gone for a not-so-smart phone in the form of a Nokia 301.

So what’s it like? Well, small, black, with traditional buttons and a no-nonsense interface would sum it up quite nicely. On a single charge it has lasted for around a week on standby although it runs down faster if the camera or music player are used more. The MP3 player is also a model of simplicity which easily found all the albums that I had loaded on the micro-SD card from the old phone. The songs can be selected via album or artist and there are also playlists which I haven’t fiddled with yet (and probably won’t). It sounds OK though the supplied headset and significantly better on more expensive headphones or playing through a proper stereo.

The camera is a 3.2MP job which is theoretically inferior to the old one but I haven’t noticed any difference. In fact for the most part it is far easier to use than the old one. The only problem I have found, and it is an annoying one, is that the photo’s are mis-orientated. I have found a way of fixing this using the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) but it is a little annoying. Anyway, I took this picture in the early evening of the Celtic Circle at The Helix:

There are a couple of useful extra features on the camera. The first is for producing Selfies. A Selfie is a self portrait produced by pointing ones camera at oneself. I discovered that this word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary the other week and is a currently fashionable term amongst the young person’s argot (in a similar way to the way iPod means “gramophone-player”). The feature works by having a bossy American woman help position the phone at arms length. This was the result:

Unfortunately, it doesn’t point out that a gale is blowing one’s fringe asunder. The other feature is a panorama which allows a wide angled shot to be deployed by taking several shots and piecing them together. This was my effort:

I could see that working nicely for landscapes or something like Liverpool waterfront. The surprising thing is how idiot proof the feature is. All of these features seem to work intuitively and with very little effort from the user. Overall I’m very pleased and aside from the annoying picture orientation I couldn’t fault the device. I’ve also managed to set it up with the old Doctor Who theme as the ringtone and a TARDIS noise as the text notification. As far as I am concerned the mobile phone industry can take their smart phones and avail themselves of the suppository app.

Helix Day

Being a dog owner I spend more than my own fair share of spare time in public parks. This gives the dogs a chance to have a run and sniff around on their own and is also a chance for me to stretch my legs and get some fresh air (well, in between cleaning up after the dogs). I always seem to have been fortunate enough to live close to a decent park – I often walked through Jesmond Dene when I lived in Newcastle and my house backed on to Roath Park when I lived in Cardiff. For many years I lived not far from Birkenhead Park – Britain’s first public park and one of the inspirations for New York’s Central Park. Falkirk does pretty well for public parks with the likes of Callendar and Dollar Park but we are getting a new one, The Helix, and yesterday was its (sort of) opening day.

I suppose the concept of a public park is rather a 19th Century idea rather than a 21st Century one but I rather like the thought that some old waste industrial ground should be turned into a public space rather than used for high density housing or “retail outlets” as pretty much every bit of free land in this country seems to be appropriated for. Helix Day was  touted as the opening day for the park although it is still very much a work in progress. However, the day itself was very well attended (read “mobbed”) and Falkirk Stadium car-park, which was meant to house all the visitors, was soon overrun. If only Falkirk football club could attract this many people? The one problem with this was that it was actually quite difficult to see the park for the entire population of Stirlingshire thronging about.

There were quite a few activities taking place including this oddball take on gardening: mixing wild flower seeds with papier-mâché and flinging them hither and thither with a giant catapult. It could almost get me into gardening again.

The Helix is actually a huge expanse which will run from Grangemouth to Carron (almost as far as Stenhousemuir). It also runs alongside the Forth and Clyde canal so it should be possible to walk or cycle to the Falkirk Wheel.

I think what should mark out The Helix as a truly modern park are the works of art. The most imposing of these will be The Kelpies. They are currently under construction but will be 30 metre / 100 feet tall steel horse-heads. I’ve seen the 1/10th scale models and even these are impressive but the real thing is just as astonishing as an engineering feat as they are for their artistic merit. To give some sort of idea of the scale there is a man working in the cradle at the top of the crane and the mass of metal that is dwarfing the VW Transporter will be one of the creature’s ears.

I walked back with the kids to Carron Phoenix Works were the North part of the Helix ends. Along the way there are a couple of other works of art. One of these is a human sun dial. It works by standing in the centre next to the current month and seeing which way one’s shadow is cast. It probably works better if you are taller than this. It also works better if you live in a country with a bit more sunshine. There wasn’t on this occasion although we probably do get more than on the West coast. There are people in Greenock that will hurl stones at the fearful ball of fire in the sky if the sun comes out. I jest, of course - no-one has ever seen the sun in Greenock.

After the sun dial I expected to see a chocolate tea-pot. In fact what I found was this curiosity called “Love and Kisses”. I think the idea is that from one end it looks like a giant heart (the symbol of love, that is, not the internal organ). From the side, I think it is meant to represent a giant pair of lips and not, as I first thought, a giant iron turd.

Overall, I think the Helix is shaping up to be something quite special. I can also see it becoming quite a tourist attraction, particularly when the Kelpies are finished. But for me, it will be somewhere else to walk the dogs.

Southern Rock

Another week and another batch of (mostly) freebee CDs courtesy of an Amazon voucher. This time I’ve ended up going for a few Southern Rock compilations. I seem to have been listening to quite a few blues-rock albums with the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Free, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Company and Whitesnake rotating on the car stereo. The odd thing with this is that they were almost all UK based acts (Hendrix was American but based in the UK for much of his short career). Southern Rock has an attraction to me in that it doesn’t fit into the overly produced slickness of mainstream US rock but retains much of the grit and roots of the Southern states of America. It also wears its influences on its sleeve with a pleasing mix of rock and roll, blues, country and folk – it feels like the real deal.

I went for three disks and for purely alphabetical reasons I started with the “Essential” Allman Bothers Band. Now, I’m not sure quite how essential this is. The rear sleeve notes say that these are “carefully selected” tracks from their career but also make reference to “Jessica – the unmistakable theme tune to TV’s Top Gear”. This is true but I would hardly go marketing such an influential group of musicians based on a popular motoring programme. Never-the-less, this is all enjoyable stuff and much more blues soaked than I somehow imagined. I can’t complain for the £3 it cost me and is one I’d happily listen to it time and again.
 

The second disk was one I’d been planning on getting for a while which was a Lynyrd Skynyrd compilation. I have an old 7” single with Sweet Home Alabama on one side and Free Bird on the other. The version of Free Bird on the single was the edit and it really misses the best bit with the extended solo. In a way it’s rather like the Beatles' Hey Jude – a so-so-ballad which turns into something monumental and anthemic towards the end. There is no risk of this curtailment with the version on “Greatest Hits” as it is all there in its full 9 minute glory – and what a moment it is. The rest of the album isn’t too shabby either and any album that can kick off with the (friendly) poke in the eye of Sweet Home Alabama can’t be that bad.

The last disk was a double CD: ZZ Top’s Rancho Texicano. In a way, this compilation sums up the two halves of this most distinctive of band’s career – the growling guitar and gritty blues-rock simplicity of their 1970s output and the synthesiser overload of the 1980s. In all honesty, it’s the first disk that I prefer but I don’t think their 80s output was that bad – just a case of diminishing returns. The first disk contains the real classics: Tush, Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers, Cheap Sunglasses and La Grange are all there but there isn’t really a bad track amongst them. The second disk actually contains their most commercially successful material and I still think that Eliminator was a great album: Gimme All Your Loving and Sharp Dressed Man were genuinely top-notch song-writing. ZZ Top were one of the first American rock bands to really embrace the MTV age and their unique image helped with this but I think it is obvious that Afterburner and Recycler were moving them further away from what they did best. My only criticism of this compilation is that the last couple of tracks are throwaway remixes of earlier tracks – it would have been nice to hear some of their more recent stuff or live performances.

Overall I’m pretty pleased with the disks and I can see myself going for some of the more recent Southern Rock acts -The Black Crowes, maybe? Then again, who knows where my musical meandering will have taken me by then.