Annus Maximus Horribilis

It’s the last day of 2016 and it has certainly turned out a year to remember – or at least one that I think many of us would rather forget. We seem to have lost so many high profile and much loved celebrities, often those who have excelled in their field, that I have lost count. Just a few include Caroline Aherne, Jean Alexander, Muhammad Ali, David Bowie, Ronnie Corbett, Leonard Cohen, Johan Cruyff, Paul Daniels, Carrie Fisher, John Glenn, Frank Kelly, Greg Lake, George Martin, George Michael, Michael Nicholson, Rick Parfitt, Prince, Debby Reynolds, Alan Rickman, Andrew Sachs, Gene Wilder, Terry Wogan, Victoria Wood and Jimmy Young. That’s just of the top of my head (in alphabetical order) so we really have been losing a lot of the the good guys. It’s got to the point that I’m afraid to switch on the news to see who has gone next. As one of my friends pointed out, it’s almost like a biblical rapture of public figures.

Of course there are world events and aside from the hideous civil war in Syria and the less visible carnage in Yemen we have had the United States move from the world’s greatest democracy to the world’s largest cretinocracy by electing the nylon-haired abomination that is Donald Trump as their president. Just how, exactly did that happen? Unfortunately, Britain is no better and arguably a lot worse by voting for Brexit. I’m not quite sure which is worse, the utter pain in the arse process which will drag on for ever with little if any benefit and a whole world of pain to endure or the fact that this dreadful, ugly portmanteaux has entered the lexicon: it apparently has no meaning: “Brexit means Brexit” isn’t a definition, it’s a tautology.

If the fact that we have lost so many well-loved people and that the world has gone insane wasn’t bad enough 2016 turns out to be one of the longest on record (only 1972 was longer). It is an  annus maximus horribilis – a great big bum year. Not only is it a leap year but we also get a leap second just before midnight on the 31st of December as the good folk at the National Physical Laboratory have decided that this would be a good time to make a necessary adjustment to the world’s clocks. So, even at the very end, some bastard has caused the year to be dragged out to its very longest possible duration.

Of course it is always possible that this surreally insane and miserable year is actually just a bad dream. We will wake up at some point on Sunday morning, rather hungover, to find out that the lunatics haven’t taken over the asylum and we get Bowie, Rickman, Fisher et al back.  That only seems slightly more bizarre than the year we have just experienced but somehow I feel that some dreams do come true and it’s usually the bad ones. Maybe 2017 will be better? Either that or World War Three, here we come…

The Return Of Doctor Mysterio

If there is one thing I look forward to on Christmas Day; at least after the kids have littered the house with wrapping paper and I’ve sorted out two German women threatening each other with kitchen knives following some “discussion” about goose cooking time and everyone has eaten far too much and ends up lying in front of the TV flatulently watching the Queen’s speech and someone has had to find the one petrol station open on Christmas Day because the batteries weren’t bloody included; If there is one thing I look forward to it’s the hour of escapism that is offered up by the now traditional festive episode of Doctor Who.

This year it featured “a superhero” which rather raised my heckles as I’ve really lost patience with the whole megabucks superhero movie genre. At least that appears to be how they have gone since DC and Marvel have both decided that rather than producing some escapist fantasy fun they are trying to earnestly produce a modern version of Shakespeare except with crap dialogue, endless fistfights and at least an hour’s worth of pointless explosions. I ended up watching the original Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve the other week, mainly to give the kids something to do aside from hitting each other, and I actually really loved it – possibly as much as I did when I was 10 years old (or whatever I was when it originally came out). Fortunately, it appears that it is that style of old-school superhero adventure that Doctor Who was aiming at.

I wasn’t that fussed on last year’s Christmas episode, The Husbands of River Song. It seemed to have a wafer thin plot that was really a premise to tie up a hanging plot line from some 7 years previous that can’t have been of any particular interest to the casual viewer. It also made very poor use of their guest stars, not least Matt Lucas as Nardole who was back this year. I wasn’t so sure on that choice but I actually found him to be more entertaining this year although I’m still not sure what his role is meant to be – it's almost the role suggested for Frank Skinner who I still think would have been a better choice (although maybe too like Capaldi). I’d also expected the new assistant to have been in this episode but it looks like we will have to wait until the start of the new series. This is a pity as I’d been looking forward to seeing Pearl Mackie and I really loved the one-off sidekick in Mysterio in the form of Charity Wakefield.

Anyway, as for the episode, I thought it worked really well as a throw away Christmas Day romp and it was something different: another genre for Doctor Who to do their own inimitable take on. This lead to some discussion with the kids as to whether the Doctor is actually a super-hero or not. I would say he isn’t as he solves problems with wit and intelligence rather than using supernatural powers or alien technology: except for that magic pill thing and, well, apart from the TARDIS… and the sonic screwdriver… and that psychic paper… OK, it’s a fine line. The superhero in this story was of the Doctor’s inadvertent making which still made it feel like Whovian daftness and Justin Chatwin put in a good performance as “The Ghost” - it’s nice to see him in something again since I don’t think I have actually seen him in anything since The War Of The Worlds when he was much younger.

Overall, I though The Return Of Doctor Mysterio hit the mark: it was light and funny enough for Christmas Day and it may have hooked in a new set of fans which is no bad thing considering that Doctor Who has been off our screens for a whole year now. It also did the one thing that I really miss with modern comic book adaptations: it actually had the look and feel of a comic book. Anyway, the new series trailer at the end has wet my appetite for series 36 which I am assuming will start showing around Easter time. Until then there are the DVDs to play with – did I mention just how good the Power of the Daleks animation was?

Christmas Stockings

My children finally pulled back the curtain and found me operating the controls of Santa Claus a few Christmases back. In a way it is something of a relief as the beard of the Santa costume is somewhat scratchy and there is only so long that I can hang about in the freezing cold waiting bring the presents in whilst “Dad has just popped out to pick up Nana.” However, the one element of the whole charade that I have kept up is the Christmas stockings. In fact it is the one bit of Christmas that I probably miss myself: being able to delve into an old football sock to see what little gifts have been left inside.

It is something of a hassle to find suitable gifts. Sweets (particularly chocolate coins) are a good bet as is the inevitable tangerine. I also tend to go for bits of stationary (coloured pencils and the like) which will get some use, as will bubble bath, novelty mugs and small books. After that it does get into the territory of plastic crap to fill the thing out. Just how many plastic dinosaurs do children really need (the answer is “tons”).

The other challenge is trying to find bits that are similar that will appeal to all three children. A metal nibbed fountain pen may be suitable as a writing gift for a 15 year old but it is more likely to be used as an offensive weapon by his younger brother. The best bet is to get something similar that is age appropriate for him: crayons is it, then?

One thing that hasn’t changed is the kid’s attitude to their “big” present. In the past we have had to explain that although Santa is both magic and philanthropic, he isn’t a millionaire. Unfortunately, now they know where the present come from they seem to think that I am as rich as Crassus.

Daytrips in the Rain

I’ve been to another couple of Historic Scotland properties in the last few weeks and one of the disadvantages of going in the Winter is that there is far more chance that the weather will be inclement. For the most part this is just a case of sticking on a jumper and some waterproofs but I’d also suggest adding fairly sturdy footwear to that list as well.

Tantallon Castle

A point in case is Tantallon castle which is near North Berwick. Now, I have to say that the castle, situated on the North Sea coast, is quite spectacular but it is also somewhat trashed after an altercation between the last inhabitant and Oliver Cromwell’s cannons in 1651. There is still quite a great deal that can be seen of the castle and there is a telescope at the back to look out towards the sea and the islands immediately off the coast but on the day we visited it started off quite drizzly and ended up with a full-on downpour. Even though some of the rooms in the castle are sheltered many of the stairwells are quite slippery and at the top of the castle it is a long, long way down. The day after we visited, my son had a dizzy spell at school and fell down the stairs – fortunately this resulted in a minor bump on the head but it could have been a whole lot worse at the castle.

Inside Aberdour Castle

The other place I visited was Aberdour Castle in Fife which is a curious mixture of the very well preserved and the quite literally falling down: there is a huge chunk of no-longer-standing tower at the side which is lodged at a peculiar angle. The nice part of this trip was that when it was raining we were able to retreat to the interior and admire the ceiling paintings. It also has some very well kept gardens at the back which looked fairly familiar – I was thinking that it was similar to Castle Campbell.

Aberdour Castle and gardens

It was only when we were leaving and browsing around the gift shop that I discovered where I had seen it before. It had been used as one of the locations for the series Outlander which is meant to be set in the Highlands but which is mostly filmed around the central belt with various locations masquerading as the Highlands and other locales due to clever set dressing and TV trickery. It looks like Historic Scotland are making the most of the publicity which does make me wonder what Doune Castle is doing – previously that was most famous for its association with Monty Python and was also the original set of Winterfell in the pilot episode of Game of Thrones (prior to filming switching to Northern Ireland.) Doune is now one of the key locations for Outlander which is probably doing it a fair few favours in the tourist trade (at least when it isn’t raining).

Discerning Viewing

I have finally cancelled my LoveFilm subscription this week. I’d threatened to do this for a while but I put it off until  after we had watched series 6 of Game of Thrones on DVD. Well we’ve watched it and I’ve finally hit the cancel button.

Renting DVDs through the post was big business at one time but, with the growth of streaming services, it is now a somewhat minority pursuit with the main appeal being for those who live out in the sticks with low bandwidth broadband connections. As far as I know there are only two major DVD through the post services left: LoveFilm, which is hidden away on the Amazon website, and Cinema Paridiso which always has had a cult following for its extensive World Cinema section.

For anyone with a decent broadband connection, the streaming alternative would seem the obvious choice but I still rather like getting the DVDs and Blu-ray discs. Partly this is because the extras on the discs are usually not available on the streamed option but also because I do like the idea of waiting to see what comes through the post. All the items should be something that we wanted to see from the Rental List but, recently, we have been finding some of the films to be a chore and, on a couple of occasions, discs have been sent back unwatched as we really couldn’t remember why it was added to the rental list in the first place. In short, we were just running out of decent films to watch.

I suppose the problem is that we don’t have that much time to watch TV on our own and there is a plethora of  viewing material already on broadcast TV (including a few movie channels) without even getting to the new content that is finding its way through to the pay-per-view market. Ultimately, I think we will go back to the days of the video hire shop and just rent out films that we really want to watch but this time it will be by the medium of streaming services.

However, for what it is worth, I still think the DVD rental services are very good value and I could see us going for one again, even if just for a few months - probably when Game of Thrones Series 7 is available to rent.

Standing Room Only

There has been quite a bit in the news recently about the reintroduction of standing areas at football matches. Top flight matches in the UK were mandated to be all-seater affairs following the Taylor Report into the Hillsborough Stadium disaster. There were a number of recommendations which were mainly common sense measures to improve the safety at football matches and few of these were particularly controversial amongst fans other than the removal of terracing. However, it was something I did agree with as I knew from first-hand experience that the welfare of the ordinary fan on terraces was often precarious.

I’m trying to remember the last time I was in a terrace for a top-flight game. I seem to recall it was at Roker Park in the early 1990’s but I’m not certain as to the exact match. I have been on terraces since but, at the amateur levels of Scottish football, one is more likely to suffer from loneliness than being crushed against the barriers. There is a great deal of over-romanticised nostalgia about terraces. They could be exhilarating when your team was winning and the whole crowd was singing in unison but there appears to be a collective amnesia about the down side: the poor view, rib crushing crowd surges, someone peeing down your leg at half time and the stench of urine from the kids at the bottom of the stand who were downstream of several thousand emptied bladders. I suffered broken spectacles on more than one occasion during over-exuberant goal celebrations and, notably, bruised ribs when the minimal crowd control didn’t go to plan.

Even though I am opposed to the old style melee of terracing I am in favour of what is currently described as “safe standing”. I wouldn’t be tempted by it but I believe it is necessary for entirely practical reasons. Once football stadia went all-seater it didn’t prevent standing at football grounds. It is just that the standing now takes place in what were the traditional terraced sections of the stadia which is both a great annoyance for those that do want to sit as their view is blocked and it is also dangerous as someone falling over where many people are standing could cause a domino effect as there is nothing to catch their fall other than the fans immediately in front of them. And, of course, once one person stands at a match it rather encourages everyone behind them to stand as well so that they don’t miss any action for what is a rather expensive 90 minutes entertainment.

“Safe standing” areas are common in Germany and have recently been introduced at Celtic Park in Glasgow. What they are not is a traditional terrace with its sparsely placed barriers and minimal crowd control. With “safe standing” areas, every standing spectator has their own barrier to lean against and tickets are given to a particular place. In effect, it is no different from people standing in all-seater stands except that they are not blocking the view of those that do want to sit and they have the added safety feature of a dedicated rail in front of them to prevent a human domino effect. The Taylor Report was a quantum leap for the safety of sports stadia. The pragmatist in me says that far from challenging the wisdom of Taylor’s report, safe standing would actually enhance it.

The Golden Age of Streaming

I have heard the phrase “The Golden Age of Television” used to refer to various periods of time depending on who is using it. In the US this tends to refer to the period from the end of World War II to 1960 in which the medium became pervasive and programming to utilise it was devised. In the UK it tends to refer to the decade from 1953 when TV ownership rocketed after the Queen’s coronation was broadcast . However, I would argue that the true Golden Age was in the 1970s as most people had a set, increasingly in colour, and there were only 3 channels to pick from with little other mass entertainment to compete with. This was to change after 1980 with the advent of the VCR which meant that the one pervasive trend, the single shared experience, began to be diluted.

Now there is more television programming available than ever before but there is very little in the way of event television. There is no real point in watching TV at the time it is broadcast unless it is a live event: a sports match or something like the Eurovision Song Contest. People do still watch programmes as they are broadcast, or soon after, but the real reach of many programmes will not be achieved until months or even years after the original release date. Just as the VCR brought to an end the age of the shared experience of live broadcast, now streaming is changing the concept of broadcasting altogether; but can streaming still create event TV?

There have been a couple of streaming only television shows that I have watched recently which may have attempted this. The first was the BBC’s Doctor Who spinoff “Class”. I did watch the first two episodes on the day that they were released. Being a Doctor Who nut I am probably part of the key demographic for this but the show is aimed more as a sort of Buffy The Vampire Slayer for the Netflix generation. It’s actually not at all bad although I think having The Doctor making a guest appearance in the first episode was something of a mistake if this is to exist as a stand-alone series. In essence it picks up the concept from the very first episode of Doctor Who in 1963 but now uses Coal Hill School as a general purpose refugee centre for aliens on the run and much of the action centres around visitations from whatever the said aliens are seeking refuge from. Whether this counts as event TV is another matter because I’m already a couple of episodes behind what has been released. It’s not that I don’t want to see them but I have other things to do and I know that they will be available for at least a year.

The other streaming event this week was “The Grand Tour”, Amazon’s offering of “not” Top Gear featuring the familiar Clarkson, May, Hammond trio presenting the motoring show from a travelling circus tent in various countries. I already have a Prime membership and I did watch this on the day of its release. In fact it has attracted quite a bit of interest and mainly critical acclaim which does predispose it as “event TV” although I am rather ambivalent towards it. The bulk of the show featured a test of three hybrid supercars which was promised on Top Gear prior to Clarkson lamping one of the production staff. I was rather put off Clarkson again when he made a crass “joke” about Gypsies at the start of Grand Tour but I reminded myself that he once punched Piers Morgan so, whilst he might have a short fuse, he isn’t all bad.

I think part of my problem with The Grand Tour is that it was far too knowingly trying to be Top Gear and really concentrated on the rather mediocre bits that the show had descended into but didn’t highlight on the bits that really worked: particularly the travelogue elements that the “Grand Tour” title suggested and the general tomfoolery between the hosts. It was a waste, as hosting the show (this week) in America could have given them the chance to use some of the world’s most stunning locations. As it was they had an initial feature about differing motoring terms and their replacement racing driver was one skit on redneck Americans that wore out after 15 seconds: for some reason the mute “Stig” is still funny after many years on the original show. The only element that I did find laugh-out funny was the dead celebrities which resembled a sketch from The Goodies. Unfortunately, I suspect that will only work once.

I will probably watch The Grand Tour again but probably not on the day of its release. It’s an entertaining enough diversion but I can’t say that it is unmissable television. I also doubt whether I would miss it if I didn’t have the Amazon Prime subscription. Oddly enough, I am looking forward more to watching Class but will make an effort to watch it when I am alert enough to appreciate it. Maybe that’s the difference: event television with streaming happens in the individual home and not the nation as a whole. It is the way the world is going but I rather miss the concept of a shared national experience.

Trumped

Much of the world appears to be shocked at the election of Donald Trump as US president this week. I thought I would be as well but I find myself actually more bemused. Part of the bemusement is that the American people have elected a fart as a leader. OK that is just my puerile mind but the main bemusement is the fact that many seem to think that there was some huge difference between the two presidential candidates. In terms of policy, the choice of presidential candidates usually comes down to picking between Pepsi and Coke. I don’t think the difference is that marked this time either it’s just the style that differs. Hillary was the standard measured stateswoman, well-rehearsed in presentation. Trump, on the other hand, is a clown from a television show. The American people have just gone and elected Krusty the Clown.

In fact, I think a closer parallel would be with former Italian leader, Silvio Berlusconi. He is so far beyond the pale that no standard political scandal can touch him. In fact it would appear that the more outrageous and controversial he is, the more his appeal to a certain demographic increases. There was a campaign in the UK for Jeremy Clarkson to be prime minister which even Clarkson found to be idiotic. By comparison to Trump, Clarkson is the model of understatement but I suspect that it is the same people who take Clarkson’s self-mocking oafishness seriously that support Trump, Berlusconi, Farage and any other pseudo anti-establishment figures. The problem is, of course, that the likes of Trump (white, privileged billionaires) are about as establishment as they come which many blue collar Trump supporters are about to discover as he gives huge tax cuts to his billionaire brethren whilst they get jack.

For someone who is a wanton lefty like myself, Trump doesn’t worry me rather than causes me despair. The United States is protected in a rather conservative manner by its constitution. This means that whilst genuine reformers like Obama struggle to get their reforms to healthcare and gun control through congress, it also stops demagogic clowns from running amok with every vacuous whim that their brain farts (or is that trumps) out. The constitution can be changed, of course, but this is a glacial process that requires the co-operation of all 50 states.

The despair comes from the fact that the world is stuck with what will be a major roadblock to combat the worlds increasing problems. Maybe we will be in luck and Obama will discover, like Jimmy Carter did in the past, that they can be far more effective as an ex-president than as a serving one. As for Trump, I can’t see him lasting that long. His appeal may have been about “sticking it to the man” but now he is that man he will be under intense scrutiny and, unless I am mistaken and he actually is some kind of political genius, his promises will be proven to be as vacuous as his speeches. Unfortunately the effect of the hatred spilled from those speeches is likely to last longer than his presidency.

Huntingtower Castle

My list of Historic Scotland sites to take the kids to see appears to have suddenly reduced. Partly, this is because we have covered lots of the nearby ones but mainly this is because many of the smaller ones go into hibernation for the Winter. However, there are still lots to see and the latest was quite intriguing.

Huntingtower Castle - two towers for the price of one.

One of the oddities of modern architecture is that domestic homes appear to be getting smaller and more cramped together and yet there is an insistence to make all the houses detached. The problem is that the “detachment” is pretty minimal. I’ve seen cases where there is barely enough space to walk between the buildings and the overall effect looks aesthetically dreadful. It just makes me wonder why they didn’t go for a nice terrace instead – the answer, of course, is that the word “detached” probably adds 20% to the already overinflated asking price.

As it turns out, this is not an entirely new phenomenon as  Huntingtower Castle in Perthshire shows. This is actually two separate towers built right next to each other with just enough space to walk between. However, in another seemingly modern trick, the towers were later joined and the access between them knocked through – similar to the way that many people annex garages as an extra room.

Inside Huntingtower Castle

The castle itself is very well maintained and thankfully (given the weather) the roof is both intact and highly functional. It is possible to get up on to the roof but, like the top of Linlithgow Palace, this is really terrifying for the likes of me and my particular distrust of gravity. Anyway, we are forecast to get the first snow of the year this week so I won’t be risking anywhere high and slippy in a hurry.

Conked Out

Eddie the whippet conked out this morning at home. He will miss his family and walks very much.
Eddie 22/02/2002 - 27/10/2016

Eddie, my whippet, died on Thursday. He would have been 15 years old early next year which is a good age for a dog and for the most part he kept himself active until late last week when I could tell that he was struggling to keep up during his walk. He had been getting gradually slower and creakier over the course of the last couple of years and had needed lifting into the back of the car for a while. Occasionally, he would slip on the vinyl floor in the kitchen and struggle to get up but over the last week that had become a constant feature. I took him to the vets on Monday and tried some anti-inflammatory medication for his back legs but it was also obvious that he had lost quite a bit of weight since he was last measured in July. He spent most of his last few days sleeping. Once it is time, old dogs seem to go downhill very quickly.

Eddie - the puppy shot

Eddie - 2D dog

In some ways it feels similar to when my cat, Emma, died five years ago but I think cats and dogs age differently. Both will slow down and become less active and both will be less agile. However, dogs never seem to quite lose their puppy mentality and the slowing down can become confusing to them as their minds want to bounce around whereas their bodies are less willing. Cats also slow down and sleep a lot but then that is typically what they enjoy doing anyway so it doesn’t come at such great loss – they simply wind down naturally.

For me it is odd. I still have our other dog, Sam, to take for walks but there is now a strange ghostly void. The one thing that Eddie was always prone to do was to be distracted by a combination of bad smells (and the woods are full of them), various wildlife and the inevitable attraction of other dog owners and their invariably more appetising treats. This meant that we were often stopping to catch up with him and ended up chatting to other dog owners who were always very fond of him. He was also quite vocal, at least when he was younger, and would make the most peculiar noises often at the bemusement of both other dogs and their owners alike: “want one” was a favourite noise when pestering for treats or conning the local park ranger out of his picnic basket. All this made for great companionship and whilst Sam will obediently stay at heal whilst out walking he doesn’t really say very much.

Eddie having just won the dog-food medal at the London Olympics

We got Eddie as a puppy so he has been a constant presence for over 14 years. The children haven’t known a time when he hasn’t been there. It is difficult to explain this to them. I frequently see references on the likes of Facebook to the “Rainbow Bridge”, a kind of afterlife for pets, but I really can’t be bothered with that. The phrase I used was “conked out” which was the self-chosen epitaph of John Le Mesurier who Eddie somehow seemed to resemble in canine form: quiet, gentle and good humoured.  I suppose that we all live in a bubble of time and once that time is up all that remains are memories. At the moment, those memories are very raw but over time the mind has the habit of screening the painful ones out so that only happier times remain.

The best place for a whippet to sleep - somewhere soft, warm and drunk.

Pandas Are Rubbish

Pandas are rubbish. Well, that was the conclusion that we came to this week. I know there are a few conservationists that disagree with the amount of time, money and effort that is spent on panda conservation given that their main problem is that they appear to have chosen an evolutionary dead end by being carnivorous bears that have adopted a vegetarian diet whilst losing practically all interest in reproduction; but that isn’t really why I think they are rubbish. I came to this conclusion after a visit to the zoo.

I last went to Edinburgh Zoo around 3 years ago and at that time their giant pandas were not on display for reasons best known to themselves (well, their keepers anyway). My daughter had spent an evening at the zoo a couple of months ago with a youth group in what had, at first, sounded like a “night at the museum” type trip. In fact this is largely what it was but, unlike the museum, most of the zoo’s exhibits tend to pack up and go to sleep at night. As I had last Monday off work and needed to amuse her for the day she decided that a day at the zoo sounded like a good idea.

Being October and a weekday it was a good time to visit the zoo as it was fairly quiet. When we arrived I was asked whether we would like an appointment to see the pandas. It appears that they now regard themselves on a par with the Pope in granting audiences but I thought we may as well give it a go. At the allotted time we went along to see said pandas and received a very informative lecture from their keeper but the pandas themselves didn’t show. All I have to show for the visit is this picture of a pile of panda food:

The only thing I would say in their defence is that the publicity that pandas attract both for a tourist attraction like Edinburgh Zoo or in the general world of conservation brings in quite a bit of finance that less attractive, if more worthy, endangered species don’t. Since my last visit the zoo looks to be really in top condition both for the exhibits on show and in terms of the conservation work that is going on. Many, if not most of the exhibits are endangered or at least threatened in the wild and they appear to be involved in many breeding programmes to keep the species alive. They also appear to have upgraded many of the enclosures which, if not entirely ideal compared to a life in the wild, appear to be keeping the animals content and stress free. Maybe pandas aren’t completely rubbish after all.

Confuse the Market

One thing that has been worrying me lately, what with the price of oil going up and the value of the pound heading South, is what effect this is likely to have on gas and electricity prices. The cost of the various energy suppliers can vary quite considerably depending on whether they are fixed or variable price, whether they have a large or small standing charge and whether there are exit charges tied to a fixed-term contract. It could be quite confusing but there are various websites like Uswitch and Which? Switch to help find the best deals. The problem is, that they can cause even more confusion than they resolve.

On the surface, it looks quite simple and, for someone who is on the standard variable tariffs from their traditional supplier it probably is. The problem arises when one is already on a fixed tariff, potentially with an early termination fee, and which runs out sometime in the next year. If any of these are the case then the price comparison could be misleading; possibly to the point of directing one to a more expensive deal.

I first tried these comparisons out on my mother-in-law’s house. In fact, this was pretty straight forward as the cheapest deal was with her current supplier and both the gas and electricity unit rates and standing charges were lower than she is currently paying and, without the switch of supplier, there is no early termination penalty to pay. Given that she has recently had a new energy-efficient boiler fitted this should lead to a good reduction in her energy bills for the next year.

The problems started with our house. Our current tariff runs through until next May and there is a penalty for swapping suppliers before then. Having plugged the figures into the comparison site it did offer a few tariffs that were lower. I discounted a few as they didn’t take into account the penalty but one did look cheaper that was also with our current supplier. The problem was that the comparison assumed that we would be paying the supplier’s standard tariff after the current deal expired (we would almost certainly not do this) and it also assumed that our energy consumption would be even throughout the year – by far our biggest energy expenditure is for gas consumption over the Winter period.

In fact the tariffs started to become even more complex once the variables of expensive standing charges compared to cheaper unit rates were taken into account. In the end I plugged the various tariff figures into a spreadsheet and came to the conclusion that if I really wanted lower energy bills I’d have to switch of the lights and put a woolly jumper on - which makes a nonsense of trying to compare prices in the first place. However, what the graph from the spreadsheet does show (which the comparison websites don’t) is that there is a definite cut-off point between the two tariffs with the newer one making sense between the end of November and the beginning of April whereas the current tariff makes more sense during the summer months.

I’m not sure that an online comparison facility would ever be able to reproduce that level of detail and it would take someone as obsessive as me to have kept all the data (although a Smart meter might be able to handle this). I suppose it is back to one of those old clichés: Do Your Own Research.

Castle Campbell

I visited another one of Historic Scotland’s properties last weekend. This time it was Castle Campbell in Dollar. It’s actually not that far from us but for some reason it’s a part of Clackmannanshire that I seldom have reason to go through.

Access to the castle is interesting. There is a car park at the top of Castle Road but it is advised to avoid it due to the state of the road leading to it: steep, narrow and pot-holed. However, there did seem to be quite a few cars parked there including one rather low-slung BMW that I suspected would need repairs to the suspension afterwards. We actually parked at the lower level “woodlands quarry” (as recommended) and walked up.

The castle itself looks spectacular when approaching it, rising out of the forested glen beneath. It is also a blessed relief after walking up the steep castle road for a seemingly interminable amount of time (actually only 15 minutes but it is a solid 15 minutes climb). Although it is a ruin it is actually quite well kept, particularly the central tower which is accessible on several floors and has a self-service tea room at the bottom which was a nice touch. The roof of the tower is also accessible which gives some spectacular views of Central Scotland including the Grangemouth refinery and a disused power station.

In terms of history, it was once visited by Mary, Queen of Scots, for a wedding (unsurprising as she has stayed in pretty much every building in Scotland beyond a certain vintage) and was also visited by John Knox, the miserable Calvinist preacher, in 1556. There is a platform known a John Knox’s pulpit in the gardens to commemorate this. One assumes that this is merely ceremonial as there is a sheer drop on the other side.

On the way back to the car park we followed the path back through the glen. This actually goes straight to the lower car park and is a much nicer walk although it would be advisable to have sturdy footwear as I could imagine it would be rather hazardous on a rainy day.

Keeping The Heat In

When we first moved into our house I installed loft insulation and replaced the old incandescent bulbs with low-energy ones. At least I did this as far as I could. There was quite a bit of loft space that was inaccessible, including a large section that is over the main living room, and I was unable to change the light bulbs in the back bedroom as they were on a dimmer switch so I was stuck with the incandescents.

Earlier this year we had a call from a firm that was fitting loft insulation in difficult to reach areas. Specifically, they were looking at fitting it behind the sloping roof in what they described as “room-in-roof” insulation. This was on one of those government energy efficiency schemes that is paid for by power generators who are still operating coal fired plants so it didn’t cost us anything. It’s also a really fiddly job that involves opening access hatches and having the fitter being a lithe individual with the body fat ratio of a whippet.

The insulation fitters did what they said they would, in that they inserted Kingspan type insulation in the sloping roof sections, but inexplicably they left the large expanse of roof above the living room without any insulation at all. Apparently this was not on their list of things to do. Fortunately, they had done the really fiddly bit for me by creating the access hatches so this week I added a few layers of glass fibre insulation myself. However, I am hardly lithe and whilst I may be a fair bit lighter than when I last installed insulation, I don’t exactly have a particularly whippet like torso. Anyway, I persevered - i.e. squeezed myself through the access hatches and cursed relentlessly whilst pot-holing my way around the minimal loft space. Since I am unlikely to go back in there I really ladled the stuff on there – up to 600mm in places. I think it is safe to say that it is well and truly insulated now.

Fixing the lights was, by comparison, a doddle. What actually prompted me to fix this was that one of the incandescent bulbs blew and the only replacement I could get was a halogen light that, for reasons best known to itself, would only produce a tiny amount of light without going into a strobing effect. The fix for this is to replace the lightbulbs with dimmable LED lights and to swap the old dimmer switch for a trailing edge one. This is actually remarkably easy as both switch and light are a straight swap. The new dimmer has electronics in it which control the dimming effect and also means there is a slight delay which somewhat negates the “instant light” feature of the LED bulbs but does mean that the light fades in with a remarkably pleasing effect. I was also able to do this without crawling around a limited space swearing.

This should, theoretically save me a few pounds from my energy bill but the real benefit is that I should have a warmer house and more effective lighting. As autumn is now in full-swing it is not a moment too early.

Slot Car Racing

As a child, if I had a favourite toy it would have had to be Scalextric, the slot car racing set. I started off with one of the smaller sets, a figure of 8 with some banking and a couple of rally Minis to race around. This was gradually enhanced as I managed to beg, borrow or (more usually) buy extra bits of track. Eventually, I managed to get up to a fully operational 4 track circuit which would, on occasion, be changed to a very long two track set with a fiendishly long strait that would run the full length of the hallway before returning to the living room. All of this prevented my mother from Hoovering which drove her batty.

For his 11th birthday, my middle son decided to spend his birthday money on a similar (but presumably much cheaper) set. This features the familiar figure of eight circuit but with the addition of a loop-the-loop. I’m actually surprised that he went for this as electronic games consoles seem to be the standard these days but I’m rather pleased that he has gone for something more old-school.

However, the first thing that I had forgotten about these is just quite how long it takes to set the whole thing up. It didn’t look that complicated but it took nearly 2 hours to assemble everything up to the point that the cars, modelled on the Mario Bros characters, could be raced around. I think it was at this point that I discovered an interesting difference with the old Scalextric set. With Scalextric, if you go too fast, the cars fly off the track. With the loop-the-loop, if you don’t go fast enough on the Mario set, the cars drop off.

Anyway, much fun was had although I also recalled another feature of the old Scalextric sets. For every 10 minutes of racing there seems to be another 5 minutes of straightening out the contact brushes. You don’t get that with console games…

New Car Smell

I spent a couple of hours cleaning up our car yesterday. Being a people carrier it seems to accumulate a huge array of litter, grime, detritus and generally vile smells. I have come to the conclusion that the people that are carried in this vehicle, particularly those in the rear seats are somewhat grotty. Anyway, after clearing away the debris, hoovering, cleaning and generally freshening up the whole thing it is actually a reasonably hospitable place to be in again.

There is another way of overcoming the stench of overly lived in automobile and that is the trusty air freshener. There are a variety of these devices that often come in the shape of a tree or flower. The one in my car actually clips on to the air vent although is no substitute for a “no rotten apple cores” rule. The scents that these come in are sometimes floral or occasionally pine or other fresh outdoorsy fragrances (assuming that the outdoors fragrance isn’t next to the chemical plants in Grangemouth).  There is also one called, intriguingly, “new car smell”.

Now I’ve been in a few new cars. I even owned one once. The smell can actually be rather overpowering but it does carry the connotations of a newly acquired and unblemished luxury item. However, when I have tried the “new car smell” air fresheners I can only assume that what they were aiming for was Toilet Duck. In fact in terms of an actual pleasing car interior the best one I’ve found is actually “vanilla.” I’m not sure whether this is what new cars should smell like but vanilla does seem to create a general sense  olfactory wellbeing.

I think the value of a clean and fragrant car interior shouldn’t be over-estimated. If you have a look through the ads in Autotrader for cars of a slightly older vintage from the more back-street vendors, one of the first things they will mention about a car is it being a “very clean example”. That is, not reliable, well-maintained, or even having the slightest whiff of a chance of passing its MOT but simply the fact that someone has been let loose with a vacuum cleaner and a squeegee.

And I think it works, after cleaning our old MPV I am now far less bothered that its mileage would have taken it over five times around the world, or that the door could do with welding, or that the tailgate is starting to rust or even that the synchro-rings in the gearbox are starting to wear. At the moment, it smells nice.

Obsessive Compulsive Collecting

As a child I used to collect coins. Mainly this was a case of collecting old pre-decimal currency that would occasionally turn up down the back of sofas or occasionally in loose change (an old halfpenny was remarkably similar to a new 2p coin). I also used to pick up odd coins from around the world – usually from a family member who had served with the forces or worked on the ships overseas. I seem to recall that my elder brother collected stamps at one point. I think he eventually lost interest in philately about the same time that I worked out that more entertainment could be experienced by spending coins rather than collecting them.

I think it’s a general human trait to collect and categorise things and there is nothing wrong with that as a pastime. I now collect CDs. There seems to be a revival in vinyl record collecting, and I can see the attraction of that with the glorious 12” artwork that goes with them, but for me it is actually the music that goes with them that is the greater attraction and a CD is a nice compromise between useful portability (you can’t play vinyl in the car) whilst still retaining the delight of the booklet and sleeve notes.

However, it’s not just about the music. I do collect and part of the reason that I can tell that I collect is that I buy recordings that I don’t reasonably expect to play more than once or twice but they do fill an irritating hole in my collection. I’ve recently bought a few second hand CDs that have filled gaps in my collection, several of which I already had on vinyl. I recently bought the last three core CDs that were missing from my Beatles collection: With The Beatles, The Beatles for Sale and Yellow Submarine. The Beatles didn’t make a bad album but these three did contain substantial amounts of filler: either hastily written B-sides, lower quality covers or, in the case of Yellow Submarine, a whole side of film score orchestration that they neither wrote nor performed. Actually, having listened to these three for the first time in years they are perfectly listenable but my main reason in buying them is really to fill in the “missing teeth” on my CD shelf.

I’m sure many other people have done the same. How many Lou Reed fans bought Metal Machine Music simply because they had everything else. No self-respecting Queen fan would be without the Flash Gordon soundtrack even if it did only contain 2 new songs (like the mere 4 new songs on Yellow Submarine). However, I think I can just about justify that my hobby is on the right side of sane. There are a couple of gaps in my collection of David Bowie CDs. One of those is the album Tin Machine II which is currently only available 2nd hand. At the time of writing this sells for anything between £26 to £300. I think I can survive without it. It still annoys me that I don’t have it, though!

Loch Leven Heritage Trail

After taking the kids to see Lochleven Castle a few week ago I decided to go back last week to walk the full Heritage Trail which is a loop around the perimeter of the Loch – just under 20km in total. This time I took one of the dogs (Sam, on the basis that I thought he would be up for it whereas Eddie would end up plodding around and looking like a badly animated fossil from a Ray Harryhausen Movie).

The Heritage Trail is, for the most point, level and consists of a well maintained path going through a variety of farmland, woodland and the RSPB nature reserve. Some of it is fenced off but it is worth keeping the dog close at hand, not least because of his habit of trying to get run over by cyclists, but also because there is some free roaming wildlife – generally he has a thing for squirrels but there were some deer floating around as well. Obviously, through the bird sanctuary he was on a very short lead.

The walk itself is very well signposted with stone milestones every so often (although marked in Kilometres so does that make them metrestones?)

The benches are also a bit of fun with stanzas of Scots poetry ranging from the romantic to the gruesome carved into them

The view from the North of the Loch includes St Surf’s Island which once housed a monastery. The remains of this can still be seen but the island now forms part of the nature reserve and access is limited.

I did rather like this stone sculpture at an RSPB viewing point.

The only disappointment is that I didn’t see too many birds apart from this field full of geese.

The walk itself is almost the same as the Wirral Way which I did a couple of years ago. It also has the same effect that the last half hour or so becomes a bit of a plod back to the car park. Oh well, have whippet will travel.

Folk Measures

I’m a big fan of the metric system, mainly because it is consistent and easy to work with, but I still find that I end up using other measures for sanity sakes: miles for distances (which our roads are still measured in) or inches for clothes sizes (although I have a sneaking suspicion that many clothes manufacturers choose to either scrimp or flatter their clientele).  However, there are many folk measures in use which are possibly useful for rule of thumb comparisons and that maybe should be more accurately defined.

One of the commonly used ones is the size of Belgium. A Belgium is 30,528 km2 which makes it approximately  1.5 Waleses, 80 Isle of Wights or 4,275,000 football pitches. The Empire State Building is 449 metres high which is in itself over 4 Big Bens, 8 Nelson Columns or around 100 double decker buses . Similarly, weight often refers to elephants, 6 family cars (at least 1980’s ones) or 6,000 bags of sugar (for those too dim to work out that a bag of sugar is 1Kg).

There are also some odd ones. When I used to go to a gym on a regular basis I devised a system to grade aerobic workouts which was the Mars Bar scale. This was determined due to most of the aerobic workout machines being calibrated to show the total energy expired during the workout and a Mars Bar at the time containing roughly 250 kcals (1,000 kJoules) of energy. Hence a moderate workout could be a 1 Marsbar routine whereas an hour and a half flat out could hit the 4 or 5 Marsbar level. An interesting aside to this is that the exercise was only of any real benefit if one did not consume the Mars Bars afterwards.

Recently, I’ve noticed an interesting unit of measure in the media which is a universal unit of unhealthy food. This unit is the BigMac and refers to comparisons to McDonald’s iconic signature hamburger. For reference a BigMac can refer to 508 kcal of energy, 25g of fat (of which 9.5g are saturates) 43g of carbohydrates (of which 9g are sugars) or 2.3g of salt and, I suppose, could also include 3.6g of fibre and 26g of protein although the latter two are probably quite good for you.

The upshot of this is that newspapers and TV documentary makers can come up with such shocking things as tomato soup or a cottage pie containing more salt than a BigMac. Sandwiches contain more sugar than a BigMac and even more surprising is that many packaged salads (you know – the health things that we are meant to eat five of a day) contain more fat than a BigMac. Of course, I could just play Devil’s Advocate with this one and suggest that, on its own, a Big Mac isn’t anything like as unhealthy as its reputation would suggest?

A Principle of Moments

I occasionally keep an eye on Amazon’s Marketplace in case some second hand bargains come up for sale. Recently, I noticed Robert Plant’s “Now and Zen” album popping up for 24p plus postage. That’s not bad, in fact it is a very good album although I don’t often listen to it as I only have it on vinyl and that doesn’t work too well in the car’s CD player. Like a dog watching a sausage I thought, “I’m having that” and with a few magic clicks of Amazon’s website it was on its way to me. Whilst I was at it I thought I’d have a quick look through some of Plant’s other albums that I only have on LP and so begins yet another sorry story of why it is a bad idea to go online shopping whilst slightly inebriated.

As far as Robert Plant’s back catalogue was going I seemed to be in luck as there were quite a few of his old albums going for pennies. I picked up his first solo effort, Pictures At Eleven, for just under a pound and whilst it isn’t my favourite of his albums it is worth having. I then saw “The Principle of Moments” going for only 35p. This was plant’s second solo album and one of his better ones. The production now sounds hideously dated to the mid-80s but it has some great songs on and even gave him a hit single and an appearance on Top Of The Pops at the time.

The next morning I checked my emails and noticed that “The Principle Of Moments” had an odd name next to it: Romeo Vendrame. I quickly checked and discovered that this was not, in fact, Plant’s “The Principle Of Moments” but another “Principle Of Moments” by someone I had never heard of. I tried to cancel but was informed by the second hand disk seller in Germany that he had already dispatched it (or more likely he was finally rid of the thing – so tough). Oh well, I’m always one for a voyage of musical discovery so what would this unknown wonder sound like?

I do have a fairly broad palate of musical tastes. I’ll listen to Classical, Rock, Jazz, Folk, weird electronica and even, on occasion, the odd pop song. I’ve listened to Ligeti’s micropolyphony and enjoyed it. I’ll listen to late-60s Musique concrete and Stockhausen’s Elektronische Musik. I’ve listened to Free Jazz that sounds like a fight broke out and the drummer was kicked downstairs. I’ve listened to Norwegian folk ensembles. I’ve listened to Death Metal that sounds like someone has filled a washing machine with rubble, put it on a 1600 rpm spin cycle and gone “AARRRGGHEUTTHH!” all over the top of it. So what would Romeo Vendrame sound like?

Well, I put the CD on and it sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. Literally nothing. As in nothing, no sound, not a peep. I turned it up and I could hear a faint rumble in the background. OK, there was something. I suppose the nearest I would have in my collection would be some very early Tangerine Dream but possibly the outtakes from the studio after they were packing up the oscillators and left the tape machine running. So it turns out to be a very Avant-garde electronica in which very little appears to happen and often nothing at all. I don’t suppose that I can be too critical as it is not entirely removed from music that I already have in my collection but whereas I could happily listen to Tangerine Dream’s Zeit or Ligeti’s Atmosphères over and over I don’t think this one will be escaping from its jewel case that often.

Anyway, the Robert Plant album of the same name has now appeared so I’ll go and listen to him singing about his Big Log – whatever that is…

Lochleven Castle

Things to do at the weekend with the kids – part 37. I have to say that I’m starting to get stuck for days out at the moment so I reverted to that old favourite of ancient ruins that I can get into free with a Historic Scotland membership. The one I came up with was Lochleven Castle which has two major things going for it. Firstly, I had never been there before, and secondly, it is in the middle of Fife so I get to have a nice drive out there.

In fact, it isn’t just in the middle of Fife, but it is in the middle of a loch in the middle of Fife. This means that it is only accessible by means of a small ferry boat (allegedly seating 12 passengers but I think it was a good job that half of them were children). Being a Saturday it was quite busy but, as the weather was nice, we took a couple of hours to walk around the nature trails before getting the boat across.

In terms of history, Lochleven is yet another one of those places that is tied in with Mary Queen Of Scots which probably does a great deal to draw the tourists in but is a bit of history that I am really rather bored with now. However, I loved it, not so much for the historical background but because the fact that the island on which the castle sits is only accessible by the small boat. Rather than the intrigues of Tudor-Stuart politics this really appeals to my romantic notions of travelling to remote inaccessible antiquities.

The only thing I wish I had done was to bring a picnic along to the island. There are lots of picnic tables on the island (and in the castle) as well as proper public toilets which seemed to be in short supply on the mainland. In fact the whole loch appealed to me with its nature walks and wildlife reserves. There is a trail which is some 12 miles long that loops right around the loch. I’ll have to go back and try this one day – and remember to bring a picnic.

The Falkirk Televisor

I took Sophia along to Falkirk’s Callendar Park on Saturday so that she could play in the park there. Unfortunately, by the time we got there it was raining – heavily. Rather than waste the trip I suggested that we look around the museum in Callendar House. Some of the exhibits, regarding the history of Falkirk, rarely change although are still of interest. They do have a couple of exhibition rooms that change their displays every few months and the current theme was “Everyday Science”. One of the exhibits was of great interest to me as I had heard of it but never actually seen it before: the Falkirk Televisor.

The Falkirk Televisor is, in effect, the oldest known existing prototype of a television camera. It was an electo-mechanical device but it’s principle of scanning images to transmit as an electrical stream was the basis of all video cameras up to the advent of digital broadcasting. The reasons for it ending up in Falkirk are a little more vague but relate to the work of its inventor, John Logie Baird, and the owner of a Falkirk radio supplies shop, John Hart. Baird presented Hart with the Televisor shortly after he had demonstrated television broadcasting in London’s Soho in January 1926. There is a plaque on the device to confirm this.

Hart displayed the Televisor in his shop window before it was eventually passed on to Falkirk Museum. The shop is long gone although a blue plaque on the wall of Falkirk’s Howgate shopping centre marks the site. By pure coincidence, I once bought a Baird branded TV from the Radio Rentals shop that used to be located about 10 metres away in the shopping centre.

What appears to be more surrounded in mystery is what, exactly, the relationship was between Baird and Hart. Given the secretive nature of inventors there are very few records of what went on but as Hart was an experienced electrical engineer and in regular contact with the local Radio Club (who knew Baird) so it would seem natural that they would work together. There is an account from a George Shaw of Larbert that Baird tested his equipment at the Temperance Café in December 1925. This would presumably be a test run for his London demonstration but the only records of this appear to be aural tradition. The Temperance Café, on Lint Riggs, is now called Johnston’s Bar Bistro (and also now sells alcohol!)

It seems unlikely that any more information from Baird’s early research will be found but it does seem likely that such a world-altering invention has its roots close to home.

Opus Bowie

This week, I watched the BBC’s “Bowie” Prom concert on the TV. I enjoy the Proms concerts (well, apart from the Last Night which I find mawkishly cringe-worthy) with their eclectic mix of the old, new, familiar and obscure and enjoy the somewhat leftfield performances that they throw in. In the past this has included concerts based around the music of Doctor Who or Jazz orientated themes. As David Bowie died earlier this year they chose to do a prom based around his music. Now, I enjoyed the concert but I have to say that it wasn’t quite what I expected and did rather push the question as to what counts as “Classical” music.

My rather excessive record collection is arranged in a perfectly logical alphabetical order of A-Z by performer apart from the classical section which I keep separately and arrange A-Z by composer. I don’t regard the classical section as being anything especially different from the rest other than I approach it from another angle as I am more concerned about the authorship of the works rather than the performance. Interestingly, I do have a couple of David Bowie works in the classical section but this come under “G” for Philip Glass who based two of his symphonies on the music from Bowie’s albums “Low” and “Heroes”.

I’d actually expected the Proms concert to include one or both of these but as it was they re-arranged many of his songs to have a (mostly) orchestral backing with mainly pop and rock music vocalists – there was one classical singer amongst them but I don’t think it really suited his music. Of the others, they worked pretty well although John Cale was really too close to Bowie’s style and Marc Almond would have benefitted from a more minimalist approach to the orchestration (in fact closer to the sparseness of Soft Cell). But was this really a classical performance or simply a rock gig with orchestration?

“Classical” is really somewhat of a misnomer as it really only covers a period of a few decades between 1750 to 1820 but most people “sort of know” this as meaning anything that is performed by trained musicians from a score produced by the original composer. This is unlike Folk which is an aural tradition, Jazz which incorporates many elements of improvisation and interpretation, and Rock which is tied more to the recorded medium. I suppose what I mean by "classical" is a performance by trained musicians of works as the composer originally scored them and on that basis I’m not sure whether the Bowie Prom really counts. On the other hand, I enjoyed the concert both as a fan of Bowie’s work and of the whole concept of the Proms. So what could be next? A Heavy Metal Prom? Don’t laugh – I really think that one could work. Someone sign up Bruce Dickenson now!

Leasowe Lighthouse

Leasowe Lighthouse

When I was growing up I often had romantic notions about living as a lighthouse keeper. In part I think this was a desire for solitude but a great part of this was a curiosity about what lay inside a disused lighthouse that was near to where we lived. At the time, the answer was probably “very little” other than disused rooms and an extremely dilapidated spiral staircase. Last Sunday, I actually got to go in this old lighthouse and see for myself.

View from the top of Leasowe Lighthouse of North Wales.

Leasowe Lighthouse is situated next to the Irish Sea on the North Western coast of the Wirral and was originally a fixed-light structure that, combined with other Lighthouses on the Wirral peninsula, was used to guide ships along the narrow channel that allowed access to the Mersey and the port of Liverpool. I think the one thing that struck me was actually how spacious the rooms in the lighthouse are. I’d always imagined that the inside would be rather pokey but this must have been a fairly substantial dwelling for the lighthouse keeper and his seemingly large family.

Irish Sea seen from Leasowe Lighthouse

The lighthouse is looked after by the Friends of Leasowe Lighthouse who organise guided tours every other Sunday afternoon. The tours themselves are remarkably cheap (£2 per adult and £1 for children) and last about 45 minutes. It’s quite a few steps to the top but this is broken up by viewing various levels of the tower although I found the journey down to be somewhat more arduous (I don’t think I’m great with heights).

The light in the lighthouse. Presumably not LEDs when it was in use.

From the top there are great views of North Wales and Liverpool in the distance and, apparently, on a good day the Isle of Man can be visible (although not the day I visited.) Overall it’s well worth a trip if you are around that part of the world.

Overlooking Liverpool from the window of Leasowe Lighthouse

On The Go

I had quite a surprise on Monday evening. My eldest son offered to walk the dogs. In fact he also offered to go down to the shops and take some stuff around to my mother-in-law’s house. He then offered to walk the dogs… again. He then set out for “a walk around the block” for no particular reason whatsoever. I’ve been rather concerned that he doesn’t seem to get out enough lately. Being the summer holidays he tends to emerge from the bombsite that passes for his bedroom sometime in the early afternoon and then spends several hours either playing video games, watching TV or reading Japanese comic books before disappearing back to his cave without ever seeing the light of day. So, what gives?

It turns out that the sudden huge attraction of the outside world is related to a new game on his phone called Pokémon Go. I have been aware of Pokémon before in terms of the brightly coloured and badly drawn Japanese cartoon characters that have graced a series of TV programmes, films, playing cards and video games whilst not having the slightest clue what it is all about. Despite being indecipherable to me, my son seems quite keen on it and has spent many hours attached to handheld consoles doing… well, to be honest, I don’t know but he seems to spend aeons transfixed by whatever the activity is. Now Pokémon has forced him to go out and get some fresh air. I think it’s great.

I have to say that I was somewhat worried that he would be wandering around the streets glued to his phone and not watching out for the traffic. From what I can make out, this doesn’t seem to be the case and he only looks at the phone when it prompts him to do whatever it is that he is supposed to do. The plus side is that he has been out and about far more than he would normally and as well as coming along with me on a few favourite dog walking routes he also seems to have discovered bits of the local neighbourhood the existence of which he was seemingly oblivious to, including the woodland behind his school, one of the dog walking parks and also a giant bright burning thing that was hanging in the sky. I explained that this was the sun and a perfectly natural phenomenon if a somewhat rare one in Scotland.

I suspect that the fad for Pokémon Go will probably die down fairly soon but I’m quite intrigued by the technology and whether it could have any practical uses. Other than encouraging lazy teenagers to get out and take some exercise I’m wondering whether it could have some serious uses – possibly as an educational tool. I’m also wondering whether there could be variations whereby Pokémon are uncovered after tidying up masses of used washing and comics that have been left on the floor. Anyway, for the moment I’ll settle for an active teenager and a well walked dog.

Auto-Renewal

I’ve had my VW Golf for 3 years now. I realised this a few weeks ago as my breakdown cover with the AA had come up for renewal. I’ve been perfectly happy with the AA as a breakdown service (and we effectively have this on our other car via the Toyota cover) but what I wasn’t particularly happy about was my renewal premium which was almost double what I paid last year. I would have been quite happy to let this lapse and go elsewhere but unfortunately I had forgotten to tick the “no auto-renewal” option on the form when I took it out last year.

Auto-renewal is a world of pain as it then involves a call to customer services to cancel it. The AA’s customer service number is actually a Freephone number and I think they should be given some real credit for that as I have had to deal with companies (I’ll not name names but let’s call them “Shysters”) who use premium phone numbers to effectively hold the unwitting customer hostage. However, when I did get through to their customer services I had to endure a full 15 minutes brow beating until I could convince the phone operator to cancel my damn policy (in fact, if they had offered the same deal as last year without the auto-renewal I would have taken it, so it’s their loss).

I’d rather not bother with Auto-Renewal at all but some firms do not give the option of an opt-out. In such cases I do have to weigh up whether the offer is good enough and, more importantly, whether the company is reputable enough before going ahead. In fact, auto-renewal and continuous payment agreements in general do have their uses but I suspect their popularity amongst some firms is to rely on customer inertia to hike up payments on an annual basis. This seems to be particularly relevant in the insurance industry which also seem to be the ones who fail to offer, or at best hide, the opt outs.

I think there should be better regulation of auto-renewals and, where they are offered, the ability to opt-out should be mandatory and the option to cancel them (and the associated contract) should be at least as easy as it is to make it in the first place whether this is online, on the phone, via mail or in person.

So what am I doing for breakdown cover now? Well a friend of mine (who also writes this light hearted motoring blog) recommended a firm called Start Rescue (www.startrescue.co.uk) which I have never heard of before. Any breakdown service is only as good as their callout but he has used them twice to recover his Jaguar and was perfectly happy with them so I am hoping that something as dull and mainstream as my Golf will be no problem. I’ve taken out the policy and they do not force the customer to take out auto-renewal by default. They cost less than half of the increase in my old AA policy. They also offer better cover than my old AA policy (I can now break down at home). They are also one of the very few firms to have their breakdown app available for Windows phones so, if necessary, I could call them out from my works’ Nokia phone. Hopefully I won’t have to contact them until renewal time next year but so far I’m quite happy with the deal.

A Responsible Adult

I was phoned up on Tuesday by one of the polling agencies, as a randomly selected individual, to be asked what my opinions were on a variety of current topics. The last time I was approached in this way was quite a while ago – in fact it was the day after John Major became Prime Minister and most of the questions then were how I thought he would do in his new job: I seem to recall that I said I didn’t think he could be any worse than the previous PM and I still regard him as an intelligent leader who has never been given credit for some of the genuinely positive things that he did achieve in spite of being surrounded by a bunch of, as he put it, S H 1 Ts.

The questions this time were general sampling questions about my age, education, employment status and how I voted at the last elections and at the Scottish Independence and EU referendums. The questions going forward were more about what I thought the countries prospects are (drowning in manure was not an actual option) and who I thought the next Prime Minister should be. There were a whole raft of names to choose from, some that I had heard of and others less familiar along with options for Other / Don’t Know. I went for “Other” and, when pressed, the only answer I could honestly give was that it was about time that we had a grown up in charge.

It may sound flippant but I believe that the main reason that the country is in such a state of limbo is that those that were left in charge were a bunch of irresponsible half-wits. Cameron comes across as the President of the sixth-form debating society, rather smug about his achievements despite being unable to piece together a rational argument. His opponents, in the form of Boris and Gove, have the demeanour of immature adolescent pranksters who have suddenly realised that their schoolboy high jinks have gone seriously awry leaving them to slope away to let others clear up their wreckage whilst Cameron has simply run away from a car crash of his own making. We need an adult to sort this out and yet there appears to be no-one with any reasoning or responsibility to take control.

Having looked at this morning’s news it looks like Theresa May is the front runner. Now, she certainly looks like a grown-up but unfortunately appears to be one whose entire world-view is informed by the pages of the Daily Mail or some other organ of right-wing bigotry. Do we really need someone in a position of power that actively hates most of the people they are meant to represent? The other alternative is Andrea Leadsom who appears to be radically opposed to any form of expert opinion and claims that Christianity is the driving force in her life. There are several hundred Conservative MPs. Is that really the best that they can come up with?

I suspect that part of the problem is that, sooner or later, someone will have to own up to the electorate exactly what leaving the EU actually entails and that it is most likely to be diametrically opposed to what many of those voting to leave were lead to believe that they were getting. To borrow from John Major, the S H 1 T will hit the fan and I suspect that many of those in power will be covered in it. One solution would be to spell out exactly what is being proposed and to give people the choice of a full withdrawal from the EU (the WTO option) with the bleak outlook for the nation’s future that it would entail; a Norwegian style option that would mean embracing all the regulations of the EU without any veto on them; or simply staying in the EU and saying “Sorry, it was all a big misunderstanding.” However, taking control of the situation in this way would require a responsible adult in charge and I don’t think that there is one available.