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.