List nazis

The Guardian has started a list of 1,000 essential albums. Each entry has a hundred words or so on why they are great.

But it’s all muso journo twaddle. Nobody is interested in how the album caught the mood of the nation at that point, an album is important because you listened to it for the first time while fumbling with somebody’s undergarments.

Two cases in point: (What’s the story) morning glory by Oasis. Played ‘wonderwall’ every morning – and I mean EVERY morning – for about two months while getting dressed for work. Did it annoy my flatmates? Possibly, but if it did it was neck and neck whether it was the repetition or my off-key warbling along that did it. Other case…’parklife’, which I listened to about ten times in a row one day when I decided to play Super Mario World on my SNES all day. Every time I hear the title track I can see the little plumber leaping to his death as I scream at him to jump you little f**ker, jump!

Lists of THINGS YOU MUST DO are annoying. They assume you have infinite time and infinite resource and limitless enthusiasm. My store of enthusiasm for anything that isn’t at least 5% proof is sorely limited these days and frankly, most activities I’m told are ‘musts’ are less attractive to me than slumping on the sofa, spooning Pot Noodle into my mouth and pondering a nap.

Worst of all are the things you are told you should do…but you can’t because the facility is not there to do them anymore. Like a drink in the bar at the top of the World Trade Centre, or visiting East Berlin, or contracting smallpox. Dire predictions mean that you can add stuff to the list of soon-to-be-impossible activities, such as skiing in the Alps, having a panda steak or shagging a bird who doesn’t have a tattoo.

What we need are achievable lists – 1,000 things you can do that are quite fun and don’t require much effort. Number one – eating Pot Noodle.

5th of November remembered

This bonfire night I toned things down somewhat, keeping the danger levels in the red, rather than into the ultraviolet. I decided to take my push-bike to the party shop I traditionally buy my semi-legal fireworks at and so was restricted to what I could carry (quite a lot, as it turned out). So I plumped for a box of assorted mayhem as opposed to one big f**k off firework, not so much display as decommissioned.

Went round to friends house, placed fireworks at one end of garden and small children at other and, by and large, things went well.

Right up until a 32 shot special flipped on its side half way through firing.

Things went from good to Bagdad in a moment. This thing was about one-third the size of a shoebox and was firing off balls of light that made loud bangs when they exploded – it was like Black Hawk Down shot at Hogwarts. The missiles were coming towards us and, to put it mildly, it was exciting. Luckily they were skimming two inches above the lawn and hitting the wall the patio was raised up on, which we were all now cowering on, laughing manically if you were an adult, howling with terror if a child.

It was all soon over and slowly my pulse returned to normal, as did my hearing, which was a relief.

Frankly, although we had saved the best and biggest until last, the rest of the display was an anti-climax. There’s nothing like the thrill of mortal terror and threat of death by firework to make you really appreciate a good display.

Oh-drink-ah-deary-deary-deary-me-oh!

Drink and folk songs are, I have been discovering, a dangerous combination – and the blue touch paper to this danger is being left on your own in the afternoon when there is alcohol in the house.

The night before, feeling a bit ‘tired’, I went on iTunes and made a few purchases. Chief among these was the song ‘skin too thin’ by Jez Low. Ahhhh, folk. Folk songs appear to break down into two types; there’s the type used in chocolate adverts and are concerned with maidens, meadows and simple goat-boys. Then there are the folk songs of the industrial north, which mainly consist of killing the mill owner using clogs. ‘Skin too thin’ is definitely in the latter vein.

Listened to it once. Yes, it was as good as when I first heard it many years ago on a radio show (odd how certain songs stay with one…I suspect that some memory neurons, swamped by wine, expanded to the point where they fired into the area of the brain that governs acquisition). Listened again. Oooh, better. But would be better still with wine. Got wine, listened again. And again. Finished wine, got more wine, listened again and started singing along.

Half three on a Sunday and come to realisation I’m slightly potted and have listened to the same song 20 times. This is bad. Worse would be stopping drinking – it was imperative I got past the stage of inebriation when you feel like wrecking looms.

To be honest, the rest of the afternoon is something of a blur but I can’t of drunk that much – I didn’t buy the rest of the album.

The blog entry now at platform 1...

Trains are by far the most romantic form of travel. Air travel had a brief flirtation with glamour but that ended when Concorde was removed from service. All the flat beds, showers in departure lounges and head massages in the world can’t disguise the fact that, even in the premium first cabin of a modern passenger jet, you’re still breathing the recycled exhalations of the proles back in super-economy and still possibly at the mercy of some bearded freak with a sharpened spoon.

First class travel on airplanes sells itself as luxury but the truth is that the huge passenger airplanes of today are really just big cattle wagons with wings. If first has beds, does economy now consist of a penny hang with a beverage cart option?

Rail, however, appears to be getting more and more luxurious. The newly refurbished St Pancras station has the longest champagne bar in the world! Train late? Who cares! Trains mean excitement, spies, the lady vanishes, nazi agents, stylish murders, brief encounters and assignations in the sleeper cars. Airplanes mean not being able to take your swiss army knife on board with you – a problem as it means you have nothing to fight off gremlins with.

Trains are great. Stations…less so. Recently there was some sort of train trouble on my morning commute and during a fifteen minute wait on the platform I and everyone else was subject to a audio torrent of announcements, all recorded. The first was apologising for the delay, the second reminding us to keep a look out for suspicious packages, the third telling us we can’t take bicycles on the train and the fourth making other announcements about delays and then the whole thing started off again! Bloody hell.

The worst thing is that the apology is so obviously computer generated. It’s maddening that something without a soul says it’s sorry – it’s like your VCR apologising if it records songs of praise over the porn tape you put together through recording the ten minute free view on the Hot Channel for two weeks. Even creepier would be if it was actually programmed to feel sorry. You just know that one day it would get into therapy and channel all that sorrow into aggression and the next thing you know you have a computer with a chip on its shoulder directing you to the wrong platform out of spite and laughing. That’s why I’m uncomfortable with anything more technologically advanced than a kettle.

Wheather or not

The exception to dumbing down of broadcasting is the weather forecast. It’s certainly become more ‘user friendly’, with little animations and so on replacing cloud symbols, but it’s all underpinned by hard science and the forecasts are supported by the sort of men who have evolved long pointy chins through stroking them while considering ‘is it going to rain tomorrow’?

Forecasting is not an exact science. From the days of sages looking at the flight of birds, through rustic types looking at seaweed and pine cones nailed to sheds right through to modern computer generated forecasts using data drawn from weather buoys, satellites and the state of the chief-forecaster’s corns, there has always been room for error. But the forecast has improved.

Which is why when you see the animations give way to actual isobars, packed close, it elicits the sort of response in a viewer only normally observed when they see a picture of their house on telly with a reporter standing outside it in a flak vest - in front of a tank and dozens of coppers with the word ‘live’ in the bottom left hand corner of the screen and themselves peering through the window and looking back and forth in disbelief at their telly.

Certainly that was the case last night, when the North Norfolk Coast was on red alert. High tides, winds, low pressure systems and a vengeful god all combined to bring the danger of flooding. My immediate concern was ‘will the fish and chipper at Wells be affected?’.

Luckily, last night passed without major watery incident.

But it did mean that, for a while there, forecasts were the centre of attention. I think they are usually exciting anyway. The shipping forecast is pure poetry. Forecasts are important, not just to those who rely on the weather to make their living, fishermen and farmers, but as an island nation to those of us who still have a genetic link to the sailors and land labourers of the past.

Which is why I think that there should be a rusticated forecast. Away with measurement of sunshine hours, the pollen index and the atmospheric pressure. I want to hear that it’s going to be ‘bosky’ tomorrow, with ‘gloaming’ spells developing toward evening. Temperature range, who needs more than: bloody hot, hot, cold, brass monkeys and ‘christ, it’s cold’?

Bonfire night explained...ish

'Bonfire night' is another term for 'Guy Fawkes night' or simply 5'th November'. It's a celebration of the failure of Guy Fawkes to blow up the Houses of Parliament using gunpowder. Wikipedia has more, of course. Traditionally, children would make a 'guy' a few days before 5th November (the sort of thing you can buy at any middle eastern effigy shop) and exhibit him in the street asking for ‘penny for the guy’. The money would be used to buy fireworks and, on 5th November night, the fireworks would be let off and the guy would go on the bonfire.

Today, the Indian festival of light, divali, means that the asian community let off fireworks at the start of November and the bangs and flashes continue for the whole first week.

Also, every British kid knows a kid who knows a kid who went to sleep in the bonfire he and his gang had made on a patch of waste ground to guard it against premature lighting by rival gangs and, like, died, yea, because a rival gang lit it with him inside and he was trapped. No, rilly.

Such occurrences are rare these days, as gangs of kids building bonfires have been a)banned under EU law and b) kids are too busy on their Xbox to bother while c) their enthusiastic nostalgic dads can’t find any waste ground because it’s all been built on.

I was over at the House about this time last year and to my dismay saw that they had rebranded bonfire night as ‘5/11 – the plot to blow up parliament’. (The English use day/month notation rather than month/date). What tosh. It’s 5th November, as in ‘remember, remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot…I see no reason why the 5th of November should ever be forgot.’

After last year’s firework extravaganza that left scorch marks on my lawn, I’ve scaled back on the pyrotechnics. No display fireworks, just normal ones. The trick is to rope them together you see. Under a bag of fertilizer. Warning: this means nasty chemical fertilizer. Using manure just results in the BBC weather forecast talking about ‘short, sharp showers of shit over the South East’ and having to put the window cleaner on double shifts.

My kind of marathon

Thanks to the magic of youhootube or whatever it’s called, I’ve spent about nine solid hours this weekend slumped on a sofa binging on ‘Black Books’. Marathon sessions of any programme are when you find out if they are really good; does the programme have the ability to silence that part of your brain that is telling you that you are Wasting Your Weekend, that you should Be Doing Something, even if it’s just opening the curtains, showering or getting out of your dressing gown.

Luckily, the part of my brain – the ‘perky section’ – that tells the rest of me that it should go for a walk and enjoy the majesty of the turning leaves and the brisk Autumn air has a hard enough time fighting my internal sloth without having to put up with external influences.

So sofa it was. I have to admit that things got a little tricky about a third of the way in, when my hangover abated long enough for me to realise I was hungry, but by putting together a running buffet on a plate, I was able to bring by starch, salt and fat levels up to optimum. I was then able to spend the next two hours fighting nausea but at least fighting nausea on a full stomach.

So it’s dark now and too late to Do Anything. Well, not quite dark, fireworks light the night all colours and bangs and pops make the place sound like downtown Bagdad on any night of the week. The air is no longer fresh but has the fresh tang of borderline legal Chinese gunpowder. Opening the curtains does reveal rockets and other skybourne fireworks, but also makes you wonder what you’re missing as you watch back gardens light up with what you hope is an impressive firework rather than, you know, somebody getting pissed and throwing paint thinner on the barbeque.

Tomorrow night is bonfire night, best enjoyed with a mug of soup stirred by a sausage – with a sparkler stuck in it. It’s also the first year when I think I shall try launching my rockets Pakistani style – in a BBC report recently celebrating Parkistani men (it’s always bloody men isn’t it) were seen gripping the stalks of rockets and then lighting them. Jesus, what savagery…can these third world idiots not afford a decent pair of gardening gloves – I bet not one of them even owns a decent set of pruning shears.

My alternative life

Nobody chooses administrative mediocrity as a career, people don’t even have it thrust upon them, that would be too dramatic. I don’t think people even drift into it. Careers involving being stuck in an office just settle on people, like dust or dandruff.

When I was a teen and it was time to start to make choices about what I wanted as a career, I seriously considered the Army. The fact that I was not disciplined, had no interest in sports or, indeed fighting did not seem an issue, either for me, or, more frightening, others. I remember a careers conference with the head of the sixth form, a committed pacifist who hated the military. On the suggestion that I was considering the Army he looked at me and acknowledged that ‘yes, that would be a good fit’. At the time I thought he simply hated me, now I realise that he thought that my being in the Army would deal it the greatest blow since Dunkirk.

As it turned out, I opted for a shirt, tie and suit rather than DPM and have, in general, been quite happy about my choice – I have no doubt that with my luck I’d pull duty testing some sort of new chemical warfare agent at Portland Down. When you find yourself on parade with three rabbits and a smoking beagle, you know you’re in deep shit.

Recent events (growing older combined with what can only be described as something of a dissatisfying time in the office) have made me reconsider these decisions though. I reckon I could, just, have made a successful career out of the Army. Join as a private, rise through the ranks and eventually command tanks and so on before being awarded that ultimate accolade – being accused of war crimes. Without a doubt, I should have joined the Catering Corps. Now called the Royal Logistics Corps or something, and probably due to be outsourced to Burger King, this is the army of the Army that makes sure the troops eat.

Now THAT sounds like soldiering. How on earth is one supposed to make a hot meal for a few dozen hungry, tired and knackered men when you are behind enemy lines and the supplies have not come through? I’d like to see those tossers on ‘masterchef’ try and cook a soufflé under fire. No, really, I would, never mind the rest of this blog entry, I’d just like to see those pretentious sods shot at.

Of course, when it comes to sourcing fresh produce, nothing helps quite so much as having a heavily armed infantry battalion to call on. If you check the background of those teevee reports from the middle east, there’s always a goat in the background or, as I like to call it, mains.