This came as a bit of a shock. While I am not a middle-class, Liberal Democrat-supporting, pseudo-intellectual Radio 4 listener, I fondly remember Linda Smith filling in on LBC Radio over the past couple of years. She wasn’t a regular presenter but often stood in if the regular presenters were on holiday. When she was on, her shows were clever and very funny. She spoke of experiences I understood. She spoke in my terms. She spoke to me. Of course, it was later that I realised that this Linda Smith was the same lady who appeared on Have I Got News For You and Room 101 and that made it all the more better. Ahhh…THAT Linda Smith. My only experience of her was through the radio and those TV shows and despite this brief connection, her death was still a shock and still upsetting. Another intelligent, clever, person bites the dust. A real bona-fide shame.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4759922.stm
On completely unrelated matters, I have a cold and I am feeling sorry for myself. (All together now…aaahhhh!). Lots of freshly squeezed lemon with hot water and honey topped off with a dram of whiskey and paracetamol. Is is a cure? I don’t know, but it makes me feel very warm inside. 😉
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Well my ex-editor from Paragon has been rehired by Imagine Publishing and has commissioned me some work. Joy of joys. For a minute back there, I thought I was heading towards a real brown trouser moment.
The Apprentice TV show didn’t disappoint last night and the usual besuited archetypes present themselves for our entertainment. I reckon that this time around, we might get a female winner because the ladies team came across as incredibly shrewd, while the men were dull, dull, dull… The finale resulted in the cancer survivor getting booted. A bit unfair as he wasn’t as incompentent as we had seen. He was just a little dull. Oh well, they always keep the villain (in this case, Syed) to add some extra spice later on in the show. We can’t wait.
Afterwards, there was a fly-on-the-wall show about a double glazing company in Coventry. The owner of the business is full of Brentisms and really knows how to flog an analogy to a grisly death. His wife comes across as one of those women who is so uptight that she probably leads a double life dogging at the local beauty spots to unwind. Last night’s show was the antithesis of The Apprentice and a lesson of how not to run a business. They managed to employ a guy who from first appearances was either a paedophile or a serial killer. It turned out he was neither, but a Championship Othello player…the mind boggles how a complete spanner like this can walk into a job while the rest of us have to endure two or three interviews. Oh well, it made me and The Missus giggle.
Today, sooo cold. I’ve even turned the central heating on. Normally, I sit in the cold until about 5pm in order to save energy (I know, I know – but the gas prices have gone up and I can always take the dog for a walk to keep warm). But today, the heating went on at lunchtime. It snowed and it rained. Horrible – one of those days where you want to pull the duvet right up over your head.
In the post: my birthday present – a chord calculator for my guitar. I was tired of constantly going to my guitar handbook when referring to some of those obscure chords, so I bought this little device with my birthday moneys. Cool. It’s like a little pocket calculator but it shows you the various fingerings of guitar chords using its LCD display. It’s a simple device, but I think it is really clever.
Amazon UK, the online retailer, has made a mistake with the pricing of a Poker game for the Sony PSP. It’s supposed to be £29.99 but they priced it up for £16.99. I had a £5 voucher in reserve, so I scored the game for £11.99. That’s almost a third of the price. RESULT! 🙂
So I am 35…whoopee dooo. All clap hands and pretend you are happy for me. I managed to get four cards this year (one of them was from Alex the Wonderdog, but I still haven’t figured out how he snuck out the house to buy it without me noticing). It was a pleasant enough day with plenty of nice presents and some shopping. A visit to the Bluewater shopping complex was a disappointment because the guitar shop there had closed down. OK – it was unlikely that I would have bought anything because they were prohibitively expensive, but I miss looking at the nice guitars. A shame that…
Of course, this birthday could never be as good as my 30th birthday, but what can a boy do. What can you do when your birthday is in the middle of winter? It’s cold and miserable and all you can do is traipse around the shops in the warm. About eight or so years ago, it was unusually warm on this day. So warm that I sported a T-shirt and we went to the seaside. That was certainly an interesting birthday. But today, it was cold damp and miserable…and that was just me feeling depressed about turning 35 and achieving nothing in this slack-arsed life of mine. Oh well, at least we are halfway there…
The best birthday present is yet to come because tomorrow night old Sir Alan “Nookie Bear’s Stunt Double” Sugar returns with another series of the excellent “The Apprentice”. It’s almost as good as the US version. I’d love to see Sugar and Trump do a special show pitting them against each other with a team of similarly inept wannabe business mugwumps.
Highlight of my day: ordering another bulk box of padded envelopes for future eBay sales. Oh yeah, this time it is serious.
Just when I feel that I am all “geared-up” and that there’s no effect pedal out there that will turn my head, something comes along that makes me want to throw myself to my knees and raise my hands high to the heavens in praise of those wonderful people at the Roland/Boss R&D labs. 🙂
While surfing, I noticed that a new Loop Pedal is coming out from Boss called the RC-50. It’s specs are enough to have me salivating in a Homer-esque Donut kind of way. It can loop in stereo and you can fire up all manner of loops at once and it is red and it has more knobs and buttons to fiddle with. Oh deep joy! There is a reason to live beyond my 35th birthday…and there I was planning to end it all by wearing a collar of bacon around my neck and waiting for Alex the Wonderdog to do the deed. But now, I am reborn…reborn to lust after more equipment I won’t find a proper use for.
My latest object of desire
Expect to see my Boss RC-20XL on eBay very, very soon.
On a completely unrelated note, late afternoon on Friday, the heron that sometimes frequents these parts landed on a neighbouring chimneypot and I managed to get a crafty picture before it flew off. Man, those things are sensitive. One twitch of the curtain and the gangly bugger was flapping off over the horizon.
Yesterday, did some recording. Whenever I have a piece of equipment, I always try and use it in a way that pleases me and offers the path of least resistance. The Roland Handsonic is one piece of gear that I don’t think I’ve properly utlised in my setup purely because I am not that good as percussionist. I get by…but that’s not saying much. But there’s some lovely Asian sounds on the kit, including some gamelan sounds that are really easy to use. You can just sit there and noodle away and it sounds good. Well. this next piece is based around those sounds. The main gamelan bit is played stone cold live (with fluffs) with the rest of the instrumentation slotted in around it. Of course, those in the know will hear this and roll their eyes to heaven and say: “I can see what he’s trying to do.” I refute all allegations. Of course, this is a just a demo of the mix and I am going back to try and get a better performance on the Handsonic and to create a more forward-moving track.
Direct download: CLICK HERE
This song also features the return of the wonderful Ashbory Rubber Bass. I don’t use this half enough because it has a particular “big” sound, but in this instance it works really well.
Today, The Missus attended court to deal with the matter of Hubble V Lock. Last year, The Missus had a car accident in which she caused £10 of damage to her own car (a broken number plate) but the 76 year old victim wanted £5000 in compensation. The insurers wasn’t having any of it and so it was up to a magistrate to decide the compensation claim. She got £1550 to cover her minor injuries and the £650 damage to her car. (We now call The Missus’ car “The Hubble Crusher” because of the damage it causes to little old ladies in 5mph impacts).
After walking Alex the Wonderdog, the doorbell rang and a very scruffy looking oik flashed his police ID badge at me. It seems that our next-door neighbour, an elderly lady called Gwen, had been robbed at about 1.30pm. Had I seen anything? No, I hadn’t. Now, Alex might have his faults but he barks whenever he sees anyone going down the neighbour’s path – he does this while sitting regally on the sofa. He had barked at 1.30pm but by the time I had gone to the window to see, I only saw the meals-on-wheels people going in. Apparently, it all happened near enough on top of each other.
The plain clothes policeman asked if I had seen anything suspicious recently. I told him that on Monday afternoon (13th Feb 2006), an Irish fellow came to the door trying to sell me some furniture. He was a shifty looking bugger and I made a point of really giving him a good look. He was late forties, grey hair, wearing a blue sleeveless body warmer and possible blue jeans. He was stocky and about 5’6″ to 5’8″. He went to Gwen’s after knocking at ours. The people that had robbed Gwen’s had been working in a pair – one distracted while the other robbed. It happens a lot around here, mainly because there is a big elderly contingent. We’ve warned her, but they never listen. Because no-one had knocked here and no-one else was targetted, it seems that these bastards knew who they were looking for. Give them 5 minutes with me and a clawhammer and I promise that they’ll never do it again…
Anyway, you are probably wondering why I am writing all this. It’s purely for a memory aid, just in case I need to ID this scumbag in future.
Now something to lighten the tone. Alex has a new trick. Whenever I am sitting cross-legged on the floor (I do this a lot because despite my near-35 years of age, I can still cross my legs and do the lotus position), he now plonks himself on my lap. This next picture gives you an idea of scale too. Either he is really big or I am really tiny…YOU DECIDE!
Last night, I got dewey-eyed and very nostalgic watching a retrospective show on BBC4 about the children’s TV show, Jackanory. For those of you not in the know, the premise is simple: a leading actor of the day sits in front of a camera and tells a story, which is serialised over 5 daily episodes. It’s a simple idea, but I remember it being very powerful and engaging as a young child. Watching the clips last night, I was surprised by just how good my memory was. It also reminded me that I’ve watched far too much TV during my life. But it was a simple pleasure and there’s something about the oral tradition of story telling that I really enjoy. With Dead Rock Star, the unpublished novel that I wrote last year, I spent most of the writing process telling the story verbally to The Missus while walking the dog. It’s a shame that the likes of Jackanory are consigned to the trash bin because its uncool or unhip. If it doesn’t move at a million miles an hour your days are numbered, my friend. But watching the documentary ran parallel with something I am working on at the moment and seeing how engaging storytelling is, it gave me new impetus to continue.
For Valentine’s, The Missus was happy with her obligatory flowers/chocolates/teddy bear combination and I received a much-appreciated bottle of aftershave. Remember, a little dab of aftershave can cover a multitute of sins.
Meanwhile, loads more crap on eBay…the links over on the right somewhere…