One for the sociologists

I wonder why so many of the bloggers who like Tom Lehrer live in Sheffield.

Just curious.

Intimations of mortality

I've always liked the idea of a full-blown New Orleans-style jazz funeral, with a full retinue of musicians marching in synchopated time, starting out with a selection of King Oliver numbers up to the last lap towards the cemetary, at which point the line parts to allow the undertaker to get to the front. Taking the lead in the parade, and doing the vocals, he would then lead the band in a final rendition of "Mood Indigo." I've always liked that idea.

But one must be practical. More realistically, I think I'll settle for a fifty-strong all-girl brass kazoo band playing "Zippady Doo Dah."

Puss in Boots

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6917113.stm

I reckon the cat's a serial killer.

On this side of the pond all we get is a succession of centenarian ladies boasting that they got their Queen's telegram on a diet of cigarettes and whisky. I don't know how they get on these days now they have to go outside for a smoke

Damp squib

I thought I'd go into Manchester to do some shopping: my dad's birthday's coming up so I thought I'd look for something a bit different. While I was there I thought I'd get a new raincoat as mine's getting a bit past its best. One or other of us is getting mildew and I rather hope it's the coat.

Do you know, you can't buy a raincoat in Manchester?

There were suits galore; blousons and reefer jackets aplenty. Every other store's packed with slackers' outfits and cloned Californian surfing gear. But not a raincoat in sight. I wasn't looking for anything particularly exotic, just a fawn raincoat, perhaps something nice in gaberdene. But nada.

"There's not much call for raincoats these days."

It's been pissing down for a month. This is what's wrong with the British retail industry.

I bet you can't move for surfers on the Medlock.

Perspective

I must be getting old.

I was watching a TV programme which included clips from Ibiza and Sping Break parties and all I could think of was all those millions of horseshoe crabs thrashing about on the beaches of Maine.

Romance

I don't know why but as I walked down the road it gave me a bit of a warm glow to see the lad from a few doors down giving his girlfriend a ride on his steamroller.

It isn't paranoia if they really are after you

I've a day off and I've made the mistake of subjecting myself to public transport. I thought I'd best get a bit of Xmas shopping done, so I went into Manchester and did a shop, which went OK. Getting home wasn't OK: I gave up on the bus towards home after waiting half an hour for our ten-minute service (by that time it was ten-past five and the crowd was pretty big) so I decided to get the tram to get the quarter-to train. What the trams didn't tell us was that there were signalling problems at GMex. Or at least they didn't tell us until we'd been sat between stops at Bridgewater Hall for ten minutes. We then had to wait another quarter of an hour to wait for our turn to go up the slope in emergency stop mode (this involved two emergency stops, not fun in a packed tram with no proper handholds!) All the larks. Let's hope I've had my quota for the week now.

Warning!

Whatever you do, don't let relatives read your blog. I've been given a "George Formby grill" for my birthday!

Twopenny blues

You've got to hand it to the New Model Royal Mail with their new e-stamps. Instead of going to the inconvience and expense of going out to the post office and buying a stamp and then sticking it on an envelope you can now go through the palaver of buying a stamp online with your credit card, print it out and then take the letter to the post office for posting because it's a non-standard size, only to find it's been closed and turned into a discount sock warehouse.

Of course, this is all part of the nonsense of pretending that public services are business units, a model that works so well on the railways. The government has its share of the blame. Nowadays, instead of being able to nip down to the post office to buy a new TV licence you've got to either log on online and pay by card or else send a cheque in the mail. In either case instead of having a done deal pdq you've got to wait for the new licence to arrive in the mail. Whenever that gets delivered these days.

In the Sherlock Holmes stories cries for help often came by post and he rushed to the rescue after consulting his Bradshaw's for the train times. Whiz for progress. The poor buggers would be dead, buried and subject to a Time Team dig by the time he got the note these days.

Thrust

We're often told that the male sex drive is at its peak at 18. We're not told that till our 19th birthday, mind. Usually by older relatives who sit back in their chairs, tap their pipes out on the cat and say: "it's all downhill from here on in tha knows."

Cobblers.

Having reviewed my relict powers I reckon I'm just as capable of thirty seconds' worth of ineffectually emabarassing fumbling about as I was quarter of a century ago.

Only in Yorkshire

One of my colleagues bought an elderly relative one of those George Foreman grills that let you eat entirely unhealthy cuts of meat smug in the knowledge that all the fat will drain down into a little plastic gutter on the front. A few days later he made the mistake of asking how he liked it:

"Reet champion, lad. I can have sausages for my tea and then I can have the mucky fat on bread for breakfast the next day."

The man in black

For some reason my 1950's semi-detached Valhalla has three street lamps stuck on the pavement in front of it.

It would be neat if any one of them was working.

Adventures in commuterland

If I had my time again I wouldn't stick with public transport for one moment longer than absolutely necessary and sod the future of the biosphere; let it go to Hell in a handcart, which it seems to be doing pretty well of its own accord anyway regardless of my travelling martyrdom. I dream of the day when I get into work and then come back home by public transport without any sort of incident or adventure. I travel about twenty-three miles to work. It's not like I'm doing the Silk Road or exploring the remoter reaches of the far Kalahari. I'm commuting across one of the major conurbations in one of the richest countries on the planet. Here's today:

• Half an hour late into work because the train into town is cancelled.


• Coming home,
  
  
  
  • the 1823 in to town turns up at 1849.
  
  
  • Once in town the trams are subject to delay so I walk into the city centre to try and make the connection to the station for the train home.
  
  
  • I know that if the tram doesn't turn up by twenty-five to eight I'm going to miss my train, unless I'm lucky and my train's late.
  
  
  • I give up at twenty to and go for a bus. At ten to eight a bus turns up. It's not my bus but it gets me close enough to home to give me a fighting chance; and if the worst comes to the worst I should only have to wait quarter of an hour for a bus home.
  
  
  • Unfortunately, the city centre's gridlocked: a bus has broken down just outside the bus "station" (actually it's just a big traffic island with bus stops on it).
  
  
  • By quarter past eight we have managed to travel literally the length of six buses. I give up, resort to a tram and get the train that runs an hour later than the one I would have got had the trams not been piddling around earlier.
    
• I get home at a minute to nine.

If it were down to me, all Members of Parliament and all directors of public transport companies would be debarred the use of cars and taxis and forced to go about their business by public transport. The arguments against are well-rehearsed...

"It would be quite impossible to get to all our important meetings by public transport."

For shame.

"There are no public transport links to the sites I need to visit."

And your point is?

"Public transport isn't an option for security reasons."

Welcome to your world. If public transport's unsafe, unreliable, inconvenient or non-existant you'll be well-placed to damned well do something about it, won't you?

These people are the architects of our workaday hells. Their being featherbedded from the consequences of their activities gives them no incentive to make things any better.

Commuting

My train into work was twenty minutes late. Sadly, this isn't the novelty it would have been under British Rail (isn't it an awful indictment of the private rail companies that we see the shoddy services provided by British Rail as some sort of Golden Age?) It was already over ten minutes late when it arrived at my station but then we stayed there while the guard attended to a lady passenger who'd had a panic attack as a result of the severe overcrowding in the carriage.

It's a reflection on Tony Blair's "Respect" agenda that rail passengers are subject to conditions that contravene EC regulations on the movement of farm animals. And the farm animals don't have to stump up a week's salary for the ticket to ride.

Insomnia

Insomnia's a damned nuisance. Too tired to read or do anything remotely useful, I end up resorting to slobbing out in front of the TV. Have you any idea what sort of rubbish there is on the TV in the wee small hours? It makes daytime TV look like Glyndebourne. Every so often I'm lucky enough to get a decent movie. More often than not I'm channel-hopping between documentaries, infomercials and odd bits of cheap tat. Being dead cheap myself, I've got cable but won't buy the extras. So when it comes to the sport channels I'm strictly low rent, just getting the sports that were left over when the money ran out. Curling, biathalon, rhythmic gymnastics... that sort of thing.

Then once in a while you bump into something that makes it all worthwhile...

Solo synchronised swimming. Live from Austria.