The Thoughts of Captain Autumn

I'm in the fortunate position that the nature of my work occasionally causes colleagues to be disproportionately grateful. Nobody ever thanks the people who process orders for keeping the company going, or the financial chaps for paying their expenses promptly, but when you help produce a nice shiny catalogue that comes back from the printers looking all glossy and colourful, it can sometimes send folk a bit giddy. So it was that last week I was given an HMV gift card (apparently vouchers are now a thing of the past) for services rendered.

So off I went to HMV on Friday afternoon, my silver token of gratitude burning a hole in my wallet. The problem was, I've spent so long rooting through CD racks in charity shops and scouring eBay for bargains that the idea of actually buying a full price CD seemed impossibly extravagant to me. I tried to go in with the attitude that here was a chance to get something I'd never find cheap anywhere so I might as well take this opportunity to acquire it without it costing me anything, but I couldn't cope with the pressure. What if I picked a CD it turned out I didn't like much? It would have cost me the equivalent of three or four CDs I'd normally buy. How can any CD live up to that level of expectation, having to be as good as three or four other albums put together? I even considered trying to sell the card to another HMV customer and putting the money towards next year's season ticket.

I'm sick of being broke. It's been going on so long now that I can't escape from the mindset even when I could do so with impunity. When I die, my epitaph will be "He finally got to stop worrying about money".

I think it's fair to say there are not many fringe benefits to being a jazz fan. Amongst the many downsides to liking the finest music created by man are the following:

i) Most people have never heard of anybody you like, and you therefore kill "So what sort of music do you like?" conversations before they start.
ii) On the rare occasions they have heard of the people you like, they almost invariably like different jazz musicians whom you have never heard, or have and dislike yourself. Unbeknownst to most pop fans, there are more than seven jazz musicians in the world.
iii) Once you mention that you like jazz, many people think it amusing to say "Nice", regurgitating a catchphrase from a sketch which was never funny in the first place, parodying as it did something which doesn't exist (jazz programming on television). Others find it equally amusing to draw attention to the slang term "jazz mag", referring to pornographic literature. These references are so hilarious I often have to sit down for several minutes afterwards while I recover from my mirth.
iv) Sometimes people mention Jools Holland, and you have to punch them in the face very hard.

But after more than 20 years I have finally found an upside. Contained with my recently arrived Steely Dan tickets was a flier from a site called eMusic.com. As part of a promotion with Ticketmaster they were offering 35 free downloads if you took a two week trial at the site. Normally I would just bin such material, but I was so disgruntled at Ticketmaster for taking weeks to send the tickets after charging a preposterous £13.50 in various booking fees and administrative charges that I vowed to get my 35 downloads and do a runner.

Now, eMusic.com appears to be a pretty arbitrary site with some pleasingly surprising nuggets amongst the huge gaps in its catalogue. One of these was a live album from Geoff Keezer, on which I promptly used nine of my 35 downloads. And for that mere nine downloads I got a whopping 68 minutes of music. Were I a fan of Arctic Monkeys (future readers please insert the name of the latest here-today-gone-tomorrow wonder band), what would I have got, 30 minutes, 40 maybe? Not for me such momentary gratification. Jazz fans need to wallow in the music, bathe in its luxuriant complexity. We need the full hour and then some.

I've probably opened a can of worms here. Music lawyers who scan the internet for any unexploited angle will find this message, and before I know it download sites will be charging not by the track but by the minute. But while it lasts, I'll make the most of my additional length. Ahem.

And so with the final matches of the regular season played, we now know that in six days my patched-up, depleted team (get the excuses in early) is to head down to Devon to take on Exeter in the away leg of the play-off semi-final. That it is Exeter is both good and bad. Good because if we're not to go up then of the available candidates I would have chosen Exeter and then York instead; bad because amongst my weblog Friends there lies hidden an Exeter City fan, and in ten days' time one of us is going to have to pass on our commiserations to the other while secretly leaping with glee.

I'm thinking that rather than me name the individual in question, we could perhaps have a game along the lines of Cluedo where we slowly discard suspects until we discover who it is. I can think of one we can eliminate pretty sharpish.

Struggling to think of anything with which to keep chuntering along, bearing in mind that my temporary schedule obliges me not to just write off a day as a bad job, I stumbled across young master Lindow’s post about his old school. He seems happy enough to go back and see how his has changed, whereas in my case even just thinking about my old school renders me almost speechless with anger.

I was a happy enough child, living in an end of terrace house which looked out over two large fields in west Oxford, until, at the age of 11, I was obliged to move with my family to Aylesbury. Given the amount I still have to write between now and the Cup Final I’ll keep my feelings about the town to myself for the time being, but not least amongst the miseries it heaped on my teenage existence was its celebrated pillar of academic excellence…

Aylesbury Grammar School.

If ever an establishment existed which served as proof of the social and psychological damage that can be wrought by single sex schooling, this was it. It’s probably too late for most of my readership (although not for Mr Lindow) but just to be on the safe side:

Do not, do not, DO NOT send your children to a single sex school.

I’m sure many such institutions exist which do not, as Aylesbury Grammar School did in my time, concentrate so heavily on ensuring their pass rates remain high that they utterly neglect the emotional development of their pupils through seven crucial years. But even those, by presenting a social fabric which is inevitably focussed in such a gender specific way, run the risk of leaving emotionally vulnerable pupils massively disadvantaged.

I was a shy child, and there are numerous reasons why I became the withdrawn, cynical misandrist I am today. But being removed from the daily influence of girls for six years is pretty high on my list. Not for nothing was I unable to feel comfortable around girls until my final year at university. Not for nothing was I devoid of self-confidence until meeting my first girlfriend at 26. Not for nothing have I not made a new friend in 20 years.

I could go on for several weeks in this vein, so I’ll leave it there for now, other than to mention that like everything it seems, Aylesbury Grammar School has its own website (http://www.ags.bucks.sch.uk/). I was hoping that a visit there would make me believe that since a generation has passed it must now be a very different place, but the Head’s Welcome does little to support that notion. Only in the last line of his third paragraph does he mention the pupils at all. “AGS – a centre of excellence in everything” it says at the bottom (a phrase which immediately disproves its own sentiment by displaying their lack of excellence in slogan writing). When it comes to personal development, I would have settled for mediocrity.

I fell asleep on the sofa a couple of nights ago and woke up during Five's late night basketball coverage. Now I know that one man's sport is another man's pastime, and I know it's all a matter of personal taste, and I know that nothing is to be gained from sweeping statements regarding matters which are clearly close to the heart of other people. But...

Basketball is surely the stupidest, most tedious, most repetitive, worthless sport ever conceived.

You score, then I'll score, then you score, then I'll score, then you score, then I'll score, then you score, then I'll score, then you score, then I'll score, then you score, then I'll score, then you score, then I'll score, then you score, then I'll score, etc. Then eventually the whistle will go and one of us will win by a couple of points.

There are two fundamental flaws to basketball which mean it was always doomed to be a useless spectacle. 1) No truly great sport is dependent on a specific physical type. If basketball had height categories (in the way that boxing has weight categories) then perhaps I could take it seriously, but a sport restricted to the freakishly tall is undermining itself before it starts. 2) In truly great sports it is the challenge of scoring that is the appeal. Just as in gambling, where the allure is in the moment of expectation, wondering whether gain or loss will ensue, so in sport we need to see people strive and struggle to reach their aim. Having someone score every 30 seconds or so removes all the mystique of the endeavour.

I'll watch almost any sport last thing at night as I'm falling asleep. I've been known to watch Nascar (American sports car racing where they just go round an oval again and again and again, presumably for those motor enthusiasts who find the procession of Formula 1 all too much); I've watched ice hockey (even though it's impossible to make out the puck and you might as well be watching some sort of experimental modern dance); I've watched bicycle polo (not, as you might imagine, where people use bikes instead of horses, but where they flick a ball to each other using the very wheels of the bikes they're riding).

But even I draw the line at basketball.

All this talk of the Sexiest Woman In The World has made me think back to when I worked alongside Miss England. It wasn't an office nickname or anything, she'd actually won the title Miss England. This was an endless source of puerile amusement to me, particularly after someone stuck pictures of her wearing a bikini and her Miss England sash on the wall next to her desk. (They remained there for months afterwards during a strange period when she combined her ceremonial Missly duties with working in our orders department). My boss and I used to joke that we should hold a Mr Graphic Design contest, and the winner would get to pin up a photo of himself in boxer shorts. There's only the two of us, so my chances would have been good.

I never really knew Miss England very well, but I was always bemused by her, or by her title at least. Although she was clearly attractive, I felt like it was in a rather anodyne way. All the elements were in place - flowing hair, sparkling teeth, requisite curves in all the right places - but as a combination they added up to an appearance without the spark of originality which sets someone apart and truly engages the eye. Rather like Jessica Simpson (whose name always leads me to think she should be a cartoon character hybrid, part Simpsons, part Jessica Rabbit - although having seen clips from her fly-on-the-wall TV series I suspect a cartoon character would have one more dimension than she does), whom you look at and think "I can see that she really should be gorgeous, but in fact she's just bland".

In the event, whatever her official nomenclature, Miss England wasn't even the most interesting looking girl in the building. Which I used to tell as many of the other women who work here as possible.

As I was cycling in this morning I went past a lorry with a winch on its back, which was hauling up one of those brown dome-shaped recycling bins. As it dangled there in mid-air there was a moment, before my befuddled mind could make sense of what it was seeing, when it appeared to be a huge bell. I was hoping for a gigantic budgie to alight from somewhere and ding us all to Christendom.

It reminded me of the occasion a few years back when my daughter - officially Britain's Cutest Girl® - was photographed for some of our publicity material. I'm extremely wary about putting personal pictures on the internet, but since this one has featured in adverts across Europe and the Middle East I suppose the ship has pretty much sailed on that one. Plus you can hardly even see her.

Anyway, I came back to my office one day to discover that a newly-arrived exhibition stand had been erected outside my door, and there barring my entrance was a massive 8 foot tall representation of my little 2 year old. The stuff of nightmares, I can tell you. A gargantuan 2 year old stomping down the stairs demanding warm Weetabix NOW!

As James helpfully (albeit slightly inaccurately) points out, I still have approximately 80 of these posts to get through before May 19. Given that I am only really qualified to write about three topics (football, my children and jazz piano), and that there is little more dull than other people's children, and that although I can bluff it quite well I don't really know what I'm talking about when it comes to jazz, the inevitable conclusion is that a proportion of these posts will have to deal with the beautiful game. I apologise to those of a non-footballing disposition, but I'm using a pint-sized personality to fill a quart-sized weblog challenge here, so something had to give.

I don't know whether it's because I'm in the unaccustomed position of still being excited by my own team as we head into May, but I seem to have lost all interest in the upper reaches of English football. I'd like to think it is because of Oxford, but I fear it's more that the characters at the top of the tree invite scorn and indifference. Mourinho, who has the intelligence and wit to be a modern Brian Clough to the media, chooses instead to act like a whining teenager. Benitez, sadly, can't seem to stop himself becoming embroiled in the same juvenile squabbles. Miraculously Ferguson simply has to maintain his school bully persona to appear to be rising above it. It's all unseemly and, frankly, very dull. Equally tedious, and I suspect another reason for my waning enthusiasm, is the increasing hegemony of the big four in an era dominated by finance. I was listening to a podcast with Kevin Beattie yesterday in which he referred to Ipswich challenging for the title a generation ago. They did that through shrewd scouting and inspired management. When will Ipswich ever challenge for the title again? Not before they find an oligarch who needs a toy, that's for sure.

Most of my readership (other than that boisterous young whippersnapper James Lindow who has probably been counting the days) will doubtless be unaware that the results of the annual FHM Sexiest Woman In The World poll have today been issued. Last year’s winner was Keira Knightley, which prompted me to post an entry commenting that while undeniably lovely, Keira simply doesn’t have the curves, the attitude, the general ‘je ne sais quoi’ that convey true sexiness. I went on to say that Oxford-based mother of four Mrs Autumn was considerably sexier.

My intention had been to write a deliberately paradoxical piece which highlighted the fundamental idiocy of ranking women according to sexiness (both in the sense that it’s an aesthetic judgement which by its nature can’t be quantified and in the sense that it’s objectification beyond which we really ought to have advanced by 2006) while simultaneously contributing to a debate which simple male atavism makes it hard to resist. At the same time I wanted to make my delicious wife feel good about herself. Alas, I overreached my meagre literary abilities and ended up with something which failed on all counts, and it remains the only posting so far that I have subsequently deleted.

This year’s winner is Jessica Alba. While she clearly handles a bikini well enough, I’m not sure she really fits the bill of Sexiest Woman In The World any more than Keira Knightley. She’s certainly a bit tasty, but not as tasty as my wife.

There. That’s the level of discourse I can just about handle.

The hundred posts marathon reaps further reward with the addition of the splendidly named Lois Wakeman, who becomes Friend 13. Time once again prohibits me from as in-depth a perusal of Ms W’s blogs as I would like to make, but what I’ve read suggests a solid, no-nonsense type for whom triskaidekaphobia will hold no fears. As someone with no formal education in English language beyond O Level, and that at a time in our educational history when pesky stuff like grammar was dismissed as a luxury, I’m slightly nervous that she is going to jump on my first mis-placed hyphen, but no doubt I do her a disservice.

Welcome aboard Ms W.

The more I think about it, the more I realise that my wife and I don’t really have too much in common. With the exception of Steely Dan she likes some pretty awful music; with the exception of ‘The West Wing’ she likes some pretty awful TV; she drinks all manner of alcoholic beverages and eats the strangest food; she is meticulously tidy when I gravitate towards mess; she dresses well and takes care over her appearance when my natural state is human scarecrow; she has a strong faith where I have none; she believes in the innate goodness of people when I am fundamentally misanthropic. However, there is one attribute which gives us a powerful unifying bond.

Fear of balloons.

Not hot air balloons you understand, but the all-intrusive, would-your-children-like-one type which are erroneously associated with fun and gaeity. Balloons are not entertaining toys for the amusement of kids, they are threatening symbols of inflated tension which oppress me and my wife. Once brought back from the seemingly innumerable parties and restaurants which like to dole them out thoughtlessly, they hang malevolently around the house, fully aware of the power they hold over us. Even once they start to deflate they still sulk in corners, biding their time, challenging us to try and dispose of them, knowing that we dare not.

I have to stop now, I’m scaring myself.

I feel like I've been writing drivel solidly for a week, and I've still only managed 17 of the 100 entries I have challenged myself to produce between now and the FA Cup Final. Admittedly I have to squeeze them in around work, getting four kids off to bed, trying to sell stuff on eBay and watching the occasional football match, but even so it's hard to maintain even the most basic level of quality control. Just keeping up with the run rate (current scoring rate 2.57 entries per day, required rate 3.28 entries per day) is a struggle. Whose stupid idea was this?

I read Matthew Hoggard a couple of days ago writing that if selected he hoped to be playing in the First Test against the West Indies in just over three weeks. Either it's the swifter passage of time with my advancing years, or they're cramming international cricket in to a ridiculous extent now. The unprecedentedly tedious and protracted World Cup hasn't even reached its inevitable conclusion, and yet there's a whole Test series just around the corner? I'm not ready for it. I need a bit of breathing space. I'm sure when I was a kid there were months between international cricket series, I can't be doing with them practically overlapping.

Part of my lack of enthusiasm is probably that an England-West Indies Test series these days bears no relation to those of my youth. Miserable though it was to be hammered relentlessly by the majesty of Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner (the list goes on and on), it is nevertheless almost as painful to see the pitiful state of the current West Indies team. Now they don't even have Brian Lara England will be strong favourites, and there is something simply not right about that. It's just my age, but as Liverpool should be the standard-bearers for English football in Europe, not Manchester Utd or (heaven forbid) Chelsea, so the West Indies should be imperious and indomitable. To see them stumbling apathetically and ignominiously out of their own World Cup was to witness sporting pathos at its most raw.

Here's a conversation I had with my four year old this morning.

"Which are you going to wear today, your red shoes or your black shoes?"

"I want to wear my baseball boots."

"You can't wear your baseball boots because they need cleaning, you'll have to wear your red shoes or your black shoes."

"I want to wear my baseball boots."

Pause.

"Actually that's OK, you wear your baseball boots because I want to wear your black shoes to work."

"No! You can't wear my black shoes!"

"Yes I can, that's fine, you wear the baseball boots and then I'll wear the black shoes."

"No, I'm going to wear the black shoes!"

At which he ran giggling off to make sure he got the black shoes before me, the poor unsuspecting sap.

This exchange made me wonder whether we couldn't use reverse psychology as part of international relations. It works so well on kids, why wouldn't it work on the diplomatic stage?

"Mr Ahmadinejad? The British government was wondering whether you might like to wind down your nuclear weapons programme."

"Iran has as much right as any other nation to develop nuclear weapons, so no."

"It will be a safer world all round if we can restrict the proliferation of nuclear technology..."

"Easy for you to say when you already have that technology."

Pause.

"Actually Mr Ahmadinejad, you go on and build those weapons, that's fine. We want you to."

"You want me to?"

"Yes, we think it would be super. Do you think you could build some today?"

"I could, but I don't want to. I'm not in a nuclear weapons mood. I'll build some whenever I feel like it."

"That's fine. Tomorrow do you think? The next day?"

"Maybe I just won't build any nuclear weapons at all, OK? Maybe I'll build something completely different!"

And so on. To be honest Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems like a fairly smooth operator and I can't see him falling for that sort of tactic.

But it might work on George Bush.

What a load of claptrap has been written about Jacqui Oatley commentating on Match of the Day. Did she describe the action adequately? Yes. Did she have a particularly pleasing voice? No. Did she shriek slightly when describing the goals? Yes. Did she shriek anywhere near as much as the appalling Alan Green does on Radio 5? Good heavens no. Did she pronounce the names of all the foreign players correctly? Yes. Can David Pleat pronounce the name of a single foreign player correctly? No. (Last week I heard him call Pascal Chimbonda ‘Shibomba’.)

My point is that you can count on one hand – in fact probably on a couple of fingers – the commentators who really enhance the viewing experience. The BBC stupidly allowed one of the best, Barry Davies, to go off in a justifiable sulk at the end of last season because he was never given any big games upon which to commentate, and now there are hardly any who know when to enhance what we can see for ourselves and when to shut the hell up. Maybe one day the TV companies will give us the option I really want – no commentary at all. Somehow I manage to get through whole games at the Kassam without it.

A blistering weekend of number plate spotting. After a record-equalling four on Friday, I followed it up with an unprecedented second four in a day on Saturday, followed by two more on Sunday. Keep going at this rate and I'll be finished by the end of the year!

I feel that perhaps I should recapitulate the Consecutive Number Plate Spotting saga for those latecomers who may have missed the early editions of this journal. My doom was sealed when I read the rules as listed on Richard Herring's gloriously funny website. (I advise that you stop reading this rubbish and head over there instead, particularly to the Warming Up section. Try this entry - http://www.richardherring.com/warmingup/warmingup.php?id=437 - to my eyes an almost impossibly hilarious account of a simple trip to the supermarket.) The idea of Consecutive Number Plate Spotting is that you spot number plates consecutively - it's not the most cryptic of pastimes. You start at 1 and you keep going until you reach 999. I only started because I was curious as to how far I would get before I got bored or simply forgot to look. I imagined I would get to about 22, then several months later would realise I'd neglected to carry on and wouldn't even remember which number I'd got to. I would laugh it off and get on with my life.

If only.

What I didn't realise was that Consecutive Number Plate Spotting was set to join the elite band of my moderate, not-especially-debilitating obsessive compulsive tendencies (otherwise restricted to locks - windows, doors, padlocks - and pulled threads on clothes). Although I have had periods of more intense activity and some lulls when I have lacked motivation, I haven't been able to free myself from the mysterious allure of the number plate. It started as a frivolous bit of displacement activity to while away the journey to work, around the time that my youngest was born. He just turned four and I'm on 378. Aware as I am that the only route to freedom from CNPS's iron grip is to stay the course, my ambition is to get it finished before he's embarrassed to know me.

Another lovely rainy morning. I say this without a trace of sarcasm - I love the rain. Not the pounding stuff which drenches you through inside a couple of minutes admittedly, but a gentle sprinkle with a cool breeze under cloud-covered skies is about as perfect as weather can get. The sun, you see, is terribly overrated. All that squinting and sweating and burning, it's all most unpleasant. I suspect that most people know this but, as with much else in life, there is a pressure to conform and they buckle under the weight of the assertion from the forecasts that hot weather is good and rainy weather is bad. There's no such thing as good weather and bad weather, there's just weather. And anyway, as celestial features go, the sun is a pretty dull one. Every day a big orange burning ball, big wow. At least the moon changes shape, and what's more it causes the tide. What does the sun do? Heats. Every day, heating, heating, heating. Some days a bit more, some days a bit less, but that's it - a one trick pony if ever there was one. The last time the sun did anything dramatic was the eclipse - when the moon got in front of it!

In musing this morning on the myriad reasons to be proud to be English, I somehow stumbled across the name Norman Foster. I only really became aware of him through the extraordinary Millau Viaduct (check out the Wikipedia page for some wonderful images), but that’s only one of numerous daring and challenging constructions for which he’s responsible. Most of us will be familiar with the Swiss Re headquarters in The City (‘The Gherkin’), but have you seen The Philological Library at the Free University of Berlin, designed in the shape of a brain? The Clyde Auditorium? The renovation of the Reichstag? The Sage Gateshead? These are structures of such audaciousness and vivacity that they fair take the breath away.

I’ve spoken before on these pages about the flawed layout of the human body, specifically in the genito-urinary department. I have now concluded that the theory of intelligent design can be dismissed, on account of our ears.

Cycling into work this morning, there were occasions when I could hardly hear the music from my Discman because of the wind interference against my ears. I don’t have particularly large ears, nor was it an especially windy day, and yet on several occasions more subtle passages all but eluded aural perception. At these points I, as an experienced listener of music while on a bike, was able to increase my personal level of reception by turning my head 90 degrees, thereby eliminating the resistance and creating a more streamlined music/weather interaction. It became obvious to me at this point that had the human body indeed been designed – rather than just evolving haphazardly from some primordial goo – that we would have one ear on the front of our heads and another on the rear.

Attentive readers who have taken the trouble to create a mental image will be aware that this realisation came to me as I was cycling forwards while looking sideways, which in turn brought home to me the deficiency of the human ocular arrangement. Two deep-set eyes on one side of the head? Rubbish. A forward-thinking architect of our audio-visual system would have given us two bulbous eyes on either side of our head, thereby enabling 100% peripheral vision.

The good news is that with the advances of modern science, we are surely only years away from being able to create a prototype man with ears and eyes placed where they should be. Any aesthetic shortfall will surely be offset by the improved, life-enhancing megasenses. And if we use Andrew Lloyd-Webber as the guinea pig, nobody will notice anyway.

Anybody noticed? I doubt it. Because while you can't go near a pub for a month beforehand without being told that St Patrick's Day is on the way, heaven forbid anyone who dares stand up and proclaim themselves proud to be English.

Now, I understand why. In the first place the English have a lot of history of which they can be ashamed, some of it recent enough that to express patriotism can be seen by those of a nervous disposition as a call to the imperial spirit. And in the second place patriotism got hijacked in the 1970s by the far right and twisted into a form of loathsome nationalism. But the time has come to put both of these behind us and not be embarrassed to stand up and say that we love to be English. Well, I do at least. I love our reserved, dispassionate nature, I love our weather, I love that the greatest pop band in history was English, I love Damien Hirst and Norman Foster and Keira Knightley, I love our multi-culturalism and that we have a Sikh and a Muslim in our cricket team, I love Stephen Fry and Harry Hill and Eddie Izzard. Most of all I love our extraordinary, rich, befuddling language with its lack of gender, simplistic verb structure and incomprehensible rules of pronunciation.

Of course there is much to hate about being English as well, and given that I've got another 89 entries to try and pull together in 26 days I would imagine I will be coming to them sooner rather than later. But for today, our national day, let's see the glass as half full.

I wonder if the people behind the unbelievably aggravating 118118.com inserts before and after commercial breaks in some of my preferred viewing are aware that they have made sure I will never use their service? The least annoying – by which I mean only very, very annoying - are the ones in ‘Prison Break’, which is such a ludicrous piece of fluff anyway that there’s never really that much dramatic tension to be broken. But the ones in ‘ER’ and specifically ‘The West Wing’, which contains surely the finest writing for television in the past decade, are irritating to an almost incalculable degree. It’s not their mere existence that frustrates me, because these days you can barely watch a programme without these little invasive sponsorships all over the place. No, it’s that they’re so completely rubbish. What makes them think that dropping a couple of witless David Bedford lookalikes into programmes ad nauseam with their feeble none-liners will make anyone want to visit their website?

They should take a look at the Stella Artois film sponsorship ones to see how it should be done. Although given my annual consumption of Stella Artois, I debate the worth of either approach.

Pending his acceptance of the invite, James will become the 12th Friend. At just 26 he is possibly the least silver of all my surfers, and as such has not a hope of getting the title of this entry. That will teach him to be so young.

7,007 at the Stafford game yesterday. I have to say I’m quite pleased that the club’s attempt to bump up attendance for a fairly meaningless fixture, by saying that people holding a ticket stub for yesterday’s game would get priority for tickets for the home leg of the play-offs, was something of a failure – only about 700 more than a normal game. Admission prices are a long running bone of contention between me and Oxford Utd. The expense of attending football often comes as a shock to people who don’t do it, and as my own club has sunk down the divisions the cost vs quality ratio has become harder and harder to justify. For this season, for 23 non-league fixtures, I paid £319 for myself and £170 for my son – that’s £170 for an 11 year old boy. Other teams in this division, granted working on a different financial scale I’m sure, ask a fraction of that. Now we’re heading towards a play-off fixture for which I will be asked to pay again - £17.50 for me and £11.50 for the lad. Given that it’s a fixture for which the club can not have have budgeted at the start of the season, and for which they’ll be gaining somewhere between 5-7,000 fairweather fans, it might have been a nice show of gratitude to the season ticket holders who have stood by the club through a decade of miserable decline to let us in for nothing. But that goes against the ethos of every professional football club – Thou Shalt Scalp Thine Fans At Every Opportunity.

Feverish excitement at the Captain Autumn web hub (as BT would probably call it) with another invitation for Friendship. What a day this stands to be I thought, as I sit halfway through a potential record-equalling four number plates in one day (369 to 372) and with another reader in the offing. However, it seems that Mr Agido is one of those curious people who just want to snare as many Friends as they can without possibly caring about what those people write or whether they have any interest in his many, many photographs of the Philippines. Well, I will not sully the reputation of the esteemed AutumnFriend by allowing such a flagrant populist amongst us. I haven't spent 494 days compiling a weblog so dear to myself and to you, my cherished Friends (even though I'm fairly sure at least half of you no longer look at this weblog at all - and good luck to you I say, there's more to life than reading this piffle) only to abandon it to the scattershot approaches of all and sundry. That's right - you're special.

I so don't get the Royal Family. Why we have one, I mean. It's not that old chestnut about the expense - in the grand scheme of things they're a drop in the ocean. And I'm not disputing that they work hard (some of them at least), and no I wouldn't do what they have to. No, what I don't get is why we maintain an institution so anachronistic in the 21st century. The idea that a person can, through accident of birth, be born into a position whereby they are ever after treated with deference and respect, without ever having to earn it, completely mystifies me. And I don't understand why it doesn't mystify everybody else as well. This is not a criticism of the current incumbents, although I'm inclined to say that with their gruesome playing out of their gripes through the media Prince Charles and Saint Lady Diana of The Holy Landmine of Self-Promotion did enough to turn us all into republicans on their own. No, it's the institution which defeats me.

What brought this to mind was a piece I read recently about the break-up of one of the princes whose name I can never remember (it must be William, because I believe Harry is the Nazi uniform wearing oaf) and Kate Someone - possibly Middleton. Supposedly all the hangers-on around the Queen are delighted because this Kate girl isn't classy enough - her mother used to be an air hostess and made lots of terrible social faux pas, such as, upon meeting the Queen for the first time, saying "Pleased to meet you" rather than "How do you do". This, apparently, is such a heinous crime in royal circles that an insider said the Queen "couldn't believe it". Now, I don't know the Queen - really, I don't - but it doesn't much matter to me whether she couldn't believe it or not. The fact that there are people around willing to claim as much on her behalf is reason enough in itself to get rid of the Royal Family.

Of course it will never happen. Sigh.

I should probably preface this by saying that I have nothing against the French as a people and nothing against France as a nation. And although I don't personally like the language, that's not behind my belief that it is a complete waste of time to be teaching it to our schoolchildren.

All foreign languages should be taught only to those children who express an interest in learning them, and then only at secondary level. The review last year by Lord Dearing which proposed compulsory teaching of foreign languages at primary level is misguided at best, and a squandering of valuable school time and resources at worst. Concerned that in 2001 78% of pupils took a language at GCSE compared to 51% in 2006, the government asked Dearing to investigate. He sought the views of secondary school students, who told him languages were difficult, boring and they "could not see the point". And you know what? They're right. There is less and less point in learning a foreign language unless you have the express desire to travel in countries where it is spoken, and there is absolutely no point in teaching it to a child under 11.

Before anybody dismisses me as a little Englander, I speak as someone who spent a decade learning a European language. I have a passion for language generally and gaining command of another one proved immensely gratifying. But in purely practical terms, it has served me no real purpose. I was told as a teenager that languages would prove to be a significant advantage in my future career, and although that's not why I chose Spanish for my degree it was a comforting thought. Alas, it turned out to be nonsense, for the simple reason that in business in the 21st century, everyone speaks English. Through an accident of chronology - American cultural imperialism combined with the explosion of electronic media - it is THE international language and it is going to get stronger, with only Mandarin and possibly Spanish as any threats to its global supremacy. We have a built-in linguistic advantage, and any further languages we choose to learn should be seen as luxury items for those with a special interest.

Being realistic, I know that a foreign language in schools will probably always be on the curriculum. Removing it would be seen as an arrogant dismissal of our international credentials, even though most other countries in Europe now produce school-leavers with a better standard of English than our own. But if there has to be a language taught, it shouldn't be French. Do you know where French ranks in the Top 10 most spoken languages in the world? It doesn't, it's 13th. Even amongst European languages it trails behind German, Portuguese and Spanish. Goodness knows where it ranks within the UK as a second language used at home, but certainly way below Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Arabic... the list goes on. The only reasons for choosing French are geographical and historical, and I'm afraid that if people say we should teach kids French because lots of them go on holiday there, that's just not a good enough reason. You can't waste schooling on something which is only going to be used in leisure time on a very sporadic basis. By that logic we should teach kids skiing. English is the dominant language of the world, we need to stop being embarrassed about it and embrace it for the bonus it is, and spend our children's school hours on something more practical and worthwhile.

Day 2 of the 100 post challenge. This is number 5. I should perhaps clarify that I have until midnight on the day of the Cup Final (May 19) to do this. That way, in the unlikely event of Oxford reaching the play-off final, I won't be compelled to post a reaction to the ultimate heartbreak of losing at Wembley, because that won't happen until the afternoon of May 20.

Anyway, no sooner has Kevin 'Kevin' Wilson joined us than we have number 11 - Ms FreeAsTheWind. At another time I would perhaps give Ms Wind a more thorough introduction, but I'm doing this stupid 100 posts thing so time is precious. But a brief scan of her five (five!) blogs seems to reveal a feisty, spirited type who also coincidentally fits my inadvertent demographic. So welcome along Ms Wind. Let me know if you object to being called Ms Wind.

The question now is who will be twelfth? Who will be Henry Fonda? Who, I have to say, never seemed at all angry to me and makes me wonder whether the film shouldn't actually be called 'Eleven Angry Men And One Really Rather Reasonable One'.

I've never indulged in any narcotic abuse, I don't drink alcohol and I don't smoke. But I can very easily envisage myself getting into deep waters with creosote abuse.

As I was cycling in yesterday someone was clearly treating wood (and they don't call it treating for nothing) somewhere nearby, because the alluring waft found its way to my vulnerable nose and practically caused me to ride into a wall. It was as nuch as I could do not to turn around and go back to Homebase for a surreptitious sniff. Cuprinol, thy name is temptation.

I probably shouldn't be writing this, because before I know it there will be dealers (or perhaps in this instance we should appropriate other criminal terminology and refer to them as fences) hanging around the bike sheds near my workplace. "It's not pure mate, you couldn't handle that, I've cut it with Ronseal Woodstain... Easy, one nostril at a time, you'll OD!"

Oh polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, how can I resist you?

Barely had I recovered from McFly covering Jellyfish than I put on the latest Eliane Elias album, 'Around The City'. It's not a recent release but I've only just acquired it - I'm sure that like me you are somewhat disappointed that Eliane Elias's albums have increasingly focussed less on her mellifluent, elegant piano soloing and more on her fragile and uninspiring vocals. Anyway, there in the middle of it - I kid you not - is a cover of Bob Marley's 'Jammin''. I absolutely loathe reggae and the hagiography surrounding Bob Marley, and even without those facts a Latin jazz cover of a reggae classic is hardly the best of ideas. But blow me if it doesn't work, sort of. She cranks up the pace to about 130bpm, gives Randy Brecker a corker of a trumpet break, then dashes off a positively spine-tingling solo like she used to 20 years ago. It's barking mad but I'll take it over another soothing ballad any time.

Incidentally, my daughter's middle name is Eliane. I mention this solely because naming my daughter after a jazz pianist is possibly the only cool act of my life. Certainly the coolest since I went to see Kraftwerk as a 13 year old.

So there I was in the pub yesterday, minding my own business and trying to win a couple of quid towards the play-off semi-final home leg not covered (surprise) by my season ticket, when the opening chords of Jellyfish's 'Baby's Coming Back' reached my ears. A quick glance at the numerous video screens and my finger-on-the-pulse awareness of modern pop told me that it was a cover version by those young whippersnappers McFly. McFly have covered Jellyfish! Whatever next?

With 'Spilt Milk' Jellyfish made one of only two albums in the last decade to have really excited me which couldn't in any way be described as jazz. I'm not up with the countless sub-divisions of popular music which place something specifically in its genre (although my iTunes automated assignation of Alternative & Punk is insulting in its inadequacy), so I wouldn't know how best to describe the album. However, what I can say is that it is drenched in catchiness and hooks and so many instantly timeless melodies that it seems insouciant to have blown them all on one extraordinary collection. There are hints of Brian Wilson and Queen and Squeeze and maybe even ELO, but the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts. It is clever, it is witty, it is sophisticated but it is thoroughly accessible and I commend it (and its companion 'Bellybutton', from which 'Baby's Coming Back' is taken) to anybody with any sort of pop sensibility. Which is why I'm thrilled about the McFly record. Somewhere out there there's a McFly fan or two more interested in the music than the cute little chaps, and they will presently be clutching to their breast copies of the Jellyfish albums which will in turn point to a whole new horizon of musical wonder. What a beautiful world it is.

The problem with trying to achieve 100 posts in a month is that it will necessitate me behaving rather like my daughter (who turns six this Sunday, a day which has also been designated, somewhat portentously one has to feel, 'World Earth Day') in having barely a thought which remains unexpressed.

But that's partly what intrigues me about it. Is it possible to remain even vaguely interesting when having to deliver almost every opinion you have ad nauseam? Or does that, both in its delivery and reception, inevitably become tedious? I also want to see whether I have the stamina and willpower to see through something which will certainly become onerous at some point - probably many points in fact. (The smart money says I don't.) And I'm intrigued as to whether the Irving Berlin effect kicks in. Irving Berlin, for any philistines reading, was one of the great American songwriters of the 20th century. He composed a staggering 3,000 songs. Do we know all these songs? Are they all classics? Of course not. Did Berlin wait for his muse to strike before putting pen to paper? Unlikely. He just ploughed on, come rain or shine, and in amongst all the mundane and humdrum occasionally something special would emerge. I doubt he knew when he wrote them that Alexander's Ragtime Band, Cheek To Cheek, Puttin' On The Ritz, Blue Skies, Let's Face The Music And Dance, Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better) and White Christmas were any better than the hundreds of his songs which haven't been heard for decades. And by the same token, I'm interested to see if simple persistence will throw up unexpected web nuggets. Or whether my submissions just get gradually worse and worse until I end up writing about something dumb like number plates.

It's a seismic instant on the Captain Autumn weblog as we reach two momentous milestones simultaneously.

First we welcome the long-awaited Tenth Friend. I've given him the once over and he appears to be a real person, rather than a front for hair replacement or diet pills. He also fits neatly into my demographic of the slightly maturer reader - not a clientele I've ever actively sought, I should add, but somehow the nature of what I write seems not to appeal to the nubile twentysomethings to whom all men knocking 40 are supposed to aspire. Anyway, Kevin Wilson appears to be a relatively normal sort of chap. Of course, he's obsessed with the name Kevin, but then I'm obsessed with number plates, so who am I to judge? So we welcome him aboard.

And by coincidence he arrives as I finally reach 100 posts. By my reckoning it's taken me 492 days, which is languorous at best. I can't help feeling that I'm something of a slacker in this regard. There are people here who get through 100 posts in a month. Admittedly most of them are along the lines of "Got up late today, had Cornflakes for breakfast, it's nice and sunny - C YA L8TER!", but still.

Knowing it was on the horizon I'd been debating how to commemorate the occasion of my 100th post. Given my level of dissatisfaction with the quality of my recent submissions I was seriously thinking it was about time to pull the plug altogether, but with the arrival of Kevin Wilson I feel reinvigorated and am considering a complete volte face - I'm wondering if maybe I should challenge myself to produce 100 posts in a month. 100 posts in a month, of a minimum of 100 words in length. None of them about Cornflakes. It would kill me. But it might stop me vegetating quite so much as well. I'll sleep on it.

I've had an e-mail from a print management company alerting me to a new service they are offering. I've changed the names of the companies just in case, but otherwise the wording is exactly as I received it.

It begins "Exciting new one 2 one marketing solutions from Aware."

Instantly they've lost any chance of getting my business. What need is there to use the number 2 there? It doesn't make any sense to use it in place of the word (the word "to" that is, as opposed to the word "two"), and it trips you up when you're reading it mentally. Plus it doesn't mean anything. What exactly is a "one 2 one marketing solution"? In what way is that different from a normal marketing solution?

"Did you know that Aware offer a data-driven, online one 2 one marketing solution for customers with localised marketing activity?"

What? WHAT? What the hell is a "data-driven" marketing solution? What are they talking about?

"For example, we provide a central, web-enabled marketing conduit for Ramptons International Estate Agents."

A "web-enabled marketing conduit"? Eh? Do they mean a website?

"Using our marketing tool, all of Rampton's regional offices are able to exploit localised marketing opportunities which integrate seamlessly into their wider marketing strategy and corporate brand."

OK. I think we're getting somewhere here. I think what they mean is they've got a website which Rampton's regional offices can use to produce marketing material which all looks the same. Would it have killed them to say so? Stupid, pointless, buzzword advertising lingo. Well I've had a brainstorming session and decided they can transition right into my non-communication interface receptacle.

It is 17 days until the first leg of the Conference play-offs, and already I am churned up by the sort of gnawing anxiety I haven't felt since taking my O Levels.

We have never before participated in any play-offs, so this is a novel experience for me. Most teams at one time or another have found themselves in the end of season lottery, but such has been our spectacular decline in the last few years that we are neophytes. And the stakes could hardly be higher - the chance to be an anonymous football team again. Because while it's been an entertaining novelty being in the Conference, you wouldn't want to do it every
year.

I'm the first to say that no club has a divine right to be in or out of any division, but the simple fact is we're a ridiculously big fish for this pond. We played at St Albans on Saturday, and while it was admittedly distorted because they'd already been relegated, 1168 of a crowd of 1713 were Oxford fans. Our average home attendance is practically double that of the next biggest team in the Conference, and four or five times times that of half of them. I'm not saying we deserve to get out of the division, because we didn't play well enough and Dagenham did, so good luck to them. But I'd like to go back to being just another team in League Two, rather than the Conference club that every other team wants to beat, the one they all pick out when the fixture list is issued, the scalp worth having.

I wonder if we'll get to Wembley. If we do, I'll wonder if I'll go. Having missed no more than a handful of games in the last 14 years I probably should, but I can't help thinking that trudging back from London after a defeat would be about as low as I could go. Then again, a win would provide a sublime moment with my first-born, and he's of an age now when he'd remember it as well. Going to the football with my son is a highly emotional experience for me. For a couple of hours we remove ourselves from the rigours of the daily routine and wallow in the artificial, heightened reality of proper, live sporting fandom which sets us apart from the media's cherished armchair-fixed, Premiership-fixated observer. In jest but with a kernel of truth I would even call it a quasi-spiritual experience. Dare we make the pilgrimage to the East, knowing that at the end of Wembley Way salvation or damnation awaits?

Probably not something I'll have to worry about. Just talking about it will have jinxed it. Come August it will be the might of Histon we have to conquer. This weblog will focus on the culture and history of Droylsden. Sigh.

I read on David Newton's website (www.davidnewton.net) that he received an e-mail inviting him to enter an amateur piano competition, to be judged by Jamie Cullum. Assuming that most people, sadly, are not au fait with Newton's work, this is rather like Gabriel Garcia Marquez being invited to enter a short story competition to be judged by Jeffrey Archer. (Which is not really to pour yet more disdain on the already widely maligned Cullum, whose work I've always found rather palatable - it's not really jazz, but I'm not sure that he would claim that it is. In fact I've always found Jamie Cullum to be rather self-effacing about his ability, and I'm quite surprised that he would agree to judge anybody, which seems rather like asking for it to me. That said, he's made a hell of a better job of teaching himself to play the piano than I did. But I digress.) David Newton has been creating sublime, widely-acclaimed music for a couple of decades now, and it seems incredible that anybody putting together a piano competition could be unaware of his position at the pinnacle of British jazz. Maybe he should enter. Given that the organisers apparently don't even know who he is, he wouldn't have to put on a disguise, and you'd have to think he'd be in with a shout. Although if they're looking for the next Jamie Cullum, maybe not.

Three tracks from Newton's forthcoming album can be heard at www.myspace.com/thedavidnewtontrio. To those who prefer to dip their toe only tentatively into the rich ocean of jazz, I commend The Walk.

In other news, I see that Louis Theroux has jumped on the Captain Autumn bandwagon by spending a few days with the Westboro Baptist Church. It was a strange kind of programme. Normally Theroux is very adept at getting under the skin of his subjects and seeing their hidden depths, but with people so driven, obsessive and self-absorbed he never had a chance. He certainly managed to bring out the tragedy of indoctrinating children into something so warped and of which they had no real understanding, but ultimately the programme became rather dull, simply because the people are so dull themselves. Endless reiteration of sentiments which initially shocked simply led to desensitization, and in the end they seemed less like real people than, as he hinted, members of a cult simply spewing out the same mantra ad nauseam. Whenever he tried to engage them in some form of debate, he could never raise it above the level that they were right and everyone else was going to hell, delivered with a disdain that was almost chilling. It was a shame that he never pointed out to them that the liberal society they so deplore is the same one which permits them to spread hate so openly.