tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-11-21:/MokoFeed2009-11-21T00:55:57+01:00tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-10-28:/2009/10/28/the-x-factor-7259982/Captain_Autumn2009-10-28T10:45:04+01:002009-10-28T10:45:04+01:00 <p>The time when it occurred to me to write about The X Factor is now long past - it was in the audition stage, the early weeks of the series. So take that into account when you read the below.</p> <p>There are people in my house who like to watch The X Factor. While I'm not a fan of talent shows (although once in a while they'll throw up a Will Young, for the most part their insistence on getting them to sing a range of styles means they end up with people who are generically competent without being individual), I have no problem with them per se. But I have a big problem with The X Factor, which goes out of its way to mock and belittle people. Most of the time these people are just sadly deluded about the level of their talent, sometimes you can't help thinking that they actually have learning difficulties (which I believe is the current accepted terminology) and someone should be looking out for them. It is the exact modern equivalent of the freak show. This lambs to the slaughter element was bad enough in previous years, when you'd have these poor saps being cut down to size by Simon Cowell and his stooges in an audition room, but they upped it this year by holding the auditions in front of a live audience. So you have people preparing to perform, thinking they might be about to have their moment, then stepping out in front of thousands of people and getting booed and derided even before Cowell gets his say.</p> <p>I stay out of the room when it's on, because it makes me angry, but inadvertently caught a couple of minutes a few weeks back. It was a duo of two cousins, he 16, she 17, who had called themselves Casyr, standing for care and support your relatives. There were about 20 members of their family there and you could tell before they started to sing that they would be terrible, which they duly were. I said that this was what I hated about it, that people like them were put through from earlier unseen auditions, had their hopes needlessly raised, specifically in order to humiliate themselves in front of an audience. I was told no, <strong>all</strong> the auditions were now done in front of an audience and the judges and they just showed the best and worst. In a way it's understandable that people believe that, because that's the way the programme portrays it, even though a fairly cursory bit of maths would make it obvious that there's no way Cowell could sit and see the tens of thousands of people who want to audition. Anyway, in order to prove my point I did a bit of digging and found <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8209429.stm">this</a>. It's not exactly a shocking expose, but it brings home the wretchedness of the whole miserable X Factor culture. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/10/28/the-x-factor-7259982/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-10-24:/2009/10/24/hot-fuzz-7234057/Captain_Autumn2009-10-24T09:47:43+02:002009-10-24T09:47:43+02:00 <p>Hot Fuzz then. Sigh. Where to start?</p> <p>About a month ago someone in my household suggested that I watch the film Hot Fuzz. She'd watched it a couple of weeks previously and said although it wasn't great, it was an enjoyable enough way to spend a couple of hours. I didn't really want to see it, partly because I suspected that the only great joke had been in the adverts on TV (the fence one), and partly because of what I'd read and heard about it. Mark Kermode on Five Live reviewed it when Simon Pegg was in the studio and you could hear him straining to find positive things to say about it. He said it had passed his six laugh rule for what constitutes a decent comedy - six laughs out loud. And I think what put me off was that several correspondents then wrote in and asked how he'd found six. That said - and this is important - I went in with an open mind. And even if I hadn't, I'm convinced it wouldn't have mattered. I've got plenty of examples of going into something expecting, indeed wanting, it to be one thing and finding it to be another. One of each - I wanted The Office to be useless because I so hated Ricky Gervais on The 11 O'Clock Show and his chat show, but it was brilliant and my antipathy counted for nought; and I was drooling when I went to the cinema for The Simpsons Movie, only for it to turn out to be a massive disappointment which made me laugh about three times.</p> <p>Anyway, Hot Fuzz. I didn't laugh once. It's obvious from the above that I wasn't really expecting to, and maybe if I'd been drunk or just watched something hilarious I might have been predisposed to (actually I'd just watched David Mitchell on good form on Would I Lie To You, so scrub that), but I just didn't find any of it funny - apart from the fence which I'd seen a dozen times before. Even if you put to one side the old hat "country people are all weird inbreds who fear outsiders" element, which has surely been taken as far as it can by The League Of Gentlemen, the jokes just weren't good enough. And as it went on being not funny, I started to get annoyed at it. About 40 minutes in I had a "give me strength" moment at this exchange:</p> <p>Nick Frost: "What made you want to become a policeman?"</p> <p>Simon Pegg: "Officer"</p> <p>Nick Frost: "What made you want to become a policeman officer?"</p> <p>So at that point I thought OK, it's not going to be funny, I'll just run with the murder mystery side of it. But then that got a ludicrous resolution - which, again, wouldn't matter if it were funny, which I presume it was meant to be - which was itself then jettisoned to make way for the interminable Hollywood shoot out ending. By which point I was so bored I just started to wind through it.</p> <p>The next day, to reassure myself that it's not just me and that the film has been whipped up by a partisan British press, I went to imdb.com to look at some of the comments. Inexplicably, it's rated 8.0 out of 10. The main featured review says "Hot Fuzz is crammed full of excellent characters, ranging from the eccentric to the diabolical, and every one gets at least one laugh during the course of the movie and most of them get many more. I don't mean to suggest that this film is wall to wall gags; in fact it is far from it, instead it is just very clever and often very subtle humour that runs continuously throughout the film." Very subtle humour? Very subtle humour?! "For me this film was every bit as good as Shaun of the Dead, and it's definitely one of the best comedies ever made." This last sentence may very well be the least accurate statement ever made about cinema.</p> <p>Maybe it's just me. Maybe people pissing on the floor in pubs is comedy gold. Anyway, enough of this subject - it's getting as boring as the last half hour of Hot Fuzz. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/10/24/hot-fuzz-7234057/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-10-15:/2009/10/15/dying-my-hair-7174472/Captain_Autumn2009-10-15T13:27:35+02:002009-10-15T13:27:35+02:00 <p>So I dyed my hair.</p> <p>This may not be an extravagant gesture for most people, but it was decidedly out of character for someone who last gave a damn about how they looked over 25 years ago. I can actually pinpoint the moment at which I decided not to care about my appearance - it was July 1982, when I wore a pair of leather trousers to a Police concert in Aylesbury and was openly mocked for it. If the people of that grim little market town are deriding you, it's time to give it up. So after that I went through an extended phase of anti-fashion Hawaiian shirt wearing and then, when they all went in a car that got stolen, just gave up altogether. I can't be bothered to tie up my shoelaces. I wear slippers in the office. I don't own a suit. You get the general idea.</p> <p>This apathy extends beyond clothing to personal grooming. I haven't combed or brushed my hair since I was a teenager. I shave a couple of times a week tops. I'm not a handsome man, and I see little point in wasting time and effort trying to make the best of a bad job.</p> <p>But a couple of months back, I decided to dye my hair. I don't know why. It was easy to attribute it (and many people did) to the cliched midlife crisis, but it didn't feel like that. I've had periods in the last decade when I've felt like time is racing away from me, but this summer hasn't been one of them. I have no great desire to remain youthful. I wasn't especially happy when I was young, so there really isn't much to recapture. My only real achievement of any merit is fathering some children, and that's an ongoing task. So it was difficult to pin down exactly what the rationale behind the decision was. In the end, I put it down mostly to boredom. Every day the same chores, the same job, the same place, the same routine, and no realistic way to change any of it. So if I couldn't alter any of that, I could alter myself.</p> <p>Here's where it got weird though. For something I did just for the hell of it, just for something to do, it made me feel good. I don't imagine I look any better, but I look different, and that's been oddly positive. There was a fair bit of mockery, which was to be anticipated, but some highly unexpected positive feedback as well. Amongst other comments, a woman at work told me it was sexy (she's heavily pregnant, it wasn't a come on, calm down). Sexy is not an adjective that has ever been used of me before, certainly not by anybody to whom I'm not married. In fact sexy is not a word anybody in full possession of their faculties would ever remotely consider using of me. But someone did. After nearly 30 years of consciously avoiding mirrors, I suddenly find myself not minding if I chance to see myself in one. I feel OK about how I look. This is a sentiment to which I can not accustom myself. </p> <p>All of which made me remember that, however much we kid ourselves we're the finished article, we never are. As we stagger and stumble through life, each backward glance makes us smirk at the fool we've left behind and smile smugly at the self-knowledge that we now know ourselves and are fully grown. And it's nonsense. We're never done, we're a permanent work in progress. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/10/15/dying-my-hair-7174472/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-10-09:/2009/10/09/gateshead-7131638/Captain_Autumn2009-10-09T14:53:59+02:002009-10-09T14:53:59+02:00 <p>One of the curiosities about supporting a football team is the misplaced sense it gives you of the prestige of a particular town or city. So it is with Gateshead, whose team is relatively minor (it has a very fragmented history and has only this season achieved the dizzy heights of the Conference), resulting in my indolently foisting upon the town, about which I know nothing, the same vague sense of irrelevance and mediocrity.</p> <p>This, of course, is stupid and unjust. So as a belated continuation of my gazetteer of places Oxford have played for the first time as part of their non-league odyssey, I give you Gateshead, Tyne & Wear. It has a rich, varied history - the first recorded mention dates from 623, in the writings of the Venerable Bede, and mining in the town dates back to 1344. The first cable laid between Dover and Calais was manufactured in Gateshead, as was half of the first one across the Atlantic (presumably the half that started here and stopped when it met the American half). It is also home to the MetroCentre, which is the largest shopping centre in the European Union. That sounds a bit grim, doesn't it?</p> <p>If you believe JB Priestley, it wasn't much to behold 75 years ago. Writing in "An English Journey", he said that "no true civilisation could have produced such a town", adding that it appeared to have been designed "by an enemy of the human race". And that was long before the <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bd/Get_Carter_carpark.jpg">Trinity Centre car park.</a> </p> <p>But you can't say they haven't tried to redress the balance, with the wonderful <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Gateshead_millenium_bridge_open.jpg">Millennium Bridge</a>, and the extraordinary <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/49/The_Sage_Gateshead.jpg">Sage</a>.</p> <p>And of course, you'll already have an opinion about <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Fly-Angel.jpg">this</a>. Mine is that it is a stunning, audacious statement of civic pride and if I didn't already live in one of the most beautiful cities in England I'd be a bit jealous. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/10/09/gateshead-7131638/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-10-07:/2009/10/07/saint-therese-7115953/Captain_Autumn2009-10-07T09:49:41+02:002009-10-07T09:49:41+02:00 <p>As I get older, I find religion increasingly odd. I'm a bit bemused that people don't, as they experience life and all the arbitrariness and misery it has to offer, conclude that surely it can't all be part of some grand plan or omniscient construct. I realise that my bemusement is down to my failure to understand the concept of faith, which by definition requires you to accept that there is a rationale for the seemingly irrational, but my mystification increases all the same.</p> <p>Which brings me to Saint Therese. Her bones (or some of them at least) have been touring the country, and people have turned out in their thousands to see them. I'm almost lost for words at how bewildering this is to me. These are the bones of a woman who, while undeniably good and worthy, was still just an ordinary person. She lived a simple life, which apparently is what made her special. She didn't have any visions or similarly ethereal experiences. Why on earth are people bothered about seeing her bones? Which in fact you can't even see, given that they're contained in a big silver container. Which in itself is inside a perspex box. The bones are said to promote healing, and although I imagine that's the motivation of some particularly superstitious visitors I refuse to believe that tens of thousands of people are turning out for that reason. What the blazes is going on here?</p> <p>Here's what I find oddest about it though. If I were religious, I'd be a lot more interested in what was happening on the spiritual plane than the corporeal one. The whole business of religious relics seems to be missing the point to me. The advantage religious people have over the rest of us (or disadvantage, depending on your perspective) is that they have a spiritual dimension which we do not. Why sully that purity of vision by worrying about bones and shrouds and miscellaneous other bric-a-brac? If God is going to be within you, surely he's going to make a direct trip. He's not going to find a route in via a heavily guarded femur. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/10/07/saint-therese-7115953/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-10-05:/2009/10/05/an-end-to-aestivation-7102800/Captain_Autumn2009-10-05T12:47:58+02:002009-10-05T12:47:58+02:00 <p>I notice from my statistics that it is a whopping 56 days since I wrote anything. This is a long time for the as many as two people who sporadically read this weblog to wait, so here is a list of subjects about which I have considered posting recently. The first person to reply by ranking them in order will get the article of their choice forthwith:</p> <p>Hot Fuzz<br> Saint Therese<br> Gateshead<br> Crawley<br> The X Factor<br> Dying my hair </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/10/05/an-end-to-aestivation-7102800/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-08-10:/2009/08/10/bebo-be-bad-6690396/Captain_Autumn2009-08-10T11:26:46+02:002009-08-10T11:26:46+02:00 <p>I had a friend request from Bebo this morning, from someone called Victoria Thomson. I don't know Victoria Thomson, and I have no wish to be her friend. In fact I have no wish to be on Bebo, which I only joined under unpleasant circumstances. A little over a year ago, one of my children was targetted by a group of bullies at his school, who set up a page on Bebo where people were invited to mock him. The page was titled "I Hate... " followed by his name. When I found out about it, the only way I could contact Bebo to express my concerns (fury might be a better word) was to join the site.</p> <p>I sent a complaint, saying that I wanted the page taken down and I wanted to know who was responsible for setting it up in the first place. Unsurprisingly I got a stock response, saying that they were not able to divulge the name unless criminal proceedings were ongoing and they were asked by law enforcement. I understand that. I know that it is right and proper that they are unable to give out information without just cause. I am in agreement with the protection of such data.</p> <p>But it did make me wonder to what extent the people who run sites like this fully understand their social responsibility. Not giving me the details I wanted is very responsible, but it is also enshrined in law. Where is the responsibility not to provide a forum for malevolent children to make other childrens' lives miserable? Why were they not able to prevent that from happening with the same efficiency with which they could rebuff me? Why is their position in such situations always reactive rather than proactive? I don't know how a site like Bebo can be expected to monitor every group that is set up for potential bullying, but, in all seriousness, that's their problem, not mine. If they can't do it, then the site shouldn't function the way it does. It simply isn't good enough to say that they take such abuses seriously and act promptly whenever they are brought to their attention. By the time we found out about it, the page had been up for weeks. Weeks. That's weeks of a 12 year old boy being ridiculed by his peers. Try and remember how it was to be 12, and how that felt. Remember how long weeks can feel when you're 12.</p> <p>By the time I would have been responding to their answer, the page had been taken down by the person who had initiated it, so my ire dampened. I found the whole experience so demoralising that I don't think I ever replied in the end, preferring to obliterate the whole experience from my consciousness as far as possible. My son was incredibly stoic about it, and in fact withstood it all rather better than I did. I have tears in my eyes writing about it now, although that is possibly just self-pity at my own inadequacy as a parent for not taking his protestations of the treatment he was getting at school as anything other than the usual rough and tumble of school life. The bullying receded and my son has enjoyed a positive year at school. It all feels like a long time ago now.</p> <p>Still, now and again I get these stupid friend requests, so I decided it was time to log on to Bebo and cancel my membership. Wading through their help section to discover how, I found the below:</p> <p>If you decline a friend request or delete a person from your friend list that person will not be notified. They will just flounder around in their own unpopularity without ever knowing why. Your personal contact information will be removed from their friend list. Gosh, life can be cruel.</p> <p>Reading that, it is hardly surprising that the vindictive elements of society gravitate to Bebo, where they clearly find a home. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/08/10/bebo-be-bad-6690396/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-08-07:/2009/08/07/alcohol-6671070/Captain_Autumn2009-08-07T12:11:55+02:002009-08-07T12:11:55+02:00 <p>Most of us, I suspect, have aspects of our character which we feel mark us out as different from the majority. Individual traits which, while perhaps not defining us as people, nevertheless distinguish us. Quirks, if you will.</p> <p>I have a few. I don't like hot, sunny weather (this, though unusual, is actually more common that you'd imagine). I don't know how to drive (and don't want to - it frightens me). I listen to jazz. I don't own a mobile phone. However, none of these comes close to making me feel as estranged from my fellow man as not drinking alcohol.</p> <p>Which makes <a href="http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/diet_and_fitness/article6250736.ece">this article</a> quite interesting from my perspective. While some of it absolutely mirrors my experience, some of it absolutely doesn't. Each of the case studies makes an observation that I could have made myself (the first one is mystified by beer drinkers above all else; the second could tell you when a fruit salad is on the turn; the third doesn't understand the culture of excessive drinking; the fourth never grew out of finding it as unpleasant as when she was 14), and yet the overall picture doesn't reflect my experience of not drinking.</p> <p>I've never had even the slightest suggestion that anyone thought I wasn't drinking because I was a recovering alcoholic. The man who says that that's the first question he gets asked can only be adhering to the stereotype of what journalists expect the teetotaller's experience to be. Either that or he mixes in some very odd company. (Seriously, can you imagine saying that to someone if they told you they didn't drink? Then following it up with asking if they were religious? Cobblers.) Nor do I believe for a moment that "drinkers envy the self-discipline and confidence required to abstain in our booze-soaked culture". Pity yes, envy no. For the most part people just don't know how to react, and that can show itself in lots of ways - generally men can't hide that they think it's plain weird, to the point that a lot of them are quite unnerved by it. Sometimes I get the reaction I imagine men must get when they tell other men they're gay. A woman I work with responded with "How sad", which annoyed me so much that I told her that was one point of view, as was thinking it was sad that some people aren't able to have a good time without having to drink. Which is not a view I really hold, but adopted in that instance.</p> <p>What drinkers can't understand, looking as they do from the inside out, is that there is a culture of alcohol in this country that is overwhelming. It's not just the binge-drinking, vomit-rivering laddish element to which I'm referring, it's the all-encompassing association of alcohol with enjoyment that runs throughout every facet of our society. That's what makes people who don't drink feel so like outsiders, the assertion (conscious or otherwise) that it is simply impossible to have a good time or function as a fully rounded member of society without having a drink.</p> <p>I don't drink for the very simple reason that I don't like the taste. The by-products of not drinking - not losing control of my senses through over-indulging, not being hung over the following day, not running the risk of becoming part of the 43% of violent crime attributable to alcohol - are just a bonus. I'm not one to proselytize about the benefits of teetotalism, but don't anybody try and tell me I'm missing out. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/08/07/alcohol-6671070/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-06-11:/2009/06/11/the-bnp-don-t-panic-6282398/Captain_Autumn2009-06-11T11:23:01+02:002009-06-11T11:23:01+02:00 <p>I was reading about the BNP yesterday. Unlike most woolly liberals of my type, I'm not unduly disturbed by the election of a couple of BNP MEPs. It's not like they're going to have any real power, and getting them elected might actually increase the profile of the BNP to the extent that rather than people thinking they're just some vaguely patriotic organisation, their true nature emerges. Because although I have no evidence for this, I can't help thinking that most of the people who voted BNP did so as a gesture of misplaced patriotism rather than because of genuinely fascistic leanings.</p> <p>The BNP's white supremacist beliefs have hardly been mentioned over the last few weeks. They've made great play of immigration from the rest of Europe and got mileage from Islamophobia, but nobody's really focused on their ludicrous views about race. And I say ludicrous not because I disagree with them, but because they're simply preposterous. I can see there's a debate to be had (a debate too complex for me, and certainly far too complex for the membership of the BNP) about the recent flurry of immigration from within the EU. Personally I think that if people have got the wherewithal to get off their backsides and travel to another country to better themselves, that's exactly the kind of people I want here, but I'm happy for people to debate it and actually feel the main parties have shied away from doing so for fear of being seen as post-imperialists. But there's no debate to be had about "firm but voluntary incentives for immigrants and their descendants to return home" (which Nick Griffin updated from the previous policy of forced repatriation). I imagine almost everybody knows somebody like a colleague of mine - half Trinidadian and half Nigerian by blood, thoroughly English by birth and upbringing. If he is to be firmly encouraged (and it's pretty easy to imagine what that would be like) to return "home", to where? It's as ill-conceived as it is repellent.</p> <p>Similarly, I doubt most BNP voters are aware that Nick Griffin is a long-standing Holocaust denier. Or that he thinks that when a white person has a mixed-race child, "a white family line that stretches back into deep pre-history is destroyed. While the BNP is not racist, it must not become multi-racist either. Our fundamental determination to secure a future for white children is restated, and an area of uncertainty is addressed and a position which is both principled and politically realistic is firmly established. We don't hate anyone, especially the mixed race children who are the most tragic victims of enforced multi-racism, but that does not mean that we accept miscegenation as moral or normal. We do not and we never will". Or that the BNP proposes that citizens should keep a rifle and ammunition in their homes. Or - and this is my favourite - it plans "to end the conflict in Ireland by welcoming Eire as well as Ulster as equal partners in a federation of the nations of the British Isles". Ha ha! I wonder if they've ever met anybody Irish. (Or perhaps I should say Eirish, since they seem to favour the archaic term which I'm told Irish people can't stand seeing used in its English version, without the accent.)</p> <p>I find it hard to get too animated about the BNP though. They're a tiny minority, and - here's the thing - they're on a hiding to nothing. Britain is multi-racial, not just in its demographic but in its heart and soul now as well. Every Theo Walcott goal, every Nitin Sawhney album, every chicken tikka masala makes that more of a fact, and there's nothing the BNP can do about it. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/06/11/the-bnp-don-t-panic-6282398/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-05-15:/2009/05/15/we-re-all-on-spam-and-alcohol-6120711/Captain_Autumn2009-05-15T15:26:08+02:002009-05-15T15:26:08+02:00 <p>What has happened to spammers these days? They're just not putting the work in. Look at these two efforts that have arrived in my inbox in the last few days.</p> <p> <a title="Spam" href="http://www.blog.co.uk/media/photo/spam/3508465"><img src="http://data5.blog.de/media/465/3508465_82ece06f95_m.jpeg" alt="Spam" hspace="5" vspace="5"></a><br> Pathetic, aren't they? They don't even bother with a story about a widow and an unclaimed inheritance. Dr Malik Ali, from whom I hear on an almost daily basis, would be horrified by their lackadaisical approach to his pitiful form of conmanship.</p> <p> In other news, the good people of FHM have once again asked for my opinions. This time the questions were all about alcohol. Given that I am approaching my 20th anniversary without partaking of the substance responsible for most of society's ills (yes that's right, I did write that), I am not the ideal subject for topics like:</p> <p> How far do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements about drinks?<br>• I worry about the long-term health effects of my alcohol consumption                     <br>• I sometimes feel pressured to drink alcohol in social situations even if I don’t really want to                     <br>• I enjoy getting drunk                     <br>• I tend to drink more alcohol in the summer months than in winter                     <br>• I often go to work with a hangover</p> <p>I also disagreed with the statement that their website is a good place to go for a quick entertainment fix, and when asked to choose from these words to describe it - Trashy, Entertaining, Safe-for-work, Confusing, Intelligent, Cluttered, Engaging, Cool, Useful, Topical, Funny, Sexy, Informative, Amusing, Sleazy, Immature, Modern, Up-to-date, All-encompassing - I plumped for trashy, sleazy and immature. I'd like to think this will finally prompt them to kick me off their panel, but thinking about it the idiots who run FHM probably take those adjectives as badges of honour. On the other hand, I hope they will have been a little confused by my answer to the illiterate question</p> <p>Which celebrity would you most like to spend an evening drinking with down the pub? </p> <p>To which I responded Richard Dawkins. Then again, they almost certainly won't have heard of him and will greet it with a neanderthal grunt.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/05/15/we-re-all-on-spam-and-alcohol-6120711/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-04-29:/2009/04/29/slip-out-the-trackback-jack-6030370/Captain_Autumn2009-04-29T16:53:01+02:002009-04-29T16:53:01+02:00 <p>Imagine my surprise to receive e-mail notification that my moribund weblog had been the subject of a trackback. Once I researched a little and found out what a trackback was, I was intrigued as to who had decided to link their weblog to mine. What might have been of such interest to another blogger that they felt driven to point people in my direction? One of my treatises on the nature of religious belief, perhaps? One of the posts which attempts to provide a cerebral insight into the visceral impulse of football fandom? Possibly one of my consciously over-analytical examinations of song lyrics?</p> <p>It could be only one subject.</p> <p>Number plates.</p> <p>The link came from someone deriding the pointless and mind-numbing activity longtime readers will recognise by its acronym CNPS - Consecutive Number Plate Spotting. Now, I don't have an issue with anyone deriding CNPS. Careful readers will have already noticed me referring to it as pointless and mind-numbing, which it undeniably is. It is also compulsive, time-consuming and obsessive. I like to think of it as less of a pastime and more of an affliction, and if someone else feels inclined to agree with that assessment then I for one will not be taking issue with them.</p> <p>Except. Here's the twist. The person making this judgement is an enthusiast of something even more lamentable. Something I have previously described here as inexplicable and absurd. The woman who fails to understand the call of CNPS is an aficionado of its preposterous bastardised offspring - the personalised number plate.</p> <p>It's a sweet irony I think. She probably imagined that of all people, a CNPSer would understand her interest. As you'll see <a href="http://number-plates.blog.co.uk/2009/03/30/number-plate-spotting-5860479/">here</a>, she can countenance the idea of someone spotting "interesting or unusual ones in the supermarket car park", but not someone wanting to see them in ascending order. Further down the post she expresses surprise at having found "whole blog posts" on the subject. Now, a couple of thoughts struck me here:</p> <p>1) There is no such thing as an interesting number plate. They are inherently dull. They are just combinations of letters and numbers. The only way a number plate can be remotely interesting is if its number is one higher than another number plate, and even then it really isn't interesting at all.</p> <p>2) Isn't it a bit rich to be taken aback by someone writing a post about CNPS when one's <strong>entire blog</strong> is devoted to personalised number plates?</p> <p>Because it is. Every last post on Ms Littlemango's weblog is concerned with personalised number plates. Which I imagine is because she deals in them, but even so there seems to be a level of personal dedication to the subject which is, frankly, completely mystifying to me. Take <a href="http://number-plates.blog.co.uk/2008/07/07/enthusiastic-about-personal-number-plate-4415792/">this post</a> for example, an account of a get-together which would make trainspotters chortle mockingly. When it comes to CNPS, at least I have the defence of awareness of the innate worthlessness of my pursuit. Something tells me the Fox family of Leicestershire with their Fox number plates are not so enlightened. Because, let me make it clear, I think personalised number plates are (with a very small number of exceptions which actually work) a witless embarrassment. In another entry Ms Littlemango refers to "gems that get snapped up quickly", citing as an example FA57 CAR. This, apparently, is supposed to say FAST CAR. But it doesn't. It says F A FIFTY SEVEN CAR. That's just what it says, unless you're illiterate (or possibly innumerate, I'm not sure) or make a conscious effort to misread it. And if you've got to make a conscious effort to misread it, what's the point? It's rubbish. As almost all of them are. And that's without even getting into the psychology of why anyone in their right mind would want to have such a number plate on their car anyway.</p> <p>To summarise then, Ms Littlemango and I share an interest in number plates. Mine is sad and pathetic and I know it. Hers is sad and pathetic and she doesn't. I'm not sure which of us comes out of this worse. Is it me for pursuing something I know to be inane, or her for not knowing she is doing the same? Answers on a number plate please. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/04/29/slip-out-the-trackback-jack-6030370/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-03-12:/2009/03/12/the-george-benson-story-5743624/Captain_Autumn2009-03-12T16:54:19+01:002009-03-12T16:54:19+01:00 <p>Many years ago I went to see George Benson at Wembley Arena. I was not a big Benson fan and had only picked up the tickets on the morning of the gig from an agency that was desperate to get shot of them. I was accompanied to the gig by a girl with whom I worked, of whom I was not particularly fond and with whom I didn't really want to be seen. As we arrived at the venue I realised that the concert was being held 'in the round' (i.e. a circular stage in the middle of the arena) and thought to myself that I hoped we wouldn't be too near the front, both so as not to be surrounded by great enthusiasts for Benson (I know how annoying it can be to be loving a gig and know that someone nearby is less thrilled), and to avoid being too visible. An usher showed us to our seats, and my heart sank progressively further as we got closer and closer to the stage. On and on we went, until finally, inevitably, we arrived at the front row. There we sat in the full glare of the spotlight, in view of thousands of people on either side of the arena, waiting for the concert to begin. I started to get a bad feeling about the way the evening was going.</p> <p>The support act was Patti Austin. She's an excellent singer and a charismatic performer, and I was enjoying it fine. About halfway through her set, she initiated some audience participation. Now, I have issues with audience participation. I don't like singing along, I don't like being cajoled into action - that's just the way I am. If I go to a concert I just want to see the performers perform, I don't need to feel like I am somehow part of the event in order to enjoy myself. If anything it detracts from the entertainment. I'm not saying nobody should, from what I gather lots of people do appreciate this kind of involvement and fair play to them, but please don't oblige me to do it as well. Anyway, she asked everybody to clap along, and because I don't like clapping along I didn't. Which would have been fine if her bass player, on noticing me sitting with my arms folded, decided to stop playing, point at me, laugh and fold his arms as well. Already feeling hot from the glare of the stage lights, my temperature rose a couple of degrees further. However, I refused to submit to the pressure coming from the bassist and stayed with my arms folded, and soon enough he had to resume playing and the anti-clockwise rotating stage moved him away to my right.</p> <p>Which would have been fine had the song not come to an end, the next one started and the rotation begun again - clockwise. Inexorably he returned, beat by dreadful beat, into my eyeline. I knew what was coming. I knew he wouldn't resist. And this time when he folded his arms, I'm ashamed to say I crumbled, making a feeble attempt at lightening the moment by clapping along in a comically bad way, as if I'd never done it before. It was excruciating.</p> <p>By the time of the interval, my mind was in a blur of thinking both that it couldn't get any worse and that I was going to enjoy the rest of the gig any damn well way I pleased. So when George Benson finally came on and everyone around me stood up to dance, I didn't. Because I don't dance. Ever. It's just not something I do. And by now I was so fed up with the whole evening that I had no inclination to even stand up, and given that I was marooned on the front row I had no need. I could still see the stage fine by remaining seated, even though it did cross my mind that the way things had gone George Benson might stop the show and ask me what the hell I was doing. I felt a bit guilty that some of Benson's fans were probably having their evening mildly spoiled by my presence, seeing me (and, bless her, the girl alongside me who was stoically supporting me) sat there unmoved. I imagined that many of them would have loved to be, as I was, about ten feet from their hero. But they could take it up with Patti Austin's bass player - it was he who had put me in this mood. One of them, though, clearly wasn't willing to go down that route. Because halfway through a particularly upbeat number, she started poking me in the back. At first I thought someone had inadvertently bumped into me, but it happened over and over again - I could feel her reaching across from a couple of seats down in the row behind. I am so English, so reserved, and was so young - 24 at the time - that I just let her do it. I had a choice between making a scene, walking out (which would have felt like a defeat) or putting up with it. Nowadays I'd turn around and give her a piece of my mind, but back then I just sank lower in my seat, and waited for the torment to be over.</p> <p>Eventually she gave up, and at some interminable point later the whole wretched concert came to an end. But to this day, even the mention of the name George Benson brings me out in goosebumps. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/03/12/the-george-benson-story-5743624/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-02-28:/2009/02/28/cowley-road-tale-5665210/Captain_Autumn2009-02-28T11:23:57+01:002009-02-28T11:23:57+01:00 <p>I had a strange, unsettling encounter yesterday. I took the afternoon off and went down Cowley Road. For those of you not familiar with Oxford, Cowley Road is one of the main thoroughfares into the city and is our most multi-cultural street. I love it - I love its ethnic diversity, and I love the fact that it still has an identity, with lots of different independent shops. I don't want to buy anything from most of them, but it's so much better than the town centre, where if you don't want a cup of coffee or a mobile phone there isn't much for you. Anyway, I was approaching a zebra crossing and I could see this bloke walking towards it, but I worked out that if I sped up I could get across without inconveniencing him, and that's what I did. I was probably leaving the crossing just as he was stepping onto it. He certainly didn't have to pull back, or even change his pace. In retrospect I think he'd been striding purposefully towards it, like some pedestrians do, as if he should just be able to walk straight out like it was an extension of the pavement. But no matter, the point is I really didn't cause him any inconvenience. Nevertheless as he crossed behind me he shouted out "Prick". It annoyed me - I'd seen him, I'd judged it accordingly, there was no issue. So I called over to him, did he have a problem. He started shouting back at me, so I got off my bike and went over to the pavement where he now was. He started hurling abuse at me, and I started barking back that he hadn't even been on the crossing when I went over it. He was being pretty aggressive, swearing a lot, and I wasn't swearing but talking loudly, and it became apparent fairly quickly that it was going nowhere, so I got on my bike and left. He called something after me - something including the abuse "four-eyed", which seemed anachronistic and comical in that environment - and I made a gesture and rode off.</p> <p>As I cycled further down the road, I started to get annoyed with myself. I knew it would prey on my mind for the rest of the afternoon, spoil what had been a really pleasant afternoon up to that point. I don't like losing it, I always feel like I've let myself down. And - being a bit hippy about it - I don't like being responsible for a bit more negativity and ill-feeling in the world. Plus, being a do-gooder left-wing liberal, it bothered me that he might think my having a go at him was motivated by race - he was an Asian guy, probably about 30, wearing a sort of lace hat which I guessed was indicative of some faith or other. So I thought I would go back down the other side of the road, see if I could see him, and say sorry for losing my temper. I didn't feel like I'd been at fault in any real way - not on the crossing, not really by reacting to being called a prick and defending myself - but I was genuinely sorry that I'd lost my temper. I figured that one of two things would happen - most likely he'd say something like "You're still a prick" and ignore me, or less likely he might make some grudging comment that met me halfway. I didn't care which, what mattered to me was that I got it out of my system. So I cycled back up, and did indeed see him. I beckoned him over and started to say "Look, back then (gesturing up the road to where it had happened), I'm sorry I - " and that was about as far as I got before he started yelling abuse at me. Really aggressive, threatening stuff. I was really taken aback, but thought that he could only have assumed that I'd come back for more as it were. He was moving towards me now, and thinking that he just couldn't have registered what I'd said, I repeated "No, I'm trying to say sorry - " at which point, still ranting, he pushed me hard in the chest. I was standing astride my bike, and it wasn't a 'squaring up' sort of push, it was an attempt to shove me off my bike into the road. Realising that this guy was not to be reasoned with and it was time to get out of there I made to cycle away, and at the same time a passer-by intervened and tried to hold him back, but not before he managed to punch me hard on the side of the head.</p> <p>It was a genuinely shocking moment. I can't remember the last time I got hit in anger. I'm not sure it's ever happened in my adult life. To be hackneyed for a moment, it had all happened so fast - the entire incident from the crossing to the punch must have been five minutes tops - and it was really disconcerting that such a level of rage could appear from nowhere.</p> <p>I cycled a few yards up the road, then stopped to get myself together. He'd hit me on the ear and it had dislodged my glasses, and I was worried that he'd bent them. As I took them off to check, four Asian lads passed me who had clearly seen the whole thing. They were young guys, maybe 20, and with the best will in the world I might, under normal circumstances, have found them a bit intimidating even had I not just had that happen to me. But here's the thing - they were all concerned, and asked how I was. I briefly explained to them what had happened, just so they knew I hadn't somehow deserved the part they'd seen. "He's got a screw loose," one of them said, which at the time I took to have been a comment on what they'd seen, but now I wonder whether the guy is known round there as a loose cannon. And here's the weird, sweet, funny, sad, I don't know what part of the whole episode. One of them said "We apologise on his behalf". I didn't know what to make of that. Did they, as I suspect, think that I would take the incident as a reason to go off and work up a grudge against the Asian community of East Oxford? (They weren't to know that I am less inclined to extrapolate an opinion of a society from the acts of an individual than anyone I know.) Did they just feel some collective sense of responsibility for their neighbourhood? I don't know, but it was a truly touching moment at the end of a weird, unnerving incident. They had no need and no reason to apologise for the thug who had hit me, but I think it was beautiful that they did. Within the space of a couple of minutes I'd been reminded that the world is full of yobbish scumbags, and then before that could take root that it is also full of decent, compassionate people. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/02/28/cowley-road-tale-5665210/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-02-16:/2009/02/16/oliver-cheatham-the-notorious-fascist-5585206/Captain_Autumn2009-02-16T12:18:47+01:002009-02-16T12:18:47+01:00 <p>"I like to party" sang Oliver Cheatham in his relentlessly played illiterate hit Make Luv a few years back, which I still hear with aggravating frequency. "I like to party" he began, "everybody does". And that's what always bothered me about it. Because I don't like to party. I don't like large congregations of people, I don't like alcohol, I don't like music being played merely as a background to inane blether, I don't like music being played so loud that it's impossible to maintain a conversation without screaming, in fact the only way I like the combination of music and people is when all of them are sitting down listening to it, and that's not a party, it's a concert. So by any conventional interpretation of the word party, I don't like to. That doesn't stop Oliver Cheatham blithely including me in his all-encompassing assessment of the entirety of mankind though. It's one of the great disconnects of modern society, people's inability to appreciate that their own experience can not serve as a template for all of humanity. If everybody were able to empathise more then we would find the increased level of understanding between different groups of people leading to more peace and tranquility around the world. But that's not what Oliver Cheatham wants. Oh no, for Oliver Cheatham everybody had damn well better like to party or else. He's essentially a funky fundamentalist, determined to impose his worldview on those of us who happen not to share it.</p> <p>Apart from which, if everybody likes to party, why is he telling us anyway? What kind of insight is that with which to open a song? He might as well be singing "I breathe in oxygen, everybody does". In fact the song would be greatly enhanced if when he sang "I like to party" a massed crowd of backing vocalists responded with "Well DUH, Oliver". Because everybody does. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/02/16/oliver-cheatham-the-notorious-fascist-5585206/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-01-30:/2009/01/30/kids-and-their-stupid-names-5475641/Captain_Autumn2009-01-30T13:10:05+01:002009-01-30T13:10:05+01:00 <p>I was reading an article recently about the popularity of certain names, which in turn took me to the website of the Office for National Statistics. It intrigues me how some names drift into and out of usage. When I was at school, you'd no more have found a kid in my class called Jack than you would Percy or Reginald, and yet now it's been the most popular name for boys for a decade or more. Then again the boys' list makes for odd reading throughout. I have a son called Gabriel, which has crept up from 100 in 2004 to 92 in 2007. That still makes it less popular than Taylor, Hayden, Ashton, Bailey and Harley (the top London advertising agency) which come in at 88, 81, 76, 70 and 69 respectively. Bailey? Who calls a baby Bailey? Is there some celebrity of whom I'm unaware called that? My own name, on the other hand, which was third in popularity in 1964 (the nearest statistic I could find, four years before I was born but close enough to get a general idea) has recently drifted out from 74 in 2003 to 99 now. I like that - it increases the odds that my kids might pick it as an unusual middle name for their children. But what kind of world are we living in when names like Michael and Charles are less popular than Jayden (32)? Jayden?! What kind of stupid, made up, ludicrous name is that? (If you're reading this and your name is Jayden - and there are a lot of you, albeit probably all under five - please feel free to answer that.)</p> <p>Part of the reason Gabriel may be sluggish is that, inexplicably, people struggle with it. You'd be amazed how many people - and I'm not talking a handful here but <strong>lots</strong> of people - can neither pronounce it nor spell it properly. He gets cards addressed to Gabrielle, from people who know him and know he is a boy, and it's pronounced like that all the time (football followers may have heard idiot commentators do the same with Gabriel Agbonlahor, who as an Englishman of Nigerian-Scottish descent I bet pronounces it the way I do). I just don't understand it. What's so hard about it? Nobody seems to struggle with Peter Gabriel! If only we'd gone with an old Biblical name.</p> <p>My daughter, however, has a name which hasn't been in the top 100 in the last five years. It's a nice, normal name, one everybody knows, neither old-fashioned nor modern, and yet it seems nobody's using it. You'd imagine you'd have to call a child Sprocket or Fizzpop to not get into the top 100. It puts her below Lacey, Harriet, Skye, Maddison, Matilda, Georgia and Leah (which always looks to me like it should be pronounced to rhyme with yeah). Mind you, the name I wanted to call her - Rachel - has dropped out of the top 100 as well. There are now more Lexies and Shannons than Rachels coming into the world. It's enough to make you read the Daily Mail.</p> <p>[Don't worry, nothing is enough to make me read the Daily Mail.] </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/01/30/kids-and-their-stupid-names-5475641/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-01-22:/2009/01/22/the-atheists-on-the-bus-go-round-and-round-5424476/Captain_Autumn2009-01-22T16:45:41+01:002009-01-22T16:45:41+01:00 <p>I cycled past one of those atheist buses the other day. I expect you know the ones I mean - they've got an advert on the side which says "There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life".</p> <p>I'm rather bemused by this wording. Maybe it's just me, but it has an air of smugness about it. Little annoys me more than smug Christians, but smug atheists can count themselves amongst that elite. The great failing of so many atheists is their sense that they have come to their belief system as a result of superior intellect - the irony being that even the most cursory application of that intellect will reveal that mental acuity has little bearing on religious conviction. For every George W. Bush there is a Nelson Mandela. I don't know what inspires religious conviction in people, but I know for sure that it isn't a lack of intellectual rigour.</p> <p>I think what bothers me most about the atheist bus slogan is the implication that Christians spend their time worrying. That while atheists are happy-go-lucky souls who skip through life knowing that it is brief and must be relished while it lasts, Christians are constantly looking over their shoulder and fretting that what they do now will impact on their future spiritual fate. Needless to say, this is far from the truth. If anything, it's my experience that those without faith find life more burdensome than their pious brethren. Unlike many resolute agnostics, I suspect, I have the advantage here of living with a Christian, whose social life gives me a window onto that (to me) mystifying world. Last summer I went to a wedding at which I would hazard a guess 98% of the guests were committed Christians. Weddings are generally fun occasions, of course, but I've never been amongst people who showed such genuine and heartfelt warmth for each other. There was an overwhelming spirit of joy in the room, unqualified, unbidden and utterly devoid of cynicism (apart from inside my head, where it naturally stayed). And that is typical of the approach that I witness from Christians. You could hardly meet a group of people less inclined to worry. That is not to say they are facile or shallow, they simply brim over with the richness and value of life, wringing every last drop of worth out of it. I think they're all a bit nuts, but it's hard not to envy their ebullience.</p> <p>I should add that I have no problem with the atheist campaign in principle, not at all. As I've <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2007/05/13/god_is_clearly_female~2261590/">stated elsewhere here</a>, I practise within my own household a policy of mutual religious tolerance. I just think they could have chosen their slogan more judiciously.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/01/22/the-atheists-on-the-bus-go-round-and-round-5424476/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2009-01-07:/2009/01/07/happy-new-year-5336820/Captain_Autumn2009-01-07T12:15:31+01:002009-01-07T12:15:31+01:00 <p>I'm not really one for New Year's Resolutions, but I figure one entry a week here won't kill me, so that's my aim. And here's the first one.</p> <p>I am, broadly speaking, enthusiastic about television. At its best it enriches and stimulates, and it affords an opportunity to see comedy and sport which would otherwise be both practically and fiscally beyond me. Of course most of it, the vast majority in fact, is worthless. Most of the Freeview channels are a complete waste of time for all but the dimmest amongst us. But it is not those channels that incur my most passionate loathing. No, that honour belongs to one of the elder statesmen of British broadcasting.</p> <p>ITV.</p> <p>I loathe ITV. I hate it even more than Channel 4, and that's saying something. I loathe ITV not because of the endless brainless pap it pours forth, not because of Jeremy Kyle, This Morning, Loose Women, an evening schedule which is a relentless barrage of moronic soap operas. No, I loathe it because I have to pay for it.</p> <p>Every time another Daily Mail article spews forth its agenda-laden bile about the BBC and the licence fee, I despair of the fallacy trotted out by advocates of ITV that it is "free to air". No it isn't. ITV is paid for by advertising, and advertisers pay for adverts from their profits, and they make their profits from me. I suppose it is feasible to shop without going to a supermarket, and get my energy from the sun, and in a thousand other ways avoid using products and companies which fund ITV. But in the first place it would be a logistical nightmare, and in the second place, in an age of globalisation, when gargantuan multinationals have a thousand fingers in pies you never would have imagined interested them, a complete nightmare to research. No, the sad reality of it is that I pay for ITV whether I like it or not, and unlike the BBC whose services I use every day - even disregarding television I make numerous visits to the sport section of their website, and download six of their podcasts (if you haven't tried Adam & Joe, you're missing out) - I go weeks on end without watching anything on ITV. Other than Harry Hill and 'Dexter', both of which have stumbled onto Britain's most conservative broadcaster from the more inventive and adventurous channels which spawned them, it's just the Champions League. Apart, that is, from the ten minutes or so every morning which make me want to put my head through a window.</p> <p>Mine is the last generation, I suspect, to remember a time when at certain hours of the day there was literally nothing on television. In the morning you might get a bit of Open University, but that was it. There would be nothing on all day. Apart from weekends, everything stopped at about midnight. On BBC1 you even got the national anthem (about which I will moan another time). I can remember the birth of breakfast TV and thinking, even as a 14 year old, "this is the thin end of the wedge". What a prescient teenager I was. Anyway, television at breakfast time has always felt vaguely wrong to me, and it hasn't felt any less wrong as over the last couple of years my wife has insisted on inflicting upon me the witless banality that is GMTV. Is there a more dispiriting way to start the day than being reminded of how thick people are? I think not. The High Priestess of Moron TV, the woman who simply by appearing on my screen could make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in hypertensile anxiety, was Fiona Phillips. And there is the happy ending to this entry - the use of the past tense. Because Fiona Phillips, a woman with the journalistic prowess and intellectual rigour of a cantaloupe, has gone. She has left GMTV. Everybody breathe a sigh of relief and move on with a smile on their face. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2009/01/07/happy-new-year-5336820/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2008-11-25:/2008/11/25/they-have-four-wheels-and-go-vroom-vroom-5103799/Captain_Autumn2008-11-25T10:43:21+01:002008-11-25T10:43:21+01:00 <p>A little while ago I mentioned <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2008/08/13/lies-damned-lies-and-fhm-surveys-4582189">the occasional e-mails I get from the FHM Panel</a> asking me about various aspects of modern life. Generally these involve facets of recreational society - downloading rock music, going to clubs, mobile phones - about which I have little or nothing to offer. Yesterday afternoon they outdid themselves. They asked me all about cars. </p> <p>Question 1 asked whether I drive and own a car. I said no. Question 2 asked whether I planned to buy a car in the next 12 months. I said no. At this point you might imagine that any survey worth bothering with would decide I wasn't the man for the job, and give up the ghost. But no, it wanted me to rank the following cars - Peugeot, Porsche, Skoda, Smart, Suzuki, Vauxhall, Volkswagen, Audi, Citroen, Hyundai, Jaguar, Kia, Lexus, Mazda - according to their reliability, environmental friendliness and image. Given that I couldn't distinguish a Hyundai from a bucket of frogs, this may be the least well-informed survey ever compiled in the history of man. Having ranked them, giving a whole new benchmark to the term arbitrary, I was then asked "Using a 5 point scale where 1 means Awful and 5 means Brilliant, please rate the following car brands in terms of your overall opinion. Again, it doesn’t matter how much you know about these brands, it’s simply your impressions we are interested in." Well, if it doesn't matter how much I know about them - which in every case is an identical amount, "they're cars" - then my impressions are as valid as anybody's. A flurry of random clicking and it appeared that I found Porsches and Jaguars to be Awful, while Audis were Brilliant.</p> <p>Then it started asking me about car adverts I've seen. Now, anyone who watches commercial television ever at any point has seen car adverts. But just like the beer adverts, I register quite quickly that they're not aimed at me so I don't really focus on them. I know that the car in front is a Toyota, although I think that hasn't been on for a while. There used to be some adverts on with Papa and Nicole, for some French car presumably, but I couldn't tell you which one. In fact the only bit of current car advertising I could definitely name is the Mini which sits on the roof of the office block adjacent to the Cowley BMW plant, and that's only because I cycle past it every day. I doubt whether most ad agencies would consider placing a car upon flat-roofed office blocks as a judicious long-term strategy.</p> <p>"Brands often sponsor events, programmes, venues, teams, etc. (For example, Arsenal football club is sponsored by Emirates; the X Factor is sponsored by Carphone Warehouse etc.)", it said. "Thinking about sponsorship for car brands you may have seen in the past few months, please indicate the specific brands for which you recall sponsorship, and what was being sponsored". Blimey. Surely some football team must be sponsored by a car, but I can't think of one. Or some TV programme, something, somewhere... I really hadn't realised quite to what extent I ignore all this drivel. I'm mildly pleased with myself for my imperviousness to advertising which could have no possible impact on me even if I were conscious of it.</p> <p>All this, supposedly, will get me entry into a draw to win one of five £100 Amazon vouchers. Something tells me that my name might fall prey to an "inadvertent" slipped finger on a delete key.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2008/11/25/they-have-four-wheels-and-go-vroom-vroom-5103799/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2008-11-12:/2008/11/12/gavin-strachan-v-marcel-desailly-5023137/Captain_Autumn2008-11-12T12:49:08+01:002008-11-12T12:49:08+01:00 <p>I've been keeping half an eye on the Gavin Strachan weblog on the BBC Sport website. Gavin Strachan is what's known as - in fact he disarmingly uses the term of himself - a journeyman footballer, plying his trade unglamorously in the lower leagues year in year out. He's approaching the end of his career and has started studying journalism as a possible future career, given that footballers at his level need to continue to earn a living when they stop playing. It's a self-effacing read, devoid of bitterness about the way his career turned out and an interesting insight into the mundane reality of life as a professional at the bottom end of the game, where fortunes are certainly not to be made.</p> <p>I thought of Strachan's blog when I happened across the website of Marcel Desailly - specifically <a href="http://marceldesailly.sports.fr/en/toutsavoir/vie/collection.asp">the collections page</a> thereof. What a smug tosser Desailly is. I'd put it down to him starting off about wine, which I've previously established as an area of pompous dilettantism that particularly <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2006/06/28/food~918527">makes my blood boil</a> ("Everybody knows the Great Wines: Cheval Blanc, Haut Brion, Petrus… indisputably my favourite Bordeaux is the Haut Brion. This wine does not vary during the meal. It remains steady. What I still have to learn is if some wines should be decanted or not, according to their vintage year…"), but it gets worse. "In Italy, carrying a beautiful watch is akin to having mastered a certain art of living. Over there, the watch is very important, an essential accessory, alongside a beautiful pair of shoes." Wanker. Wanker wanker wanker. Explaining how significant a beautiful watch is by saying it's as important as a good pair of shoes, what an arse. Try spending half an hour living in the real world. "Today, I have a beautiful collection: well known makes such as Rolex or Cartier, and others less known by general public but much more prestigious, such as Frank Muller, Patek Philip and Bréguet." Yes, we're all ignorant scum Marcel. If only we were as learned as you and knew the names of obscure watchmakers. Maybe one day we can dream of learning the names of obscure cobblers too. </p> <p>Just in case we weren't convinced as to the level of his self-importance, he continues "It is perhaps an ignored aspect of my personality, but I am a fanatic for table tennis." Sorry for ignoring that rivetting part of your personality Marcel. I was just too gripped by the wine and watches to devote myself to your table tennis fandom. I promise to try harder in future. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2008/11/12/gavin-strachan-v-marcel-desailly-5023137/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2008-10-13:/2008/10/13/level-42new-theatre-oxford-11-october-4864720/Captain_Autumn2008-10-13T15:39:02+02:002008-10-14T11:36:39+02:00 <p>Twenty five years after we first made the trip, a bepaunched gathering of the grey and balding descended on Oxford's New Theatre on Saturday night to see the latest incarnation of Level 42. Would they deliver the greatest hits routine which has become distinctly stale in recent years, or would the return to the fold of original keyboard player Mike Lindup prove reinvigorating? </p> <p>When Mark King meandered on, looking more than ever like Mel Smith, and launched into 'Fashion Fever' - the most populist track from their most populist album - it seemed likely that a run through the FM gold repertoire might be in order. Early choices of hits like 'Leaving Me Now' (albeit with the frisson of its famous piano outro being played by the elegant Lindup) and 'Running In The Family' suggested likewise. But then the band wrenched itself from the comfort zone with some rarely heard gems. The selection of 'The Machine Stops', apparently due to a fans' website vote, was followed by the seductive 'Romance' from the neglected 'Forever Now' album, King in his exchanges with the audience sounding gratified that the band had been asked to move off the beaten track. Less predictable still was when a couple of songs later the epic 'Man' was given a rare outing. As the show drew towards its climax Lindup, until then a subdued, almost tangential figure looking less like a pop star than an interior designer, took his only lead vocal of the night with the soaring 'Starchild', before the singalong 'Lessons In Love' surprisingly segued into a storming 'Dive Into The Sun' from 2006 - a finale which belied King's early rallying cry that the setlist would include nothing but oldies.</p> <p>Encores of 'The Chinese Way' and 'Hot Water' were to be anticipated, but sandwiched between them the eight minute instrumental 'The Pursuit Of Accidents' was as unexpected as it was welcome. If Level 42 can continue to juggle the demands of filling theatres with revisiting the arcane reaches of their back catalogue, then there's life in the old dog yet. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2008/10/13/level-42new-theatre-oxford-11-october-4864720/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2008-10-13:/2008/10/13/ashley-cole-an-explanation-4863503/Captain_Autumn2008-10-13T11:59:21+02:002008-10-13T11:59:21+02:00 <p>Am I the only person to understand the reality of why the crowd started booing Ashley Cole on Saturday? It can be explained in four simple words.</p> <p>Everybody hates Ashley Cole.</p> <p>OK, so it's possible a few Chelsea fans don't, although I'd hazard a guess most of them do as well. Certainly pretty much everybody else does. If it's not the tawdry way he left Arsenal, bemoaning his plight only earning however many tens of thousands a week it was (which while making him no better or worse than hundreds of other footballers didn't exactly endear him to those of us who earn less in a year than he did every few days), there's the on-field petulance, the self-important autobiography, and for most red-blooded men the inexplicable cheating on his not unattractive wife. This is a man who seems to live by the mantra "I've got it all, but I want more". Little wonder, then, that given the opportunity to vent their resentment, disapproval and, yes, jealousy, thousands of England fans watching their team labour to victory over a thoroughly inexperienced side ranked 120 places below them took it in spades. They weren't booing the pass. They weren't booing the performance. They were booing the man.</p> <p>Then again, maybe it's just me. I'm often astonished that there are people in the world who don't consider Robbie Savage to be the footballing devil incarnate.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2008/10/13/ashley-cole-an-explanation-4863503/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2008-09-04:/2008/09/04/rod-or-god-the-debate-rages-4681707/Captain_Autumn2008-09-04T16:01:40+02:002008-09-04T16:01:40+02:00 <p>I'm currently engaged in the long overdue process of trying to replace all my old vinyl singles with CD or mp3 equivalents. Some have been very easy to find, others less so. One of the most tricky ones to locate has been Rod Stewart's 1978 World Cup song 'Ole Ola'. Initially I didn't think it had ever come out on CD, but it turns out to have been released a few years ago on an album called 'The Tartan Army', which comprises - you guessed it - Scottish football songs. Much as I like 'Ole Ola' I can hardly think of a CD I'd like to own less, so I e-mailed the person who runs the Rod Stewart fan site where I found out about it (he's French, hence the very good but slightly off English) and asked if it had ever been released elsewhere, hoping he'd just send me an mp3. This is the reply I got. </p> <p>I agree with you regarding the Ole Ola song. You may also like the B-side of<br> this one time single, which is pretty good too. Unfortunately only Ole ola<br> was officially released on CD.<br> What you can do is drop a mail on a RS forum somewhere in the net and kindly<br> ask for a fellow admirer to mail you the MP3 of the songs.<br> I would have done it myself if I had it, but I do not have the songs with me<br> on this computer (and I won't get back to where they are before long)!</p> <p>I hope this help?</p> <p>Always remember, as good as Rod is, he will never pay back your soul. He is<br> no God. There is only One Saviour, His Name is Yahweh (our Creator) and His<br> Son Jesus, is the one who can redeem us.</p> <p>"For Yahweh so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that<br> whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal." (John<br> 3:16)</p> <p>May Yahweh bless you.</p> <p>Now, I'm glad he added those last lines, because I've been waiting and waiting for Rod to pay back my soul, and it turns out that he's never going to. Apparently my redemption lies not in the songs of the born-in-London, never-lived-north-of-Watford, dyed-in-the-wool Scot, but in Yahweh and his son Jesus (or Yahsus as I like to call him). I'm sure that, like me, you've viewed the Rod Stewart musical <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2006/06/01/tonight_s_the_night_or_not~847750">'Tonight's The Night'</a> as a template for spiritual living, but it turns out we were mistaken. There is only one true Rod, and he's not a transcendental figurehead. I suppose I should have realised when he released 'Do Ya Think I'm Secular?'</p> <p>Sorry.</p> <p>Yahweh, incidentally, is a name considered so sacred by observant Jews that they never say it aloud - it is referred to as the Unutterable Name. Which makes me wonder whether God is in fact Voldemort. I think that means that Rod Stewart is Harry Potter. I am confused. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2008/09/04/rod-or-god-the-debate-rages-4681707/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2008-08-29:/2008/08/29/it-s-political-correctness-gone-mad-4653675/Captain_Autumn2008-08-29T13:49:48+02:002008-08-29T13:49:48+02:00 <p>I was just served in my workplace cafe by a new black guy who's started working here recently. Unfamiliar with the prices, he was checking the list to see how much to charge me. Seeing this, the white woman who runs the cafe called over to him "50p, chocolate". </p> <p>Mentally I recoiled. Did she just call him what I think she did? My first thought, ridiculously, was that that might actually be his name. Dismissing that, I wondered whether it was his nickname, but in 2008 that seemed highly unlikely - this isn't 'Love Thy Neighbour'. Finally I concluded that she must just have taken it upon herself to bestow upon him this supposedly affectionate but ultimately condescending and racist nickname, and that he was too new and diffident to object.</p> <p>It was then that I realised I was buying a Mars Bar, and she was telling him how much it was. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2008/08/29/it-s-political-correctness-gone-mad-4653675/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2008-08-14:/2008/08/14/michael-phelps-can-swim-4586694/Captain_Autumn2008-08-14T09:45:13+02:002008-08-14T09:45:13+02:00 <p>I may be alone in this, but I don't want Michael Phelps to win his eight gold medals. And here's why.</p> <p>I've got issues with swimming. I've always had issues with swimming, ever since I had to be dragged screaming into primary school on Fridays knowing that it was swimming lesson day. For many a year people tried to teach me to swim, and for many a year they more or less failed. They were still trying when I was 12 or 13 and getting openly derided for it. These days I have to take my kids swimming, and I just sit in the shallow end trying not to panic as they show me how long they can stay underwater. I hate going under the water. Water is dangerous. People drown in it.</p> <p>So anyway, for me swimming has always been something that you can either do or you can't. Like holding a tune, or mental arithmetic. Such activities can be honed and advanced, but if an individual doesn't have it in them in the first place they'll never get the hang of it. Phelps is clearly someone who can do swimming, and he's obviously worked incredibly hard to get to a position of such dominance and I applaud him for that. Here's my problem with the eight gold medals though. It will be eight gold medals for doing more or less the same thing. Freestyle, butterfly, breaststroke, it's all just swimming. To win a decathlon gold, you've got to be pretty decent in ten different disciplines, and even if you put them into broadly similar categories you still have skills as diverse as running, throwing and jumping. Phelps just has to keep on swimming, swimming, swimming, and people start calling him the greatest ever Olympian. I hope Steve Redgrave gets to award him one of his medals, preferably with a little smirk.</p> <p>Swimmers out there will, I don't doubt, disagree with me, telling me that swimming butterfly is as different from swimming freestyle as pole vault is from dressage. And speaking from a position of profound ignorance I am happy to be corrected. But I'll still hate swimming. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2008/08/14/michael-phelps-can-swim-4586694/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2008-08-13:/2008/08/13/lies-damned-lies-and-fhm-surveys-4582189/Captain_Autumn2008-08-13T09:57:15+02:002008-08-13T09:57:15+02:00 <p>A while back I joined the FHM mailing list in order to enter some contest they were running. A few weeks ago I filled in a survey - you got entry into a draw for Amazon vouchers for doing it - and they asked if I wanted to be on a panel where I would get sent occasional surveys, each of which has this same draw element. They take about 10 minutes and I figure someone has to win these things. And anyway, as irresponsible as this may sound, ever since I fabricated statistics when working for the Metropolitan Police I've liked contributing to surveys to try and help them be as ill-informed and pointless as they unquestionably are. These FHM ones are perfect for that. I am so not the demographic for which FHM is aiming, which judging by their e-mails is the XBox-playing, binge-drinking, income-disposing 18 to 25 year old, that all of their surveys ask me about stuff about which I know absolutely nothing. </p> <p>The latest one started by asking me how interesting I think the idea is of them getting people to say which artists have influenced their taste in music. I had to say whether I was intrigued to hear what shaped the tastes of musicians, general celebrities, members of the public or "other". Why on earth would anyone care what shaped the taste of members of the public? Or for that matter general celebrities, whoever they are - probably people like the woman I flicked through on Channel 4 this morning on some Big Brother offshoot programme, who when asked by the sub-Russell Brand host whether she would like to see two of the contestants on the cover of a magazine in loincloths asked "What's a loincloth again?" Are people not capable of formulating their own taste in music without having the reassurance that some cast member of Hollyoaks agrees with them?</p> <p>The survey got better when I had to rate the following brands on a range of 1 to 10 from Completely Outdated to Extremely Innovative. </p> <p>Nokia<br> FCUK<br> Samsung<br> Peugeot<br> Ford<br> Renault<br> Carphone Warehouse<br> Orange<br> Xbox 360<br> Fiat<br> O2<br> Sony Ericsson<br> Facebook<br> Virgin<br> Adidas</p> <p>If you had to make a list of brands which better reflected the aspects of modern living in which I have no interest, you could hardly have made a better job. I don't drive, I don't own a mobile phone, I don't play computer games. There is barely a man alive in Britain today less appropriate to make these judgements than I am. I merrily dotted away all over the screen, my wantonly ignorant clicking hopefully causing great confusion to some London-based media focus group. I decided that Peugeout is Completely Outdated and Adidas Extremely Innovative. Who knows why? I know I don't. Then I had to do the same in other (apparently different) categories: Uncool to Very Cool (Ford is Uncool, Orange is Very Cool), Hate It to Love It (Hate FCUK, Love O2), and finally - it's almost as if FHM are reading my mind - I had to rate them all from Irrelevant To My Life to Completely Relevant To My Life. If I were being honest, I would mark every single one as being irrelevant. But the purpose of this survey is not accuracy, and thus while I so don't care about Virgin I am passionate about Carphone Warehouse.</p> <p>The only area where I told the truth is when they asked me how my spending on eating out and holidays had been affected by the credit crunch. I could honestly click "It isn't an area of expenditure that I am looking to cut down on", given that it's hard to spend less than nothing. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2008/08/13/lies-damned-lies-and-fhm-surveys-4582189/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2008-08-12:/2008/08/12/bingham-is-back-4576881/Captain_Autumn2008-08-12T12:58:52+02:002008-08-12T12:58:52+02:00 <p>How marvellous to hear from a bona fide, genuine Steve Bingham. Not Steve .... Bingham you understand - don't get too excited - just plain old Steve Bingham. The one who, according to his <a href="http://www.stevebingham.co.uk">website</a>, The Independent called an "extraordinary performer" (interestingly it doesn't say in what capacity). The website which has a frankly disturbing picture of some sort of Boys From Brazil experiment gone wrong, with dozens of Steves gaily Binghaming around the parks of Norfolk. Steve Bingham who has the self-effacing good humour to take a pretty stupid post on my part a couple of years back in the benign spirit in which it was intended. Well played Sir. </p> <p>As a classical music Philistine, I was all geared up to point people towards Steve's site without being able to recommend anything myself, but his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/stevebinghamviolin">YouTube clips</a> of his looping performances of While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Philip Glass are simply stunning. I only wish I had more than three sporadic readers who might find them as a result of this. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2008/08/12/bingham-is-back-4576881/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2008-08-07:/2008/08/07/roll-out-the-barrow-4556539/Captain_Autumn2008-08-07T19:05:17+02:002008-08-07T19:05:17+02:00 <p>Just 24 hours to go then, to the biggest sporting event of the year. You have to feel for the Chinese - years of work and billions of yuan poured into the Olympics, only to have the attention of the world diverted from the opening day by Barrow against Oxford.</p> <p>So, are you excited about the new football season? No, me neither. </p> <p>When I was a kid it seemed like a lifetime from one season to the next, but these days it seems like I haven't digested the one just ended before the next one is upon us. Part of this is undoubtedly just me being older, because we all know that time passes so much faster as we age. (A while back I booked tickets for Stevie Wonder and noticed that it was exactly three months until the concert, and realised that when I was young that would have passed so slowly. Without me noticing, it is suddenly only five weeks away.) But another part of it is definitely the sort of blaring, endless hype parodied so brilliantly by David Mitchell <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF_uOgyBK1c">here</a>.</p> <p>That said, it will be nice to be watching a football match I actually care about, as opposed to one in which I have little more than an academic interest. History is a curious beast, is it not? I imagine when Oxford played their first ever league game against Barrow on 18 August 1962, the Cumbrians must have wondered what they were doing playing a lowly team like Oxford. And I bet that many an ignorant Oxford fan will be thinking the same tomorrow. Let's just hope that playing on TV against the biggest team in the division - sad but true - doesn't inspire them the way it did the titans of Droylsden and Histon against us last season. </p> <p>Anyway, time to resume my non-league travelogue. Barrow was a small fishing village (32 dwellings and two pubs in 1843) until the Industrial Revolution, when it became a centre for shipbuilding. From the 1960s nuclear submarines were built there, but the end of the Cold War has not been good for Barrow and unemployment has risen. Some Barrow nuggets:</p> <p>1) In 2002 Barrow suffered the UK's worst ever outbreak of Legionnaire's disease - seven people died.</p> <p>2) The population of Barrow has barely altered in 100 years, fluctuating between 73-75,000. The ethnic population constitutes just 5.7%, the non-white population a mere 2.8%.</p> <p>3) 23% of people in Barrow are on benefits (the national average is 14%).</p> <p>4) Former England football captain Emlyn Hughes was born in Barrow.</p> <p>5) So was original Jethro Tull bass player Glenn Cornick.</p> <p>OK, I'm struggling now. Incidentally, Glenn Cornick has a <a href="http://www.cornick.org">website</a> full of wonderful old pictures of his time in Jethro Tull. It's a really tremendous resource for people interested in the band. Makes me wish I was one of them.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2008/08/07/roll-out-the-barrow-4556539/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2008-07-30:/2008/07/30/i-am-not-a-free-man-i-am-a-number-plate--4519764/Captain_Autumn2008-07-30T11:43:49+02:002008-07-30T11:43:49+02:00 <p>I imagine the 20 or so daily visitors that blog.co.uk invents for this page must be anxious to know how the land lies in the world of number plates.</p> <p>I have exciting news.</p> <p>Like Hillary and Tenzing standing at the peak of Everest, assessing their achievement and surveying the descent, so I sit with the symbolic number 500 in the bag. Anyone who thinks that the comparison is presumptuous, think again - it only took them a few weeks to climb Everest, and I've been doing this for about five years. If anything, it is inadequate to compare the travails of a couple of glorified hill-walkers with the dedication required to look at number plates in such a compulsive, irrational way. My commemorative stamp must surely be imminent.</p> <p>So now it is just back down the mountain to 999. I have seen more numbers than I need to see. Just another five years or so without getting a life and freedom will be mine. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2008/07/30/i-am-not-a-free-man-i-am-a-number-plate--4519764/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2008-07-23:/2008/07/23/tempted-4487618/Captain_Autumn2008-07-23T11:34:09+02:002008-07-23T11:34:09+02:00 <p>I was watching an interview with Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook last night, an hour long programme called Songbook: Squeeze where they sat and talked about the songwriting process. I was quite surprised to see how current it looked, because they reached a point a decade or so ago when they couldn't work together any more. I knew they were getting back to tour as Squeeze for a few dates last year to promote the re-releases, but that was supposed to be it. It turns out they got on well and it appears they may work together again. Which would be lovely if it happens.</p> <p>They did a version of Tempted with Glenn Tilbrook at the piano, and much as I was enjoying it there was something I couldn't place which wasn't quite right. It was only when it got to the second verse, where on the record Tilbrook takes the lead vocal for the first time, that I realised - it's one of only two songs of theirs which have the lead taken by Paul Carrack, and as much as I adore Tilbrook's voice it was Carrack that was missing. And it served to remind me that the version of Tempted on East Side Story is about as perfect a pop song as has ever been recorded. </p> <p>Out of curiosity I had a browse through iTunes to see if there were many cover versions, and of course there are loads - bland versions which remove all the soul, country versions which are an abomination, jazz versions which overcook it, a folk version by Richard Thompson, a bizarre ska version by Regatta 69, even an a cappella version by a sub-Take 6 act called Rockapella... it's like a Noah's Ark of musical styles all trying to put a new slant on this peerless song. Weirdest of all there's a moribund version by Chris Difford, who I suppose at least has the right to murder his own song. And I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at a Jools Holland version - you'd think he'd have realised that the reason East Side Story is Squeeze's best album is because he's not on it. </p> <p>Anyway, they all highlight the reality that once in a while a combination of music, lyric, personnel, performance and production come together and create something upon which it is simply impossible to improve.</p> <p>At this point I would embed the YouTube video if I knew how, but I don't. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUA7F9j_xzs">So it's here.</a> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2008/07/23/tempted-4487618/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:captainautumn.blog.co.uk,2008-06-30:/2008/06/30/ten-degrees-of-wikipedia-4383884/Captain_Autumn2008-06-30T12:04:10+02:002008-06-30T12:04:10+02:00 <p>Here's an interesting diversion, if you're sad, or bored, or both. As you're probably aware, almost everything on Wikipedia links to something else on Wikipedia. Just to see where it took me I decided to start from a random page - in this case Neil Armstrong - and follow the tenth link on each subsequent page to see where I ended up. The idea was that when I got to the tenth page I would read that one in its entirety. As well as gaining some new knowledge at the end, I figured I would pick up some interesting nuggets I didn't know before along the way, and I was right. Did you know that West Point Military Academy is in New York State, overlooking the Hudson River? That the Dutch East India Company was the first multinational company in the world, and the first to issue stock? What the Batavian Republic was? Unfortunately my plan to get into progressively more specialised areas somewhat backfired when the tenth link on the Patriot Party (political faction of the Dutch Republic) was United States... but I still ended up with something quite interesting:</p> <p>Neil Armstrong<br> David Scott<br> West Point<br> Hudson River<br> Dutch East India Company<br> Batavian Republic<br> Patriot Party<br> United States<br> Canada<br> French colonisation of the Americas</p> <p>Then I had another go, starting (as we approach the 60th anniversary of the health service) with arguably my least favourite institution, BUPA:</p> <p>BUPA<br> Leeds<br> Historic counties of England<br> The Bishop of Durham<br> Family name<br> Mr<br> American English<br> German language<br> Linguistic geography of Switzerland<br> French language</p> <p>Not bad. I'm not sure if ten links is enough to get you away from the ones which are very similar to the topic you're on. Then again, Neil Armstrong to French colonisation is quite a journey, as is BUPA to French language (anybody still doubting that Wikipedia is part of a French conspiracy?)</p> <p>If I were Dave Gorman I'd have visited all these places by now and made a supposedly spontaneous but in reality meticulously planned documentary about them. And given that my weblog is now apparently a hotbed of media research, any journalists reading this please note that I thought of this first and if you stick it in your newspapers I want my cut! Likewise if it takes off as on online cult, I want everybody pointed back to my weblog. I like the idea of thousands and thousands of people ending up here thinking "this is drivel". </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://captainautumn.blog.co.uk/2008/06/30/ten-degrees-of-wikipedia-4383884/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>