Week 166, Pitch it

We are constantly encouraged to save money, make do on a smaller budget, to show prudence.

How can we re-work a big-budget TV show to make best use of a small pot of cash?

My proposal is this.

A TV production that has no need for the high cost of other programmes.

One where costumes are not an issue.

No one needs miss a step.

Celebrities not required.

All shot on location at a local car park.

It doesn't require a host, not a conventional one at least.

The non-host rarely has to appear on screen and is mainly voice-over.

It doesn't even need a film crew, just a few well placed CCTV cameras to catch the lack of action from all angles.

It can be broadcast live the action edited down for a highlights package.

Strictly No Parking.

Cars.

Not parking.

Unless of course a car does park, at which point we can get that bald bloke who shouts at people on daytime TV.

Dom, is that him?  The bloke that makes a big deal out of a housing benefit overpayment.

I'm sure he'd do it for nowt more than a bag of jellied eels.*

Here's Dom accosting an elderly lady that is lost and isn't sure where to park.

He'll speak reasonably with her face to face, but on the voice-over he'll ridicule her for her lack of parking acumen.

Ideal.

Although having thought about it that's an approximate definition of actual, current daytime TV anyway.

Back to the drawing board.

* Yes, a bag of them, it's all part of the cost saving.

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Week 165, Chocolate bitcoin

Got myself some solid, gold-coloured, chocolate fake-coin.

Barely accepted by anyone.

Transactions not subject to taxation.

What's the difference between the value of this and the 'value' of bitcoin?

Well, I can unpeel these and eat them, which is very satisfactory.

Whereas your bitcoin isn't edible.

Bitcoin transactions only take place where other people want to believe there is value.

Whereas with actual (and chocolate) cash the belief isn't so flimsy, although ultimately based on the same principle.

Backed globally by nations and regulation, that belief in real currency will be hard to shift.

Whereas once the Emperor is revealed to have crypto-clothing made from bitcoin your trousers will vanish.*

You'll be left out of, and without, pocket, not having the wherewithal to buy even a cardboard space shuttle.

*I make no apology for clunky metaphors.

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Week 164, An OK day

Early morning.

While en route to talk to health researchers about optimising the configuration of their half a million quid data gathering device I pass this street suggestion.

Don't set your expectations too high and perhaps you won't be disappointed.

As it happens the conversation was more productive than that, even if the rest of the day regressed to the mean.

I'll take that as a win.

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Week 163, Cool runnings

Running around in the snow.

Best pace 4:34, but only very briefly on a downhill.

What's the point of this?

One target is doing 1500m in under 7:05, my best (and only) time back in 1980(?), which was a slow time even for a 15 year old.  Once this isn't a mix of walking and running that time ought to come down.

Which leads to another target, that of running without interspersing with recovery walks.

Further to that, lose weight, which might help when going uphill - the uphills are currently run at not much over walking pace, and given that Sheffield is mostly hills...

How is this being achieved?

Using the very handy program from the book The Rough Guide To Running.  That's the 5k section finished, it consists of four weeks of three sessions of running each week.  Each week the intensity and duration is gradually increased, the increase is gradual enough to prevent over-stress and injury.  Below are the summary results of the three sessions in week four.

Next: additional similarly structured weeks of running to build up to 10k.

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Week 162, Park like a joyrider again

Yes folks it's here again.

National Park Like a Joyrider Day.

An occasional series occurring at roughly 18 month intervals.

Yet again it's an entrant from the amateur class.  It's a good effort, let's take a closer look.

Starting our review at the back. The rear wheel is only just on the pavement, this could be marked down for not being far enough over but as the wheel partially obscures the tactile surface for the visually impaired this gains points.

The back end of the car gains marks as not only does it obscure the visibility at the junction but also juts out into the adjacent thoroughfare, this shows a level of skill above that of the novice in the amateur category.

Moving to the front of the vehicle.  The front wheel is as far onto the pavement as it can go, only prevented from further travel by the obstruction caused by the Give Way sign - the juxtaposition of the ideal to 'give way' and the blockage caused by the vehicle adds a cheeky twist to the effort from this amateur entrant.

There could be some improvement, cyclist snagging loose trim and a packet of Lambert and Butler on the dashboard with a small, empty plastic bag with a few dregs of home-grown perhaps, but overall a good quality attempt.

7/10 for this example from the amateur class.

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Week 161, Cast aside

How can this happen.

The tower cast aside.

A postcard from the city of pavement cafes, discarded in the street, amongst the leaf litter.

If someone can cast the tower aside then what other dereliction could they be capable of.

...

This is a metaphor.

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Week 160, Labelled with love

Once upon a winter walk

No-one sees

The cabinet revealed

"Delivered" says the new-born

A bill of passage

The jejune box

Documents enclosed

Soon to be distributed over Crookes

By meteorological ambience

A katabatic* wind

Carrying words of hate, hope and love

Regardless

Prosaic

* Any wind blowing down an incline.

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Week 159, Crowded out

Football skies.

Football pies.

27466 bums on seats.

4 goals to 1 against the Tigers.

Clarke's on, crowded out.

...

...

...

I've never eaten the pies.*

* Not even the veggie ones.

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Week 158, Settle down

Everybody needs a touch of the masonic undergarment, or that's what I've heard at least.

Wobbling around in less than fragrant chuddies during the initiation ceremony may not be appreciated.

"I stopped as soon as I saw your blue light flashing officer."

Guaranteed to gain a free pass on speeding, assuming the hand signal is correct and your slacks are in order.

All performed in an auditorium of some kind, and with flaming pillars at the entrance.

Semi-circular, not in the round nor on the square.

Not unlike this theatrical treat.

It had better not be pants.

Pants as in trousers, like they say in the North West of England, and in Ireland too.

This isn't a fashion show.*

* What is this?  Brought to you this evening by the winter drawers on of word association football.  Our usual correspondent is indisposed.

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Week 157, Wrong turn

After a hard day eating aphids what could be better than to have a rest on a leaf.

Here we see the Harlequin ladybird, a relatively recent arrival from Asia.

Harlequins were first spotted in the UK in the summer of 2004, although in fact they've always been spotted...

The impact on native ladybird species is being monitored, it isn't likely to be good.

It is already thought to be responsible for the decline of 7 of our 46 resident species.

The "most invasive ladybird on Earth" didn't so much take a wrong turn as take advantage of modern transportation.

They hitched a ride in cars, trucks and other transport.

Harlequins don't just out-compete other ladybird species but will also eat them as well as aphids.

The spotty sods.

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Week 156, A barren departure

Maybe I need a coat, I don't know.

Is it warm? Perhaps the waterproof will afford an extra degree of comfort.

I wear the waterproof.

I've no idea why I'm going to Broomhill, but that's where my legs are taking me.

As if an automata, my body performing the hollow activity defined by some long since still hand.

Strange are these moments when clarity is lost but movement persists.

The air is cool, almost cold.

I buy Bombay mix, chocolate, spicy crisps - better to be full and nauseous than empty.

The walk back passes leaves being blown into piles, damp leaves, already rotting, returning.

I remember that it was milk.

Milk.

That's why I went to the shop.

But being distracted by the cosmic microwave background, a deflating universe, a drop of pressure, I wandered.

To the paper shop then, they have milk, it's just a small diversion.

And as the rain starts to fall, my waterproof reveals itself to be adequate protection.

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Week 155, Angular Superimposition

Things happen in a day that get in the way.

Small things, tall things, some as big as your head.

Jerky, pointy, spiky things.

Things that only experience and a thick waterproof can shake off.

Experience, being waterproof, and an impersonal approach confers an advantage.

One that I am happy to embrace.

The only thing that got in my way was an orthotic appointment.

Very bland.

All of which was a preamble to the composite photograph below.

Which features jerky, pointy, spiky things.*

And a load of balls.

* This cannot be described as easy-going architecture, particularly the 'cheese grater'.


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Week 154, The Intertubes

Here they are, The Intertubes.

No, not a popular new boy-band but the pipes that bring the wireless.

Yes, it brings the wireless, your wireless would be nothing but a dull hiss without The Intertubes.

Or am I thinking of the wireless?

Who knows.

I haven't a clue.

It's one of those days where I'm struggling to recite pi to 10 decimal places...*

Or remember the whole word to the name of the Maori hill in Quantum Jump's Lone Ranger.**

This must be what it's like to be normal.***

* I memorise random shit.
** I really do memorise random shit.
*** As in 'being too sensible to be bothered to remember random shit.'


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Week 153, Archery

How much?

A quid?

Not a penny more, not a penny less.  Seems a little much but heads you win.

Only time will tell.

Be careful what you wish for as cometh the hour this was a man who would discover whether there was honour among thieves.

Some elements of the fourth estate were happy to accept the return of damages, and lest we give the wrong impression, the prisoner of birth was released shortly thereafter and allowed to perpetrate further crimes against literature.*

* Will this do? - Jeffrey.

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Week 152, Rabbit's Hat Mushroom Magic

While walking through woods we spotted a rabbit.

Slow walking enabled us to get within a metre of the creature, Oryctolagus cuniculus, introduced into the UK by the Romans.

We followed the rabbit but it soon disappeared, possibly into a hole.

Near the trees where the rabbit vanished was a mushroom.

Amanita muscaria, or if you never had the Latin, the fly agaric mushroom.

The most iconic of the fungi.

Regularly cropping in literature among the moist, Birch printed pages of such classics as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Here we have one in the natural environment, near Birch trees, with a size about the diameter of a CD.

Some others in this habitat were the size of dinner plates, like the pupils of those that have consumed them.

We left it for the more adventurous, and didn't follow anyone down any holes.

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Week 151, Round Back

In the words of Les Dawson* - 

If you were the only girl in the world
You'd have to have a strong back

Obviously this isn't the same thing at all.

I have no idea what I was thinking of.

The note appears to be not quite right, rather like Les Dawson's piano playing.


Alternatively we could look at it as a, poorly laid out, type of logic problem.

A material implication, thus:

7A, 7B and 7 implies ROUND BACK

In this case I think I prefer the piano playing.

* Or was it Mike Harding?

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Week 150, No Parking At Any Time

That's what the sign says.*

Nowhere to be seen, and not involved in the building work beyond the fence.

White van man strikes again.**

* An amusing juxtaposition and mild diversion on my walk.
** Yes, it was a 'man'.

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Week 149, A lump of brutalism

Moore Street substation

A colossal brutalist monument

In the style of the social housing of the era

Nobody lives here

Unlike brutalist housing now beloved of the hip, the chic

Kelvin, Park Hill, Hyde Park*

I knew those from them all

Buzzing, vibrant

But not from here

Nobody lives here

Beloved of the hip, the chic

You won't get in

Not a hum

Fulfilling its purpose

No snap, no crackle

No doorway unoccupied

Power transformed

More or less

In whose favour

* Park Hill Phase 2 as it is officially known

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Week 148, Clown Computing

A cardboard, dummy floppy disk, retrieved from a 'not quite' MS-DOS compatible Apricot PC XI just before I flogged it.  This XI also had a 10MB hard disk drive, which by the time I took ownership in around 1990 wasn't such a big deal.  The cardboard floppy was used to protect the drive of the 'luggable' PC during transportation.  The hard disk needed the 'park' command to park the read/write head in a safe location to prevent it damaging the drive once shutdown, a process no longer needed as modern disks auto-park their heads.

No need to consider that now, just pop your data in the cloud and assume someone else has taken responsibility.

Excuse me while I locate my stick-on red nose.

Always read the small print - have you have handed over rights of ownership; what happens if the cloud provider goes bust; what happens if your data is not as well protected as you assume - e.g. held in a single location; what happens if a legal case is made against the service provider and they suspend business; what happens if the data centre provider has similar issues; what happens if you need to end the relationship with your service provider and have to extract your data; what happens if your business critical data is the "small percentage" lost by the eleven nines uptime service provider.

No service provider will accept liability if your data is lost, not even for large customers.

I'm sure it'll be perfectly fine, it'll never happen.  Well, it rarely happens.

Otherwise you might as well have saved your data on a cardboard, dummy floppy disk, or on a 10MB MFM RLL hard disk drive.

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Week 147, Roger and Out, maximum break

June 7 1985.

In the pub, as usual, the Frog and Parrot, a regular haunt.  It was a neat and quiet pub, other than when occupied by huge numbers of people.  The pub had no jukebox, dart board, or pool table, and still had original features such as the enormous sheets of curved plate glass window on each side of the main entrance.  I understand it now has noise, slot machines, and other entertainment for those unable to make conversation or sit silently sulking, and the curved plate glass has long since been destroyed by oafish behaviour.

By 1985 there was no frog, and the parrot had been retired from public display - there had actually never been a frog.  The parrot had been removed due to becoming a little moth-eaten after developing an enforced beer habit, the habit due to some customers not respecting the dietary requirements of your Norwegian Blue.*

Roger and Out, the strongest draught beer in the world apparently, went on sale in the Frog and Parrot on Division Street in Sheffield on Friday 7 June 1985.  On first release it had an original gravity of 1125, roughly 15% alcohol.

For each one third of a pint glass of Roger and Out, up to the third glass, you were issued with a different certificate.  It was rumoured that any drinker was limited to three glasses, that was nonsense, it was actually the certificates which stopped at three.  The limit was all part of the mythology, no attempt was made to stop anyone drinking more, and in fact the likelihood was that having got your three certificates you were relieved you didn't have to drink any more as it wasn't particularly pleasant.

I have all three of the certificates - they are reproduced below - and on the 7th June 1985 I drank five thirds of the stuff.  After the thirds of R&O I moved onto one of the normal brews (Conqueror with an OG of 1066 or Reckless), and probably went to the Wapentake and then Rebels.  At that time I had the constitution of an ox and was able to drink well into double figures with absolutely no ill effects whatsoever, until the next day at least...

Many may have the certificates, but few will have collected the maximum set on the first night, with authentic advertising literature too - before leaving I also pinched this A4 poster from the window.

* I have no idea what the actual brand of the Parrot was.

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Week 146, Wittgenstein and the answer to the ultimate question

So where were you and what were you doing on Wednesday 8th December 1993, thirteen years after Lennon (John) was shot?

Let's take a look into the crystal ball and see if there is any observable empirical data to give us some cognitive meaning for one group of characters on that day.

Back when the Film Unit at Sheffield Uni was just a long room with some rows of chairs in it the band known as Caustic Soup would make the occasional visit.  Why did we do that?  Well, that must be part of the ultimate question.

The ultimate question must also contain the reasoning for there being a Martian dwarf in Jarman's film Wittgenstein where none appeared in Eagleton's original script.  Is the Martian an hypothetical external observer?  Perhaps Durkheim has something to say on this - although it will almost certainly be too verbose and not even slightly humorous, which would have appealed to Wittgenstein.*

Fast forward in the film to Wittgenstein as he is dying:

Wittgenstein tells John Maynard Keynes, "I'd quite like to have composed a philosophical work that consisted only of jokes."

"Why didn't you do it?" Keynes inquires.

"Sadly, I had no sense of humour."


About a year later, at the end of November 1994 and 7 years before Harrison (George) died, the band went to see Faust, the film directed by Švankmajer.  This was purely for the hell of it - logical, positive, and an ideal cultural night out.  Wooden heads, puppets, live action, and all voiced by Sachs (Andrew) - one of the fifth Beatles.**  But without the physical evidence of a ticket did this elevating cultural event actually take place...

A broad cultural input is invaluable to the creative process, a view which some may consider pompous and overblown, but to that I say, Pretentious, Moi?  In retrospect however can we detect any actual cultural output, is that output unambiguous and of a notable qualitative standard when presented to an unbiased audience?

All the questions.

Let's take a look at the ticket to see if we can spot the answer to the ultimate question.

Just there below the watermark of Starr (Ringo) and McCartney (Paul).  Can you see it.

I can't imagine what Hitchhikers writer, and substantial Beatles fan, Adams (Douglas) would have made of it, but perhaps there is no correlation at all.†

* There is a collective as well as an individual humor inclining peoples to sadness or cheerfulness, making them see things in bright or somber lights. In fact, only society can pass a collective opinion on the value of human life; for this the individual is incompetent. - Emile Durkheim
** Everyone will be referred to as "The fifth Beatle" for up to 15 minutes at some point.
† Another question is... [insert your own here] ?

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Week 145, Five things: Gigs; April; Mystery year; Names; This will change your life

While tidying up I unearthed this band related artefact.

Caustic Soup on tour.

Surely this amount of gigs wasn't sustainable given the number of venues within relatively easy reach of our home base.  Distance was no object, as long as it took less than an hour to get there and we could get our PA back in time for midnight, otherwise it would turn into a pumpkin sized excess charge.  I certainly don't remember there being an average of four gigs per month.  Rock and roll excess huh?

My memory may not be accurate, perhaps we supported Guns N' Roses at some point.  Although given the size of Morrisey's Riverside, a regular venue for us, I doubt it would have had room for the provisions for their legendary consumption, or indeed Duff McKagan's exploding pancreas.  No, we wouldn't have supported them, there would have ended up being an altercation with Axl Rose caused by him being an arse.

As for the Slug and Fiddle (proprietor Herbie Armstrong) gig on Thursday 17 April being switched to the Foundry and Firkin, I have no idea, maybe we never played the Slug.  We did at some point play The Boardwalk, or Mucky Duck as it should properly be known, the other one of Herbie Armstrong's pubs, a stage graced by many bands people had actually heard of.

I'm quite prepared to extrapolate from this and believe we played around 50 gigs per year for five years if it adds to the mythology.  A mythology which included us being the first band to play an open air festival on The Ponderosa in Sheffield since Free, which is probably, nearly true - it was definitely the easiest gig for me to get to, I just took the lift down from my flat with my guitar and walked to the stage.

I also found copies of the setlist, and while many songs were easy to recollect I struggled to associate some of the titles with any tune at all - something we had occasionally been accused of, however being an avant-garde outfit this didn't perturb us.

The unknown year?  My skills of Googling tell me that Friday 18 April was in 1997.  Less than a fortnight after the final gig listed here we had a Labour government, heady days where people appeared to know what they were doing and not just blundering about like a bunch of privileged, tousle-haired twats.

Exactly the sorts of things that will change your life.

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Week 144, Planet of the sheds

"Nobody should be denied a shed."

So said Fallacious, the Greek pragmatist, sometime around 400 BC - and in doing so Fallacious managed to predate the US tradition of pragmatism by some 2000 odd years, much to the annoyance of Charles Peirce.  Peirce subsequently steadfastly refused to countenance outbuildings of any kind on his substantial farmland, which severely restricted income and lead to years of poverty.

Why this interest in sheds?

I had the good fortune to see the inside of a decently sized outbuilding the other day, a building which included a cast iron range.  Myself and a couple of others were discussing what a fine construction it was when the topic moved to storage, and how outhouses, sheds and the like, rapidly become filled with items.

One of the party, who shall remain nameless, said he had five sheds.  Five whole sheds.

This makes the 1969 Monty Python sketch "Arthur 'two sheds' Jackson" appear rather tame.

So Gary - let's call him Gary, that isn't his name - Gary 'five sheds' went on to explain that he had all sorts of things in the sheds, wood, more wood, a lot of wood, and other things.  The rest of us agreed that we had a lot of things in our sheds too, wood, a lot of wood, and other things that weren't wood but which were not dissimilar to wood in their property of space consumption.

Having grown up with no male role model to speak of, other than Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise, I found it reassuring and satisfying to discover that the acquisition of sheds, and the propensity of items to expand to fill those sheds, was not a peculiar one.  I refer to a male role model but I am aware that there are female shedees too, perhaps not as many, or perhaps due to a perceived, and very real, patriarchal disdain of female shedees they are not as forthcoming - fortunately these outmoded views are rapidly being discarded.

I am reminded of a number of songs about sheds.  Pat Benatar memorably sang about them and their storage capability, who could forget the line 'We have sheds, wood's not a battlefield' from the song Wood's not a Battlefield.  Pat was at the vanguard, knocking over the male-dominated, external non-permanent structure world view.  Views such as that of King Crimson in their song The Night Watch with the lyrics 'Shed, shed, the light of wood works shed, The struts before the plain sawn gate, now painted new and primed', where they refer to various pursuits deemed manly.

But I digress.

I've only got the two sheds myself, although I'm not called Arthur.

Perhaps there's someone, somewhere out there with two sheds called Martha?

Who knows.

I maybe confused.

Is it too early for a drink?

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