RunningPosted by kevin Tue, August 31, 2010 22:34:17
Ok, so I was a little surprised when a number of people approached me today and suggested that I might be a bit simple for thinking I could run a marathon on a treadmill. After all, I should be able to knock out this sort of mileage as long as take it easy, right? Wrong, apparently.
But I take solace in the knowledge that others have made complete twits of themselves on treadmills for years now, so I can just join the queue. I had a browse around youtube this evening to see the sort of thing that people have copied up - unfortunately in amongst all the people flying into walls off the end of treadmills, it' hard to see which ones were really accidents.
Consequently, am linking to one that shows people actively trying to do stupid things on treadmills. I'll obviously be practicing the correct way to demonstrate these stunts as part of my intensive training plan.
RunningPosted by kevin Mon, August 30, 2010 18:27:51
Here's a short list of things that don't work properly when I go running:
1.Lower back, following recent bizarre gardening accident. This one kicks in on long runs, and if I'm stupid enough to lift anything heavier than a paperback the day before.
2.Left hamstring, pulled during a track session in 2005. The failure to fix this has been as frustrating as anything I've ever experienced, with the possible exception of watching Norwich play in the brief period of time they were 'managed' by Bryan Gunn. Still, at least it managed to pay for a couple of holidays for the hard working alternative therapists in East Anglia.
3.Both knees. If I run the previous day, I make it to the top of the stairs only by treading very carefully. If it's been a tough session, the journey from stairs to kettle is often made by 'bumping' down like a two year old.
4.Right achilles, which went 'ping' a couple of years ago, and means I have to start every run looking like I'm wearing some sort of bizarre foot caliper. This one goes away after about a mile.
5.Both calf muscles. These now seem to be impossible to relax, which is all rather inconvenient, and if I put in a hard session, both will cramp up at the same time. This is intolerably painful but I would imagine quite entertaining to watch, as the muscle spasms make you boing about like MC Hammer trying firewalking for the first time.
All of which does rather make me wonder why I should have said 'yes' when I was asked to run a treadmill marathon a few days ago. And it's in 12 day's time. And apparently doing this can really mess your legs up for ages afterwards.
But it is, as they say, all for cheridy. And, after all, whining about legs that hurt is kind of missing the point here. I think this is all about setting your expectations accordingly, and not necessarily based on the irritating limitations that niggle daily.
If this was, say, Ernest Hemingway pitching up for the event, he'd have a quart of rye by way of a warm up, keep himself going with a few snifters of absinthe, then gone on to a big night out afterwards. Steve Prefontaine would keep going for about five hours to see if he had the guts to do so. Sir Ranulph Fiennes would emerge from his garden shed, after hacking off a couple of irritating fingers, then run 7 marathons on 7 different treadmills in 7 days with the treadmills being pulled across 7 different countries by a pack of 7 huskies. Probably. Anyway, the point I'm struggling to make here is that people that reach further tend to get more stuff done. And accordingly, my plan of action on 10th September is to try to assume this is all doable, rather than drone on like a miserable middle aged wimp. Well, that's the plan, anyway.
So, given that this is undoubtedly a plan due to end in ungraceful failure, please sponsor me at here
And if you're planning to be anywhere near the Start event in London on the morning of 10th September, please remember to pass the absinthe.
PeoplePosted by kevin Thu, August 26, 2010 22:04:44 Am writing this a couple of miles above ground in an aeroplane that should have landed 30 minutes ago.
Our departure from Edinburgh featured a refreshing breeze and clear blue skies, but as we got into East Anglia, the cloud that had settled over that area all day surrounded us. Not a good sign, so when our cheery captain came on the PA to say there was nothing to worry about, our hearts lifted.
So the descent to Nch began, and we finally broke through the cloud at, I would guess, about 500 metres. At which point the pilot decided this was not he landing he wanted, grabbed the stick thing that he has in front of him, and like a WWI flying ace, we pulled out, up, and back into the cloud.
This is a fairly small plane, the wheels were down and we were landing, so I have a horrible feeling that when we came out of the cloud he couldn't actually see where the airport was. Surely you can't get lost in a plane these days can you?
Incidentally, this does remind me of the journeys I used to take from Norwich to Edinburgh years ago, in far smaller planes. Pre 9-11, if you sat at the front of the plane, all that separated you from the pilot was a small grey curtain, and you would always see, next to all the controls, the key navigational guide, which was the AA Book Of The Road. I asked the pilot about this once, and he said that this was indeed what they used to fly with - for Edinburgh to Norwich for example, you follow the A1 and turn off at Peterborough.
Anyway, 30 mins after we should have landed, our pilot tells us that he's going to 'have a bit of a think' about options, but not to worry as he's got plenty of fuel. And while he's thinking, he's going to switch off the seatbelt sign if any of us want to move about. Bizarre.
45 mins after we should have landed, and the scenery (white cloud) hasn't changed. Mrs Emu will, by now, be slightly irritated. No word from Captain Mannering in the cockpit.
60 mins after we should have landed. Everyone being very calm. Stewardesses wandering up and down not doing much and avoiding eye contact. Fair enough, that's what I'd do, if I were them, although I'd draw the line at the stupid haircut. I've now officially decided that I don't like flying. Some people do this for pleasure, you know. I understand the message from Captain Crunch now though - he was expecting to be some time in the air.
Just had an update - they were expecting weather improvement on the hour, and this hasn't happened. I didn't think weather was so precise as to change on the hour, but you've got to trust these people, haven't you? Well, haven't you? as Fagin might say. This is something that vexes me a little at the best of times, and it worries me more in these circumstances. Every day we put our trust in taxi drivers, airline pilots, cooks and many more people who we don't know from Adam. Yet in my darker moments, I feel I can't trust about 10% of the people I meet, a number that steadily increases in London, in pubs, clubs, or at anything involving the word 'festival'. So what if Captain Flack is one of them? Or what if he's having a bad day? Probably best not to think about it. I'll look out of the window. Update - still white clouds.
80 minutes - the man in the seat next to me is taking an unhealthy interest in the 'business' article about Caprice and her lingerie range. With picture of her apparently falling out of her business suit. I think I just heard someone get a text and wonder if I should risk texting Mrs E. Best not. I don't know technically how such interference works, but apparently mobile phones operating can make planes plummet from the sky, and I wouldn't like to have that on my conscience. Not that I would, but you know what I mean.
We appear to be climbing again. Got a not good feeling about this; I think we're headed for somewhere less cloudy. Oh dear. I'll have a little nap now and hope it all goes away. The bloke next to me has closed his eyes. Probably thinking about Caprice's fiscal planning.
120 mins - sod it, tried to send a txt to Mrs E. No signal - pah! Curse the Blackberry.
Captain Fantastic says we're going to try again in 10 mins! Using a different runway. I'm slightly worried that I thought Nch only had one runway, but the Caprice fan next to me assures me that if you approach from a different direction, it counts as two. So it's been a rich learning experience sitting next to him.
Switching Blackberry off as Ms Terrible Haircut glowering as I write that.
130 mins - hit the runway about 90 seconds after coming out of the cloud. Everyone suddenly starts talking. A round of applause for Captain Marvel. Ms Flock Of Seagulls wishes us well, welcomes us to Norwich and hopes to see us all again soon.
FamilyPosted by kevin Tue, August 17, 2010 22:28:17
In many ways, last Saturday night was destined to be a failure from the off. My last night in France before travelling home, and leaving Mrs Emu and all the little Emus for a further week, and we decide to have a dinner party. Why on earth we should do this in France, when we'd never contemplate having people to eat dinner with us at home (where, incidentally, we actually have a kitchen that works), remains a mystery to me.
Anyway, it seemed a good idea at the time, and food was suitably prepared for our five guests, who, gentle reader, I would like to introduce. Dinner Party Guest 1 - Mrs Emu's mother, a splendid woman who can speak better French than many natives, and who had prepared for the feast by preparing two desserts, one of which was a massive trifle, a desert apparently unknown to French residents. This was going to be The Evening's Big Treat. DPG2 - A good friend who has been kind enough to look after us many times during our various crises in France (and there have been many). Knows everyone in the area, is local mayor for a neighbouring village, and is as impassive a man as I've ever met. I think he may think that we're complete idiots, but he'd never let on. DPG3 - DPG2's wife, equally impassive and just as charming. DPG4 - the lovely, ebullient and lively daughter of DPG2 and DPG3, just returned home that day from doing very good work overseas, bringing with her… DPG5 - the new boyfriend, who DPG2 and DPG3 had never met before
So, to a certain extent, there was a fair bit to go wrong before we mixed in the following challenging ingredients: -neither of us were much into cooking, let alone on a broken calor gas cooker… -so we enlisted the kids to help… -who don't have a great track record on personal hygiene or any culinary talent. And finally... -alcohol was always going to be a factor of the evening, and this is not a substance to be treated lightly where Mrs Emu or her mother are involved. We had a similar event last year which was going swimmingly until DPG1 declared herself to be 'in her cups', and lost all grasp of the French (and a fair bit of the English) language. As she had served as the interpreter all evening, this was a distinct disadvantage, and our guests fortunately took this as a sign that the evening was over and left without saying very much more.
So, a fair bit more to go wrong. So it was surprising that we made it through a couple of hours without any sort of a domestic incident. As the drink flowed (rather worryingly, a dizzy combination of Pastis, Amaretto, Port and Wine), and the conversation got livelier, all looked good, and Mrs E was despatched to the far reaches of the house to pick up The Evening's Big Treat. Suddenly a blood-curdling scream cut through the night. I turned to face the kitchen, and to my surprise, saw what remained of the trifle spread out over the kitchen floor. There was, interestingly, no sign of my wife. Now, I know what I'd do if I dropped a bloody great big trifle on the floor, showering all comers with a mixture of custard and glass. I'd make straight for the outside garden to cover my embarrassment, possibly stopping to pick up some tobacco and papers en route. And I assumed that this is what had happened here, and we all waited for Mrs Emu to come back looking slightly abashed, with a ready apology and possibly a 'Tsk' or a 'Butterfingers' at the ready.
So we waited. And after a couple of minutes, DPG2, who had been sat facing the kitchen, let go his guard of passivity. As we asked if he'd seen what had happened. "Yes", he said, " she fell really badly and cracked her head against the wall". Which she had indeed done, and I'm not entirely sure why DPG2 hadn't thought to mention it earlier. Some little while later, I found my injured wife who was indeed in the garden, but only because she didn't want to scream in front of the guests. She had, apparently actually started her fall in a different room entirely, and had carried the bowl horizontally for several yards before her head met the wall and the trifle came into view on the floor. And, dear reader, that's where this all ends. She's got a horrible bump on her head, a massive black eye, a shredded left arm, and a 10 hour drive ahead of her on Friday. She sent me this picture today which makes me feel even more like a guilty husband who's just skipped the country.
Still, on the positive side, I'm hoping to arrange for trifle for tea on Friday night.
PeoplePosted by kevin Fri, August 13, 2010 21:29:48
I always have a regret or two during holidays in France. Last year I managed to put my back out doing something stupid in the garden. The year before I managed to, well, put myself in a very embarrassing position by thinking I knew more French than I really did. This year, I've rather unfortunately managed to combine both experiences, ending up semi-naked in the hands of a man that I'd only met 20 minutes before, and with a very limited grasp of his plans.
But perhaps I'm getting a little ahead of myself.
I had a very good first week running. Clocked up 75 miles, managed a few effort sessions, generally felt at one with the world. Saturday knocked out a fast session in the morning, followed by a very heavy shift in the garden involving a ladder, a 15 foot high hedge and a petrol hedge trimmer. By the evening there was a familiar twinge in the small of my back. Got up for Sunday's long run, and…well I say 'got up' as if I did anything other than try to roll over in bed to get out, followed by an agonising yelp like a Jack Russell being fed into a mangle. (I would imagine.) Anyway, I didn't get up. I laid as still as I could, then spent the next couple of days feeling very sorry for myself, and slowly shuffling around the house like a 85 year old rickets victim.
So much so, in fact that, by Tuesday, Mrs E had agreed that I ought to see someone, and we looked in the local phone book to find an Osteopath. My experience of the Osteopath profession involves unfortunate memories of being jumped on from a great height, getting a horrendous noise out of my back as a result, and feeling a bit duff…then a bit better. Seemed like a small price for being able to be able to vaguely stand up straight again.
Appointment duly booked for Wednesday, and I made my way up the stairs above the chemist in a small local town; got to the second floor, and onto the lighting scheme favoured by all small continental offices, ie total darkness. So I ended up feeling my way along the wall to the distant door, lit only by a small electric doorbell. Pushing the door open, I was met by a small lithe man who reminded me almost immediately of both George Clooney and Graham Norton. You may have to work quite hard at imagining that bit.
Anyway, ushered into his office, and before too long I realised that my limited grasp of French was going to be no match for what was in store.
I garbled my way through how I had got the injury in the first place. I think this may have come across, however, as being the result of some 'very high industrial gardening', as I had forgotten the French for both ladder and hedge trimmer.
George/Graham indicated that I should stand up, and using an international sign language that he was not only comfortable with, but that I also, rather worryingly, immediately understood, he asked me to take my shirt off. And, using the same sign language, that I shouldn't stop there.
As I lay on the table, feeling exposed in soooooo many ways, I realised how unprepared I was for this visit. A few years of Longman's Audio Visual French had produced a 'B' at GCE (which, Elliot, is equivalent to an A* in today's money). And, as a result, if M Marsaud, Jean-Paul or Marie-France chose to lance le ballon in my direction at any time, I wouldn't foresee any problem at all. But unfortunately, this was pretty new territory, untrodden by Longman's. And as a result, I fear my blatant improvisation may have been rather misconstrued.
At one point, I tried to tell G/G that his technique was much less painful than previous treatments that I'd had. Unfortunately, not knowing the appropriate vocabulary may have held me back. I rather fear that I told him that I found his gentle and kind touch most refreshing. If I'd had the words to apologise, I would have. In fact, had I known the words for awkward, embarrassed, and happily married with four children I might have used those as well.
The session ended with a very confusing conversation where I was asking about whether I'd torn my gluteus maximus, and he was having a completely separate one about whether I'd ever enjoyed kayaking down the Loire. Which will forever be a euphemism in our neck of the woods for being rubbed down by a total stranger.
Not sure what all of this teaches us, other than be prepared for everything. And if you're not, busk it.
Oh, and always make sure you're wearing clean underwear.
FamilyPosted by kevin Thu, August 12, 2010 20:45:42
When I was an impressionable 12 year old, my bible of choice alternated between the Exchange and Mart and Old Moore's Almanac. I've not seen either of them on sale for a while, and I suspect that one has been replaced by a combination of Autotrader, ebay and Free Ads, and the other by a whole range of conspiracy and astrological sites on the internet. For those of you unfamiliar with OMA, it purported to predict the future year ahead, but managed to do so in a very very general way. Not quite 'this year the Grand National will be won by a horse', but not far off.
Anyway, the science, or art, of prediction has always been of interest, and where I've singularly failed at the blackjack tables in Vegas, or the bookies in the less salubrious parts of Edinburgh, I hope to recover in accurately guessing the future fate of my children.
Number three, for example, has managed to let loose a couple of comments during our current holiday that might hint to his future. And where I say hint, I mean the sort of strong hint that a detective would normally associate with a signed confession, several high quality witnesses, a strong motive, a smoking gun and a suspect wearing a T-shirt saying 'I did it. Honest Guv. I'm banged to rights. Slap the bracelets on and lead me dahn the nick'.
1. When talking about bands and their riders, he was straight on the case, declaring a need for a daily rider of those chocolates in the shape of shells, a DVD of the Fantastic Four with special close-ups of Sue Storm's body, fresh orchids, and enough lego to build a full replica of his own face.
2. As part of some extensive re-planning of Emu Towers, he is going to get his own bedroom. He would very much like a star on the door, and a mirror with bulbs around the outside.
3. In a discussion about his ancestors, he asked whether his Great Grandfather had died from smoking. "In the 50's, everybody smoked and drank", his mother patiently explained. "I'm not going to smoke or drink", he responded, "Well, maybe a little Crème de menthe on special occasions".
4. As part of a new found independence, #3 has taken on the role of cycling down to the local Tabac to pick up the bread every morning. His grasp of French is not quite as good as we'd like, although there's little danger of problems on the road, as it's very quiet, and he failed his cycling proficiency test by continually cycling on the right, so France is a far more natural cycling environment. So we went through the basics on his first expedition - trois pain pour notre famille; la meme demain - that sort of thing. He came back half an hour later, happily with the right amount of bread, and change. "How did you get on?", his mother asked, hoping to glow with pride at his linguistic skills. "Ok", he replied, "but I didn't speak much French. As soon as I got through the door, I forgot my lines".
Next week - number 4 shows all the hallmarks of a future serial killer. And Old Moore predicts people will be disappointed with the British government in 2011.
A long time ago, the then leader of Bhutan was interviewed, and was asked about his understanding of Gross National Productivity in Bhutan. He replied that he wasn't particularly interested in GNP, but that he was really interested in something called Gross National Happiness. By all accounts this was a bit of a throwaway line, but ever since, Bhutan has been held up as shining example of an alternative and better way of measuring a country's state of development.
Just as well, you might argue, as using traditional measures, Bhutan is always going to be looked at as a country in development - it has little going for it in the way of natural resources, has the global equivalent of the neighbours from hell, and generally has an existence that western states would describe as 'basic' by traditional measures.
But I'm a big fan of GNH, as I think most people's satisfaction with their lot is based around far more than average income levels. To illustrate - GNH has been further defined as the following seven measures:
1. Economic Wellness: eg consumer debt, average income to consumer price index ratio and income distribution
2. Environmental Wellness: eg pollution, noise and traffic
3. Physical Wellness: eg severe illnesses
4. Mental Wellness: eg usage of antidepressants and rise or decline of psychotherapy patients
6. Social Wellness: eg discrimination, safety, divorce rates, complaints of domestic conflicts and family lawsuits, public lawsuits, crime rates
7. Political Wellness: eg quality of local democracy, individual freedom, and foreign conflicts.
And if you buy into the whole GNH assessment, then a combination of all of the above feels like a pretty well balanced view of your country.
Of course, the challenge with this is that you need to hang your standard measures somewhere, and that's where it starts getting complicated. But I think that people tend to wear their GNH on their sleeves most of the time - and it's influenced by a whole load of non-economic factors - so for example I'd suggest that the weather, MP expenses scandals, the state of the NHS, how well Andy Murray is doing at Wimbledon and many other factors have a far bigger impact on the mood of the UK than any traditional economic measure.
So, how to measure this complicated mess? Well, I'm pleased to say, dear reader, that The Emu can exclusively reveal how to measure the health of the nation, using a single points score, far more accurately than any traditional way, and for a fraction of the cost.
Many years ago, I started doing my long Sunday morning runs with my friend G, who for the sake of this blog, we will refer to as The Flying Postman. Now, TFP and I have pretty much nothing in common. But we seem to knock along fine for a couple of hours every week, arguing the finer points of politics/hamstring injuries/football/families and the like, so that a Sunday morning not spent trying to argue TFP out of his 'hang 'em and flog 'em' approach to benefit cheats and shoplifters seems like a pretty empty place indeed. And one notable difference between us is in how we talk to people we meet on those Sunday mornings.
Possibly because I don't particularly enjoy the actual running element of running, I might just about manage a grunt at the walker/dog-owner/runner coming in the opposite direction. TFP, however, fairly skips into their vision, flashes a winning smile, and calls out a hearty 'Good Morning', in a voice that can sometimes be heard across three counties. And it's the reaction to TFP, who, incidentally looks like a nightclub bouncer, and is normally approaching them at pace, wearing a vest and sweating like a good'un, that interests us here.
So, a few weeks ago, I challenged TFP to a competition to measure GNH every Sunday. Basically, you get a point for every person you meet on the run who says 'Good Morning' back to you. There is an increasingly complex system of penalty and bonus scores, which means that a 'good' score works out about zero:
1. A point for each good morning back
2. Minus one for each person who ignores you
3. Groups of people must all answer back - so if you only get a 'spokesman' response from a family of four, you score a net minus two
4. Dog walkers are excluded. They're going to say hello anyway. But it does allow a free practice go
5. Fellow runners coming towards you who don't answer - score minus two
6. And minus ten, for a member of your own running club who ignores you. This really happened a few weeks ago and it led us to practically weep for humanity. Well, sort of.
7. From the agreed position that all cyclists are miserable sods, you may 'Good Morning' them with no penalty for no response, but you do get a point for a "Good Morning" back. Which accounted for a fairly high total a couple of weeks back when we found ourselves on the course of the Norwich Triathlon, running against the traffic.
8. Living fairly near the university and running Sunday mornings gives us a fair chance of bumping into students enjoying the 'walk of shame' home after a big night out. Wearing last night's clothes used to be a bit of a badge of honour in my day, but please note, it is no longer acceptable to call out "well done mate", particularly if it's a girl. After all, one day, the voice under the hoody will answer back "Morning Dad". Anyway, double points for a response.
9. Double points as well for young families with pushchairs. If you have a baby, it's unlikely that you're going to actually want to go for a walk at 8am on a Sunday, so if they can engage with sweating strangers coming towards them, they deserve to be counted extra
10. If the walker/runner/cyclist says "Good Morning" first, five points. I'm looking forward to a few games of 'Cheerful Greeting Chicken' as a result of this rule. Which was, incidentally brought in last week after someone with a voice slightly louder than TFP got in there first. Honestly, it was like being at the deaf glee club.
On our last run, where TFP scored a rather disappointing minus 12, (and therefore summing up Eastern England post World Cup, post Wimbledon, and pre summer holidays,) I asked him why he was so insistent on being so cheery in the mornings. "I don't know", he said, "I just like saying hello to people I suppose - and any way if more people did it, we'd all be a lot happier".
Of course, he's right. Really must try it myself some time.
*Not often you get a chance to reference Helen Shapiro and John Cooper Clarke in the same heading. More of both in the world would be good. And hello Steph x
I think I might have gone on ad nauseum on this site a while back about the joys of cycling in Holland, and in the likely event that you didn't catch that message, here it is in summary:
Dutch people are, as far as I can make out, all lovely in every way…
…and they all ride bicycles. Which means that….
being a cyclist in Holland is an absolute pleasure…
not least because they've covered the country in a fab network of cyclepaths that can get you anywhere, without a sniff of a car. Or car driver…
…who, incidentally are all lovely and polite as well, although I believe this is partly due to the rule in Holland that any accident involving bike and car is automatically the car driver's fault.
Plus, it's flat, which means that you can rattle away for a few hundred miles on one gear if you want. Which, last year, I did.
This year's expedition did involve a few more gears on my part, and as a result we went a tad faster and further, but the lessons from last time are just the same…but more so.
Which means that the last few weeks of cycling in the UK have, for me, brought into sharp relief just how far behind we are compared to countries like Holland.
The last couple of bike rides provide no end of good examples:
Piling into potholes on major roads. If you've thought 'ouch' when hitting these in a car, just imagine what it feels like on a bike
Following a cycle path that appeared, Wile E Coyote-like, to end at a brick wall
Following a hatchback in Norwich in traffic, just missing the lit fag thrown out of the window by the driver, swerving to the left, then just missing the lump of phlegm gobbed out of the window by his passenger. I don't think either of them knew I was there; it's just the way that people behave when they're in a car
Getting overtaken while going around a roundabout - impressive driving skills to get through the gap, but it scared the living daylights out of me
Cycling in central London and mixing it with the tourist pedestrians, lorries, taxis, and, my personal favourite, the 18 metre 'bendy bus'
It just all a bit crap, frankly.
And while I know that we all rely hugely on four wheels(or eight, or sixteen) to get about, unfortunately almost all the issues I have as a cyclist in the UK are related to big vehicles that put me or any other cyclist in danger. As a matter of principle I would never drive a journey of less than a couple of miles, but nowadays I have to really think about this, especially if I'm travelling with the kids. Which means one more car on the road, half an hour less exercise, and so on.
So, given all of the above, I've decided to get a bit radical on my bike. Whilst I don't think the urban warrior/cycle courier is really me, I'm going to make sure that people in cars at least see me, and if they tee me off, I'll try to engage them in conversation about driving with at least one eye on their fellow road user. All of which, of course, means that the next edition of the Emu may well be written from an A&E department*.
Feel free to wish me well in this quest. Whilst I don't think one more saved journey will make a difference, a hundred might, and imagine how fab the world would be if we all saved, say, 50% of these marginal journeys. Might even persuade that strange people friendly coalition that appears to have been left in charge of the country to put a few cycle paths in place.
*Cue my favourite on-stage joke…'this song features Chris, who when he's not playing guitar, is studying to be a Doctor. To demonstrate this, he's going to spend the entire evening tonight in A and E…'
I thought you might like to share what a Saturday evening feels like in the Emu household, now that Mrs E & I have abandoned our attempts to out-debauch Amy Winehouse and Joey Ramone. We just don’t have the appetite for it any more, you see, and have far more fun anticipating through parted fingers the future drink fuelled disasters expected of the Jr Emus.
Anyway, this is how last Saturday went.
After a fairly testing bike ride in the early morning (elated mood) and clearing out the garage (concern at being middle aged mood), followed by nipping into the city to get #2 a new mobile phone (how can all this technology be sold in such a complex style mood), I reached that period of quiet reflection that can only be reached in our house by two plates of curry and a bowl of ice cream. The concern at this stage of course, is that what with all the mood changing and calories spent and consumed, it was only a short step to a light sleep on the sofa. But this was Saturday night, and standards have to be maintained, and in our house Saturday standards include staying up as late as humanly possible.
So, a brisk walk was in order, and where better to stroll along to the Co-op (nee Somerfields, nee Gateway etc), a store that despite a number of rebrands, has still managed to maintain a level of soviet-style misery in all its employees. But my heart and mood was in a happy place, for it was Saturday night, there was beer to be bought, and I was greeted on the way by the sight of two men, in full chef's whites, off duty from the local curry house, enjoying an impromptu game of badminton in the car park. Mood up again, in an 'all is right with the world' sort of style.
Managed to maintain this state of mind despite the general gurning and grunting that greets you when you try to buy anything from our Co-op, and fair skipped home, for what awaited the family Emu when I got back was the gala final of 'Britain's Got Talent'. To watch BGT, I think you have to be one of two things - a moron of the first order, or an opportunist with a good stock of 'Pointing & Laughing' chances. In a desperate attempt to avoid being labelled a moron, I went for three big P&L opportunities:
1. Jayney Cutler to be this year's essential car crash viewing.
Well, reader, she certainly didn't disappoint. Starting off in the wrong key, and at least a beat behind the bemused orchestra, she proceeded to kick the living daylights out of 'Non, je ne regrette rien', which, incidentally she'd translated into her native Glaswegian. Given this was the final, our parade of judges were magnanimous in their gentle criticism. 'Well Jayney', they chirrupped, 'you were a little behind the beat, but you made it up like a real trooper'. Jayney simply stared into the middle distance, cackling quietly away, not realising that her dream of being the new Susan Boyle (except without the voice, the rapier wit or, err, the looks) was over.
2. Piers Morgan to set new records in levels of condescension.
Again, happily achieved without really breaking sweat. To Spelbound : 'Y'know, what you've achieved says to me that no matter how hard this show might be criticised, it's capable of unearthing the most amazing and unique hidden talent that Britain has to offer, and we really should applaud it' (discernible pause) '...and I understand you're also preparing for the world championships'. Not a hint of irony. Wonderful.
3. Simon Cowell to prove himself a git of the highest order.
Ok, he's an easy target, but as regular readers of this blog will know, that's never been a reason to hold back. In my head, SC managed to plough new lows in taste and talent as he announced his new single, a version of Tears for Fears' 'Shout', featuring the woefully underexposed and talented James Corden and Dizzee Rascal. Introducing the song as something that 'he'd been waiting to do something with for some time', SC set our pulses racing in eager anticipation that he might have done vaguely interesting. Not for him a glib opportunity to turn the nation's world cup fever into a ridiculously childish terrace rant, surely…
Well, by now, you've probably heard the result of his creative input. Honestly, it's the work of genius to include lines like 'Let's get physical', 'Pull your socks up' and (I kid you not) 'Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough'. All along to a driving 'terrace' beat that will no doubt have us singing along in the stands for years to come. No, really.
All of which left me in the worst mood of the day by far. I'm sure I'll get over it, as long as I never, ever, ever have to listen to that song again.
I vividly remember the first time I flew on an aeroplane. I was 11 years old, and I was despatched to Rawalpindi, to visit my uncle, aunt and cousins. Exotic, huh? By far and away the most exciting event of my life, and travelling alone gave it a level of wide eyed wonder that I wish I could have bottled and kept forever. In contrast, my last flight, on an admittedly less glamorous trip, was rather less exciting. It was really just an exercise in getting from A to B, with all the attendant long queues, intrusive security checks, last minute rush to the gate, cramming into a seat and hoping that the whole exercise would just be over with before the noxious fumes of my fellow passengers took over completely.
Given that almost 40 years separate these two journeys then it's hardly surprising that things have moved on a tad in the airline industry, not least to what the marketeers no doubt describe as the 'customer experience'. Let's face it, air travel has fundamentally changed, from the most thrilling and special experience you could possibly imagine, where everything about the journey felt geared towards you, to an exercise in unsuccessfully minimising the many hassles that you have to deal with. Added to which, in these enlightened eco-sensitive times, there is lots of guilt to mask any pleasures that you might have hopelessly been hanging on to.
Which brings me to the current challenges that BA and its much maligned cabin crew have been having in the last few months. With apparently very little reference to the 'customer experience', the series of strikes, combined with the already challenged air schedules, have made BA a bit of a joke for travellers, and I suspect that, following the debacle around Terminal 5 and various pricing shenanigans, that this latest story means that people flying BA will be those who have to fly BA, rather than those who have any choice in the matter.
So, given that it's all gone in that direction, why? BA has lots of good routes, an excellent safety history, and pretty reasonable record in getting large groups of travellers to the right place on time. Most of the time these days the baggage goes to the right place as well.
My theory would be that the airline has just lost its way since the halcyon days of air travel. When you get on a BA flight, it feels like you've stepped back to the 1970's, insofar that it ought to feel special, but it doesn't. Most other airlines have recognised that it ain't going to feel that special anymore, so they don't really bother. And part of the problem, frankly, is the cabin crew, who have, ahem, grown up with BA. So the "special" bit is delivered by crew who, frankly look and behave as if they've seen it all before. Which they probably have**.
In contrast, the budget airlines put people in the air who know that their role is to give you the safety talk, not deal with any flak, and generally get the trip over as painlessly as possible, not least for themselves. These (young) staff know exactly what they're getting into; there's no glamour to this - at Ryanair they even pay for their own uniforms. And this is a million miles away from the image of air crew in the 60's and 70's, where, without blushing, a pouting stewardess would appear on an ad to say to the business traveller "I'm Mandy, Fly Me". (Technically, I think this is somewhere between a double and a single entendre.)
Meanwhile, the BA management hold out against the unions in a manner reminiscent of the standoffs of the winter of discontent, and that seems a bit out of time. And, the cabin crew complain of being ill equipped, badly paid, put into difficult circumstances and unhappy with their uniforms. Which, given that these are much the same complaints being sent back from the military in Afghanistan, means that they're also completely out of touch. Both sides are completely losing any public sympathy, which I would have thought, given the circumstances, that they should really be craving.
I'd really like BA to be a good airline. I just wish it would grow up a bit.
*Other names are available. Evening and weekend rates apply.
**I'm acutely aware that this is about the 4th sentence in this blog that is grammatically horrible. My favourite ever line from 'Just A Minute' was when Nicholas Parsons asked Clement Freud "Who would you most like to be shipwrecked on a desert island with?". To which the great man replied: "Almost anyone who didn't end a sentence with a preposition". So, sorry.
TechnologyPosted by kevin Tue, May 18, 2010 22:48:42 Rather disappointingly, I seem to have inherited very few of my father's redeeming features. Not for me the fine aquiline nose, the easy athleticism, the ability to be at ease in any social situation or the capability to enjoy a good political argument without resorting to mild violence. Disappointingly, my make-up features clear opposites of all of the above, plus a rather jaundiced view on genetic inheritance.
Where we stand, however, father and son together, is in our clear enthusiasm for taking a stand against some of societies irritants, to the point of boycott and damnation. If you want to see my father worked up into a furious, blue-nosed frenzy, just mention that you're a glowing admirer of Dame Shirley Porter, the London Evening Standard, or Rupert Murdoch. If you want to see me seething in a similar fashion, you can achieve a similar effect by expounding the virtues of Bill Gates, Michael Winner, or, funnily enough, Rupert Murdoch.
In my father's case, his sense of moral frustration has some dire consequences. He lives a long way away from the distribution of the Evening Standard, and only recently have I realised that he's managed to put a good 10 miles between him and the nearest branch of Tesco's, which was probably a key factor in choosing his location for retirement. He still believes that every penny spent there personally bankrolls Dame Shirley, and for all I know, he may well be right. His love of cricket is tempered on a regular basis, depending on which network has got what contract - he'd rather make a 250 mile round trip to see a county game than even consider watching a test match on Sky.
Anyway, the fantasy disembowelment of Rupert Murdoch is a passion shared, and I guess we're both equally pleased to see the real-life Monty Burns start to get irritated about copyright law. As far as I understand the argument, the sense of outrage that News International currently has, is against the notion that its journalistic data be shared on the internet for free. As such, it is planning to introduce a new model for Times subscribers, whereby they pay for online content. And presumably NI plans to sue the backside off anyone who has the audacity to use the copy & paste facility. (Which, I might add, was not invented by Bill Gates.)
Since the first salvoes were launched on charging for online content last year, it's all gone a bit quiet, but I can't imagine the ambition has gone away, so the likes of me are still looking into the middle distance, jaws dropped on the floor. If it had been suggested 10 years ago, we would have pointed and laughed. To suggest this as a valid business model now is kind of missing the point of the internet, of social communication, and of how the whole realm of journalism is heading. It's not as if there isn't a model to base the future challenges on - I'm not sure what parts of the music industry NI owns, but there's a pretty strong precedent there in the way that old business models just don't work any more. In the same way that musicians are going to have to find different ways of getting people to listen to their music, journalists and writers are going to have to find different ways of communicating. And that's no bad thing. When I buy a newspaper I'd really quite like to have a different type of paper every day. Generally I would rather buy than have something sold to me, and I'm sure I'm not alone there. The bigger point is that the days of the fourth estate and journalistic privilege are truly numbered as long as there is a persistence that the public needs to pay in old fashioned ways for new delivery. Which means that News International, Fox, The Sun, Sky and all the rest might all yet be under threat. And I'm sorry if this sounds childish, but good. And ner ner ner ner ner ner*.
For now of course, I'm pretty happy the way it is. When Principle Skinner got together with Marge's sister in The Simpsons, they realised that their common bond was that they hated the same things. It might not be the strongest basis for a relationship, but I do quite like having something in common with my Dad.
As you enter the dread confines of middle age, the likelihood of spending every night in a hallucinogenic stupor gets less and less. I think this is down to a number of factors. Perhaps you’ve lost touch with the sort of chancer who used to help you achieve such a state, and you feel that asking your new best friends (the yummy mummies at the school pickup for example) where you could get a quarter of something mellow might be rather frowned upon. Possibly your career as a top judge/school teacher/shadow home secretary doesn’t really knock along with a class C habit. You might have found that your increasing years needed to kick off a review of your lifestyle, and that you were only going to allow into your body ingredients to feed, rather than addle, your brain.
Whatever your reasoning, it’s quite likely that you miss your decadent years. You might find yourself nodding along to that old joke about the man that goes into the doctors:
“Doctor, I really want to live to be a hundred”
“Certainly, all you need to do is give up drinking, smoking, chasing women, fried food and start exercising twice a day.”
“And if I do, will I live to be a hundred?”
“No, but it will certainly feel like it.”
But, if you’re one of those former hemp-heads, listlessly yearning nostalgically for your more agreeably wasted days, help is at hand, courtesy of the Emu, the blog that always aims to please. All you have to do is tune in to BBC1 at just after 7pm on Saturday evening. For there you will find hallucinogenic treats that you thought you’d left just to the back of your very own Camberwell carrot.
The programme is called “Over the Rainbow”, and features a number of nubile young hopefuls desperate to appear in the latest Andrew Lloyd Webber masterpiece* “The Wizard of Oz”. And if you’re short of time, don’t feel you have to watch it all the way through. But you must, repeat must, watch the last 10 minutes of each show, and you’ll be thankful that you did.
At the end of each episode is a ‘sing-off’, where through some complicated mathematics known only to Graham Norton and the BBC pension fund, two girls are pitted against each other and forced to sing a duet in which one of them will lose and be unceremoniously kicked out of the show. Which they seem to do with good humour, although it must be very tempting to try to distract your competitor during the song with a raised eyebrow, surreptitious cough, or discreet wedgie. Then the panel, which includes a slightly camper version of John Barrowman, keeps one Dorothy and loses another. If in doubt, the casting vote goes to ALW himself. Who appears to be on a throne, and is referred to at all times as ‘The Lord’. I must have missed the news on the day that popular multi-millionaire and plagiarist songwriter ALW became a conservative life peer, as I’m sure I would have remembered such a ringing endorsement of the UK political system. Anyway, the dear girl is booted out, but not before some ringing words of sympathy from ALW (sorry, LAWL), such as “I know you’re going to go far” and “Let’s keep in touch”, words which the girls are bound to hear the next time a well-educated bounder dumps them in real life. And then comes the really good bit. Rather than thanking the panel and LAWL, and offering firm handshakes all round before exiting stage left, our Dorothy is asked to sing for the final time. Which she does, with her (soon to be ex) chums, in front of a pair of 15-foot high sparkling slingbacks. And in a croaking voice, she begins a song which includes a line to the panel which goes “You’ve ditched her so completely”, that her fellow competitors gladly sing along to. Then, for reasons best known to the producers of the show, she takes her own sparkly shoes off and symbolically presents them to LAWL, whose putty-like features have creased further into the vacant stare of the rest home client. And then, she takes a few steps up the stairs to a crescent moon seat, and begins a rousing version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow”. And (this gets even better), as she sings, the seat raises up and over the stage so that she’s singing down at her erstwhile competitors. The camera angle changes at this point and looks down at the wide eyed lovelies, all fighting back the tears, and to the untrained eye, all on the verge of a stirring rendition of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me". As the latest Dorothy to go blasts out her last note, the crowd goes mad, and there are no doubt nods on the panel and whispers backstage about the latest one being a real trouper. And the very very best bit, far better than anything you could get from a tenner exchange in the back room of the Dog and Duck on a Saturday night, is as the camera pulls back. Because without warning, the crescent moon accelerates at some pace roughly North West (ie into and past the top left of your TV screen), taking Dorothy into the spotlights that you can’t see, and also very possibly into a forgotten oblivion. I believe this is called a metaphor.
You couldn’t make it up and you couldn’t buy a trip like that.
*I am marginally outnumbered in my house in not being a particular fan of ALW. If ever I find myself in a tight corner in trying to put him in his place, I always remind myself of the great Humphrey Lyttleton joke: “History has seen some great musical pairings, from Gilbert and Sullivan to Rodgers and Hammerstein, right through to Andrew Lloyd Webber and his Photocopier”.
RunningPosted by kevin Wed, April 28, 2010 17:08:20
And a mystery (or mythtery, as Toyah would say*) it certainly is.
It is an absolute mystery to me that I can spend 10 hours a week, for 3 months, training for an event, do half a dozen really long runs, have a a great warm-up race, a perfect marathon taper, then go into the race that really mattered last Sunday and get horrible*** cramp at 14 miles; so much so that I ended up pleading for salt with those lovely people**** from St John's, then walking large sections of the rest of the race, feeling very sorry for myself.
Anyway, the whole thing resulted in the slowest I've run a marathon for 12 years, and it's really really really infuriating that I can't put my finger on the reasoning. I guess if I were to take a world view on this sort of frustration, I would assess it as indicative of our desire these days to capture everything in black and white - everything has a cause and effect, and the simpler the better. And whilst it would be great to be able to do this, I think it's pretty unlikely in practice - in this case, I might just have to put the whole thing down as a bad day at the office. And in doing so, maybe accept that there's a bit of ambiguity and mystery in why things happen, and that sometimes all the planning in the world won't stop some bad luck.
Meanwhile, at the end of the course, Jr Emu #2 was waiting with his mother.
"Well Done", he said, really meaning it, "You did really well"
"Thanks", I said, "but I should have finished about 15 minutes quicker than that"
"Yes, but Dad", he reassured me, "I was watching everyone finish, and noone ahead of you looked nearly as old or as grey as you"
Which I think he meant as a positive.
Must dash now. Got an autumn comeback marathon to plan.
*And this does give me an opportunity to tell you my favourite Toyah story. Some time after her 'classic' EP 'Sheep farming in Barnet', Toyah shot to the top of the 'hit parade**' with an album that included hits like 'It's A Mystery', and, err, some other stuff. A friend of mine was manager of a large record store at the time and took delivery of several boxes of the album. The record bombed, and he was left with boxes and boxes of records that he had to return. Normally, this would involve cutting open a record sleeve, putting a light scratch on it and sending it back damaged, but there were hundreds of these, and a) it would have taken ages and b) it might have been seen as a bit of a scam. So, in a moment of sheer genius, he put a 'damaged/return' label on each box, and wrote in big letters: "Singer has lisp".
** ask your Dad
*** Really horrible
**** I'm sure they really are lovely people. Just wish they knew a bit more about fixing injuries.
FamilyPosted by kevin Fri, April 16, 2010 20:24:14
The defining force behind the Marx Brothers was not Groucho, Chico or Harpo (or even Zeppo, or Gummo), but their mother, Minnie. Mrs Marx drove her boys pretty hard, to follow her into a career in Vaudeville, where she'd enjoyed a fairly lively career herself. In fact, trivia fans, her early career is referenced in the excellent 'Carter Beats the Devil' book, under the alias of Minnie Palmer. Anyway, I mention her name, as I heard an interesting story about her approach to parenting last week from Jr Emu #1. Apparently, in a bid to save money, Minnie would travel by train with all four (or five) of her boys on child fares. On one such trip, the conductor approached her mid-journey. 'Madam', he said, 'Of your children on this train, one is smoking a cigar in the first class carriage, and another is having a shave in the bathroom' 'Gosh', said Minnie, 'they grow up so fast, don't they?' I was reminded of this story, when called upon to give The Talk On Drugs And Sex to Jr Emu#2 earlier this week. TTOD&S doesn't get made very often in our house, largely as the subject matter is delivered far more successfully by free access to the internet, adolescent boys being adolescent boys, and having a nurse for a mother. But occasionally, fatherly advice needs to be given, and for want of a more qualified person in the family, I'm enlisted to help. 'So', I said to #2, after a particularly challenging discussion on why meow meow was essentially a bad thing, is there anything you need to know about sex? Anything bugging you about stuff you don't understand?' 'Only one thing', said #2. 'Then ask away', I said, in as much of a man of the world fashion as I could muster. 'It's just that I've never really understood what felching is'
TrainingPosted by kevin Tue, April 06, 2010 20:55:28
So, we're back in foreign climes again, or as my friend Richard would say, the land of ecouté et repeté.
And, given that this part of my marathon training plan calls for a horribly tough training week, what better time to lace up, and head out the door, much to the surprise of the French residents hereabouts, who tend to regard anyone not wearing overalls and driving a tractor with deep suspicion. And yesterday, out the door I went, with a certain amount of trepidation, to try for a rather hilly 20-miler.
All good up to about mile 15, where I aimed to take on (as we runners call it) a drink and a gel to see me through the last quarter of the run.
I had been slightly influenced in this by a presentation on sports nutrition that I went to a couple of weeks ago. Now this had been sponsored by the lovely people from Lucozade, and reminded me, probably quite unfairly, of the posters that I used to see at school advertising drug use. Well, not advertising drug use in the traditional sense (although if you jotted down some of the numbers in the boys toilets then you'd probably be alright for a lively weekend. However, you needed to be reasonably alert - I knew a boy who swapped his moped one Friday for what turned out to be an Oxo cube.) I mean advertising that drugs use was pretty much A Bad Thing, and that people who dealt in such wares always gave the first few hits free.
And so it turned out with the Lucozade man, as he described how important it was to get nutrition into you during a marathon, and that the London Marathon would be supplying all runners with Lucozade gels and drinks on the course. Anyway, all interesting stuff, and in true Nick O'Teen (remember him?) style, he invited us at the end of the talk to help ourselves to as many free samples as we could justify to ourselves. Which, looking at some of my fellow runners, was quite a generous justification. Standing outside the scrum, I asked a friend if she could pass me a couple of gels, which she duly did, and off I went, happy that I could try the gels out (For Nothing!) before I set off on a race proper.
So, at mile 15, I had stashed a bottle of water and a gel, and picked them up almost without breaking stride. I should mention at this point that the weather at that point featured what I believe weathermen call 'squally' winds. I think this just means the wind blows fairly random directions, and I evidenced this earlier in the run when I spat out of the right side of my mouth, only for the spit to complete a 270 degree rotation of my head and land in my left eye. Anyway, let that be a lesson for all sportsmen to keep their saliva in their mouth at all times. Back to mile 15, and I expectantly bit the side of the wrapper off the gel, and squeezed the contents into my mouth. There followed an odd sensation, which was a bit like eating stardust sweets mixed with the inside of a sherbert dip. Not unpleasant, but not quite how I expected a gel to feel. About half way through I realised that I wasn't eating a gel at all, but a single serving Lucozade powder. At which point, two things happened. Firstly, running along at a reasonable pace, I was briskly followed by all manner of insects, who were for some reason attracted to a runner caked in sweat with a unshiftable layer of raspberry sherbert all over his face. And secondly, I remembered about osmosis. Osmosis, you may recall from school, is where water diffuses across a semi-permeable membrane, such as you might find, oh I don't know, maybe in your stomach wall. And if you put a concentration of powder that absorbs water into a stomach when you're nicely dehydrated, you can almost feel the particles of water dragging their way across the stomach. I really don't know if this is an exact physiological description of what happened, but it certainly felt like it at the time.
The rest of the run wasn't quite so much fun as the first bit. The flies disappeared after a while, and I dragged myself back to the house.
'How was your run?' enquired Mrs E.
'Finished.' I said.
*If you get this reference, then good on you. I miss Norwich in the 1980's.
FamilyPosted by kevin Sat, April 03, 2010 22:20:22
This morning's Guardian carries a piece titled 'We get what we want in life', which is about couples choosing the sex of their baby. For me & Mrs E, this turned out to be an interesting read, and brought back some memories that frankly were probably best consigned to a bucket marked 'irritations of the past'.
For background, and in rudimentary code, this is how our family arrived:
010 Set 'children we have' to zero
020 Mrs E fills a little faint, and several months later adds 1 to 'children we have'
030 Despite expecting to have a girl, we had a boy. And he was gorgeous and we couldn't imagine our lives could be more perfect.
040 If 'children we have' = 4, go to 060
050 Go to 020
060 Live Happily Ever After
Thus, by the time we got to line 060, we had four fantastic and healthy boys, all of whom were great value and continue to be so. And largely, you'd think, that would be that, and we could look forward to living HEA. Which, of course, we've largely done, and only little minor annoyances have distracted us from that course. Especially the early ones, where 'children we have' had just equalled 4. Mrs E would find herself stopped in the street by relative strangers, who'd tilt their heads gently to one side and tell her that she mustn't be so sad at having a boy. While she was pushing him along in the pram. I heard one exchange with a woman at a supermarket till that ended 'Oh dear; I was lucky of course, I had one of each'. I was asked incredulously at work (in an IT department, indeed) 'What are the chances of having 4 boys?', to which, of course, the answer is 16:1, i.e. the same odds as any sequence of 4 children.
Quite apart from the gormless insensitivity shown by people who really should know better, it really teed us off at the time to think that Jr Emu #4 should arrive as a disappointment. He has, incidentally, been a bit of a testing individual since, but that's not the point. The point is that, by and large, he arrived healthy and happy and has continued to be so.
So, when the Guardian feature quote a woman with four boys as being 'traumatised by what she hadn't got'*, it really…feels wrong. Not so much morally, although the middle class outlook on gender selection is of tiny relevance compared to the interest in, say, India or China, but in the context of just being happy with your lot.
For our part, I don't think any of us could contemplate a different gender mix in the family. Nothing against girls, you understand, just can't imagine how it would work. For Mrs E, it's like having two sets of the Kray twins on hand. For Jr Emu #1, he has 3 younger brothers to boss about, and for #4, 3 to copy, wrestle with and torment. And neither #2 or #3 has exclusivity on being a difficult middle child. And if you're reading this and you have a family, you've almost certainly got a similar dynamic going on, because that's how families work, they just get on with the situation of just being a family. And so, in my humble opinion, it should continue.
*Accompanying pictures to the article: 4 solemn looking boys on p16, the 2 girls born via IVF, post vasectomy sperm extraction then gender selection in Spain** on p17
PeoplePosted by kevin Wed, March 31, 2010 17:43:37
Just a very short note in case you are interested in the ways of internet linkage. I was looking on the BBC website just now (if the link is still there, it's http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8597399.stm), and, also if it's still there, you may see the link in the bottom rhs of the page.
It reads:
Times Online Lonmin shares take tumble as problem child furnace is shut - 8 hrs ago
Disappointingly, the grammar changes as you go to the link:
Lonmin shares take tumble as ‘problem child’ furnace is shut
All of which is a bit of a shame. Those of us with problem children might not ever want to put them in a furnace, but every now and again it might be nice to use as a threat.
FamilyPosted by kevin Thu, March 25, 2010 22:59:59 Some time ago (possibly in the 1980's) I set what I thought was a reasonable ceiling on footwear. In them days (I know, I know), you could get a decent pair of DM's for £30, so I thought it was a pretty valid benchmark. And, with the exception of running shoes, which I can justify on the basis that cheap ones will limit my ambition of still running marathons well into my 70's, I still pretty much have £30 as my top limit for shoes. Which, as you might imagine, means a fairly limited approach to shoe-buying that isn't always successful.
I tell you all this as a context for a recent conversation with Mrs Emu, a woman who I hold in considerable regard, and with whom I share almost every moral code. There are exceptions, however, and both the length of time allowed shopping for shoes and the price ceiling are good examples.
Here's my favourite phone call of the week:
Mr E: 'Hi, what's up'
Mrs E: 'Well, just thought I'd phone to see how you were'
Mr E 'All good...you don't normally phone up just for that'
Mrs E 'No, well just thought I'd let you know that I had half an hour spare so I cycled into the city, and I found the most amazing pair of brown boots. You know I've been after some for ages, and these are just fantastic'
Mr E 'Great, did they cost much?'
Mrs E 'Well, far less than those road bikes you've been looking at online'
(The conversation went back and forth a bit, even involving a bit of 'The Price Is Right' 'higher/lower' action, until the full price was revealed.)
Mr E 'That's quite a lot of money for a pair of boots'
Mrs E 'I know, and I'll work a couple of extra shifts to pay for them. Besides, these boots will make me happy in a way that you'll never be able to'
My advice if you're looking for a wife or husband...find someone who makes you laugh while they put you in your place. Although, if you're reading this dear, ideally also someone who doesn't end her sentences with a preposition.
RunningPosted by kevin Mon, March 22, 2010 20:03:03
Sadly, another day in which I feel old before my time. As my dear children will often remind me, I am old, at least by their standards, but this morning at around 0800, on the Newmarket Road leading into Norwich, I had my first 'senior' moment. For it was there and then, dear reader, that I suffered a fall.
Suffering a fall is the sort of thing that I'd associated previously with shopping trolleys on wheels, thermal bootees, and for some reason, Thora Hird. And I do have the excuse that I was travelling at least at some pace, but even so, a fall it certainly was.
Being a bloke, I do feel it necessary to drag out both the extreme pain and the ignomy of the experience in some detail. I was running to work along my normal route, not really going either fast or slow, and listening to Danny Baker tearing up the podcast charts, when I, well, just lost my footing. On what appeared to be (and I did check) a perfectly reasonable piece of pavement. At this point I stumbled, and cracked my knee very hard onto the pavement. Which hurt. Then I bounced along the pavement, before I bashed down simultaneously on my left shoulder and elbow. Which really hurt. Then, one more bounce, before I came to rest with my head perilously close to the gutter, having broken my fall with both palms. Which really really hurt.
For those of you familar with this part of the world, you'll realise that at that time, on that road, there's lots of traffic, moving pretty slowly. And I must have sailed past about 5 cars travelling in the opposite direction before I finally stopped moving. At which point a succession of very slow moving cars will have seen a bloke in shorts, lying down on the pavement next to them, bleeding. For my part, I think I lay there for a couple of minutes, not through any other reasons than thinking that I'd broken my arm, and not having the first idea of what to do. And, as it happens, whether I'd still make it for my 0830 meeting.
And, nothing would please me more to report to you that the traffic stopped, and I finally came to, wrapped up in a tartan blanket from the back of a car, while perfect strangers administered basic first aid, sweet tea, and kind words of comfort.
But, this being fact, no such thing happened. Every single car drove straight by, although a couple of cars did steer slightly to the right as they did. I suspect that this was to protect their tyres rather than my body though. As it happens, a couple of guys walking into the city ran over, checked me out and lifted me up. Having thanked them, and deciding that nothing was broken, I continued both my run, and, indeed, my general disillussionment with my fellow man.
This is a blog which starts off with me in the shower, so readers of a nervous disposition may wish to look away now.
Jr Emu #1 bought me a radio for my Christmas present; one that I can listen to when I'm out of the shower in the mornings. Given that I take a morning shower in the basement of the office after running into work, however, this creates an issue. My radio stations of choice for the morning are Radio 4 (light political grillings - just the thing to kick off the morning meetings) or Radio 5 (relatively inane banter that might inform the odd conversation during the day on football). And unfortunately, even though the great British Broadcasting institution reaches all around the world, it is unable to penetrate the lower ground floor in the NR4 postcode area.
Unless, it seems, it is masquerading as BBC Radio Norfolk, which has signal like you wouldn't believe. I don't quite understand this, as I thought that all BBC channels would be transmitted from the same masts at the same strength, but the truth is there to be heard in glorious mono, every morning at 8am.
So, to get to the point, I am compelled to listen to Radio Norfolk in the morning. Now, me and Radio Norfolk actually go back quite a long way.
In my youth, I worked at Radio Norfolk for what was probably all of about 4 weeks. I had a very brief stint as an assistant to an assistant, and very briefly reached the position of bona fide assistant when the teatime show presenter went on holiday, thus allowing his assistant to stop being an assistant, and thereby needing his own assistant.
The best fun on local radio was devising phone-in competitions, and at Radio Norfolk we had the added challenge of having no audience with any enthusiasm for phoning in. Or possibly no audience with any enthusiasm. Or possibly no audience.
Which left us pretty much to our own devices, and this meant getting our friends to phone up in a style that I like to think was ripped off wholesale by shock-jocks a few years later. So, for example, we would announce the 'talented pets competition'. "Phone us with your talented pets, and we'll let the county know", we'd call out. "If you can't get through right away, keep trying, as the phones are really hot here at Radio Norfolk", we'd cry, looking out into the control room, where the work experience girl was looking intently at a phone that was steadfastly refusing to ring. At which point, we'd call in our special weapon, which for the sake of this blog, we'll call Mike Todd, on account of that being his name.
Mike would appear on the phone (we had to dial him, which always left the work experience girl a bit more miserable), and he'd pretend to be a caller with an interesting pet. Initially this was a yodelling dog, which was basically his flatmate making howling noises while MIke played the piano. Then it was a tap dancing tortoise, introduced by a nervous schoolboy, who'd discovered this talent while a) his Dad was out, and b) he'd let the tortoise stand on the hotplate. And so on. We did get a few genuine callers, which left us a bit flustered, but we soldiered on. I don't think anybody from Radio Norfolk noticed anything was unusual - largely you were alright, even on primetime, as long as you didn't use up any of the 'needletime' budget.
This may have changed now, but certainly in those days, the royalties you had to play on records, calculated by 'needletime', could make or break the budget of the show. So you did one of three things. 1. Talk about absolutely anything for as long as possible. 2. Play music from unsigned bands. 3. Play music from 'pre-paid' albums (Now that's what I call… etc). Fortunately, we managed to fill hours and hours with 1 & 2 and seldom resorted to 3.
But the best bit about Radio Norfolk was the institutional parochialism that filled the place in a pleasant, practical fashion. The best example of this was the traffic report. Growing up near London, I was familiar with Capital Radio's 'Eye in the Sky', swooping down on the North Circular and giving up to the minute reports at all hours of the day. Things in Norfolk were slightly different. Firstly, the only road that anyone was bothered about was the A11. It got people into Norfolk, and it got people out. Secondly, the budget didn't really run to helicopter surveillance. So, very practically, one of the editorial staff would phone up her Dad every morning. Her Dad lived on the side of the A11, just outside Wymondham. So, after the normal father/daughter greetings were complete, he'd put the phone down, go to the front door, look to the right and to the left, then report back accordingly.
So, although I would never listen to Radio Norfolk if I had any real choice, if I do have to then it's always a bit nostalgically. Certainly I listen to the webcam driven traffic reports with some disappointment, as I'd just really like to know that the A11 is clear at Wymondham. And I listened with abject horror on Friday, when the phone in was 'what do you look for in a chicken'. Just asking for trouble, quite frankly.
And imagine my surprise when I came across this on the BBC Norwich City website tonight.
You need to look at the last item under 'local news'.
And if you can't read this, it says "Farmer reunited with lost fowl". I suppose when you see real life imitating stereotypes, we may as well enjoy it.
