Me Myseff amd Isolasion: day 10

A couple of days ago, we (as a collective culture) lost Diana Rigg. There is always a steady stream of people who are or were in the public eye or ear or mind who pass on. Some hit you where it hurts and others have less impact on you. Some make you think back to your childhood; some make you think about your own mortality; some make you think about beans.

Diana Rigg is someone even younger readers would know due to her doing an excellent job as the matriarch of the Tyrell family in Game of Thrones. Many others will remember her as the only “Bond girl” that managed to get him to settle down (for about the length of a wedding) and, of course, she was Emma Peel.

If “Emma Peel” means nothing to you, then it will take too long to explain. I’d have to go into The Avengers, and then explain that it’s not The Avengers you are thinking of. The one I’m talking about was the archetypal paranormal / science-fiction -influenced spy show (Psy-Spy-fi).

It’s made me intrigued to find and watch a couple. Been a long time since I saw one.  It has never been as easy as it is now to find old TV shows. Not that The Avengers would have been a hard one to find, as it was the ultimate in mainstream cult classic and a box set would have been available from shortly after the box set was invented and packaged up In a huge bundle of VHS cassette tapes. Now some of the older, more obscure series can be found for free, while others can often be streamed for a few shekels. And Box sets still exist.

I like the idea of boxsets, but I also like the idea of space in my apartment. Charlie Brooker (I believe it was) described boxsets as tombstones for old TV shows. The final clincher is that my partner hates music or movies on physical media. 

Totally self-indulgent list of old shows I have seen (some or all of) in the last year or so…

• Hammer House of Horror – TV show by Britain’s best-known horror studio. I never saw any of these as a kid, despite my love of (Hammer) horror. Some are great. Some are terrible.
• The Day Today / Brass eye – the greatest spoofs of the TV news business you could ever see. Still holds up today. Seriously, watch them. 
• Blakes 7 – 70s/80s British sci fi series which even back then you knew the FX were wobbly. I must say I appreciate the dystopian view of the future much more as an adult. And the cast was first rate. This was one I thought rewatching would be ruining part of my childhood, but it didn’t.
• Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace – something I missed when it came out. An amazing spoof of bad sci-fi/horror TV.
• The Sweeney – tough British cop series from the seventies. Was inspired to hunt some down after watching the excellent Life On Mars. They were well made, and generally not as outdated as you’d expect.
• Look Around You – I hadn’t even knows this existed. A joyful spoof of TV education / science shows. (Not everything I like is a spoof, honest.)
• Nighty Night – I didn’t get to see this when it first came out. Very dark comedy (not really a sitcom although it has the feel). Great cast of exaggerated and monstrous characters and some very funny moments. Central character is a true monster with a mission.
• Ripping Yarns – I saw one when they first came out and then never managed to see one again. Great, um, spoof, of boys own adventure stories by Michael Palin and Terry Jones.

So you can see, I’ve been busy. What else should I watch? Agree or disagree with my opinions? Let me know.

Also, we are not allowed to meet up in groups of six or more in England. A friend from Wales taunted us, but pointing out he could meet 6 or more people. In Wales 6 people is called a town.

Me Myself and Isolation: day 4

 Day #4.  (Day number four / day hash four / day pound four / day sharp four.)

The toddler is rolling her scooter over bubble wrap because just pressing it by hand won’t cut it anymore.

Yesterday got into some pretty murky theological areas. I realise I compared my child to Satan. Satan is the bringer of chaos, the sender of noise, the destroyer of all that is weak and fragile. So, that stands.

News comes in that the toddlers nanny on his mother’s side (mormor as the Swedish call it) has got some horrendous stomach bug. It’s not the corona, but it is not good. It doesn’t involve hospitalisation, but it does involve a lot of bathroomalisation. It explains why we all have slightly dodgy tummies. The fear is for us it’ll also go full Somme. [You might need to adjust this reference for your own region, by referring to the muddiest, messiest battle you know.]

Don’t worry. We’ll keep you informed of how this goes.

For general cleaning and the fun of it, we have a robot vacuum cleaner. It’s not one of the fancy ones and it’s not that smart. It has about 5 different programs, that it cycles through until a random point in time OR it has hit enough obstacles to give up on that one.

Somehow its programming means it spends most of it’s time under the chair, like a timid pet. Every now and again it emerges, usually with a ball. Under the sofa is a graveyard for balls, Lego pieces and anything else a child might want to throw or kick around. For that read “everything.”

 The toddler has a fascination / horror relationship with it. She wants it on and loves to see it move semi-randomly around the room. But, she is terrified of it. She will not stand on the floor when it’s moving. She’ll sit on a chair or stand on a step where it can’t get her. She might still scream with a mixture of fear and joy when it comes close. I hope she doesn’t pursue human relationships like that.

She’s very excited when the robot emerges with one of her toys. Sometimes she’ll be brave enough to run and get it, screaming the whole time. Others, she won’t dare. With three robots, I could probably keep the child herded in the other part of the house. Until she overcame her fear and hopped from robot to robot filled with revenge.

"Take me to your leader."

As for our self-isolation, no one has checked on us yet. Which brings us to Priti Patel, who sounds like a character in a satirical novel, is in fact a frequently inept, pandering, reactionary politician, like a character in a satirical novel. She’s the Secretary of State for the Home Department, meaning she’s in part responsible for things of State and indeed partly responsible for the state of things.

She has said, they monitor 1 in 5 people, which they do by calling them. Not sure this is the best thing to admit. Better keep us being good by not knowing the system rather than allowing people to think, “I ain’t getting calls, so I ain’t being tracked.”

Apparently I was right about one thing – they are mostly interested in the background noise. So never go anywhere where you can’t drown out the ambient noise with a recording of cats mewing, or a serial killer documentary or sounds of porn. But beware of having too many cats in the recording so that you sound like you are at a sanctuary, or that the documentary is at the point of an re-enactment so it sounds like you are killing someone, or that the porn sounds are too real and it sounds like you are actually having an orgy.

Anyway, so no call and apart from a lot of screams over the top of a droning robot, we’ve all still got it together.

Me Myself and Isolation: day 2

 Day 2. Toddler is scooting across the lounge with a liberated coin next to her on the footrest.

On the behest of a more scientific friend, I have looked up some of the coronadata.

When it comes to this pandemic, there seem are more opinions flying around than actual data. Maybe that’s true of nearly everything nowadays. You’d think the internet would make it easier. After all, everything that ever happened is recorded somewhere on the internet. On the other hand, every lie ever told is also on the internet. Every opinion you have, no matter how ludicrous has a website, group or channel backing it up. It has never been so easy to be wrong.

In terms of Deaths, Sweden is doing better than the UK (meaning there are fewer of them, to clear up any confusion), but that is not saying much. However, it’s still up there in the top part. Their hope is that now it’s all done and dusted and a second wave won’t bother it. We’ll have to see. Its neighbours are much lower down the chart, but in Denmark, according to TV, you are much more likely to die of a serial killer than anything.

It’s odd that despite its high death rate, I have some trust Sweden’s science-led approach. Even though a lot of the science is up in the air and all we have is predictions, and when the dust has settled, we can see what went down. Definitely, I have more trust than in the UK’s response which seems to have been “try all the methods” and is much more spin-doctor-led.

I’ll have to look into what Denmark, Norway and Finland’s methodologies have been for dealing with the crisis, but that’s enough geomedical statistics for one day.

Day 2 and everything is A-OK

The rules for self isolation in England are that you absolutely must stay indoors (or your own garden) except for when you or your pet needs medical attention, if you have to go to court(!), or “to avoid injury or illness or to escape a risk of harm.” So, if the house is falling down or you are a character witness for your best friend accused of serial killing, then you can leave it.

You can also leave if you absolutely need some food you can’t arrange to be delivered in time, which we had to do on the first day due to a milk emergency that meant one of us had to go out under cover of mask to make sure we survived. Believe me. Somethings you can do without as an adult, but there are things without which children become unbearable monsters. Some of these can be bought from shops (such as milk or what ever the little things drink of choice is), others are unique items such as that one special soft toy (out of all the others that are somehow vastly inferior) or that one special blanket without which sleep is impossible except after an hour of tears and wailing.

There are some other specific exceptions / quirks. The people you are staying with do not need to self-isolate. Which is convenient but seems counter to how transmittable diseases work. Also if you are a child, and you have to change houses because it’s the turn of the other separated parent, then you can do that and continue your quarantine there. It doesn’t say whether you should hug your other parent or not when you arrive. It doesn’t say what you can do if you are leading a double life with two separate households.

Finally, you cannot change houses unless “there are exceptional circumstances in which it becomes impracticable [impossible] to remain at the original address.” This is very open and I guess includes your best friend / flat mate turning out to be a serial killer, crocodiles start living in the bathroom or demonic possession of the bedside tables. Feel free to share your own, and we’ll see which is the most likely. (Note: actual most likely are flooding and spousal abuse, but let’s not sully the mood.)

The big question I’m sure is on everybody’s mind is: do the authorities check up on you and your self isolation? Short answer: Apparently, yes. More on this in a later episode.

Did you know episode is an online version of a pisode? This is the state of comedy on day 2. Stay tuned.

Travel Sweden Feb 2015 part 2: More on Uppsala and Television

It used to be, in the old days, you wouldn't leave the hotel for fear of hostile natives. Now you don't leave the hotel because you don't want to lose wifi. It's called progress. 

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Uppsala is a small town dominated by a university and a cathedral.

University building: 4 people in this picture are statues.

Maths ball on top of university building.

Whilst the cathedral is big and impressive, the university has many buildings and some are quite intriguing. I’m not sure if the university and the cathedral have some sort of rivalry. It’s easy to imagine they do as they kind of represent opposing forces. Although they are both about receiving knowledge, how this knowledge is discovered is wildly different.

Something pink poking out of the undergrowth.

Also competing for dominance of the town is a large castle (or slott, as the very satisfying Swedish word for it is). It sits on a hill and tries to look all buff, but it's a bit too pink and phallic to be taken seriously. And not phallic in an imposing way, more of a comical way. It’s possibly a bit too short and squat to really do that dominance thing. How the castle really exerts is authority is by having six old cannons all trained on the church. It clearly isn’t worried about the university.
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"Your move, God!"

Uppsala also has some theatres. But its rare for a city’s theatres to be the dominant force. The theatre I was there to play in (see my impro blog later for more details) was the Regina Theatre which is apparently famous (in part) because a well-known actor once died on stage there. I had always thought given the general state and intensity of most actors, that every stage everywhere had had some actor of note keel over on it at some point. Maybe it happens less than I expect. (As ever, Wikipedia already has a list of these things)

This relationship is clearly not working.

I think it seems a big thing for me because some big names in comedy history from my own country have died on stage or in front of the camera. Most notably Sid James, Tommy Cooper and Marty Feldman. If you don’t know who they are then I don’t know what they are teaching in schools these days.

Early attempt to create android.

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From the theatre, one moves easily up or down (depending on your leanings) to the television. Sweden is like the Netherlands in that all foreign shows are subtitled rather than dubbed. It’s probably one of the reasons why Swedes speak English more good that what many of us does.

Every country has TV gems in the department of “what the hairy Jesus was that?” Sweden is no exception. The gem here is “Hasselhoff - en svensk talkshow.” If any of those words need translating, it’s “svensk” which means Swedish. If you need Hasselhoff translating, you have not been paying attention at all in celebrity culture classes, which is not necessarily a bad thing. So this show is exactly what you are thinking it is: a talk show on Swedish television hosted by David Hasselhoff. Now it sounds on paper like it could be a fun, kitsch idea, and its clear that this is what it’s meant to be. Unfortunately with its painfully flat jokes, lame pranks and just all around feeling of awkwardness, it’s not fun. At least based on the half a show I saw. Watch it here: http://davidhasselhoffonline.com/tv/

Not to suggest the Swedes are obsessed with kitch (as it’s me who’s pointing these things out and so that is probably where the problem lies) but the big thing on TV the weekend I was there was the Eurovision Song Contest heats. One of a series of 4 heats to determine which of the nation’s musical talents would go to represent them at the Eurovision Song Contest proper.

The Swedes are almost Eastern European in their appreciation of this event. Even for the heats, there were groups of people walking around town dressed up like British hen parties because they were on their way to a Eurovision party.



In the heat I saw, there was a broad selection: an old-style crooner; a young guy who sang country-infused guitar pop; a singer from the world of musicals; a nightclub soul singer;  a loud, blond woman who sang over the top of some 90s dance track; a band of cheeky, fresh-faced boys; and a man so obsessed with the 80s he could have been the very ghost of Limahl.

Some of them went through to the next round and one of them may have even won and can be seen at the Eurovision final. But as with football and porn, if it’s not happening right there in front of me, I really don’t care.

In case you think Sweden is kitsch and behind the times,
here is a poster I found in the theatre.

Now, I should really get out of this hotel.

It’s A Man’s Wind

A little while back, I saw this article in the Washington Post about how people don’t take as much precautions when a hurricane is named after a woman as when it’s name after a man. It seems because people don’t feel threatened by a woman. My first thought was, isn’t this a subtle way of reducing the number of sexists in the world? But then I also thought, is it actually sexist to think of women less likely to cause harm to the world, when statistically it’s true. Whether that’s something to do with the nature of the female of the species or the fact that they don’t usually get too much chance to get to a position where they can do too much damage is up for discussion. But this latest research seems clear: women are perceived as less of a threat than men. My second thought was to use this information to make people take the appropriate amount of precaution. So we name our hurricanes according to how bad we’ll think they’ll be.

Benign storms can get “little old lady” names like Gladys or Martha. Then, building up through increasingly macho names as the storms get more dangerous. The very top rung we can pull out another prejudice and use foreign-sounding names. Just to instill a bit more fear into the general public. Thus Ramon or Abdullah would be great names for dangerous hurricanes in the US. The trouble is, this doesn’t simply use established stereotypes and prejudices for a practical purpose, it also helps to reinforce them. (Plus, people in ethnic groups where these names are more common, won't prepare as well.)

Meteorologists deny that Hurricane Bertha caused by Bermuda setting light to a fart.

So maybe we should take it away from the world of human names and use other categories to name them. Maybe it’s animals that we should use. Our fear of animals tends to be related to actually how dangerous they are (well, somewhat). So we can base the name on how deadly the species is. Thus Hurricane Mouse is nothing compared to Hurricane Shark. Hurricane Wombat would be quite small and Hurricane Boa Constrictor would be pretty darn big. And you should all run and hide when you hear Hurricane Mosquito is coming. Seriously, look those statistics up.

Or maybe we should use movies. Small hurricanes can be named after classic, friendly movies you see at Christmas or on Wednesday afternoons, but the really big ones can be named after video nasties. Hurricane I Spit On Your Grave or Hurricane Texas Chainsaw Massacre are definitely ones to hide from. But you can probably go for a walk during Hurricane Lassie Come Home.

*Woof Woof*

What's that Lassie? There's a storm coming? What's it called?

*Woof Woof Woof Woof *

Hurricane Ramon and Abdullah Kill Dismembered Slut Spiders and Drink Your Blood! We'd better hide.

Texas, Dec 2013 pt 1: Trains, Planes, Buses and Automobiles

Getting to the airport for 6:30 sure is a rigmarole, but in some ways it’s worth it for how uncrowded and unrushed it is there. And getting there was only a rigmarole because we eschewed the convenience and expense of taking a taxi for risking life and limb on the night bus and train.

Night busses in Amsterdam are pretty similar to those in other cities around the world. They are infrequent, filled with people who are either drunk or who to or from arduous jobs or both, and they are driven by people who are desperately trying to get away from somewhere.

Quiet day at Amsterdam Schiphol airport by Maurice on Flickr

Most transportation systems require you to be in one of two states prior to embarkation - rushing all-out to catch it or waiting for it. Any trip that requires you to take a train, two buses, two planes and the world’s smallest Chevrolet (still bigger than most Fiats) certainly gives you the chance to experience both of these.

All flights begin with the Safety Rigmarole. It’s always been fascinating to me since the first time I heard it. In recent years, airlines have taken pains to make it more entertaining. BA’s has the usual dryish voice over, but instead of the normal shots of concerned extras, this features a plane full of cute, happy, multinational travellers animated in a briezy style. It even begins with a Save The Cat[™] moment, when the central stewardess character picks up a floppy piglet dropped by a kid.

American Airlines’ uses the style where every line is said by a different member of staff much beloved by appeal ads and has the added benefit of showing that American Airlines is an equal opportunity employer and their employees are very happy.

My seat on the BA flights had a mechanical fault so that it slowly reclined imperceptibly. I only noticed when the steward, who looked more like an old-school club comedian than a steward, told me to put my seat back up prior to take off. It might have been the reason the urchin behind me kept kicking my seat right in the small of the back. Had he a little bit of rhythm and pacing, it could have been quite theraputic, but the kid had no talent in that direction. And the kicking is not so hard that there is any chance the kid might grow up to become a footballer or nightclub bouncer. No, the kid just had persistence but no discernable talent. [Insert your own jobbist or celebrity-specific punchline here.]

The BA flight had only stewards. I’d never been on an all-male crewed flight before. It felt unexpectedly weird like an insight into an alternate universe. It’s nearly always mixed these days.

“Breakfast,” as the stewards called it, was a croissant shaped bun indecently forced apart by slices of cheese and ham, and one of those tubs of orange juice you only ever see on planes. On a flight this short, they barely have time to throw the food at you and then wrench the remnants from your bony grasp.

Heathrow at 9 am is the total opposite of Schiphol at 7 am. It’s so full of people that if you swung a cat, you’d hit a dozen people at least. We didn’t have a cat, so it was only a thought experiment, like Schrodinger’s Swinging Cat. Which states that you don’t know how many people a swung cat would hit until you swing the cat. Schrodinger’s many thought experiments are all tough on cats. He’s my favourite scientist.

Forbidden Planet (1956)

I've just finished rewatching Forbidden Planet, a big-budget sci-fi adventure movie from 1956. It’s a bit of a departure for me because my favourite genre is in fact low-budget sci-fi adventure movies from that era. But there are plenty of reasons to watch this movie even though it is dated. In fact it being dated is tied up in nearly all of the reasons to watch it. It’s a very 1950s view of the future. I’m so used to watching movies from that era with terrible or no special effects that it’s always surprising to see one from that era with pretty darn good special effects. For the time.

Reasons to watch:

1. A very young Leslie Nielsen. 
2. It’s basically The Tempest with a planet instead of an island. 
3. Because it was made in 1950s, the technology is very mechanical and everything needs cables. 
4. Because it was made in 1950s, the crew consists of only white men. 
5. Because it was made in 1950s, the only woman for 16 light years is wearing a miniskirt. 
6. Because it was made in 1950s, people are amazed at a very clumsy, mechanical robot. 
7. Because it was made in 1950s, people think that men will land on the moon at the end of the 21st century, rather than 15 years later. 

8. The monster looks like an early draft of the Tasmanian Devil.
9. Did I mention a very young Leslie Nielsen?

Actually, despite the things that clearly date it, it is a good, well told story. No doubt due in part to it being penned by one William Shakespeare. And the story in this futuristic setting remains very plausible, even though the 1950s realisation of it is very much fixed in the 1950s. In this respect, this is not a movie to watch to see 150 years into the future, but to see 50 years into the past.

Friends who know friends who know friends

I recently reached 500 friends on facebook. Which is quite amazing because in real life I only really know 12 people. This is why social media is, ironically, great for the social mediocre. Facebook really is the Jesus of friends. Bring your few meagre scraps of people you haven't alienated through thinking before joking or expressing your extremist views on cats and facebook-jesus will turn them into a multitude. You can befriend the five thousand.

Even I with my brag-worthy half-a-grand of friends, stull suffer from the feeling that I have fewer friends than most of my other friends. Although suffer is a strong word. I actually think the 12 people I really do know is quite a lot of responsibility. But I do have the sense that everyone else knows more people. And that is probably true according to this article in the New York Times...

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/friends-you-can-count-on/

What this article basically says is that feelings of inadequacy are just an anomaly of statistics. And that's not just on facebook, but in other areas too. Buck up, stop feeling sorry for yourself, it's all just a statistical illusion. And in fact, statistics has just proved you are way superior than most other people. Very few people indeed have actually made it to the end of this blog post.

I Ain't Superstitious*. (* - restrictions apply)

I am not superstitious; I’d like to make that clear. I will happily walk on the cracks in the pavement. I would be fine living on the 13th floor. I have no problem walking under a ladder – unless, of course, someone is up there painting, in which case you’d be an idiot to walk under a ladder.

I’ve always thought of myself to be far too intelligent or worldly or whatever you want to call it for superstitions. This is what I thought.

The moment I realised I wasn’t too intelligent or worldly or whatever you want to call it happened on a long flight to Singapore. I was writing, which is what I liked to do on planes back then. This was during that time shortly before planes gave everyone their own video screens – or, if you were lucky enough to get on a plane where everyone had their own video screen, more often than not the system stopped working 2 minutes into the flight. So to pass the time, I’d write, or read or stare jealously at all those people who were able to sleep.

So in the middle of this flight, I’m writing – about flying as it happens: inspiration for me is always very close at hand. Very close. So I was writing about flying and possible things that can happen to a flight and I came to a point in the sentence where I had to write the word “crash.” And I found I couldn’t write it. I simply couldn’t. It felt wrong. It felt like writing it would somehow jinx the flight and make it more likely it to... that word. It’s clearly ridiculous and is exactly the sort of woolly-headed thinking that I would mock regularly. But here I was, an intelligent or worldly or whatever you want to call it guy, doing exactly that very thing that I’d been mocking. It was weird to realise I could be like that.

I spent the rest of the flight writing about superstition – such are the mysteries of inspiration – and only once the flight had landed, taxied and come to a complete stop could I go back a few pages and fill in the small blank with the word “crash.”

From that point on, I was on the look out for any other superstitions I might have. I observed myself closely for signs of other similar behaviour. But this seemed to be my only one. If I spilled salt, I didn’t throw it over my shoulder, if I did anything I would brush it on the floor. Black cats could walk in front of me if they liked, I didn’t care. If they get too close, I might kick them, but that’s not for luck, that’s just how I feel about cats.

I was really pleased to find out I only had this one superstition. This one tiny bit of craziness or naivety or whatever you want to call it.

And even that has now gone. I found myself on a plane recently reading Macbeth, that most superstitious of plays. And I realised if I can read this play in a flying plane, why can’t I write the word “crash”, so I got out my pen and on the top corner of the page I wrote the word “crash.” And for the next 20 seconds, I sat there in utter dread. Because if that plane had started falling out of the sky right then, I would have been screaming – not because I was going to die, but because everything I had ever believed about the way the universe worked would have been utterly wrong.

As you can guess, nothing happened. I mean, a baby cried, four people sneezed and someone called for the stewardess instead of turning on the light, but nothing unusual for a flight. I was cured. I went back to reading Macbeth. I even said the name out loud. “Macbeth.” Wrote the word “crash” a few more times. Nothing.

I was cured of my one single superstition. I should have been happy, because now I was 100% sane or worldly or whatever you want to call it

But I wasn’t. It was like I’d taken a step away from being human; like I was slightly less interesting.

And then, I thought, “surely ‘believing that being illogical is what makes you interesting’ is a form of superstition.” And I told myself, “Yes it is.” And I was imperfect and interesting again; and always will be. Touch wood.

Viva Foreboder: How the end of the world continually fails to spoil Christmas

I, like many of you, was bitterly disappointed that the world didn’t end on 21st December 2012 as the Mayans would have had us believe. I was mostly disappointed because it meant now I still have to go through Christmas. I’m not a big Christmas person. Three things I hate very much in this world are shopping; songs that are relentlessly happy; and anything that twinkles. Christmas is clearly not for me.

Mayan calendar taken with an Aztec camera

But we’re not out of the woods yet, in terms of world destruction. Because not only did the Mayan calendar run out this week, but my Spice Girls calendar runs out on 31st December 2012. One of these has to be correct. They can’t both be wrong. So if it is not the mighty wisdom of the Mayans that prevails here, it must fall to the collective acumen of the Spice Girls to predict the end of the world. After all, does not the Bible refer to the great prophecy of the “five girls of spice?” (Quick check. No, it doesn’t seem to. Maybe it was the King James edition.)

I love that whenever it’s the end of the world, people always stock up on two things: Food and ammunition. Neither of which is going to be any use. It’s the end of the world! You’re not going to be saved from the total destruction of everything just because you have 20 extra tins of oxtail soup in the cupboard.

The Four Horsemen as prophesised in The Brick Bible
(thebrickbible.com)

And you can’t shoot the four horsemen of the apocalypse. They’re powerful, skeletal and mythological. Believe me, if there is a quartet you don’t want to piss off, it’s the four horsemen of the apocalypse. They are called Famine, War, Death and Pestilence. They ain’t going to take being shot at too lightly. Famine, War, Death and Pestilence. Four powerful, spectral figures whose sole purpose is to lay waste the land astride their mighty steeds, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen. (I might be mixing my myths a little here.)

As for me and Christmas, with the help of e-commerce, an ipod and special polarised glasses that reduce twinkles to a slow pulsating, I am ready to face it. And once that’s done, I can prepare myself for the next end of the world. So for all of you out there, have a bearable Christmas and, if the Spice Girls turn out to be as reliable as the Mayans, Nostradamus, Harold Camping, Jehovah's Witnesses, Sun Myung Moon, Pat Robertson, Pope Sylvester II, William Miller, Sabbatai Zevi, Yearolopolies 2K and all the others who have disappointed me, I wish you a wonderful 2013.

Lego What!?!

Lego have long since realised that the market for their products is broad and diverse, but nothing highlights this more for me than this...

The Lego Town Hall.

It's absolutely clear that no kid in his right mind is going to want to build a town hall. No way. Even for anyone under 57 this is going to be an odd choice unless they are a small-time evil genius with designs on town-domination. The only vaguely cool circumstance to buy and build a Lego town hall is if you have a huge aquarium and are recreating a post-environmental disaster scene. In fact the only people I really see as buying this are robbers who are planning a heist on a building that looks just like this. So I can only assume this is all part of a police sting operation, and people who buy it are automatically followed and suspected of criminal intent. If they have a huge aquarium, they can be assumed to be innocent, but anyone else is either a well-prepared robber or a low-achieving evil genius.

My only flaw in the plan is that any criminal planning a heist or take-over of a city district after an environmental apocalypse will fall through the net and will be free to carry out their dastardly scheme once civilisation as we know it has been all but destroyed. I fear for our future, sub-aquatic children

"Soft-watt light through yonder window breaks"

The Huffy Fluffy Morning Club

The common wisdom is that pets calm you down. People are always throwing pat phrases at me to that effect. Or they throw the scientific equivalent of pat phrases at me, statistics. I don't deny that the majority of people who have pets are calmed by their presence, charmed by their actions and generally enraptured by the fact that this little furry bundle loves them like they were its own little mummikins.

However, statistics is a two way street. As readers of British tabloids know (although the papers themselves do not seem to) for every study showing X is bad for you it is only a matter of time before a study appears showing that X is good for you. (It's called Dacre's Mirror in newspaper circles, I believe.) Thus I am sure I can dig up statistics demonstrating the following:

People in a state somewhat akin to sleep, when greeted every morning by constant, bad-tempered whines and attempts to block their every step by something fat demanding to be made even fatter, find their levels of calm are shown to drop sharply.

I'm not saying that I never find the cats charming, or even on occasion (when it's their wish to be stroked) calming. (Although it is patently clear their love is at best that which you might have for an occasionally conscientious servant.) But for me the key moment of every day is when I awake. The hopes of the whole day are forming in my clouded mind. The whole mood and outlook of the next segment of daylight is created by the first few events between emerging from the sanctity of bed to that first taste of the brew of life. Were I to be wafted from my bedroom, held aloft by a set of adoring felines and carried to my study and a waiting mug of steaming coffee, then the cats could be said to have a truly calming effect.

But instead I get a chorus of ill-tempered mews berating me for spending all those hours sleeping when I should have been shovelling chicken-flavoured globules in their beaks. I get petulant demands to head down and replenish their bowls with poultry-based kibbles whilst at the same time, the same cats stand directly in front of my feet making any serious attempt to head anywhere almost impossible. It makes me wonder if they are simply without concept of cause and effect or whether they are deliberately out to annoy me.

Somehow they don't seem to mind that their breakfast is thrown in their bowls in the most begrudging fashion. And I shouldn't be so begrudging, really. Because that moment after the food is down and the coffee machine is preparing to do it's Jesus trick of turning water and a bag into coffee – when the only sounds are a few late morning birds asking around where the worms are, the gentle rumble of the Jesus machine warming up and the restful "nom nom" of God's creatures stuffing their furry faces – that moment is the calmest point of the day. Thank you for making me appreciate it, cats. Thank you. Who loves their daddikins?

Food for String Programme

As many of you know, Professor Gray and I live with two creatures of the genus Felis catus. The functions of these creatures are to act as a crude alarm clock, to cover everything in the house with a thin layer of hair and for scientific observation.

Cath and I both have very different disciplines. I am in charge of noting the negative characteristics of the subjects: such as, the frequency and irritation of pitch of their whining; their tendency to believe they are ankle bracelets; and their inability to learn practical lessons from many of their escapades. Professor Gray is in charge of exaggerating their learning and cognitive skills.

Even before our chubby little subjects went on their diets, the overriding concern in their lives was food. Whilst this is true of many animals who, in the wild, don't know where their next meal is coming from, for animals that have never known the wild, rarely go out and are fed pretty damn regularly, this should not be a worry. Yet, Borneo (the male subject) spends his entire waking life whining that he doesn't have food in his bowl. Obviously he does have food in his bowl quite frequently, but it's only ever there for a few seconds before he wolfs it down. This brief period does at least afford the briefest gap in his whining. Borneo has an eating problem.

One of other joys in a cat's life is the stalking, wrestling and torturing of such prey as twine, thread and lengths of string. This of course is also related to food. In the wild, these bits of string would be mice, birds and adorable, little baby rabbits with big eyes and a delightful curiosity. But even cats know that the nutritional value of a bit of string is somewhat below wood shavings and hair (although Borneo does eat a lot of the latter). However the process is so closely linked with the getting of food, even for a cat that has never caught anything bigger than a moth in is life, that once the string has been caught, very often Borneo will drag it down to the kitchen and drop it in his bowl. Because all he knows about food is that this is where it appears.

Professor Gray has hypothesised that this shows rudimentary understanding of currency. Which I guess could be true. But it's more likely he's either treating this as a gift (more able cats often give their owners gifts of disembowelled mice or the badly-chewed heads of adorable, little baby rabbits with big eyes and a delightful curiosity); or that he is using some rudimentary logic along the lines of:

things caught = food;
food lives in bowl;
therefore anything put in the bowl will become food.
(Reductio ad felinus)

It's possible that some dropping of caught string in the bowl has been seemingly rewarded with real food, which may have reinforced this behaviour.

However with true scientific rigour, we do need to prove or disprove the currency theory. Therefore I am creating a whole system of different-length strings that equate to different amounts of food, along with an exchange rate (linked to stock market prices) between the string and other currencies (little squashy balls, catnip mice and shoe laces). So the cat will be paid unemployment benefit of three balls a week and an obesity allowance of one catnip mouse, plus whatever string he's able to hunt, as long as it's under the string-hunting quota of 15 pieces of string a week. Once he's got the hang of this, we'll starting introducing hunting levies and taxation, plus we may have to investigate possible unemployment benefit fraud as hunting could be considered an occupation. Once he has mastered these complications, it's time to make him CEO (or perhaps Main Executive Operating Worker) of his own corporation and see how long it lasts. Although the problem I foresee is that his first role as CEO will almost certainly be to reward himself a huge food bonus.

Who said cats were stupid? Oh, yeah, I did.

Travel: 2/6/09 – Tuesday, must be Seattle

Due to time travel, I woke up at 6:20 am. I sat on the balcony over the sea and listened to the roar of the city. Like many big cities, Seattle has a background roar of traffic and... well, just traffic really. I observed a pair of seagulls clamour around the tin roof just below our balcony. One had an odd tendency to stand on one leg. In fact, for the first 15 minutes I thought he only had one leg. Every now and again one or the other would fly off or disappear under next door's balcony. They didn't even know or care that I existed.

Ships came in and out the harbour. I watched the steady progress of a huge container ship laden down with containers bearing the name Hyundai.

At shortly before nine we grabbed some coffee from the conference breakfast area, and I attended one of the sessions available to anybody (only Cath had paid up, I was a conference husband for the next few days; Free to play golf and have tea with other conference husbands, of which there seemed to be none).

During the late morning, I wandered through the maze of Pike Place Market and then topped up my caffeine level at a branch of Seattle's Best Coffee. It's pretty good, but I'm not sure it's the best.

After that, I wandered around some more; joined Greenpeas; bought an ironic hat and some bubblegum cigarettes; and visited the bubblegum wall. I don't normally do so many bubblegum related things in one day, but when in Rome... The latter is a wall outside an improv theatre which has lots of bubblegum squashed into it. It's a local attraction and somewhat artistic and somewhat gross at the same time. Back at Pike Place Market, I finally got to see some fish being thrown. It's apparently one of the things that you must see and there are often tourists hanging about the same corner waiting for a new fish to emerge.

For dinner we had Vietnamese and were happy to see that some places do serve more normal American portions. Nouvelle cuisine isn't very American, being French and hard to spell. And small in size.

In a random drugstore, we found another of those American products that make you shake your head in wonder. This month it was Identigene – home DNA test kit. "for mother, child and alleged father." It's not really a home testing kit. It's a kit for taking the necessary swabs and an envelope to send them to the lab. It does not include the $119+ for the actual test.

Down one of the narrow alleys between buildings, we caught sight of a scampering. And sure enough, as large as life and twice as smart, was a rat. We pretty much saw a rat every day after that. Seattle is all about coffee, rain, rats, fish, tattoos and totem poles. Not necessarily in that order. Somehow grunge got dropped off the list.

On the way back, we had to wait for a huge long train heading from the harbour area out of town. It was loaded with Hyundai containers. I guess they'd finished unloading the boat I'd seen that morning.

Luxury hotel it may be, but either the walls are really thin or the people next door were really loud.

Travel: 1/6/09 pt2 – Somewhere above the Atlantic

Airlines still have not taken on board my idea of having a separate section for families with children, or making the children travel in the hold with pets. After all, smoking is banned and second-hand smoke doesn't shorten your life like having to deal with screaming kids does.

At the front of our section was a kid with a misshapen head who screamed even before the plane even took off. You can imagine how he was when the plane left the ground and the pressure swelled the air in his odd little ears to painful levels.

The choice of food on flights these days seems always to be "chicken or pasta." Which is an annoying choice. I mean, "how is the chicken prepared?" and "what's in the pasta?" Perhaps there really is no choice, just chicken pasta? It's like asking "4x4 or Hyundai?" or "White or electrical appliance?" Crazy. Anyway they ran out of chicken two people before me, so there was no need to choose.

Cath always avoids all this by playing the "lactose intolerant" card. I must admit "lactose intolerance" always makes me think of some old geezer sitting in a bar saying, "Ah, these lactoses, coming here and flooding our cornflakes! Why can't they go back to cowland?" Idiot! Everyone knows it's Cowtania.

After food, the crew announced the availability of "doody-free" items, implying both the chicken and the pasta contained "doody."

After this, there were the compulsory entertainment system problems. In my experience of long-haul flying, there is always one entertainment system problem per flight. This time it was an entire entertainment system failure. You never want to hear the word "failure" announced over the aircraft PA system, but that was exactly what happened. You just hoped and prayed they reset the right box or that the entertainment system wasn't directly linked to the flight control system. Liberal use of the word "failure" over an aircraft PA system is exactly the sort of thing to make your underpants entirely not "doody-free."

Travel: 1/6/09 pt1 – Schiphol airport, Netherlands

"Anywhere I go, a fly girl will please me," NWA

Having checked in online, we didn't have to queue up at the check-in desk at the airport. However, as we had bags to check, we had to perform a queue up at the baggage-drop desk. The baggage-drop desk is a check-in desk relabelled "baggage-drop desk" at which you queue in exactly the same manner as you did when it was a check-in desk.

We were checked in, sorry: our baggage was dropped by Mevrouw Room (or Mrs Cream, which is clearly a name from some novel). After this we went through the security check, which is still called the same thing, but is now a much longer process.

Since shoes have been thrown at the last US president and belts have killed several actors and rock stars in hotel rooms, both are now considered deadly weapons and must be x-rayed. I am dreading the day terrorists hijack a plane by strangling the pilot with a pair of underpants. In fact in the 1974 sexploitation classic Deadly Weapons, I'm pretty sure Chesty Morgan kills a man with her enormous boobs. If the FAA in the US ever see this movie, I expect that boobs over a certain size will have to be kept in a resealable plastic bra.



After the regular security comes the extra travelling-to-the-US security, which employs the same travelling-to-Israel security techniques of X-raying things a second time and asking a lot of questions. They don't really listen to the answers, I've notices, but, I guess, to your nervousness in answering.

NWA is currently undergoing an identity crisis and can't decide whether it's called NWA or Delta. I think it should call itself something even more hip-hop like NWA vs Delta Posse featuring The KLM Crew.

The plane was from NWA, but the safety rigmarole (video) was from Delta. I hadn't seen Delta's safety rigmarole before; it's cute. In it a chirpy actress with an LA smile perkily tells you all the ways to avoid death. Or at least things to help you feel you can avoid it. It doesn’t help fill you with confidence when your ticket says, Destination: SEA. I preferred my first ever long-haul ticket that proudly proclaimed, Destination: SIN.

Travel 29/3/09 – Relatives & Music: Dallas, Texas

Church of the day: St. Peter's Vietnamese Catholic Church.

Not many people realise St. Peter (or San Pi Ta) was Vietnamese. In fact only a handful are even aware there were Vietnamese Jews in Israel in and around 0 AD/BC. What we do all know is that AD/BC was the rock band that Peter fronted. It's not mentioned much, but when Jesus said, "Peter, you are my rock," he actually screamed it out from the front row of the Jerusalem Amphitheatre (now the Cellcom Arena).

First port of call for today was a pleasant, well-run nursing home currently housing one of Catherine's relatives. It's usually hard not to be depressed around nursing homes, but this place does almost everything to make itself seem like a hotel. Except that most of the staff dress like nurses. Mind you, many people would pay very good money to stay in a hotel where the staff dress like nurses.

Lunch was ambushed at Spring Creek Barbeque. Here there were several options for getting your food. You could shuffle along the canteen-style line to pick out what you wanted; or you could stand at a desk and request it for take-away from the smiley lady. There was also an extra stand selling "cobblers." Cobblers are a kind of filled dumpling. If you're British, never has "carry-out" food been so "Carry On."

In-restaurant music was provided by a CD of Christian rock. For those of you who don't know Christian rock, this was a highly typical example. It was bland, country-tinged AOR (Adult-Orientated Rock) with choruses of the sort that go, "Jesus is alive!" with a portion of the gusto that other bands use when celebrating women who "shake." No matter what your views on religion, it's safe to assume Jesus deserves better than Christian rock. Most bands are very pale imitations indeed of the legendary AD/BC.

The middle of the day was devoted to golf, the gentleman of sports. The only sport that comes with its own special buggy (except, of course, buggy racing) and where you have the chance to see bobcats (except, perhaps, bobcat buggy chasing). I was very pleased with how it all turned out. My previous experience with golf had been limited to knocking balls about as a way to get out of more physical sports at school and a couple of practice rounds over the years. But I still remembered how to swing that stick and thwack that ball in roughly the right direction and for a reasonable percentage of the distance required. Not quite Tiger Woods, but perhaps Pussycat Bracken.

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If TV ads are to be taken as showing what Americans think they need, then the answer is: cars and medication. In fact the number of car ads is down since the auto industry rolled over the side of a cliff and burst into flames. Of the medications, very popular seem to be Viagra and "Cialis," which I only know about from my email box.

The best thing about the ads for medication (including Viagra, Cialis and the like) is that so much time goes towards (a) making sure you check with your doctor first; (b) warning you about possible side effects; and (c) making sure if anything unusual occurs, you go to your doctor. More time is spent warning you about the product than is spent trying to sell it.

America has come a long way and I never thought I'd hear the words "erectile dysfunction" in the middle of the day on a US TV station. Not that I really wanted to. The "erectile dysfunction" ads show a lot of men older than 30 sitting on sofas with women and talking. And thus by implication, not having sex. In fact, had the announcer not said the words "erectile dysfunction" you wouldn't have guessed he was hoping for sex, except for the fact he was a man alone with a woman. There is nothing suggestive of the situation except a mild sadness in the couple's eyes. In Italy, no doubt they have a cartoon penis to advertise these products who starts of flaccid and out of breath. In the US, this would cause heart attacks and riots on the street. My campaign for Viagra would be hosted by former cartoon dog, Droopy. He would be perfect for the role. There's almost certainly a cartoon where he drank growth serum.

Dinner was had at Chedders a chain of restaurants that are pleasantly decorated but frequented by noisy people. The food is the usual sweet, salty fare. Even the carrots were sweetened, which is a crime against humanity. Or at least against veganity, which I'm sure is nearly as bad. They had music in the background and, guess what, Chedders plays pop. (You have to be British and over 30 to appreciate that joke.)

In the evening we visited Cath's spirited Aunt Vora, who lives in one of those neighbourhoods with faux-wooden bungalows on each plot.

I was told not to walk on the grass because of things called chiggers. Chiggers are local-grown little critters that live in the grass but prefer skin. They cause itching and rashes and things like that. Nobody seemed to have a good word for them. There ought to be a joke about the sort of music they play, perhaps only suitable for Brits over 30, but I can't think of what it would be.

On the subject of music, I'll leave you with a tune that was following us around on the radio waves this trip. It's something like New Wave Electro English Beat Queen Gary Numan Pink Floyd. Ladies I give you Late of the Pier with Bathroom Gurgle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYuwGGqd0y4

PS Of course, right at the end should come the set-up for both the jokes in this entry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4TmQxLjELI Glorious!

Travel 25/3/09 (3) – In the air over the Atlantic

Coping with long-haul flights is different for each person. Catherine can often manage to sleep on planes, especially in her ear-plugs, eye-mask and mind-shield. I can rarely it. Even with less than four hours sleep under my lids I still was not able to drop off on the plane. Two large coffees didn't help matters. But then being stuck on a plane is a good chance to catch up on the three W's: watching, writing and reading.

Out of curiosity, and the fact I've watched all the others, I took in Quarter of Sausages (also know as The Bond Conspiracy). In it, Jason Bond moods and broods through a succession of killings frequently juxtaposed with similarly dramatic performances (operas, fiestas and other fights). Bonds are a lot more psychological these days and villains no longer want to take over and/or destroy the world. In Question of Sportsnight, the secret organisation (excitingly more spectre-like than Spectre ever was) wants to get in on the lucrative game of utilities management. Anyone who didn't already think that water providers were more evil than al Qaida of Saudiarabia can feel a Quantum of Smugness.

In all, Quest for Seweragerights is enjoyable and somehow gritty yet over the top at the same time. Three Roger Moores out of 5.

Sitting in a plane, you can't help but get a glance of other people's screens. These, half-glimpsed images (always from the same small subset of films) often get merged in the mind and you wonder how you missed the subplots in the film you saw about the street kids in India and escaped cartoon zoo animals. Personally, I think this would have made a much better film (worthy of 4 or even 5 Roger Moores) and would be called Quantum of Slumdog Madagascar.

The second film I watched was Suspect X, a Japanese cop drama starring your favourites: Masaharu Fukuyama, Matsuyuki Yasuko and Tsutsumi Shinichi. A repressed yet somewhat tense story where emotions are kept in except for the odd crime of passion or vent. In the end, love wins over science although this being a Japanese film not in a happy singing-dancing way but in an "everyone's doomed to a life of depression" sort of way. Two Masaharu Fukuyamas out of 5.

Sometime during the films, the cabin crew offered "doody free" items. Implying everything else they offered so far had been filled with faeces.

Travel 25/3/09 (1) – Amsterdam

It has not been unknown for me to help KLM out with training their support staff to deal with angry customers, so it actually felt weird to call them several times in one day as a genuinely irritated customer. I was sorely temped to get really angry just to see if they'd learnt everything. But in the end I was too nice to get anything more than miffed.

I was calling because my names appeared to have been stuck together and wanted to check that this was okay. The girl said that because the US authorities were such sticklers for accuracy (even though highly organised terrorists are far more likely to get things like that right than the average Joa) it was best to get it changed.
• Plus side: they could easily have this done for me.
• Minus side: a change like this (adding a space as far as I was aware) takes several hours.
• Extra Minus side: we could not check in online until it was done.

So we waited. Some time shortly before 4pm, a new e-ticket was issued.
• Plus side: a change had been made
• Minus side: It was even odder than before, with the Mr put in an odd place.
• Plus side: the (or another) girl confirmed this would be okay,
• Minus side: we now could not check in.

Although our ticket said "this is an e-ticket," and the My Tickets area listed it as an e-ticket, when we tried to check in online it gave us an error message, "This ain't no e-ticket, motherf***er." Or something to that effect. The (or another) girl tried to help, but clearly something had got messed up during the change. Computer records are annoyingly like vinyl, very easily damaged. The airline support fall-back was soon the only option – check in at the airport.

So with only 4½ hours sleep under our lids, we arrived at the airport at 7:30, dreading being given the worst seats on the plane. (The worst seats are usually those right at the back where they do not recline but the ones in front of you recline fully. Although once on an internal flight in China I and a colleague were allocated seats that didn't exist as they had been taken out to make the exit.) As things turned out, we had fine seats and check-in was relatively smooth except I couldn't be checked in onto our connecting flight; we had to do that once we arrived at our stopover.

As we waited in the long line for stuffy security staff to ask about our stuff, we watched the silent TV screens. It's intriguing to see what they show to people in airports. Most airports show you rolling news channels, but sometimes Schiphol likes to be different. Today they were showing curling.

Curling is possibly the world's worst sport. Yet somehow strangely compelling – like an incomprehensible foreign ritual. But as a sport it is, as I believe president Obama would put it, retarded.

Before you complain:

"Retarded, adj: Physics. Designating parameters of an electromagnetic field which allow for the finite speed of wave propagation, so that the potential due to a distant source is expressed in terms of the state of the source at some time in the past" (New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary).

If you don't know, curling is a kind of bowls meets lavatory cleaning on ice. One person bowls a large, solid blob along an ice strip towards a painted target. After this two enthusiastic moppers take over and clean the path (in front of) of the ball with brushes. As Newton's 4th law of Subthermal Dynamics states:

"The cleanliness of the ice is in direct proportion to the maximum speed attainable by an object travelling along that ice." (Old Longer Cambridge English Dictionary)

My main problem with it is that in other sports, the ball is what you use to play; in curling, the sweepers speed along preparing the way for the ball. They are the ball's bitches. The skill involved is the skill of being able to sweep really fast whilst skating. I agree not an easy skill, but at the same time not a useful, elegant, empowering, practical, cool, or indeed desirable skill. Participation has the result of making yourself less important than a large, solid blob of who-knows-what. It's a hard sport to play and keep any form of self respect.