According to a news report I read this week, the BBC have received ‘dozens’ of complaints because they showed too much rugby last Saturday.
We live in the modern, digital age and, despite scaremongering reports that half the population don’t know about the digital changeover or what to do when terrestrial signals get switched off, the majority of households these days have either a Freeview box, a Sky Digital box, or some form of digital service provided by a cable supplier.
Which makes me wonder why 124 people felt it necessary to complain about the amount of rugby shown last Saturday when it would have been easier and quicker to just turn the channel over? Or, failing that, turn the damned TV off in the first place. Even those households without a digital service have at least three, if not four, other channels to choose from.
I often tell my wife to be grateful that my favourite sport, Formula One, is only shown for two hours every other Sunday, for only half the year. The worst that might happen, on one or two occasions in the season, is that some old dear might have to wait an extra half an hour to watch Coronation Street. Compare that to the amount of football that is shown on television – not to mention the disruption to regular broadcasting it causes – and it’s not a lot, really. If England had managed to qualify for this year’s Euro 2008 competition, television would be absolutely dominated by football this summer and I seriously doubt we’d have had so many complaints about that. As it is, there’ll probably still be a fair amount of the football shown anyway which, combined with the Beijing Olympics, will make up an awful lot of sport. All of which will be shown on terrestrial television.
The Six Nations is an important tournament in rugby and the occurrence of all three matches taking place on the same day, being broadcast by one channel, is rare. The fact that an average of fifteen million viewers tuned in to watch the sport simply justifies that far more people were interested in it than the ten dozen or so who felt it better to write a letter of complaint than simply turn the channel over.
What bothers me about all of this is that somebody has had the craving to complain about ten hours of sport being shown on the telly, yet probably wouldn’t even consider writing a single sentence about the glut of reality TV that is shown day in and day out. These days our televisions are literally full, hour-after-hour, of cheaply made tosh, all for our voyeuristic entertainment; watching the rugby, for me, has been a welcome break from it all.
If you still think that there was too much rugby on telly last weekend, why not compare it to that epitome of real-life drama that the BBC broadcast: EastEnders. Not only is it shown just about every day of every week but, in case you missed it, the whole week is repeated – in full! – in an omnibus every Sunday afternoon. That, I’m afraid, is too much for me.
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Thursday, 28 February 2008
Earth Rumbles Slighlty; Chimney Pot Falls Off (Part 2)
With all the news on TV lately about the extreme weather conditions affecting the East Coast of the US, the mud slides in the Middle East and South America, along with the dire predictions made by such films as The Day After Tomorrow, we shouldn’t forget that Britain has its share of devastating too.
I’ve attached a photo illustrating the damage caused to a friend’s home from the earthquake that hit Lincolnshire last night.
It really makes you cherish what you have, and reminds us not to take things for granted.
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
Earth Rumbles Slightly; Chimney Pot Falls Off
Being woken up at one o’clock in the morning isn’t amusing, unless it’s for your wife to do something very nice to you. It’s even less amusing when it’s the second time in less than half an hour that she’s done it, and there isn’t so much as a spot of fellatio in sight.
At 12:30 this morning, Ali fell in to a slumber deep enough to rival that of Morpheus and, in doing so, dropped the book she was reading on to the floor, where it landed on her mobile phone. The contact resulted in her phone dialling mine, which was in my jeans trouser pocket the other side of the room. Hearing the phone ring at that time in the morning is enough to cause anybody to panic and I woke with a startle that took me a little while to settle from once I’d realised what had happened.
Ali’s subsequent snoring, however, rumbled deep to the Earth’s core and, at one o’clock in the morning, she shook me awake again, worried that she’d just heard a door close in the bars beneath us and that somebody might be creeping around in the dark. As the hyper-sensitive burglar alarms – prone to call the police the moment a common housefly buzzes by them – weren’t ringing and given that there was a gale blowing so fiercely outside that the building was groaning like the hull of an old ship, I put the noises down to our aged eighteenth century building moaning and creaking in the dark and went back to sleep.
Turns out this morning, however, that she might actually have heard a bit of an earthquake in action. Not that we put two-and-two together straight away, mind you. My step-father, currently in Houston, Texas, on business had heard about the quake via a US Propaganda News Channel that probably happened to mention in passing that England had sunk to its oblivion, and rang home at four o’clock this morning to check my mum was okay. It was only after a subsequent text conversation with my mother, and whilst watching the dramatic scenes of police putting tape around a building that had lost some roof tiles, that we started to work out what might have happened.
Whilst America might be slightly disappointed to hear that all our houses haven’t fallen down, it seems that last night our country was struck by its most powerful quake in the last quarter century. Earthquakes, as a really crude and rather brief explanation, are caused by the patchwork quilt of tectonic plates which constantly move about beneath the surface of our planet. Big quakes are caused when one plate isn’t looking where it’s going and bumps in to another. Whilst the giant plates argue with each other over insurance details for a little while, havoc can sometimes break out on the surface above, as has been seen in some of the more notorious quakes such as the Boxing Day Sumatra-Andaman quake of 2004, which caused an estimated 230’000 fatalities, or the 1983 Californian quake that left downtown Coalinga ruined.
The subsurface geological activity of the British Isles, however, is as lively as Mo Mowlam’s libido and as a result we have a pretty unexciting – and therefore safe – environment in which to live. That said we do experience about 200 earthquakes a year, although most go unfelt on the surface.
Consequently, such unusual and unexpected quake activity in the UK will undoubtedly prompt the environmentalists to have a little look at the situation and, as usual, by the time all the investigations have been conducted it will probably end up being my fault.
Because Tuesday nights are our one night of the week off we invariably escape from the pub for a bit and go and find things to do that will stop the children from whining and moaning and bleating on about being hungry. Last night, however, we decided that we’d have a good old fashioned night in, feed the children early, play games with them, give them their monthly bath and then send them to bed early. Once this was done, the plan was to crack open a bottle of wine and sit down to watch some back episodes of Ashes to Ashes. In order to enjoy this to the full, however, we decided to order a take-away, and this meant I had to go and pick up a Chinese meal from Newmarket.
To do this meant starting my 4x4 and, as a result – and because we’re being brainwashed by the Daily Mail that all off-roaders are built by Satan – I think I probably sent a seismic shiver up the spine of the country to Market Rasen which, in turn, caused a chimney to fall down in Barnsley.
Nothing at all to do with seismic shifts, tectonic plate movements or, indeed, just the planet doing what it’s done for millions of years, then.
At 12:30 this morning, Ali fell in to a slumber deep enough to rival that of Morpheus and, in doing so, dropped the book she was reading on to the floor, where it landed on her mobile phone. The contact resulted in her phone dialling mine, which was in my jeans trouser pocket the other side of the room. Hearing the phone ring at that time in the morning is enough to cause anybody to panic and I woke with a startle that took me a little while to settle from once I’d realised what had happened.
Ali’s subsequent snoring, however, rumbled deep to the Earth’s core and, at one o’clock in the morning, she shook me awake again, worried that she’d just heard a door close in the bars beneath us and that somebody might be creeping around in the dark. As the hyper-sensitive burglar alarms – prone to call the police the moment a common housefly buzzes by them – weren’t ringing and given that there was a gale blowing so fiercely outside that the building was groaning like the hull of an old ship, I put the noises down to our aged eighteenth century building moaning and creaking in the dark and went back to sleep.
Turns out this morning, however, that she might actually have heard a bit of an earthquake in action. Not that we put two-and-two together straight away, mind you. My step-father, currently in Houston, Texas, on business had heard about the quake via a US Propaganda News Channel that probably happened to mention in passing that England had sunk to its oblivion, and rang home at four o’clock this morning to check my mum was okay. It was only after a subsequent text conversation with my mother, and whilst watching the dramatic scenes of police putting tape around a building that had lost some roof tiles, that we started to work out what might have happened.
Whilst America might be slightly disappointed to hear that all our houses haven’t fallen down, it seems that last night our country was struck by its most powerful quake in the last quarter century. Earthquakes, as a really crude and rather brief explanation, are caused by the patchwork quilt of tectonic plates which constantly move about beneath the surface of our planet. Big quakes are caused when one plate isn’t looking where it’s going and bumps in to another. Whilst the giant plates argue with each other over insurance details for a little while, havoc can sometimes break out on the surface above, as has been seen in some of the more notorious quakes such as the Boxing Day Sumatra-Andaman quake of 2004, which caused an estimated 230’000 fatalities, or the 1983 Californian quake that left downtown Coalinga ruined.
The subsurface geological activity of the British Isles, however, is as lively as Mo Mowlam’s libido and as a result we have a pretty unexciting – and therefore safe – environment in which to live. That said we do experience about 200 earthquakes a year, although most go unfelt on the surface.
Consequently, such unusual and unexpected quake activity in the UK will undoubtedly prompt the environmentalists to have a little look at the situation and, as usual, by the time all the investigations have been conducted it will probably end up being my fault.
Because Tuesday nights are our one night of the week off we invariably escape from the pub for a bit and go and find things to do that will stop the children from whining and moaning and bleating on about being hungry. Last night, however, we decided that we’d have a good old fashioned night in, feed the children early, play games with them, give them their monthly bath and then send them to bed early. Once this was done, the plan was to crack open a bottle of wine and sit down to watch some back episodes of Ashes to Ashes. In order to enjoy this to the full, however, we decided to order a take-away, and this meant I had to go and pick up a Chinese meal from Newmarket.
To do this meant starting my 4x4 and, as a result – and because we’re being brainwashed by the Daily Mail that all off-roaders are built by Satan – I think I probably sent a seismic shiver up the spine of the country to Market Rasen which, in turn, caused a chimney to fall down in Barnsley.
Nothing at all to do with seismic shifts, tectonic plate movements or, indeed, just the planet doing what it’s done for millions of years, then.
--
Sunday, 24 February 2008
A Gobble Too Far
Somebody tell me if I’m wrong, but has Ireland finally lost the plot? Yes, I know, the Irish have always been the butt of some pretty rotten jokes (An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman were sitting in a bar, drinking, and discussing how stupid their wives were. The Englishman says, "I tell you, my wife is so stupid. Last week she went to the supermarket and bought £250 worth of meat because it was on sale, and we don't even have a fridge to keep it in." The Scotsman agrees that she sounds pretty thick, but says his wife is thicker. "Just last week, she went out and spent £17,000 on a new car," he laments, "and she doesn't even know how to drive!" The Irishman nods sagely, and agrees that these two woman sound like they both walked through the stupid forest and got hit by every branch. However, he still thinks his wife is dumber. "Ah, it kills me every toime oi tink of it," he chuckles. "Moy woife just left to go on a holiday in Greece. Oy watched her packing her bag, and she must have put about 100 condoms in there. And she doesn't even have a penis!") but at the end of the day they’re not all that bad.
I quite like the Irish. I love the ladies’ accents, I love the beauty of their countryside, I love their ability to laugh and enjoy themselves and I’m a big fan of Guinness. They have a fairly decent international rugby team and Ireland – sorry, Eire – was the first country in the world to impose an outright ban on smoking in public places, so they’re quite brave and forward thinking too, and throughout the history of the Eurovision Song Contest they’ve notched up a bedpost full of strong performances, winning the contest a record seven times.
It’s this last bit that interests me most, however.
Recently, Ireland has suffered at the hands of the Eurovision as the contest has become more and more geopolitical in its voting process. Neighbouring countries voting for each other rather than for the best song has seen an unprecedented increase in rather rubbish songs doing well from the competition and has resulted in the British having to endure even more of Terry Wogan’s insufferable wit as he tries to make sense of all the incestuous balloting that goes on throughout the evening.
Since the heady days of Johnny Logan, Ireland has had a pretty poor run of success and last year their entry came plumb last, finishing even behind England’s rather cheesy tongue-in-cheek attack on our European neighbours. Scooch’s Flying The Flag For You, which contains such immortally insulting lines as “flying high over Amsterdam”, finished one place ahead of Dervish’s They Can’t Stop The Spring, while Serbia’s Marija Šerifović won in Helsinki last year with Moltiva.
Desperate to stop this dearth of results, Ireland are determined that they are going to do better this year. Which worries me a little bit as, this weekend, they’ve voted Dustin the Turkey – yes, a puppet! – to represent them on stage in Belgrade this year.
Dustin the Turkey is, according to his own biography, Ireland’s foremost entertainer and has been a figurehead of RTE’s show The Den for the past eighteen years. He’s no stranger to music, either, having released six albums and fourteen singles (one of them as a feature on a track with popular puppets Zig and Zag). But that’s kind of like saying Bart Simpson should put an entry in.
One rather thinks that the country is relying on the sympathy vote to help them through this year, but for a country with such a rich history in the Eurovision this gimmick, dubiously titled Irelande Douze Points, strikes me that they might just be plucking at feathers.
I quite like the Irish. I love the ladies’ accents, I love the beauty of their countryside, I love their ability to laugh and enjoy themselves and I’m a big fan of Guinness. They have a fairly decent international rugby team and Ireland – sorry, Eire – was the first country in the world to impose an outright ban on smoking in public places, so they’re quite brave and forward thinking too, and throughout the history of the Eurovision Song Contest they’ve notched up a bedpost full of strong performances, winning the contest a record seven times.
It’s this last bit that interests me most, however.
Recently, Ireland has suffered at the hands of the Eurovision as the contest has become more and more geopolitical in its voting process. Neighbouring countries voting for each other rather than for the best song has seen an unprecedented increase in rather rubbish songs doing well from the competition and has resulted in the British having to endure even more of Terry Wogan’s insufferable wit as he tries to make sense of all the incestuous balloting that goes on throughout the evening.
Since the heady days of Johnny Logan, Ireland has had a pretty poor run of success and last year their entry came plumb last, finishing even behind England’s rather cheesy tongue-in-cheek attack on our European neighbours. Scooch’s Flying The Flag For You, which contains such immortally insulting lines as “flying high over Amsterdam”, finished one place ahead of Dervish’s They Can’t Stop The Spring, while Serbia’s Marija Šerifović won in Helsinki last year with Moltiva.
Desperate to stop this dearth of results, Ireland are determined that they are going to do better this year. Which worries me a little bit as, this weekend, they’ve voted Dustin the Turkey – yes, a puppet! – to represent them on stage in Belgrade this year.
Dustin the Turkey is, according to his own biography, Ireland’s foremost entertainer and has been a figurehead of RTE’s show The Den for the past eighteen years. He’s no stranger to music, either, having released six albums and fourteen singles (one of them as a feature on a track with popular puppets Zig and Zag). But that’s kind of like saying Bart Simpson should put an entry in.
One rather thinks that the country is relying on the sympathy vote to help them through this year, but for a country with such a rich history in the Eurovision this gimmick, dubiously titled Irelande Douze Points, strikes me that they might just be plucking at feathers.
--
View the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYyxhWEHO3w
Find the, ahem, lyrics here: http://drhenkenstein.blogspot.com/2008/02/irlande-douze-points.html
Thursday, 14 February 2008
Oh my, it's Valentine's Day. Again.
It’s that time of year again. You know the one I mean – the one all us men forget more readily than our wedding anniversaries or the birthdays of our children: Valentine’s Day.
Every year, Ali sets about building up her expectations of what I’m going to get her for this inauspicious occasion and, every year, I invariably forget. The day usually goes something like this: Ali wakes up and gazes intently at me, waiting for me to produce the Glaucous Dog Roses picked exclusively from Vladimir Putin’s private rose garden. She’ll then expect to be ‘surprised’ by the night away in London, where we’ll stay in the St. George’s Penthouse Suite at the Westbury Mayfair Hotel after dining at La Noisette on Sloane Street. For supper, she’ll be eagerly awaiting the Chippendales, oiled and naked, to present her with glazed veal sweetbreads on a tray of petunia petals.
The reality is that I usually wake up, fart, pick my nose and then remember, as she presents me with a card, that I was supposed to do something and completely forgot. To redeem myself, I’ll race downstairs, dash into the garden, pick some wilting daisies, pour a steaming cup of tea in a gaudy mug with the words Sex & Chocolate emblazoned on the side and plonk a left over sandwich from last night’s Cribbage match on to a cheap plastic blue tray from the kitchen, all in the hopes that my cheesy attempt at offering her flowers, sex and chocolate, along with breakfast in bed, will be an amusing and unique way of atoning for my absent-minded approach to apparently important romantic occasions.
In response, she’ll simply glare at the makeshift gift, fart, and pull the duvet up over her shoulders in a symbolic gesture that means sex is off the menu until the next holiday created by greeting card companies.
This year, however, is slightly different. For once, I’ve remembered that Valentine’s Day actually exists and, whilst naked striptease artistes, rare flowers and nights of passion on satin bed linen woven by the monks of St Basil the Great might be off the menu for the day, I have at least got her a card and a token gesture present.
Admittedly, whilst I think the card is funny she will undoubtedly find it far too embarrassing to put on the shelf as a public display of my affection, but at least the thought is there and I don’t feel so guilty forgetting about February 14th.
In return, however, she has clearly decided to get her own back for all those years I forgot about St. Valentine’s Day by booking me an appointment with the dentist.
I’ve always said I’d like to enjoy good oral hygiene on Valentine’s Day...
Every year, Ali sets about building up her expectations of what I’m going to get her for this inauspicious occasion and, every year, I invariably forget. The day usually goes something like this: Ali wakes up and gazes intently at me, waiting for me to produce the Glaucous Dog Roses picked exclusively from Vladimir Putin’s private rose garden. She’ll then expect to be ‘surprised’ by the night away in London, where we’ll stay in the St. George’s Penthouse Suite at the Westbury Mayfair Hotel after dining at La Noisette on Sloane Street. For supper, she’ll be eagerly awaiting the Chippendales, oiled and naked, to present her with glazed veal sweetbreads on a tray of petunia petals.
The reality is that I usually wake up, fart, pick my nose and then remember, as she presents me with a card, that I was supposed to do something and completely forgot. To redeem myself, I’ll race downstairs, dash into the garden, pick some wilting daisies, pour a steaming cup of tea in a gaudy mug with the words Sex & Chocolate emblazoned on the side and plonk a left over sandwich from last night’s Cribbage match on to a cheap plastic blue tray from the kitchen, all in the hopes that my cheesy attempt at offering her flowers, sex and chocolate, along with breakfast in bed, will be an amusing and unique way of atoning for my absent-minded approach to apparently important romantic occasions.
In response, she’ll simply glare at the makeshift gift, fart, and pull the duvet up over her shoulders in a symbolic gesture that means sex is off the menu until the next holiday created by greeting card companies.
This year, however, is slightly different. For once, I’ve remembered that Valentine’s Day actually exists and, whilst naked striptease artistes, rare flowers and nights of passion on satin bed linen woven by the monks of St Basil the Great might be off the menu for the day, I have at least got her a card and a token gesture present.
Admittedly, whilst I think the card is funny she will undoubtedly find it far too embarrassing to put on the shelf as a public display of my affection, but at least the thought is there and I don’t feel so guilty forgetting about February 14th.
In return, however, she has clearly decided to get her own back for all those years I forgot about St. Valentine’s Day by booking me an appointment with the dentist.
I’ve always said I’d like to enjoy good oral hygiene on Valentine’s Day...
Sunday, 10 February 2008
Tragic Magic's Day Of Almost No Tragedy. Almost
I’ll make a pact with you: the day nothing goes wrong in this place is the day I’ll sell the pub.
I actually thought that day was going to come yesterday, Saturday 9th February 2008. The day had started so well: a global-warming-enhanced February morning brought bright sunshine and warm temperatures; the children raised themselves from the pits they call beds and managed to make less noise than a gritting lorry stuck on an icy hill; even Ali awoke in a fruity mood, which is to say she rolled over and gave me a kiss before demanding I went and made her a Latte.
The sunny weather meant that Malachy and Jacob could play outside and later it brought copious amounts of customers for a Saturday lunch time sandwich. I enjoyed spending the lunch session chatting with customers who had seen our recent ad, had never been to the pub before, those that had just visited the Snow Drop Day at Chippenham Park, and even a couple who had driven to the area in order to buy a Vizsla hunting dog puppy for £2’000.
Later, when lunch had finished and the pub was a bit quieter, I took the boys down to the local park, which has recently been refitted with new play equipment and to which we are donating a bench for the kiddies to sit and picnic at. The children loved the new equipment and we were there for ages as I chatted with other village residents until it was time to walk back to the pub.
At 5:00 Amy started her shift and the pub was humming gently with a steady throng of customers while France fought back against Ireland in the Six Nations Rugby. I was smiling and happy – perhaps the financially dire winter period was finally over and things could start to look up. Perhaps, I even teased myself, 2008 wasn’t going to be such a dire year after all.
Ali stepped on to the bar behind me and wrapped her arms around me, dragging me back towards her. “Mark,” she whispered seductively in my ear, “the dishwasher is on fire.”
I actually thought that day was going to come yesterday, Saturday 9th February 2008. The day had started so well: a global-warming-enhanced February morning brought bright sunshine and warm temperatures; the children raised themselves from the pits they call beds and managed to make less noise than a gritting lorry stuck on an icy hill; even Ali awoke in a fruity mood, which is to say she rolled over and gave me a kiss before demanding I went and made her a Latte.
The sunny weather meant that Malachy and Jacob could play outside and later it brought copious amounts of customers for a Saturday lunch time sandwich. I enjoyed spending the lunch session chatting with customers who had seen our recent ad, had never been to the pub before, those that had just visited the Snow Drop Day at Chippenham Park, and even a couple who had driven to the area in order to buy a Vizsla hunting dog puppy for £2’000.
Later, when lunch had finished and the pub was a bit quieter, I took the boys down to the local park, which has recently been refitted with new play equipment and to which we are donating a bench for the kiddies to sit and picnic at. The children loved the new equipment and we were there for ages as I chatted with other village residents until it was time to walk back to the pub.
At 5:00 Amy started her shift and the pub was humming gently with a steady throng of customers while France fought back against Ireland in the Six Nations Rugby. I was smiling and happy – perhaps the financially dire winter period was finally over and things could start to look up. Perhaps, I even teased myself, 2008 wasn’t going to be such a dire year after all.
Ali stepped on to the bar behind me and wrapped her arms around me, dragging me back towards her. “Mark,” she whispered seductively in my ear, “the dishwasher is on fire.”
*
It would, of course, be easy to just finish the story there, as I have often done before, but naturally things had been going so well that the balance of equality simply meant I couldn’t do that. With restaurant table bookings for Saturday evening and Sunday lunch time already in place, the prospect of having to hand wash all the crockery appalled all of us and so, after quickly checking to make sure no 999 calls were going to have to be made and customers weren’t going to have to be evacuated, a telephone call was made to Hughes in Newmarket. “What dishwashers do you have in stock that I can take away today?” That was the question, only display models were the answer. “And what time do you shut?”
“In about ten minutes,” came the reply from the girl at Hughes, who was clearly stressed after a long Saturday shift on the High Street and was almost certainly in need of a cigarette.
“Don’t close the doors,” I said, and hung up. Many people think that four-by-four vehicles don’t handle particularly well and are only really good for going across muddy fields or for carrying the small children of wealthy footballers’ wives to their posh schools, but last night my Jeep managed to prove even a sporty BMW driver wrong as I hurtled round the country lanes on two wheels and, amazingly, it hadn’t actually broken down by the time I arrived in Newmarket, where the sales assistant had already decided that if I was going to make her stay at work late then I was going to buy the more expensive of the display models that she had available.
Hoisting the posh Bosch into the boot of the Jeep, I made a call to make sure Slaveboy Adam was drafted in to help me unload when I got back to the pub and, before too long, a new dishwasher was safely ensconced beside the glasswasher.
“Mark,” Amy called from the bar as I started to relax. “The credit card machine isn’t working.” And, for some inexplicable reason, it wasn’t – which is highly frustrating when you have a restaurant full of people all wanting to pay by credit card. After several attempts to resolve the problem and a telephone call to the Streamline Emergency Help Line, which had closed five minutes earlier for the evening, I abandoned hope and dragged out the rather archaic clicky-swipe machine, much to the amusement of some and the frustration of others. It took quite a few attempts to work out how to use the damned machine without breaking my fingers, and Amy refused to use it for fear of damaging a nail, but at least we were able to take credit card payments again.
Which was a bit of a waste of time as, once faced with the prospect of having to use such an old machine, everybody decided to pay with cash.
With the pub still busy but Amy calmly in charge of the bar and Ali equally in control of the kitchen, I headed back to the blue room to admire the new dishwasher.
Which was steadily pumping all of its drainage water out over the floor.
Friday, 8 February 2008
Tragic Magic In Handy Backup Supply Shocker
When I took over the pub I was determined to drag the place kicking and screaming in to the twenty-first century, with an infusion of gadgets and technology that is capable of making a grown boy weep. As such, the pub is now resplendent with a large screen LCD TV, a wireless network and a hard-wired network (for resilience) and even includes a digital music player rather than the old fashioned CD player.
Because of this, I’ve been able to develop a music collection that – whilst not a complete catalogue of every song or music track ever recorded – is quite impressive for a small-time village pub. Jukeboxes tend to cost a lot of money, require an extremely expensive public music license and are often left unused by the customers, which results in a large amount of wasted money and a machine that will occasionally – and very randomly – blast a short rendition of Johnny Nash through the speakers to remind the customers that it exists and would like paying for said existence.
Instead, our digital music player has access to 7’394 tracks that allow those of us behind the bar, at a touch of a button, to select any track from past or present, ranging from Russ Abbot’s Atmosphere to Judy Garland’s Zing Went The Strings Of My Heart, and any random concoction of modern day beat-bop tunes in between.
All of this is powered by an ageing ShuttleX home-built PC that resides in the background and feeds the digital music player across all genres of music but, sadly, in November last year this PC became poorly and the hard-drive started ticking and repeatedly failing to come to life.
Fearing for the safety of my almost 8’000 music tracks and nearly 3’000 private and family photographs all stored on the hard-drive of this machine, I raced to PC World, quickly purchased a Maxtor Personal Storage 3200 external hard-drive to back everything up to, returned home - and then promptly forgot all about it.
This morning, however, when the computer failed for the umpteenth time and then the digital media player said it couldn’t find any music files I decided it was time to take the cellophane off my recently purchased storage device and set about backing up all my precious files.
Gently, I coaxed the ShuttleX pc back to life and checked that the music and photo directories were still okay and then set about plugging in the hard-drive. It’s a rather sleek, grey, rectangular box which plugs in via the USB socket on the computer and can either be laid flat or stands in its specially prepared holder, through which you plug the other end of the USB cable for connection.
Once ready, you can take the power supply cable, which looks like a kettle lead, and try, repeatedly, to plug it in to the hard drive’s power socket. Which is a round pin device that looks absolutely nothing like the power cable that came supplied in the box.
Naturally, it’s three months since I purchased the external hard-drive and I cannot find the receipt.
Because of this, I’ve been able to develop a music collection that – whilst not a complete catalogue of every song or music track ever recorded – is quite impressive for a small-time village pub. Jukeboxes tend to cost a lot of money, require an extremely expensive public music license and are often left unused by the customers, which results in a large amount of wasted money and a machine that will occasionally – and very randomly – blast a short rendition of Johnny Nash through the speakers to remind the customers that it exists and would like paying for said existence.
Instead, our digital music player has access to 7’394 tracks that allow those of us behind the bar, at a touch of a button, to select any track from past or present, ranging from Russ Abbot’s Atmosphere to Judy Garland’s Zing Went The Strings Of My Heart, and any random concoction of modern day beat-bop tunes in between.
All of this is powered by an ageing ShuttleX home-built PC that resides in the background and feeds the digital music player across all genres of music but, sadly, in November last year this PC became poorly and the hard-drive started ticking and repeatedly failing to come to life.
Fearing for the safety of my almost 8’000 music tracks and nearly 3’000 private and family photographs all stored on the hard-drive of this machine, I raced to PC World, quickly purchased a Maxtor Personal Storage 3200 external hard-drive to back everything up to, returned home - and then promptly forgot all about it.
This morning, however, when the computer failed for the umpteenth time and then the digital media player said it couldn’t find any music files I decided it was time to take the cellophane off my recently purchased storage device and set about backing up all my precious files.
Gently, I coaxed the ShuttleX pc back to life and checked that the music and photo directories were still okay and then set about plugging in the hard-drive. It’s a rather sleek, grey, rectangular box which plugs in via the USB socket on the computer and can either be laid flat or stands in its specially prepared holder, through which you plug the other end of the USB cable for connection.
Once ready, you can take the power supply cable, which looks like a kettle lead, and try, repeatedly, to plug it in to the hard drive’s power socket. Which is a round pin device that looks absolutely nothing like the power cable that came supplied in the box.
Naturally, it’s three months since I purchased the external hard-drive and I cannot find the receipt.
Thursday, 7 February 2008
Why is beer making me unhappy??
I’ve noticed a rather worrying trend – beer is actually making me unhappy.
This concerns me on two points: a) my entire business is based on beer and b) I quite like drinking the stuff.
The trouble is this: of late I’ve noticed that beer is sitting heavily on my stomach and making me feel quite lethargic. I’ve tried shifting off beer to wine but that’s leaving me with incredibly bad stomach acid and heartburn. Ordinarily, when I’ve had my fill of beer or wine, I turn to Bacardi and Coke or, if I’m feeling exceptionally showy, I’ll have a Morgan’s Spiced with Coke instead. But even these haven’t been making me feel any better.
So, after a rather heavy session of drinking Stella Artois and Budweiser Budvar following a day at the Bill Gwynne Rally School on Tuesday, I’ve decided to give up alcohol. For a few days, at least.
The aim of the exercise is to see if it helps me feel any better and, although I only started yesterday, I can tell it just isn’t going to work.
You see, yesterday evening turned out to be our busiest day since New Year. As a result, I was rushed off my feet, frustrated with one particular individual and slightly annoyed that everything the people in the restaurant kept ordering the kitchen kept telling me we were out of stock of. It would have been bliss to have enjoyed a nice relaxing alcoholic beverage at the end of it, just to calm myself down but no, instead I enjoyed a steaming hot mug of tea and then took a bottle of water to bed with me.
And this is where all my problems start. I spent most of Wednesday drinking soft drinks, water, orange juice, pineapple juice and steaming mugs of caffeine-laced tea and coffee that meant, by the time I went to bed, my bladder was full.
I peed for what seemed like a good hour before heading to bed, whereupon my bladder told me it needed to go to the toilet again. This happened at 2:03a.m., 3:37a.m., 4:18a.m., and – rather annoyingly – at 6:57a.m. Then the radio alarm clock went off at 7:00 to tell me it was time to get the kids out of bed.
Consequently, with so little sleep, I now feel worse than if I had drank eighteen pints of Guinness and had spent most of the morning swallowing Paracetamol and vomiting in the bathroom.
My dilemma is now this: do I stay off the booze for a few days and allow blood to start coursing through my veins once more, or do I have a pint or two of Heineken and get myself a good night’s sleep?
This concerns me on two points: a) my entire business is based on beer and b) I quite like drinking the stuff.
The trouble is this: of late I’ve noticed that beer is sitting heavily on my stomach and making me feel quite lethargic. I’ve tried shifting off beer to wine but that’s leaving me with incredibly bad stomach acid and heartburn. Ordinarily, when I’ve had my fill of beer or wine, I turn to Bacardi and Coke or, if I’m feeling exceptionally showy, I’ll have a Morgan’s Spiced with Coke instead. But even these haven’t been making me feel any better.
So, after a rather heavy session of drinking Stella Artois and Budweiser Budvar following a day at the Bill Gwynne Rally School on Tuesday, I’ve decided to give up alcohol. For a few days, at least.
The aim of the exercise is to see if it helps me feel any better and, although I only started yesterday, I can tell it just isn’t going to work.
You see, yesterday evening turned out to be our busiest day since New Year. As a result, I was rushed off my feet, frustrated with one particular individual and slightly annoyed that everything the people in the restaurant kept ordering the kitchen kept telling me we were out of stock of. It would have been bliss to have enjoyed a nice relaxing alcoholic beverage at the end of it, just to calm myself down but no, instead I enjoyed a steaming hot mug of tea and then took a bottle of water to bed with me.
And this is where all my problems start. I spent most of Wednesday drinking soft drinks, water, orange juice, pineapple juice and steaming mugs of caffeine-laced tea and coffee that meant, by the time I went to bed, my bladder was full.
I peed for what seemed like a good hour before heading to bed, whereupon my bladder told me it needed to go to the toilet again. This happened at 2:03a.m., 3:37a.m., 4:18a.m., and – rather annoyingly – at 6:57a.m. Then the radio alarm clock went off at 7:00 to tell me it was time to get the kids out of bed.
Consequently, with so little sleep, I now feel worse than if I had drank eighteen pints of Guinness and had spent most of the morning swallowing Paracetamol and vomiting in the bathroom.
My dilemma is now this: do I stay off the booze for a few days and allow blood to start coursing through my veins once more, or do I have a pint or two of Heineken and get myself a good night’s sleep?
Monday, 4 February 2008
Oh my God, I'm scared of Clowns!
According to recent newspaper reports, children don’t like clowns.
Well – and please excuse the profanity here – no shit, Sherlock. Researcher Dr Penny Curtis, from the University of Sheffield, questioned 250 children last month and found that all of them, even the older ones, either didn’t like or were scared of the Circus Ringmaster’s favourite funny men. She probably got paid an awful lot of money to do this research, too.
It would have been cheaper if somebody had popped in to my pub, bought me a pint and asked me the same question. I could have told you that children don’t like clowns – I don’t like clowns either. In case nobody’s noticed, children don’t actually like Mickey Mouse or, amazingly, Father Christmas as well. Sure, they look great on the TV and in children’s books, but have you actually seen the faces on small children standing on Main Street USA when an eight-foot tall mouse with a maniacal grin on his face is approaching them?
Go to any Disney park anywhere in the world and watch what happens. I’d be terrified if I were a four-year old as well. Parents drag their little cherubs into queues to get the autographs of towering Disney characters, their cameras glinting in the sun like Clint Eastwood’s pistol, completely unaware of the terror on their tots’ faces.
It’s the same from October to the other side of Christmas. Shopping centres the length and breadth of England become littered with fairy tale houses where children can visit Santa and demand their Christmas presents. Except, once inside the dark and claustrophobic grotto, they come face-to-face with a huge fat guy with a lot of face hair and burst in to tears, much to the shock of their parents. “Oh bless,” they coo, “he must be tired.” No, he’s just filled his nappy out of fear.
So I find it a touch baffling that some researcher presumably applied for a grant, got it, asked two hundred and fifty kids about clowns and then appeared shocked that they found them a little bit menacing. More people suffer from Coulrophobia than they do Arachnaphobia. Kids’ minds are pretty malleable and these days they watch a lot of telly: in the cartoon Animaniacs two of the main characters suffer severe anxiety around clowns while the hit US show The Simpsons has Krusty the Klown as a primary character depicted as a womanising, chain-smoking, gambling alcoholic whose sidekick is a homicidal maniac. And the fear doesn’t stop when we grow up: horror writers the world over have depicted clowns in varying degrees of murder, most famously Stephen King’s Pennywise clown character from the novel It.
In 2005 my wife had this amazingly flawed idea that it would be cool to take the children to see the circus. I’ve never been a fan of the circus anyway but agreed in the interests of an easy life and, halfway through the show, was invited into the ring by the Ringmaster himself. Once there, a clown appeared, pushed me against a wall, blind-folded me and then proceeded to throw knives at me whilst I clutched my crotch and hoped his aim was true.
Unsurprisingly, my children are now scarred for life and don’t particularly care much for clowns.
Unemployment is quite low in this country at the moment and that’s because the Government have employed a lot of bureaucrats to run the Health & Safety Executive and a lot of researchers to go and investigate things that they could learn quite easily if they simply applied common sense. But instead of popping to the pub and asking “does anybody think kids might find clown scary?” researchers are granted humungous funds to support their study in to whether buffalo can become domesticated pets or whether sex directly affects university students’ exam results and then we wonder why, today, the newspapers are full of stories that the country’s economy might be failing.
Without any application for a research grant whatsoever, I can tell you that buffalos make better main courses than they do household pets, students do drugs but can still pass their exams and women who enjoy Marmite are also more likely to enjoy giving oral sex. Apparently. I’m not fully sure on that last one as the Government have still not responded to my £1m grant application to research that further.
But please don’t tell the clowns we’ve found out kids really don’t like them. I can think of nothing worse than a squirting-flowered, honking-red-nosed, baggy-trousered, exploding-car, knife-wielding protest march down the village high street.
Well – and please excuse the profanity here – no shit, Sherlock. Researcher Dr Penny Curtis, from the University of Sheffield, questioned 250 children last month and found that all of them, even the older ones, either didn’t like or were scared of the Circus Ringmaster’s favourite funny men. She probably got paid an awful lot of money to do this research, too.
It would have been cheaper if somebody had popped in to my pub, bought me a pint and asked me the same question. I could have told you that children don’t like clowns – I don’t like clowns either. In case nobody’s noticed, children don’t actually like Mickey Mouse or, amazingly, Father Christmas as well. Sure, they look great on the TV and in children’s books, but have you actually seen the faces on small children standing on Main Street USA when an eight-foot tall mouse with a maniacal grin on his face is approaching them?
Go to any Disney park anywhere in the world and watch what happens. I’d be terrified if I were a four-year old as well. Parents drag their little cherubs into queues to get the autographs of towering Disney characters, their cameras glinting in the sun like Clint Eastwood’s pistol, completely unaware of the terror on their tots’ faces.
It’s the same from October to the other side of Christmas. Shopping centres the length and breadth of England become littered with fairy tale houses where children can visit Santa and demand their Christmas presents. Except, once inside the dark and claustrophobic grotto, they come face-to-face with a huge fat guy with a lot of face hair and burst in to tears, much to the shock of their parents. “Oh bless,” they coo, “he must be tired.” No, he’s just filled his nappy out of fear.
So I find it a touch baffling that some researcher presumably applied for a grant, got it, asked two hundred and fifty kids about clowns and then appeared shocked that they found them a little bit menacing. More people suffer from Coulrophobia than they do Arachnaphobia. Kids’ minds are pretty malleable and these days they watch a lot of telly: in the cartoon Animaniacs two of the main characters suffer severe anxiety around clowns while the hit US show The Simpsons has Krusty the Klown as a primary character depicted as a womanising, chain-smoking, gambling alcoholic whose sidekick is a homicidal maniac. And the fear doesn’t stop when we grow up: horror writers the world over have depicted clowns in varying degrees of murder, most famously Stephen King’s Pennywise clown character from the novel It.
In 2005 my wife had this amazingly flawed idea that it would be cool to take the children to see the circus. I’ve never been a fan of the circus anyway but agreed in the interests of an easy life and, halfway through the show, was invited into the ring by the Ringmaster himself. Once there, a clown appeared, pushed me against a wall, blind-folded me and then proceeded to throw knives at me whilst I clutched my crotch and hoped his aim was true.
Unsurprisingly, my children are now scarred for life and don’t particularly care much for clowns.
Unemployment is quite low in this country at the moment and that’s because the Government have employed a lot of bureaucrats to run the Health & Safety Executive and a lot of researchers to go and investigate things that they could learn quite easily if they simply applied common sense. But instead of popping to the pub and asking “does anybody think kids might find clown scary?” researchers are granted humungous funds to support their study in to whether buffalo can become domesticated pets or whether sex directly affects university students’ exam results and then we wonder why, today, the newspapers are full of stories that the country’s economy might be failing.
Without any application for a research grant whatsoever, I can tell you that buffalos make better main courses than they do household pets, students do drugs but can still pass their exams and women who enjoy Marmite are also more likely to enjoy giving oral sex. Apparently. I’m not fully sure on that last one as the Government have still not responded to my £1m grant application to research that further.
But please don’t tell the clowns we’ve found out kids really don’t like them. I can think of nothing worse than a squirting-flowered, honking-red-nosed, baggy-trousered, exploding-car, knife-wielding protest march down the village high street.
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