May 2012
1 post
April 2012
1 post
November 2011
3 posts
7 tags
Never mind the jokes
Perhaps I was just the right age to be suitably titilated by a post prime-time concoction of pop trivia and bad language, but whatever it was, I certainly enjoyed Never Mind The Buzzcocks when I was a lad. Looking back, it had a certain pre-smoking ban charm about it; a devilish glee on the faces of the panel as they twisted the knife. Of course, after Mark Lamarr they eventually went with Simon...
6 tags
Soured cream
No, the cream does NOT always rise to the top. It might seem obvious to some, but the most famous musicians are not the best musicians, and I’ll tell you what, many of them don’t even know “all the chords”.
Whilst studying music and sharing lodgings with the usual hotchpotch from other faculties, a flat-mate made some comment about the then-Oasis lead guitarist which led...
“As if all cooks were fat, all peasants phlegmatic, all statesmen stately. As if...”
– Bertolt Brecht
September 2011
1 post
Blake vs Blake
As I sat by what must have been North London’s most incredulous and highest pitched Indian on a bus yesterday, I got to thinking, just who would win in a battle between William Blake and James Blake?
I fancy that the former Blake may begin with a slow building barrage of poetry, each one more sexually supressed than its predecessor, but ultimately, James would win by turning each stanza...
June 2011
3 posts
Miss of the century →
You can shine a torch down their ears, but you...
It was a few months back now but did you see the Blackberry Torch adverts? Heading down the escalators at Euston I couldn’t help but notice a 20ft slew of banality dribbling down the wall. What irked me wasn’t so much the product - I’m an iPhone incidentally - but Blackberry Man’s schema of what their demographic sounds like in first person. I’m referring to the “status updates” of...
The lowest notes
There is a unique dread to the realisation that you are on stage and you’re not making any noise. At first, it’s the slow-dawning of “where’s the bass gone?” and then quickly remembering that this is meant to be your own contribution to the band. This is followed by the hand on jack moment - “yes, I am plugged in” - the hand on volume-knob moment -...
May 2011
1 post
Denial
Oh Tuesday, runt of the weekday litter, I can see you wheezing and lumbering over the hill towards me. Why don’t you just piss off?
April 2011
1 post
Jonathan Wilson on football bloggers →
March 2011
2 posts
“There comes a time in your life when everyday is the anniversary of something”
– John Peel
It's a sign
There’s a sign I notice on the final leg of my journey home, which seldom fails to ‘grind my gears’. Before I go further, I should clarify that the gears grind only a little and it’s not the thin end of the vehicle’s terminal decline, more the endearing lurch of an old banger.
“SLOW - Low trees”
It once served a purpose. It was something of a beacon...
February 2011
1 post
Every cloud
“You alright?”
“Not really,” she retorted. “I’ve a bad back, a bad foot and I’ve been in bed all day. I haven’t been able to get my paper yet”.
For me, this was more information than I was able to work with from a woman who I barely know, despite sharing walls with her for several years. Short on words for a response, I offered my best face in sympathy - for which you should read that I conjured...
January 2011
1 post
Tyrannasaurus Tax
I’m fully taxed-up for the year (most likely overtaxed with a slew of coding notices to cement up my postbox in the very near future). Genuinely now, why is the process so ridiculous, unintuitive and unreliable? And do the people who design the forms not actually go online themselves? It is a maze of dead-ends and false dawns and, when you finally finish, the thing disappears without so much...
July 2010
2 posts
Coming first
With some embarrassment, this post came first.
“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy when seen in longshot”
– Charlie Chaplin