In a spin

I had planned to write a scholarly analysis of why Ed Milliband is doomed to failure as the leader of the Labour party.  It would have been great, honest.  But then a man with a spanner infuriated me and I decided to wallow yet again in the minutiae of my domestic frustrations.  I wasn't joking when I named this thing.  Before I veer off, check out this article by Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell about why Ed's boggly eyes will be his undoing.

Right.  My washing machine broke a few weeks ago.  The frustration this caused was tempered by the rare thrill of knowing exactly what was wrong, like a real man who understands machines. The heating element was bollocksed. I know this because a) it wasn't heating up and b) exactly the same bit broke a few months ago.

I was almost looking forward to the man coming to fix it so I could impress him with my know-how.  Unfortunately it didn't go quite as planned.  We got off on the wrong foot when he tried to get into the flat by alternately leaning on and tapping the buzzer to my flat while I shrieked "Just push the door!" into the intercom.  A morse code expert may have been able to discern a message in the beeps.  "I will under no circumstances fix your washing machine", perhaps.

I got him in and proudly unveiled my heater theory.  He looked at me blankly and then looked at the washing machine even more blankly.  He opened up his case to access a laptop, and started to send emails to a person unknown.  They may have read "Man keeps pointing at large white box. What is this thing?".  He eventually decided he would have to drag the machine out of the cupboard, whereupon he almost crushed himself between the machine and the door behind.  Unable to bear watching him straddle the corner of the unit, trying to decide which way to topple, I left him to his own devices.

A little later he emerged looking triumphant.  All fixed.  No sir, your heater theory was wrong - the motherboard was broken and I've replaced it.  Hurrah! I said.  Guess I'm not such an expert after all!  As he left I put in a load of by now quite whiffy washing.  20 minutes later I was back on the phone to Indesit, breaking the news that it was still completely bollocksed.

Me: "Can the man come back and fix the heating element please?"
Indesit: "Afraid not, sir.  He's a standard engineer, and only senior engineers carry that part."
Me: "But...so...hang on, why did you send him in the first place then?"
Indesit: "Aha!  Well, we didn't think the heater would have been the problem.  You'll have to make an appointment for a different day."
Me: "But...I said when I called before what the problem was....hhhhnnggghhh....ok.  What's the tightest time-frame for a new appointment that you can give me?"
Indesit: "All of Monday?"
Me: "Maybe a touch tighter?"

And so it ended with an appointment for 8 days hence.  Bastards.  In the meantime I've acquired an expensive habit for having my shirts laundered at work.  To go back to my crease-tastic ironing style will be a hell of a blow.

The missing ink

I had lots of life administration to do last Sunday.  Personal finances management (ie pay council tax to maintain the binmen's weekly 6am performance of Stomp), flat cleaning (ie collect the clothing that the missus has strewn aroung the flat (socks draped over lampshades, handbags in the bath, trousers in the oven) and put it all in a big bag that she can shake empty over the following week, like an urban fox with expensive tastes).  I was even going to cut my increasingly alarming hair (the crappiest of all the chores).

Unfortunately two things got in my way.  The first was the inevitable Sunday morning hangover, which now renders me incapable of anything other than watching 17 episodes of Come Dine With Me with the curtains drawn.  But the real killer was this website: http://archivedmusicpress.wordpress.com, which I literally spent hours and hours and hours reading.

It's nothing more sophisticated than a guy putting up hundreds of scanned pages from the Melody Maker and the NME circa 1987 - 1996.  I can see why that wouldn't float everyone's boat.  But if, like me, you grew up completely dependent on the news and reviews in these cheaply printed, ink-smeared rags then it's an absolute treasure trove.

Going though the 1994-1996 vintage material on the site it's amazing how much I remember.  Last year I was forced to go through my childhood memorabilia after a flood from an exploding boiler gave my parents an excuse not to have to store three tonnes of maths exercise books and shoddy renderings of glaciers any more.  Other than a few colourful reminders of how much I used to enjoy drawing the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot (not interacting - I was a stickler for realism) I came across a review of the first ever gig I went to, carefully torn from the Melody Maker and preserved between the pages of a terrible essay on music as a metaphor for love in Twelfth Night.  I needn't have bothered - it's here.  As is the MM's excellently dismissive review of What's the Story (Morning Glory) ("Oasis are fallen, fallen short of the stars. They sound knackered").  They subsequently re-evaluated this position when it turned out that Oasis sold millions of copies when put on the cover and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci sadly did not.

The Oasis flip-flop is an illustration of what a different world the music press was pre-internet.  They could get away with it because if you missed an issue, you missed it.  You couldn't just type the name of your favourite indie concern into a seach box and flick through everything ever written about them.  And as there were no band websites or myspace the only way you could get any information was through the inkies.  I remember pouring over news articles about upcoming albums and trying to imagine what a song called "Pencil Skirt" or "Pull the Wires from the Wall" could possibly sound like.  There were albums I didn't buy because, having considered the tracklisting long and hard, I'd decided they weren't up to scratch.

The lack of concern about a permanent record really comes through in the writing, some of which is frankly terrible.  The journalists insert themselves into interviews and reviews in a manner in which even the author of this blog considers to be self-indulgent.  But this also means that much of it has a liveliness and individuality that is sorely lacking in the post-internet, post-comments-sections-and-trolling age.

One of the things that I assume is the same now as it ever was is the making of terrible predictions.  The press needs to hype to have something to write about, and the law of averages dictates they get it wrong 95% of the time.  Which means there's a lot of sneering to be done by someone reading 15 years (Christ) later.  Almost every page has a reference to a band that, after years of effort, reached the pinnacle of their career with a mention in the NME before sinking without a trace.  Tokyo Ghetto Pussy.  Pimlico.  Buxom.  Brassy.  The Amps.  These are the fallen, and this website gives them the ghost of a tribute.

Got to dash, I've just found a three page interview with the Tindersticks from 1995.  I've already read it, of course.  But I was 14 then, and I read things differently now.

A rare moment of sanity

Without wishing to go on too much more about my tragic Luke Haines obsession, I made a very grown-up decision last week.  In a move rather boldly described as an "art event" he released just 50 copies of his new album, each a unique one-off live home recording.  Apparently he answers the door to the postman in the middle of one of them.

I was obviously gibbering with anticipation, but then I saw the £75 price tag.  That's a lot when you might end up with the one he rushed through to catch the start of Sherlock.  So I bowed out.  I'm not a lunatic.

They've all sold out now, so he's got the loot.  If you own one of the copies please consider the ultimate act of charity and bung me a copy.  You can have a unique recording of me crooning any song of your choice in return.

Sneezy does it

Culture is terrible for your health.  In a burst of holiday vim I took myself off to the Rude Britannia exhibition at the Tate.  The exhibition itself was excellent (the Viz-curated room being a particular crass highlight) but I got lavishly soaked on both the walks there and back, compounded by a couple of hours in between of marinating in swampy dampness.

As a result I have been suffering from a catastrophic cold for the last couple of days.  I've been self-medicating like a sneezy Elvis, gobbling strepsils, sudafed, lemsip and paracetamol pretty much at random.  Sadly I also made the grave error of going out for a few drinks last night, condemning myself to a hangover/head congestion combination at 6am this morning that felt like someone had filled my entire skull with glue.

As the missus is away for the weekend I've resorted to a day of recuperation tragic even by my horribly low standards.  Having taken quintuple doses of every medicine in the flat I shuffled into the living room wrapped in a duvet, yanked out the sofa bed and spent the entire morning watching Spaced DVDs, swallowing satsumas virtually whole and creating an arctic blizzard of used tissues.

I then dragged my stinking carcass to a pub for a roast I couldn't taste before returning to the sofa bed base camp and seeing off the afternoon by snoozing raspily to my favourite football podcast for morons, the Sky Sports Sunday Supplement.  I love the porcine tabloid hacks passive aggressively squabbling over favoured contacts ("Of course, you'd know that from your little chats with Sir Alex, wouldn't you Tony?") and straining to suggest intimacy with millionaire players ("Let me tell you, Lamps/JT/Stevie G ain't happy with the situation Brian, not one bit") who in reality must absolutely loathe them.  I woke in a state of confusion and had to calm down by blowing my nose 14 times, watching the X-Files and eating a few more satsumas.

It's actually been quite an effective tribute to the endless school summer holidays that I frittered away goggling at the Big Breakfast, Saved By The Bell, Roseanne and Quantum Leap for weeks on end without feeling the slightest shame or compulsion to leave the house.  If only I had access to Championship Manager 1995/96 the replication would be complete.

Porklife

Am off work this week and bloody loving it.  I even took a jog around Kennington park this morning, accompanied by the steady hail of local squirrels dropping their breakfast nuts in disbelief.  Three startled pigeons slamming into tree trunks and an inadequate number of laps later I strode out of the south gate newsagentwards for my morning milk and Guardian.

Disaster, though - my favoured shop on Brixton Road had the former but not the latter.  I was forced to try the shop known to me and my girlfriend as Dog Piss Onions, after we reported to the owner that an enormous Alsation had just widdled all over his fresh produce and he responded with barely a shrug.  Rationalising that a similar attack on the newspapers would be easier to detect I braved it, and strode in brandishing my milk from the previous shop.

Me: "Just the Guardian please"
Dog Piss Onions owner: "I'll have to charge you for the milk as well"
Me: "You wag.  Here's the quid for the Gaurdian, cheers"
DPOO: "No, really.  You need to pay for the milk"
Me: "I just walked past you while holding it.  This plainly isn't your milk"
DPOO: "Sir, I NEED to charge you for the MILK!"
Me: (hotly) "You REALLY don't!"
DPOO: "Ha ha! I am joking of course sir.  You have a good day now"

This country.

Talking of this country, I spent last week in a totally different one.  The missus and I vacationed on the shores of Lake Garda in Italy, sharing our hotel with Germans wearing unironic moustaches and a frankly weird amount of lesbians.  Having accidentally booked a package holiday on lastminute.com we received a cultural overview of Italy on the coach from the airport ("Now, to order what I think we'd all call a "real" coffee...") and were given a welcome pack which included a definition of bolognese ("a meat and tomato based sauce").  Unfortunately the translations page omitted the Italian for "Thomas Cook are incompetent pricks", which would have been useful when we discovered that they'd taken our money and not told the hotel we were coming.  It's a real larf changing rooms three times in seven days, let me tell you.

Luckily the rest of the holiday was excellent, thanks for asking - sun, clear water, tasty food, foxy Italian wo many areas of historical interest.  And now I've got this week off too.  And a bank holiday weekend.  Lovely stuff.

brian harvey sausage rolls

A side effect of my summer blog design meltdown (see previous post for more griping) was that I temporarily disconnected myself from Google Analytics, the programme that tells me stuff about who comes here.  I was somewhat concerned when the entire internet, from my closest friends to strangers and spambots, simutaneously decided to boycott the site.  Discovering that it was a coding problem, and it is just the vast, vast majority of the internet population who don't bother dropping by, was a huge boost and inspired me to dig a little deeper than usual into the Analytics reports.

I was particularly fascinated by the one showing the Google searches that lead people to the site.  My favourite ten are below.  I hope the person who needed London Underground advice wasn't in a hurry.

• morrissey communicates with faxes
• new york sunset now
• famous wankers
• green wankers
• self-indulgence goat
• "luke haines" "old weirdo"
• wrongfucksex
• jubilee line closed
• self cruelty
• brian harvey sausage rolls

If it ain't broke...

Once upon a time a man had a blog.  Not being notably technologically savvy, he nicked the template from the blog of a friend.   It looked ok after he supplemented it with a nice picture for the header and he was perfectly happy with it for a while.

But after a few months he got bored with the template. There were too many columns and it looked all blocky and square.  So in a burst of activity he ditched the old template and installed a new one.

And then this happened.



Honestly, blog fans, it's been a real pain in the bum.  No one seems to like the new look, every time I change something another part breaks, and I can't stop fiddling with it.

Today started well. I found a picture of a lovely monkey for the header and, after much swearing and fiddling around in Paint (the premier editing software of the Jurassic era), managed to install it.  Then I noticed that although it's fine in Firefox, the new header appears for a few seconds in Internet Explorer before disappearing.

So if you read this on IE and are wondering what's going on, it isn't subliminal ape propoganda.  I don't know why it's happening or how to fix it.  If you do, please let me know.

London Colin

Just wasted an hour of my life watching Undercover Boss on Channel 4.

I can't remember the last time I saw something with such a fatally flawed concept.  The Chief Executive of Tower Hamlets, the catastrophically deprived East London borough, goes literally undercover to spy on unsuspecting departments to experience life on the front line of council services provision.  We see lots of shots of him in a suit, in meetings, looking out of a window while frotting his blackberry - he's a man in an ivory tower.  He needs to get out there and see what's really going down.

All he needs is a way of getting a realistic view of the coal face.  One that won't make people behave unnaturally around him.  The Channel 4 execs convene an emergency mind shower  before emerging triumphantly for an early lunch ten minutes later.  He will pose as a trainee trying out various council jobs and be mentored by a member of staff in each.  A 50 year old trainee who reads with glasses that cost more than the annual salary of his mentor and looks exactly like the Chief Executive wearing a week's growth of stubble, and who takes a camera crew everywhere with him.

The sheer pointlessness and artifice is demonstrated by the choice of mentors, heart of gold diamonds in the rough one and all.  Because if you need to choose someone to be on telly representing your department, you choose the most presentable.  After all, the Chief Executive might watch it.  That is if he wasn't shuffling around onscreen dressed as Colin the Hollywood Hobo and remembering to put on his northern accent every time someone asks where he's from.

He gets shown meals on wheels, pest control, a homeless advice centre, community coppers etc etc.  'Colin' can't believe his luck - every department of his council is staffed by professionals burning with zeal, compassion and unrealised potential.  The creak of the door to the storeroom containing all the sewer-mouthed tattooed mutants who failed the telly test can be occasionally heard as it groans against its padlocks.

So 'Colin' shaves off his bumfluff, has an erotic reunion with his blackberry and goes back to playing Sir Alan, albeit with a renewed sense of perspective.  But wait - there's one last twist.  He needs to reveal his true identity to his mentors.  The best of these meetings goes as follows:

Chief Exec: "Do you know who I am?"
Underling: "Yeah Chief Exec seen you on the internet innit."
Chief Exec: "So, I hear you had an interesting day yesterday?"
Underling: "Yeah showed a geezer round the market yeah?"
Chief Exec: [leans forward, slowly removes designer glasss]
Underling: "NOOOOOO! You is Colin!"

He tells them they're wonderful and gives them unpaid jobs on vague and uninspiring committees.  Well, except Malechi, a gentle young black man working in the homeless advisory service.  He's on a temporary contract.  The Chief Executive offers to become his permanent career mentor.  We learn during the voiceover that he "hopes to have a permanent job soon".  Shit mentor.

Just wasted 20 minutes of my life whinging about Undercover Boss on Channel 4.

The old plates of meat

As an old woman in an Alan Bennett play might say, I'm a martyr to my feet.  They give me all sorts of gyp.  They go through phases of throbbing agony which can only be dealt with by replacing a pair of shoes, except the shoes I have to replace never seem to have any similarities.

It's not so much Right Foot - that's quite stoic.  Left Foot is the big grizzly girl.  Things got so bad after a weekend stomping around a festival that I hobbled into the GP today to see what could be done.  One of the few perks of being a bottom feeder at a massive company is the private healthcare, so rather than an overworked Dr Whatever in the 64th hour of his shift I was greeted by a man who looked like Moss from the IT Crowd, if Moss was also in Vampire Weekend.

I assumed (hoped) he was a doctor as he only introduced himself as Nathan.  Nathan was a bit too cool for my liking, and didn't look at all enthusiastic when I whipped off my sock.  I gave my toes a little waggle to try to entice him but he was content to analyse the situation from a distance.  Anti-inflammatory pills plus an appointment to see a foot expert, who will conduct a 'gait analysis'.  Obviously I'm very excited about that bit, which I assume will involve walking up and down a catwalk while Louie Spence from Pineapple Dance Studios yells at me to work my hips.  I will keep you posted.  The letter that Nathan wrote to Louie on my behalf described me as "this pleasant gentleman".  If any doctors are reading, could you please let me know if this is accepted medical terminology for "this massive tool"?

On a related medical note, I saw a businessman reading a dieting book on the tube home today.  Sob Yourself Thin or similar.  I admired his commitment to reading around the issue, although feared for his resolve when I notice his bookmark was a menu for Yeung's Express takeaway.

The Piano of Temptation

Phew, long week.  Had to organise a work event on Friday/Saturday which meant the days before were grizzly.  I am not designed to work long hours.  My brain acts like a mobile phone - at peak capacity when I wake up and unplug it from the power supply of snores, it then depletes in power steadily throughout the day.  By 4pm I'm on two bars, and by 7pm can only make emergency calls.

Which means when I get home around 10pm, as I did on Thursday, I am in a burned out and uncommunicative state.  I beached myself on the sofa and turned on Big Brother.  I was just thinking what a shame it is that Shabby is so pretty and yet so utterly deranged when the front door slammed open.  A lady-shaped shadow loomed over me and leaned in for a boozy hello.  "How much have you drunk?" I asked nervously.  "Beer AND a wine!" she announced with slurry pride.  "And I was too busy to have lunch and I didn't eat dinner either!"

Code Red.  A mixture of drinks on an empty stomach.  As she crashed onto the sofa I could hear a faint crackling sound.  Sure enough, there were sparks shooting out of her nostrils and ears.  Complete lady brain malfunction.

Under usual circumstances this sort of situation requires immediate preventative action, such as finding an episode of Gok Wan's Fashion Fix for her to watch.  I was feeling foolishly obstinant, however.  Man work hard.  Man tired.  Man not need to deal with loopy lady.  So I focussed hard on Big Brother while she tottered off to make some tea.

The Tree of Temptation was involved, which I always enjoy.  The Tree is a dismembodied voice in the bathroom that doles out unpleasant secret tasks and is very rude to the housemates (to posh layabout Ben - "Oi, Brideshead!").  As I was considering the witty retorts I'd have up my sleeve to counter the Tree if I was on the show, a gruff voice growled up at me from floor level in the gap between the back of the sofa and the landlady's piano.

"Hello!  I am the Piano of Temptation!"  The Piano of Temptation sounded far more feminine than the Tree of Temptation.  "I have a secret task for you!"  Appalling news - I was much too tired for a task.  I grabbed a nearby towel and swatted it in the direction of the Piano, which yelped and was silenced.

A short time after my girlfriend re-appeared.  I considered telling her about the Piano of Temptation but her mood seemed to have taken a turn for the worse.  My lack of general chit chat then only worsened it.  Time for bed.

I emerged from the bathroom to find my girlfriend sitting up in bed with her arms wrapped around her knees, frowning hard.  If a cartoonist had drawn the scene, he would have found it difficult not to add a small storm cloud above her head.  I opined that she might be in a mood.

Several minutes later, as her footsteps stomped down the stairs and the spare room door crashed shut, the point had been forcefully made that she was not in a mood.  I lay in bed, trickles of blood seeping from my ears, and considered the theory that often the best approach is to do nothing at all.  The short term benefits were compelling, but experience suggested that this would not be the best overall strategy.  I went downstairs to retrieve her and found that the volcano, whilst still spitting out the occasional lump of burning lava, had largely burned itself out.

I got home yesterday to find the flat cleaned from top to bottom to a standard unprecedented in three years of co-habitation.  She knows how to appeal to my innner Kryten.  How long this contrition will last for is unsure, and I suspect it may have evaporated at about paragraph 2 of this blog.  Maybe the whole thing was a task from the Piano of Temptation.  Maybe I'll have to pretend to be drunk next week.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this, which iTunes tells me I've played 28 times in the last three weeks.