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A Night of Revelry and Suspect Underwear
Well, the final quiz (or at least the final one with Rob and I in charge) went off on Tuesday and much fun it was too.
Surprisingly the place was absolutely packed which we really hadn’t expected. You’d have thought that what with people going away for Christmas and so on it’d have been a bit subdued, but no… whilst we didn’t push past our best ever number of teams, we were only one away from it.
And the booze flowed rather freely it must be said. Thank you to all those who bought us drink – even if I was struggling to drink it towards the end.
But what was most touching was that our most seasoned regulars – Team Nick Chips – who have been represented at pretty much every single one for the last 100 weeks got us presents. Which we then had to apportion out between us in a lucky-dip stylee. Thankfully I was too drunk to get too emotional but I find myself smiling in a sentimental way by it even now.
Although maybe I shouldn’t have put the prize Thong round my neck. I completely forgot about it and didn’t rediscover it until I got home.
Sadly this means that the fit guy on the tube wasn’t actually staring at me in a “cor, I’d like some of that” way after all. It was clearly a more “cor, look at that drunken idiot with the thong round his neck” kind of stare.
Never mind, eh?
And what will I be doing with my time now? Well… for one thing I’m discovering the joys of sleeping in a bit of a weekend. And for another my creative juices are being once more turned towards writing. 2009 is going to be the year Daniel and I get ourselves out there, I swear!
Posted on December 29, 2008 | Filed Under My So-Called Life | 1 Comment
When You Come Back To Me
Those who know me well will be aware (with a due sense of resignation) of my love of extended mixes – specifically those from the PWL stable – which, when done properly, enhance my appreciation of the original track no end.
A good mix, in my opinion, builds up the track part by part, allowing you to see how intricately it was constructed, throws the song at you, then de-constructs it again. The golden age for such mixes was the late 80s and early 90s before mixes started having bugger all to do with the actual song (many of the Pet Shop Boys mixes of the mid-to-late 90s show off this problem in all its gory glory).
Which brings me to J. Donovan Esq’s 1990 single “When You Come Back To Me“. The extended mix of this is, I think, pretty much perfect – second only to the 12″ version of Betty Boo’s “Doin’ the Do”.
Part of it is the song, pretty much one of the best Mike Stock wrote, and one that actually evokes some Christmassy feelings in jaded old me for a change. And it’s a nice lyric too. (No “I Should Be So Lucky”, I’ll grant you but I believe I’m alone in loving that song too.)
But the extended mix just makes me appreciate it so much more. The thunderbirds-esque kettle drums, the dropped spanners (or chimes, probably), the soft pippy synths, the gentle stabby keyboards, the warm brass noises. But it’s the sheer amount of harmony that’s boggling. I’m no musical expert, clearly, but it’s awash with harmonics from the strings to the backing vocalists – the latter being a team of people (including Stock himself) who never got enough credit.
In many respects it’s the perfect culmination of the sound that SAW used for him. It’s not the standard Eurodisco of Kylies stuff, not the spiky cold feel of Sonia’s material, say, but a warm-sounding filled-out production with a walking-pace style song.
Frankly I love it to bits. The fact it’s also got a key change makes me almost cream.
(And it’s not just me that wanted that coat is it? It’s certainly a bit Doctory…)
Posted on December 21, 2008 | Filed Under Pop Music | 2 Comments
Bloody Typical
Only two weeks of the quiz left to do and, after about two months where creating one single round was like pulling teeth, suddenly I find I’m having trouble stopping.
I’ve written four rounds this weekend. I only needed two.
One of them’s a music round. I suddenly realised it was my last chance.
Posted on December 14, 2008 | Filed Under My So-Called Life | 1 Comment
Fare Thee Well, Woolies…
I had thought, on my way home tonight, to call in at the Brixton branch of Woolworths since the chances are I may ne’er set foot in one again, otherwise. It has held many a fond memory for me (well, fond-ish) since it is possibly the only Woolworths store in London – nay possibly even the whole country – which I could actually say is any good.
I mean… for comparison you should have seen the Clapham one. My God it was shite!
But alas my visit was not to be. As I neared the threshold I saw with a slight tug in my heart that the queue for the tills looped back and forth twice and vanished in the back of the store.
My fellow man’s appetite for cheap tat really does surprise me sometimes.
Posted on December 11, 2008 | Filed Under The World we Live In | 1 Comment
Credit Where It’s Due
Now, I must admit that correspondence from my credit card providers always makes me feel a bit nervy. The monthly statements are bad enough, but when they send me something else out of the blue I always imagine that on opening it I’ll find a letter stating something along the lines of “you’re a fraud, we’ve found you out and you owe us mister. Oh yes, you owe us…”
So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I peeled open an envelope from Barclaycard last night, fully expecting – based on the previous horrors of my day – that judgement day had finally come and my savings were about to be shot away.
What I found instead was that they’d decided to double my credit card limit.
I must say this irks me somewhat. Considering the current economic crisis it strikes me as being hugely irresponsible to be increasing anyone’s opportunities for getting into debt, especially mine.
But there seems to be an odd attitude abroad at the moment. Everything seems to be geared towards making people more comfortable with spending their money to keep the economy going, and penalising those people who have, you know, not overstretched their mortgages, tried to regularly save and so on.
So please please please can someone explain precisely why spending your way out of debt actually works as a concept? Because at the moment it seems utterly nonsensical to me and I’m worried that by slowly paying off and closing down my credit cards I’m in some way ruining the social fabric of our country…
Posted on December 11, 2008 | Filed Under The World we Live In | 4 Comments
It’s all paying off…
Today the Personal Sadist grabbed me before I’d even stepped on a cross-trainer and hustled me into an anteroom (which is increasingly looking like a junkyard) and began taking measurements to compare back to a few weeks ago.
I wasn’t keen to be honest. I was feeling uncomfortably bloated as it was (well done, coffee) and didn’t think this was a good time, but there we had it. (He seems to have learned that taking me by surprise is the way to stop me protesting as much as normal.)
But I was somewhat surprised – not to mention thrilled – to learn that in I’ve dropped 3 centimetres from both my waist and my hips over the last few weeks, most of which we can attribute to fat loss (since my saddlebags are pretty much where I store it).
I’d kind of noticed I was reducing a bit but to see it in that sort of figure really thrilled me.
Sadly my suggestion that he should be made to pay for the new jeans I’ll need in a month or so met with outright refusal.
Oh well… can’t have it all I suppose…
Posted on December 4, 2008 | Filed Under Health and Fitness | 0 Comments
If you insist…
I had occasion to pop into the Apple Store on Regent Street yesterday, which is always a distressing experience given the place is always thronged about with ghastly tourists fully taking advantage of the free internet on the pretty laptops.
My reason was to purchase a new keyboard. Due to a distressing accident with a bottle of cola the other week the existing one had become practically unusable. With a tendency to force-capitalise everything.
But anyway, while I was there I noticed that the staff had new t-shirts, seasonally themed this time: “Santa has his elves,” they proclaimed. “You have me.”
And aside from the fact that I thought the message was kind of cute, there was also a bit of me which, on noticing how well one of the swarthier guys was filling his shirt, couldn’t help but go “oh, all right then”.
It’s unusual for me to fall in love with the staff in that place, I must admit. The products yes, but the staff rarely.
That said, I’m so over him now.
Posted on December 2, 2008 | Filed Under Battles with Technology, My So-Called Life | 0 Comments
Carry on Sergeant?
I must say, I’m rather bemused by the national outcry over John Sergeant’s resignation from (the stupidly named) Strictly Come Dancing.
Now, I don’t care for either of them, but this and the continuing outry over how far some X-Factor hopefuls got just confirms my belief that there’s a problem with the way people in this country vote. Why in God’s name do people get so attached to people who are crap?
It’s a dancing competition for God’s sake. Entertainment yes, but many things are and as far as I’m concerned fun is something so fundamentally important as to be taken seriously. (In the same way as nothing is so sacred it can’t be poked fun of.)
I’m sorry, but people who are daft enough to vote for someone who can’t dance in a dancing show clearly deserve to lose their money in order to teach them a lesson. (Preferably to go to charity, natch.)
Jesus… this voting for people who amuse us is what got bloody Johnson in after all.
Posted on November 22, 2008 | Filed Under Film, TV, Theatre, The World we Live In | 1 Comment
The Quiz is Dead – Long Live the Quiz…
Well, it’s official now. Other Rob and I announced last night that as of our 100th quiz at the Griffin we would be giving it up. 4,500 questions down the line, and after over two years of continuous service (barring the pub refurbishment work) we’ve decided to call it a day.
Basically, whilst the presenting of it is fun, it does mean that not a single Tuesday can be entirely our own – and there are occasionally things I’d like to do on Tuesdays. There’s a comedy club in Soho, there’s various “gay professional” events which tend to be on Tuesdays and so on.
Plus it tends to impact on my Monday nights in order to get things ready, and a huge chunk is taken out of both of our weekends writing the thing – a task which is getting harder the longer we go on. (Seriously, writing this week’s quiz was like pulling teeth.)
So there we go, time to move aside and let someone with new ideas come in, freshen up the format and so on. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll get a chance to enjoy the fruits of someone else’s labours now too.
We’ll miss it of course, despite the hard work. “What will you do on your first Tuesday?” Rob asked me yesterday. I thought about it a bit and realised I would probably end up standing in the middle of my living room looking slightly lost and out of place.
So anyway… 23rd December 2008. Quiz 100. Our last stand. Do come along if you can make it!
Posted on November 19, 2008 | Filed Under My So-Called Life | 0 Comments
Sunlit Perfection
On my return from Malta I paused for a moment in the airport bookshop where I was killing time and found myself taking down a slim volume that had caught my eye. The last time I had a yen for finding the works of this particular author it had been impossible, but there was a whole host of freshly printed, newly re-issued copies staring right at me. So I bought one.
I have now joined the illustrious ranks of Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Douglas Adams and Ben Elton amongst others in being utterly addicted (well, okay, it’s probably just the live ones who still are) to the works of P.G. Wodehouse.
Admittedly I’m only ploughing my way through the Jeeves and Wooster novels at the moment (coindientally ITV3 – Independent Television’s “When We Were Good” channel – is showing the Fry and Laurie adaptations too) but they are frankly the written equivalent of spun gold. Wodehouse is one of the finest writers ever to put pen – or inked metal – to paper. A wordsmith who manages to be both staggeringly clever, uproarisouly funny and yet completely aposite with his every choice.
His genius should not be understated.
Any man who can come up with lines like the following should be universally adored.
- Many a man may look respectable, and yet be able to hide at will behind a spiral staircase.
- It isn’t often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.
- He caught the eye and arrested it. It was as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla and had changed its mind at the last moment.
- It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.
- Before my eyes he wilted like a wet sock.
- I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢d always thought her half-baked, but now I think they didn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t even put her in the oven.
And so on and so on. The pages are full of them!
I think, though, one of the things that endears me to Bertie Wooster though is his victimisation at the hands of his aunts. They always seem to be pushing or dragging him into some ill-advised venture that even his limited common sense warns him against, but finds them unstoppable.
And I kind of know how he feels.
Anyway. Buy one. Or more. You won’t regret it.
Posted on November 16, 2008 | Filed Under Reading and Writing | 0 Comments