War Is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength

I've just watched tonight's Panorama special about Scientology - now, it's fair to say that even before seeing this the very mention of the word was enough to bring me out in hives, but I have to say seeing this pushed me over the edge. It's one thing to read about their deeply sinister and repressive practices, another to see them in action. Much has been made of the video clip of reporter Jon Sweeney losing it pretty comprehensively with Scientology attack dog Tommy Davis, and to be fair it is pretty amusing; that said, anything short of punching the evil smug little shit's teeth through the back of his head qualifies as heroic restraint in my book.

The trouble with Scientology is that it's almost too easy to mock - founded by a hilariously mendacious charlatan and self-mythologiser who pretty much made up the central belief system as he went along, basing large chunks of it on his ropey science fiction output (the space-based DC-8s are the most hilarious bit, but it's all good), the paranoid secrecy and aggression shown to anyone attempting to investigate the organisation, the shameless preying on the weak and impressionable (I myself was given a Dianetics "questionnaire" by an attractive young lady in Bath a few years ago - if, having looked at it, I'd had any urge other than to wipe my arse on it, I might have been in danger of being suckered in), the rabid hatred of psychology and psychiatry - not perfect or infallible sciences by any means, but it's not hard to see Scientology's problem with them, what with their clear purpose being to clear the mind of obstructions to clear thinking; no shit, Sherlock, as they say.

Anyone who knows me will know that I have a similarly visceral aversion to pretty much any organised religion; I'm not sure this is quite the same, though. Which is not to say that the basic methods aren't the same: make unhappy and vulnerable people feel bad about themselves, claim to sympathise and that your ways, and your ways alone, can provide a key to a happier life. The difference, and it's arguably a pretty small one, is that I do (reluctantly) believe that the senior mullahs in the Islamic church, for instance, really do believe in the stated tenets of their religion. It is inconceivable to me that anyone admitted to the central "secrets" of Scientology can actually believe any of this shit, but it's my firm belief that this really isn't the point; the point is to provide the most flimsy of bases to claim "religion" status for the organisation, with all of the tax breaks and legal immunity that provides. It's gratifying that most European countries have, thus far, taken a commendably robust no-bullshit attitude to all this nonsense.

I have a hopelessly romantic and optimistic view of humanity; we really are the pinnacle of evolution (so far at least), with these great big brains of ours, but just occasionally they can lead us up blind alleys, or even more occasionally right up our own arses. Nonetheless I remain convinced that any repressive, controlling and secretive regime will eventually implode under its own pressure; you could say I adhere to Winston Smith's view rather than O'Brien's and the Party's - "a boot stamping on a human face - forever".

As a species we are better, more special and more unique than to get caught up in this evil, life-denying claptrap, and the sooner we come to that realisation the better off we'll all be. Well, apart from Tommy Davis, and Tom Cruise and John Travolta and various others, but you'll forgive me if I don't see them as part of our glorious rational future. In fact the sooner they get into their intergalactic DC8 and fuck right off, the better.

Hmmmmm. Well, I seem to have coughed up a bit of a bile-soaked furball over the last few paragraphs, but I feel better for it, and that's all that matters. Anyone wanting further Scientology information could do a lot worse than call in at Operation Clambake, or have a look at this (be prepared for some disturbing images, though), or a debunking article from 1968 - we really do never learn.

fact of the day

America. Big, isn't it? I mean, for the purposes of this little anecdote we're only considering the 48 contiguous states (i.e. excluding Alaska and Hawaii), but it's still on the biggish side. Put it this way, you wouldn't want to have to paint it, not in a weekend anyway, not all 7,881,925 square kilometres of it.

Slightly surprising, therefore, is the fact that the highest and lowest points in the contiguous states, the continental USA, Mainland USA, the Lower 48, whatever you prefer, are, respectively, Mount Whitney and Death Valley. The surprising bit is that they are a mere 76 miles apart. Interesting, eh? No doubt there's some sort of mileage to be made out of the mileage from Whitney to Houston, as well, but I don't think I can be bothered.

I see dead things....

Latest round of photographic evidence of my deeply dull and futile life:

• a few photos of the Easter weekend at my Mum & Dad's place - mainly just eating and drinking and burning stuff.
• photos of a walk I did from Bradford-on-Avon to Bathampton a month or so ago. We'd arranged a poker night over at my friend and cheese racing colleague Andy's place in Bathampton, it was a nice sunny day, so I thought I'd make an afternoon of it. Got the train to Bradford-on-Avon (8 quid single - bargain) and then walked up the Kennet & Avon canal towpath to Bathampton, passing all manner of interesting canal architecture on the way, including the Avoncliff and Dundas aqueducts. Texas hold 'em, since you ask. I'd never played before, but it went OK. We were only playing for small stakes, and I only lost about a fiver, which wasn't too bad.
• some photos of last weekend in Reading - Hazel and I went over to meet up with Doug & Anna and go to the Reading Real Ale festival. We managed to achieve all of our stated objectives, except, erm, going to the Reading Real Ale festival. We just went to the pub instead, which, in a very real sense, comes to the same thing, if you think about it. Apologies for the interminable series of me & Hazel pulling faces at the end; Doug went a bit snap-crazy in the pub.
• some photos of Hannah & Mark's wedding in Bournemouth last weekend. In addition to getting an invite in our own right, Hazel was on wedding photographer duty for this one, so needless to say some far superior photos were taken, but these are mine, for what they're worth.

On a completely unconnected note, may I recommend the completely fascinating Weird Meat blog - partly for the wonderfully diverse range of bizarre dead stuff (and some that's not actually quite dead yet), and partly for the hilariously brainless ranting comments from the fluffy bunny brigade: OMFG WTF u ate a dog! u suck dude, etc. etc. As a pathetically unadventurous comparison I've eaten a few interesting dead things, mainly while I was in Africa, but also in France where they'll eat pretty much anything:

• deep-fried caterpillars, which may or may not have been mopani worms, it was hard to tell. Not quite as disgusting as you might imagine, sort of nutty - at the same time I'm not going to be elbowing anyone in the face to get to another plate of them.
• kudu - a large gazellesque creature
• warthog - bit like wild boar, which is, in turn, a bit like pork
• crocodile - nice. Flaky like fish, but more meaty. I'm going to cash in the "tastes like chicken" get-out-of-jail-free card at this point.
• zebra - bit like horse
• horse - bit like beef. I had it barbecued, and it was sort of steak-y.
• foie gras - not the pâté, the real thing. Morally highly dubious, no doubt, but goodness me it's delicious. I had it in riverstation down by the docks here in Bristol a few years ago.
• calves sweetbreads - I have no idea whether the ones I had were thymus glands or pancreas, but they were OK. Possibly just because they were sauced up with a load of Puy lentils and washed down with a gallon of wine in a dingy Parisian restaurant.

So there you go. I'm not counting the obvious things like rabbit, pigeon, goat, etc. - surely everyone eats those? I'll let you know how tomorrow night's dog soufflé goes.

the last book I read

The Memoirs Of A Survivor by Doris Lessing.

Well, this is all very strange. We're in a large city which we are invited to assume is London, after some unspecified catastrophe and the gradual unravelling of civilised society (though some sort of governmental apparatus remains). An unnamed woman lives alone in an apartment in a larger complex of apartments. In quick succession a couple of strange things happen to her; firstly she discovers a strange netherworld which she can gain access to by walking "through" her kitchen wall, secondly she is entrusted with the care of a young girl, Emily, and her strange cat/dog hybrid pet companion, Hugo.

The never-named narrator's experiences behind the wall feature what seem to be scenes from Emily's early life, in addition to some scenes of a seemingly random nature. Things continue to deteriorate in the outside world, Emily acquires a boyfriend who leads a ramshackle gang of youths, things are further complicated by the arrival of a group of feral children who seem to be devoid of any sort of civilised moral instincts altogether (there are grim intimations of cannibalism and other horrors throughout) and Hugo becomes a sort of symbol of the struggle to remain civilised as the children plot to capture and eat him. Eventually the real world and the shadowy parallel world behind the wall come together in a surreal and, frankly, slightly baffling climax.

I've read a few Doris Lessing books before, and this one mirrors some themes developed in the others: a slightly paranoid sense of powerlessness, of circumstances being controlled by a shadowy group of "others" (dealt with much more explicitly in Shikasta and the rest of the Canopus in Argos series, and, in a more straightforward way, in The Good Terrorist), the richness of the inner world of the imagination, and the blurring of the boundaries between it and the "real" world (this is the theme of the powerfully weird Briefing For A Descent Into Hell - probably the best of the small subset of her work that I've read). Apparently a lot of her 1970's output was informed by Doris Lessing's involvement with Sufi Islam, this period includes all of the books mentioned above (with the exception of The Good Terrorist, which was written in 1985). (Strangely enough Richard Thompson who featured briefly in a recent post was also an adherent of Sufism.)

Doris Lessing apparently described The Memoirs Of A Survivor as "an attempt at autobiography". If that's the case then are we to assume that in addition to the "folding" of time that enables the narrator to see scenes from Emily's childhood, that perhaps some further "folding" of time is going on to enable the narrator to witness herself as a young woman - i.e. that the narrator and Emily are the same person? And what are we to make of the ending, with its exotic fantasy world of flourishing wildlife, giant iron eggs, and space and time seemingly collapsing in on itself? Search me, guv. But for a book of less than 200 pages it's a powerfully rich and strange experience, and I'm of the opinion that being baffled from time to time is good for the mind.

just a quickie...

...amusingly named estate agents.

I didn't know, until a few days ago, that the character Hotblack Desiato in Douglas Adams' Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy books (specifically, The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe) was named after a London estate agent.

Which is a pretty amusing name. It's not as good, however, as the one I saw when I was in Reading this weekend - if you live in the Reading area and you've got a house to sell, why not put it in the hands of the good people at Vanderpump and Wellbelove?

first will and netstatement

Should I be hideously slain in a bizarre blogging accident before I've got round to putting together an actual proper will, here's what I want my grief-stricken friends and family to do.

First, donate all my useful organs to medical science; I won't be needing them any more. Corneas, kidneys, heart, organs of Corti, islets of Langerhans, toes, earlobes, you can take it all.

Then take my flayed and ravaged corpse and torch, I mean cremate, it.

Then scrape all the ashes together, stick them through a crusher to get the big lumps out (crematoria really do do this already, you know), and put them in a bowl.

Then make them into pills. Now I'm in two minds about how to do this: my first thought was to use an old-fashioned pill-press to make them into aspirin-style tablets, but then I thought it might be easier to make them into capsules (as per the image on the left). Do this in such a way as to end up with a pill for everyone attending the memorial ceremony.

Then, at a suitable point during the ceremony, everyone pops the tablet in their mouth, lifts the ceremonial glass of water to their lips, and glugs me right down.

What better send-off into the afterlife than to be ingested (and subsequently excreted) by your friends and loved ones? Plus, charcoal is good for the digestion, so I'd be doing everyone a favour as I passed through their alimentary tracts in a mysterious way.

album of the day

Solid Air by John Martyn.

This is regularly voted, somewhat euphemistically, one of the great "chill-out" albums of all time - what people mean by "great chill-out album", of course, is "great dope-smoking album", and I wouldn't necessarily argue with that. The eponymous opening track, in particular, with its gurgling bass and tinkling keyboard fills and Martyn's trademark slurred, velvety vocals is like sinking into a warm bath. Which is ironic, because it's actually a song of brotherly concern about Martyn's close friend and fellow folkie Nick Drake who (unless the conspiracy theorists are to be believed) took his own life the following year (1974).

Over The Hill and I Don't Want To Know are more orthodox jazzy folk numbers, while the bluesy I'd Rather Be The Devil showcases Martyn's innovative use of the primitive Echoplex echo/delay unit - yes, you could, if you wished to do so, blame John Martyn for the guitar intro to U2's Where The Streets Have No Name; that might be a bit harsh, though. Of the remaining tracks, Go Down Easy, May You Never and The Easy Blues are in the acoustic folkie mode, while Dreams By The Sea and the Man In The Station are in the harsher experimental jazz-folk-blues mode. They're all terrific, though, particularly if you're, hem hem, "chilling out" at the time.

This was the second album (1971's Bless The Weather being the first) in Martyn's purple patch which lasted from about 1971 to 1977 - the others being Inside Out (mind-bending experimental jazz-folk), Sunday's Child (a return to more orthodox orthodox folk songs) and One World (recorded in Jamaica; more pop and reggae-influenced). One World also includes Small Hours, a 9-minute dead slow jazzy improvisation recorded outdoors beside a lake with Canada geese taking off squawking in the background; sounds ghastly but in fact your life is an insubstantial and hollow sham and mockery until you hear it, preferably in a darkened room while, hem hem, etc., "chilling out".

There was a fascinating BBC4 series about musical mavericks and innovators a year or so ago, and one of the programmes was about John Martyn, featuring various clips from his 70's heyday and contemporary interviews as he was about to go into hospital to have his leg amputated below the knee. Fascinating in particular to contrast this programme with the one that immediately followed it about Richard Thompson - Martyn the drink-fuelled maverick and Thompson the ascetic Buddhist (and contributor of mandolin to Over The Hill here). The irony is that a lot of Martyn's output (though not Solid Air, which is actually pretty disciplined in its own way) provokes the wish that he'd apply a bit more discipline and structure to what he's doing, while a lot of Thompson's output (particularly recently) makes you wish he'd let his hair down and unleash the guitar a bit more. I guess you can't have it both ways.

Tihs for ew, oh satahw

Today's subject of interest: names of people or places that look and sound as if they've been written down backwards by accident.

• Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan - surely that should be Nag O'Drepiy Yatpecer?
• Remote atoll and US nuclear testing site Eniwetok - surely Kotewine? Maybe the blast knocked the name the wrong way round. Yes, that must be it.
• BBC Creative Director Alan Yentob - Private Eye have been calling him "Botney" for years.
• Peruvian vocalist Yma Sumac - there was a persistent rumour that she was actually an American called Amy Camus, apparently not true.
• Legendary Czech athlete Emil Zatopek - but he was always Lime Kepotaz to his real friends.

Any more?

in-car micturition splash-avoidance product of the day

So you're in the car, at a rock festival, maybe at the theatre or in a job interview, or picking up an MBE from the Queen - anywhere where it's really not convenient or possible to just nip out for a piss. But, the thing is, you really really need one.

Well, help is at hand. No longer do you have to contort yourself in order to piss into a bottle, a process that has a number of drawbacks - for a start it's practically impossible if you're a girl, and you do also have to remember not to wake up some hours later with a raging thirst and greedily guzzle down the lot before remembering. It's no joke, I can tell you. Anyway, now you simply unroll your TravelJohn disposable urinal pouch, deploy the funnel attachment appropriate to your gender, and away you go, quite literally. They are available, along with numerous other useful travel gadgets, from the lavishly stocked Roaming Fox website. There is also an instructional video, for those in any way unclear about how the whole "pissing in a bag" process works. I clicked the link with a certain amount of trepidation, but actually it's all quite clean, no actual piss is involved. It's claimed that each pouch can soak up 28 fluid ounces of liquid, which I calculate to be just under a pint and a half - not bad, but realistically you'd probably have to be quite desperate before pissing in a bag started to seem like a good idea, and, well, you know how it is, once you start you can't stop.

I'm conscious of having said "piss" quite a lot over the course of the last couple of paragraphs; not that I'm apologising as that is essentially what those two paragraphs were about. But it just reminded me of a very minor claim to fame that I have, which is that I am one of a select group of people who have been told off for saying "piss" on BBC Radio. If the dates in the Cheeseracing News page are to be believed (and I'm sure they are) then it was May 2003 when Andy and I appeared on Bob Fischer and Mark Drury's Gobstopper show on BBC Radio Cleveland. Obviously you get a brief pep-talk before you go on, you know, keep it light, no swearing, etc. etc. Anyway, bearing this in mind, I waited until about the third or fourth word I uttered before saying "piss". They took it very well, though, and didn't cut us off or anything.

And while we're on the subject of cheeseracing - it's barbecue season, so get racing! And buy more thongs!

specific meat capacity

Pointless observation of the day which will enhance your life in no way whatsoever: musings on the heat retention properties of various kinds of food.

This struck me while I was eating a delicious plate of risotto for dinner this evening. Risotto appears to have interesting heat retention properties, in that it retains heat very well. Oh, sure, you serve it up in a big steaming pile and the outer layer becomes cool soon enough, but the inside stays volcanically hot. You find yourself having to keep stirring it around to let the steam out.

Contrast this, if you will, with pasta carbonara. This is proper pasta carbonara, mind, with the eggs and the cream, none of your shortcuts with the Philadelphia cheese and all. Delicious, but you plonk a big steaming pile of it on a plate, reach over to grab the tub of Parmesan, and by the time you come back to the plate it's cold. Stone cold, all the way through.

Speaking of food - hey! - we haven't done a recipe for a while. Here's one - ironically it's a kind of carbonara shortcut. This is, without doubt, the single dish I cook (in one of its variations) more than any other, by a factor of, well, several.

Dave's All-Purpose Creamy Pasta

Here's what you do. First, cook some pasta. I like linguine, 'cos it's quick and easy to cook - failing that, tagliatelle. Or, hey, penne, fusilli, whatever. Just avoid the two kinds of pasta I always avoid owing to their flawed design. These are: farfalle, because the pinch of the bow in the middle makes that area of the pasta shape cook more slowly than the outside, and conchiglie, because the shell shape makes some of the shapes turn up and float when you pour the water in, and you have to poke them down with a spoon. Anyway.....drain the pasta and run some cold water through it to arrest the cooking process and stop it sticking together.

Second, put some olive oil in the pan and cook some garlic. Then add the meaty ingredients. These can be pretty much anything; examples I've used include:

• ham and mushroom
• bacon and mushroom
• chicken and spinach
• chicken, chorizo and black olives

Then put in a grind of black pepper and a huge dollop of pesto. I tend to use up to a third of a jar per portion, but that's just me. You can slosh in some supplementary liquid at this point, such as:

• a splash of balsamic vinegar
• lemon juice
• red wine
• white wine

I tend to oscillate between keeping it simple and spartan, and sloshing in ingredients willy-nilly. Then put the pasta back in and stir it all around. Finally chuck in a big lump of mascarpone cheese, probably a couple of dessertspoonsful, and a liberal sprinkling of parmesan. Then eat. It's not a low-calorie dish, it should be pointed out at this point, but on the other hand it is delicious. And it takes no time at all.

I, for one, welcome our new cephalopodic overlords

While I'm here I must just plug one more Tim Kreider cartoon - this one. The man even shares my obsession with giant squids! He really is my new best friend. It's almost certainly racially suspect, but just try saying the line from the first frame ("He say he want brack rady! He say Japanese girr too RITTRE!") in the appropriate stereotypical accent, without pissing yourself. If you can manage it your humour-resistant bladder control is better than mine.

There's a link in the comments to some appropriate T-shirts, but it doesn't work. The ones you want are here and here.

album of the day

Floodland by The Sisters Of Mercy.

The whole Goth thing is a bit of a problem - that whole self-consciousness/wilful ugliness combo, the schizophrenic "look at me"/"don't look at me" thing; my usual attitude is: look, the grownups are trying to talk here - go and put some more eyeliner on. Suspension of disbelief is the key with Goth music. If you can't forget that these are ordinary blokes who live with their Mums and travel to gigs on the bus, then you won't get it. You've got to believe these are some world-weary leather-clad sex overlords who can talk Nietzsche to you while stringing you up in some sort of kinky bondage harness. Or so I like to think anyway.

I bought this album when it first came out in 1987, on the strength of seeing them performing This Corrosion on Top Of The Pops. I've since lost my original CD, but they've just re-released a remastered CD version with a couple of extra tracks on it, and the mighty Fopp had it for a fiver, so it seemed rude not to. It must be at least ten years since I've listened to it.

And you know what? It's pretty good. You get certain features built-in, for free, with any Goth album, specifically, that the songs will be primarily bass and drum-driven, and the vocals will be gravelly and monotonic. To be fair, this probably became a cliché after Andrew Eldritch made it his trademark here. The mighty opening of Dominion/Mother Russia sets the scene, there's a few slower atmospheric numbers like Flood I and Flood II with their watery imagery ("at the head of the river.....dream of the flood.....the water come rushing over"), there's the bouncy, rocky Lucretia My Reflection, which appears to be an ode to bassist Patricia Morrison (though she departed fairly acrimoniously after the album was released), and, most importantly, there's the massive Jim Steinman-produced 11-minute epic, This Corrosion. If you were to describe this as the Goth Bohemian Rhapsody, you wouldn't be far wrong. It is simultaneously an utterly absurd and ludicrous great wedding cake of a song and completely magnificent, with the New York Choral Society wailing away in the background like some Wagnerian Phantom Of The Opera-style undead zombie choir.

Eldritch went on to recruit a whole new band (apart from ever-present cyberdrummer Doktor Avalanche) for the next Sisters album, 1991's Vision Thing, which was much more rocky and guitar-driven, and, as I remember (I've lost the CD of this one too), also pretty good. And that was the last anyone heard of them in terms of official releases, though Eldritch continues to tour under the Sisters Of Mercy banner. Floodland remains their finest hour, though. Listen to it in the dark.

Alan Johnston

Just to register Electric Halibut's support for the BBC's blogging campaign for the release of their Gaza correspondent, Alan Johnston - click the image here for further details. The motives of those kidnapping journalists in the hope of spreading their message to the wider world seem confused at best, and dangerously irrational at worst. Let's hope the latest lurid rumours turn out to be unfounded, and that he's released unharmed, and soon.

the triumph of democracy over apathy

....is a slightly grandiose title for a blog post, but there it is. I'm referring to the results of the first round of the French presidential election yesterday. It seems that either the French voting public was genuinely engaged and energised by the candidates on offer this time round, or that they were keen to avoid the debacle of 2002 when Jean-Marie Le Pen qualified for the second round of voting at the expense of the Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin.

Whatever the reason, voter turnout was a startling 84.6% compared with 71.6% in 2002, and what most neutral-ish observers would consider the "right" pair of candidates, Nicloas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal, qualified for the run-off on 6th May. At least this way there'll be a meaningful second round, unlike last time where Jacques Chirac was guaranteed a landslide victory as soon as Le Pen qualified alongside him.

It'll be interesting to see where the unsuccessful candidates' votes go in the second round; you would assume that the Le Pen vote will largely gravitate to Sarkozy, despite the two men's mutual personal loathing. Where the Bayrou vote might go is a bit trickier. Not to mention the significant numbers (16% of the turnout) who voted for the various other candidates, including José Bové and his comedy moustache. Here's a picture (above) so you can compare it with Dick Strawbridge's from a few posts back. I think his startling resemblance to Asterix (also above) might have won him a few votes, as well.

Personally I hope Ségolène Royal wins, just because it would give the chauvinistic conservative status quo an almighty hoof in the family jewels, which would be quite amusing. There may be an element of me quite fancying her, in a quintessentially French older woman kind of way, as well, but I'm not prepared to comment on that.

This might be a good moment, also, to revive the hoary old quote which I've just looked up and seen attributed to Gore Vidal: "Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so." Or, for French consumption: "N'importe quel français qui est disposé à courir pour le président devrait automatiquement, par définition, être éliminé de faire jamais ainsi." Well, "courir pour le président" probably isn't the right idiom, but it'll have to do. Sarkozy really really wants to be president; you can see it in his eyes. Some people might find this a bit alarming.

It's instructive to contrast the turnout with the turnout at the last two UK general elections - 61.3% in 2005 and 59.2% in 2001. That's what you get in a system (i.e. the French one) where every person casting a vote knows that their vote is going to count. Admittedly electing 650 MPs is a bit more complex than electing a single President, but the same principles apply. More here, if you want it.

On a completely unrelated note, this is my 147th blog post, and the World Snooker Championship started this week. Spooky, huh?

bangin' 'toons

I'm mildly suspicious of grown men (and women, though, let's be honest, it is almost exclusively men) who read comic books, however adult-themed these books might claim to be, and however hysterically they might clamour to be categorised as "graphic novels" instead. So it's no use getting all Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman on my ass, it's not going to change my mind. I have similar sentiments regarding adults reading Harry Potter books as well, but I'll skip over that topic for a moment, mainly as I'm trying to keep this post relatively short and rambling-free as it's a sunny day outside and I want to get out in it.

My point, such as it is, is that while I disdain the cartoon form as a medium for great literary works, it is perfect for making short sharp satirical points. That's why most newspapers carry single-frame political cartoons on their leader pages, plus the odd multi-frame series like Steve Bell's If... (which I've never really "got") and Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury.

It's reassuring that these still have the power to cause shock and outrage, as Dave Brown of the Independent did a couple of years ago with his cartoon of Ariel Sharon eating Palestinian babies. Not to mention the storm in the Islamic community over the Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad (which I choose not to reproduce here partly out of a craven desire not to be fatwah-ed, but mainly because they're just not particularly funny - the greatest cartoon crime of all).

If any of these people ever saw Tim Kreider's work, specifically the series The Pain, When Will It End?, they might very well have some sort of seizure. And they should see it, because if there were any justice in the world, this guy would be the most famous cartoonist out there. He's a firm believer that no subject should be off-limits to humour and satire, a sentiment with which I profoundly agree. This means plenty of cartoons on such diverse subjects as sex, religion, Nazism, science, religion, the Holocaust, body piercing, and the cartoonist's own secret fantasies. Oh, and the ex-planet Pluto. It really is all tremendous stuff, and illustrates an important truth - stupid people are just depressing, while highly articulate and intelligent people (please do read the comments after the cartoons) pretending to be dumb are funny. It's not fair, but there it is. I also like the way Kreider caricatures himself (possibly unintentionally) as Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons after a radical haircut.

summer is in the air.....

...yeah, I know spring was in the air only a fortnight or so ago (just before the US Masters in fact), but things move quickly in this crazy post-millennial world of ours. So a matter of weeks later it's the start of the English cricket season - ergo, summer. Simple.

It's also the World Cup, of course, though it seems to have been going on forever. After tomorrow the interminable Super 8 stage will be over, though the last two matches (Australia v New Zealand today, and England v West Indies tomorrow) are irrelevant in terms of the semi-final line-up, though in certain unlikely circumstances (specifically, New Zealand thrashing Australia today with a substantial difference in run-rate) the "who plays who" situation could change. Most likely semi-final matches are Australia v South Africa, and Sri Lanka v New Zealand. This is (to a neutral observer anyway) the "right" line-up, as these are clearly the best four one-day sides in the world (India and Pakistan might have something to say about that, but they failed to qualify, so we'll choose to ignore them). That said I'd be extremely surprised if Ricky Ponting's Australians don't win the cup. Sticking my neck out, I'd say that the game they could lose is the semi-final against South Africa - if they get to the final they'll win.

Back to England - I see Duncan Fletcher has stood down as coach, which I think was pretty inevitable after the winter England have had. I think in general he can look back and be pretty proud of what he achieved with the team, particularly the period leading up to the Ashes triumph of 2005. He was unlucky to never be able to field the Ashes-winning Test team again owing to illness and injury to various key people (Vaughan, Trescothick and Simon Jones most significantly), and I think he was hampered by having a slightly too chummy relationship with his two captains, Nasser Hussain and Michael Vaughan; Vaughan's continuing presence in the one-day side is a symptom of this. I see also that Peter Moores has been installed as caretaker coach. I don't know much about Moores except that he was heavily involved with the Sussex team that's been so dominant in the County Championship recently - his lack of Test experience at either playing or coaching level may count against him when the big guns like Tom Moody and John Wright start expressing an interest in the job on a more permanent basis, though.

Nice to see Marcus Trescothick in the runs for Somerset, and Steve Harmison picking up a few wickets for Durham. We really need these two back in the Test team pronto. Mark Ramprakash continues to stack up runs at a rate of knots as well, though I suspect even he would have to concede his Test-playing days are over.




It's a strange quirk of modern cricket that while in the old days the pinnacle of batsmanship, membership of the 100 100's club, was the preserve of the finest batsmen of their time, men like Jack Hobbs, Walter Hammond, Don Bradman, Len Hutton etc., these days it's much more of a niche market because of the smaller number of county games, and the greater number of Test matches and the preparation time devoted to them. Specifically, entry these days depends on being a county run-machine who never quite cracked it at Test level - the two shining examples being Graeme Hick (already a member) and Ramprakash (87 first-class centuries up to the start of this season, I think he made one last week, and he made 115 for Surrey against Yorkshire today - spooky).

thank you for not breeding

A glut of book-related posts recently, for which I apologise. Anyone who's not as quite lidderally bonkers about lidderature as I am might have found the whole thing a bit trying.

Here's something different, then. You're a concerned environmentalist. You recycle. You use low-energy light bulbs. Maybe you even knit your own tofu. But unless you're prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice it's all for nothing. And that ultimate sacrifice is.....you. Oh, and all your descendants. Or so the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement would have you believe. That's VHEMT for short, pronounced "vehement" because, and I quote, "that's what we are". Well, that's one word for it.

Their website has a handy FAQ section with some great questions on it, all answered in an endearingly deadpan way, from the starter category like "Are some people opposed to the VHEMT concept?" to the slightly more Zen ones like "How do I gauge the depth of my ecology?" to the no-punches-pulled approach of "Why don't you just kill yourself?".

It's easy to mock, of course, as well as being right and proper and essential to do so. The funny thing is, though, that among all the barking lunacy (and I'm not totally convinced the whole thing isn't an elaborate wind-up) they talk more sense on a number of topics than those who are, in a very real sense, running the world. Let me offer you a couple of examples.

• Population growth. Just to start with the obvious one. There are too many of us for the available resources (unless we all fancy going back to subsistence farming and perhaps owning the odd goat. Not keen? Thought not. Me neither), even if there aren't there soon will be at current rates of population increase. Global warming doesn't help either, in fact of course the two phenomena are inextricably linked; more people means more pollution, greenhouse gases, etc., and also more people living in areas vulnerable to the effects of global warming, like rising sea levels. None of which leads unavoidably to the conclusion that we should voluntarily wipe ourselves out, but just because their conclusion is bonkers doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the starting premise.



• Contraception. Clearly if you're advocating the gradual phasing out of the human race you're going to have to advocate either mass suicide (not really a vote-winner), total abstention from sex (ditto) or contraceptive use. Hardly surprisingly, this is the approach they've plumped for. Contrast this, if you will, with the approach advocated by the Catholic Church, which continues to adhere to the position that contraception is inherently sinful, and, as if this wasn't enough, in some African countries to spread the eye-poppingly evil notion that condoms promote the spread of HIV/AIDS. Now who are the nutters?



• Abortion. No method of contraception, however conscientiously used, is 100% reliable. VHEMT take what could be viewed as a commendably pragmatic view of this problem - equally it could be viewed as a view cynically in line with their ultimate aim - the end of the human race! (Insert dramatic orchestral stab here). Either way it's a lot more sane than the current goings-on in the US Supreme Court. Maybe Ruth Bader Ginsberg is being paranoid in seeing this as the first step on the right-wing religious conservative road to getting Roe v Wade repealed; I'm not so sure she is, though. I say: get Hillary in the White House pronto; she'll sort 'em out.

the last book I read

Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee.

Well now, here's an irony. Having if not damned with faint praise then certainly expressed distinctly lukewarm sentiments towards one author's (Kurt Vonnegut) experiments with metafiction, I find myself reading almost immediately afterwards a novel which dabbles in a very similar area, somewhat unexpectedly.

Let's go back a step. This is, ostensibly and initially at least, the story of sixtysomething Paul Rayment, French by birth but long-since Australian by residence, who gets knocked off his bike while riding around the suburbs of Adelaide, where he lives, and injured so badly that one of his legs has to be amputated above the knee. A formerly active (if reserved) man, he withdraws into himself after the accident, spurning the concern of his friends as well as the offer of a prosthetic limb to allow him to walk again. He engages the services of a Croatian nurse, Marijana, who he falls in love with (or imagines he does), but she has a husband and children already.

So far, so relatively normal, except: Rayment is a sixtysomething fitness enthusiast and cyclist, resident in Australia (and Adelaide, specifically) despite not being born there; Coetzee is a sixtysomething fitness enthusiast and cyclist, resident in Australia (and Adelaide, specifically) despite not being born there (he's South African). So is Rayment meant to be Coetzee?

About a third of the way through the book, Rayment is paid an unexpected visit by an elderly woman who announces herself to be Elizabeth Costello, an Australian novelist, and a woman who seems to know a lot about Rayment and his predicament. In fact she recites to him, as a way of demonstrating this, the first lines of the novel, verbatim. Weird, huh? Those who know a bit about Coetzee's other books will know at this point that his previous novel was called Elizabeth Costello, and featured the same character, and will be feeling the narrative rug being pulled out from under them. So is her appearance here a physical manifestation of the authorial voice? To put it another way, is Costello meant to be Coetzee?

The answers to the questions posed at the end of the previous two paragraphs are, respectively: erm, maybe and erm, maybe. Costello urges Rayment to come out of himself and engage with the world, Rayment resolutely refuses to do so, his fraught relationship with Marijana and her son Drago continues, there's a sub-plot involving the (possible) theft of some antique photographs, but not a huge amount actually happens. It's significant, perhaps, that the main piece of action in the book (Rayment's collision with the car) happens a fraction of a second before the book starts - the first line has him flying through the air. Nothing as dramatic actually occurs within the pages of the book.

So on one level it's a story about caring and being cared for, love, old age, the desire to leave a mark on the world after you've gone, etc....and on another level it's a story about the author's struggle with his characters, the struggle to have them behave in interesting yet authentic and recognisable ways.

I see all that. I see, also, that it's beautifully written in Coetzee's trademark spare and precise way, and I sped through it pretty quickly. But is it as good as Disgrace, which is much more orthodox in structure, equally beautifully written, and in which plenty of interesting stuff happens?

No. I'd start there if I were you.

album of the day

Genius: The Best Of Warren Zevon.

Ever seen The Colour Of Money? You know, Tom Cruise, Paul Newman, a sort of sequel to the (much) earlier Newman vehicle The Hustler, won Newman a belated Best Actor Oscar, a bit crap, Cruise as irritating as ever, etc., etc. One of Cruise's most self-satisfied and irritating bits, though, is when he dances round a pool table to the strains of Werewolves Of London, by, yes (you knew there was a point to these ramblings), Warren Zevon.

It's a terrific song, with its thumping piano riff and twisted lyrics, and falls into what I term Category 1 among Warren Zevon songs, these being the sardonic rockers, category 2 being the gently sentimental ballads. Category 1 examples: the aforementioned Werewolves of London, Poor Poor Pitiful Me, Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner, Excitable Boy ("He took little Suzie to the Junior Prom / Excitable boy, they all said / And he raped her and killed her, then he took her home / Excitable boy, they all said / Well, he's just an excitable boy"), Lawyers, Guns And Money, Boom Boom Mancini, Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead, Mr. Bad Example.

Category 2 examples: Carmelita, Reconsider Me, Searching For A Heart.

Actually there is a Category 3 as well: the slightly more contemplative songs written late in his career, the last few of which would have been written in the sure and certain knowledge of his own impending death from lung cancer (he died in September 2003) - ones like Mutineer, I Was In The House When The House Burned Down and Genius. Some of the rockier numbers are a bit lumpy and synth-heavy and 1980's in their arrangements, but the lyrics are pure gold.

Further thoughts: the album Mr. Bad Example included a couple of songs later used as the titles of works in other artistic media: Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead (film starring Andy Garcia, among others), and Quite Ugly One Morning (book by Christopher Brookmyre). Also - the list of great rock songs about boxing is a pretty short one, but Boom Boom Mancini is right up there. Actually I can't think of any others, apart from maybe Hurricane by Bob Dylan, and that isn't really about boxing at all. And, erm, The Boxer by Simon And Garfunkel, I suppose. And Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School is one of the best album titles ever.

Anyway, unless you want the 44-track retrospective I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, this is the compilation to go for. Nice set of sleeve notes by fellow substance-abusing wordsmith Will Self, as well.

look at the Coch on that

Back in Cardiff at the weekend and revisited a couple of the places I visited back in December. This time it was a bit more of a full day out, though. Hazel and I got a local train from Cathays to Treforest, nipped across to the local cemetery which marks the access point to the Taff Trail (just here in fact), walked down the trail past Nantgarw to a handily-placed picnic table where we had lunch, then pressed on into Fforest-fawr and thence to Castell Coch. The rebuilding works have finished and the scaffolding has all come down since December, and it was a glorious sunny day so it was all looking very idyllic. We paid our £3.50 (each!) and had a look around inside - then we headed off down the hill into Tongwynlais.

Last time my timing of arrival at the pub was not too good as it was about 10:30 in the morning, and the place was shut; this time it was perfect as it was just before 4pm, so not only was the pub open, but it was just about to show the Grand National. So we sat around, watched the race, had a couple of pints, headed back down out of the village down the Taff Trail which hugs the riverside back towards the centre of Cardiff and caught the train back into town from Radyr.

Photos are available here. On the basis of the stretch of the Taff Trail we saw (about 8 miles or so, I reckon) I'd say it would be a lot of fun to cycle along, especially as the scenery would get a lot more spectacular as you head out into the country north of Merthyr Tydfil. Definitely worth reserving a summer weekend for!

Vonny.....gutted

This is a slight rehash of a topic covered in the comments to the Michael Dibdin article, but I think it warrants a mention in a "proper" posting. Another literary death this week: Kurt Vonnegut. Various obituary articles here: the BBC, and slightly more comprehensive ones in the Times and the Washington Post.

Needless to say Kurt Vonnegut was a far bigger deal in the literary world, both critically and comercially, than Michael Dibdin ever was, but I never quite got to grips with him in quite the same way. I read the book upon which the bulk of his reputation rests, Slaughterhouse-Five, and I've also read Breakfast Of Champions and Galapagos. I think you either instantly engage with and love the constant structural experiments and the self-referentiality or you find the whole thing leaves you a bit cold and yearning from some proper literary meat to chew on. I probably fall into the latter camp, which isn't to say I didn't find the books enjoyable, just that I wasn't fired with an irresistible urge to seek out and read any more of them.

After having a root around my bookshelves last night I discover I've also got one of his earlier ones, The Sirens Of Titan, though I've never read it. I'll get to it eventually.

Slightly bizarrely, I was inspired to read Slaughterhouse-Five after hearing it mentioned in the film Footloose, the classic piece of 1980's teen tosh. When you're a teenager anything that might have been banned somewhere sounds like the sort of thing you want to be reading.

Reverend, we have a little problem.
I heard the English teacher is planning to teach that book.
Slaughterhouse Five. Isn't that an awful name?

On a completely unrelated topic, I found myself watching It's Not Easy Being Green last night, the continuing eco-adventures of the Strawbridge family, featuring Dick Strawbridge, a man with a moustache you could lose a badger in. Well, I suppose it's not completely unrelated, as there is the moustache connection (see the Vonnegut picture above). Anyway, I couldn't help noticing that the incidental music featured the instrumental intros from two songs from Sufjan Stevens' brilliant Come On Feel The Illinoise album: John Wayne Gacy, Jr. and Decatur. Well done BBC. I'm almost tempted to write to Points Of View, except I don't think it's on any more.

the last book I read

Aunt Julia And The Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa.

Interesting bloke, Mario Vargas Llosa - Peruvian novelist, one-time bosom buddy of legendary Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.....their friendship ended in mysterious circumstances with a punch-up in a Mexican cinema 30-odd years ago; rumour has it there may have been a woman involved. He also ran for President of Peru back in the early 1990s and lost narrowly to Alberto Fujimori.

Anyway, back to the book.....although MVL's (as I like to call him) biography is relevant here, as this is a thinly disguised account of his own scandalous affair with and subsequent marriage to his Aunt Julia. The story of the affair and the couple's increasingly desperate attempts to find a way to get married despite the disapproval of the protagonist's parents is interspersed with the increasingly deranged soap-operatic radio serial scripts written by the protagonist's friend Pedro Camacho.

It's all highly entertaining stuff, though the ending is a bit odd - MVL did go on to divorce his Aunt Julia and marry his cousin Pauline, just as in the book. Pedro Camacho's descent into semi-madness is never adequately explained , though.

Michael Dibdin RIP

Sad to hear of the death of one of my favourite authors, novelist Michael Dibdin - he died on March 30th, but I only found out this weekend. The obituaries were in the midweek papers last week (including a comprehensive one in the Daily Telegraph and slightly shorter ones in the Guardian and Independent), but my local newsagent has been shut for the last couple of weeks, so my newspaper-buying has been a bit erratic of late. Thankfully it's open again now, though.

The obituaries all say that he died after a "short illness", which is usually obituary-ese for a heart attack (a "long illness" usually meaning cancer, by contrast).

He's most famous for the Italian-set Aurelio Zen series of detective novels, the last of which, Back To Bologna, I read just recently. Apparently there is one more in the pipeline which he completed before he died. I recommend the whole series, as well as the non-Zen novels Dirty Tricks and Dark Spectre, unreservedly.

vulpine shenanigans #3

Following on from my fox-related post of a few days ago, I got back to Bristol on Easter Monday to find this handsome chap sunning himself in my garden. I went and got the camera, and he obliged by looking straight at me while I snapped him, and then getting up and trotting off once I'd finished.

Next week: I surprise a colony of tapirs in my airing cupboard.

Masters post-mortem + showbiz lookalikes

Well, not many people (me included) would have predicted Zach Johnson as the 2007 Masters champion, but he was a thoroughly deserving winner in the end. A couple of others could have challenged - Justin Rose was in it up to the 17th but a horrible drive put paid to his chances; Tiger Woods produced a sensational eagle at the 13th, but missed a makeable birdie putt at 14 and was left having to go for the green in two after a pushed drive at 15 and put an almost impossible shot in the water. Retief Goosen played very steadily and but for a couple of putts which refused to drop on 12 and 14 and a bit of appalling luck on 16 - when a tee shot which looked to be in hole-in-one territory stuck at the top of the bank in defiance of the laws of physics - might have nicked it. All in all a very exciting weekend though, and lots of European interest near the top of the leaderboard (Rose, Harrington, Casey, Donald, etc.) - though not actually at the top of the leaderboard, which is the only place that really counts. Just ask Tiger.













More importantly though, anyone watching the antepenultimate pairing of Johnson and Vaughn Taylor going round the course on Sunday must have done a double-take: surely this must be the celebrity pro-am section of the tournament? Otherwise what are Joaquin Phoenix and Matthew Modine doing playing a round of golf together?

double vulpine congratulations

Firstly to my fellow blogmeister Andy "Silver Fox" Browne who is now (as of last week) father to two daughters. Congratulations must also go to his wife Sara who, to be fair, did most of the work, Andy's involvement being, as I understand it, brief, yet pivotal.















Also many congratulations to my old friend Tony "Foxy" Fox who got married a month or so ago in New Zealand. Fascinating fact: Tony's wife Lianne is the only person I know (admittedly somewhat tangentially) who has a legitimate Wikipedia entry. The picture here is of Tony and Mario (another Antipodean escapee who now lives in Sydney) down on the Dorset coast in, slightly astonishingly (to me anyway), 1996.

Lastly, and I know this has seen some exposure on the internet recently, but I have to mention it because it is quite amusing - check out ex-Queen guitarist Brian May's website. I have to reproduce just a couple of quotes: one at the end of an article about animal testing:

I swear I will use all my influence, from now until I die, to try to turn the human race around...

Cheers, Bri. And one from a somewhat hyperbolic piece about John Lennon:

NEVER had anything been created like these works in the whole of History.

Crikey. And there's me thinking they were just some songs.

spring is in the air.....

.....and I'm not referring to the mild and sunny weather we've been having recently (well, round these parts anyway), still less to any voodoo pagan ritualism involving cuckoos and snowdrops.

No, what I'm referring to is the fact that it's the US Masters this weekend - the first golfing major of the year. Not only is it a great and historic golfing tournament, but it's a riot of colour when the weather's good - as it usually is. Although if it isn't then they apparently park sun-lamps in front of the azaleas to ensure they're in full bloom when the TV cameras are on them, and if the weather's been particularly warm they pack them in ice to ensure they don't wilt over the weekend. It's the sort of thing colour television was invented for - apparently Nick Faldo was inspired to take up golf after sitting in his living room in Welwyn Garden City watching Jack Nicklaus win the 1972 Masters. Though as far as the passing of the seasons goes all it really proves is that it's nice and sunny in Georgia in April - not really much of a surprise.

My first US Masters memory is of seeing Jack Nicklaus win (his 18th and final Major) in 1986 - just as with the 1981 Ashes a fantastically tense and emotional finish that has, paradoxically, simultaneously kept me gripped to subsequent tournaments and mildly disappointed that most of them haven't been as good.

So who's going to win this year? What, you mean apart from Tiger Woods?

No, seriously. He's won something like 11 of his last 15 strokeplay tournaments, the course couldn't be better suited to his game, and he's got the wood (ooer) on every other player in the field, mentally. As someone once said about Nicklaus, "he knows he's going to beat you, you know he's going to beat you, and he knows you know he's going to beat you". Actually I've just looked it up, and it was JC Snead - who can probably be forgiven a touch of bitterness, as growing up playing against his uncle must have been pretty demoralising as well. If we leave Tiger aside, then it comes down to either another of the Big Five having a good week (probably Mickelson or Goosen), or one of the shorter hitters in the pack finding some absolutely miraculous form on the greens. Mike Weir was the last guy to do this, in 2003, so it can be done.

What about the Europeans? Well, those who have previous Augusta form like Olazabal and Langer are a bit long in the tooth these days, so you'd have to look to the younger contingent. It could be one of the Brits, which comes down to a choice between a long hitter capable of some streaks of sensational scoring (and equally some terrible ones) in Paul Casey, or Mr. Consistency in Luke Donald. I reckon Casey has the game, as long as he brings it with him. Otherwise it could be Henrik Stenson (pictured), the man who holed the winning putt in the Ryder Cup, though winners who haven't played Augusta several times before are rare. We could do with a European major winner, though - it's been seven and a half years since the last one, Paul Lawrie at Carnoustie.

While writing this I went and had a look at Doug's golfing predictions blog - turns out he's got some thoughts as well - if you're after a serious form guide I urge you to look there rather than at my vague ramblings.

album of the day

Chronicle by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Another forgotten band - after The Rolling Stones and The Beatles these guys were probably the biggest band in the world for a year or two between 1969 and 1970. They had five US #2 singles without ever having a #1, which is apparently a record, while in the UK Bad Moon Rising was a #1 hit in September 1969, and later featured memorably in the man-to-werewolf transformation scene in the film An American Werewolf In London in the early 1980's. Not only that, but it was a John Fogerty song that opened Live Aid in 1985. Don't remember that? Well, Rockin' All Over The World by Status Quo is a cover of a Fogerty original from his debut solo album in 1975. Didn't know that? Well, there you go.

Fogerty is CCR, to all intents and purposes, no disrespect to the other three members of the group - principal songwriter, lead singer and lead guitarist. The Creedence sound couldn't be more simple, in stark contrast to the countless trippy psychedelic combos around in the late 1960's Creedence were devout primitivists - two guitars, bass and drums will do nicely thank you, as well as a bunch of songs influenced by country, blues and old-time rock'n'roll (Travelin' Band is a blatant Little Richard rip-off). Only a bit of electric piano and saxophone on the spine-tingling Long As I Can See The Light and a swell of Hammond organ on Have You Ever Seen The Rain? deviate from the standard formula; the rest is an awesomely tightly focused collection of 2 to 3 minute swamp-rock nuggets like Proud Mary, Bad Moon Rising, Green River, Fortunate Son (probably their finest moment) and Run Through The Jungle. Even when they unleash an 11-minute cover version of Marvin Gaye's I Heard It Through The Grapevine they somehow manage to pull it off - it ought to be horrible, but it's actually irresistibly funky, and Fogerty's gravelly howl is one of the great rock voices. It's only the later stuff like Hey, Tonight and Sweet Hitch-Hiker that marks a downturn in quality (and preceded the break-up of the band) - nothing much wrong with the songs, but they're much more generic rock and the voodoo magic of the earlier stuff has gone. That break-up preceded a series of mishaps for Fogerty whereby he lost millions thanks to Fantasy Records' accounting cock-ups and was then (somewhat bizarrely) accused of self-plagiarism and embroiled in lawsuits for some years, only returning with the triumphant Centerfield in 1985.

Apparently Bad Moon Rising is the source of a mondegreen - the last line of the chorus "there's a bad moon on the rise" is often misheard as "there's a bathroom on the right". And the crazy thing is, in my flat there is a bathroom on the right. As long as you're coming from the bedroom.

let me take you up the Hardknott Pass

I bought a Freeview box the other day - specifically a Philips DTR 210, £39 in Tesco in Cardiff. I could have got one for about £10 less, but I paid the extra for a manufacturer I'd actually heard of. Got it home, plugged it in, worked straight out of the box, bish bosh, sorted. Within an hour I was watching adverts for a toaster-shaped rotisserie delivered by a caricature fat Italian in a chef's hat. Apparently, if you can toast, you can roast. Genius.

Anyway, the reason I mention this is that this allows me access to a whole world of new channels, some of them rubbish (like the rotisserie channel, for instance), but some of them quite good, like for instance BBC4. On which there was an interesting documentary this evening about Alfred Wainwright, the Lakeland guidebook author. Anyone who's done any walking up in the Lakes will have come across the books; I've got a couple myself, and while they're exceptionally good as walking guides in their own right, they're also works of art.


It's a uniquely and quintessentially British story - mild-mannered accountant trapped in unhappy marriage seeks an outlet to a) escape from the wife b) wear himself out c) sublimate and suppress his sexual desires, and takes himself off (on the bus) in tweed suit and hobnailed boots to map every last inch of the Lakeland fells over a meticulously planned 13-year period. Then again if it hadn't been for old Alf's unfulfilling sex life there would have been no books, and scores of hillwalkers would be wandering around lost on top of Great Gable right now.

Anyone wanting to pay the ultimate tribute should note that AW's ashes are scattered on top of Haystacks in the western Lakes. Though he's probably been grazed up and crapped out by sheep multiple times by now. Still, it's what he would have wanted.