Category: Social

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Firsts

It’s time to open up some of my darkest secrets! Once upon a time I was a young teenager unsure of my musical direction. I was still searching (although unknowingly) for the style of low density fluid compression waves that would emotionally move me. Here’s some interesting trivia:

The first single I bought on 7″ vinyl was “99 Red Balloons” by the German singer Nena. It was sometime in 1984 so I was 12 years old. I’ve never really been a lyrics man concentrating more on the music but the song fits in quite well with my previous post about nuclear war.

The second single I bought caused some controversy between me and my best friend of the time, Mark. He thought I ought to buy “The Reflex” by Duran Duran but I chose more wisely and opted for “Two Tribes” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. This was 1984 still. Once again this is a song about nuclear war.

The first album I bought came with a warning from my Mum that I was spending a lot of money and I should be sure that I really wanted it. I bought the Ghostbusters film soundtrack on 12″ vinyl. It is still 1984. I still have it in a proper box in the cupboard ready for future play. I still have a record player set up in the dining room just in case. There is a record on the player, it is Dance With The Devil by Cozy Powell.

I don’t recall what my first CD was but I do know that I didn’t have a CD player on which to listen to it! I think I bought a CD single by W.A.S.P. it might have been “The Real Me”. I’ll have to look in the attic to see if I can find which singles I bought.

I don’t throw music away. This is a potential fault because as my children grow up they might find some of the awful stuff I bought when I was young. I guess that music reflected my tastes at the time. I don’t think there is a record or piece of music of which I am ashamed as it is a part of me at some level.

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The Slip Road

Along with previous posts about driving [Thank you and Throttle] I would like to add this short rant.

I have noticed a number of people recently who take the slip road to join the motorway (mainly the M20 near me) who decide to continue at the mediocre speed they were doing before the motorway.
This is clearly dangerous. The whole point of the slip road is to allow traffic to match the speed of the vehicles on the main carriageway. Most traffic seems to travel near 70 miles per hour on the motorway so heading down the slip road at 40 to 50 mph is just plain dangerous. It’s no surprise that I get annoyed when my safety is put at risk because another driver on the road doesn’t have the confidence to drive at a proper speed.

The highway code says [my emphasis]:

259

Joining the motorway. When you join the motorway you will normally approach it from a road on the left (a slip road) or from an adjoining motorway. You should

  • give priority to traffic already on the motorway
  • check the traffic on the motorway and match your speed to fit safely into the traffic flow in the left-hand lane
  • not cross solid white lines that separate lanes or use the hard shoulder
  • stay on the slip road if it continues as an extra lane on the motorway
  • remain in the left-hand lane long enough to adjust to the speed of traffic before considering overtaking

Put your foot down please and stop endangering my life.

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Special Sister Parish

I’ve had to write this communication because some of my pupils at work have told me to. Very kindly they got me a card for being their form tutor. It contains some nice words but is titled:

For a special sister [parish]

Miss Diamond Dame, if it doesn’t sparkle, quite simply, it’s lame

The also got me a poster for my room. It’s cool.

AT-AT in Manhattan

Thanks very much, Andy and Harrison.

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Thank You!

I know I am a grumpy git. I know that I am now old fashioned. I know that I moan about too many things and should probably just accept the state of things as they are and move on.

However – It doesn’t take much energy to say thank you when you cut me up on the roads and pull in front of me.

I don’t mind how you say it:

  • you can flash your hazard lights
  • you can wave out the back window
  • you can wave of your side window
  • you can hack into the DVLA database and find my address and send me a gift voucher

Just say “THANK YOU”.

Most of the time you have pulled in front of my car while I’m travelling at more than 50mph and I’m trying to leave a safe distance between me and the car in front because I am normally carrying the most precious cargo possible. You have deemed this a suitable place into which to drive and not worry about a conscientious driver trying to be safe – acknowledge your arseholeness.

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Thank God For BMW

About six years ago I found myself perplexed! I would see a car out of the corner of my eye and think “ooh, there’s a nice looking car”. It would only hit me when I looked properly that it was a BMW. I hadn’t liked any BMWs until this time and I found it distressing that they had changed their general style and were now good looking.

Finally this balance has been redressed. The latest BMWs that I have seen on the roads are back to ugly. I think they look stupid. All is well with the world again and everything is correct.

An Aside
The Range Rover Evoke is a horrible looking car. The designers are genius because it seems to be the latest fashion accessory. Ugly but selling, perhaps they should be pink as well? If I had designed it I would be crying with laughter all the time. The BMW X6 is just as bad.

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Fulham Five Day

5th May 2012

The inaugural Fulham Five Day. A date where members of the F5 aim to replicate activities from 20 years ago.

the inaugural, annual F5 Day called so to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the formation of the F5

Here’s some of the activities the 5 got upto on the Inaugural Fulham 5 Day.

Have called back and told them to lock the door and hide all the toilet paper- said I would explain later. In keeping with the F5 tradition I am going to have a completely normally day. I expect emails from the rest of you so I can send emails back saying tut tut.

I will purposefully leave my dinner out this evening, down here that will be covered in flies and maggots by morning. Just about to book my flight so I can break into Mazza’s apartment! I will call as many people as I can a c**t and be surprised when they are offended!

Celebrating by not doing any examination lesson preparation. Going to spend 2 minutes looking at past papers and then say “screw this”. Put “Killing in the name of” on loud and lie on the floor in the dark with my sunglasses on. Possibly head to the chippy after that for sausage and chips and coming back via the off licence for a few cans of Murphy’s. Will piss in the kitchen sink in the morning and check how cooked the spaghetti is by throwing it at the wall. Might even burn an important letter for the guy downstairs later in the week! Going to turn on the games console, play Attack Sub and Desert Storm and will then settle in for a Madden fest playing the Redskins. After that I’ll let Jase play Phantasy Star for a complete weekend! Will wait for Ades to come in later and try to sleep with Mazza. Going to take appointments for the doctors surgery when the phone goes at 830 in the morning.

Sorry to arrive late, but I spent the weekend sitting on Jason and ferrying breakables out of his room after he downed a bottle of Smirnoff.  You should see the state of his sofa…
I’m looking forward to 5.5.55 when I suggest we all rent a flat in Fulham below some rowdy students and turn the tables on them.

 

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One Season

The following programmes were cancelled after just one (or two) seasons. It’s a disgrace.
I do understand that tv shows have to make money but surely there should be some space for critical acclaim.

  • Knightrider
  • The Cape
  • Painkiller Jane
  • Terra Nova
  • Dollhouse (two seasons)
  • Firefly
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    iTunes Albums

    I spent a few hours at the weekend sorting out my iTunes library and then changing it back. I’ll explain:
    My car stereo lets the iPhone plug into it. I can then browse the library and select songs and playlists etc. from the stereo display. Unfortunately the display doesn’t have many characters and so long album names scroll across which takes some time. If there are two parts to an album and I’ve jogged the select wheel while going over a bump then I have to wait ages and concentrate on the stereo display while the album name scrolls across. This is a touch unsafe and irritating.
    So I decided to rename all multi-part albums with a 1 or 2 prefix so that I could see which part I had selected quickly on the car stereo display. Doing this took a while as I have my music library on my NAS drive and iTunes takes a while to adjust the music tags and then copy the new files to the phone.
    That night I slept rather uneasily. It was distressing me that my albums were not correctly named. It seemed wrong.
    So the next day I set about changing it back. Again it took a while but I feel more relaxed about it now. The albums are all correctly named and I’ll just have to be careful when selecting these songs in the car.
    See my music collection here.
    When I mentioned to WW that I had changed everything back to what it should be she said “I thought you’d do that”. I guess she knows me very well.

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    My Favourite Car

    The best and most fun car I think I ever drove is the Toyota Land Cruiser FJ60 (Australia edition). I spent a glorious weekend driving around Fraser Island off the east coast of Australia with Pom, Mel and ww.

    Gorgeous Truck, Fraser Island
    Gorgeous Truck, Fraser Island

    This truck definitely wasn’t the newest on the island. There was gaffer tape holding up the passenger windows and broken bits all over it. There were loads of newer Toyotas and other 4x4s racing the fishermen to the best sports areas but I’m glad we had this one. It made us feel like we were really getting into the wilderness. Also, it made us rather relaxed about getting it dirty.
    Pom and I took it in turns to drive over the world’s largest sand island. It’s a place where there is an 80kph speed limit on the main highway (or beach as we would call it) and you just have to go slower inland. Where in the world do you have to check the tides before you can drive the highway?
    We had a couple of close shaves! We entered some soft sand within the first hour of being on the island and the truck slowed but didn’t quite stop and we continued on. From then it was rather uneventful apart from placing the bottles of wine in towels so they didn’t break as we went over the bumps and they jumped about in the boot. This truck was a hoot to drive.
    On the way back to the mainland we had a bit of an issue with a large wave that spread water up the beach and over the highway. I swear we were close to turning over! The truck lurched sideways and bounced around a lot. It was very exciting. On the ferry back to the mainland lots of people were laughing at just how dirty our truck was. It proved we had a great time.
    Once back on the main land I drove along the beach (why use tarmac?) and we tried to find somewhere to rejoin the main road. Someway along the beach we came to a blockage. A tree had fallen over and there were two choices. Drive into the sea and hope or turn around and go back the way we came. I just drove straight on into the sea. We probably went about a foot deep and then with luck on our side we managed to get out the other side and keep driving. It was hilarious at the time although later that night we would whistle about it!
    Here’s a glorious shot of the Toyota:

    Gorgeous truck in a gorgeous location (Fraser Island)
    Gorgeous truck in a gorgeous location (Fraser Island)

    I want one.

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    Making It Look Easy

    Recently I have taken up jogging. This is a normal summertime hobby with the aim of helping lose my winter blubber and get fit. This year is slightly different as ww has decided to do this also. There is a little bit of competition there but it is rather unfair at the moment as ww has slight activity-induced asthma!

    We have found a 5Km route around the vineyards and fields surrounding our village. There is a bit of vertical work to do as we live at the base of the North Downs and there are ups and downs on the route!

    At the moment I can run the 5Km in about 32 minutes. Let’s say that this is about 6 mile per hour. Which would give a pace of about 10 minutes per mile. Now for the scary bit. . . . The current world record for the mile is under four minutes. If we take the four minutes as the correct time for ease of calculations then that is 15 mph or 2.5 times my current speed. An athlete I am not!

    The London Marathon was recently run in a time of just over 2 hours. Assuming it to be about 2 hours you get a speed of 13 mph which isn’t that much slower than the speed for the mile and yet these athletes keep it up for 2 hours. VERY impressive. The human body is quite stunning! An athlete I still am not.

    I think this is part of a bigger social phenomenon that professional people make things look very easy because they do it all-day every-day. Professional footballers make playing in the premiership look easy (although for £50,000 a week I’d make sure I could hit the net EVERY time). Professional athletes make it look easy, professional sports drivers make it look easy.
    Even in my profession (teaching) I think we make it look easy. I have had people come and observe my lessons and I think they think it looks easy. Then when they get the chance to do it themselves a lot of them are rubbish and have no idea and to be honest won’t be able to do it after lots of practice. It takes the right kind of person with the right kind of practice to be good at their chosen profession. Not everyone can do it. The following is a misnomer:

    you can do anything you set your mind to

    Unfortunately this was said by Ben Franklin whom I would normally hold in high esteem. Perhaps it should be re-phrased:

    you can do anything you set your mind to as long as you have the natural ability

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