Yup. That's what I thought.

You Are a Great Liar

You can pretty much pull anything over on anyone. You are an expert liar, even if you don't lie very often.

Are You a Good Liar?

Less of a celebration, more of a rip-off

Lovely Significant Other, who couldn't be less interested, but knows I am, turned up with two tickets to the Doctor Who exhibition. So, come Saturday afternoon, off we traipsed to West Brompton.

I dunno, maybe it was the gap between expectation and fulfillment, but I was disappointed. (Possibly also the gap between moulded plastic and CGI, I dunno.) There were some good bits, like How To Build An Ood, and a static display of life-size Daleks that came VERY SUDDENLY to life, also setting some unsuspecting small children to crying ha ha ha ha, and, I guess, for those so inclined, the actual real true-life Waitress costume As Worn By Kylie, but otherwise -

Nah. The jeans worn by La Piper? A cat-faced nun? A Victorian telescope that looked just a leetle like it had been made out of a gigantic loo-roll and some sticky-backed plastic? And a Tardis with DO NOT TOUCH all over it, so the much-longed-for photo of Moi in its doorway is going to have to wait for my much closer acquaintance with Photoshop? And a shop where the minimum price-hike was 20%.?

And all over kids (not that I'm agin 'em in principle, you understand, but when they get in my way to this degree?) standing by the exhibits, looking gormless, and having to keep out of the way while Doting Parent takes a picture?

Again, Nah. I'll stick to watching it on telly There's only So Far one can take fandom, and with a grateful kiss to Significant Other, this was A Step Too Far.




Actually the Stone Angel was quite good, positioned in a suitably unexpected corner. And the Empress of Raknoss was BIG. That was good too.

All we like sheep . . .

Far be it from me blindly to follow the crowd, and it does seem that a lot of bloggers are posting links to videos, but on the other hand I did find a REALLY GOOD PIECE. It's an a capella rendering of Bohemian Rhapsody by one of those College Boy Bands so quintessentially decadent East Coast. (Of the U.S. of A., I mean, not Essex. Or Kent.)

I shall be quite annoyed if this phenomenomenomenon isn't kept afloat by gay men. How irritating would it be to find a country where it's perfectly acceptable for talented straight men to dress tidily, have an extremely functional knowledge of music, and work hard enough to produce this little gem.

Oh, yes, the link - it's here.

Dangerous

One of my favourite things ever is getting a comment from Reg. This is what it looks like in my hotmail inbox - all dark and brooding. Think storm clouds on the horizon, think the Reichenbach Falls, think Olivier playing Heathcliff. Think Reg.

In other news, 'Paradise Lost' is orf. Not enough interest in the village. I'm a bit gutted, aksherly.

Abdiel

Look at this -

O Heaven! That such resemblance of the Highest
Should yet remain, where faith and realty
Remain not; wherefore should not strength and might
There fail where virtue fails, or weakest prove
Where boldest, though to sight unconquerable?
His puissance, trusting to th' Almighty's aid
I mean to try, whose reason I have tried
Unsound and false; nor is it aught but just
That he who in debate of truth hath won
Should win in arms, in both disputes alike
Victor; though brutish that contést and foul,
When reason hath to deal with force, yet so
Most reason is that reason overcome.

There's to be a staging of Milton's words in early July (not all of them. That would be mad.) and I auditioned yesterday. I said, of course, that I would just be pleased to be asked at all, but that's a LIE - I want Abdiel. I really really want Abdiel.

(Abdiel is the angel who initially was swayed by Lucifer's 'Non serviam', but thought better of it. That's the angel opposing Satan, who with his legions is assaulting the throne of Heaven. I may have to post some more of this later - it's FANTASTIC.)

See?

If it's better to give

then who on earth do the givers give to? This week, as 'appen, ME.

Lilies from Anisa, all tightly furled. One of my favourite things EVER is to watch flowers slowly burst into bloom, and lilies are spectacularly good for this - a miracle on my own mantlepiece. And, just as they reached full perfection, Significant Other asked, sobbing, if we could please throw them out.


Pollen allergy. Bah.






My mother, returning from a couple of months in South Africa, bore a box (shaped like a star, coloured crackly antique gold, with a BEJEWELLED top) full of shells.







And Rachael, who is an Autumn, occasionally buys Spring stuff by mistake, and then gives it to me.

I'm dreaming of a white . . .

. . . Easter?

Makes a change, though, doesn't it? Daffodils peeking through the snowdrifts, long weekend picnic plans all awry because you weren't banking on snow, and Easter Egg hunts . . .

Oh, Easter Egg hunts in the snow. The outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible FIB. All those little darlings asking why, if the Easter Bunny really exists, each egg is hidden at the end of a line of size eleven trainer tracks.


PS I should have mentioned that this Easter Egg hunt took place in the churchyard. (Eostre must have been laughing all over her lovely green face.) It was a churchwarden's rather brilliant ploy to get the kids out before the next service. So there were all these lovely Christian folk defending the existence of a pagan God's totem. In the churchyard.

Valkyrie. Even Hippolyta would be better.

I have mentioned before my appallment that 'Amazon' should be called 'Amazon', and not something starting with a letter a great deal further down the alphabet. Any letter, just not bloody blimmin' A, is all. ANYTHING that takes that line OK OK! THOSE LINES! Happy now?

Where was I before I got all defensive and shouty? Oh yes - anything that takes those lines down past the fold in the credit card statement, so they are not THE FIRST THINGS Significant Other SEES.

Which would be great, no? Unless - unless . . .



Yup. EVERY SINGLE LINE ON MY LAST STATEMENT.

Trades Descriptions Act

This really should have been exciting, I promise you. I'd been led to expect fireworks of one sort or another - either a lot of Scandinavian berserking, or a fjord-ful of tears, arms around the shoulders and vows of eternal amity.

But no - another half-arsed solution to a half-arsed irritant. What is with them? So both men thrive on bitter, nagging relationships, fractured by wilful misunderstanding and patched up by the threat of losing their livelihoods if they don't work together - what do they think wives are for?

The honeymoon is over

I believe I already mentioned accdentally calling Significant Other a incompetent fool all over the interwebthingy. When he really really is not, it was clearly an error in translation, somebody has swapped around all the keys on my keyboard for a joke and I knew not what I typed, or possibly (just possibly. By a whisker) the incompetent foolness of Insignificant Other. (If women are the fair sex, does that make men the unfair sex? If a man utters an opinion, and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?)

Well He Has Had A Good Run. But he is The Golden Boy no longer. He had his chance, and made his mark, and carved his niche, but now the fun has to stop. The party is over, the easy wins are all won.

Poor fellow has been having difficulties with a local bloke in the Norwegian IT department (I know. What an exotic working life he has) and emailed his boss in Germany (it just gets more exciting, doesn't it?) to ask for a confab about said difficulties, and the German boss emailed back, copying Norwegian Man.

SO is coming back tonight from a brace of days there, and I dare say there is no way I can avoid hearing all about it.

On the other hand, it might be worth paying attention because it may be the next post . . .

Recipe

Heat the oven to 180°C / 350°F. Brush a 20cm removable-base tin with melted butter, and dust with ground almonds.

Melt together 300g plain chocolate (min. 60% cocoa), 275g caster sugar, 165g unsalted butter and a pinch of salt. Remove from the heat.

Whisk five large eggs together with a tablespoon of ground almonds, and fold into the chocolate mixture. Bake for 35 - 40 minutes.

To cool, remove the base of the tin, carefully burning yourself on the forearm and tipping the entire confection onto the top of your gas hob, ensuring you get sufficient quantities into the hard-to-reach areas under the pan support grids.

Swear Significant Other to grave-like secrecy. Your secrecy, his grave.

Thanking the good Lord in Heaven that you cleaned your hob-top within living memory, pick out enough bits to fill four bowls, and put the bowls into the fridge. Put the remainder into a fifth bowl, and pick at this for the next two hours, while you are preparing dinner for your guests.

Hope that you got all the bits of last week's rice out, and serve with crossed fingers and cream.

(The ingredients and method are from the competely fantastic Green & Black cookbook. The presentation is all mine.)

(And I can't even blog this on my RL blog, because they will read it.)

Stardust

. . . was charming, thank you. I very much enjoyed the comic when it came out, and was disappointed when I didn't get to a cinema to see the movie, so I treated myself to the DVD immediately it came out.

Charlie Thing was very good, Claire Danes miscast, Michelle Pfeiffer beautiful, Rickie Gervais predictable, and Robert de Niro a hoot. And I didn't mind at all the divergences in plot, except for the ending, which was awful. So much better in the comic.

But what I didn't get was why, out of all the favourable reviews, and there were quite a few, the DVD distributors decide to quote the Daily Mail* on the back, and, on a specially commissioned sticker on the front, the Sun**. Neil Gaiman himself was part of the production team, and surely he can't have lived abroad so long he's forgotten what these two newspapers are like?

I've always struggled against intellectual snobbery*** but for the life of me I can't see why the makers of this movie thought that the readership of the Mail and the Sun was an appropriate demographic at which to aim.

Shows just how much I know.

* The Mail is legendarily a bastion of knee-jerk right wing xenophobic prejudice, and even if it actually isn't, it's become a national stereotype, and 'a Daily Mail reader' is cultural shorthand for describing a knee-jerk right wing xenophobe.

**The Sun has a picture of a naked woman on page three every day, and no-one knows what is on the other pages. Or cares. And 'Page Three' is cultural shorthand for - well, naked woman with big breasts. All shot in the best possible taste. And anyway, these women enjoy it, and they are genuinely talented, and it's the first step on theit road to stardom. Or some such.

***that's a lie

A Week Without a Washing machine

Yesterday saw an emergency dash to John Lewis as (did I really just type that? 'Emergency Dash to John Lewis'? How horribly middle-class.) our washing machine finally collapsed. Our painstakingly-researched (or possibly, 'Here's the first one in the row. WE'LL TAKE IT!) selected model won't be delivered until Friday. In the mean time, as we were due at SO's folks today to celebrate various birthdays, we packed up all the washing, both sopping wet from the busted machine, and fresh (HAH!) from the laundry basket, and ruthlessly exploited the in-lawful, and fully functional, washing machine. Twice.

All worth it to hear his mother muttering, 'Forty six years old and still brings his washing home. . .')

Oh, the pain

There are two things I want from nanotechnology. Neither of them difficult, and both of them contributing significantly to the quality of life in this country.

One. I want a nanotech bug that eats nothing but Japanese Knotweed. I guess it would have to be activated by something local to here - maybe a signal broadcast from the mobile phone networks - so that if it got accidentally shipped off to Japan, it won't destroy the entire eco-system, but that can't be hard. And the only thing it's built to do is eat Japanese Sodding Knotweed. At our last home in Chiswick, never mind infesting our garden, it was in all the gardens in the street and the three parallel, all over the railway embankment and threatening the little wildlife enclosure. We moved out nine years ago - I haven't had the nerve to go back.

Two. I want a nanotech bug that eats nothing but PLAQUE. Isn't dentistry about due for some sort of revolution? I had a DEEPLY uncomfortable hour in the chair yesterday, and am due two more sessions over the next month. (Oh frabjous day, let joy be unconfined etc etc.) The activity seems pre-historic in it's sophistication - I doubt it has changed significantly in - well, ever, would be my guess. (And let's not forget the cost. Holy shoot.) Why on earth can't THEY design a bug that stays dormant in toothpaste, is activated by saliva and chews its way through the unwanted contents of your mouth. It would be desirable if it didn't crap there, so maybe once it was full, it would just stop. You would just swallow it and thereafter dispose of it in the normal manner.

Please? Someone? Anyone?

I'm back

The cycling was lovely, the open fire cosy and the Scrabble set untouched. Caught up with Tempe Brennan and Robert Langdon (I was on holiday. Gimme a break) and ate tapas (in Wiltshire. I know) and swam. Well, messed about in deepish water. SO likes the pounding up and down of the lengths-swimming, me, I like a decent flume and a good Rapids. I was happy, he, not so much.

. . . and I am delighted and relieved to find that I missed a proper shower more than I missed broadband and a mobile signal.

Enough already

I have come to the reluctant conclusion that, unless one has a spare room awash with sacks of fivers, a USB turntable is (currently) *sigh* the way to go. Yes,

• it takes ages,
• it's a pain, and
• the quality of the resulting digital tracks is not all one could wish,

but on the other hand,

• you do get to listen to all that lovely music,
• you do focus on what LPs you do want to spend the effort on,
• if one had ears good enough to be bothered by the slight drop in quality one be would be earning a damn sight more as some sort of fancy consultant for Deutsche Grammophon. That or the blind bloke on a boat in Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow.

There are, of course, people who will do it all for you, For A Price. The cheapest I could find was £10 an album, at which point unless one's collection was really obscure (Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, anyone?) one really may as well just buy the CDs.

But, dammit darn it, now I'm all excited about exploring areas of technology hitherto distant dreams. Next Post - My New Electric Toothbrush. Don't hold your breath though, as SO and I are off to the wilds of Wiltshire for a few days. I expect my toothbrush to come in quite handy.

And the series of crushing defeats rolls on . . .

I spent THREE HOURS a coupla days ago getting The Tango Project from vinyl to digital. I couldn't adjust the sound levels, I'd forgotten how short some of the tracks are, indeed how abruptly some of them end, leaving me nano-seconds to stop what I was doing to press the 'Next Track' button, missing it and having to start the session over again, SEVERAL TIMES



Sorry. More shouting. No swearing, though.

Just imagine my delight when I found an ad for a Teac GF-350. Insert a CD, set the record to playing up top, and voila! A CD with your record on it, all nicely broken up into tracks because the software recognizes track breaks. And only twice the price of the USB turntable we bought two weeks ago.

I was kinda relieved to find a lovely man in some US of A publication, who tells me it ain't necessarily so.

*sigh* this is turning into a techblog, and I don't appear to be able to do a thing about it. A techblog with the added additional extra of me not knowing what the hell I am talking about.

And The Tango Project? Having spent years deliberately not buying CD duplicates of my vinyl, because we were going to get a turntable ANY DAY NOW, I remembered earlier tonight that that was one of the EXTREMELY FEW I'd cracked and bought because I couldn't bear to be without that music one more minute.

I've given up swearing for Lent

. . . and its bloody hard work I can tell you.

Dubbin

Not the stuff you put on yer boots, alas. The thing you do, left, right ands centre, FOR THE WHOLE WEEK. And you can't do ANYTHING ELSE at the same time.

Phew. This is turning into a bit of a shouty post, and I haven't even started yet.

First off, that blimmin' turntable. Oh where do I start? With the nasty software that won't figure out from three seconds (that's a distinctly long time in record-speak) of scratchy hiss that IT'S A NEW TRACK. Nu-hoh, you have to tell it. It's kind of OK if you are transferring something symphonic on acccount of the tracks are about 15 minutes long, so I can set the timer and pay some serious attention to my book. But if it's (shudder) pop, you have to sit there, listening to Fleetwood Mac (good grief I'm old) with an attention that I never managed when I was young, in order to press the damn button in between each and every track. Then you get to label the track, and start on the next one.

And after a LONG TIME of doing this, you discover another button which lets you just mark a new track, and then you do the labelling in bulk at the end of the side. (And the cool thing is, occasionally it recognises what you just recorded, and fills in all the track details for you!)

Oh yes - and for some reason the software overrides the volume controls on the laptop, so you can't turn it down. And thats my concentration shot - never bin very good with background music unless I'm doing manual labour. If there's music on I'm hopelessly distracted from

Reading
Preparing Sunday School stuff (have you seen the time!)
Writing (well-overdue) thank-you notes
and BLOGGING

The whole business is a right pain. Turns out that my lovely record collection is lovelier in retrospect than prospect - faced with choosing to go through the grinding boredom of dubbing the stuff onto a hard drive, and NEVER LISTENING TO IT AGAIN . . .

And in between times, because it needed re-formatting, I was having to download stuff from the DVD hard drive, programme by programme. Again, not discovering the Bulk Dub function for an unnecessarily long time.

*sigh* - at least I can stop with the song lyrics, because I,LTV's back, hooray.