Friday, May 06, 2005

Whatever Happened To Shelley Cheshire

I used to go to school some distance away from where I lived in a rural area of South Worcestershire - Imagine the accent I had to lose when I went to college - and we all had to get various, rickety old buses from sundry points in the middle of nowhere. For most of the drive the view was of boring fields (boring to a teenager - I miss them now) but for one bit on the outskirts of one of the villages, it was all gates to big houses with long gravel drives, like something from the Jane Austen books we should have read but didn't. Anyway, the bus used to drop off one or two 'posh' young ladies here. I'm not sure why I'm mentioning this. I wanted to write a longer, Friday-type entry but time and circumstances have got in the way of that. Imagine early summer sunshine, green lawns and bus that would not seem out of place at a Crustys' camp near Stonehenge and you get some of the atmosphere.

No Spell Check again.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Swallows And Amazons For Ever

Listening to Middle Of Nowhere by Orbital

They had the same Drum Machine as me you know. The difference was that they knew how to use it; I just used to sit there listening to the sound of breaking glass and bashed dustbins with a childish smile on my face. Oh! And they became very rich.

I was working late last night, here in this huge empty office, all on my own, spinning files between servers so many miles away. Technology is magic as Arthur C. Clarke said some time. Ennui has now flowed over me like some dark cloud. Each of these sentences is having to be dragged out and I am stoping at every fifth word just to sit and work out if it is worth carrying on 'til the next one.

Aha! Something interesting has just sprung to mind. There is one of those awful Gee-Whizz adverts on TV at the moment. It is for a wonderfully huge panoramic TV which boasts about the 18 bllion colours it can display on-screen. I seem to remember from my graphics support that the Human eye can only distinguish 10 million colours. So massively over-engineered there!

See You.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

It'd Be Funny If The Siren Went Now Wouldn't It?

In the face of all this VE day nostalgia, I have my own contribution to make.



(From 'The Victory Book' - Odhams Press 1945*)

If by any remote chance anyone who reads this knows anyone else in the photo PLEASE PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I don't know where exactly it was taken but it's somewhere in central London.

The young lady sitting on the bonnet of the car waving a flag is my aunt. This is the frontpiece to The Victory Book which is one of those wonderful Odhams press books with great pictures and great writing. It's actually mostly about the campaign which led up to VE Day. I am slightly bemused as to why one of the Keystone Cops is riding on the top of the car - the bloke in the pointy hat and with what appears to be a suspiciously bushy moustache. Just for interest as well, the film on show at the cinema in the background is The Fifth Chair (UK title) starring Fred Allen, Jack Benny and Don Ameche.

* Odhams are strange in that they don't put dates of publication in the copyright statement but I can be reasonably sure that this one was 1945.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

You Look Like A Badly Lit Quaker

My daughter cried buckets when the Dalek died in Saturday's Episode of Doctor Who. That isn't to say she wasn't frightened by the rest of it; she sat on my knee for the whole thing occasionally burying her head in my shoulder but that is of course what Doctor Who is for. We asked her several times if we should turn it off but she insisted on carrying on and then as I said she bawled at the thought of the Dalek being alone and then killing itself. She also seemed intrigued by the Dalek questioning itself after absorbing Rose's DNA. I had to give a potted description of what DNA is as well. My wife says that the children have been chasing each other round the playground this morning shouting 'exterminate - exterminate' so things are exactly as they should be in the world. Wonderful! Oh! And 'Elevate' which is obviously homage to Captain Flack's command to raise the Trumpton Fire Brigade's mini Simon Snorkel. Well I like to think so anyway.

There is a tale to do with the Simon Snorkel as well. Some time before we were married, we travelled into town and were diverted slightly by a fire which was attended by a version of the aforementioned fire engine. When I said that it was called a Simon Snorkel, my wife (to be) laughed and said I was making it up. (The one we saw was actually a Bronto Skylift but the concept is the same). I printed out pictures from the Internet to prove it but she said I could have mocked them up quite easily. Proof was only accepted when we walked past the model shop in Bold Street in Liverpool which right at eye level had a beautiful Corgi Simon Snorkel fire engine (now clogging up our garage). Before any tank-topped, Fire Engine obsessives contact me, I do realise that Simon Snorkel really only refers to the hydraulic platform and that the lorry itself is a good old Bedford Chassis and Cab.

Which reminds of the joke - what is the difference between a Simon Snorkel and a Giraffe? Well one has Hydraulics and the other has high ... er ... doesn't.

It's thundering here now as it did yesterday. We were out in the park where our daughter was trying to cycle without stabilisers. When I heard someone mention lightning I thought that standing out in the middle of the park was probably not good.