BBC NEWS | In Pictures | In pictures: Spoof signs
This is a neat idea – and just ready for the Christmas (sorry, Winterval) market. There’s a pleasing air of the surreal about them, which makes them more entertaining than the real signs you see around you. My recent “real” favourite is one that says “Danger – possible wet and slippery surface”. This is posted at the entrance to the showers in the gym…
I note that the beatification of George Best lasted all of 24 hours. One of today’s tabloid “newspapers” alleges that he had at least two “secret” children. Given his lifestyle, are we surprised? Does it matter? No, and no.
Meanwhile, the floral tributes pour in, and a Diana-like mountain of flowers, pictures, scarves etc grows outside Old Trafford. Toddlers whose parents were too young ever to have seen Best play are being pushed forward to add their teddy bear or posy. It’s nauseating.
Best was a great footballer – one of the all time greats. His death is sad, though hardly unexpected, and hardly otherwise remarkable. I wonder how many other fifty something alcoholics died the other day? Best’s memory was ill served at the end by the ghoulish bulletins from outside the hospital – Best not dead yet, Best still not dead – reminiscent of the rolling news coverage of the Pope’s death – and by the tacky souvenir pull-outs when he finally did succumb.
Who’s next for the maudlin flower show? We seem locked into a cycle of excessive public grief when a famous person dies, though unable as a society to sort out the misery and pain that surrounds us everywhere, and that we conveniently ignore.
BBC NEWS | Education | Term-time working ‘lowers grades’ The department of the bleeding obvious has clearly been working overtime of late. I suppose the statistics will be useful in the debate about student funding, but surely no-one can be surprised by this?
This morning, like most other Sunday mornings, I bought my Sunday paper (the Observer, since you ask) at our local newsagent. As on every other occasion I have bought a paper there, he asked if I wanted a bag for it. As always, I declined – I’ve given up pointing out the waste this habit causes. When I said, months ago, that I didn’t want a bag, and what’s more, they might consider the environmental consequences of offering a bag to everyone, he looked at me as if I was mad.
The use of plastic bags in this country is a disgrace. In other European countries, it is routine (as of course it used to be here) to go shopping with a sturdy shopping bag. Plastic bags are very much the last resort. German stores always sell very cheap, but durable canvas bags for people without a shopping bag. In Ireland, you can have a bag, but you pay for it – the result is that plastic bag use in supermarkets has declined – people use proper bags, or reuse their old plastic ones. Litter is reduced, as is the number of bags going to landfill.
The UK government considered such a scheme three years ago, but obviously decided it had more important things to do, even though the supermarkets were in favour. Maybe the supermarkets should just do it anyway- there must be some forum where the suits from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and the rest meet up. Why can’t they just agree that they will henceforth charge 10p a bag? And why not commit the profit from that charge to environmental schemes? Then they could show they had a conscience, benefit the environment, feel good about themselves, and it would cost them nothing.
Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times – Times Online:
Another despatch from the department of the bleeding obvious. It clearly was a very onerous task to discover that “high street cafes are convivial places where people go to enjoy others’ company.” Who knew? I always go to to them to play ice hockey. I feel a couple of research proposals coming on:
1) to investigate the reasons why people go to pubs. This will involve a two year longitudinal study of human interaction in public houses. Researchers will be committed to spending at least twenty hours a week in pubs in order to conduct their research.
2) to investigate the impact of personal income on restaurant choice. This will involve visiting a large number of restaurants, especially the more expensive ones, and interviewing people about the amount of money they have spent. Researchers will be obliged to eat at these restaurants to conduct covert investigations of the subjects.
One of the surer signs of advancing age is that you find yourself saying things you remember your parents saying. I’ve long been detached from the pop music scene, but yesterday marked a new level of dissociation. In the never-ending fight against flab, I went to the gym. There is always something blaring out of the speakers, and I usually manage to ignore it. Yesterday, though, it was so loud and insistent, I couldn’t avoid it. Several long tracks were played. They all had near identical throbbing beats, but the lyrics were different. Track one went:
I can’t wait until the weekend
I can’t wait until the weekend
I can’t wait until the weekend
I can’t wait until the weekend
I can’t wait until the weekend
I can’t wait until the weekend
I can’t wait until the weekend
I can’t wait until the weekend
I can’t wait until the weekend
I can’t wait until the weekend
I can’t wait until the weekend
(Repeat ad infinitum)
The second track was a subtle variation on this masterpiece:
I can’t wait until Saturday comes
I can’t wait until Saturday comes
I can’t wait until Saturday comes
I can’t wait until Saturday comes
I can’t wait until Saturday comes
I can’t wait until Saturday comes
etc etc
The third track explored a whole new area of the artist’s emotional palette:
Put your hands in the air
Put your hands in the air
Put your hands in the air
Put your hands in the air
Put your hands in the air
Put your hands in the air
(and so on until I had virtually given up the will to live)
Now, I’m not going to claim that in my day we had proper music, made our own entertainment, could have a night out at the pictures and a bag of chips and still have change out of sixpence for the tram fare…but we did actually require our heroes to write lyrics (often fey and pretentious it’s true) and we did require them to master the rudiments of their instruments. Now we seem to have (almost) lyric-free, and certainly instrument-free “songs” that are almost identical to each other. I just don’t get it. But then, I’m an old git.
memo to self:
1. Buy iPod
2. Load with Vivaldi
3. Go to gym.
Guardian Unlimited Books | News | Author John Fowles dies aged 79 I was sad to read of the death of Fowles. The French Lieutenant’s Woman will go down as one of the most engaging postwar British novels, notable especially for a postmodern twist: alternative endings, presented by an intrusive narrator. That novel is a useful read for anyone studying Victorian history or literature, as Fowles did some extensive research, documented in un-novelish footnotes.
The Collector is a kind of Hitchcockian thriller, very well plotted, and genuinely creepy.
He would have a considerable reputation on these two novels alone, but he produced a good deal of other fiction and critical writing. One of the last grand old men of English letters.
Literature-Map – The tourist map of literatureThis is an interesting concept. Key in a writer’s name and watch the map develop. An interesting way of finding new authors similar to ones you already like, methinks.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft scans British Library
Reading stufff like this makes you wonder how long the printed book has got left. But the book has a great resilience, and I can’t imagine a time when it would be more pleasant to sit under a tree on a summer’s day with a hand held electronic device rather than a physical volume with pages.
Initiatives such as this will be important for research, but won’t, in my estimation, signal the end for the traditional book.
BBC NEWS | Politics | Blunkett resigns from the Cabinet
Blimey! Cabinet minister does honourable thing shock horror…