Month: June 2019

La La La

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in BBC, Moaning

I’m not really into music.

This probably becomes clear when I say that the first single I ever bought was The Smurf Song; and the fact that one of the biggest surprises of my life came in my early twenties, when I discovered that not everybody likes ABBA, makes it clear that the punk revolution entirely passed me by.

Nevertheless, even I know this weekend is Glastonbury – if only because Radio 2 has spent the past week telling us so. Its our channel of choice at work, meaning that the days pass by to a background of Zoe Ball in the morning, through Ken Bruce and his legendary Popmaster, followed by the constantly surprising and occasionally controversial Jeremy Vine (generally giving us something to chew over at lunchtime). Then it’s Steve Wright in the afternoon (inspiring a rush of nostalgia for my late-80s A-Level years, when he performed exactly the same role but on Radio 1) and finally we end up with Sara Cox in the teatime slot.

If I leave work particularly late, I catch a bit of Jo Whiley’s early evening show from 7pm onwards. It is, if I’m honest, a bit of an acquired taste and not really my bag – because as opposed to the daytime shows, it isn’t entirely made up of well-known popular music. Rather, it determinedly and laudably champions new music too. That probably makes it inevitable, given my ‘not into music/Smurfs/who could possibly not enjoy deceptively complex cod-English Swedish pop stylings’ opening, that it doesn’t do much for me. (Although, the other week I must admit I caught the very end of Jo’s show when to my delight she played Perry Como’s For The Good Times which took me instantly back to 1975 when my Mum had it on double LP.)

So although I’m clearly not a Glastohead  (if that’s the word (if that’s a word)) I am aware that it’s on, I’m aware that Kylie was appearing on the Legend Stage on Sunday, and that Stormzy headlined on Friday night. In the interests of full disclosure, and once again I refer you to my ‘not into music’ credentials, I’ll have to admit that although I know all those things almost as a matter of rote after having heard it so many times this past week, I don’t actually know who one of those people is. (And it’s not the one who married Jason Donovan in Neighbours.)

Conversely, Jo Whiley is clearly a fervent Glastonburyer (is that the word?) and she made the point one evening this week (not sure which, although clearly one where I left work particularly late) that for those who aren’t one bit interested in the whole Glastonbury thing, it is only for one week out of the broadcasting year, so why not just let those who enjoy it get on and enjoy it.

She makes a good point (and by crikey she does a good show, even if it’s not for me). There is a tendency, a need even, that some people have, to poopoo things that others enjoy. Maybe it’s the inevitably polarising effect of social media that makes it seem more prevalent nowadays, but as soon as somebody tweets [other social media platforms are available] how much they enjoy a film/sport/Somerset-based internationally-famous musical festival event, they will get replies that say they love it too OR that they absolutely hate it. (The vast swathe of middle-ground opinion, the ‘I can take it or leave it’ crowd doesn’t get much of an airing – because, I guess, if you don’t have any strong feeling one way or the other, why would you waste time telling anybody?)

I don’t enjoy Wimbledon, I can’t stand the Olympics or the World Cup, and clearly I’m no Glastonaut (that can’t be it?). But I don’t go around saying that (well, except in this paragraph apparently). We all like different things, and rather than raining on each other’s parades, we should try letting each other indulge our passions when the opportunity arises, rather than criticise or complain.

Although, obviously, if you don’t like ABBA, well… there must be something wrong with you, surely?

Liberty, Legality, Maternity

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, Money

The news story that has niggled me the most this week, is this one:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48671092

Now, I absolutely agree that we need to have more women in Parliament – just looking at the line up of candidates for Tory leader on Tuesday’s debate made that abundantly clear (although I must just add the disclaimer that, thank goodness that ghastly Esther McVey didn’t get past the first round).

So going in, I was perfectly prepared to be outraged on MP Stella Creasy’s behalf. I quickly discovered, as I read, that MPs do not get maternity leave, which really did sound genuinely outrageous. Every (other) employer in the land has to, why should the Houses of Parliament get away with it?

It struck me that here was a rare example of MPs getting a worse deal than a regular person, and there certainly aren’t many instances of that, other than… Erm… Well, there aren’t any instances of that in fact.

Statutory maternity arrangements for a pregnant woman are that she can have up to a year off work. For the first 6 weeks of her maternity leave she receives 90% of her salary, then a maximum of £149 for 33 weeks, and then, for the remaining 13 weeks, nothing at all. That’s not necessarily great, but it’s better than nothing (well, for 39 weeks it is anyway). And, getting back to my being outraged, it is a darned sight more than MPs get, because as has been previously mentioned, they don’t get maternity pay at all.

Except, in the midst of my outrage, and as I read the article in more detail, I came across the sentence, “MPs themselves are paid in full for the whole period.”

Ah. Right. I see.

So… although she’s not getting anything called maternity pay, in actual fact Ms Creasy can take off whatever time she likes and will still get her full MPs salary. Of just over £1525 per week. As opposed to £149 (or nothing) for anybody else.

Her argument seems to be that there is no facility to provide funding for a temporary replacement while she is on maternity leave. My counter-argument would be, what with all that ‘spare’ money (which just in case you couldn’t quite believe it the first time, is almost £1400 more per week than a normal person on maternity leave) she could surely fund it herself. In fact, just nip down to her local job centre and offer somebody £1000 per week to be an MP for 9 months, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of takers.

But no, what she would actually like is funding to be provided for, in effect, an extra MP during the period of her maternity leave. That just smacks a little bit of… well, of being hugely and grossly unfair; and to be actually complaining about it just demonstrates the same old obliviousness to the real world of which MPs are constantly being accused.

Of course, I’m a man so in today’s world it’s unthinkable for me to have any sort of opinion on something that doesn’t directly involve me – but if I was a woman, if I’d had to compromise during the first nine months of my maternity leave because I had less money coming in; and if I’d ended up going back to work early, because after nine months the money stopped and I simply couldn’t afford to stay off any longer… Well, if that was me, I think I’d be more than a little cheesed off at Ms Creasy bemoaning her situation.

There’s a secondary issue too, which is that presumably any stand in that the taxpayer funded would be selected either by the party or indeed quite possibly just by Ms Creasy herself. It’s fine to argue that your constituents won’t otherwise have a representative – but in that scenario, they’d end up with a representative that they did not elect, and whose appointment they had no say in.

I mean, imagine that. A politician being selected for an official position, without the electorate having any say in the matter whatsoever.

Unthinkable.

Body Talk

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Family, Moaning, Sex

As I’ve got older, I feel I’ve got to know my body better.

Not particularly the physical quirks. The scar on my head, the chickenpox scab on my cheek, that slight bend to the little finger inherited from my Father (or Dad), my inexplicably shiny legs; I’m at ease with all of them. But beyond all that, I seem to understand more about how my body works.

So, for example, if I feel a headache coming on during the afternoon it won’t matter how many paracetamol or ibuprofen I take, the ache will get worse in the evening, will be really bad at bedtime, will still be there in the morning, and won’t properly wear off until lunchtime the following day.

And if I skip meals, I know that I’ll either get woozy or sullen. (Or both.)

For many years I never bothered with breakfast. Occasionally I’d skip lunch. And on the final Friday of each month, when I used to stay late at work to complete the month-end, I never brought anything in to munch on. I never felt any ill effects from any of that.

I was younger then of course – which is just another way of saying ‘I couldn’t do that now’. I was reminded of this on Thursday evening. My other half had mentioned/threatened earlier in the week that she wanted us to go food shopping, but she had said it would be Wednesday – so when, on getting home on Wednesday evening, there was no mention of it, I naturally decided not to remind her and congratulated myself on having dodged that particular bullet.

Alas, it turned out she meant Thursday. Unaware of this, I wasn’t home especially punctually, meaning that almost immediately upon my return we were off out again without anything to eat first.

Partway around Lidl, I felt myself slowing down, and overcome with the urge to yawn hugely. Usually if I’m a bit peckish I hear my stomach rumble, but on this occasion it manifested itself as an ever-diminishing level of energy, and as we progressed from aisle to aisle I was aware of both my concentration and my conversation flagging. At last we reached the checkout, where from some unexpected reserve I managed to find the strength to pack.

Then, tragically, as we reached the car my wife leant over to whisper softly in my ear those three little words, “Now to Tesco”, and without an excuse ready at hand and without the energy to invent one, on we went to round two.

I’m a ‘get in, get the job done, get out again’ sort of person (my wife’s always saying so) but when we’re shopping together I’m normally patient enough to put up with the fact that she is a browser. But on Thursday, after fifteen minutes, by which time we’d only got as far as circumnavigating the fruit and veg aisle three times in order to save 20p on broccoli, I could hear my ancestors calling to me.

My conversation dropping from functional to trappist, and my energy banks entirely drained, at long last we arrived home, and I could collapse onto the settee. It’s been a very long time since I’ve felt so weary and, despite my expectations, a quick sit down and a bite to eat failed to return me to my usual fighting-fit state.

I managed after twenty minutes to move from one settee to the other. Ten minutes later I stirred long enough to turn on the TV and select A Bit of Fry and Laurie on Netflix, after which I fell asleep again at ten to twelve, waking at five past one to find I’d not managed even the tiniest bit (or Bit) and that the TV was just sitting there looking at me.

I decided to give up and go to bed. My other half was already there and ironically, as I laid down, feeling that I’d had quite enough of my own body for one night, it suddenly struck me that I’d gladly take an interest in hers. I felt my body rallying a little.

It was not to be. Apparently she was worn out from all that shopping.

Fathers Day

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Family, Moaning, TV

Quick disclaimer: it’s not about the sitcom, sorry.

A few years ago I was trying to track down some images to represent obscure sitcoms of the past. What surprised me was, firstly, just how many of them I could think of – and second, even with the entire internet at my disposal, many of them were almost completely absent. I found scandalously little on triple-star vehicle Tom, Dick & Harriet, and both You Must Be The Husband and Streets Apart had vanished almost without trace.

So too had long-forgotten early-80s Channel 4 Sitcom Father’s Day, starring John Alderton. There is a mention of it on one or two comedy guides (which then go on to not actually give any kind of guide to the show at all) and a surprisingly-impressive guest cast listing on IMDB, but apart from that nothing. That’s quite astonishing, given that there are 116 million hits for teaspoon.

From memory it was filmed in a real house, which gave it a washed-out, dull sort of look; and it eschewed canned laughter (presumably the edgy new Channel 4 would have viewed that as outdated bourgeois BBC nonsense). So all in all, it kind of came across as a less Scousy version of Brookside rather than an obviously hilarious knock-about family-based comedy.

So, anyway, I thought it important to make that quite clear straight away, just in case some poor beggar Googles the show and gets themselves all excited thinking they’ve come across some really good info about it. Other than the above scant recollections, and the fact that I can still recall the opening lines of the theme tune, I’m afraid you haven’t. Sorry.

But anyway, and with that rather longer than expected disclaimer out of the way, I always have a bit of a problem with Fathers Day. It’s the unfortunate fact that my Dad (or Father) is not interested in golf or football. He doesn’t fish or drink lots of beer. He’s not even, unless he’s keeping it very quiet, interested in racing cars.

Yet card manufacturers feel sure that having covered those five bases so comprehensively, this will ensure something for everyone. I suppose one could argue that, he’s in his seventies now so surely he’s had ample time to have acquired an interest in at least one of those five possible options – but it feels a bit harsh to be blaming my Dad (or Father) for the complete failure of his life to overlap with any of the Fathers (or Dads) Day cards available.

And anyway, I don’t think it can be just him. In fact it’s definitely not, because I don’t like any of those things either. (Although, I suppose… well I suppose that could be heredity kicking in couldn’t it… In which case… Maybe it is his fault after all…?  No, no, it’s not him, it’s definitely the Greetings Card manufacturers that are to blame.)

To be honest, I also have a problem with Fathers Day in general. As a father myself I’ve spent several years telling my own daughter not to bother, because it’s basically just an exercise in commercialism, and I genuinely don’t mind her ignoring it. (So far she has ignored me saying she can ignore it, which just goes to show how contrary the female mind can be!)

I’m sure my own Dad (or Father) would entirely agree with that sentiment; but forty-seven years in it might seem a bit off to suddenly give up on the whole thing. It would be very hard not to infer some criticism or slight, I think. By common tacit consent, however, we have pretty much given up on presents for Fathers Day (or at least, we’ve stopped getting him anything and he hasn’t complained yet) so that at least is a chink of sanity.

But, and in a ‘this is more or less where I came in’ kind of way, we do still buy him a card. Dad’s not a sportsman or a drinker, and in his quiet, modest way I don’t think he’d welcome a huge, flashy card proclaiming ‘World’s Greatest Dad’ either.

I mean he is, obviously, but even so…

What’s New Pissy Cat

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Moaning, Pets

Our cats pee. A lot.

I don’t necessarily think they pee any more than any other group of cats, and in fact I don’t even mind cat pee as such. Obviously (he added quickly) I don’t actively like it, but I’m certainly not bothered by it while it remains in its proper place. Which is inside the cat, outside in the garden, or (slightly begrudgingly but still acceptable) in a tray of woodshavings kept in the corner of the kitchen for just that very purpose.

No, my particular problem, and it’s one that is exacerbated by the fact that we have five cats (yes, that is excessive) is that ours seem to pee in an awful lot of places which are definitely NOT on the list.

One of our cats is knocking on a bit, so it would be kind of understandable (though still annoying) if it was just Sootica having the occasional spontaneous, unpreventable wee. Coming from a family of weak bladders myself, I feel it would be bad karma to moan too much about our old cat having the odd accident because frankly sooner or later it could very easily be me.

However, the fact is that it isn’t (just) Sootica. (Plus, karma or no karma, if I had an accident it definitely wouldn’t be all over the kitchen tiles or up the pedal bin. I’d be a geriatric, not an acrobat.) All five are likely suspects, and it’s now like Russian Roulette going into our kitchen because you can never be quite sure what you’re going to encounter.

Perhaps inevitably, then, I’ve developed something of a sixth sense for cat pee. Not the smell particularly, although there is something nonetheless very distinctive about it – it’s insidiously unpleasant, a smell you catch out of the corner of your nose, and not always easy to locate.

But it’s rarely the smell I pick up on first. More likely, quartering the kitchen like a tiptoeing Child Catcher type figure, I might spy a slight variation in the quality of the shadow against one wall; or a reflection of the lights from a particular patch on the lino. Some tiny insignificant detail which registers unconsciously, before my eyes (and then my nose) properly catch up.

One smell I do like is the smell of bleach – which is fortunate, because our pedal bin has needed a considerable amount sprayed on and under it these past few months. Even more maddening are those occasions when a cat has done it literally right in front of the tray, in what can surely only be a deliberately act of provocation?

In the age-old battle of Cats V Dogs, I was for a very long time firmly on the side of the Cat. Even after my wife finally persuaded me that we should get a dog (and I’m using the word ‘persuaded’ quite incorrectly there, since it was a fait accompli (no, tell a lie – it was a Labrador, I’m rubbish at identifying breeds)) I was still pro-Cat, on the grounds that they are a lot more intelligent, and require a lot less walking.

Somewhere in the intervening decade, however, that swingometer has, um, swung against the feline and towards the canine. That’s not to say dogs don’t pee, of course they do, but ours at least are polite enough to wait until they are outside to do it. There are other things they do out there too, but despite that (even despite the brief phase one of our puppies went through of eating it after they’d done it) still, in mess terms, the dogs win paws down.

But back to the kitchen (no, no, I don’t want to go back in there, please don’t make me go!!) and it sometimes feels I’m on what Kryten in Red Dwarf once referred to as “twenty-four hour wipe alert” with our cats. The smug beggars have all demonstrated in the past that they know how to do it right – yet still they continue to go where they shouldn’t go, and leave me constantly cleaning up after them.

No wonder I get a bit pissy about it.

Comic Effect

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Doctor Who

My Doctor Who Magazine came this week.

It’s a magazine not a comic (feel free to imagine me saying that in a defensive, whiny, teenager sort of a voice) but even so, and although I no longer sit under the letterbox like I used to when I was a kid, there’s undeniably that same ‘new comic’ vibe when I know it’s due.

Comics seemed to figure very heavily in my youth, in a way that they don’t seem to with kids today. When I look at the magazine racks in supermarkets or in newsagents, the children’s section is full of over-bright, generic, photographic covers, and the only selling point seems to be the free gift.

In my day, as a given you’d get free gifts with the first three issues (very occasionally, the first four). After that, the comic had to stand on its own two feet, with free gifts used only very sparingly – a Judge Dredd badge with issue 178 of 2000AD for example, or the occasional plastic glove puppet of Dennis or Gnasher in The Beano.

And we seemed to have so many comics. Whizzer & Chips, Topper, Krazy… Starlord, Tornado, Battle… Roy of the Rovers and especially the long-running Tiger were my brother’s particular favourites (featuring Johnny Cougar, Skid Solo, Hotshot Hamish – and of course Billy Dane, the one with the boots). I started with Buster, another long-runner, which had Faceache and The Leopard of Lime Street.

I regularly got Star Wars Weekly (later Monthly (later still, back to Weekly)) and the 1980s revival of Eagle with Dan Dare the headliner, accompanied by a host of other, mainly photographic strips. (A curious delight of the subsequent DVD age was spotting heroic-but-doomed ‘reporter Howard Harvey’ from the legendary first Doomlord strip, popping up as an extra in 1980s Doctor Who stories.)

But I was probably most passionate about, most engaged with, 2000AD. Some of its strips were extraordinary storytelling – targeted at kids (well, presumably) but pitched at an adult level. The classic Dostoyevsky dilemma (to create a Utopia could you torture to death one innocent creature?) I first came across in one of Tharg’s early Future Shocks. And an instalment of one particular Robohunter story ended with the Mayor discovering that he was actually a robot replica of himself. It would be a great cliffhanger with somebody else finding out; but to discover it of yourself… That still blows my mind.

Occasionally I think about tracking down some of those memorable back issues: Dredd’s Judge Child saga say, or the Sam Slade story where they all burst into song. Halo Jones maybe, or Fiends of the Eastern Front. Something always holds me back.

As a child, no question, I had an awareness that at their best these strips were treating me ‘as an adult’ in that they weren’t patronising or condescending, and they certainly weren’t shying away from ideas. But I’m not sure that necessarily translates today as ‘for adults’.

Many memorable and influential things from my childhood come a cropper with this dilemma unfortunately. On the one hand, I’d sort of love to revisit them; on the other, for all that they felt grown up to me as a kid, I know they’re not really meant for me as an adult. Grange Hill was extraordinary back in the day, but I’d feel just a little bit odd about buying the DVDs and watching them now.

Maybe I’m feeling that “when I became a man, I put away childish things” (which, depending on your point of view, is a quotation either from Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians or Doctor Who’s The Curse of Fenric). I definitely remember collecting Star Wars toys well after Return of the Jedi had been released, until in my mid-teens, having just bought a large Kenner Rebel Transporter toy, it suddenly seemed ‘childish’ and ‘wrong’.

Of course Doctor Who is, as ever, the exception to the rule. There’s a show that’s absolutely intended for children but with adult levels to it, yet I revisit that (and often!) without ever feeling it’s ‘inappropriate’.

I don’t even feel childish when my comic turns up each month.

Magazine. When my magazine turns up each month.