Talking the Talk & Walking the Walk

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Family, Little Bit Of Politics

I’m on a Podcast!

I’ve not become dangerously modern or anything like that, it’s simply a couple of readings that I recorded months ago and then, I must confess, promptly forgot all about.

Until this week, when the podcast for which they were recorded finally aired. Or went live. Or whatever the term is for podcasting. Launched? Popped-Up?

If I may channel Reggie Perrin’s son-in-law for a moment, I’m not a podcast person… but I did of course listen to this one, maybe out of vanity, but also a curiosity after all this time as to what it was I’d actually recorded! As ever when I hear my voice played back, I was struck by how it sounds almost entirely different to how I think it sounds.

On a purely fact-based level, I know that my voice definitely did break, without question, sometime during the 1980s. It’s important to be clear on that, because I sometimes feel that the fact is not entirely backed up by the voice. Certainly, I’ve long been aware that I’m a bit on the high/shrill side, and although I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve got a big hang-up about it, I certainly prefer the long periods of time when I forget all about it. Inside my head it sounds much better, and in general people are good enough not to comment on it. (Unless I’m married to them, or have fathered them, in which case it’s fair game apparently.)

Maybe it’s something genetic? That would certainly explain why, when bumping into a family acquaintance in a hospital lift, they said I sounded like my mother. Just in case that hadn’t properly dented my self-confidence, she felt the need to add, “exactly like!”

Or maybe it’s an indication of some failing in my testosterone levels. My wife, who’s in a position to listen to my voice on a daily basis (whether she likes it or not) and who is, from time to time, in the sort of position(s) where she can assess my testosterone levels, has certainly never made a connection between the two, and it’s never quite seemed the right time to ask. So who can say?

I have to assume everyone has similar hang-ups about themselves, little quirks or perceived defects which are wired into their sense of self. In addition to my voice I’m reliably informed that I have a funny walk. Not in the John Cleese sense (of course not, that would be Silly) but nevertheless a walk that is… I’m going to say ‘distinctive’, which sounds nice, as opposed to ‘odd’ which doesn’t.

I have a vague recollection from Secondary School of a friend observing that I walked like Mr Humphries from Are You Being Served? And while I would never want to downplay the comic genius of John Inman’s creation, that probably wasn’t exactly the style I was going for as I began to navigate my way through those difficult teenage years.

In my head (where, as I’ve already mentioned, my voice sounds a lot more manly (well, a bit anyway)) I think I walk with the distinctive, commanding purpose of Tom Baker in his heyday – but since nobody has ever described it even remotely in those terms, I’m prepared to concede that I may be deluded on that score as well.

I don’t let it get to me (mostly) but goodness knows how anybody in the public eye deals with it, especially the young. In this age of social media, it would be so easy to develop a seriously deep-seated complex on the back of some online idiot’s casual tweet about a spot on your nose, or the hint of a lisp. Even (and I fear another Ben EltonTM little bit of politics coming on) political figures don’t really deserve to be laughed at for their appearance. Mock their policies by all means, berate them for their opinions, but don’t lower yourself to sneering at how they look. Listen to them, and criticise that instead.

Even if you’re listening to them on a Podcast, and it turns out they have an unnaturally high-pitched voice!

A Song For Europe

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Carlisle, Doctor Who, Family, Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, TV

When I was a kid, Eurovision was huge.

That’s not to say that it isn’t still huge (nowadays it’s probably huger than ever, if ‘huger’ is a word) only that, at some point, it stopped being appointment television in our family. Clearly it used to be a thing: my Grandparents went as far as buying 1976’s Save All Your Kisses For Me on 45, and similarly my parents’ record collection boasted Sandie Shaw’s Puppet on a String (which won in 1967).

We never had a copy of Bucks Fizz’s 1981 winner, though, so maybe even by then the magic had begun to fade. (My brother did get the single of their The Land of Make Believe. Curiously my overriding memory of that, even above the intoxicating image of Cheryl Baker wearing what’s barely even half a dress on the record sleeve, is that he bought it on a Saturday afternoon during which I became increasingly irritable that I couldn’t find the book of Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive anywhere in Carlisle City Centre.)

In fact it wasn’t until recently, which perhaps shows just how much Eurovision has slipped under the Curnow radar, that I discovered 1981 wasn’t the last time we won. Apparently, the UK was the winner in 1997 too. Who knew? (Apart from the 150-plus million people watching.)

I’ve not watched the whole thing since 1995, and even then it was the first time in about 10 years, as an exercise in nostalgia. To be honest, even in the days when I did sit through it all, the scoring at the end was generally the best bit, even though you had to put up with interminable filler acts posing as the half-time entertainment before you got to it. (To be fair this year they’ve got Madonna which is a definite improvement on the half-remembered earnest retellings of ancient folk legends represented in interpretative dance which nearly finished me off as a child).

When we used to flat-share, my brother would quite happily watch ‘just the end’ of things. Just the Death Star battle at the end of Star Wars, or just the trial at the end of Oliver Stone’s JFK. Even just the last episode of Tom Baker’s Logopolis (now available in glorious blu-ray as part of the season 18 boxset apparently (grumble grumble)).

So even now, although I never bother with the Song part of the Song Contest, I still like to watch the scoring, and if nothing else it’s a good chance for a bit of mental arithmetic. It always seems to get to that desperate stage where I’m saying things like, “If nobody gives Finland any more points, and if the remaining countries all give us twelve, we can still win.”

I wish (checks Google) Michael Rice well, but I don’t think we’re very likely to win, not really. After last year, he’ll have done well if he just manages to bring in a few “douze points” for the good old “royaume-uni”. But we’ll see.

Of course, there’s further European voting to be done later in the week isn’t there. I don’t know who’ll be covering the results show for that, although presumably not Graham Norton. Maybe it’ll be David Dimblebly again. I’m sure I heard he was retiring from it after the 2015 election but since then he’s covered 2016’s referendum, the US Presidential election of the same year, and 2017’s general election, so it could well be him. (He’s second in the ‘seemingly impossible to get rid of’ stakes only to Theresa May.)

I must admit, although it’s the first time that any of us have actually been in any way interested in the European elections (ironically, given that we’re coming out) I’m still uncertain of how to vote. I feel like I’m being pulled in various conflicting directions, none of which are especially palatable, and it may well be one of those grim elections where I have to go with ‘the least worst’ candidate.

I’d better get thinking about it, because voting day is this coming Thursday. Soon I’ll find that there comes a time, for making my mind up!

(And there goes my skirt…)

No News Is Not Good News…?

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in BBC, Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, Trump

It’s not been a great week for the BBC.

I don’t mean the hugely disappointing last episode of Line of Duty, although mother o’God the already-commissioned sixth season will need to go some to restore its reputation.

No, I mean things like Thursday’s sacking of Danny Baker, an extraordinary example of a stupid action being met with an even more stupid reaction. (This modern trend of a kneejerk response driven by the outrage of the online mob is a very scary thing – and although it seems to be largely a ‘celebrity’ thing at the moment, what do we do if one day it’s us the mob is outraged by?)

The Baker furore, though, had settled down enough to be made light of in the announcement the following day, of the decision to pull Have I Got News For You? at the last minute. The reason given was that Change UK’s leader Heidi Allen was on the show, and because we are now into the European Election Campaign, that breaches the Beeb’s impartiality rules.

There has of course been a backlash >ahem< the outrage of the online mob >ahem< with people pointing out that Nigel Farage was on Question Time only the day before. As if in some way a politician appearing alongside three other politicians in a political debate talking about political issues… is the same as a comedy news quiz.

It’s not. And although it probably reflects badly on our society, a public figure’s reputation can be dealt a considerable blow, or given a huge boost, by a ‘simple’ appearance on a light-entertainment show. Boris Johnson’s otherwise-inexplicable popularity, for example, is in no small part due to appearances as a baffled but entertaining minor political figure on Have I Got News For You?

So unquestionably, Heidi Allen’s reputation would either have been enhanced or… um… or the opposite of enhanced. And whichever way that bias went, it could be legitimately pointed at as being unfair. (Of course, one might argue that even a non-appearance has done her profile some good, as until yesterday I had never even heard of her, and certainly didn’t know she was the leader of the Change party!)

The trouble in these ‘personality politics’ days, especially with figures as divisive as Mr Farage, is that his detractors too often come across as attacking the person, rather than  his views. And because they do it so often…

Well, it’s as though they’ve never heard of the Boy who cried Wolf. Or even its modern-day remake, the Democrats who cried Trump.

Despite their fervent hopes, and although not quite the whole-hearted exoneration the President claims, the Mueller Report has not uncovered any ‘smoking guns’. As far as the electorate is concerned, it’s done – if we’ve already heard enough about it at a distance of however wide the Atlantic Ocean is, how much more fed up is the average US voter by now? The Democrats need to stop raking over the election of three years ago, and start focussing on the one happening next year – their approach ought to be why people should vote for their candidate and NOT why people shouldn’t vote for Trump. Sadly it doesn’t look like that’s where they’re going, which means even more sadly they’re probably losing the next election as we speak.

Similarly, hopping back across the pond, vocal opponents of Farage run the risk of putting people’s backs up when they complain even at his presence on a TV show. It could be argued that he appears quite a lot (I’ve name-checked him three times already myself) but you could counter-argue that there aren’t all that many members of the Brexit party to choose from, so the odds are that when it is represented, it’s going to be by him.

Stuck in the middle, then, is the poor BBC. Accused of obvious far-right pro-Brexit bias AND of blatant lefty Remainer liberalism. I’m famously no expert on politics, but if the BBC is managing to annoy all sides, I’d say that’s a reasonable indication that it’s being even-handed and fair to all parties.

Unless you’re a middle-aged DJ with some monkey pictures, obviously.

Photographic Memories

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Carlisle, Childhood, Friends, Work

We had our photo taken at work this week.

I won’t bore you with the details, it was simply a group shot for Facebook purposes, but my main takeaway from the finished picture was the sheer amount of forehead I have these days. Fortunately my wife was at hand with a comforting word: “How could you not know?!” she said.

Inevitably, it reminded me of the last time I featured in a work photograph. When that particular company closed down a few years later, simply on the basis of being the last man standing I ended up with about twenty odd copies of the finished picture. I still have them, hoping that somebody in it will one day become a huge superstar and I’ll be able to make a small fortune selling ‘before they were famous’ pictures on eBay.

The same is true of the ‘class of 87’ photo taken during our last term at secondary school. You would have thought that, with close to a hundred and fifty people in it, somebody surely would have made it big? And yet… Well, it’s now close to thirty-two years since it was taken, so it seems increasingly unlikely.

Mind you, it’s entirely possible that it’s already happened and I just haven’t realised it. I could probably name everybody in that work photo (I mean blimey, it was only taken last Tuesday!) but I would struggle now to put a name to more than a handful of the faces in that school group.

Conversely, though, there are photographs where I can still name everyone, even after forty years. Somewhere in one of my parents’ many photo albums is a picture of half a dozen of us from Primary School, all woollen jumpers, short trousers, and gappy teeth. Robert Campbell is in it, so is Melanie Harper. So am I.

I don’t actually remember the picture being taken I’ll admit – but I do remember the occasion, which was a prize presentation to our group at the local CoOp. We got the afternoon off school for it, and since I know we were in Mrs Lamb’s class at the time that pins it down to 1979. I also remember that whatever prize money I got (possibly a postal order) was very soon spent on a Han Solo action figure. (It was the second version, fact fans, the one with the larger head, and the one which my brother subsequently held too close to the gas fire, meaning that the Corellian scoundrel forever after sported two unsightly melted sections on his cranium. (Although at least he didn’t have a huge mountain of forehead to contend with.))

I don’t know whether it’s something unique to the memories of childhood or if it’s just that, personally, I preferred it, but I’m confident I could still name most if not all of the pupils in my class at Primary School; as opposed to not being able to name very many at all of the crowd from Secondary School (not even the (possibly) really famous ones).

Our last ever day at Primary School, although there were some games, mainly involved a lot of ‘end of term housekeeping’ and our teacher of the time (with no apparent regard either for posterity or for recycling) made us all throw our exercise books into the huge wheeled bins at the back of the school.

With that simple act, alas, I lost forever the details of the slimy, slithering constructions  of a far-distant alien world. Trashed along with it was ‘the history of a house’ through two wars. And I’ll never be able to check just how I managed to fill a whole page on the uninspiring topic of ‘a World without Oil’.

But amid all the cultural vandalism, there was a pause where we posed for a class photo, altogether on the climbing frame, just a few hours before it dawned on me (rather late in the day, I’ll admit) that I probably wouldn’t see any of those friends ever again – which has indeed turned out to be the case.

I can remember that too, the moment when that bombshell really hit me.

I bet my face was a picture.

Taking A Punt On City Life

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Carlisle, Family

My daughter goes up to Cambridge this weekend.

I mean, she’s coming back again on Monday – it’s not mortarboard and cloisters so much as overnight bag and youth hostels. She’s got a job interview there in fact. She hasn’t been head-hunted for a position or anything like that; she’s simply seen a job advert, applied, been invited to attend an interview, and hasn’t let the fact that we’re the best part of three hundred miles away put her off.

By coincidence I went for a job in Cambridge many years ago, not long before my daughter was born, at a hugely profitable, up-and-coming, soon-to-be-major player in the telecoms industry. That’s what they said anyway, and the huge building, lavish offices, flashy reception and commissioner on the door certainly all looked the part. Frankly, the only thing that made me slightly dubious was the fact that I had never even heard of them, which is why I declined what otherwise seemed to be a very good offer.

According to Wikipedia’s entry on Ionica (no, I don’t expect you’ve ever heard of them either) they went into Administration eighteen months later. How different things would have been if I had taken that job, it’s hard to say, but clearly I’d have been unemployed after less than two years, and therefore wouldn’t even qualify for redundancy pay, so I suspect it probably wouldn’t have been much fun.

It would certainly have made a difference to my daughter, though, because it would have meant she grew up in the city rather than out in the countryside. She has a yearning for the city life, and at least in part that’s simply because it’s something different to what she knows. Applying for this job, and others equally far from home, is part of that – she feels the need for a change, even if she doesn’t entirely know what form she wants that change to take.

I’ve lived in a city, in as far as we were in Carlisle for almost all of my Primary School years, but we lived out in the suburbs, and looking back it was actually rather a posh bit of them too (certainly well above the flood plain). So I probably have a rose-tinted view, a combination of nostalgia and romanticism creating an illusion of the gleaming concrete jungle, a happy multi-cultural bustle, streets where anything and everything is readily available, and where jolly red buses are always at hand.

I know that there’s also noise and pollution and overcrowding and the homeless and high crime rates – but even so, after a couple of brief visits to London a few years ago, if anybody had offered me a job there I’d have taken it like a shot.

Except I wouldn’t. My wife lived in Portsmouth for nearly twenty five years, and is probably the least nostalgic person I know, and she would never, ever consider going back to city life. So for me at least the discussion is closed.

But not, of course, for our daughter. I don’t know if she’ll get the job. Thinking just about her, even though the reality will be vastly different to her expectations, I hope she does. What a huge change it will be! For me, as a parent, twenty-two looks a lot younger from the outside than once upon a time it felt from the inside, so naturally I’ll be far less worried if she doesn’t get it. So, all in all, I’m not sure whether that makes it a no-win situation, or a no-lose one.

The interview’s not till Monday though, there’s the practical worry of actually getting her there first. I’m driving her to Exeter Bus Station, from there she gets a coach to Victoria, and then changes onto the onward coach for Cambridge. So even the journey is pretty daunting.

I give myself a maximum of 700 words as being the most I feel I can get away with, without becoming irretrievably boring (although I accept that it may well be far fewer than that) and this self-imposed word count is telling me it’s time to stop. So I will.

I’ve reached my (city) limits.

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Confused, Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, Weather

I’m feeling overheated.

I know weather forecasters assume that sunny = good, but when it comes down to it I don’t think we’re really designed for sunshine. It’s traditionally a rather damp and cool little island, and as such I find that endless days of unrelenting sunshine just make me hot and sweaty and irritable.

Everything becomes so much more of an effort when you’re battling against the blinding glare and the sweltering heat – even writing, just pushing buttons on a keyboard, feels too much like hard work. I discovered today that there’s a celebrated sex toy manufacturer less than thirty miles from us, which you might have thought would provoke some sort of response (if only an eager look online for opening times and exact directions) but no, the weather has beaten me.

At least, I think it’s the weather. As opposed to the climate, I mean. I know that they’re two different things but… A bit like cauliflower and broccoli, I struggle to recall what the difference is.

Like so many other aspects of modern life (gender fluidity, quantum computing, the plot to Line of Duty) I find the climate/environment thing very confusing. Not in a dismissive, ‘I’m not going to bother trying to understand it’ way – but in a confused, ‘how many issues are there or is it all the same thing’ kind of way.

It’s second nature now, to put our food waste in the bin provided, to put cardboard and paper into recycling sacks, to sort plastic and glass into recycling buckets. I do it religiously, but I would struggle to explain what good it’s actually doing, or what problem it’s trying to address.

Are my flattened Rice Krispies boxes and rinsed out jam jars helping reduce pollution, or are they conserving natural resources? Is that the same thing? Alternatively, are they, in some inexplicable way, arresting the global rise in temperature? Or helping to repair the hole in the ozone layer even? For that matter, is that even a thing anymore? It used to be mentioned all the time, but (like the Tower of Pisa) I can’t remember the last time I heard anybody talk about it.

Even when I think I’m doing the right thing, I can’t be sure. We get our milk from a local farm as opposed to a supermarket so that means less travel which means reduced carbon emissions which is good. Hurrah.

But he delivers it in plastic bottles. So that’s bad. (I think).

But then, we put the bottles in the recycling, and that’s good. Probably. (Although I don’t know how.)

Should I be nagging him to switch to glass bottles? Would that be better or worse?

And then I hear that cows are bad for the environment – no, the climate – no, the environment – Well, anyway I hear that they’re really bad because of how darned farty they are. So maybe I should just cut out the milk completely?

Less confused, apparently, are the campaigners who have been in London this past week. I have a grudging admiration for anybody going on a protest, but it slightly baffles me that their main aim is to get a Big Solution from government. Yes, they could ban all non-essential air travel, but it’s never going to happen overnight… Better surely, to try and persuade ordinary people to stop flying right now?

We can wait for ‘the people in charge’ – or we can decide to all do our bit now, and that’s got to be a better option, hasn’t it? Even if, like me, you don’t really know what it’s doing. Recycle as much as you can. Don’t fly unless it’s absolutely essential. Buy locally. (Please ignore my casual decimation of both the aviation and haulage industries in a single paragraph there).

It’s not always easy, I know. As a rural area, we’re lucky in that there are plenty of local sources for milk and meat and fruit and vegetables. (Though, no public transport, so swings and roundabouts.)

There’s even, did I mention, a sex toy company in the area. Literally, I could be there in forty minutes.

Oh dear, I’m starting to get overheated again…

Off The Top Of My Head…

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Doctor Who, Family

I got my hair cut today.

If it helps in picturing it, I’ve gone from ‘Sylvester McCoy in the TV movie’ to something of an early Matt Smith (although due to my age, there’s a touch of ‘the miners of Peladon’ about the colour scheme). My brother, not that it’s really relevant, used to keep very much to the Eccleston/’Paul McGann Longleat reveal’ look, although as the years go by he’s tending more towards Henry Woolf in The Sun Makers. (Or a Sontaran.)

Details (and possible libel) aside, my hair, to recap, has now been cut. It’s not, to be honest, an experience I especially enjoy. I’m not suffering any kind of Sampson delusion, worrying that my great strength will be removed along with my colossal bouffant; and I’m not bothered that, when they use the mirror to show me the reverse view, it shows off my bald spot, nestled among my locks like the laser focussing dish on the Death Star. It’s not even the money, although I suspect it’s deliberately priced as a £9 cut so that weak, stupid people will leave the £1 change as a tip. (Which obviously I always do.)

No, my biggest problem is the chit chat.

The young lady who cut my hair today was probably the youngest I’ve seen yet; she’s still got a fortnight to go with her college course in fact, and although I would love to know the answer, I didn’t dare ask whether her hairdresser training includes, along with current styles, what not to cut, and which hair products get you really high, the art of conversation.

That’s in no way a dig, only an observation that whereas the more experienced coiffeurs have established a style and patter of their own, today’s scissor-wielder was a little more tentative. Having dealt with my singular lack of anything planned for the weekend, and having between us thoroughly analysed the weather (colder than it looked, but at least it’s dry) I was rewarded with a real classic, when she asked if I was going anywhere nice for my holidays! (I’m not.)

For many years, all through school and in fact quite a long way out the other side, my Dad cut my hair. That suited me just fine, partly because it was cheap, and also because there was no awkward small talk to navigate my way through. Dad isn’t one for too much casual chatter either (plus of course, when I was nine he would have had more idea of where I was going on my holidays than I did).

The only real downside to Dad’s stint as my barber, was his, erm, cutting-edge technology. From, I would guess, some deceptive newspaper or TV ad (the words K-Tel may be hovering) he acquired some curious barber-y tool. In appearance it was like a white comb, but with a razor blade fitted in the end, the concept being (so I believe – I never actually saw the ad) that it could remove large clumps of hair at a stroke, leaving the scissors free to swoop in near the end to do all the fine detailing and take the credit.

I can appreciate that on paper (or on ITV) it would have sounded good; but the one major flaw from where I was sitting (which was nearest to the business end of the wretched thing) was that for some reason it was apparently designed to only ever work with the bluntest of razor blades. Even now, I can recall the dragging, tearing, rending sensation – frankly Dad could have saved himself £9.99 + p&p and just yanked great clumps out of my head with his bare hands.

In short, it was agony. And by comparison, even with my conversational awkwardness, today’s experience was a breeze. When Dad cut my hair of course, he could do it of a weekday evening; whereas now I have to make sure to fit it in on a day I’m not at work.

It’s something for the weekend, you might say.

Catching Up With Old Friends

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Friends, TV

It’s Netflix’s fault.

It’s got all ten seasons of Friends, and although you might well think I shouldn’t be spending/wasting so much time watching TV, I’m already halfway through. To be nitpicky I’m halfway through in number of seasons rather than number of episodes; so in other words I’ve just finished season five, which is the one (sorry, The One) set in Las Vegas.

The previous year’s finale was set in London, with the cast filmed on location there alongside an array of UK guest stars. Vegas, on the other hand, is represented by stock footage, the cast are confined to studio sets, and there’s not even a C-Lister in sight. Suggesting, perhaps, that its popularity had already peaked?

That’s unfair, or at least a cynical view twenty years after the fact. Because Friends definitely was hugely popular in its time. For me it evokes the days when imported TV shows, especially from the US, would often take pride of place in primetime, which they never do now on the terrestrial channels. And there were so many of them – just off the top of my head, the BBC used to show Starsky & Hutch and The Rockford Files, Dynasty and Dallas; and ITV was home to The A-Team, Airwolf, The Equalizer and The Fall Guy.

They carried with them, perhaps, an air of the exotic; and certainly those US shows looked more expensive and flashy than much of our homegrown stuff. Or maybe that’s nostalgia talking again – memories of the extraordinary wait to find out who actually did shoot JR, or of being allowed to stay up late on a Friday night to watch Starsky & Hutch.

Re-engaging with shows from the past is warm and cosy, even though in truth the nostalgia is probably as much for the particular time in our lives when we first watched them, rather than for the actual content. But the flip side of it is that, objectively, Friends no longer feels fresh and modern, instead it’s already very dated.

It’s only twenty years ago but it’s a strikingly lo-tech world. Ross is the only one who has a mobile (and it’s only for phone calls). Nobody has an email address. There’s no home computing, and the internet doesn’t even exist. They spend all that time in the coffee shop, and nobody is ever checking their messages.

What’s even more striking (occasionally shocking) is how attitudes have changed too. The first thing my daughter sees, and she’s right, is that this is a show about six friends. Six Straight White friends. I can’t imagine that pitch getting further than those four words today.

In the most recent episode I watched, Monica agrees to never see her ex again if that’s what Chander wants, Chandler having forbidden her (yes, that’s for-bid-den her) in the previous episode. That’s definitely not the sort of ‘submissive female something about the patriarchy’ kind of characterisation that you’d expect nowadays. It shows how much has changed in what feels like a very short time.

For all that, though, and rightly or wrongly I’m still enjoying it. Back in the day I sort of drifted away from the show after the first couple of years, so other than the major bullet points (having babies, not having babies, and a half-memory of having once seen the very last episode) I don’t really know what’s coming over the next five seasons. It’s comfortable and cosy, at least to somebody who’s old enough to have been around at the time, and frankly it’s just nice to be in the company of people who are generally speaking, kind and fun and pleasant to each other.

In the real world, I must admit, I find friends and friendships infinitely more complicated and difficult.

Maybe that’s why I have so much time to spend watching TV…

Making Up For Lost Time

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Work, Writing

Never mind the hour last night, I’ve lost a whole day.

Not in a “we’ve all had weekends like that, fnar fnar” sort of way. My ‘lost day’ refers to the fact that I worked on Friday. I admit that’s not tremendously dramatic in itself, other than I normally work a four day week, Monday to Thursday. Even then I’m secretly pining for the brief heady period in 2017 when I was only doing a three day week. (My bank manager is understandably less nostalgic about it.)

This week, however, and as previously advertised, I worked Friday as well – and unexpectedly it’s thrown me off kilter for the entire weekend. ‘Entire weekend’ in this instance is only two days, of course, and it really does feel so much shorter than usual. (As well it might, having been reduced by a whole third.) Just as you start to get into the swing of it, it’s over. Compare and contrast that with my normal routine, where there’s a whole day of prologue before Saturday even arrives.

It’s not much, I suppose, in the scheme of things; and the feeling of a curtailed weekend has probably been accentuated by having time taken up yesterday afternoon in cutting the grass for the first time this year (a chore I hate). And of course there’s the mysterious hour lost overnight. Put all these things together, and this weekend really has had a sense of being more ‘edited highlights’ than ‘full-length feature’.

As a rule, I manage to get in a bit of writing every morning of the weekend, sometimes in the evening as well, and although it only ever comes after a ridiculous amount of evasion (laundry, walking the dogs, idly gazing out of the window, that sort of thing) I do usually end up getting something done.

Somehow, without that initial kick-start of Friday to get things underway, this unusual two-day weekend has not made any headway in that regard – although after an unusually enthusiastic rush of it last weekend I must confess I’d run up against a wall anyway.  I’ve not exactly run out of plot but I have reached a point where I don’t quite know how to bridge the gap between big chunk of plot A and big chunk of plot B. So as it happens a weekend off probably won’t do it any harm.

And I realise that not having Friday to get things going sounds like a really lame excuse, because arguably as regards time it isn’t how much you have, it’s what you do with it that counts. (That sounds vaguely familiar…) Nevertheless there’s just a tiny warning light there, or at least a timely reminder, that for almost twenty-five years, when I did work a five-day week, I hardly did any writing at all.

As John Rowles opined on yesterday’s Pick of the Pops (1968, to save you Wikipediaing it) “If I only had time.” Or, if you prefer, as Sylvester McCoy said of the punishing BBC schedule in the documentary about the making of Silver Nemesis (1988, to ditto) “we didn’t want more money, we wanted more time.”

Next week, as far as I know, it’s back to normal, back to the four day week and the three day weekend. It’s swings and roundabouts of course (as my bank manager would point out). Yes, there’s more weekend (and less stress) with my job now; but there’s also less work and hence less income.

I still wouldn’t want to turn the clock back though.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

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

I usually leave politics to my brother.

I don’t really follow it, and don’t properly understand it, and on the rare occasions when I risk popping my head over the parapet for (as Ben Elton used to say) a little bit of politics, I always expect to be told to pipe down in an old-fashioned, unacceptably-sexist ‘don’t worry your pretty little head about it’ sort of a way.

Nevertheless, and I suspect I may not be the only one who feels like this, it’s becoming really rather difficult to ignore this whole Brexit malarkey. Like an itch, or an irritating spot, or that slowly spreading rash that deep down you know you really ought to go and see the doctor about, it’s increasingly impossible to overlook it.

Before 2016, back in those innocent, pre-referendum days, I’m not convinced that the overwhelming majority of people were really that bothered one way or the other. It’s only the irritation (or slowly spreading rash) of some idiot holding a referendum which forced us all into forming an opinion.

But now we’ve been and gone and had the vote, and unfortunately it’s impossible to put the oak tree back inside the acorn and just go back to how things were. The Remainers won’t be satisfied if we Leave, the Leavers won’t be happy if we Remain and all in all, it seems increasingly likely that there won’t be any winners in this – because the really stupid thing isn’t the determination to honour the result of the referendum, it’s to have had the dratted referendum in the first place.

Bus or no Bus, I’d like to suggest that there’ll be no money to be had from Brexit. Being out of the EU will give us about 9 billion extra to play with each year, but although that’s not the sort of amount I would sniff at if I found it down the back of the settee, in the scheme of things it still only represents around 1.2% of annual government spending. I think it’ll be akin to somebody who gives up smoking. Without that expense, in theory, they’re going to be hundreds of pounds better off per year… but they never see it, not as a lump sum, it’s just a little bit spent on something here, a little bit extra spent on something there.

Maybe I’m just apathetic (quite possibly) or uninformed (equally likely) or just plain stupid (almost certainly) but I’m honestly not worrying about Brexit. If we actually end up with a ‘No Deal’ I expect business interests will still ensure a continuation/resumption of supplies (by which I mean, simply put, that companies in Europe will still want to make money, and so will companies in the UK). If we do manage to get some kind of a deal through, well fine – but that’s just an agreement for things to remain broadly the same before we then begin the actual, proper trade negotiations. And those will be years in the making, not months.

But whatever happens with Mrs May and her Deal/No Deal scenario, we certainly won’t find ourselves basking in the sunny uplands of a post-Brexit UK, enjoying a new golden age of happiness, wealth and prosperity for all. Nor will we see mile-long queues for bread outside Sainsburys, and horrible tales of people forced to eat their pets.

Because the truth is, surely, that most of the things that really anger or depress or shame or outrage us about modern life, such as an underfunded NHS, poor education standards, insufficient police resources, university fees, an overly-complex and woefully-inadequate benefits system, MPs expenses, banker bonuses, rising council tax bills… All of these are of our own doing, they’re homegrown problems, and nothing to do with Europe.

In short, then, my gloomy prediction is that, once we’re finished with the initial cheering & celebrating / wailing & gnashing of teeth (delete as applicable) we’ll find that, actually, not much has changed, and that the whole thing has been the most enormous waste of time.

A monstrous, overblown, hugely-expensive, cripplingly-divisive, publicly-humiliating waste of time. But a waste of time nonetheless.