This is the Life of Billy archive

April 15, 2008

nature notes

Don't get excited. I'm not saying I'm going to get back to posting regularly again. I'm still prioritising life over blogging ;-)

But I thought I should log that I just witnessed a crow attacking a heron in Regent's Park. I was coming up to the gates where my route from town joins the inner circle, heard a squawking and screeching and looked up to see a very strange outline in the sky. It was a heron with wings and legs spread out randomly dropping towards me as if coming in to land. It righted itself and arrowed over my head pursued by an angry crow.

Earlier this year I heard woodpecker-like sounds two days in a row on my way to get the paper and decided to keep my eyes open on the way home. A spotted woodpecker was sitting on a tv aerial pecking away at it. Apoa saw it the next day so it obviously spent a few days there expressing itself.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 4:47 PM | Comments (0)

September 7, 2007

linguists still love jamie

All the linguists I spoke to were early adopters and big fans of Jamie Oliver when he first started off as a young lad zipping around London on his scooter picking up ingredients and drumming with his mates. He's still got the ability to come up with recipes that look simple, turn out to actually be simple and taste good when you've made them. We've just started a routine where the kids cook one evening meal each every week and Apoa is starting off by referring to the first Naked Chef book

Last night we had her own adaptation of 'Pappardelle with mixed wild mushrooms' It was, indeed, delicious.

We're impressed by her creative and artistic approach. Her first thought was to ask us if we could pick up any enoki mushrooms and she's had us out sourcing ingredients for the past few days.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

June 29, 2007

the end of fopp B-(

This makes me very sad. I was in Fopp last week when they were taking cash only but didn't realise it wasn't just a blip with their card machines. B-(

Posted by Billy at 5:00 PM | Comments (0)

June 23, 2007

the damned utd

Met Tim in the pub and lent him the excellent the damned utd which he hadn't read yet. He revealed to me he was living next door to Brian Clough when he was winning the league with Derby and stuff. Don't think he features in the book, though.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2007

script frenzy

dug told me to sign up for script frenzy so I did

B-)

Posted by Billy at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2007

not dry

The party was great. Not dry at all. The wine was consumed rather slowly, but that may have been partly to do with the fact that there had been some consumption in advance. Nice to see students outside class and with no more coursework or anything hanging over them (in most cases). And to hear about plans for the soon-to-be-graduating and the views from the end of year 1 and year 2.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 12:39 AM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2007

deadline day

It's the final deadline day of the semester so I'm sitting here typing this above a hall full of administrators gathering work from tired students. The union bar is closed until September so the only way the students can get a drink after handing in is if they come to our unbelievably hip and groovy 'handing in party'. I don't think the students know there will be alcohol available as I just heard one of them say it would be 'well dry'...

B-}

Posted by Billy at 3:32 PM | Comments (0)

May 4, 2007

Gilbert and George

Just caught a glimpse of them after a signing at the Tate Modern. Alice and I took in the exhibition while the Venturers we took there enjoyed the rest of the building.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 9:59 PM | Comments (0)

parkland walk

The Parkland Walk is one of the best things about the bit of Norf London I live in. The Friends of the Parkland Walk have just reawoken themselves and I've been co-opted as a committee member to represent our local Woodcraft Folk. Our main activity now is to respond to the 'Greenway' proposal to improve the walk with 400 thousand pounds the council have scored from TfL after putting in a bid no-one locally was consulted on until now. I went to a packed local area assembly last night where the consultation process began to get into gear. As Jed leaves local government (his time as a councillor has just ended) I find myself beginning to go to council meetings. And as Tony Bliar gets ready to leave, I think I agree with Jed that one of his main legacies is that no-one believes in consultation any more. I'm sure 'so-called' is one of its main collocates now.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 7:49 AM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2007

'Ahem..!'

'Billy

Peter says, "Get off the blog and hurry up and write the intro to the chapter for our book!"

Marina'

Posted by Billy at 9:45 AM | Comments (0)

February 9, 2007

recycling

A while ago, we started a battery box at the kids' primary school (now their ex-school, sadly). The council had no battery recycling at the time. The idea was that a parent would take them to the nearest recycling point (in Barnet) when the box was full. The kids got quite motivated, writing to the council. the queen, parents, tony blair and others about it. I just had this update (the dots indicate bowdlerisation). I love the idea of sending the crisp bags back to Walker's

B-))

Hi Billy,

How is it going?
Guess what, not only the battery box ... is still going, the children are still involved in the aftermath. The kids are now in Year 6, and last month, as a result of a letter they wrote to the Environmental Minister, they were invited to meet Ben Bradshaw and ask him some questions. The Minister was a bit of a disappointment for the children - one of them said to me "How come he is the Environmental Minister and we children know more about batteries than he does?", but I assume in time they might realize that this was their first taster of what government is sadly often all about

The positive side - ... the teacher who accompanied the children on
the trip and who taught them in Year 5, was telling me how this whole class as a result of the battery project has turned out to be very environmentally aware, not just the kids from potentially "green backgrounds", but all of them, also the ones you wouldn't expect to be.

Also - as a result of the trip some of the kids had a new idea - they are collecting Walkers crisps bags, which apparently are not recyclable, and want to send them back to the company.

And I unintentionally came home with some new ideas and inspiration. In the current Year 4 I am going to run a plastic bag project, and ...

... building upon our original idea for the battery project to expand we want to try to run the battery project at other primary schools. Some of my friend have long been interested for their kids' schools. So my friend Judith and I, whose kids are at ..., want to hopefully run it at ...her... Primary School in a few weeks (Judith has started negotiating with the Head there), and hopefully later on through another friend we might be able to run it at ...another school... in Islington.

I have written a summary of the battery project ... to have something on paper for the ... Head to start out with. ... Any ideas warmly welcome, please feel free to criticise and improve!

Thanks a lot, and all the best
Cathrin

Posted by Billy at 9:51 AM | Comments (0)

January 16, 2007

'late pronation'

Sorry if you're squeamish but I've been back to the physio this morning and finding out a bit more about the roots of my biomechanical failure. It seems I've got late pronation and a problem with my tibialis posterior which is leading to a bit of tendonopathy.

Meanwhile, yesterday's dentist visit revealed I'm at risk of 'cracked tooth syndrome' and the dreaded 'RCT' (root canal treatment).

B-}

Posted by Billy at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

December 5, 2006

piano exam

I have no time to blog just now but I have to tell you that I got a merit in my grade one piano exam. I was emailed last night and told I could check results online so I don't have feedback yet, just numbers. I wonder how Theo and William, the candidates before and after me, got on?

I still have a way to go before I catch up with James Fenton, though. He's on grade five which is when everyone says it all begins to get much more interesting.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

November 1, 2006

'biomechanical failure'

This is the term for the problem I'm having physioed on my foot at the moment. Had a good time on a balance board yesterday - hard work, pain and new terminology. What more could you ask for?

B-)

Posted by Billy at 1:18 PM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2006

comedy academic

Just took a too big desk out of my office and replaced it with a smaller table. Of course, the big one needed to be taken apart and reassembled. As a linguist, I'm much better at the taking apart side of things but I did get it back together again, more or less.

Of course, all through it Billy Bragg was singing in my head about 'the temptation to take the precious things we have apart to see how they work...'

B-)

Posted by Billy at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)

August 4, 2006

a tale of two saunas

It's a busy summer. Last week I was at a conference in Finland having a sauna in the woods and diving into a beautiful lake as the sun went down. This week I'm in a field in Kent with a few thousand young people from all over the world who have gathered together to change it. There is a home-made sauna here, built by some of the Finnish delegation. I haven't checked it out yet but hope to in the next day or two.

I started the camp as coordinator for a village containing 120 people, half from Norf London and half from Bad Doberan in Germany. Today, though, we had 'Governance Day' and after some discussion about how the camp is being run (apparently, I'm 'not controlling enough' which I kind of think of as a good thing) I have been deposed and two younger people are in charge. I could think about mounting a coup but instead I've sneaked off for a bit of blogging. I'll update you later but we are currently leaderless. The German leader lost interest straight away and the English leader made a few decisions (adults do all cooking tonight and get to bed by 10.30 - don't tell her we're all very keen on this) then proposed an anarchic system with no central authority (I don't think this sounds too different from my regime) and now says she wants to stand down. She hasn't found a replacement yet, though. She asked Val whose response was as direct as ever: 'Wouldn't touch it with a bargepole mate!'

B-)

Posted by Billy at 4:01 PM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2006

'a billy at work'

'You've got a Billy at work' said Harry, when Sylvia said she was going in to work yesterday.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 12:03 AM | Comments (0)

'sick of the sight of them'

'I'm sick of the sight of them, to be honest' said the nice man who wiped my bike for traces of explosives in advance of Brenda's visit to the library on Tuesday. After a while the novelty wears off, it seems.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2006

le miserable

Well, I enjoyed the pre-match atmosphere round Highbury yesterday afternoon. 4 hours before kickoff, there were hundreds of Arsenal shirts heading through the 'tickets only -sold out' signs on the doors of the pubs, 'tired and emotional' youths were making noise on Upper Street, and cars with flags were tooting at them as they went by. I was dropping off Ohna's computer which those nice Apple people have agreed to fix despite it being past its warranty (actually past its 'repair extension programme' but anyway). I stopped for a coffee and came out to find my bike had been driven into (handlebars bent, pedal on floor, crank broken, back derailleur bent). I'd been sitting ten yards away but facing in the wrong direction. Just got the call to confirm that it's 'beyond economical repair'. Time to shop around and get into debt again...

B-(

Posted by Billy at 6:00 PM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2006

all in the game 2

Well, it has some qualities, mainly some of Ray's 'colourful' language, but time for life to go on.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 9:51 PM | Comments (0)

all in the game

channel 4 - all in the game

Ray Winstone. always worth watching. And a nice use of Kasabian at the beginning. Might be a laugh. Hope it's not too good, though. I've got other things to do....

The football looked OK in the trailer, although not sure about the final shot. Reminds me of the time we were the crowd for a Comic Strip movie during half time at QPR.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 9:13 PM | Comments (0)

Warning: meltdown imminent

Just received this from the Guardian:

Welcome to Higher Noon, academic news and opinion, twice weekly from EducationGuardian.co.uk

Warning: meltdown imminent

11 May 2006

Latest

Universities face meltdown over pay, says lecturers' leader

Universities face complete "meltdown" if the lecturers' pay dispute is not resolved this week, the Association of University Teachers warned employers today.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/specialreports/lecturerspay/story/0,,1772449,00.html

It does look like we might be in for a bumpy ride. I'm still surprised how few people know about this. I'm still trasumatising students who are about to hand in their work and haven't heard about it yet. A common response when I explain the action is, 'What, again?!' It seems many of them thought the strike was one day of action and that was that.

I do hope it's resolved soon, though.

Posted by Billy at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

May 9, 2006

'I like the flowers...'

Off to lead a woodcraft music session this evening. Just found this interesting discussion about woodies on the Crouch End High Horse

I love it that the poster refers to our nation as 'Thatcher's Britain'.

We sing 'I like the flowers..' fairly regularly but not the plutonium version.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 3:16 PM | Comments (0)

rural london

Sitting in the park listening to jazz wafting as I work and surrounded by birdsong. Stood 20 yards from a wet and shaggy heron on the way in, then said hello to a man who was walking a very large pony on the patch of grass near Bounds Green Road. Gotta love the rural life.

Meanwhile, the lesser spotted thief has been having a go at my bank account. Seems I got 'skimmed' at the weekend.

Had a nice walk in Sussex with Dug on Saturday. Enjoyed the muddy, rainy bits best, although I'm not sure I'd recommend Dug's outfit - open Birkie sandals and a soft shirt (no raincoat).

B-)

Posted by Billy at 3:03 PM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2006

'practical alien linguistics could be pretty essential soon'

Yes, Suzette Haden Elgin has finally inspired me to read The Embedding by Ian Watson. It's a linguisticsy science fiction novel in which self-embedding sentences** play an important role. The article in which she mentions it is 'Waterships All The Way Down' in Rebecca Wheeler's 'Language Alive in the Classroom' where she passes on some suggestions for using science fiction to teach linguistics.

B-)

**like 'fish cats dogs chase eat swim fast' (which means 'fish that get eaten by cats that get chased by dogs swim fast'), or, to take a comprehensible one, 'the game those boys I met invented resembles chess' (as mentioned in Neil Smith's 1989 book 'The Twitter Machine')

Posted by Billy at 7:05 PM | Comments (0)

sharing in the library

Wow, we're up to at least 25 cafe del mar compilations now. I know this because I'm listening to music from Saira's computer while working in the library on the handout for a seminar next week. Sharing is great, but I need to get more stuff on this computer so I don't feel so guilty about having so little to bring to the party. It's also interesting to notice how similar all of our tastes are. Are there any academics who don't like Air?

B-)

Posted by Billy at 3:24 PM | Comments (0)

March 1, 2006

strike

I'm on strike next Tuesday. Luckily, a student mentioned it in a tutorial. I hadn't had time yet to read the emails from NATFHE, one of which had the info. It would be typical of an academic not to know he was on strike because he hadn't read the email yet. I wouldn't faint if I found out that more than one academic uses the day to catch up on some work.

One depressing aspect of this is how little anyone seems to care when academics go on strike. How many of you know about the long-running dispute and academic boycott of London Met, for example?

There has been some national coverage of the coming strike and assessment boycott on the BBC and national papers, but it seems indicative to me that the first info on media coverage on the website is that 'news of balloting appeared in the Belfast Newsletter, Portsmouth News and elsewhere'

B-}

Posted by Billy at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2006

mr. semantics

Ohna has often commented on the irony of a useless communicator like me making a living out of studying communication. I've always thought, though, that it might be what you'd expect. Sometimes you get interested in things when they go wrong.

The latest example is now on my head. The barber thought the missing constituent in my explicature was 'all over my head including the top' when I thought he'd realise I meant 'just the back and sides'. I realised his mistake after he had dragged the mower right over the top of my head.

B-}

Posted by Billy at 9:23 PM | Comments (0)

January 29, 2006

sleeper train

Had a weekend in Scotland last weekend. Mike and I went up by sleeper for Elma's 60th. A nice journey, although the plunge into darkness and silence when the engine failed at Watford was a bit weird. We arrived 4 and a half hours late, which is pretty significant when you've only got two days. It was a nice visit and good to see everybody. Kyle is at the one-word stage and has some nice versions of names. Kirstin is 'tin' and Kyle is 'me'. Kirstin is a laugh a minute and I was pleased to see her adopting 'Uncle Pongo' as a name for Mike.

I'd post a Scottish photo but blueyonder is letting me down again.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 2:02 PM | Comments (0)

January 3, 2006

back to work

There were a few funny tummies at Christmas, as well as a broken boiler (which chose christmas eve to pack in) and Hogmanay was also a bit sick. Donal had mumps so his 18th birthday party/hogmanay combo was cancelled and replaced with a small neighbours' party. Andrew caught it (them?) too and we had a rather strange evening with people disappearing for lie-downs and to pop into other parties before we all got onto the bathroom roof to watch the fireworks and toast the new year. We had a quick game of Buzz (playstation music quiz) after which Ohna suggested that reducing Dad's Competivitiveness might be a resolution to go alongside my main one about improving my contribution to the quality of family life.

The last couple of days have been really nice with all of us at home and no school or anything. It's ending soon, though. Apoa's back to school today. We weren't sure whether she'd be able to get up after having adjusted to late mornings and nights, so we were amazed to hear her up making breakfast an hour early at 5.30. She then went back to bed and was pretty tired by the time she caught her train. I'm back to work today but working at home before getting back on campus tomorrow. We've pencilled in a break later on to start taking down decorations and the tree. Kiloh's back on Thursday so she's PS2ing like crazy in the meantime.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)

December 16, 2005

two films and an apocalypse

I would've sent this post at the weekend but you know.

We went to see the original King Kong at the NFT on Saturday afternoon. I had forgotten that it was the best film ever made. Kiloh gave me a hard time for saying so (this was an allusion to Mark Kermode - I'll tell you later). We then watched Four Weddings and a Funeral when we got home. I'm a big Mike Newell fan so I was delighted that the kids had insisted we rent it. Big excitement when we got to the scene at the NFT and then on the river at the South Bank. I've got a theory that the most obvious skills of Mike Newell as a director and of Hugh Grant as an actor are the same thing really, being all about timing, which is about judging what your audience needs to have happen when. Also one of the main things you need to get right in teaching.

Clemmie came out with us on Sunday, but the poor wee thing was suffering from a bit of a cold. Nicki came and rescued her at the end of the day.

I'm not sure what to make of the symbolism as I went out on Sunday to buy our Christmas tree under the almighty black cloud that was spreading over us from Hemel Hempstead.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)

December 9, 2005

cats and gorillas

Had a great time last night with Robbie and Dug at the John Martin Gallery

Robbie had four wee pictures in the show, which was Into The Jungle - a homage to Rousseau

It was a nice show with some great work, a good mix of styles, not too many people (you could move around), men in gorilla suits, African drummers, classy cocktails and nibbles. And one of Robbie's pictures sold while we were there.

The audience were appropriately beautiful and stylish, and they coped well with having three big scruffy blokes galumphing through the middle of them. I've made a note to get a gorilla suit before we go to see King Kong.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 2:07 PM | Comments (0)

December 3, 2005

'nice odd'

Just had an email from a student who finds it a bit odd that lecturers would be bloggers. 'Nice odd, though'.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 3:57 PM | Comments (4)

November 4, 2005

out of joint

Now I'm really getting confused. I'm getting emails inviting me to events that happened a couple of days ago and I'm having phone calls where me and the other speaker seem to be in different zones and reference points. This time travel is trickier than I thought.

B-}

Posted by Billy at 2:32 PM | Comments (0)

November 3, 2005

blustery day

It's a classic blustery autumn day, leaves spinning through the rain on the way to campus and cars shaving me and trying to send me spinning with them. Perfect day for pausing to look at all the amazing work that Robbie has been working through the night on.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 10:10 AM | Comments (1)

November 2, 2005

isolation

Big problems with the servers at work. Email has been broken since Monday and they're now saying it might be the end of the week before it's working again. If anyone needs to contact me, best to use one of my other email addresses, e.g. billyclarkie a la mac dot com or billyclarkie a la gmail dot com

The academics are divided into those who feel liberated and those who feel like their life support system has been cut.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 3:24 PM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2005

Forbes and e-julie

David Ewalt is doing a great job of publicising the excellent resources on language and communication at Forbes

I finally got round to posting about it on London Language today and found Mai had beaten me to it. I then discovered that the language nerds of the world are all linking to it.

One Forbers linker is The Language Legend This is an excellent resource mainly aimed at A Level English language students. I was shocked on Wednesday to discover that I had just met e-julie, the person responsible for it, but not realised that that's who she was. Could be a useful example for the sense-reference distinction (will make a nice change from Venus, the morning star and Ortcutt).

B-)

Posted by Billy at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)

October 14, 2005

blogometer

Well, this is officially post number 1,000 to this blog. Imagine if I used my powers for good!

B-)

Posted by Billy at 1:35 PM | Comments (3)

October 6, 2005

OK with my decay

45 today and Grandaddy shuffled into my ears with this incredibly appropriate song:

I'm OK/With my decay/I have no choice/I have no voice/I have no say/In my decay/I have no choice/so I'll rejoice/

Ohna Apoa and Kiloh gave me an incredibly appropriate gift of a turntable so I can finally play all my 45s. Naturally, I'm hoping to get through 45 of them. I started by taking myself back once more to the 1980s in the Neill Lounge/Aitken Disco where Musical Youth were passing the dutchie to the totally wired fall and Robbie was breaking the DJ's lights dancing to Depeche Mode. Then I decided to let Kiloh break things up a bit with a choice of her own. She went straight for The American by Simple Minds leaving me straight back in the 80s and visions of young men in big coats.

I'll carry on my celebrations now by reading Steven Pinker and Ray Jackendoff to prepare for class this afternoon.

B-}

Posted by Billy at 12:23 PM | Comments (1)

October 3, 2005

congestion charging

On my way to the tube station last night I was asked to stop by four young women who looked to be around 14 or so. They asked me for 50p 'congestion charge'. One of them put her hands on the front of my bike and tried to stop me carrying on. Blinking flip!

B-}

Posted by Billy at 5:59 PM | Comments (1)

September 9, 2005

moving in

Remembered to time myself cycling to the new campus this morning. 45 minutes from when I started cycling at home to arriving at the bike rack here.

I've now got everything into our office (but not at all organised) apart from five crates of books. Sylvia has 6 more crates. We have no more room, though. An interesting little puzzle. I've got no idea what will happen when students come to discuss things (something I spend a lot of time doing).

No individual post trays yet so I went to the mail room, gathered all of our mail into a big sack and carried it fatherchristmaslike to the building where I sorted and distributed it. Several colleagues asked me whether I was being 'redeployed'

B-)

Posted by Billy at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)

September 6, 2005

meetings with remarkable trees

Well, I'm fully back to Trent Park now and struggling to combine catching up with doing new things and unpacking. We have a desperate need of shelving which is currently being thwarted by the system.

It's nice to be here, though, and getting used to a new (and longer) cycle route. Really nice to cycle through the foggy woods yesterday morning, including a tumble when the bike jammed in the mud. Left my knee slightly iffy so today was a public transport day. Always an adventure.

I'm not sure how much I'm going to enjoy the extra time involved in cycling home every evening. This was added to yesterday by having to visit the police station on the way home to report Apoa's passport having been lost on the music trip to Paris at the weekend. A bit of a surreal experience as they constantly impress on you the importance of reporting it quickly and then make it very hard. I particularly enjoyed the policeman's first response at the station which was that Apoa would have to come in herself to prove that I wasn't 'making her up'. Luckily, he decided it would be OK seeing as she's only 12.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 4:44 PM | Comments (0)

September 2, 2005

starting up again

I've had a few real 3-D people comment on the lack of posts now so I guess it's time to get going again. I expect I'll post more after Monday when I'll be spending more time sitting among the unpacked crates in my new office.

Meanwhile, I'm at a conference trying to understand the apparent lack of recursion in Piraha syntax despite its obvious presence in the semantics of their utterances and thoughts, and keeping up with family life by email. Here's part of an update from Ohna on Apoa's first day back at school:

First day of school this morning was very typical. I asked her to make sure she had all her things packed last night, but of course as she was about to leave, she realised she didn't have her travel pass sorted, or her mobile phone or any money & I forgot to make her a packed lunch!!

B-)

Posted by Billy at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2005

shooting

I've been amazed at how cool the kids I've spoken to have been about the bombs and everything. Apoa was genuinely shocked today, though, when she heard about police shooting someone on the tube. She acted like she couldn't believe it. 'But that's the death penalty!' she said. She couldn't believe the police would administer justice on the spot. I pointed out that we don't know what was happening yet and we had a discussion about the law on self-defence and stuff as well. There's a discussion of this going at the Guardian's newsblog just now.

I have no time to blog at the moment as I'm trying to get my stuff out of my office before they move everything to the new campus and get everything sorted before we go camping tomorrow. Hoping to catch a glimpse of Ohna overnight on the way. Wish I had time to tell you about the conference I just got back from. Some other time.

B

Posted by Billy at 2:02 PM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2005

sampa

I'm finally finding out about SAMPA

B-)

Posted by Billy at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)

pattern finding

I can never resit sneaky blogging when I'm meant to be doing something else. Right now I'm at a workshop learning about Pattern-Finder, software for finding (phonetic) patterns in texts. Will let you know more when I do.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2005

restless night

Took Apoa through to my bed when I got home last night. She's off school again today. Kiloh came through at 4.30 saying she'd heard plates smashing and the dog barking next door. After some discussion we decided it was probably not what she thought and that it wasn't worth calling in the middle of the night to check. At 7.30 Andrew phoned from Ireland to ask me to check on Donal who said he'd phone when he got home last night but hadn't phoned. I went round to find the house very quiet apart from a not-tuned-in radio playing upstairs. Donal was bleary but fine.

I encouraged Kiloh to keep her ears open. She has scared off burglars from their garden in the past.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)

help

Have you ever found a conversation so strange that your anxiety takes on human form and rushes round the room screaming 'get me out'?

B-)

Posted by Billy at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)

phone saga continues

Well, they just delivered the wrong phone. They're trying again on Monday. In the meantime, I can use this different one. It has all the same functions but not the all-important radio. I wasn't sure I'd bother with it since my ancient phone still works but Apoa wants to play with it and I want to play with the camera over the weekend.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2005

end of the mobile

Well, the groovy new phone is going back to the shop tomorrow and they're bringing me a new one. Still, I've already had a fair amount of photo fun (helped by both girls being off school today) and spent around a day working out how to do things and getting my old contacts onto the new phone. Now I'm about to spend half a day getting them back again. B-)

And Robbie and I have exchanged photos between here and Cyprus. I'm glad to see Robbie is blogging again. Got to work out that Cyprus/Hastings lifeshare for him.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 2:39 PM | Comments (0)

July 13, 2005

mobile life

[PICTURE REMOVED AT REQUEST OF SUBJECT]

Had a nice day at Alice and Justin's picnic on Sunday. Played a couple of hours of football until Tim ruined it by pointing out that grown-ups were taking a game against five-year-olds a little too seriously. Mai came with some friends and a birthday cake. Nicki came with Clemmie and they came home for tea and a bit of a play afterwards. And a Lancaster Bomber, a spitfire and a hurricane flew over fresh from dropping poppies on the mall.

This was likely to be the last we see of Ohna for a few weeks as she gets back from Milan just after we all leave for summer camp and we all get back from that just after she goes to New York B-(

After years of being the one with the ancient bashed-up phone, I leapt to the other extreme the other day and got a phone that does all those groovy things like taking photos, browsing the web, bluetooth, etc. My favourite feature is the radio as I won't have to think about packing one now. I hoped to be able to send Ohna some photos while she's away but phone and blackberry technology has been defeating us so flickr should do the job. This is the first pic I took.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 3:27 PM | Comments (0)

June 14, 2005

cooking on wood

Looks like I might be going on summer camp with the woodcraft folk again this year. I particularly enjoyed this bit of the information letter which I'm still trying to understand:

We understand that some people are concerned about the toilet arrangements. We will put up a shower tent and we might even get our 'solar water heater' working for it. For lavatories we shall get the farmer to dig a slit trench. The alternative would be to use chemical lats but over many years we have found that using slit trenches is more hygienic and pleasanter. If you have never used them it may sound unlikely, but let us assure you it's true. It's like cooking on wood being more efficient than cooking on gas. Certainly we hope that it won't put people off.

B-}

Posted by Billy at 1:24 PM | Comments (1)

June 13, 2005

illness predicted 22.6.05

Academics often get ill on the first day after term ends. The theory is that you keep yourself at full throttle as long as term's on and then something subconscious allows the illness to kick in as soon as you don't have a class/meeting/deadline for tomorrow. Some academics think it's a good idea to catch a cold a week or two before the end of term just to avoid being in bed for the first week of the break.

Another generalisation about academia is that workloads shoot up at the end of summer teaching as marking coincides with all those meetings that couldn't be scheduled in teaching time and with all those deadlines that got pushed back during the term. This year it's been madder than ever for me, which you'll already know if you've noticed the gap on the blog.

For several weeks now, I've had 22nd June pencilled in as the day when things will get a bit more manageable. So we'll see whether illness awaits (and yes, I do already have two meetings booked in for that day).

Anyway, I think I'm going to sneak the odd minute for a bit of blogging again now. This one is being posted between phone calls on a day of interviewing for a position that attracted such an international set of applicants that we're only seeing two of them in person.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 3:51 PM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2005

systems down

Well, like a lot of people I forgot about the email we got a few weeks ago to let us know that Middlesex systems would be down for the next few days. I'm out of email contact until Sunday night. Maybe I'll be able to get some work done!

B-)

Posted by Billy at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2005

surprise

Sometimes you find that life is getting on top of you with too many commitments piling on top of each other and not enough time to get to grips with any of them properly. And then out of the blue you get a message offering you a ticket to the cup final.

B-))

Posted by Billy at 9:27 AM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2005

music and adventure

Went to Apoa's music concert after work today and this is me just getting back from it at 11.30pm. Apoa and Kiloh got a lift home and arrived around 9.30ish.

All I can say is that I really appreciate a head teacher who thinks he's leaving a governors' meeting at 10.30pm and is heading off home, only to be met by a biker who's been waiting to explain that his bike is locked in the pupils' bike shed and that the caretaker hasn't got a key, and who still smilingly sorts everything out and sympathises with me for having had to wait so long. I even more appreciate a deputy head who gets out of bed to answer his answer machine and explain where the key is.

The concert was great, with a mix of styles and abilities. Some of the kids were amazingly good. The crowd's favourite was a violin soloist who performed a very complicated piece with no music and then had to return for a second bow. I particularly enjoyed Jessie's trombone version of 'Summertime' which hypnotised the whole room. I thought we were about to be sucked into the end of the trombone. There were also two memorable versions of the Titanic theme, one haunting voice (three vocalists) and piano version in the first half and later a completely different take in which Apoa and some classmates had worked out their own arrangement for two pianists, a bass guitar, flute, clarinet and oboe.

Deadline day is Monday which means I'm being swamped with last-minute drafts, so I spent my waiting time reading about things like case theory and the dative alternation.

Apoa's tube pass ran out today so I had the added pleasure of a visit to the tube station to renew it on the way home, and a cycle down the A10 on the way - not recommended around 11pm, I'd say.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)

May 9, 2005

quizzing

I was feeling cocky after getting both of the mystery guests on Question of Sport on Friday, so imagine my surprise when I settled down to watch the final of University Challenge only to find that I could hardly process any of the questions, let alone answer them. I know I used to know some answers back in the old days! I didn't even get all of the linguistics questions! For the record, I got 'synthetic', 'agglutinative', 'Noam Chomsky' and 'article', but 'Mandarin' foxed me.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

May 6, 2005

election post mortem

Well, Barbara Roche lost. I think it's a shame as she was a good local MP and worked really hard for her constituents. Here are some thoughts from a local Labour Party worker:

Iraq (and Blair more generally) were massive issues over on the western side of the constituency and cost us loads of votes. But genuinely it was hardly mentioned over in Wood Green (except approvingly as evidence of Blair's courage and leadership, but then only by Asian and Middle Eastern voters). There the determinants were apathy and possibly immigration. I was harangued at length by a Jamaican about the injustice of all the perks that the latest wave of immigrants get, while his family get nothing - I found it very hard to argue the point, although I've never had a problem doing so with white working class punters; I heard from other activists that they had experienced this same 'pulling up the ladder' phenomenon, so plainly some unlikely people were thinking what Mr Howard was thinking).

A little insight on apathy/tunrout for you. In Woodside (north east of Wood Green), where I spent most of yesterday, we had 40% of the vote just based on our 'promises' (supportive canvass returns); you can add at least another 20% or so to this if you factor up proportionately for those 'unknown'/uncontacted who also voted. This was not untypical, so in the Labour parts of the constituency, I think we were getting about 60% of the vote. However, turnout was barely over 40%, whereas across the whole constituency it was about 60% (so vastly higher in Muswell Hill, Highgate and Crouch End). We lost by 2500 votes. Had turnout in our 5 best wards (out of the ten in the constituency) been at the average, we probably would have won, albeit by a handful of votes. Differential turnout - it's how elections are won and lost. Still, the fact that we lost huge numbers of voters in the leafy west (but not to the Greens, whose vote and share fell) probably means we wouldn't have won anyway, so enough of the post mortem. We've got four more years to get it right and a much stronger Crouch End Labour Party, so it's not all bad.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 5:15 PM | Comments (0)

May 5, 2005

election

I held my nose.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)

May 4, 2005

election blog: too smelly?

Well, I would have liked to have had the time to pass on lots of thoughts and news about the election, but it looks like this will have to be your lot. I've been wavering like never before on this one. I can see that the Tories would be a disaster so 'hold your nose and vote Labour' seems sensible. On the other hand, the stink really is pretty bad and 'the other guys are worse' isn't much of a sales gimmick. On the other other hand, they have done some good stuff and it would be a shame if that was dumped because of their bad side. On the other other other hand, if that happens, isn't it their fault rather than ours? I mean, who is it who's been going round alienating voters? And isn't it good to send the mesasage that you can't get away with some things? I have to say that there have been more cases than usual of election messages pushing me to do the opposite of what they want me to do. The letter from our local Tory candidate began by saying what a good hard-working MP Barbara Roche is! Which she is, so that's quite a strong argument too. The most persuasive, though, was the talk of Blunkett yesterday, and, even more forceful, the talk by Blunkett (i.e. he's persuading me not to vote Labour by saying I'm a self-indulgent middle class whinger if I don't).

I've had a few interesting political discussions recently, including Roger suggesting that this might be 1970 over again, Ade worrying that it might be 1992, and Robert saying that it's everybody's fault if it all goes wrong. As he put it:

When we had two million on the streets we should have rioted for peace and brought down the government...

Although he did add helpfully add that:

That would not have worked either.

Meanwhile, Apoa's still quite engaged. Apparently, the Tories are the funniest in her school mock election. She can't decide whether to vote for the funny ones since it doesn't really count or go for who she might vote for in real life. Both Apoa and Kiloh are asking if they can come to see the polling booth with me tomorrow. Hope tennagerdom doesn't apatheticise them,

B-)

Posted by Billy at 5:46 PM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2005

justifying the licence fee

Can't believe they got to broadcast this story making an analogy between Tony Blair and evil aliens trying to destroy the planet ('aliens have incredible superweapons ... capable of deployment in 45 seconds ... weapons of mass destruction ... UN needs to grant us the power to use nukes... etc.') during the election campaign. I suppose they're counting on how stupid Tony would look if he kicked up a fuss about Dr. Who ;-)

Great to see Penelope Wilton in it too B-)

Posted by Billy at 7:53 PM | Comments (0)

whale's tails and princesses

Today I should have helped Ohna and Apoa sort out some of the mess in the spare room and I should have helped our local Woodcraft Folk sort out the camping equipment in the store. But I've done my neck in (probably partly to do with the bus trip to Oxford yesterday) so now I'm damaging my neck doing a pile of marking and listening to itunes shuffling around. The joy of 'shuffle' is of course the stuff you forgot you had. The Cocteau Twins singing Whale's Tails was the highlight so far, but they've just been topped by Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret's 'A Broadcast Message To Children' which they recorded during World War Two and you can hear on the British Library's The Century In Sound. Very spooky to suddenly hear this very posh child's voice from a whole other world.

I recommend the bus as a way of getting to Oxford, btw. A quick cycle down to Baker Street, the bike goes in the boot and you can fall asleep listening to David Bowie performing live and doing your neck in until you arrive, wake up and get cycling.

It was really nice to see Robbie and cycle round the pubs of Oxford with him. He needs to find some mates, though, and some artistic inspiration. Any friendly humans in Oxford?

B-)

PS Seminar task: spot the syntactic ambiguity in this post ;-)

Posted by Billy at 4:57 PM | Comments (4)

surprising sounds: whale's tails and princesses

Today I should have helped Ohna and Apoa sort out some of the mess in the spare room and I should have helped our local Woodcraft Folk sort out the camping equipment in the store. But I've done my neck in (probably partly to do with the bus trip to Oxford yesterday) so now I'm damaging my neck doing a pile of marking and listening to itunes shuffling around. The joy of 'shuffle' is of course the stuff you forgot you had. The Cocteau Twins singing Whale's Tails was the highlight so far, but they've just been topped by Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret's 'A Broadcast Message To Children' which they recorded during World War Two and you can hear on the British Library's The Century In Sound. Very spooky to suddenly hear this very posh child's voice from a whole other world.

I recommend the bus as a way of getting to Oxford, btw. A quick cycle down to Baker Street, the bike goes in the boot and you can fall asleep listening to David Bowie performing live and doing your neck in until you arrive, wake up and get cycling.

It was really nice to see Robbie and cycle round the pubs of Oxford with him. He needs to find some mates, though, and some artistic inspiration. Any friendly humans in Oxford?

B-)

Posted by Billy at 4:51 PM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2005

reader

I was shocked at 1am last night to peek in on Apoa and find she was still reading three hours after we'd said good night. She's still in bed now, though, which is good. Off to Oxford to see Robbie now (I've practically finished the validation document and have at least sent on the important bits, so I can do this with a bit less guilt than I would have otherwise).

B-)

Posted by Billy at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)

April 22, 2005

a very long engagement

Ages ago Jed sent Ohna the piece on A Very Long Engagement from American Cinematographer. He wrote 'Go see!' at the bottom of every page.

After Robbie gave it the double thumbs-up ('best film I've seen in ages!') we finally managed it on Thursday. We were both tired and wanted to spend some time together so we weren't sure if a movie was the right thing, but it was great and just the right movie to see at that time - we even managed to stay awake long enough for a bite and a chat afterwards. Jeunet is very comic-booky which is only one reason why you'd expect Jed and Robbie to like the movie. The pacing was less frenetic and the storytelling a bit less gimmicky than Amélie but it was also a 'fabuleux destin'. This one was both a fairytale and also to do with real things (such as World War One). It was fascinating to read about it from a technical point of view (mainly Bruno Delbonnel the cinematographer's) in American Cinematographer, with details of lenses and colour mixing and testing to see which lenses would work with Audrey Tautou's face, given that Jeunet wanted lots of wide-angle close-ups with a slight tilt:

We saw that her face worked well with the 25mm and the 27mm. The 21mm still works for her, but you have to be careful; the 18mm doesn't work, nor does the 35mm.

I was particularly impressed with the 460-square-foot frame, with lights attached, that they suspended from a 70-ton crane above the trenches to block out the sun. The frame could also be tilted to change its orientation. Quite a contrast from some of Ohna's low-budget affairs, and of course totally pointless if the story's no good...

And then there was all the detail about the 'naked' camera with a foam cushion on the side so that offscreen actors could be really close to help the onscreen ones. And on and on...

Also interesting to hear him talk about how definitely he wanted it all not to be realistic ('Realism doesn't interest me! I strive for an unrealistic approach') but also didn't want the scenes in the trenches to be too beautiful to depict the horrors of war.

I could go on...

B-)

Posted by Billy at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2005

work and play

Good morning. I've got a few things to say today but I guess I'd better get this blooming validation paperwork done first, not to mention the other things that are queuing up at the door.

B-)

NB The queuing bit is a metaphor. The things are things and not people. The only things outside my door are books on the bookcrossing shelf.

Posted by Billy at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2005

you say 'papam'...

OK. I know. I'm sorry. The cardinal who delivered the news pronounced the second 'a' fully but the reporters both used a schwa. I thought I did well to get the 'habemus' bit right...

B-(

Posted by Billy at 1:24 PM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2005

you say 'papum'...

According to a reporter on radio 5, we're about to hear someone say 'habemus papum'. But the next reporter said he'd say 'habemus papum'. The first one said 'pay-pum', the second said 'pah-pum'. That's what happens when you speak a dead language (it happens with live ones too, of course).

B-)

Posted by Billy at 4:59 PM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2005

civilisation

Went to bed at around 10 o'clock last night. This is early for me. I was drained after spending the morning at a rather charged meeting and then heading straight off to Cambridge for a conference.

I had to miss the first day of the conference because of the meeting but I had a nice evening cycling around looking at cows and popping into an overheated internet cafe where I bumped into Mai who had had the same idea. I've just left the conference room because I missed the speaker's handout and he's talking too fast for me to follow it. I then asked a couple of people and discovered that they have a room here with computers just for us to use.

It's all very civilised here. I made a joke about auditors to an academic downstairs and he said 'what are auditors?' (Maybe only academics will know why the next sentence might begin 'Picking myself off the floor, ...'). I also enjoy all the College stuff. Having breakfast in a big dark hall (candles are the only illumination on offer) and trying to get a proper view of the portraits (some top quality stuff), and I must make sure I stay up late tonight just so I can come in the night way (through a tiny door in the back garden, into the back of a building, out the front of it, and then along the terrace to our place).

I'm now very excited because I've been looking at this book on Grice longingly since it came out, not being able to afford it and not wanting to wait until the library finally gets it, and it was on special offer here for conference attendees (half price). Now I don't know whether to wait until I've polished off The Inheritors before getting into it.

The Inheritors is looking good, although I just started last night. Two days after Tim persuaded me I had to read it, Sylvia deposited it on the book crossing shelf outside my office. Tim is here and tells me he's also persuaded himself to reread it. We looked at in class the other day, doing a bit of Hallidayan analysis on it. It seemed appropriate, since Halliday's paper on it is a stylistics classic. The class was fun and, for me at least, the exercise demonstrated Hallidayan analysis, showed how it's useful for stylistics, revealed some of the style of the book, and made me want to read more.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 1:18 PM | Comments (0)

April 12, 2005

'Grandma, when is the world going to end?'

This was a question Kirstin asked Elma in the car the other day. I collected a few other nice bits of linguistic data today:

Daddy, you should be finished your class by now!

(A pouty voicemail from Kiloh at 4.37pm, with a dramatic pause between each word - class finished at 5pm)

PAEDIATRICS - Please remember gonad protection. This is a legal requirement

(Sign behind the screen when Apoa was getting her arm x-rayed. The diagrams were also cool, one with flesh and one with bones)

The other was Apoa's bewildered silence when the doctor asked her, 'How can I help you?' I thought it was because she was used to doctors talking to me rather than her, but she said it was because she didn't expect to be asked how the doctor could help. She says next time she'll just say, 'cream, painkillers and an x-ray please!' ;-)

You'll have gathered that I did have to take Apoa to the doctor and then an x-ray today. Bad choice of day. The doctor was very busy and the x-ray department was busy and had some broken machinery. The receptionist explained there'd be at least an hour of a wait and asked us to take a seat, pointing to a waiting area with no unoccupied seats. The floor was fine, though. There's no fracture so it's just a case of waiting for it to feel better. Meanwhile no PE or guitar or anything.

Missed my office hours this morning and ended up over half an hour late for my class (I did warn them, though). The topic today was grammar in schools so we looked at Debbie Cameron's discussion in Verbal Hygiene of the conservative obsession with grammar and standards in the 1980s. So, of course, we had to talk about Mistress Chloe

B-)

Posted by Billy at 5:50 PM | Comments (0)

April 8, 2005

don't look back/forward

This summer, Middlesex is closing its Tottenham campus and a load of us are moving to Trent Park, which is where I was based when I first came here. So today I left Mark fixing the flood and leak (he was there working on a bunch of things including our still malfunctioning and now electrically dangerous central heating system when a huge amount of water fell into the hall having slowly built up from a leak in a heating pipe under the landing (the water had risen to just below floorboard level before it came through)) and Apoa and Rachel on their way to the swimming pool (are your linguistic processing modules still with me?) and travelled by train and tube up to Oakwood and on to my former workplace (the bike is still in the shop after a bit of confusion about a wheel yesterday*).

It's weird coming back. I started by standing at the wrong place waiting for the minibus up from the tube station to the campus and since then I've been bumping into lots of people whose names I used to know and wondering whether or not to reintroduce myself. I'm sitting now in a large open-plan computer centre which includes what used to be my office and I'm also more or less underneath what will be my shared cupboard after September. Trent Park is a lovely campus in a country park that has a lot of history (George III used to visit here, the Sassoon family owned it at the start of the twentieth century, it was a POW camp for German officers during WWII, etc.), lovely views and great walks and cycle trails. Still, I've always liked Tottenham, which is more 'street' and has buildings named after Jimi Hendrix, Jenny Seacole and Toussaint L'Ouverture rather than mad king's doctors (forgive the syntactic ambiguity) and things.

I came for an open day and spent it meeting some really nice potential students and staff (although I'm now being made nervous by the student next to me whose mouse keeps getting too close to my left hand). I particularly enjoyed chatting to my History and English colleagues about Leavis and the legendary William Empson scandal of the condoms.

B-)

*I sent it in for a service and spoke repair. I'm collecting it later today with a new chain, cassette, rear wheel and saddle. The holdup was because I told the guy working on it I had a spare wheel in the shed, only to find out too late that it was a front wheel rather than a rear one. Soon my bike will be like the axe that's had its handle and blade changed several times but has been in the family for generations.

Posted by Billy at 4:20 PM | Comments (4)

April 6, 2005

'Labour's unthinking opposition'

Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | Labour's unthinking opposition

I agree with David Aaronovitch's criticism of the 'prejudice, cynicism and lack of political nous' of some people who oppose Tony Blair. It seems that humans are designed to like broad conclusions and over-strong generalisations, and to hold conclusions strongly without fully exploring all of the relevant evidence. This applies as much to academics as anyone else, even though one of the main aims of their work is to practice and teach careful analysis of arguments. (There will undoubtedly be some academics who disagree with this but, by definition, not in such a way that I could enter into an argument with them).

I think this will be an interesting election because the electorate is more aware than ever of things they don't like about the various voting options. I live in a fairly sheltered part of North London so I don't have much contact with the real world where there are people who are worried about immigration, who supported the war in Iraq, and even some who would ever consider voting Tory (I remember how the neighbours all pitied young Toby, the Tory candidate in our last local elections who was dutifully working the doorsteps asking everyone to confirm that they wouldn't be voting for him). The people I meet are quite unsure what to do in the election. There's definitely unhappiness with Labour, particularly to do with the war, but people don't seem too sure what they do want to do with their vote and they'd definitely hate to see the Tories get in.

Of course, there's also a general feeling of powerlessness associated with not being in the small group of voters who will really decide the outcome. I guess that's one thing that my world does share with the majority of the country.

Despite their shortcomings, I do see that Labour are far preferable to the Tories. The main thing that annoys me about them is still the war and the way they defend their decision to join in (mainly by pretending that anti-war people are pro-Saddam and anti-ever-doing-anything-about-it).

Locally, our MP is Barbara Roche. I know a lot of the 'literary dinner-party' people David Aaronovitch mentioned will be quite negative about her, but I do think she does a good job for people here (and not just because she has been supportive of The Lecture List). We see plenty of her in school and elsewhere, and she did get the graffiti off of Andrew's wall for him.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 8:14 AM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2005

producers, blackberries and holding your drink

It's been a busy week. Went to see The Producers with Ohna on Monday. It's not perfect, but I think you have to see it. Brad Oscar is great as Max so we didn't miss Nathan Lane. Interesting that I found the comedy gays a bit boring even though the show is nothing but tasteless jokes, with comedy nazis and comedy old ladies etc. Ohna's been given a blackberry by her work which I would think of as a disaster. Sure enough, she was being emailed in and out of the theatre. We went for a bite afterwards and she was outside on the phone when our food arrived.

Went to an opening with Dug and Alan last night and then Ohna joined us later. Found myself not coping too well with the alcoholic intake, so I'll try to be sensible tonight.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 6:55 PM | Comments (0)

if you can't lobby, go to the alley

I thought I was going to lobby parliament with Kiloh and Anna Clare today. The woodcraft folk have had their government grant stopped so we were off to try to persuade some MPs to do something about it. It turned out, though, that I had got the day wrong and the lobbying was yesterday. So we took the opportunity to go bowling and now I'm using the time before meeting Rupert for a movie trip to do a bit of blogging.

This article by David Batty says that some people think they took away the woodcraft folk's money because they were against the war. It can't have been a surprise that woodies were against the war, though. I mean, we spend a lot of our time sitting round campfires singing about things like the H-bomb's thunder and how we're going to lay down our arms and how you've got axes so we'll get axes too.... Like, woodcraft folk are against war, full stop. Anyway, hope they see sense. Kiloh and Anna reckon they might, seeing as how the election is coming up. I kind of think, though, that we've got another goverment who would put me in the category of 'wouldn't vote for us anyway'.

B-}

Posted by Billy at 6:46 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2005

flu

Well, the reason I've been quiet for a bit is cos I got a kind of flu-like thing last week (10 days ago) and after I got better I had a load of stuff to catch up on. I'm just about back up to speed now, although that partly depends on a few things getting done this weekend. I examined a PhD last Friday when I was just about recovered, which was fun despite my slightly less than 100% state. Since then I've been mainly catching up. Middlesex has carried on with its amazing range of speakers. I went to see David Putnam the other day giving a really good talk on how he moved from film to education. The main idea was that film can be a really important thing if it has to do with our common humanity and collective responsibility. He's fed up with films where bombs only land on just the right people and murders leave no widows. So maybe he was in education even when he was in film? I also made it to the session with Guy Jenkin, who wrote loads of TV comedy including some Spitting Image and Drop The Dead Donkey (I always thought that was a great title and a not quite so great show) and Graham Lineham who wrote Father Ted among other stuff (of course a great show but I've always had a bit of a problem with priests - not that I particularly know any or anything). I would have maybe seen Howard Brenton but he cancelled at the last minute, and I definitely would have seen Michael Rosen (on 'Are books for children worth reading?') if the subject review I was involved in hadn't taken 10 hours (from 9.15am until 7.15pm). This was in Middlesex's country park campus where I used to be based and will be again after summer. Funny to be moving back and it feels longer ago than I'd realised. I'll miss Tottenham but I'm looking forward to being back to the countryside. This week I also managed to miss Kiloh's appearance for the school team in the girls' football finals. I felt less bad, though, when I heard she didn't get to play. She's usually one of the subs but they didn't use any subs in any of their games, which was sad for the four kids who didn't get a game. I was pleased to hear that Kiloh took this really well and said it was the team that mattered. Or is she a bad player if she hasn't learned to get on the moby to her agent as soon as anything like this happens?

B-)

Posted by Billy at 8:43 PM | Comments (0)

March 4, 2005

happy birthday apoa

Apoa woke up at 3.30 and at 3.45 but then managed to sleep until 6. She enjoyed opening cards and pressies in our bed and then had a nice breakfast (brownie and milk - putting aside her anti-exczema dairy freeness for one day) but is particularly pleased that it's snowing properly on her birthday.

We finally gave in and bought her a mobile phone. We used to say she could get one when she could afford to buy one and pay for her own calls, but a train plus bus journey every day persuaded us it would be practical if she had one. We made sure the phone came with everything to get started but of course it came without a battery, so I'm off to Woolies this afternoon.

My bike has been in Crouch End for a couple of days now, following the double puncture on Wednesday (that's 6 in the past month) and I don't like cycling when there are icy roads, so I took the bus which was pleasant. Particularly enjoyed being reminded how ahead of their time Cabaret Voltaire were from the Mojo Beyond Punk compiliation, and everyone on the bus enjoyed the bus behind driving into us (slowly) at a bus stop on the way.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 10:49 AM | Comments (0)

March 2, 2005

stroud green: a 'dormitory community?'

The Independent Online Edition - Money

Seems our neighbourhood is 'losing its anonymity'. Naturally, there are a few things us locals wouldn't agree with in this article but it'll be interesting to see if people will begin to have heard of Stroud Green. At the moment I always tell people I live in Finsbury park so that they don't have to ask where Stroud Green is. Crouch End is definitely a bit more heard-of these days, although it was news to me until some of our friends moved there.

When we moved here, Mrs Stefanou told us this was 'one of the nicest bits of Crouch End' while her son told us it was a great place to be because it was 'so easy to get to Crouch End from here'.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 1:03 PM | Comments (0)

March 1, 2005

me cyaan believe it

Got up this morning, went past the post office to collect a package containing Apoa's birthday presents from Jed and Ruth, took the parcels out of the box so I could fit them in the bike bag, headed off to Middlesex for a morning of equal opportunities training (more linguistic data than you could shake a stick at (whatever that means)) bought a sandwich and ate half of it before my first tutee arrived at 1.15, then finished it at 5 after the last one left, then went to hear Linton Kwesi Johnson talk about Michael Smith before (now) heading off for a night out with Ohna. Somehow managed to read the start of an MA dissertation and approve three more encyclopedia articles inbetween, which means I'm only waiting for two and then my only remaining job will be to look at the proofs and corrections suggested by authors (hooray). A busy day, but I enjoyed it. Linton Kwesi Johnson is a visiting professor here which is very cool. I pretended to be John Peel, though, and suppressed my starstruckness.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 7:16 PM | Comments (0)

February 25, 2005

good grief!

I might have mentioned that I'm writing encyclopedia articles just now as well as editing a section in the encyclopedia. There are just a few articles I'm responsible for that still need a bit of revising, but theoretically I have 6 more to write myself by Monday. Before I left last night I went over one of them changing some things, including stuff I was sure I'd already changed. Sure enough, I just found a version of the paper that already had some of the changes in it. Which means that where I am now is more or less where I had already got to a couple of weeks ago. Grrr! The reassuring thing is that a lot of the changes I made yesterday are more or less the same as the ones I'd made before.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

February 21, 2005

they won't let it lie

Way hay, snow! It's dying before it hits the ground, though. I'm totally bored with the freezing weather but snow makes it a bit more bearable.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 3:49 PM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2005

pictures fae the North East

Just got my pictures back from the Scottish trip. They're on my mac homepage if you want to see them all.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 5:23 PM | Comments (0)

February 16, 2005

more technology

I don't feel old for being amazed by skype

Oisin and Apoa were also excited when Dug and I had a free phone call via the internet earlier this evening. I guess one day they'll be remembering when they thought of this as a new and exciting concept.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 2:28 AM | Comments (0)

this charming man

Sitting up late reviewing encyclopedia entries. Thank you NME and Channel 4 for putting on the NME Awards shows to keep me entertained. I love hearing musos chat about each other and particularly enjoyed them talking about The Libertines with Pete Doherty being a member of the panel. He really is a charming bugger, isn't he?

I also still get a buzz from emailing an author in the states and getting an instant response at 2 in the morning. I remember when email was new and this was a truly amazing thing. Yes, that's right, I remember when we used the post, sending my first ever article off to a US journal and having to wait for comments to come back in the mail. On bits of paper!

B-))

Posted by Billy at 2:20 AM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2005

apple pie and memories

Had a really nice trip to Auntie Lorna's with Bessie and Ted today. Was surprised to see how much at home I felt in Inverurie with the shops full of lunch hour kids, having been one of those kids for just a couple of years many moons ago. Lorna served up a lovely meal of soup and apple pie and then we enjoyed a healthy helping of photographs and memories. In these days of deferred parenting, I think Lorna deserves some kind of medal for having great-great-grandchildren (she can gather five generations of Mitchells together in one place). Bessie offered a couple of good linguistic examples:

- Lewis calls his grandad 'dyde' as the Belger word for grandad is 'dydie'

- Philip used to call his great grandma his 'afa-grandma' ('afa'='awful')

Followed this nostalgia-fest with a nice evening with Kim in the swinging hotspots of the Broch.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 12:51 AM | Comments (0)

February 10, 2005

notes from the belger

I just made the radical move of taking a few days' leave during term-time to come and make a long overdue visit to Bessie and Ted in Cairnbulg (or the 'Belger' as the locals call it). Had a nice flight up and then annoyed the locals with my slow driving on the way out (I'm not an eagle at the best of times but I'm Mr. Magoo when driving at night). I felt sensible, though, when I heard about the latest horrible death on the Aberdeen-Fraserburgh road last week.

Bessie and Ted are in bed now so I'm sitting in the kitchen trying to catch up with encyclopedia reviewing in the hope that I'll also find some time to finish my own articles in the next few days. It's quite nice sitting in a quiet kitchen with a newly-double-framed Apoa and Kiloh watching over me while I work. Compensates a bit for missing Apoa's dramatic performance at school tonight (that's literal, as in acting in a play ;-)

I also enjoyed discovering Newsnight Scotland where the debate was about which kind of alternative the Scottish Socialist Party should be offering and how left wing it should be. A nice change from the election debate in England which, as Johann Hari put it, is all about whether Blair or Howard can seem the most rabidly right wing.

I'd have quoted Johann Hari's piece directly but, despite having paid 60p to read the print version earlier today, it costs another quid to read it on the web. I decided to go for it and went through some form-filling which included a question where you tick to receive spam followed instantly by a question where you tick not to receive spam (BT Click&Buy are the ********s who are responsible for this) but then they deactivated my account with no explanation at the end of the process B-}

It was interesting to read Johann Hari's piece straight after reading George Orwell on the rampant spread of socialism around the world in 1948 earlier today.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 12:43 AM | Comments (0)

February 4, 2005

ministry of truth

Spent most of yesterday in Senate House, a beautiful building that was used as the Ministry of Information during World War II and which was the model for George Orwell's Ministry of Truth. Funnily enough, Keith didn't know that when he referred to 'Room 101' during one of our meetings. When I met him earlier he said 'this is Richard the Third'. It took me a while to realise he was referring to the movie with Ian McKellen set in a fascist 1930's England. Also funnily enough, I'm currently reading Orwell - The Observer Years. He's such a good writer, but it's also fascinating to read his reports about what was happening 'on the ground' in Paris and Germany at the end of the war.

I followed two meetings of academics in Senate House with yet another meeting with Griselda, working on getting a partner/'angel' sorted for The Lecture List, which is doing great but really needs to find a partner now. (Any offers?)

I then fitted in a quick bit of work in Borders (just managing on the way to pick up a double bass book for Kiloh from a nice man in Denmark Street who was trying to lock up but took the trouble to get me the book before he did) and then I went to meet Ohna who had spent the day waiting for a meeting that still hasn't happened.

We thought we must have good karma when we managed to get the lucky window seat in the Dog and Duck, but this morning began with tax disasters and now my bike has a puncture and a broken rack.

OK, that should keep you going. Back to work.

B-)

PS Please, someone, find a home for Robbie in Oxford. I can't bear what that bus trip is doing to him.

Posted by Billy at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)

February 2, 2005

sign language

Had a good session at woodcraft on British Sign Language

I can now sign the alphabet, ask for chocolate, tell you my name and ask you yours, ask if you want help and apologise for not being a signer.

I think the grownups' favourite sign was the one where you turn a key in your neck to tell people to turn their voices off.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)

January 29, 2005

i'm a liar

Apoa just came in and objected that I hadn't explained to her what capitalism is. So we just had a quick seminar. The result is that she says she doesn't know what she thinks but at the moment she's definitely more like a communist than a capitalist.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 10:59 PM | Comments (1)

music and handouts

Don't tell bozo but I think the missing music on my itunes is only missing cos I downloaded it onto a different computer ;-)

Listening to Candyskin by the Fire Engines just now (thanks, Robbie). Takes you back. This was THE song for a wee while back in the day. I seem to be sinking in nostalgia at the moment, having been to see the Gang of Four last night. They were great and not really in a nostalgic way. Ended up going on my own as each of my 'dates' fell by the wayside one after another. Felt like a comedy character being there on my own with two big heavy bike bags, one of which had a computer in it, struggling to the bar with no hands free for my pint. I had remembered the Gang of Four as a bit funky and a bit rock-y but I hadn't thought of the rock bit as being as heavy as it was. They were quite industrial and brutal and didn't really sound like they were from the old days. I was delighted while I was there to be slipped a 'Capitalism? No thanks!' free-access card ('can be used to abolish global credit and debit systems') from http://www.worldsocialism.org

Followed that with a listen to metal box this morning. Mike gave me his spare copy last night. Hadn't listened for ages but it sounded great and Albatross is perfect Saturday morning breakfast music. Twenty odd years ago, we used to listen to Theme from the first pil album when we felt disgustedly hungover with ourselves.

At breakfast I showed the kids the worldsocialism card which meant I had to explain to them what capitalism is.

Meanwhile I think I've got a busy enough weekend without not being able to find my old handouts so that I have to redo the handout for Monday's first year class from scratch.

B-}

Posted by Billy at 8:15 PM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2005

Saturday

Don't tell the publishers, or the students, or the university, but I took time off from academia today (I know I shouldn't feel guilty about that on a Saturday, but there you go). Followed a nice game of football with a wee game of basketball. Martha takes it really seriously. I think that kind of competitiveness is at its height when you're around 10. I think I was around 10 when I started changing channels to check whether Aberdeen had really lost most Saturday teatimes. I remember one time the BBC said they'd won 5-0 at Ayr and I changed to ITV who said they'd lost 5-0. It turned out ITV had got it wrong. B-)

Followed the sport with a bit of computer play (partial success with using Airport to play stuff off the computers through the hifi system, but a bit of a worry that some of my itunes music seems to have disappeared when Dug fixed the computer) and some house organising. Had to borrow a drill cos I still can't find ours, but it looks like we're getting slightly more organised. Ohna did some major work with the help of Muji.

Just listening to some very groovy oldstyle funk on Radio Magnetic which is perfect for a Saturday night when you're getting ready to go out.

Went to a super gig on Dug's birthday on Thursday. Ian Broudie in a tiny room upstairs at the Enterprise. Reminded of when Gentleman Jim played my back living room for my fortieth. Particularly enjoyed the double bass - Kiloh is currently taking advantage of free double bass lessons from the Haringey Music Centre.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 7:55 PM | Comments (3)

January 16, 2005

back to life

Dug spent a good few hours today getting my computer back to life. Now I'm cracking on with marking again. Meanwhile, an author who's working on the encyclopedia emailed to say that his computer crashed on him a couple of days ago. He's based in Jakarta and has been travelling in Sumatra where the tsunami hit. Which kind of puts the panic over a linguistics encyclopedia entry into perspective. He was pleased to hear that I was in a similar situation. He then freaked himself out by making this comment:

'But if you hear a news flash of a meteorite smashing into Jakarta, you'll know
it's my encyclopaedia jinx again.'

and then waking up in the morning to find that there had been an earthquake in Jakarta that night (too small to notice, luckily). Hero that he is, he's now typed up the article that he had a hard copy of and also completely rewritten the one that was totally lost. Wish I was working that quickly.

Meanwhile, one of Apoa's friends just came round with her parents to apologise for telling stories that weren't true about relatives being missing in the tsunami. Apparently, during World War II, they did have a relative who was missing for a week after Sri Lanka was bombed and then turned up safe and sound.

B-}

Posted by Billy at 9:06 PM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2005

stereotype

I guess the stereotypical academic has a lot of marking to do between semesters. And is simultaneously trying to squeeze in various things - writing, editing and so on - that got squeezed out during the semester. I guess if your computer melts down making all of the writing work you've been doing inaccessible just when you're trying to get at least some of your writing off before the 'no no this time we really mean it, it really is the really really final final deadline' so that you can then stay up half the night marking but instead you spend a few hours trying to fix your computer but of course you're not a neek so you've got no idea what you're doing and it's probably a big job anyway, so eventually you give up and you might as well have given up earlier and just gone on to the marking even if the publishers are really going to be going crazy when the stuff you promised doesn't arrive, then it just makes you even more of a stereotype, right?

Topic shift: the new issue of Lore just came out with a little piece from me on being an academic who blogs Don't suppose this could count for the RAE, could it?

B-)

Posted by Billy at 6:29 PM | Comments (0)

January 12, 2005

Hi Robbie

Hope you're enjoying Berlin. I enjoyed the night out last week and taking part in the Laurel and Hardy sketch on Saturday morning.

Sorry you've been getting bored checking in to the same old 'poguetry' post for the past month (and for the rainy Hoxton blockage a while back).

See you when you get back,

B-)

Posted by Billy at 2:09 PM | Comments (0)

December 15, 2004

Blunkett

Blunkett resigns - The Guardian

When I started blogging, one of my main themes was having a go at Blunkett for lying about school selection and weasel words on immigration. I'm sure there's no connection with this, though.

Personally, I think singing Fred Astaire songs is pretty cool.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 6:23 PM | Comments (0)

ecard

Sam just picked up my ecard. Hope she replies to me instead of Brian ;-)

Posted by Billy at 5:56 PM | Comments (0)

goodwill from a stranger

For the first time I just received an ecard that wasn't meant for me. Strangely, I'm glad Brian hopes I'm better and is sorry for this morning.

B-)

PS Equally irrationally, I also feel sad when the machine at the gym doesn't say 'great workout!' when I'm finished.

PPS In fact, I received a copy of the 'email you sent' which means Brian put my email address in the box (yes, I can work out who he is)

Posted by Billy at 3:51 PM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2004

catchup

Over three weeks since I posted, and still not really time to post anything. In brief, though:

1. punkrockkaraoke is great fun
2. Robbie's 40 and doing well
3. thanksgiving was fun
4. Apoa was accosted by a policeman and a truant officer on her way home from the pool one day when her school was closed for the day
5. Lemony Snicket books are fun and shorter than I'd realised
(Kiloh insists I read the first three before the film comes out next week)
6. The Incredibles is great
7. Bessie and Ted are back at home after separately going to hospital - hope they're going to cope OK at home
8. I'm going mad trying to meet multiple deadlines before christmas (what about sending some cards or buying some pressies, though?)
9. I haven't managed to reply to Janelle yet who's interested in busyness on this side of the Atlantic (sorry)
10. Sorry, that'll have to do for now. No time for links or anything.

B-}

Posted by Billy at 8:31 PM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2004

teaching

Woke up early this morning to make sure Apoa finished the homework that was due today (getting more and more tempted every day to 'throw it on the fire and take the car downtown') and really didn't feel in the mood to go in and teach all day. Wednesdays involve two three hour sessions with an hour for lunch in the middle. But I had such a good time in the classroom that I hereby take it all back.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 6:14 PM | Comments (1)

November 14, 2004

neglected sim baby

Went to pick up the kids from their sleepover this morning. When I arrived, Anne said they'd just given birth to a baby on The Sims, '9 seconds from conception to birth!' By the time I got upstairs, social workers had arrived and taken the baby away cos the grownups had all gone to work and left the baby home alone.

B-}

Posted by Billy at 6:11 PM | Comments (0)

November 9, 2004

eavesdropping

I heard a student today saying:

'you hand it in and then they rip it apart, and that's how you learn'

B-)

Posted by Billy at 3:34 PM | Comments (1)

'hello, you're through to Animal...'

Not what you expect to hear when you finally get through to a person on a ticket booking line.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 3:00 PM | Comments (0)

November 6, 2004

a job for Robbie

I'm really pleased that Robbie has got a new job. It's in Oxford and is part-time, 3 days a week. Another artist told me that she does 2 days a week and that you should never take on more than that if you want to do your own work, but Robbie thinks it will work so we'll see. I think it's really important that Robbie gets a chance to work seriously on his art, like when the main concern of the literary establishment was to 'get Mr. Eliot out of the bank'. (Where did I read about that?)

B-)

Posted by Billy at 1:19 AM | Comments (0)

back to blogging

Well, there's been plenty to blog about recently but no time to do it. When lots of 'real' people and things are waiting for you to do stuff it's hard to justify sitting here typing for virtual entities.

But I've just been woken up on the point of bedtime by the sound of someone being beaten up outside and have been standing in the cold talking to the victim, the cops and a few other witnesses. The police radio was talking about a 'crack address' here but it sounded from what the others said more like he had got pissed and been beaten up by somebody he knew on his way home. Anyway, since I'm not sleepy any more, I'll add a message or two before I get dozy again.

B-}

Posted by Billy at 1:08 AM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2004

The Advantages of Using Elephants

Next door to me, Zaria is being Hannibal B-)

Posted by Billy at 12:42 PM | Comments (2)

PowerPoint Boudicca

Today I am mainly being Boudicca putting together a PowerPoint presentation to try to persuade the Iceni that now is the time to rise up against our Roman oppressors.

This is the second Tuesday in a row where I've spent the day being trained. Tomorrow, no doubt, I'll be using some moments from the course as real-life examples to discuss in class.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2004

Avril and the week before

Avril Lavigne at Wembley Arena - official Wembley site

Just got back from this. We all agreed it was better than SClubUnited, which is the only other concert the kids have been to. We had standing tickets but took advantage of the offer to be reseated at the side of the stage, since the kids wouldn't have seen anything from the floor. Us oldies particularly enjoyed the cover of Blur's Song 2 with the bassist from Simple Plan on vocals and Avril on drums.

Earlier in the day, we went to a remembrance service for families who had lost babies at the Whittington Hospital, as Apoa's guitar group were playing there. It was a simple service and obviously a lot of sadness there. The guitar group played beautifully.

Earlier still, Kiloh went to her circus class and Apoa missed hers to go bowling for Rachel's birthday.

All of this inspired us to rent a car for the weekend. I'm glad we did as it made all the moving around easier, and we even managed a quick visit to Ikea 10 mintues before they closed, where we picked up curtains and a rail etc. for Kiloh's room. But I must say it reminded me how crappy it is driving around and being close to all the angry drivers.

Yesterday was much quieter, but we managed to fit in a visit from Nicki and Clemmie, who enjoyed capering with her cousines.

Earlier in the week I learned a new German word, 'schnapszahl', when I turned 44. The kids think a 'double-digit' is really cool. Maybe this can be mentioned in my meaning class. To celebrate we went to St. John and the following night we went to a dinner hosted by Fergus Henderson and Anthony Bourdain which was great fun, even though the food wasn't very good (!!). The audience were mean enough to mention that in the question session.

Anyway, sorry to splurt out a whole week (well, bits of it) like that. I'll try to get back to daily postings from now on.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 12:15 AM | Comments (2)

September 29, 2004

club nme

Just got another offer of free entry to Club NME. The first 300 get in free every week as well. I don't know if I could take the excitement, but luckily I'm busy tonight anyway.

Meanwhile, Donal is being teased by his mates because he went to the theatre last Wednesday while 'your dad and his mate were out clubbing'. Like, which ones are the wrinklies here?

Off to start teaching for the first time in ages now. Hope I can stay awake...

B-)

Posted by Billy at 9:59 AM | Comments (0)

September 27, 2004

busy day

After a quiet day at home tidying up the spare room for next week's visit from Daniel and Gemma, and a quiet evening in with just Kiloh at night (Apoa was off sleeping over), with a visit from Clemmie, Dug and Nicki squeezed in (with a bit of guilt as I took advantage of their SUV for a quick stock-up on cat food), we had a really fun day today.

First we visited circus school where Apoa took a massive step forward in the battle against vertigo and learned how to turn around on the flying trapeze. Meanwhile Kiloh mastered the 'big star' on the static trapeze and developed her skills on the walking globe and whatever those funny things with two steps and four wheels are called. Then we resisted stopping off at Virgin on the way to the Soho Theatre, where the matinee performance of Private Peaceful was followed with a discussion and question session with Michael Morpurgo (author of the novel), Simon Reade (writer and director of the play) and Paul Chequer (the one actor in the play). I've been to a fair number of these discussions and this was the liveliest and most fun, mainly because Michael Morpurgo is a right laugh and a great performer. When the host said we should be winding up soon, he said 'Why? I don't have anything on this evening, do you?' He capped it all by having his chair collapse under him near the end. His wife instantly leapt onto the stage, whipped out her camera and took a picture. She says it might appear on his Children's laureate website soon.

The play itself was really great. I could mention the few things I would have been tempted to change (there are always some of these) but the main thing to say is that the script and performance were great, totally involving and 'real'.

We followed that with a quick pizza stop on the way home and an almost instant passing-out from both kids when we got home. Maybe not the best prep for a busy week at school, but worth it imho.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 1:00 AM | Comments (1)

postal detour

Message to Jed and Ruth:

Hi guys,

Do you remember back on the 12th of September when you went visiting as many artists as you could in one day in Somerset? And you sent us a lovely card about it?

We wanted to say thanks for the lovely card and thought you'd be interested to know that we received it on Friday after the card had taken a slight detour to Australia and back! It arrived with a note on the envelope saying:

'Missorted to Australia. Return UK'

Well, at least it got here in the end!

B-)

Posted by Billy at 12:33 AM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2004

the mosh pit revisited

Emily from the nme phoned me yesterday to tell me I'd won two tickets to the launch night of club nme at Koko

She had them biked over to me which made me think they were maybe a bit worried about the turnout.

They were gold VIP tickets, so when we got there Andrew and I had a look for the VIP area. We eventually discovered that these were the kind of VIP tickets that let you jump the queue on the way in but not much else.

It's a lovely building and we had a great time. It was all quite relaxed in the beginning and we enjoyed that there wasn't much sense of preciousness about the people. By the end of the evening, we had maybe consumed one kola kube tequila shot too many (OK, I only had one but anyway), enjoyed the Kaiser Chiefs, joined the moshers for The Others, whose set ended with a full stage invasion, and I had been snogged by a delightful young lady who introduced herself to us by stealing large gulps of Andrew's drink.

It's got to be over a decade since I moshed (I'm sure it wasn't even called that then) and I have to say I really enjoyed it, especially the bit where my specs were being bent in two onto my eyes and the bit where I did my spectacular backwards tumble (starting from the floor, not the stage or anything). It wasn't packed, so we remembered that bit in School of Rock when Jack Black dives from the stage and the audience politely stand aside to let him land on his face.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 4:11 PM | Comments (0)

September 17, 2004

security for peers

Two people I know were at the House of Lords last night. Both said the security was really lame.

B-}

Posted by Billy at 3:35 PM | Comments (0)

crystal anniversary

Yesterday was our 15th anniversary, but we decided to postpone it until today. We spent yesterday evening at the APA Show instead. Free drinks and nibbles, and a screening of 'the best' 50 ads from last year. In the V&A, which was very cool. My favourite ad was the one for powerade with the cameraman running faster than the racing athletes. I think it would have been better if the commentator hadn't mentioned the cameraman at all, though. No doubt it was that old fear of some of the audience not getting it.

B-)

Posted by Billy at 9:39 AM | Comments (1)

September 16, 2004

rumours