Additional: Nearly Famous!

Yay! I got a review of my blog :)

http://www.doyoudiggit.com/humor/please-dont-feed-the-pixies#comment-677

And thanks Lydia for the kind words

The Joy Of Computer Games In The 1980s

It seems odd to think of it now, but in its day The Hobbit (as enjoyed by myself on the ZX Spectrum) was a pretty revolutionary game. Not only did it take typed instructions, re-engage a pre-Peter Jackson interest in Lord Of The Rings and (shock horror) come with actual pictures as part of the game (admittedly they took 3 minutes to download) but it got a whole generation talking about computer games.

Here, however, is my experience of how pretty much every game ended:


YOU ARE IN A ROOM. TO THE EAST THERE IS A DOOR, TO THE WEST THERE IS A WINDOW. THORIN IS PRESENT
>open door<
THE DOOR IS LOCKED
>open window<
YOU CANNOT REACH THE WINDOW
>say to Thorin “open window”<
YOU TALK TO THORIN
>say to Thorin “open window”<
YOU TALK TO THORIN. TIME PASSES
>say to Thorin “please open the window”<
YOU TALK TO THORIN. THORIN SITS DOWN AND SINGS A SONG ABOUT GOLD
>say to Thorin “open the *#@$ window”<
DO NOT UNDERSTAND *#@$”
>say to Thorin “open the window”<
YOU TALK TO THORIN. THORIN OPENS THE WINDOW
>climb through window<
YOU CANNOT REACH THE WINDOW
>say to Thorin “pick me up”<
YOU TALK TO THORIN. TIME PASSES
>say to Thorin “if you pick me up I can climb through the window and we can escape”<
YOU TALK TO THORIN. THORIN CLOSES THE WINDOW
>say to Thorin “you useless *#@$, I just wasted *#@$ ten minutes persuading you to open the *#@$ window!”<
DO NOT UNDERSTAND *#@$”
>say to Thorin “Unless you open the window now I will take this dagger and apply its pointy end to your nether regions”<
DO NOT UNDERSTAND “nether regions”
>say to Thorin “Just OPEN THE WINDOW!”<
YOU TALK TO THORIN. THORIN SITS DOWN AND SINGS A SONG ABOUT GOLD
>kill Thorin<
YOU ATTACK THORIN. THORIN KILLS YOU. GAME OVER – YOU HAVE ACHIEVED 5%

NB: If Gandalf was present things were generally a bit better, as sometimes he would pick you up and help you out – but within seconds you would be re-captured and end up back in the cell with only Thorin for company. On other occasions Gandalf would open the window and climb out, leaving you alone.

How many fingers am i holding up?

Since it's Wednesday and its gone 9:15am UK standard time and i'm sitting at a computer typing this it's fair to say that i haven't been blown to smithereens today.

No black hole has got out of control and swallowed the Earth, we haven't just witnessed a second Big Bang and yes, i really am going to have to pay off my mortgage.

In short either the Large Hadron Collider, buried somewhere under France (NB: Why France? Why did scientists decide that France was more expendable than any other country - do they not like the wine there?), has failed to go off or the conspiracy theorists were wrong - again.

Just once i think it would be quite nice for the poor old dears, sitting in their corners with their Tupperware containers full of marmite sandwiches (no crust) and smelling vaguely of railway stations, if they could be right. Wouldn't it be nice to think that our inept governments - incapable of downloading a couple of files without leaving them on a train - could organise global conspiracies including faking moon landings, alien/human hybrid colonisation and making Jim Carrey into a movie star despite any signs of obvious talent (admittedly that one is a bit hard to explain - joke)

Except, of course, that if the Quantum Physicists have got it right - then the conspiracy theorists were right all along.

Bear with me here, because few people outside of Stephen Hawking understand the full ramifications, but the upshot is that modern Quantum Physics suggests a theory of infinite realities where every possiblity is played out. Remember that day when you woke up and couldn't face eating that bowl of cornflakes? Well, Quantum Mechanics says that in one reality you said no, whilst in another you decided you quite liked cornflakes and choked to death on them.

So with every possiblity played out it does give one a little leway in life - sure your life in this reality may not be that great, but just think - in another corner of the universe you're currently King of the Watusi (Yay you!)

But then i was discussing this very thing with the man at the train station this morning and we were talking about how some people believed the Large Hadron Collider was going to end all life as we know it by the end of the day and he sighed and tutted and said: "Typical...and i've got a new shed coming at the weekend"

Sometimes you just can't win, can you?

Train Of Thought

I’m having one of those days – the ones where you just want to go home and sit in a darkened room with a guitar and a glass of wine, maybe sing the blues for a while.

There’s no chance of that, of course, because the cats have serious issues with anything that takes attention away from them – plus I have promised myself I will go swimming and try and lose some of the gut I seem to be steadily growing.

I used to belong to a gym and my favourite time of year was always January when you couldn’t get on a machine – not because I’m lazy, but because it was always amusing to see the New Years Resolution Makers and take private bets on how long they’d last. Most wouldn’t make it past the end of the month.

But then I got a mortgage and the money was no longer there. I still miss it.

Back then if I was having one of those days I would make sure to go to the gym after work. Sure – I wouldn’t be in the mood or anything, in fact I still just wanted to go home and pick up that guitar, but I always knew that somewhere about half-way through my stint on the cross-trainer the endorphins would kick in and I would come home feeling better, if sweatier. Those days are long behind me now – I’d love to join a gym, but like most people I have bills to pay first.

This morning Furry had a good try at breaking my neck, he sat about half-way down the stairs and I only just saw his black shape in time to avoid stepping on him. He guided me to his bowl and demanded food – I pointed out that there was still food in his bowl and that he should think himself well off: “think about all the starving cats in Africa” I said, not expecting it to work any more than it had when my grandparents had tried it on me as a kid. It didn’t

I’ve got a forty page document to read on my desk at work – might as well be written in doublespeak or latin, but the basic upshot of the document can be summarised as such:
* receive problem
* copy information of problem onto computer
* decide who needs to deal with the problem and when by
* forward problem on to designated parties
* check on a regular basis that problem is being sorted
* record every stage of previous points

Another process to manage the process of process management: if you know what I mean. Shit: these days it’s not enough to do something, you have to prove that not only did you do it, but that everyone agreed to you doing it in the first place. The job requires absolutely no intelligence or part of my brain to complete. A thousand monkeys with a typewriter could come up with the same if you gave them enough time.

I think about the training my new boss has signed off and how glad I am that the old boss, Sauron the Dark Lord of Mordor, has gone, lifting a dark cloud from middle earth. He used to ask questions without even looking at you, and just storm past when you held the door open. Nobody was upset when he went.

I think about the painting I want to do, and the novel I should be writing – and decide the painting will have to wait until I’ve cleared some space in my house and the novel will have to wait and see if I’m in the mood tomorrow. I think about an old friend I lost touch with as a kid, about how it was my fault, and feel bad about that once again.

I wonder what I’m going to watch on TV when I do the ironing this Sunday morning – I’ve become strangely addicted to Power Rangers over the last few weeks, but now this is finished and I feel like re-visiting some of my favourite Sci-Fi series, or maybe listen to some Frank. Nothing suits a dull Sunday morning in September better than a bit of Sinatra.

I remember the bloke with the glasses, who was doing the backstroke in the pool last week and hit me in the face because he wasn’t looking where he was going. I actually came close to standing up for myself for a change and told him to look where he was going - but he nearly hit someone else on the next length. I imagine what would have happened to him if he'd hit one of my neighbours and hope to hell he’s not there this week.

I think about the bloke in the paper this morning who’s had his face altered so he looks like a cat (complete with attachable whiskers) and wonder about the sanity of the plastic surgeon who allowed this to happen. I pause to wonder if anyone who enters a talent show but clearly has no talent is truly deluded or just looking for a quick route to fame. Seems no one wants to work for their fifteen minutes these days.

I look on the blogspots and honour has written a new, beautiful, poem and it makes me think of an old song. I take a look at writerquake and Old Postcard Wednesday cheers me further still. Samuria gets me thinking, which i thought was going to be an impossibility today. A few others have yet to update, so I re-read what they say and allow myself to feel more hopeful. I think about holding my partner when I see her and it feels good.

This is my random train of thoughts. Today nothing is fixed in stone in my head, nothing seems to connect – but maybe that’s ok after all.

How Long (Has This Been Going On)

“If you feel the need to go cheese-rolling before next spring, why not visit Canada?”
http://www.cheese-rolling.co.uk/

The offer is intriguing. Though I notice on further examination that I am, sadly, too late and said event has already passed into history (16th August 2008)

I am not aware that there has ever been a point in my life where I have felt the need to go cheese-rolling. Nor, as far as I can tell, is this desire ever likely to arise in me. If I were to visit Canada (and such an event does seem attractive) then it is unlikely to be for the rolling of cheese for any purpose whatsoever.

And yet every year hundreds of people arrive at Cooper’s Hill, Gloucestershire (next event 25th May 2009) and chase a whacking-great cheese down a hill.

The website is vague as to the origins of this particular pastime (in short: a cheese is released to roll down a very steep hill, people chase after it and the first to the bottom wins – it is rare for the cheese to be caught, though this has happened) – though the event is said to date back 200 years.

One is forced to wonder how such an event came to pass – perhaps two stout young fellows were out walking with their pet cheese (very easy to look after a pet cheese – no exercise or feeding required) when it got off the lead and rolled down the hill. Very possibly they chased after it and had such a whale of a time they decided to invite some friends along the same time the next year…

Or maybe not.

When you think about it it’s weird the things that we do purely because “It’s traditional”. For instance – fireworks on November 5th (celebrating failed attempt by the French – well, a French man - to destroy parliament), Christmas trees (brought in by Prince Albert because it was popular in Germany) and Morris Dancing (people in baggy white shirts desperately trying to dry their handkerchiefs through the medium of dance – presumably so they can wipe the black make-up off)

Weddings are another example - a positive minefield of Traditions That Must Be Followed from the Stag Night (bridegroom to either be found naked handcuffed to railings, or - increasingly - go on an army weekend to prove manhood prior to wedlock), on to the Bride wearing white, borrowing something blue and all the way through the ceremony to the Tradional Not-Remotely Amusing Nor Interesting Speeches Which Must Last 12 Hours and the DJ playing "Come On, Eileen" (curse you Kevin Rowland!)

And we all do this without question (with the exception of Morris Dancing, which is only performed by those ignorant of personal embarrasment in public) – often creating our own superstitions: throwing spilt salt over our shoulders to blind the devil, avoiding stepping on the cracks in the pavement in case the Bears come to get us (a genuine problem in some parts of the USA, but not generally in the streets of Croydon.

More recently, and timed to coincide with the end of the Olympics, England was home to the annual Ditch Snorkelling event – where swimmers must traverse a specially dug trench through peat bogs using no recognisable swimming stroke (and I’d like to see Michael Phelps have a go at that one!)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A403147

Also – the traditional British Barbeque. Men who wouldn’t be seen dead in front of the cooker can’t wait to don an Amusing Apron (either depicting a skeleton or a pair of breasts – this is also Tradition with a capital T) and prepare a Salmonella Special at the first hint that the August rain will hold off for half an hour.

And in every small village of England we keep these daft old traditions rolling year after year, despite the fact that we will never catch the cheese and despite the attempts of Health & Safety to stop us making stinging nettle stews to an age-old recipe (one lady was nearly thrown out of her local competition for producing a vegetarian version, but they let her off in the end)

I even started my own – the traditional New Year’s Day cycle ride, though sadly this year I had to break the 3 year old tradition when I had a bad cold. So far it has not caught on outside my own street and I can only think I need to add some spurious element for this to happen – i.e. the New Year Naked Cycle Ride, or the New Year Clown Costume Ride (this would probably be preferable to my neighbours)

I can only hope that when generations ahead people set out on their bicycles across the Mendips, clad only in a funny pointed hat and white baggy suit with pom-poms they will take a moment to wonder which stupid bugger it was that started this particular tradition and thank that lost name for keeping another slice of “Britishness” well and truly alive.

We hate it when our friends become successful….

There’s been something missing from my life this year. Not missed, but definitely missing.

Usually from around St George’s Day onwards my street is festooned with the England flag (not to be confused with the British Flag, as worn by Especially Useless Spice back in the 90s) and the night skies are rendered with the cries of eng-er-land, eng-er-land as 11 of our most inept sportsmen head towards another crushing semi-final defeat (preferably via penalty shoot out)

England haven’t won anything in football (or soccer as it’s also known) since 1966 when we beat West Germany in the World Cup - an event that has passed into our national psyche like no other to the point where it seems to have surpassed The Battle Of Hastings, the Works of Shakespeare, the constant expecting special treatment abroad on the grounds we had an empire once and Hugh Grant films as our defining moment - and so we have gathered our gallant losers to our collective bosom, forever hoping that one day they will rise again.

However, I do wonder what fate would await our players were they ever to start actually bringing home the trophies. As a non-believer in football I was secretly pleased when England failed to get past the qualifiers – resulting in a quieter and far more sober summer for our street than had been expected without a single flag waving from someone’s window…and yet we have been doing rather well elsewhere recently.

At the time of writing this Team GB (as we are calling them to make them somehow sound more cool) are third in the Olympic Gold Medal tables. Only Russia stands any chance of catching us and whatever happens we have had our best Olympic results since 1908.

So you might expect the streets to be festooned with flags. You might expect the streets to be full of enthusiastic English people cheering on our athletes as they start bringing home the medals. You might expect the same kind of hero worship that is currently being thrown at the feet of Michael Phelps – the only man who could take on Marina the fish-girl from Stingray and win.

What we Brits are actually reacting with is sarcasm, cynisism and bad jokes. Fairly typical for a country that has national heroes and stars that include Captain Scott (died coming second to the south pole), Tim (out in the quarter-finals without fail) Henman, Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards and Jade Goody (don't ask - just be grateful you don't know who she is...)

Earlier this week I saw a cartoon in a free newspaper where a billboard was showing “Team GB Wins Gold In Cycling, Riding And Rowing”. Two men were shown walking past, saying, “I put it down to the price of fuel”

This is typical of our reaction to the Olympics. Over the last two weeks I have heard comments along the lines of “We only do well at the sports where we have something to help us” (IE boats, horses, cycles) and “We only do well at the sports that other countries are too poor to enter” (this joke was broadcast on the BBC)

And whilst it is true that we have done rather better at the sports that are played by the kind of person who went to Eaton, speaks like Joanna Lumley (in posh mode) and owns half of Buckinghamshire this does not detract from their hard work and dedication – so maybe we should ditch the negative response and try being proud of them for a change?

The truly sad part is that in a couple of weeks there will be another Olympics. We will do rather better at this one, bring home medals in almost every sport and probably set a few records along the way.

But there will be no all-day TV coverage of the Para-Olympics on BBC1 – in fact they’ll be lucky to get half-an-hour of highlights on one of the secondary channels, and the medallists will return home to little or no heroes welcome.

Surely the spirit of the Olympics is not just to be the fastest and the strongest, but the battle to achieve and be more than we thought we could be.

Meanwhile, in a corner of the sofa, my cat is competing in the Cat Olympics. He makes it through to the final of the All Day Snoozing Event, but looses out in the finals to the Chinese (or Siamese in this case). I give him a hug and tell him I’m proud of him anyway and together we fly a small flag for the cats of the world. I’d play him the Cat National Anthem – if only I knew how it went!

Safety In Numbers

If it were possible to do such a thing I would issue a restraining order against maths

Algebra would have to stay 50 metres away from me at all times, Isosceles and Pythagoras would have ASBOs (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders) keeping them indoors at night and long division would only be allowed to visit on the grounds that it brought its own calculator with it. Negative numbers would just be put in front of a firing squad with no last requests.

Maths and I have never got along. Despite all my best efforts I have never memorised my times-tables and I still have to count on my fingers for anything more complicated than six times nine equals forty-two (think about it…and go read The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy books if you still don’t get it)

Thus when I was at school – which, as we have already established, was a long, long time ago – my hands became all to familiar with visits from Mr Ruler and his family as teacher after teacher slapped my knuckles for being so stupid.

We had different coloured wall-charts every month with different sets of times-tables written on in huge marker-pen. The idea of this was that we would gaze at them inbetween reciting the tables by rote and it would somehow wedge into our brains. No SmartBoards and interactive web-page answers from Google for us in those days - the home computer was still an iceage away (infact in my next school there was a lad whose dad worked for IBM - practically promoting the lad to God overnight) - back then the nearest we came to an Interactive Board was using a piece of chalk and a rubber.

But the problem for me has always been that it is not sufficient for me to learn that 7x8 = 56 (I had to get a calculator out for this, but would normally subtract 7 twice from 70 on my fingers) – I have to understand the why of why 7x8 = 56 – and get very frustrated with stuff like algebra, fractions and negative numbers where they keep changing the rules dependant on what you are doing to the numbers.

This was something that my teachers, so ancient that they remembered when Everest was a molehill, could not understand – and so they assumed that it was my inability to learn.

Now I know that when you are young everyone over 20 seems ancient, but I had one teacher at junior school who had taught my mother and uncle years previously. He was of the Old-School Child-Hating Mortar-Board And Cape wearing teacher that you see in history books and always assume to be fictional. I won’t name him here, but he had a famous rugby playing son and was an Evil Bastard with a capital E, B and every other letter in both words. Quite frankly: burning in hell would be a let off as far as I’m concerned.

So there was this one time when I got a sum wrong – just one of many really – but this one particularly sticks in my memory. It was a hot day and a dark classroom with rows of single desks – the old kind with inkwells. He called my surname and summoned me to stand at the front.

Without even looking at me he barked, ‘How many pennies in a pound you stupid boy?’

Now I was pretty sure that it was 100 – but I was scared witless and I didn’t want to look like a know-it-all in front of the class, so in a quavering, uncertain voice I said ‘ninety-nine?’

Still refusing to look at me he called out “tell him the answer’ to the class and they called the answer I had known all along.

Cut ahead some years and you may begin to see why I still had a fear of maths – to the point where every time I heard a maths question part of my brain would shut down. I’m not saying that one incident made all the difference, but it didn’t help – I came out of school with a borderline pass at the lowest level you can enter.

And many people, some of my friends included, remain very bitter about this and spend the rest of their lives complaining that if someone had only spent a bit more time with them it would make all the difference.

And whilst I can be very pessimistic and spend many hours in the company of that inner voice saying "you can't do this" (as most of us do) I also know better – I know that if you spend your whole life stuck in the past and moaning about the fact that you never achieved anything then you only have yourself to blame – so I decided to set out to prove them wrong.

So about 2 years ago I grabbed Maths in a headlock and dragged it kicking and screaming into evening classes. The teacher still couldn’t understand why I couldn’t easily grasp the things that were crystal clear to her, but this time I was old enough and stubborn enough to know that it was her failure as a teacher and not my failure as a student – so bloody well made her explain it again and again and again until I could put it into a language that I could understand.

I came out with the maximum pass I could get in the exam. Maths and I will never be friends, but I’ve got it worried now and on the run!

And the moral of the story is: never let anyone tell you that you are stupid and never be afraid to keep on asking when you don’t understand something. Sometimes knowledge is given, sometimes it seems to arrive by osmosis and sometimes it has to be bludgeoned into your brain - but the best kind of knowledge, the kind you really appreciate - is the kind that you earn for yourself.