Indiana Jones: Raiders March by John Williams

 

Every year, the radio station Classic FM asks its listeners to vote for their top three favourite pieces of classical music and compiles a top 300 Hall of Fame chart from the votes cast, which they count down over the Easter weekend. This year, my favourite piece of music is this…

 

I was recently asked what my favourite film was. This was a tough question, but not for the reasons one might think – there’s not a lot for me to choose from.

Unlike most people – who somehow seem to be able watch a whole movie in one go at least once a week, or maybe, astonishingly, even more frequently than that – I usually manage a whole movie in (almost) one sitting about once a year, if that. That’s it. One film a year.

I’ll maybe watch ten minutes of many films throughout the year though, little snippets here and there whilst channel hopping. So I might actually end up watching a whole film, but over the course of about ten years.

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence by Ryuichi Sakamoto

 

Every year, the radio station Classic FM asks its listeners to vote for their top three favourite pieces of classical music and compiles a top 300 Hall of Fame chart from the votes cast, which they count down over the Easter weekend. This year, for my second favourite piece of music, I voted for this…

 

To some, retirement is a horrific thought. It sends them into a mild panic that I can only compare to the thought of running out of tea bags – you know it will happen if you let it, and unless you take some avoiding action, life will not be quite as enjoyable.

So to avoid an unthinkable tea-less situation from occurring in my life, what I do is to write the word tea bags on a piece of paper and the next time I’m in a supermarket, I look at this piece of paper. Consequently, it reminds me to purchase more tea bags and thus avert a dangerous situation from occurring.

Likewise, a person horrified at the thought of retirement could carry on working until they are physically unable to move, or perhaps they might retire but immediately take up a volunteering position to keep their mind active and day fulfilled satisfactorily. Because otherwise they would most likely go loopy from repeatedly counting how many tea bags they currently own.

In the Steppes of Central Asia by Alexander Borodin

 

Every year, the radio station Classic FM asks its listeners to vote for their top three favourite pieces of classical music and compiles a top 300 Hall of Fame chart from the votes cast, which they count down over the Easter weekend. This year, for my third favourite piece of music, I voted for this…

 

When is a fish not a fish? When it’s a catfish apparently.

Up until a week or so ago, I had lived my life in full confidence that I knew exactly what a catfish was. When I was asked by a colleague recently what a catfish was, I replied with all the self-assurance and coolness of someone who knows a great deal of impressive knowledge that a catfish was a fish.

When my questioner finally got over the amusement and then dismay that I had unreasonably thought a catfish was a fish, they patiently explained to Captain Caveman here that a catfish is not just an aquatic animal, but a person who assumes the online identity of someone else for nefarious reasons.

They then went on to explain the various details of these cheats and how to avoid them, which interestingly included reverse image searches – another thing I knew nothing about.

So thanks to my thoughtful and considerate workmate, I now know to avoid anyone who claims to have had a car crash in Atlanta. Or something. (I can now hear the deep and exasperated sigh as my educator repeatedly thumps their head on the desk in complete disappointment and utter despair.)

Blood pressure monitor = Machine of Horror

Some things in life are not scary at all. Things like carpets, pencils and golden syrup. Then there are things that are most definitely scary. Things like heights, spiders and Big Bird from Sesame Street.

And then there are things that don’t appear to be very scary at first, but on closer inspection are absolutely terrifying. In this category we have skiing, vindaloo and Boris Johnson. Plus one other that I’ve only recently discovered.

Blood pressure monitors.

I should clarify that not all blood pressure monitors are terrifying; that would be a huge injustice to the whole blood pressure family, particularly to those that inhabit hospitals, surgeries and health centres the world over. My accusation is pointing firmly at the self-administered types of machine that can easily be purchased and used at home. Particularly by medically squeamish people (wimps) like me.

To be blunt, they are pant-wettingly horrific to the point of vomiting.

Hamilton Acronymicals? No, it’s Shonan Bellmare v Urawa Reds!

Acronyms are a strange thing. They express information in easy to use brevity, but without resorting to long and complicated words. But here’s the thing: they only work if you know what they mean.

Some people use them to gain superiority in a conversation or an argument in order to bamboozle everyone and seem superior. But actually, to everyone else, it just sounds like a load of steaming sewage spewing from their face and makes them an arse.

However, there is one rather childish way of getting your own back with someone like this, and that is to reply to their nonsense by nodding sagely and saying “YAAA” after they’ve finished each statement. This has the effect of letting them think that you are agreeing with their incoherent babble and also that you understand it. But in actual fact, you’re responding with your very own acronymical insult:

YAAA = You Are An Arse. You’ll find that German people are particularly good at this.

Tieless at the Trust: Westbury Court Garden

It was a bank holiday Monday, and I was unsure whether to go out or not. My usual rule about this sort of thing is to decline such frivolous behaviour, as the amount of other people with similar thoughts of going out at the same time normally make the day more miserable than enjoyable.

This is because that almost everyone nurturing an idea of going out on a bank holiday fall into the trap of thinking that nobody else will be considering going out this time. Not after the last bank holiday Monday, they think, when most of the population got stuck on a motorway for hours and hours. Or trapped in a train carriage because the signals decided not to work, and then ended up waiting hours and hours for the engineer who was needed to fix the broken signals to finish sitting for hours and hours in a motorway queue trying to get to the signals.

Nobody would be so daft as to go out again this bank holiday, surely. But they do. Every single time.

But this bank holiday Monday, I had a plan. I would get up early. And not only that, I would get up early and arrive at my chosen destination as soon as it opened, at 10am. Now I know that 10am is not normally classed as early, but 10am in bank holiday hours is around about the equivalent of 5am in normal working-day hours. So it felt a little wrong to be up and about at that inhospitable mid-morning hour. My chosen destination: National Trust’s Westbury Court Garden in Gloucestershire.

Oita Trinita v Consadole Sapporo: (a kind of) match review

Being a fan of Japanese football is a bit difficult when one lives in Britain, as I do. There is almost no information about it on terrestrial and traditional media. The only time a Japanese club ever gets mentioned is if they are playing in the FIFA Club World Cup, and then only briefly. The only other time they get mentioned is when Gary Lineker plays for Nagoya Grampus Eight. And since he stopped doing that in 1994, it’s been a bit sparse on J-League news around here.

Enter the internet; I can now see weekly highlights of games via YouTube, albeit all in Japanese. Enter podcasts; or rather, enter a specific podcast: the J-Talk podcast. This is a great weekly listen, with in-depth and reliable analysis from fans and experts alike, and crucially, all conducted in English. But until recently, there has been no way of watching full and live J-League games, even with the super powers of the all conquering internet.

So, enter Rakuten Sports and their J-League match streaming service that went live on the web a few weeks ago. I’ve not had a chance to try it out, but heard a bit about it. So seeing as though it is currently completely free to use and needs just an email address to sign up, I gave it a go. About a minute later, I was watching the first J1 league match I’ve ever seen. And this is what I made of it.

Chuffing toot! – it’s Warley 2018

I’ve just returned from a model railway exhibition. Up until now, I’d never attended one before. Mainly because I didn’t really know that model railway exhibitions existed until recently. I knew that model railways existed, just not the exhibitions.

Model railways, in my head, was the hobby taken up by nice older gentlemen called Malcolm who lovingly pour great amounts of their time into creating and tinkering with railway layouts in the privacy of their own sheds and attics, on the pretence of “building something for the grandchildren to enjoy”. Which, as we all know, is just a massive excuse to play with miniature trains all day long. And perhaps, on the odd occasion, when no one is listening, make chuffing and tooting noises when the locos start running.

However, after attending a model railway exhibition, I can confirm that model railways is indeed a hobby largely taken up by nice older gentlemen called Malcolm who lovingly create and tinker with their railway layouts in their own sheds and attics, but without the need for any pretence whatsoever. They also do not need any excuse to make chuffing and tooting noises, and will gladly make chuffing and tooting noises in front of anybody and everybody.

And do you know what? I’m so glad that they do, as I have discovered that model railways is a fantastic interest to pursue, and should be celebrated as a worthwhile activity. It brings joy and entertainment to the creators, the users and the viewers, and that is certainly not a bad thing.

Wooden you know it, I’m 828 years old you know. And I’m still living in Chepstow.

Imagine if you were to suddenly discover that you were older than you actually are. Not by a few years, but tens of years.

There you’d be at a grand old age of 20, busying yourself with posting every facet of your life on SnapGramTwitFace five hundred times a day, taking inspiration from scarecrows by wearing jeans with multiple holes ripped in them, and eating so many takeaways that Greece would feel compelled to open an embassy in your arteries.

But then one day you learn that you’re actually 75, and immediately take a keen interest in corduroy, driving slowly and getting in everyone’s way in supermarkets and garden centres at the weekend when you could easily have visited midweek instead.

Ageing that quickly would be a little disconcerting to say the least, but it couldn’t possibly happen. Unless you’re a wooden door of course. In which case, it’s perfectly possible to have your age debated on a fairly regular basis, because nobody really knows for sure when you were made.

Quick, grab the plunger – the sofa’s down the loo again.

Can you imagine life without a toilet?

Regardless of recent life changing modern inventions that we all can’t bear to be without – the internet, cars and mediocre blogs like this, to name but three – the toilet is the one thing that makes the basic necessities of life far more comfortable and hygienic than without it.

Actually, central heating is quite good, come to think of it. And shoes. Medicine is another great invention for life, as is a cup of tea. There are many great life enhancements that have been discovered or invented down the years, but the toilet has to rank as the greatest of them all.

However, I think I have to qualify the word ‘toilet’ by explaining that it refers to the classic sit down version with a seat and lid and not one of those primitive hole-in-the-floor squat toilets that can be found in certain places in Europe. With a horrible squat toilet, how can people be expected to read the paper or stalk people on Facebook in comfort?