Things That Make You Go Bah

In Memoriam, Jeremy James Anthony Gibson Beadlebum

2008-02-01T20:37:00.000Z

Beadlebum, Beadlebum
Be-be-beadlebum
Beadlebum, Beadlebum
2-6-1
Get on the phone and join in the fun
On 3-5-3 8 1-1-1
Sunday nights, Saturdays too
With Beadlebum and all the crew
It's quiz and competition time
You'd better not leave your brains behind
A Sense of the ridiculous comes in fine
So stand by the radio and get on the line
To Beadlebum, Beadlebum
Be-be-beadlebum
3-5-3 8 1-1-1

I've invented a new sport

2007-10-15T13:15:00.000+01:00

To the Tate Modern, to view the new turbine hall installation Shibboleth by Doris Salcedo, which the Great British Press has, from the Grauniad on down, gleefully dubbed "Doris's crack".

It is well worth seeing, if only to ponder over just how they did it - there's talk of it having been installed into a specially-dug trench, but there's no sign of any joins alongside the actual crack.

Our enjoyment was spoiled, however, when we arrived to find a full-scale "flashmob" in full swing. Lots of very cool but very sad people with iPods dancing and shouting "wooh" at the top of their voices as if at a rave. All very post-modern and harnessing the power of teh intarwebs and all that, but a real PITA when trying to contemplate art.

But all was not lost, as I have invented a new sport; I call it Flashmob Cricket. All you need is a flashmob, some suitable vantage point above said flashmob and some balls - the harder the better. Scoring is simple: 4 runs if you hit one of the flashmobbers, 6 points if you can knock them out cold. Sadly a lack of foresight meant that neither corrector of bah nor myself had brought any suitable balls and so we were unable to have an inaugural match at the Tate.

I wonder if we start lobbying whether we can get it adopted for the 2012 Olympics?

On hating jazz

2007-09-17T13:42:00.000+01:00

I like Pret a Manger, even though I don't buy my coffee there any more, as I have a wonderful Bialetti Mukka Express stove-top cappuccino maker which I use to make my morning shot of latte which I bring into work in a flask, I do still sometimes buy a breakfast baguette or croissant there occasionally, when I'm too lazy or too late to make breakfast at home.

Pret has a problem though; they insist on playing jazz in their outlets. This is usually only mildly annoying as normally you're not in there long enough to get too narked (I could never work in one for that reason). This morning though, they were playing a particularly egregious example of the genre which sounded like it was the theme music from some '60s ITV action drama serious called The Adventurers or something similar, the sort of music they'd play over the obligatory but hilariously contrived fight scenes those sort of shows used to have.

(Digressing wildly, I'm currently working my way through the complete box set of Blake's 7 DVDs and I have to say that bad as those '60s series' fight scenes were, they've got nothing on the dire fight scenes in B7, which usually consist of a bit of grappling that wouldn't even pass muster on a primary school playground followed by a karate chop to someone's neck which would always render them unconscious - I mean, I know it was the late '70s and the aftermath of the kung fu craze, but really. It seems the B7 production staff knew these scenes were laughably bad, as they comment on this on some of the commentary tracks on the DVD, and claim it was due to a lack of budget and time to do it properly. I don't believe this myself, I think it's because B7 was on before the watershed, and the BBC chiefs were worried that kids would copy any violence they saw on such shows so deliberately toned it down to be relatively harmless - I know this must be the case 'cos I can remember how many times other kids would karate chop me on the neck and they must have learnt it somewhere.)

Anyway, jazz. I mean, come on, who likes it? No-one, except a sub-set of middle-aged men who are scared off by the intellectualism of classical music but are too snobby to admit to liking real popular music and so claim to like jazz because they think it's sophisticated to do so. These men (you never see a female jazz fan - women are far too intelligent) are a menace: until a couple of years ago yours truly and corrector of bah used to take the train into Victoria rather than Cannon Street of a morning, and many times we had the misfortune to share a carriage with a pair of 40/50-year old men who we christened "the Jazz Wankers" who'd spend the whole bloody journey discussing the merits of this recording or that performer until you prayed for some Network Rail navvy to have removed a rail from the points ahead just so they'd SHUT. UP.

Now it is possible that the reason why so many middle-aged men like jazz is because that's what they grew up with. I don't buy this - I don't believe that anyone can have ever really liked jazz, even when it was new - they just had no choice because real popular music hadn't been invented yet. OK, perhaps I say that because I'm a bit worried, as I am now nearly a whole year into my 40s, and so I am myself officially middle-aged. Does this mean that sometime soon I'm going to walk into a Pret and suddenly find myself saying to myself "yeah, schmoking, this is actually quite good, yeah, I am from Belgium and I like yazz" (apologies to Bill Bailey). God, I hope not. I think that I will treat finding myself liking jazz the same way as I'd treat finding myself liking golf: proof that I am finally, irrevocably old and that, sorry corrector of bah and any bahlets we might have accrued by then, it's time to jump off the nearest bridge.

Bah.

it was FADS

2007-07-15T17:36:00.000+01:00

stupid useless British paint shop! we dont order paint, that would mean repeat customers and we really just want to go out of business so no customers bother us ever again!

Why Britain really doesn't quite get capitalism

2007-07-15T16:59:00.000+01:00

So you run a chain of shops, selling, oh let's say paint, and a customer comes in to one of your b ranches and tells you that they're looking for a specific colour, which they bought the last cans of from you just a couple of weeks ago, but which hasn't been re-stocked yet, and would like you to order in for them.

Do you

a) Say "Of course sir/madam, let me take the details and we'll order it in in the next order."

or

b) Say "Well, we used to have a system like that, but we don't do that any more. We're expecting a new delivery of paint in a couple of weeks, but we can't tell you specifically if the colour you want will be in it as it will depend on whether the colour has sold enough."

Personally, I'd've thought that a chain that wanted to encourage repeat custom and actually make sales would opt for a), but our local D-I-Y branch seems to belong to a chain that subscribes to b) as a business model.

Bah.

Hmm, which is more offensive?

2007-07-03T12:13:00.001+01:00

a) Being charged £4.05 for a crayfish and rocket sandwich at Wimbledon - note, not £3.95, which would indicate a slight sense of shame at the outrageous over-pricing; an attempt to make it seem like it isn't really four quid for a sandwich, but £4.05 - that last 5p being shorthand for "because we can".

Or

b) Getting to the checkout at the self-service buffet restaurant at Wimbledon, be charged nearly £30 for a chunk of "mushy and unpleasant" (corrector of bah) pasta bake (£9.50!), an OK curry (another £9.50!), two teas and pastries and then find a tip jar!

Having said that, I did enjoy the Wimbledon experience, rain and all - and by comparison to the above the rather nice strawberries and cream at £2 a bowl were almost reasonable, and even at £6 a go the Pimms was nice.

The thing that gets me though is this: all the profits from the Wimbledon tournament, and they must be substantial, are supposed to go to the Lawn Tennis Association to develop the game of tennis in the UK. So why are we still so rubbish at it?

Bah.

Dear BBC and Guardian

2007-06-25T12:21:00.000+01:00

If I wanted wall-to-wall coverage of Glastonbury, don't you think I'd've gone to it?

Love,
Bah

egregious use of the word refreshing

2007-06-24T19:09:00.000+01:00

this word needs to be exorcised from the speech of poncey middleclass English as it is only ever used to express the newfound experience that poor/ordinary people are not as untouchably unintelligent or uncultured as they thought.

On the rubbishness of modern rail tickets

2007-06-23T12:58:00.000+01:00

There's really little hope that Britain's privatised rail industry will ever get the trains to run on time, not if my experience of one of the smallest, simplest parts of the system is anything to go by. I mean, if they can't even get the physical tickets right, what hope is there that they'll ever sort out the trains?

My esteemed employer offers an interest-free annual season ticket loan, so ever since we moved to sunny Medway I've bought an annual seasonal ticket from Gillingham to London. I'm now on my fifth annual season ticket, and so far I have yet to have one that actually lasted the whole year without having to be replaced.

OK, they're only little rectangles of magnetically-encoded cardboard, and they take some punishment - being extracted and run through the ticket gate machine at least four times on every work day - not to mention the effects of mobiles and other electro-magnetic devices. So I accept that I'll probably have to replace my ticket at least once during the year (I think I did have one last about nine months before the magnetic stripe died).

No, my complaint is that recently Gillingham station had its ticket counter machines "upgraded" to spiffy new ones (you may have seen them at your local station, you know the sort - now have a full PC keyboard and monitor and take about twice as long to issue the tickets as the old machines). These machines issue their ticket on different "stock" to the old ones, and its rubbish. Firstly the magnetic encoding is much more sensitive than on the old tickets, so I've had to move my staff swipe card out of my ticket holder after having a series of failures, almost on a daily basis. But what's really inexcusable is that the ink smudges so badly that I've had to replace my ticket after just three months due to the expiry date in the centre becoming illegible. Now when I go through the gates I'm taking care to grasp the ticket by the corners and now the printing there is getting faded after just three weeks.

Is it really too much to expect a ticket that's valid for a year to actually last a year?

Bah.