B. Henderson Asher's Moments of Mirth

ruudboy @ 2009-12-23T13:17:00

2009-12-23T13:17:04Z

Hooray! I'm happily on my Christmas train home, sailing through lovely festive countryside - frozen ponds! - and watching Seinfeld on DVD. Happy Christmas one and all!

A vague account of the weekend

2009-12-21T11:18:14Z

* Went to the Nine Carols show at the Bloomsbury Theatre on Friday night which was excellent. I can't remember any of the scientists' names now, but I liked the one who did his alternative awards ceremony, and I liked Stewart Lee even though his material was ancient. The elderlyish bloke sitting next to us looked totally mystified by Gary Le Strange.

* Accidentally heard Dotun Adebayo when I was listening to the radio late on Saturday night. He's rotten, isn't he? He first hosted a dreadful discussion about Leslie Hughes being sacked as Manchester city manager, then he talked about the snow in America with what he described as "native New Yorkers" as if we're supposed to be impressed by this. Real mericans? Live on the radio? Zowie! The best bit was when he said "'I'm just going outside, I may be some time' as Captain Scott famously said." Um, alright, whatever.

* Finished my nephew/niece Christmas shopping at the Science Museum/Natural History Museum shops. Got great stuff, including space ice cream and a T-Rex glove puppet!

* Went on a tube walk around the lovely houses and lovely food shops of Kensignton. Holland Park's good though, isn't it? It has a Kyoto Garden and peacocks.

ruudboy @ 2009-12-20T23:17:00

2009-12-20T23:17:33Z

You know it's Christmas when the Father Ted special is on. Oh, I love it so.

ruudboy @ 2009-12-19T23:20:00

2009-12-19T23:20:52Z

It's Saturday night, I'm in alone and boycotting Match of the Day in a football related huff to watch Love Actually. Therefore, in no particular order, my favourite LPs of 2009. I'll try and write a bit about them, but as usual when I try and write about music I'll probably just end up saying "I like it!" because I'm rubbish at describing music I like.

Love Actually's not bad really is it?

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Pains of Being Pure at Heart

I may have moaned a bit about their gig a couple of weeks ago, but I still think the album's great. Fuzzy indie rock, vaguely reminiscent of Buzzcocks. Great stuff. This is Contender

God Help The Girl - God Help The Girl

So this is Stuart Murdoch's B&S spinoff - the story of a mixed up girl sung by three singers he found through internet auditions. And it's beautiful. So listen to the title track:

Moofish Catfish - Moofish Catfish

And the self-titled albums keep coming. I saw Moofish Catfish supporting someone - I can't remember who - earlier this year, and I picked up their album. I like it. Here's About This Girl.

Slow Club - Yeah So? (£4.98! Amazing bargain!)

As you may have seen, I went to their gig this week. This is It Doesn't Always Have to be Beautiful:

Pocketbooks - Flight Paths

I've talked about Pocketbooks loads on here. I <3 them absolutely and I've already shared far too much of their album probly, but have another track anyway - Every Good Time We Ever Had:

The Duckworth Lewis Method - The Duckworth Lewis Method

It's not every year that a concept album about cricket comes out, and it's not every year that a track written from the point of view of Mike Gatting is released. Jiggery Pokery:

MJ Hibbett & The Validators - Regardez, Ecoutez et Repetez

Silly, witty, fun, catchy, INDIE! I've uploaded this track, because although it's written from the point of the view of the band, I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments expressed as a punter. It's called We're Old and We're Tired (And We Want to Go Home):

ruudboy @ 2009-12-17T23:43:00

2009-12-17T23:43:58Z

I don't know, you wait all year for a gig at the Union Chapel and then two come along at once. Last night I went to see Danny Boy Kitson, who was his usual touching, thought-provoking and hilarious self.

Tonight was Slow Club putting in a late bid for Gig of the Year, with a terrific show.

They were everything that The Pains of Being Pure at Heart weren't last week - they engaged with the crowd, they were funny, they seemed like they were having fun being there, and in addition they were wonderful - Becky has superb voice, full of character. And at the end of a great gig, what better way to end than with an encore of Christmas songs and inviting all the support acts back on stage for some fun:

Pow! Take THAT, The Man!

2009-12-16T12:08:46Z

Rage Against The Machine's Tom Morello has said that beating the X Factor single to Christmas number one will be a "wonderful dose of anarchy".

...

"My hope is that one of the results of this whole Christmas season is there'll be a new generation of rockers who will take on the establishment with the music they write."

Anarchy! Taking on the establishment! Excellent. This will be a great result for the tiny little independent label that this song is no doubt released on.

Epic Records released Rage Against the Machine's self titled debut album on November 6, 1992. The album included the singles "Killing in the Name", "Freedom" and "Take the Power Back".

Epic Records is an American record label. It is a premier subsidiary label of Sony Music Entertainment.

Anarchy, there.

ruudboy @ 2009-12-15T23:17:00

2009-12-15T23:17:39Z

I can't find my rug. I'm sure I saw it about a week ago. Srsly, how can you lose a rug?

Spike's gone insane, and is charging around the flat like a lunatic. Lynda's just looking at him pityingly.

Police state!

2009-12-10T19:03:43Z

Oh man, I've just been hassled by the filth! I was walking into London Bridge station, and a PCSO aught my eye, haughtily beckoned me over to him and said "I know you!" While I was trying to remember someone at school who looked like him he told me I was on their list of people their looking for and asked me my name. I said "Tim" and he told me to tell him the truth or I'd be arrested. Wtf? I showed him my driving license and he (obviously) let me go.

I've obviously no problem with confirming my identity if I resemble a wanted man, but there was no need for him to be so fvcking rude and agressive. I texted my brother-in-law who's a sergeant in the real police, and he didn't seem at all surprised that a PCSO would be so useless.

ruudboy @ 2009-12-10T12:51:00

2009-12-10T12:51:46Z

Hooray! MPs'expenses are back!

The most important revelation here is that there's such a thing as a "£2 hamburger maker". Where do I get one of these pls?

ruudboy @ 2009-12-09T23:49:00

2009-12-09T23:49:36Z

"This is not just any Christmas dinner - this is a GMP custody suite Christmas dinner."

ruudboy @ 2009-12-08T15:46:00

2009-12-08T15:46:49Z

I went away to Copenhagen, and I'm back now. It was excellent - very cold, and it gets dark early but it didn't rain at all, and Copenhagen's lovely.

We were staying in Gentofte, whose main attraction was the railway station that made it so quick and easy to get into the city centre. Having got up at 5.30 to get the early flight, we were v tired so decided just to go into the city for a bit of a wander round to get our bearings then come back and get something to eat near the hotel. Which proved next to impossible, as nothing happens in Gentofte at night. It was practiaclly a ghost town, and there was nowhere to eat so we ended up getting a takeaway from a kebab place and eating it in our room. My fish and chips was nice though.

On Saturday we went to the Danish National Gallery in the morning. Among the highlights was an exhibition aimed at 6-12 year olds which had a painting in it called "OH MY GOD! That flower is a fvcking vacuum cleaner!" which featured masturbating carrots and a flower giving a bee a blow job. The Danes are a bit odd, I think - another odd thing was that the dentist's next to the hotel had no curtains, so you could see people in the dentist's chair having their mouth poked about in. They were mostly lovely as well as odd though. In the afternoon we went to the Danish National Museum and looked at Danish stuff there, then just before it went dark we went to Tivoli, which was excitingly lit up for christmas. It was very pretty.

On Sunday we went to the zoo in the morning, then went on a Canal boat trip in the afternoon.

Isn't everything expensive in Copenhagen? I knew it was an expensive city before I went, but I don't think you can realise before you go that it's expensive. Money just vanishes through your fingers, and it's a wonder anyone can afford to live there. Also, although there was lots of evidence that the climate change summit was coming to town, it didn't cause any inconvenience. If that were happening in London, there'd be road closures and police all over the place, but there was nothing like that there. There was an ice sculpture of a polar bear though.

ruudboy @ 2009-12-03T13:50:00

2009-12-03T13:50:44Z

My work PC's fvcked. It always BSODs when I connect to a particular network drive we have here, and now it's started refusing to print and it won't run Firefox or Chrome so I'm having to use IE. Do people seriously use this out of choice? Are they fvcking mental.

Fortunately, it's going to be reinstalled while I'm away, so I only have to use this for a day, but srsly. Sheesh.

ruudboy @ 2009-12-03T01:11:00

2009-12-03T01:11:31Z

Your task today, should you accept it, is to find me an mp3 of the "Ice Cream! Ice Cream!" sound effect fmor Speedball 2.

ruudboy @ 2009-12-02T23:19:00

2009-12-02T23:19:26Z

Hooray, I've just taken the rubbish out, which is the very last thing and means that I'm pretty much ready to go on holiday!

Can anyone think of the cheapest place I can by a European plug converter near London Bridge tomorrow lunchtime, because I can't find mine anywhere.

ruudboy @ 2009-12-02T16:17:00

2009-12-02T16:17:44Z

I've mentioned the 9.15am slot on BBC1 before - it really is the bit where the BBC attempt to appeal to readers of the Mail and the Express. It's either cosy stories about animals, heroic rescues or moaning about anything that could be the subject of a headline starting with "Now"¹. This week, the contribution to the unique and distinctive brand of public service programming that the BBC provides is entitled Rip Off Britain.

It's dreadful. This type of programming's beyond parody since the Not The Nine O'Clock News That's Life parody that I can't find on YouTube, but this might have brought it back into the firing line. It's full of just utter moaning b@stards - this morning it was about food and supermarket alleged ripoffs. Apparently - and I hope you're sitting down before you read this - some things cost more than they used to. I know, it's awful isn't it? And shockingly, sometimes things cost more in Tesco/Sainsbury's Convenience stores than in the big out of town barns. Which isn't surprising, since presumably it costs more to rent a shop on the high street than it does to rent land in the middle of nowhere. I had to go out to work after 10 minutes of it, but I imagine in the bit I saw there was someone complaining about how he bought a tin of carrots, and then he got home and he realised he doesn't like carrots. Grr. Those supermarkets!

¹Yesterday the Express's front page story was about how foreign eggs are coming over and stealing our salmonella.

ruudboy @ 2009-12-01T14:27:00

2009-12-01T14:27:15Z

I bought chewing gum at lunchtime, but I seem to have lost it between Tesco and the office. Bah.

I did the fairly obvious lunchtime walk from here - along to Tower Bridge and across, then back to London Bridge and across. I like the bit in front of Custom House, which is pretty much directly opposite the office where there are a couple of wooden posts that look like they might have been pier supports at one time, but now they're where the cormorants hang out. There was one of them holding his wings open, probably to dry them but he looked just like a giant bat. Sadly, I had no camera with me.

ruudboy @ 2009-12-01T10:22:00

2009-12-01T10:22:14Z

I'm not saying it's a slow news day today but two of the top 10 stories on the BBC are the Underground is crowded during the rush hour and Old people sometimes have grey hair.

Trains were stopping early at Old Street again today, but FCC have now admitted that as publicansdecoy mentioned yesterday, it's actually because the escalators at Moorgate were broken. Far from clarifying matters, this only throws up more questions. Which escalators? The station's been open in the morning rush hour in the past when escalators were being repaired, and people were directed to the stairs instead without any issues that I could see. If this escalator thing is a disaster, why was the tube still running through the station and stopping to pick up and drop off. And most of all, why would FCC invent flooding yesterday? The station is operated by London Underground, so admitting the escalator issue wouldn't admit any liability for the problem on their part. Have they now got to the point where they just lie and talk rubbish by default?

ruudboy @ 2009-11-30T13:34:00

2009-11-30T13:34:31Z

Trains into Moorgate were terminating at Old Street this morning, apparently due to flooding at Moorgate. I'd like to believe this is true, but I'm disinclined to accept the word of FCC on anything these days, especially since the Northern Line was still running through Moorgate, although it's only separated from the FCC line there by a pair of escalators. Perhaps only the entrance was flooded? If so, where did the man on the platform when the tube stopped there this morning come from then? Hmm.

I did very little this weekend, mostly because the weather convinced me to cower indoors hiding from it. I did go to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the NHM yesterday. Probably my favourite was this one:

For some reason they didn't have it as a postcard. Instead, I got postcards of this, this and this. Go to see it if you like pictures of wildlife, it's excellent.

ruudboy @ 2009-11-28T23:35:00

2009-11-28T23:35:52Z

I'm looking at a set of images on Flickr of London in the 60s. It's great, especially the photos of the Lord Mayor's Show in 1967:

Addendum - those darn cats

2009-11-26T15:11:00Z

When I got up this morning, I opened my bedroom door and found my toothpaste on the floor outside it. When I squeezed it, the better to clean my teeth it was like one of those play-doh hairdresser things. Grr.

Miscellany

2009-11-26T12:06:56Z

Today's annoying public transport person: the woman getting off the train at Moorgate in front of me who spotted a discarded hat on a seat, stopped to pick it up and consider it, then discarded it and continued in a slow zig-zag in front of me to the platform exit towards the Northern Line, where she stopped dead. GET OUT OF MY WAY! Also at this time of year, a curse on people waving big umbrellas around without the vaguest notion of who they might be poking in the ribs.

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This week's Radio 4 book of the week is Family Britain. Listening to it every night has reminded me that I've had its predecessor, Austerity Britain glowering fatly at me from a bookshelf for probably somewhere over a year now so I stuck it in my coat pocket - I like that at this time of year I can wear my big coat with its capacious pockets - and I've been reading it on the train for the last couple of days. It's v good so far but man, it's disspritingly huge. I have little hope that I'll ever read anything else.

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Taste London are giving away 2000 free annual memberships right now! Sadly, the website is obviously overwhelmed, as I can't get the page to load. Tsk.

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What food are you currently slightly addicted to? I'm obsessed with lemon curd sandwiches at the moment. Morrison's finest lemon curd is excellent.

ruudboy @ 2009-11-23T11:51:00

2009-11-23T11:51:43Z

Aagh, Monday morning FAIL. The day started badly when instead of being woken by the gentle lilt of John Humphries, I was woken by the hideous BEEP mode that I'd accidentally set my radio alarm to when I went to bed last night. Why does it need a beep mode anyway? If I wanted to be woken by something going BEEP at me, I wouldn't have spent money on something with a radio in would I?

Anyway, after the usual staying in bed until the last possible minute, I hurried out of the door and narrowly made the train courtesy of it being delayed (thanks First Crapital Connect!), only to realise when I got to London Bridge that I had neither my Oyster card or any form of payment on me. Luckily, a nice underground man let me out when I threw myself on his mercy for this (thanks, nice Underground man!) and braisedbywolves has been good enough to sub me a fiver to get through the day. Looks like a nice bus ride home then.

Despite the miserablist weather that made me not want to leave the house at all, the weekend was fun. I managed to cut excursions during the day on Sunday and Saturday to the bare minimum shopping trips required (Crouch End on Saturday, Muswell Hill yesterday) and on Saturday night I went to the God Help The Girl show at the 100 Club. Tickets for this sold out about 10 seconds after going on sale, so I have to give a huge thanks to my industry source miss_newham for getting me on the guest list for this. Thanks, Jo!

Supporting were Pocketbooks who readers may recall me enthusing about at length before (buy their album, it's great!) and the played a great set to start, full of confidence and they seem to me that they should be playing bigger venues than they are - hopefully this support slot will be the start of great things for them.

GHTG did a great show too - the singers are amazing, great, interesting voices and stage presence. With Stuart, Stevie and Bobby all in the band it was almost like a mini B&S gig too. In short, it was a great night, and thanks again to miss_newham for the tickets.

What else have I been up to recently. Well, Monday was S's birthday, but she was visiting family so we went out on Tuesday night. We were going to go to Inamo but we couldn't get a table at a sensible time so we went to New World in Chinatown instead, which is now my default Chinatown restaurant. It's nothing amazing, with the usual Chinatown menu, but everything on it is well cooked and nice and fresh, so although you know what you're getting you know it's going to be good too. And on Thursday, we went to see The Fantastic Mr Fox which I enjoyed greatly. I liked that Mr Fox was essentially wearing Wes Anderson's clothes.

Tonight I'll mostly be cowering inside from what will probably be rain, with only David Attenborough for company. Life is every bit as good as you'd expect from a BBC Nature programme with Dave narrating - I loved the insects last week.

ruudboy @ 2009-11-21T17:03:00

2009-11-21T17:03:48Z

ruudboy @ 2009-11-21T15:36:00

2009-11-21T15:36:02Z

10 most bizarre sexist adverts.

Remember, most men ask "Is she pretty?" and not "Is she clever?" Don't go worrying your delicate little minds with education.

ruudboy @ 2009-11-19T14:16:00

2009-11-19T14:16:43Z

M&S are currently doing a 2 for £3 offer on their excellent fresh soups. I got a smoked bacon and sweetcorn chowder(chowdah!) and a fish soup yesterday to stick in the kitchen here, and had the sweetcorn one today. Excellent £1.50 lunch there!

Is there any sort of software/web service thing I can use so that I can email/text a phrase such as "take chicken out of freezer" somewhere and a window will pop up on the screen of my computer at home with the message on so that I can think of things I need to do when I'm at work, and remember them when I get home? Todo lists are all very well, but I never remember to look at them.