First Post - 8 April 2010

Hi, just starting this blogging lark today, I hope it’ll be fun and that I don’t upset too many people and don’t make too many idiot mistakes. I have ignorance and stupidity in clubs! (Sometimes in bars and restaurants as well.)

Introduction

A bit of background. I’m a bloke somewhat over 50 and a very early user of computers, starting with “mainframes” of around 64k, yes “k”! Being now unemployed, I read a lot of books, mainly history and crime novels, and have just ended a fixation with the city of Berlin.

I used to play a lot of hockey, but now just lumber around the gym, doing ab curls and cycling along to “Frasier” on early-morning TV. Actually, I’m a big fan of Seinfeld, and have even written a couple of disastrous sit-coms of my own, which went absolutely nowhere.

I have flirted briefly with learning various languages, e.g. French, Italian, Russian. Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say that I made a furtive, indecent approach to them, but I still frequently flick over my Russian notes.

I have lived in several parts of the country, but as I suffer from the rare disease of “alphphobia” it means that I can’t live anywhere beyond the letter “E” in the alphabet. So, amongst other places, I have lived are Bath, Banbury, Birmingham, Chester, Darlington, Exmouth and Aurora (Colorado), but I would struggle in Falmouth, and certainly couldn’t cope at all with Gateshead.

BBC goes horse-racing at Aintree today

I was listening to Radio 5 earlier this afternoon and heard Richard Bacon say that there was going to be some “interesting racing here at Aintree today”. Apparently, this was because there were some horses running owned by footballers! For BBC TV, horse-racing is more of a celebrity event than a sport, and is incomplete without either The Queen, Ricky Tomlinson or John Parrott, preferably all three. Luckily, with half an hour between races – rather than just a quarter of an hour on Channel 4 – there’s plenty of time left to talk to all these celebs, and, if you’re at Ascot you can wear silly clothes for a week as well.

Great! It's another Election!

Why does everything else in the media have to be so dominated by a British (or US) election? It’s just a vote – usually meaningless, as more that two thirds of the constituencies are “safe” – every 5 years and Ill be voting the same as last time around. That’s unless a feel a sudden, frivolous urge to go Monster Raving Loony. I’m informed the whole thing’s going to be decided by the grey vote, or the women’s vote, or Motorway Man, or possibly The Headless Horseman. Anyway, before calling the damned thing shouldn’t Gordon have checked that ER was in Buck House, rather than dragging back the dear old soul from her Easter hols in Windsor? Incidentally, why do the Royal Family have (some of) their homes in boring places such as Norfolk or Scotland? Someone reliably informed me that when they’re up in Balmoral over the Christmas hols, they only have coal fires: always have just porridge (made with water and a single pinch of salt) for breakfast; but insist on fresh strawberries (and cream) for tea, which are specially flown in from South Africa every day.

Why is there no interest in European elections, especially if we are now ruled from Brussels as everyone on the right says? I would find it fascinating – and almost certainly so would UKIP – to find out what fascist Italian porn stars and wishy-washy Belgian bookkeepers were governing us.

Eggheads is on TV

Interesting. On TV tonight a team from the Isle of Wight is challenging “The Eggheads”. They should do OK unless they get asked about anything that’s happened after 1959.