Carolyn‘s children saw a ghost the other night. They were out in the garden trying to photograph foxes. Their friend was with them, so they took her photograph:
When they saw the result, they thought they’d photographed a ghost. It startled the crap out of them. They ran screaming into the house and begged their mum to lock all the doors.
Silly children! Don’t you know that ghosts can walk through doors?
(Only joking: there’s no such thing as ghosts really!)
I saw a ghost once.
This might sound odd coming, as it does, from a devout sceptic (or a terrible sceptic, as a close friend recently put it—as if being sceptical was something to be ashamed of). I usually have no time for mumbo-jumbo such as ghosts, spirits, the afterlife, homeopathy, wind power or papal infallibility; but, on this occasion, I saw it with my own eyes: a 100%, real-death ghost! It startled the crap out of me.
I had known about the ghost since I was a kid. The White Lady, they call her. She haunts the ancient humpback bridge over the stream which formed the picturesque Dibbinsdale valley, close to where I grew up. Local legend has it that, many years ago, a novice nun had a tragic love affair with a monk from a nearby monastery. She ended up drowning herself in the stream. People say, if you pass through Dibbinsdale on a dark, winter’s night, you can see her ghost standing on the bridge. Pure nonsense, of course—until you actually see it.
I was seventeen years old when I saw the ghost. It was December 1982, and I had just passed my driving test. This meant I got to give Carolyn a lift in my dad’s old Triumph to a local church where she had recently become a bell-ringer. Don’t ask me why Carolyn had suddenly decided to take up bell-ringing—it’s just the sort of thing she does—but I was glad she had, because I got to spend an hour watching her swing around on the end of a rope, and… well, unlike Carolyn, why don’t I leave the rest to the imagination?
Anyway, our route home from the church took us through Dibbinsdale. Even without the ghost, it’s a spooky place to drive through after dark, especially in December: the leafless trees cast eery shadows in the beams of your car’s headlights. Not that I was worrying about shadows, you understand; I was wondering how it would look if a committed atheist were suddenly to take up bell-ringing.
When we got to the bottom of the hill, I rounded the sharp right-hand bend, then swung hard-left over the bridge. And then I saw her: the White Lady began to materialise directly in front of me. I think I might have gasped (not for the first time that evening), but that was all I had time to do before my car ploughed through the still-not-quite-corporeal form and headed up the other side of the valley.
“Did you see that?” I asked, trying to hide my alarm.
“Did I see what?” asked Carolyn.
“The ghost!”
“Don’t be silly, Richard!”
And then I realised what I had really seen. Fortunately, it wasn’t too late to save face:
“…Yeah, but you can see where the ghost story comes from: a dark, winter night; the cold air sinks to the bottom of the valley, turning the moisture in the air above the stream to mist; the beam from your headlights shoots into the air as you cross the humpback bridge and suddenly illuminates the mist—is it any wonder people think they’ve seen a ghost?”
“Only if they’re totally stupid, though.”
National Geographic: Coughing Cats May Be Allergic to People, Vets Say
Furry housepets—especially felines—have long been blamed for allergies and breathing problems in people.
But now researchers at an animal hospital in Scotland say the discomfort can also work the other way around: Humans can trigger asthma attacks in cats.
Good.
See also: Alergy
Rod Stewart is on Parky as I type. I’m not a fan. I think he’s overrated. Fair’s fair: he’s realised that he’s getting on a bit and needs to find a new sound. For a while, he tried to be Tom Waits (how the hell did he have such a massive hit with Tom Traubert’s Blues, when he’d totally ruined it?). Now he’s trying to be Harry Nilsson. I don’t like his sound, but good luck to him.
Rod Stewart did one very wonderful thing: he sung (uncredited) lead vocals on Python Lee Jackson‘s masterpiece, In a Broken Dream: a genuine classic. And what happens to genuine classics? Some arsehole does a cover version of them and totally ruins them. In this case, the arsehole was Ronan Keating. Enough said.
Now you know how it feels, Rod. Stop ruining other people’s songs and write some of your own: you’re up to it (I think).
We have a small back bedroom which I refer to as the box room. This is on account of my having unceremoniously dumped several boxes of stuff in there shortly after we moved into the house four years ago. They have lain there unopened ever since. The mess in the room has, quite frankly, been driving poor Jen up the wall, so, last weekend, I decided to have a major throw-out.
It took me three hours to go through all the stuff in the boxes. I soon developed a simple but effective filtering rule: Books: keep. Non-books: chuck. I was amazed at how easy it was to chuck so many things that I didn’t feel I should chuck four years ago.
I kept a few things which weren’t books, of course (including an antique ostrich feather which was a present from Stense—yes, that’s right, an ostrich feather), but most of it went straight into the Chuck pile. Then I opened my box of audio tapes:
I haven’t listened to an audio tape for years; all my music is on CDs these days, with a bit of stuff you can’t get on CD still on vinyl. I hadn’t realised how many audio tapes I had amassed over the years—there must have been a few hundred. In the end, I chucked most of them, but there were a few tapes which were too sentimental to part with. Of these, by far the most important was a tape Hitchin did for me when we were at university in 1984.
1984 was the year I finally acquired a taste in music. Before then, I’d had very limited (and, let’s be honest, shite) musical tastes. Then I got hooked on The Blues Brothers (still my favourite film), and asked Hitchin if he would do me a bluesy tape. The result was a compilation which I dubbed The Hitchin Connection. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it certainly had bluesy moments—most notably Click Clack by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. More importantly, it was an absolutely cracking compilation. I played it over and over again. Twenty-one years later, and I reckon it has withstood the test of time remarkably well. It was a major influence on my musical tastes for the last two decades. Here, therefore, for posterity (and just in case I ever accidentally declutter the tape), is a track listing:
Side A Side B Walk on the Wild Side
Lou ReedSultans of Swing
Dire StraitsRock ‘n’ Roll
Lou ReedEastbound Train
Dire StraitsThe Killing Moon
Echo & the BunnymenLondon Calling
The ClashThe Cutter
Echo & the BunnymenBrand New Cadillac
The ClashNever Stop
Echo & the BunnymenRiders on the Storm
The DoorsWhite Riot
The ClashLight My Fire
The DoorsPretty Vacant
The Sex PistolsBring on the Dancing Horses
Echo & the BunnymenLet’s Lynch the Landlord
Dead KennedysBad Moon Rising
Creedence Clearwater RevivalClick Clack
Captain Beefheart & the Magic BandLooking for Lewis and Clark
The Long RydersNeon Meate Dream of a Octafish
Captain Beefheart & the Magic BandThe Old Fart at Play
Captain Beefheart & the Magic BandPena
Captain Beefheart & the Magic BandFrank’s Wild Years
Tom Waits
Cool tape or what? (Don’t blame Hitchin for the Dire Straits: that was my idea.)
The box room is totally empty now. Empty, that is, apart from the two wardrobes Jen unceremoniously dumped in there shortly after we moved into the house four years ago. Come on, Jen, stop being so bloody untidy will you? It’s driving me up the wall!
Those Scousers are a compassionate lot.
After much deliberation by the official judge (OK, she chose one at random, because she didn’t think any of the entries were worthy of winning on merit), we finally have a winner of the My Fanny Up For Grabs competition. He is Justin, and his winning entry went as follows:
Fanny treated her husband like dirt.
His feelings she’d constantly hurt.
So he took his old rifle,
And filled it with trifle,
And blew her head off with dessert.
Congratulations, Justin, that was rubbish. Your top prize, an almost pristine copy of Fanny Cradock’s rip-roaring roller coaster of a novel, The Lormes of Castle Rising, is in the post.
Think you can stomach more? Read all the rubbish competition entries.
Lordy, is it that time of year again already? Jen and I spent several hours traipsing across the local moors with our friend the farmer yesterday. We were looking for some cows that had been grazing up there over the summer. We needed to bring them down into the lower fields for the winter.
Unfortunately, although cows are damn big animals, the local moor is roughly the size of Belgium, so finding them wasn’t as easy as you might think. Mind you, unlike a year ago today, at least the cows hadn’t split into two groups, and they had only wandered a mile away.
Flickr: More photos (or should that be moor photos?)
New Scientist: Out-of-this-world sex could jeopardise missions
Sex and romantic entanglements among astronauts could derail missions to Mars and should therefore be studied by NASA, warns a top-level panel of US researchers.
What are the odds that this so-called top-level panel of researchers works for NASA? And what are the odds that they already have a particular top-level team in mind to carry out this study? I’ll bet their lab-coats are looking a bit shabby, the pervs.
I watched Mastermind at my parents’ house on Tuesday. I think they’re dumbing down the show: the eventual winner’s specialist subject was The Television Series One Foot in the Grave. I don’t believe it!
It reminded me of my favourite Mastermind story. It’s strange I haven’t mentioned here before, so why don’t I put that right immediately?
There was a TV programme called Nationwide which ran from the Sixties until the early Eighties. Some of you might remember it. It was a strange mix of current affairs and inane trivia. They once had some nutter on it who claimed he could walk on eggs without breaking them. He achieved this by jumping over the eggs and touching them gently with his foot as he flew by. It took him several attempts before he succeeded, after which, flushed with success, he demonstrated his ability to walk on water using a near-identical technique. I’ll never forget the presenter, Michael Barrett’s, exact words after witnessing this incredible feat: “Is that it?”
Anyway, I digress. A few years before the Powers That Be finally pulled the plug on Nationwide, someone on the programme had the bright idea of running a Junior Mastermind competition. The grand final was between a young girl from Welwyn Garden City (or somewhere posh like that) and some rough, northern lad from Bolton. Magnus Magnusson (who else?) asked the questions:
Magnusson: Our first contestant please. And your name is?
Girl: Webeccaa Bwacknell-Wemmington.
Magnusson: Occupation?
Girl: Schoolgirl.
Magnusson: And your specialist subject?
Girl: Woman Bwitain, forty-four A.D. to four-hundwed and ten A.D.
OK, I made up her name.
OK, I made up her speech impediment as well. But you get the idea: she was a very posh girl from a very posh school.
She got about four questions correct with eighteen passes.
On came her adversary:
Magnusson: And our second contestant please. And your name is?
Boy: Gary Radcliffe.
Magnusson: Occupation?
Boy: Schoolboy.
Magnusson: And your specialist subject?
Boy: BUZZES!
Gary’s outstanding knowledge of buses (for that is what he meant) enabled him to wipe the floor with poor, young Webecca.
Even though I was only a kid myself at the time, I knew a fix when I saw one.
Actually, I tell I lie: I think Gary might have lost. Either way, it was still a fix. It was like that stupid race at primary school all over again.
Postscript: Oh, I see the BBC has resurrected the idea of Junior Mastermind.
BBC: Daniel Craig takes on 007 mantle
Actor Daniel Craig has been confirmed as the new James Bond…
“It’s a huge challenge. Life is about challenges and this is one of the big ones as an actor,” said Craig, 37, who will be the sixth James Bond.
Setting aside my natural disappointment at having been passed over for the Bond role yet again (despite my excellent credentials as a Man of Mystery and Adventure), HOLY CRAP, MAN: I’m older than James Bond!
Every Sunday morning, the elderly woman who works at the local newsagent’s moans about the weight of my newspaper as she hauls it across the counter to zap with her barcode reader. I’m not exaggerating, she moans about it every single week. She doesn’t moan in a friendly, aren’t-these-big-newspapers-a-real-nuisance kind of way; she moans as if to admonish me for not choosing a lighter paper.
I think she’s in the wrong job.
I became invisible for approximately 45 minutes on Thursday.
I say approximately because I didn’t become invisible to myself, only to other people, so it’s hard to tell exactly when the invisibility kicked in. It must have been shortly after I collected my trolley and headed into Tesco. The woman on the lottery counter certainly seemed to be able to see me—she didn’t show any surprise at all when I asked to collect my winnings (two tenners in a fortnight: my syndicate and I are on a roll!)—but, by the time I had got to the fruit and veg section, I had become the invisible man.
The first sign of my invisibility was when people began cutting in front of me as if I wasn’t there. At first, I took this to be common rudeness, but, after a couple of minutes, I became convinced something was up: people were acting as if I wasn’t there far more spectacularly than usual: they marched straight at me, stepped right in front of me when I was travelling at speed, and hove their trolleys into my path with all the grace and inertia of oil tankers. Then, as I was heading (rather appropriately) towards the ginger display, a red-headed man cut in front of me and parked his trolley in such a way that it made a ‘V’ shape with the shelves. He then stood in the opening of the ‘V’, totally monopolising the ginger. I tried to squeeze round the side of him, but he stepped into my path, looking neither directly at nor directly away from me. I tried sneaking round the other side, but he moved again. So I gently pushed his trolley out the way. The ginger-headed man gaped in open amazement as an invisible force propelled his trolley sideways into the aisle.
But what really brought my invisibility home was when a fat, sweaty woman handbreak-turned her trolley directly into my path, blocking the aisle in front of me. I stared at her in irritation, while she looked straight through me, eyeing-up the chocolate biscuits.
Let’s be honest, we’ve all fantasised about becoming invisible at some point, but have you ever worked out exactly what you would do if you could become invisible for 45 minutes? Me too! But Tesco isn’t really the place you had in mind, is it? Me neither. And, thinking about it, I now realise that it probably wasn’t me who had become invisible at all; my trolley must have been invisible all the time, and had somehow extended its cloak of invisibility to me. That’s a much more rational explanation.
And who wants the 45 minutes of invisibility they’ve always dreamed about if they have to lug a supermarket trolley around with them as part of the deal?
BBC: Pinter wins Nobel literary prize
Controversial British playwright and campaigner Harold Pinter has won the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature.
No he hasn’t: Harold Pinter has been awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature. He did not actively participate in any competition, and was probably oblivious to the fact that he was in the running. To be awarded a Nobel Prize is a great honour; to say that he won it makes it sound as if Pinter sought the prize—which rather cheapens it.
Nice one, Harold!
In celebration of the centenary this year of Albert Einstein’s annus mirabilis (for which he should, by rights, have won not one, but three Nobel Prizes), I think it’s about time I told you my Einstein joke. It’s a fairly significant anniversary for the joke as well: I thought of it 25 years ago this year. I was still at school studying physics, and there had been a lot of programmes on the telly about the 75th anniversary that year of Einstein’s annus mirabilis.
So, without further ado, here it is:
The Einstein Joke
Albert Einstein had a brother named Fred, who also dabbled in physics. Being a close relative of Albert’s, he had more than a passing interest in Albert’s ideas on relativity.
Fred read up on the subject and learnt that, as objects move towards you at close to the speed of light, they appear to be more blue in colour (a phenonmenon known as blue shift), whereas objects moving away from you at close to the speed of light appear more red in colour (a phenomenon known as red shift).
This got Fred thinking: what would objects look like if they moved across your field of vision at close to the speed of light? Would they be red-shifted or blue-shifted?
So Fred took out his slide-rule and his protractor and set to work trying to answer this fascinating question. After many months of calculations, he came to the remarkable conclusion that objects moving across your field of vision at close to the speed of light would appear to have red and blue diagonal stripes running across them. Because this phenomenon was half red shift and half blue shift, Fred decided to name it half shift.
Full of excitement, Fred showed his calculations to his brother. But Albert took one look at them and sadly shook his head:
“Nein, Friedrich,” he said (because he was still German in those days), “I am afraid zat you are inkorrect: as any dummkopf knows, light can’t half shift.”
I thank you.
All joking aside, I’m beginning to think that I really must be in league with the devil. Try this one on for size (apologies in advance, it’s a bit convoluted, so I’ve split it into bullet points—bear with me on this one):
…And, from Hebden Bridge,
Somebody said to me,
“I can’t understand a word you say.”
He said, “99% of non-smokes die”…
So there you have it: I must be in league with the devil, because my favourite song-writer has made reference to me in a re-worded version of my favourite Fall song—even though he probably doesn’t even realise it.
Well, that’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it.
See also: Fall Heads Roll (photo)
Stense is ‘working from home’ this week. On Monday, I sent her an email, accusing her of swanning around. This morning, she sent me a text message:
…Got in late last night to yr ‘swanning around’ email – I had just got in from seeing Swan Lake!
I am in league with the devil.
I met a retired ballerina once. Her name was Dame Margot Fonteyn. She was tiny, graceful and delicate—totally unlike a swan, in fact.
Swans aren’t tiny, graceful and delicate; swans are HUGE, LUMBERING BASTARDS. It’s common knowledge that they can break a man’s arm with a beat of their wings. You wouldn’t catch Dame Margot doing that. And, when they’re not breaking people’s arms, swans are pecking at you with their VISCIOUS beaks. But they don’t call them beaks. Oh no, they call them bills. How bloody pretentious is that? When you think about it, swans are nothing more than oversized, dangerous ducks. They might act all innocent, but I half suspect swans actually eat people. They’re supposed to live on weeds and gravel and shit off the bottom of ponds, but have you see the size of them? They’re SODDING ENORMOUS! They didn’t get that size by eating pondweed, I tell you.
Someone should do something.
See also: Bapera
Richard Carter – George Michael Tribute Act
Richard Carter appeared on Stars in their Eyes in March 1999. He proved to be a popular contestant and was well credited for his performance.
Richard’s act contains everything from early George Michael hits such as ‘Everything She Wants’ and ‘A Different Corner’ and follows his career up to date with his latest hits.
Not wishing to be unkind to my namesake or anything, but I think he looks more like me than he looks like George Michael.
In fact, I think I’d go so far as to say that the resemblance is pretty damn spooky.
There was a scruffy man standing at the entrance to the farmers’ market when I popped into town for the papers this morning. He had his hand clapped to his ear, and was talking in a very loud voice—actually it was more like monosyllabic chanting than talking. I assumed that he had a poor reception on his mobile phone. I also assumed that he had a really embarrassing phone, because he seemed to be going to great lengths to conceal it behind the flat of his hand.
It turned out he was a folk singer.