Bic Crystal ballpoint pen, medium point, black

Read all about it!

Dilemmas of a lazy blogger

I seem to be building up a lot of posts in draft mode and never getting around to finishing and publishing them. Let's delete some and post others. I'm not sure about my all time top 100 albums. By the time I've finished that one, Kate Bush will have released another album! As for the review of "The Play Wot I Wrote" which I started months ago, I'll think I shall give up on that. At least the recording of Radio 4's "Just A Minute" was recent enough for me to remember, so I will try again. Anyway, here is a post I wrote several weeks ago and never hit the publish button . . . .


Two modern day dilemmas.

1) The Key.

The back door key is a silly shape. It has a prong sticking out on the edge that you insert into the hole. Over time the prong gets more and more bent inwards, until the key stops working. Before it gets to this stage I took it to a key cutters and asked if they could re-cut the key, with the bent prong in a straight position. The key cutter got to work using the duplicating machine as much as possible before finished it off by hand. The result looked similar enough so I got out my money. "No" said the key cutter chappy, "try it and if it doesn't work, then throw it away. If it does work then come back and pay".
When I got back home I tried it and it worked perfectly.
Given that it might well be a month before I'm back in that town and able to pay them, should I eventually pay them? Will the key-cutters just think I'm a right plonker for paying for something that they may well have forgotten about and I could have had for free?

2) The Bike.

I'm driving along and I see a car ahead with its hazard warning lights on, parked just before a bend. Just as I take this in, the two cars between me and the parked car both started signalling left and started to pull in behind the parked car. Just as I was starting to curse about the stupidity of parking just before a bend, I suddenly realised that I was passing a person lying on the grass verge with a crumpled bicycle next to them.

My thoughts for the next couple of seconds went like this:
Man down! Stop and assist!
But wait, that explains why those three cars have stopped here, and people are now getting out of their cars. If I stopped as well that would be four cars parked before that corner. Also I have no medical training and no working mobile phone. I didn't even see how the fallen fellow came to be there. What use will I be?
Oh blow it, carry on.

Trouble is, I spent most of the remaining journey home feeling guilty about not stopping.
Was I right for not stopping?

A bit of bush

At the end of the film "The Golden Compass" you can hear a rare outing of
Kate Bush. Yep, she has once more plunged into her underused and dusty
studio and knocked out a song called "Lyra" for the end of the movie. It
features a nice vocal by Kate over some rather lazy hazy backing which
ultimately does very little. I suppose if you consider it as ambient music, it sort of works, but otherwise is hardly something to jump up and down
excitedly about.

OK, so it is something new by Kate Bush, perhaps I will do
a bit of jumping up and down after all, but very small jumps, in slippers,
on the carpet.

Meanwhile Sky News reports that by recording this new track, Kate Bush now
has "a taste for recording" and "fans are being told to expect a new
offering from Bush, but probably not until late next year". Pardon me while
I rock with mirth. I'm sure Kate may well be thinking about recording
some more material sometime eventually, but let's not get excited for a few more years yet.
 


Kate hard at work in her high-tech studio.

Just the thing for Kitschmas

Ship of Fools have just the things to buy your loved ones for Christmas, including this great calendar.

Speaking of this unspeakable time of year, .T. and I did a "oh no it is December and we need to get some things from King's Lynn, so let's get there by 9am so we can avoid the mad people" trip today. Although for this time of year it was quite calm, even by 11am when we left. I was rather saddened by the sight of the former Fopp (still with its signs up) now housing a cheap Christmas store and I gawped at the grotty grotto that has appeared. (Mum to small child: "Ooh, do you think Father Christmas is in there?" Small child: "Don't be silly mum".)

Also overheard when passing new trendy wine bar LXIX, "Is that pronounced licks?"