Month: March 2010

Grammar, we love you

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment


Just a very short note in case you are interested in the ways of internet linkage. I was looking on the BBC website just now (if the link is still there, it’s http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8597399.stm), and, also if it’s still there, you may see the link in the bottom rhs of the page.

It reads:

Times Online Lonmin shares take tumble as problem child furnace is shut – 8 hrs ago

Disappointingly, the grammar changes as you go to the link:

Lonmin shares take tumble as ‘problem child’ furnace is shut

All of which is a bit of a shame. Those of us with problem children might not ever want to put them in a furnace, but every now and again it might be nice to use as a threat.

My Funny Valentine

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment


Some time ago (possibly in the 1980’s) I set what I thought was a reasonable ceiling on footwear. In them days (I know, I know), you could get a decent pair of DM’s for £30, so I thought it was a pretty valid benchmark. And, with the exception of running shoes, which I can justify on the basis that cheap ones will limit my ambition of still running marathons well into my 70’s, I still pretty much have £30 as my top limit for shoes. Which, as you might imagine, means a fairly limited approach to shoe-buying that isn’t always successful.

I tell you all this as a context for a recent conversation with Mrs Emu, a woman who I hold in considerable regard, and with whom I share almost every moral code. There are exceptions, however, and both the length of time allowed shopping for shoes and the price ceiling are good examples.

Here’s my favourite phone call of the week:

Mr E: ‘Hi, what’s up’

Mrs E: ‘Well, just thought I’d phone to see how you were’

Mr E ‘All good…you don’t normally phone up just for that’

Mrs E ‘No, well just thought I’d let you know that I had half an hour spare so I cycled into the city, and I found the most amazing pair of brown boots. You know I’ve been after some for ages, and these are just fantastic’

Mr E ‘Great, did they cost much?’

Mrs E ‘Well, far less than those road bikes you’ve been looking at online’

(The conversation went back and forth a bit, even involving a bit of ‘The Price Is Right’ ‘higher/lower’ action, until the full price was revealed.)

Mr E ‘That’s quite a lot of money for a pair of boots’

Mrs E ‘I know, and I’ll work a couple of extra shifts to pay for them. Besides, these boots will make me happy in a way that you’ll never be able to’

My advice if you’re looking for a wife or husband…find someone who makes you laugh while they put you in your place. Although, if you’re reading this dear, ideally also someone who doesn’t end her sentences with a preposition.

Falling on a bruise

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

Sadly, another day in which I feel old before my time. As my dear children will often remind me, I am old, at least by their standards, but this morning at around 0800, on the Newmarket Road leading into Norwich, I had my first ‘senior’ moment. For it was there and then, dear reader, that I suffered a fall.

Suffering a fall is the sort of thing that I’d associated previously with shopping trolleys on wheels, thermal bootees, and for some reason, Thora Hird. And I do have the excuse that I was travelling at least at some pace, but even so, a fall it certainly was.

Being a bloke, I do feel it necessary to drag out both the extreme pain and the ignomy of the experience in some detail. I was running to work along my normal route, not really going either fast or slow, and listening to Danny Baker tearing up the podcast charts, when I, well, just lost my footing. On what appeared to be (and I did check) a perfectly reasonable piece of pavement. At this point I stumbled, and cracked my knee very hard onto the pavement. Which hurt. Then I bounced along the pavement, before I bashed down simultaneously on my left shoulder and elbow. Which really hurt. Then, one more bounce, before I came to rest with my head perilously close to the gutter, having broken my fall with both palms. Which really really hurt.

For those of you familar with this part of the world, you’ll realise that at that time, on that road, there’s lots of traffic, moving pretty slowly. And I must have sailed past about 5 cars travelling in the opposite direction before I finally stopped moving. At which point a succession of very slow moving cars will have seen a bloke in shorts, lying down on the pavement next to them, bleeding. For my part, I think I lay there for a couple of minutes, not through any other reasons than thinking that I’d broken my arm, and not having the first idea of what to do. And, as it happens, whether I’d still make it for my 0830 meeting.

And, nothing would please me more to report to you that the traffic stopped, and I finally came to, wrapped up in a tartan blanket from the back of a car, while perfect strangers administered basic first aid, sweet tea, and kind words of comfort.

But, this being fact, no such thing happened. Every single car drove straight by, although a couple of cars did steer slightly to the right as they did. I suspect that this was to protect their tyres rather than my body though. As it happens, a couple of guys walking into the city ran over, checked me out and lifted me up. Having thanked them, and deciding that nothing was broken, I continued both my run, and, indeed, my general disillussionment with my fellow man.

Chewing gum for the ears

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment


This is a blog which starts off with me in the shower, so readers of a nervous disposition may wish to look away now.

Jr Emu #1 bought me a radio for my Christmas present; one that I can listen to when I’m out of the shower in the mornings. Given that I take a morning shower in the basement of the office after running into work, however, this creates an issue. My radio stations of choice for the morning are Radio 4 (light political grillings – just the thing to kick off the morning meetings) or Radio 5 (relatively inane banter that might inform the odd conversation during the day on football). And unfortunately, even though the great British Broadcasting institution reaches all around the world, it is unable to penetrate the lower ground floor in the NR4 postcode area.

Unless, it seems, it is masquerading as BBC Radio Norfolk, which has signal like you wouldn’t believe. I don’t quite understand this, as I thought that all BBC channels would be transmitted from the same masts at the same strength, but the truth is there to be heard in glorious mono, every morning at 8am.

So, to get to the point, I am compelled to listen to Radio Norfolk in the morning. Now, me and Radio Norfolk actually go back quite a long way.

In my youth, I worked at Radio Norfolk for what was probably all of about 4 weeks. I had a very brief stint as an assistant to an assistant, and very briefly reached the position of bona fide assistant when the teatime show presenter went on holiday, thus allowing his assistant to stop being an assistant, and thereby needing his own assistant.

The best fun on local radio was devising phone-in competitions, and at Radio Norfolk we had the added challenge of having no audience with any enthusiasm for phoning in. Or possibly no audience with any enthusiasm. Or possibly no audience.

Which left us pretty much to our own devices, and this meant getting our friends to phone up in a style that I like to think was ripped off wholesale by shock-jocks a few years later. So, for example, we would announce the ‘talented pets competition’. “Phone us with your talented pets, and we’ll let the county know”, we’d call out. “If you can’t get through right away, keep trying, as the phones are really hot here at Radio Norfolk”, we’d cry, looking out into the control room, where the work experience girl was looking intently at a phone that was steadfastly refusing to ring. At which point, we’d call in our special weapon, which for the sake of this blog, we’ll call Mike Todd, on account of that being his name.

Mike would appear on the phone (we had to dial him, which always left the work experience girl a bit more miserable), and he’d pretend to be a caller with an interesting pet. Initially this was a yodelling dog, which was basically his flatmate making howling noises while MIke played the piano. Then it was a tap dancing tortoise, introduced by a nervous schoolboy, who’d discovered this talent while a) his Dad was out, and b) he’d let the tortoise stand on the hotplate. And so on. We did get a few genuine callers, which left us a bit flustered, but we soldiered on. I don’t think anybody from Radio Norfolk noticed anything was unusual – largely you were alright, even on primetime, as long as you didn’t use up any of the ‘needletime’ budget.

This may have changed now, but certainly in those days, the royalties you had to play on records, calculated by ‘needletime’, could make or break the budget of the show. So you did one of three things. 1. Talk about absolutely anything for as long as possible. 2. Play music from unsigned bands. 3. Play music from ‘pre-paid’ albums (Now that’s what I call… etc). Fortunately, we managed to fill hours and hours with 1 & 2 and seldom resorted to 3.

But the best bit about Radio Norfolk was the institutional parochialism that filled the place in a pleasant, practical fashion. The best example of this was the traffic report. Growing up near London, I was familiar with Capital Radio’s ‘Eye in the Sky’, swooping down on the North Circular and giving up to the minute reports at all hours of the day. Things in Norfolk were slightly different. Firstly, the only road that anyone was bothered about was the A11. It got people into Norfolk, and it got people out. Secondly, the budget didn’t really run to helicopter surveillance. So, very practically, one of the editorial staff would phone up her Dad every morning. Her Dad lived on the side of the A11, just outside Wymondham. So, after the normal father/daughter greetings were complete, he’d put the phone down, go to the front door, look to the right and to the left, then report back accordingly.

So, although I would never listen to Radio Norfolk if I had any real choice, if I do have to then it’s always a bit nostalgically. Certainly I listen to the webcam driven traffic reports with some disappointment, as I’d just really like to know that the A11 is clear at Wymondham. And I listened with abject horror on Friday, when the phone in was ‘what do you look for in a chicken’. Just asking for trouble, quite frankly.

And imagine my surprise when I came across this on the BBC Norwich City website tonight.

You need to look at the last item under ‘local news’.

And if you can’t read this, it says “Farmer reunited with lost fowl”. I suppose when you see real life imitating stereotypes, we may as well enjoy it.

Menus with pictures…a good thing!

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment


Things to avoid on holiday in Barcelona:

1. If your wife is scared of heights, and yet willing to confront her fears on a wobbly cable car several hundred feet above Barcelona harbour, really think carefully about the ‘bargain’ return ticket.

2. If travelling to Montjuic, the steep hills overlooking the city to the east, be sure to read the guidebooks in advance. They will tell you where to get an escalator to the top of the hills, and avoid you having to climb 1 in 4 slopes on your hands and knees.

3. If ordering from a Tapas menu, don’t feel that you have to be adventurous. For example, if you see ‘Sepia’ on the menu, and work out that it’s Cuttlefish, then don’t assume that because Cuttlefish have ‘fish’ in their name, that they look or taste anything like a fish. However, do make sure that when what appears to be a grilled alien lifeform is delivered to your table, make appreciative noises and get stuck in. However, you may find that the ink sac that gives Cuttlefish its Sepia reference is quite easy to burst. Watch out if this happens, as the ink can go quite a long way in a crowded restaurant.

For future reference, this is what a Cuttlefish looks like:

and here’s someone who obviously ate at the same restaurant as us:

4. Remember the golden rules around your fellow humans in European/ Mediterranean cities:

4.1 Whilst the image of loveliness that typifies our notion of people living in Milan, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid etc, is of beautiful olive skin, flawless bone structure, elegant dress sense and shiny hair, the grim reality is that a large percentage of the population look like Wayne and Waynetta Slob dressed entirely from Millets c1976, and with skin applied with an artex trowel

4.2 In any given crowd, on the metro or in restaurants, the majority of people wearing black clothes will be local. ‘Colourful’ clothing tends to be brought to you by Americans and Northern Europeans, most noticeably the British. As if you needed any more signs as to who they were.

5. Meanwhile, back in the restaurant, try not to improvise your order. So if you see a delightful fruit salad being delivered to a table nearby, and then think you see it on the menu for a mere 1 euro, don’t be surprised if you get into a bizarre discussion where the waiter lists all the fruit he has available, you keep answering ‘Si’, and he starts getting slightly cross. In case you’d not guessed, one euro buys you one piece of fruit. Still the conversation will stay with me for some time to come:

‘Plaintain?’

‘Si’

‘Mandarin’

‘Si’

‘Naranja’

‘Si’…and so on

Anyway, had a lovely time. Not as glad to be back as I’d like…