My Personality

I’m not sure what questions I  answered that gave it the impression I’m not conscientious!

Now, where are those leaflets I should have delivered in July?

It would have been Freddie Mercury’s 60th birthday today. Neil has all the details.

You may know Neil as the one who thinks I don’t get out often enough for not recognising a Metallica musician.

To be honest, even if I was going out every night, I still don’t think I’d understand what you young things are listening to these days.

Today, I had an accident – I fell down the stairs. So although I am acutely aware of my hip, I’m not feeling particularly hip.

My foot just slipped out from under me and I fell the full length of the stairs on my arse. I grabbed a bannister to stop myself but it just came lose and ripped a hole in my finger. I have carpet burns on my legs and bruises on my shoulderblades that banged every step. I didn’t come to a stop until my bum was right on the floor and my feet had pushed the mat into the front door.

I felt really stupid.

The noise attracted the cats who came bounding down the stairs and just looked at me and didn’t help much. P was already at work.

I didn’t need any help, nothing was broken or seriously damaged, but as well as feeling stupid I felt surprisingly shaken.

Did you know a significant number of older people die at Christmas because they go and stay with their children, wake in the night to answer a call of nature, get confused and end up tumbling down the stairs? Make sure you leave a night light on.
So it could have been worse.

But I really ought to write my will.

Yesterday at the movie recording was interesting. Amazing numbers of beautiful young people hanging around not doing very much. We got to work with Robert Webb and David Mitchell and Jessica Stevenson. We recorded a number of scenes. We spent a huge amount of time being subjected to a bad warm-up guy called Scott who told us he was just back from entertaining the troops, but clearly hadn’t had time to change his routine to something a litte more family friendly. They fed us – handing each of us a baggie with crisps, an apple, chocolate and water as we signed our waivers – then asked us to do everything we could to make sure the bags weren’t in shot. Easier for the guys…

ARGH! WTF’S THAT DANGLING DOWN BY MY FACE??? ARGH, A SPIDER! Fetch cat. Point cat at spider. Cat bats spider. Spider wanders off. Cat wanders off. Why don’t our mighty hunter cats eat spiders like every other cat I’ve ever had? I keep walking into spider webs in the house and garden. They like to span across the obvious walkways. Maybe I should hoover more often.

… anyway easier for the guys with overcoats to hide lunch bags than the girls following instuctions and wearing gownless evening straps in their magician’s wife costume.

The highlight was definitely the time when the talent spent five minutes just talking to the audience. Jessica Stevenson asked for questions, and I asked if there were going to be zombies. There weren’t, but she did promise a decapitation. The boors behind us asked her if she’d ever slept with Simon Pegg, and she, er, avoided the issue.

Towards the end of the end of the evening, I got my own best shot at the limelight. Robert Webb (v cute in person as well on TV) came and stood in the audience, right next to me. Right next to me. I shared his spotlight.

True, it was a wide angle with almost all of the 700 extras in shot too, but it was me right next to the star.

Shoes

Originally uploaded by nilexuk.

Iain, when he was (knickerflash) nominating me for More 4 Podcast Blog of the Week, wondered whether I wore sandals.

I certainly do. I insist on a pair with nothing between the toes and nothing behind my ankle. They are very good for people with foot odour disorders to let their feet breathe. They are much less good for everyone around you in enclosed spaces.

It’s not a sin any more. Everyone’s wearing sandals these days.

Tomorrow, we’re going to be extras in a film. We have some unexpected spare tickets after friends had to back out at the last minute.

The film is made by the people behind Peep Show and is about magicians. One magician “accidentally” guillotines the other’s wife in half following a dispute.

We’re going to be the audience at a magic show. We have to dress as magicians (or magician’s wives/assistants) ourselves and sit in the Royal Centre tomorrow from 3.30pm til 9pm.

If you’d like to join in and can be in Nottingham for those times tomorrow, drop me an urgent line.

One thing’s for certain, I’m not dressing like this magician. this magician. (NSFW)

I’ve just seen this story at the BBC about lawyers representing two associations of music publishers in the States.

They’ve closed olga, the online guitar archive. The site had a large number of tabs – sort of like guitar sheet music – for thousands of songs.  They were unofficial, worked out by fans, and many of them weren’t much good at all.

But it’s the way I learned to play the meagre few songs I know.  I play a knackered second-hand guitar with bent tuning pins.  I can only just manage more chords than fingers on my fret hand, and I don’t have the time to practice.  I’ve no intention ever of buying guitar music written down, and no intention of ever buying a decent guitar, or
performing in public.

Now I have no way of even trying to improve my repertoir or play any more songs.

It’s not even as if the vast majority of songs were even available commercially.  And its not as if each artist who felt like his copyright was being infringed has requested his songs be removed.  It’s a blanket “take everything down” – and it even includes folk songs for which no copyright exists.

Go and read all the comments made on the BBC story.  They have everything to say, I think.

If you buy / pre-order the new Charles Kennedy book that’s hitting the headlines at the moment using this link, you can help the Lib Dems raise funds without it costing you anything.

I’m tempted to put the link so that it earns me money, too, but all the other Amazon links on here do that. I’ve earned about thirty quid that way since 1998, mostly off my own purchases.

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• Of the more than 1,000 number 1 singles in the UK charts, only 80 have been solo female artists.

• Madonna had 12 of those.
• Kylie, Britney and Whitney have had 15 between them
• Dusty Springfield only had one! (“You don’t have to say you love me”)

• Therefore one Windermere = 9 * 30.5 * 24 = 6,588 Albert Halls
• “Mere” means “lake”, so saying Lake Windermere is like saying Lake Winderlake

I like factoids like these.  My brain stores them up endlessly, then mixes them up with others and then regurgitates them randomly at parties.

What are your favourite factoids?