Statistical Review of the Year: 2010

Aaaaaand I’m back.

So, it’s been 2 months, but then it has been a busy year. And as always, the year ends with a statistical review…

Number of months in year: 12
Number of months in year actually needed: 15
Number of houses bought: 1
Number of wives wedded to: 1
Number of litres of paint put onto walls: At least 40
Number of countries visited: 2
Number of continents visited: 2
Favourite place(s): San Francisco, Death Valley, Greenwich Village, and Jewish Quarter of NYC
Best musical experience: West Side Story on Broadway
Number of weddings played for: 70-something
Bottles of Champagne drunk in the name of ‘wine-tasting’: At least a dozen.

And, in a change to the previous format, ladies and gentlemen I present my year in graph form:

New York, New York

Web 2.0: End

So, I’ve been thinking about quitting Facebook for a while. There. I said it.

There have been a few high-profile exits over the last year or so. And I’m on the waiting list for Diaspora (the new Facebook, not some suppository  in case that’s what you’re thinking). But then there was that high-profile ‘international quit Facebook day’ back in May, and no one really went through with it. And it got less coverage than ‘international talk like a pirate day’. And I’m left in inner-turmoil.

You see, I like the idea of joining a gym. I like the idea of being able to say, ‘oohh, hard day at work and I’m just off to the gym’. But then there’s the reality of it all: the fees, the holdall, the shiny trainers, being over-taken on a treadmill by a purple-rinse great grandmother. That kind of thing.

And it’s the same about quitting Facebook. I like the idea of getting more time to do stuff (think of all the extra cello practice I could do if I got my cello out every time I’d normally ‘pop on facebook’). I like the idea of saying, ‘oh yes, well I’m living in analogue again now’. But then I think I’d constantly be worrying about not being in the loop; about what I’m missing out on. It’s like being part of a gang at school – you don’t want to cut the worm in half and try to set fire to it with a magnifying glass from the science lab, but you’re scared you won’t be able to join in the conversation at the back of the class after lunch because you won’t be in on any of the jokes.

Then I look at my online life: My blog, my website, the quartet site, the quartet blog, the ensemble site, Twitter. I’m quietly proud of the fact I had a semi-blog (sounds rude, doesn’t it?) about life in my student flat back in 1997/98. That my quartet were one of the first groups of its type to embrace the web for work. I like to feel like a tech geek… but then I don’t have an Iphone. You see, I’m in turmoil again.

Lot’s of people have summed it up a lot better than me, like Daniel Sieberg here. And I don’t think I’m as bad as he thinks he became. I’m very selective about my friends. My tweets are locked and private. My Facebook Friends are nowhere near to triple figure because they’re all people who I interact with online and have met in person.

So, ladies and gentlemen, before I close the ‘book for good I’m going to try one last way. A third way, if you like. For the next few weeks (or until I completely fail at it), I’m going to try to promote interaction with my tweets and updates. The most obvious way is to phrase things in questions, inviting a response. I’m going to try to interact more on it – that way I won’t just be a part of the worm-chopping, I’ll be starting the conversations about it. And before you all call me a hypocrite because I have a blog – there’s a comment box down there. And I’ve been looking at ways of integrating the social elements into this for a while.

It’s my last-ditch attempt to make it work before it goes for good.

The Pope would like it. Probably. Sorry, just wanted to stay topical.

Baggy Trousers

Who was your most influential teacher at school? I think mine was an English teacher…

Or: The one in which I get all nostalgic for school. Sorry. This won’t last long.

I know it’s because I went back to Suffolk the other day, and also because lately I seem to fail spectacularly whenever it comes to meeting up with people from school, but my brain keeps flashing up memories of school.

Today, I was driving along and Sting started singing ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’. Those of you under the age of20 will know it as ‘that one Rachel sang on Glee when she had a crush on Mr Shu’.

Suddenly I’m catapulted back to being about 14 and sitting in assembly. Assemblies at my school were a big thing. OfSted had been in and told the school off for only having 1 assembly a week, and for the fact they had zero religious content, or hymns, or anything really. So, to remedy this, the English teacher Mr O’Connell was standing in front of us taking the assembly. He was telling us about a friend he had at teacher training college in Sheffield (you need to know at this point, that Mr O’Connell was, to schoolkids from a sleepy Suffolk Market town, a gritty northerner with a pale complexion, and weathered skin, a northern accent and a VERY loud voice).

Anyway, I’m sure the point of his assembly was probably about judging people. Or perhaps it was career advice. It could have been about the correct consistency for fondant icing for all we knew. He’d just told us he was best friends with Sting before he was famous – they’d been friends at teacher-training college. And, so to most of us, this made him one step away from royalty.

It wasn’t just this that made him a really good teacher. As he taught us ‘Our Day Out’ by Willy Russell, those of us that were listening and reading between the lines could see that he was comparing it to our school and some of our teachers. He had just the right balance of encouragement and fear too. And as a result, English quickly became my favourite subject.

He wasn’t the only teacher to make a big impression on us. There was our maths teacher Mr Evans, who had a masterly command of writing equations upside down on the overhead projector, and access to an infinite number of beige suits. And then there was Mr Lloyd who decided to saw his own thumb off to make our woodward lesson more interesting one Wednesday afternoon. There was the semi-retired Mr Knight who’d been told to teach RE instead of woodwork (his actual subject), and set about the most un-PC tour of Judaism you could ever imagine. And then there was the morris-dancing history teacher Mr Clarke, who taught us the history of medicing using Blackadder episodes, and the history of the Irish ‘troubles’ via an impressive impression of the Rev. Ian Paisley.

The connection is this though: they all taught you about life and about yourself rather than just the subject (in some cases, they barely touched the subject written on the door to their room!). Think back to the teachers who influenced you the most, and I bet you’ll find the same.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, yes there was an influential music teacher or two. One in particular gets a mention here.

That’s me in the corner

Actually, scrub that. That’s me in the spotlight. In the middle.

Going back to where you grew up is always a nostalgic experience. The streets you grew up on (not literally, obviously, I’m not the Littlest Hobo or anything). The park you played in. The school you went to. The shops you shopped in. The houses your friends lived in.

Of course, in reality it’s a bit weird. The streets I grew up on have been pedestrianised, or blocked off and turned into front gardens to make the place look more attractive. The council have decided to build a replacement primary school on what’s left of the park I played in, having built ticky-tacky box houses on half of it already. The school I went to is now some trendy business and enterprise school. The shops have all become either building societies or coffee shops. And most of my friends seemed to move house every year or so, and hardly any of them live there anymore anyway.

So imagine my surprise when I was presented with this page of the local paper.

‘What is he doing here? Do you recognise anyone in this picture?’

Um. Yes, actually. That was me (yes yes, I know you all want to know the name of my stylist, but they’ve long hung-up their scissors). I am famous. In fact, not only am I famous, I’ve met Steve Davis. STEVE DAVIS!!

Quite a big deal for a boy of 8 or 9 who spent most of his days playing snooker in his spare room with a specially-made waistcoat on. I got a morning off school too to go and meet him as he opened the new sports department in the Co-op. Everyone got a signed picture of Steve, signed in silver pen (I still have it). In true Ferris Beuller style, someone from the paper took my picture, and by Thursday everyone knew I didn’t go to the dentist, or whatever excuse my Mum must have made up.

Funny isn’t it. You expect to go back and feel nostalgic as you go passed places, you don’t expect the nostalgia to come to you!

More pressingly, why did they think he needed a bodyguard in a small Suffolk market town. Any why is he taking such a nervous look at me?

The Green Green Grass of Somewhere near Home

Have a good Bank Holiday Monday? I found myself visiting a stately home, and a long walk through the woods. Strangely though, I was drawn to this image out of every photo I took. I’m not sure why, but I love photos with blue and green…

Last of the Last of the Summer Wine

Okay, I admit it from the start that I’ve always had a bit of soft spot for the sitcom set in a field featuring tea-drinking and rolling down a hill in a bathtub. Yes, I know everyone only ever mentions the runaway bathtub episode, but it was a good one.

Today the BBC killed it off. Not in a kind of shoot-em-up US Postal service rampage sort of way, although that would have made for an interesting episode… No, they just let it slip away peacefully in the night. No big shindig, just the cast heading up the hill in an old tour bus leaving two trouser-less policemen standing in a ditch beside the Yorkshire Dales. S

The thing is, the lovely Sarah remembers watching it with her Grandparents in Cambridgeshire and wondering if they didn’t think it was some kind of documentary of how people live ‘oop-north’.

It certainly was a retirement home for the UK’s veteran actors. Yes, we lost many of them along the way; Compo, Foggy, Wally, Nora – I’d run out of space on this blog before I listed them all. But Clegg’s still there, and Howard, Pearl, Marina, and now they’ve been joined by Captain Peacock from ‘Are you being served’ and Russ Abbot (how, incidentally does an excellent job of reprising his routines from his ‘Russ Abbot Comedy Show’ in the form of Basildon Bond and slapstick, just with less Nazis and fat ladies).

It’s charm was in it’s simplicity. Family-friendly smutty jokes, double-entendre, and stunts worthy of Michael Crawford in ‘Some Mothers Do ‘ave em’. You watch it and your mind says the stage directions ‘compo exits stage left’ because you know it’s just a stageplay on screen. But whilst that gives it it’s charm, it’s also made for it’s demise. A Yorkshire cafe just doesn’t work in HD – there’s only so many pixels in off-white doilies and creme tablecloths. And the media is all about airbrushing wrinkles, and the caps can only cover so much.

It will remain a comedy great, and it leaves me in two minds – should it have been shipped off to Switzerland to rest in peace a decade ago, or is it as much a part of our national identity as the Queen? Personally, with all the hours of television devoted to Dick n Dom, Noel Edmunds and Adrian bloody Chiles, I can’t help thinking that we could have kept 30 minutes a week for Last of the Summer Wine. Sure, no one would have watched, but we’d have all felt good knowing it was there – like those little tea shops in Cotswold town that no one goes in, but which were they to be replaced by wine bars and internet cafes would soon ruin the quaint charm of the place.

In Distress

I’ve been playing around with various artistic ways of presenting some of my photos, and couldn’t resist distressing a pic of an American car I shot at the Chipping Sodbury Classic Car run a few months back.

Golden, that gate is

Recently in San Francisco, I was determined to get a nice shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. Turns out it’s not as easy as it looks. The city has its own weather system, almost entirely independent of the rest of planet Earth. And when it doesn’t cooperate, it really doesn’t cooperate.

Try as I might, I couldn’t get the nice red hues, and the top of the structure in one shot…

So, I thought I’d walk the 3 miles or so across it, to where it looked sunnier incidentally, and try again. But one half of the pesky bridge then started hiding behind it’s non-city brother!

Thankfully, we happened upon China beach in our hire car as we were preparing to cross the bridge and leave San Fran on our roadtrip. Even then, it refused to cooperate with our honeymoon shot (as did my ‘smile’ function, as can be seen below)…

Finally though, it cooperated and appeared in full shot just as we were walking away from the beach, and the city. I did get a few good shots, but they’re being prepared for a new website project. But here’s a shot…

US Transport

The first few rough edits of some of pictures taken on our recent US road trip. Rough, because the final ones are going on a new website I’m working on (technically I’m working on 3 sites simultaneously but more to come soon).

I was going for the 70’s grainy film style picture…