Destroy All Onions!

A colleague returned from a trip home to India recently, and brought me a gift of some delicious Indian snacks.

But wait – what is that little logo in the middle?

Let’s zoom in a bit!

Yes! A logo on them to show that they contain no onion!

This is real progress, and I hope it gets rolled out internationally!

I’ll admit that I have nothing in particular against garlic, and yes, I am aware that this logo is for the benefit of people whose religion forbids them to eat certain things, but this still really made my day.

As a side-effect of living in the 21st century, I get a lot of junk mail through my letterbox. We all do. It’s the times we live in.

Some of it doesn’t have any name on it. Some of it is for “the occupier”. Most of it has my name on it. But a few are for “Mr and Mrs Simms”. My mother is Mrs Simms, as are some of my cousins. But none of them live with me - there is no Mrs Simms at this address. And yet a few people insist on sending mail to me and my non-existent wife. They are all charities, I notice. I assume they feel that their letter might be thrown in the bin by me, but that my tenderhearted imaginary wife might take pity on them and read the contents.

However, they are completely wrong. I get annoyed by this, and refuse to read them at all. I don’t understand why they do this. It is clearly a deliberate strategy to add an “and Mrs” to their address database. But it’s wrong - I’m single, and I like being single, and I object to being assigned a wife.

So stop it charities!

“O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana by Carl Orff came up on random play today.

Or the Old Spice music to some of us of a certain age. Also used in the X Factor.

It’s a marvellous piece of music. But I’d never thought much about the words before.

Which is today’s exciting news – there are proper words, and you can sing along.
In Latin!

It turns out that the words are older than the music by several centuries, and are actually pretty cool. In fact, over here you can read the words along with the music, and the English translation. What a clever old internet it is.

(As an aside, if you followed the second link above, I remember watching that live. They were amazing, but put on very scary faces for it. Very impressive!)

I was recently in the west of Ireland, in Donegal, with some friends from church on a hiking expedition. It’s a long old trip, and on the way we took a wrong turn and drove through Daniel O’Donnell’s home town. I was shocked, stunned and appalled to find:

It’s not many people who get a visitor centre in their home town while they are still alive.

I met up with an old friend the other day, who couldn’t help sniggering when I mentioned being at the gym the day before. She remembers when I was younger, and completely opposed to such things. But now I am a bit older, and aware of the fact that a bit of effort now might have benefits for my health in the future.

Recently, things haven’t been going quite so well, and I have been a bit discouraged about the whole thing. I’m getting more aches and pains than I used to, which I mainly attribute to exercising parts of my body more than they would like. My weight has also been increasing, which is kind of the opposite of what I want.

But at the gym on Thursday, Chris took my stats, using a measuring tape and a set of magic scales. And quite unexpectedly, they are showing improvement! My weight is up because I have gained muscle, and muscle is heavier than fat. So I am encouraged again. I went out for a run this afternoon and ran 5 miles in less than 50 minutes. I keep waiting for my legs to get sore, but they haven’t. I’m really pleased about that.

I’ll never be an athlete, but at least I’m not wasting my time, and going to the gym is giving me some results. Hooray!

I  hadn’t planned to watch the Olympic Opening Ceremony. I’m not a fan of organised sport, so obviously the Olympics is not my cup of tea - I generally refer to it as the Great Egg and Spoon Race. But I was working late at home on Friday night, and had come to an end just as I knew it was starting, so I thought I would stick on the tv and give it a chance.

And most unexpectedly, I was impressed. For a start, there was no sport, which was great. It was also uniquely British – no other country would choose to celebrate the things that Danny Boyle chose, and I like that. It was a good show. And most unexpectedly, there was humour. These sorts of things are usually super-serious, nothing but pomp and ceremony, and viewers usually find the humour in it by pricking that pomposity. But the inclusion of the excellent Mr Bean sketch, and the Queen’s parachuting were completely unexpected, and did a brilliant job of lightening the mood and making it less pompous. A great move, and very daring! And full marks to the Queen for joining in.

But the things that impressed me most were actually towards the end. The choice of people who carried in the Olympic flag was remarkable – when I heard the name Doreen Lawrence, I was really surprised. But I loved that the opportunity was taken to acknowledge people who are actually making the world a better place, as opposed to the Olympics, which is meant to be about that, but isn’t really. We could argue all day about who was or wasn’t worthy of it (probably about Shami Chakrabati), but it was a great idea, and I loved it. And then the inclusion of Mohammed Ali, a man once so great, but now unable to stand on his own, speak, or even smile for the event. The Olympics is all about stronger, faster and higher, but those things are fleeting, and I found Ali’s inclusion a poignant reminder of mortality.

And then I loved the fact that Danny outfoxed all of the bookies by using a group of young athletes to light the flame, rather than any of the famous names from the past. It was nice to beat the media, and do something that no-one expected. And the cauldron was a very nice piece of art itself.

I will of course admit that I didn’t watch all of it – the parade of the nations was more interesting than I had expected, but I still did some wandering in and out at that stage. But I did watch most of it.

So good work Danny, an unexpected pleasure!

I’ve been riding my bike to work for quite a while now. Ever since I started working for BT lots of years ago, I’ve walked to work. But last year I worked out that cycling wasn’t that scary, it got me into work a whole lot quicker, it’s kind of fun, and it’s a bit healthy.

So I have been riding my mountain bike into work. That bike is 6 or 7 years old,  it’s got over five and a half thousand miles on it, and it’s showing its age a bit. So I decided it was time to upgrade and get a new bike. Since my last bike cost me about 150 quid , I thought it wouldn’t be too difficult to improve on it.

But it’s been a tricky business. The one thing that I knew I wanted were disk brakes, since much of my cycling is done in the rain, and disk brakes should have a bit more stopping power since they are in the middle of the wheel and out of the puddles. So off I went looking at bikes. I quickly got a feel for how the components improve as you spend more money. And I quickly discovered that the disk brakes add a lot to the cost.

After a fair bit of looking around all the local bike shops, I very nearly bought a bike a couple of weeks ago, but it was a bit more expensive than I had expected, and to be honest I didn’t like the colour (dark red). When I went back 2 days later, the last one had been sold earlier that morning. So I have been back round the bike shops a few times, and spent a lot of time looking at them on the internet. I very nearly bought one online at the start  of the week, but I didn’t really want to buy one over the internet – I wanted to sit on it, and have a bit of a ride on it, and be able to take it back to the shop if bits fell off!

And finally today I found one I like, and put down a deposit on it. The picture isn’t of my actual bike, as I have to wait for a fresh delivery, but it’s the one I had a ride on to try it out.

So it’s a Specialized Hard Rock Sport (2013 edition no less), from McConvey Cycles just down the road.

I’m all pleased

Two pieces of musical news today, one from the radio, and one from my ipod.

On shuffle while I was out cycling today I heard “Over There” by Glenn Miller and his orchestra. You can imagine my surprise when I immediately recognised it as that curse of the airwaves, the Go Compare tune (and no, I am not putting a link to the go compare tune in my blog! Just turn on your tv, and leave it for a few minutes and you’ll find it yourself). So for anyone who has found themselves whistling or humming that tune accidentally, this is excellent news – it has a more civilised pedigree that you might expect, and your actually humming a Glenn Miller tune!

The other musical news is that the Beach Boys classic “Sloop John B” has become a marching tune on the twelfth! They played a clip of it on Talkback, and then Wendy Austin helpfully explained that this was not simply a marching band expanding their repertoire in an unusual direction, but was in fact deeply offensive. I was hugely disappointed, as I would have liked to hear them tackle Good Vibrations or Barbara Ann (though of course flute bands always suffer from not having enough bass which wouldn’t help in the harmonies). I was hoping the story behind this would be that the Beach Boys had accidentally picked a folk tune which also had loyalist lyrics, but it turns out not to be the case. Apparently the Beach Boys did get there first, and then someone did a re-write on their lyrics. If you don’t believe me, you can hear it here.
Such a shame.

In other non-musical news, the weather has been unexpectedly good, and I got to cycle yesterday and today. Today I made it to the International Airport and back, which was a stupid idea, and I was knackered long before home. But on the bright side I did get to stop for Maud’s ice cream in Templepatrick, which was just what I needed. And another stop at the Indian takeaway down the street to refuel when I got home. 40 miles – a good afternoon out!

I had an unexpected pleasure on Saturday, of going to the Grand Opera House in the afternoon to see Gilbert and Sullivans’ Ruddigore. I know! Opera on a Saturday afternoon! What kind of crazy person does that! Well, me apparently. And maybe a hundred other people – I wasn’t there on my own.

I’d seen a few posters around town for this, and after enjoying a Gilbert and Sullivan opera last year I thought I should look into it. But I am disorganised clown, and I didn’t. Then a friend raved about it in work on Friday after seeing it the previous evening. I assumed I had missed my chance, but he pointed out that there was a Saturday afternoon matinee. So with his glowing recommendation, off I went.

The seats in Opera House remain as uncomfortable as I remember. But I really enjoyed my afternoon nonetheless. The spoiler-light summary of the story would be that Rose and Robin find their romance complicated greatly by the fact that he is the rightful Baron of Ruddigore, a title which comes with a curse that he must commit a crime every day or die horribly, by the fact that his friend Richard must always follow his heart wherever it may lead him, and by the fact that Rose must at all times behave properly according to her book of etiquette.

The play opens in the style of a silent film to provide some background, which is very nicely done. The curtain then opens to Rose being awoken by the local girls, all dressed as bridesmaids. As she is the prettiest girl in town, no-one will propose to them until she marries, and so they are all getting increasingly exasperated by her choosiness, and very keen for her to marry as soon as possible. It’s a lovely opening, well sung, with a large cast of bridesmaids, nicely choreographed, and with all the wit we expect from Gilbert and Sullivan.

Ruddigore is not apparently among the most loved of Gilbert and Sullivan’s works, and I freely admit I had never heard of it and recognised none of the songs. But it was exactly what I had expected and hoped for - the tunes are catchy, the lyrics are witty, and there were plenty of laughs. The staging was very good, with the ghostly Ruddigores emerging from their portraits very well, and generally high production values (as I guess they say in these situations). The little orchestra were very good once the clarinet player had sorted out his squeaky reed in the first couple of numbers, and never overpowered the singers.

One song had a surprising update to include crimes such as phone hacking, expenses fiddling, and Greek debts which was marvellous and completely unexpected. But highlight for me had to be the playing of the baron as the classic pantomime villain, with black moustache, top hat, and black cape which was swished and swirled around at every opportunity.

A great afternoon, and not bad value at £20 for a long and lavish show. I loved it, and will definitely seek out more Gilbert and Sullivan.

Managed to catch Prometheus on Saturday night, Ridley Scott’s eagerly awaited prequel to his best film, Alien. Scott had said that he didn’t want to do a traditional prequel that would end at the start of Alien, but wanted to tell a different story that could lead in different directions.

So, how was it? Pretty good I thought. It’s a film that looks beautiful throughout, from sweeping landscape shots to a very nice spaceship, from cool spacesuits to the sort of holographic displays we’d love to have – full marks for design and cinematography. It also has a story, and a compelling one too. Without saying too much, when a couple of archaeologists find the same pattern of stars repeating in ancient paintings from around the Earth, they realise that it points to a destination that may explain the origins of life on our planet. An expedition is mounted on board the space ship Prometheus, with a crew who have various reasons for being there, which takes them to a place that fans of Alien will recognise.

While the cast are all pretty good, the show is predictably stolen by Michael Fassbender, who plays David, the ship’s android. It’s partly his fault, because he is very compelling to watch, but the android is also the most interesting character – he is on a ship with his creators, as they seek their creators. He also gets the most interesting conversation in the film, when he asks:

“Why do you think your people made me”

“Because we could”

“How disappointed will you be if you get the same answer?”

(Not a precise transcription, just how I remember it)

And so we have a film with a bit more of a philosophical edge to it, about the relationship between creators and their creations. It is not an action movie, but it is unpleasant and gory in places, just like Alien was. It’s not by any means the best film I have ever seen, and it will never have the place in sci-fi culture that Alien has, but I liked it and I think it’s worth seeing.

And now the spoilers – if you haven’t seen it, then look away now.

As I’ve said, I rather liked the film, but a few things about it either annoyed me, or intrigued me. The first is in the setup; at the start, we see our archeologists discovering the address of the alien planet, and a big deal is made of how this is a message or an invitation. But then later they conclude that it’s at best a research station, at worst a weapons research station. So why would the aliens have given that invitation in the first place? Surely they would be more likely to have issued any invitation to their home world. Perhaps deliberate misdirection as a security precaution, but it still seems odd.

And then a thing that intrigued me – my initial doubts were confirmed – the planet they visit is designated LV-223. But the planet in Alien and Aliens is LV-426. So they are different planets – it becomes clear at the end of the film that the alien ship they discovered is not the one that they will discover in Alien, but it was only when I checked at home that I realised that it’s not even on the same planet. Interesting.

And then something else that annoyed me – they cast Guy Pearce as Peter Weyland. Weyland is an old man, Guy Pearce is not – he is a much younger man in make-up. From this, I assumed that he would somehow be rejuvenated at some point, but he wasn’t. So why not just cast an old actor? There are plenty of them about! Unless of course I fell exactly into the trap I was meant to. I kind of disliked that on principle – Where it’s not required, I’d rather see an old actor than a made-up one.

Another question for me was whether they were really correct in their conclusions about it all. Clearly the alien substance does horrible things, but was it actually a weapon? Or was it just biology gone mad? I’ll agree that the Engineer didn’t seem pleased to see the humans, but he only got violent when they started asking the cheeky questions. I don’t know that it was very clear that he was heading to earth to destroy it. I’ll agree that their cargo would not have done humanity many favours, but I don’t think it was clear that this was a plan to harm us. Let a child loose in their dad’s garage full of tools and they’ll damage themselves and everything in their path, but neither their dad, nor the tools, nor the child is evil. I have a suspicion that there could be a director’s cut somewhere that might explain this a bit better. Or maybe it’s just me, but I find it vaguely unsatisfying.

We are also meant to see great significance in the cross, and Shaw’s insistence on wearing it. But there must be a problem there – if she has a Christian faith, she doesn’t have to travel across light years to seek her creator. If she doesn’t have that faith, why is the cross so important to her. She’s clearly believing in something, but it’s not very clear that it’s anything other than a non-specific hope for something after death, as opposed to an actual religious faith.

And then the ending. I love the idea of Shaw and David heading off to find the home of the Engineers. I’m not sure it needs a sequel to tell it, but I like the idea of it, and I like the open-endedness of it. And then we have the birth of what is clearly something related to the familar H.R.Giger alien. Again, an odd thing that the offspring off a giant octopus/squid thing and a largely human looking engineer would be that kind of alien. I can see how it’s great to finish like that, but it seems a bit unlikely.

Enough rambling – bottom line – this seems like the longest review I’ve written in a long time, and that’s probaby an indication of how much I liked the film – well worth seeing I reckon.