Marcus Intalex

has a new mix CD – in the Fabriclive series. It is really rather quite surprisingly good. Especially when one is seeking to relax after unpacking 30 boxes of Collins dictionaries, folding the boxes and bringing them home, ready to fill them with you own books over the weekend.

Plus, and this is a big plus, it always interests me to hear how DJ’s put a set together – peaks and troughs, or a simple build to a climax – even if I am not entirely au fait with the music (in fact, this generally serves to help me take a dislocated view of how they go about their craft).

Unteachable

Basil Fawlty: This is typical. Absolutely typical… of the kind of…
[shouting]
Basil Fawlty: ARSE I have to put up with from you people. You ponce in here expecting to be waited on hand and foot, while I’m trying to run a hotel here. Have you any idea of how much there is to do? Do you ever think of that? Of course not, you’re all too busy sticking your noses into every corner, poking around for things to complain about, aren’t you? Well let me tell you something – this is exactly how Nazi Germany started. A lot of layabouts with nothing better to do than to cause trouble. Well I’ve had fifteen years of pandering to the likes of you, and I’ve had enough. I’ve had it. Come on, pack your bags and get out.

The Life Laundry

was a dreadful BBC2 lifestyle show, in which a “home consultant” (how does one train in this area?) would come into someone’s house, take everything out of it, put it on their lawn/forecourt, and tell them to sort through it. They would then try to sell anything of value, recycle anything that could be, and then pulp the rest of it in an enormous crusher. The result, ideally, would be that the individual would have more space, more money and be psychologically healed by breaking with their past.

I have bought a shredder in anticipation of my early September move. And, I have to say there is something wonderfully cathartic about destroying masses of useless paperwork (to be recycled and/or used as packing material, of course). So much so, that it has also inspired me to remove all my CDs from their original cases and store them in wallets. I am not sure I will be psychologically healthier following this process, but at least there will be far less to carry down to the van come the start of September.

Time has told me

Time has told me
You’re a rare rare find
A troubled cure
For a troubled mind.

And time has told me
Not to ask for more
Someday our ocean
Will find its shore.

So I`ll leave the ways that are making me be
What I really don’t want to be
Leave the ways that are making me love
What I really don’t want to love.

Time has told me
You came with the dawn
A soul with no footprint
A rose with no thorn.

Your tears they tell me
There’s really no way
Of ending your troubles
With things you can say.

And time will tell you
To stay by my side
To keep on trying
’til there’s no more to hide.

So leave the ways that are making you be
What you really don’t want to be
Leave the ways that are making you love
What you really don’t want to love.

Time has told me
You’re a rare rare find
A troubled cure
For a troubled mind.

And time has told me
Not to ask for more
For some day our ocean
Will find its shore.

Nick Drake, from Five Leaves Left

Today

Estate agents
Premier League
Baltika
Peter Davison
and Shredder no sorry, a shredder…

It’s not a matter of life and death…

It’s more important than that. EPL starts again today. In 1 hour and 35 minutes. And I am so excited I could burst. Almost a year of unbroken football with the European Championship next summer. In the meantime, though, an ugly man who played his entire career for  the most unmentionable team scores a raft of delightful goals:

Two mouthfuls and I was there,

back in my brother’s flat in Moscow in June 1996, after 6 weeks in Kazan. The taste was Ben & Jerry’s cookie dough ice-cream, which could be found in his freezer, along with frozen plastic cartons of milk. Finding it in Tesco’s last night was another serendipitious experience – I had bought it to stuff myself, in the vain hope that too much food would assuage my insomniac tendencies. It did.Moreover, the taste also led to a wave of Russophile nostalgia, aided and abetted by Andy Home’s “Siberian Dreams“; his reaction(s) to the Russian suburbs of both Moscow and Norilsk capture beautifully the disorientation experienced by the first time visitor to the Russia beyond Red Square, the Kremlin and Piter.

My Lovely Horse

My Lovely Horse
Running through the.. field
Where are you going
With your fetlocks blowing
In the… wind

I want to shower you with sugar lumps
And ride you over…fences
I want to polish your hooves every single day
And bring you to the horse… dentist

My lovely horse
You’re a pony no… more
Running around
With a man on your back
Like a train in the night
Like a train in the… (hang on I can get this)… night!

Thank you. In general.

Karinthy and Milgram

are two early theorists linked to the ‘Six degrees of separation‘. I am slightly disappointed that it does not seem to work on Facebook – maybe the population is too small or too specific, but each group, be it social, geographical or based on interest, seems to exist in a vacuum. Hmmm… I shall go on thinking.

Number 95

is the bus that travels from White City to Hanger Lane. I know this because I caught it this evening, then changed to the number 83 to Ealing Hospital. The tubelines into West London all went into meltdown this evening. Why, I am unsure.

Thankfully, my train terminated at the aforementioned White City, and so I waited for 20 minutes in front of BBC Television Centre (the home to many of my dreams as a child), then caught the bus. I was even more grateful that it happened at this point of my journey (or as grateful as one can be when your journey time is doubled), as I have been stranded at East Acton Tube station before – missing in Acton, if you will (there was a student band at my halls of residence in 1995/6/7 who thought that was a wonderful pun – I assume they had actually lived in Acton, rather than simply being illiterate or having no proofreading skills). And now I wonder whether there are American and Ethiopian bands missing in Akron and Axum respectively. God, I hate my brain.

Despite being next to the A40 out of London, East Acton is, in fact, the middle of nowhere. For all I know, there could be a dimensional portal at the exit to the station – such is your chance of catching a bus towards any local population centres. I am sure Warsaw and Krakow both have more connecting bus services to Ealing than East Acton does – and it is less than 2 miles away. There is a bus that runs to and from Hammersmith, but it just stops in the middle of an industrial estate. End of the line. Quite literally, if it was the last bus leaving Hammersmith bus station, you saw the word Acton and assumed it would at least carry you vaguely in the direction you wanted to go.

Ah, I feel much better now.