chrisp65

For all the crimes of Savile, it was talking over the last 45 seconds of every song I was trying to tape that I can never forgive him for.

On the charades theme, I stayed up until 2:00am during the floods to see how the sign language person doing the news round up did Cockermouth.

Location: The Ivor Davies, Wetherspoons, Cardiff Date: 26.02.2016 Time: 8:30am Status: about half full, two men dancing a jig outside, one man cheering them on waving a carrier bag welcome to match day in the city centre.....

fair point about fussy eaters though...

With all due respect to the £1,000 budget, once you are in that price bracket there is an element of luck. Faced with a Renault, a Jag, Disco, Fiat, Chrysler and an Alfa and they were all £995.....it's a brave person that would guarantee one over the others.

Let's not take our eye off the ball here, Rodders was a public school fag. I was at a 'do' once. An architect's award evening. I was in the queue for my scran mid way through the evening when the lady behind me in the queue asked what school I'd attended. I proudly announced 'Barry Boys'. She was silent for about 10 seconds, then put down her little plate and walked away, forsaking her place next to me in the queue.

Stephen Fry simply wants the world. He wants to be able to do witty intellectual fisting jokes whilst wearing a green smoking jacket. He wants to 'shock'. He wants to share and inform us all of his bi polar and his intellect and his black days. But he can't take a bit of push back by people with less vocabulary. Upset by twitter? Switch it off for 2 days or delete your account. I couldn't give a **** frankly. I'm not interested in how Fry wants to see the world organised. I basically PM'd him that, but with a picture of a cock.

It's very much the hard work of a 10 minute sound scape in my car. Preferably whilst cruising over the Westway in the dark looking at all the pretty lights and pretending I'm in the sequel to Drive. But yeah, wife's car is a bit more Elton John's greatest hits. I find myself saying 'yeah, this one is ok actually......yeah and this one......yeah and I do actually like this one....'

I played some to my nipper as captive audience in the car last night. Apparently it's a genre called 'repetitive incoherent shite just like the rest of the CD's in your car, dad'. Well, I like it and it's my car. Driver picks the tunes, it's a science law.

ATGCLVLSSCAP Very good, excellent first 9 or 10 tracks, less keen on the singing towards the end but perhaps that will grow on me.

CAP Payments Off on a little diversion. The link above is to the page that itself has a link to the excel spreadsheet of payments. Many are for a few hundred pound. Many are for much much more and some are being paid directly to land owning companies overseas. So, essentially not only am I being taxed to give money to land owners, but some of those land owners receiving my money have actually legally based themselves offshore..... It's a bit dry and boring, but a quick look at the tens of millions of pounds paid out annually to UK farmers and land owners via the EU's Common Agricultural Policy and you realise it will be quite entertaining to see how the 'leave' campaign sell the idea to the countryside folk.

Right now? Black heavy framed glasses. Quite a severe short hair cut. Full salt n pepper beard. Black jumper. Black jeans. Brown boots with white soles. Hot. You know you want it.

nerd alert: I went to a free lecture in Swansea University last weekend, on american politics and how we got where we are. Just utterly fascinating. Well worth reminding yourself every now and again the sheer scale of the place and the diversity of wealth, outlook, geography and ethnicity. Anyway, the lecturer was most interested in the apparent disconnect between the internal warmth of welcome to visitors, the easy community feel of many places, but contrasted with some dystopian inner cities and a fear of the world 'out there'. The disinclination to join the first world war, the disincilnation to get too involved in Syria and then the contradictory role of self styled world policeman. But I have to confess, it was a bit like one of TonyH's comedy nights. Utterly enthralling for 2 hours whilst I was there, lots of moments where I thought 'bloody hell I didn't realise that!', followed by very little memory of actual facts and figures just days later! Other than I was more aware of my own prejudices.

I would have thought there are really only three ways of judging these things: Statistics - as in the most money / downloads / plays etc. wins as a point of pure fact. Coldplay selling a million copies of a song for a million pound beats somebody obscure selling five hundred copies of something for five hundred pound. Perception of craft or cool is irrelevant. Art - this is subjective and suggests there must be a panel of experts with the correct taste and opinions that can tell us an Adele song is better than a Muse song. Vox Pop - vote now, did you like the back story of the blind girl singer, the cheeky gangstaaa, or the dancing dog in a tutu? Personally, I have little interest in any of those. I don't care if a song has shifted a million units. I don't follow bands because they won a Novello. I certainly wouldn't base anything on how many teenagers voted on the red button from a pre selected short list of pop stars. I like Abba, so I buy some Abba. I like the Beach Boys, I bought some Beach Boys. Yesterday, I walked in to a shop and was instructed by the all knowing staff that I should buy some Ulver and some Horace Andy. I did this. If any of them are 'winners' it's kind of coincidental. But I guess prizes raise profile? So I understand how the industry sees it as being necessary. Good for them if it works for them.

I don't suppose anyone knows if UKIP have an opinion on EU subsidy of UK farm land and the reinstatement of fox hunting?

You didn't ever get that cycling proficiency badge did you? But seriously, no. There can be little in the world more futile than celebrities and personalities and singers and actors all lining up to give each other prizes. Little more futile, other than sitting o your sofa and watching it.

ghey

For me, talk of what we can do if we are in/out is all a little bit disingenuous. That talk this morning on the radio was a case in point. Our pork industry kind of struggles for home market share against EU pork imports. But that's because our rules are tighter on our our produce over and above the less expensive EU rules that the Danes and Spanish are working to. But we allow in Danish pork produced to a lesser standard. Not only that, but we can import a spanish pig carcass, put it through a grinder and call it a British sausage. That is so easily fixed whether we are in or out. But similarly, we've got our own pork deal with China. So being in the EU clearly doesn't prevent us from striking our own unilateral rules. We are being thoroughly mis informed. But I think the ticking bomb in this debate is that the election is only 3 days after England crash out of the Euros. That's a lot of disgruntled and confused people wandering around thinking they are already out and not bothering to vote. Or trying to vote for Italy and getting annoyed with the options on the ballot. It will also be the height of the summer, we'll have a million refugees on our screens every night and a big chunk of the population unable to grasp the difference between a refugee and a Slovakian plumber.

Given that it's a number higher than zero, it's remarkable. I think this is a good time to mention my two favourite states are Colorado and Wyoming. I know very little about them, but I have every respect for the people that set or negotiated their state borders.

he's actually under thought that one for a change

On the presumption you're not a petrol head supermarket car park racer, just about anything. Avoid anything old with jaguar or land rover written on the back. After that, it comes down to brand snobbery and your favourite colour. Don't presume a used car is cheaper than a new one.

Listening to the Today programme, Radio 4 this morning, Sarah Montague asked Michael Gove why, definitively, he felt we should be voting to leave the EU. His answer was that we'll get our mojo back. Doubtless later today, somebody will reveal that we need to remain in, to be cool. My best guess at the moment, is that the lack of detail (either way) means that nobody can possibly know what the consequences of leaving might be. They did an article on sausages. sausage link, geddit? which was quite interesting. Basically, we have self imposed more rules on pigs than the rest of the EU, we have negotiated our own independent pork deal with the Chinese - no need to wait for europe.

1.0 Book club - none of them read the book, they have an over priced pizza and discuss how each others kids are progressing in school 2.0 Gig night - typically slightly moany singer songwriter acoustic guitar solo types, most recently Jason Manns, Rob Benedict, Martyn Joseph. 3.0 Gardening club - none of them have done any gardening recently, they have an over priced pizza and discuss how each others kids are progressing in school of course, she could actually be a sleeper agent or an assassassassin I should just caveat that, with our trips out together, 'date stylee' are great. Usually involving a builders breakfast / lunch, a little shop browsing and then sitting on a hill somewhere looking at the sea. Followed by shooting up some small town post office and phoning out for hookers.