The View from the Spaghetti Factory

If the BBC interrupted Newsnight with toothpaste adverts, I’d be annoyed. Similarly, if the Houses of Parliament were renamed the Vodafone GovMax! Centre, I’d have a right old rant. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?

So when, having bought some Royal Mail stamps today, I was made to wait for my change while the Post Office assistant tried her utmost to sell me a BLOODY CREDIT CARD, I was not amused. I know Post Office Counters plc is now distinct from the Royal Mail, but still… I’d rather like to deal directly with the people who are delivering my mail, rather than through an advert-funded intermediary! I’d buy all of my stamps from the newsagents if I could, thus avoiding the endless Post Office queues, but that’s not an option when something has to be weighed.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened; I’ve turned down offers of credit cards and car insurance on four or five occasions. I don’t know whether the assistants have any choice in this (i.e. whether they’re doing it for commission) so I’ve been polite every time, but I’m now itching to give someone a piece of my mind. Let’s see how effective their complaints system is, shall we?

And on the subject of the previous entry, here’s what I did last weekend.

Nicola’s Mum had always wanted to see Claude Monet’s house and garden at Giverny, so we decided to combine that with a long weekend in nearby Rouen. I’d often wondered what Rouen was like, as it’s twinned with Norwich, where I used to live. It didn’t disappoint… it’s a picturesque city, with friendly people, great Normandy food and drink (cider and calvados being the liquid specialities) and plenty of significant historical and cultural links.

As ever, I invite you to browse the photos… “Rouen, May 2006″ on Flickr

For the past three months, I’ve been spending a short time each day learning French.

Why? Well, first you have to understand why not. I don’t completely lack a background in French… like just about every British schoolkid, I learned French from the start of high school, continuing up to O Level standard. However, by that point (aged sixteen) I was more comfortable with German, so I followed a Germanic theme with an A Level in German and a BA degree in Swedish. Even with the onset of working, tax-paying adulthood (all terms used loosely) where education starts to be a pleasurable pastime rather than a necessary evil, I never revisited French. In our household, Nicola has always been The One Who Speaks French, and I’m not going to be competing with her MA in French literature in a hurry.

Earlier this year I pondered this situation. It seemed daft that my knowledge of French had atrophied to the point of virtual non-existence, given my enthusiastic consumption of so much French culture. My CD collection features music from Perotin to Boulez, along with lots of gypsy jazz, and I’ve read French authors in translation, from Zola to Perec. I stuff my belly with their food, wine and other drinks, and I’ve marvelled at their contributions to art and design. And yet my linguistic ability was on the level of “deux bières, s’il vous plaît”.

I started with the Michel Thomas courses, working through the basic and advanced packages a couple of times each. That brought back some long-forgotten vocabulary and established most of the general rules and structures in my mind. The Michel Thomas material is great for learning to formulate your thoughts in the language, but there’s very little emphasis on aural skills (and absolutely no use of the written word, such is the very nature of his teaching method).

Reading material is easy to sort out under your own steam; I’m not ready to tackle Jacques Attali just yet, but there’s a good range of children’s books and chatty lifestyle magazines for absorbing real, idiomatic French. In terms of aural skills, my long-term aim is to be able to listen to Radio France podcasts, but until then I’ve found some useful beginner/intermediate material at the iTunes Store (where the podcasts are generally free). In case you’re in the same situation as me, here’s a few recommendations…

French poetry podcast - Camille Chevalier reads, explains and explores a poem every month.

The French Pod Class - Comprehensive lessons from Sebastien, including videos, PDF texts and other teaching material.

Ecouter en Français facile - Vincent Durrenberger reads short texts on a variety of subjects.

For everyone in the South-East, wondering whether or not to start filling saucepans (or for people not in the SE, wondering what the fuss is about) here’s a good BBC article about the figures behind the drought orders…

Spin between the raindrops

I don’t usually find myself agreeing with cosy middle class bluster and outrage (”I pay my bleedin’ taxes, and for this!”) but this whole thing is quite ridiculous. I’m paying £200 a year for the local water company to lose a couple of Lake Windermeres every week. There’ll be civil disobedience once the lupins start to flower, mark my words!

On a serious note, the fault doesn’t lie entirely with the water companies. Wandering the suburban avenues here in Sutton, I’ve noticed that the trend for totally paved driveways and front gardens is increasing rapidly, to the point where houses with traditional front gardens are almost in the minority. A decent shower of rain results in most of the water rushing straight into the storm drains, rather than seeping into the soil. However, if the water suppliers continue to display this bullish and uncompromising attitude, they can’t expect much give and take from the consumers.

Our back garden, by the way, is looking pretty lush. Drought, eh?

In yesterday’s Comedy Revue Double Bill at the White House, George Bush demonstrated rare insight, claiming to have “learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner”.

That’s all very well, but in light entertainment, consistency is vital. The success of a double act depends on the audience instantly being able to recognise the straight man, the funny man, the buffoonish village (world) policeman, etc. So what’s happening here? Are they swapping roles?

It certainly looks that way. Tony Blair summoned the full and bountiful fruits of the post-war British public education system, and squeaked forth…

Crikey! Those beastly foreign types never play by the rules, do they?

Right, here we go…

I’ve installed Wordpress and done a few simple tweaks to ensure basic functionality. Apart from that, it’s all pretty raw at the moment; I really just wanted to get something up and running.

The next thing to do is decide on a redesign… I’ve got a few ideas floating around at the moment, but nothing certain. In fact, I did come up with a design a few weeks ago that I really liked, but looking at it this morning, I like it less. I’m keen to avoid all of those multiple shades of grey, fine dividing lines and sweeping landscape photos that scream “web geek with no sense of humour”. So I’m not rushing anything. All I know is that it’ll be a contrast to the previous monochrome design.

After that, I’ll reincorporate all of the old content, along with a few new ideas. It looks like it’s pretty tricky to import old Greymatter files into the latest Wordpress, so I may just have to create the archives manually. It’ll be a long job, but at least I can add categories as I go along.

It’s 25 years since Brian Eno and David Byrne released “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” and you can learn all about this groundbreaking album on a shiny new website.

Of particular interest to musical types, though, is the related “remix” site where you can download the multitrack master recordings for two of the tracks. Within the bounds of the Creative Commons license, you can then use those recordings as you wish, remixing the tracks or using elements in your own music. It’s no cheap gimmick… as well as mp3s for quick access, the tracks are available in wav format!

Bush of Ghosts Remix Site

Well, it was a typically unemphatic last day performance, with a 1-1 home draw against nothing-to-play-for Rochdale, but that was enough: Lincoln City are in the 3rd Division (or League 2, if you prefer) play-offs for the fourth season running. The climax was less fraught than in previous seasons, with fewer variables affecting the play-off positions, but you just never know… Lincoln have shown a remarkable ability to self-destruct at crucial moments all season.

But anyway, Lincoln City’s season is elongated once again by three extra matches, starting this time with a visit to local rivals Grimsby Town. For about 16 minutes today, it looked like Grimsby would snatch the third automatic promotion position, leaving Lincoln to face Leyton Orient (with their impressive away form) in the play-offs, but late goals changed that. In the run of normal matches this season, Lincoln lost 3-0 at Grimsby (admittedly during a particularly inconsistent period at the end of 2005) but won 5-0 at home in March. I suspect there may be a few goals in the next two matches…

And dare I think about potential opponents for the final? Lincoln lost both home and away to Cheltenham, but again, this was in the dodgy pre-2006 period. The home defeat to Wycombe came around the same time whereas last month’s virtuoso 3-0 away win was far more typical of the Imps’ post-Christmas form. It’s all idle speculation, though. As I’ve seen in the play-offs over the last three seasons, it’s all about “peaking” at the right time. This time round, I’m tempted to bury my head, ostrich style, until it’s all over.

Oh, and here’s to Swindon Town fans everywhere (such as Neil McIntosh and my own Ms Spaghetti) who can at least wind down for the summer in the knowledge that every cloud of relegation disappointment has a chink of silver lining ;-)

Working through the vast backlog of “ooh, that looks interesting” podcasts I’ve downloaded recently, I found a great little feature on Alf Clausen, composer of all the background and incidental music on “The Simpsons”… basically, everything except for Danny Elfman’s title music. I’ve always been intrigued by the process of creating music around the structure of film, and quite fancy having a go at some point. As a fast-paced cartoon show with multiple layers of cultural references, “The Simpsons” must be pretty challenging to compose for, especially as the music ranges from short bursts of “aural scenery” right up to full-length parody songs.

With the hope that my bandwidth doesn’t get completely SLAMMED, I’ve uploaded the 21-minute chunk here…

Mitt i Musiken: Alf Clausen feature (14.75MB)

It’s from the Swedish radio programme “Mitt i Musiken” (*mumble*… sorry, Sveriges Radio…) but the chunks in Swedish are mostly translating and summarising what Alf says in the interview portions. It’s worth ploughing through for the rehearsal excerpts (now that’s what first-call session players sound like!) and there’s a few interesting nuggets of information. For instance, Matt Groening likes having real orchestral music on the soundtrack, in order to provide smooth continuity and sheen when the animation is a little rough and ready. Also, it turns out that Alf Clausen is hugely influenced by Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, which, on reflection, doesn’t surprise me. I’ll be talking about that piece right here, once the Proms season starts…