Timberblog

Victoria (London Tube Song) by Abandoned Rugs

2010-03-24T22:08:00.002Z

In the continued absence of Timberblog, you may wish to take a peek at my quite incredible YouTube channel which includes several massive hits by the Abandoned Rugs - probably the greatest band you've never heard.

Facebook killed my blog

2008-01-03T01:11:00.000Z

Gradually,
more or less anyone who reads this blog has joined Facebook,
where they can see the photos I would have plastered,
read the news I would have scribbled,
and graffiti my wall with what used to be comments.

ALL OF YOU
ARE KNOWING COLLABORATORS
IN THE END

OF TIMBERBLOG.

The Pyramids Are Not Andrew's Arse

2007-12-04T22:04:00.001Z

Andrew's Arse Is Not The Pyramids

2007-11-22T22:54:00.000Z

This view of Terminal 3 departure lounge brought to you courtesy of Egyptair

Timber's travel tip of the day:
1. Anyone wishing to fly Egyptair should be made aware of their "Passengers will be held 7 hours in the departure lounge before being told the flight's not going today at all maybe come back tomorrow" policy.
2. Andrew's arse is not the Pyramids.

Timber's weekend excursions N° 7: Belated birthday bundle

2007-11-06T22:37:00.000Z

It has come to my attention that my previous blogentry was rather depressed in nature. It pleases me to inform you that this one is much cheerier. Anyway, life is a rollercoaster, just got to ride it, as Ronan Keating so sagely and perceptively caterwauled among drapes of gruesome light-pop slosh back in 2000.

Liverpool Anglican Cathedral

This week I have been mostly partying non-stop. It started on Friday 26th with work arranging general alcoholic carnage to celebrate hitting targets three months in a row. This distressed me somewhat as my Christmas bonus probably went on somebody else's bar tab. Having made tenuous friends with some archaeologists from the fourth floor, I made a fairly early escape, largely because I like my colleagues but absolutely cannot cope with drunken work parties at all, and subsequently pitched up at Bar Kick. This is an excellent place on Shoreditch High Street if you want to drink, eat, and/or play babyfoot. I wanted to do all three of these things, although Sam started to feel less enthusiastic about the latter activity after losing his first two legs 19-1.

Primrose Hill feat. darling Mother

The parents arrived on Monday and were entertained with various nonsense around London including an exhibition on War Propaganda posters at the Imperial War Museum. They stayed around until Wednesday lunchtime, and in testament to my own quite galactically atrocious levels of organisation, I actually spent the morning of my birthday trying to purchase a birthday present for my Dad. His was in July.

After they thanked me for having them - and vice versa, only 26 years ago, and in a very much more literal sense - I found young Sezinha at Euston and dragged her off to Liverpool where we found Em and Dan. We then went on a hunt for the SuperLambBanana which wasn't in the place where it ought to have been and hence made us late for dinner. We also saw the place where the This Morning weather map ought to have been and also wasn't. All in all it was not the most auspicious of sight seeing trips.

After dinner Sezinha and I made our way up to Anfield hence fulfilling the whole Hideout-related we'll-go-to-Anfield-one-day pact type thing I mentioned in May. This worked out rather well since we blagged seats virtually on the half way line and saw a 2-1 win. On a further but possibly more obtuse positive note, if you include that Fulham game last season, we have both now personally witnessed virtually the entire Liverpool career of Nabil El Zhar.

Posing with girls again, largely to irritate TimBarton

We slept over at Em's house and met her mother, dog, and father, with mixed results. The morning turned into a bonus mini-Beatles tour featuring a small church with Eleanor Rigby's grave and what was presumably Father MacKenzie having just performed the sermon that no-one will hear, followed by Penny Lane, complete with barbershop, bank, and shelter in the middle of the roundabout.

The tour finished off with Liverpool's two cathedrals - the Anglican one, which was designed by a Catholic (who also did a nice line in telephone boxes and power stations), and the Catholic one, which was designed by an Anglican. They are linked by a road called Hope Street. Presumably this is a powerful symbol of something or other.

Back in London on Thursday night I went to see some workmates in a theatre production called Mile End, which was excellent - don't just take my word for it.

Fulham. Stadium next to the Thames. Looks like a rowing club. Their fans are regularly outsung by passing waterfowl.

I finally managed to slip in some birthday drinks on Friday and Saturday nights, sandwiching a rather distressing trip with JSen to Craven Cottage. This was also notable for four lads from school, whom we'd not seen in 7 years, turning up and sitting in the seats next to us. We might have felt more like going for drinks afterwards if it wasn't for Reading outplaying Fulham but somehow losing 3-1. Still, as Steve Coppell, the manager, put it after the game: "there are 1.2 billion people in India who couldn't give a shit what happens to Reading."

Yes.

There is something very wrong about this.

On Sunday, Sarah of Derby came down to see me for the first time in ages, following her year spent gallivanting around South America. I treated her to a jolly tour of London that for some reason ended up in Euston Station forecourt. We discovered that this is one of the absolute worst places in the world to watch a sunset.

Finally I returned to work on Monday only for the office to decide that I hadn't got away with being on holiday for my birthday and that if there was any half-decent chance of an excuse to crack out some cake, they were definitely going to take it. My resistance to this idea was shall we say minimal.

Once cake was over I was informed that our sister office downstairs (whose advertising campaign is mostly my responsibility) had hit a major business target last month and that everyone involved had been individually awarded a bottle of champagne. Including me.

Which was nice.

The music industry is a pile of arse, and other observations

2007-10-27T00:55:00.000+01:00

Right. This weekend I was intending on bringing you news of playing the Astoria. I had managed to land myself a gig with the hastily thrown together support act to Budka Suflera, who are playing the legendary venue on Sunday night and who are - apparently - a massive Polish rock group in the vein of the Scorpions. If you are not thinking "that sounds absolutely awful", you may wish to leave this page immediately and have your musical tastes surgically adjusted.

It was going to be easily the biggest gig I've done. The Astoria holds somewhere between 1500-2000 people. The largest gig I've done must be about 300-400. Unless you count "performing" in front of around 1000 French teenagers during my remarkably brief career as a hair product model for Revlon.

I met the band last weekend. It consisted of four Poles, and an English dude on guitars who looked as if he felt as utterly out of place as I did. (This turned out to be indeed the case. My sociological skills are still in good nick, which is one positive I can take from this. Anyway.)

We rehearsed last weekend in a studio stuck out in the arse end of Acton. The set was to consist of three songs, which were pretty simple to learn, and we had a good four hours to learn them. We had them pretty tight by the end of the session. I went away with instructions to work on a few parts of each song and get a couple of friends down on the guest list.

I spent most of the week thinking, woo, I'm going to play the Astoria. However, my years of experience as a musician and consequent level of extreme cynicism about the industry and its atrocious overall reliability record for Positive Things Happening meant that I elected against broadcasting this, mentioning it only to a couple of friends who asked what I was going to be up to at the weekend.

I've never enjoyed telling people how excited I am about brilliant things that are about to happen, and then falling flat on my face when they don't.

The singer woke me up with a phone call this morning, sounding very upset, and saying that the support gig had been cancelled.

This is why I depend on Something Which Has Bog All To Do With Music for my salary.

(On the plus side, I've made a new guitarist friend with similar interests in selling out all notions of artistic credibility for the opportunity to play in front of a thousand Poles.)

ad:tech London 2007 Kensington Olympia

2007-09-26T21:06:00.000+01:00

ad:tech claims to be "the UK's premier interactive marketing event". My work tend to send me along to it. I think this is because I work in internet marketing or something.

As anyone who works in anything will know, the whole point of corporate exhibitions such as this is to obtain as much free stuff as is humanly possible, without letting anyone talk to you about their product.

I went to last year's ad:tech. It was rubbish. All I got was a Google bag with a pen, a notepad, some sweets and a mousemat that I am admittedly still using.

This year, however -

ad:tech swag 2007

Ah, that fluffy goat is going to make one lucky lady very happy next Valentine's...
(Please form an orderly queue.)

Hobnobbing with the Tories

2007-09-24T20:51:00.000+01:00

Hi, I'm Andrew Neil.
You may know me from televised political boredom and photos in Private Eye.

Last week, skilled manipulation of some fairly flimsy contacts resulted in me being entertained at the End of Summer Party at The Spectator. This featured free booze (excellent), free upper-crust hot dogs (british farm sausages in hand-made bread), and besuited live musicians playing the kind of pallid background jazz you only notice has stopped when they start again five minutes later.

This illustrates that the best way of escaping the corporate rat race and making money from your art is to sell your art to the corporate rat race. This in turn is a very bad way of escaping the corporate rat race and thus illustrates the futility of life.

Another futile thing to do in life is go celeb spotting. I've been out of the British political loop for a good while, and I only recognised 4 people there. The first 3 of those were people I work with every day, which was encouraging, as it showed I was in the right place, and that I was not blind drunk. The fourth was Andrew Neil, whose presence I noted in a fairly impassive "oh, that's 'im off 'telly" sort of moment. Boris Johnson, former editor, whom I'm told is a popular figure these days, was sadly nowhere to be seen.

Proactivity and holidays

2007-09-09T23:09:00.001+01:00

Apologies for lack of bloggage. Tho it's about time you wrote me an email or facebook msg too (I'm looking at you Spearo). Recently I have been wildly proactive.

Joined a football team, and not just that, but a proper Sunday league with refs and home and away fixtures and everything. First training sesh was this afternoon. We are going to be terrible. I have bought new boots. They are very sexy. They will make me look good on the bench.
Been meeting singers. Result: several extra bonus friends, someone to teach me guitar technique in exchange for piano (woo!), and free recording facilities at the weekend... providing I get my arse to zone 3. (All musicians live in zone 3. This is because they are musicians.) Also met new girl at work. She is singer, "likes my myspace", and invites me to jam on Wednesday. Bingo.
Speaking of work, they are expanding and were interviewing candidates to join my team. Annabel and I objected to boss' ideas of bringing in more people like us, i.e. EMT with degrees in foreign languages, and demanded that he go for foreign mother tongue people instead. Result: we now have a German guy starting soon, and hopefully an Italian girl too. I will be able to improve my German and Italian working with them and this makes me very happy.
Obtained Reading FC member card. Went to West Ham game. Lost heavily. Bad.
Determined, if I am spending £50 a pop on tickets and travel, to see Reading win a game. Needed to select match with biggest likelihood of this occurring. Plumped for Derby at home, next month. Surely we can't lose that one?
Holidays. Due to judicious holiday planning, I still have 20 days left this year. Where should I go?

Timber's weekend excursions No. 89 - Edinburgh

2007-08-29T23:19:00.000+01:00

Edinburgh Old Town from Princes St Gardens

This weekend I have mostly been visiting Edinburgh. And wondering why the hell I hadn't been before. Edinburgh is stunning. As we drove into the city on Saturday morning, it confused me how beautiful everything was; surely there was some mistake, this couldn't be Britain, right? The same country that, in 1585, built the Staple Inn on High Holborn, and then 4 centuries later thought it would be an idea to build The Crime Against Humanity That Is The Building To The Left Of It?

Upon arrival we met up with some of Bear's friends - in fact, I will give Pete the musician a plug, since he organised accommodation and some entertainment for us. After various shenanigans including being locked out of one flat by a mysterious woman named Nogs who we never met, and then chasing an annoyed man called Eric down a canalside, we found our place to stay for the night, which turned out to be a yoga mat in a 4th floor bedroom that had been converted into a Hindu shrine. There was no kidding either. I laid out my sleeping bag and was swiftly informed that I had made an error: a bed should never point towards the door or the window since this would be tremendously bad Feng Shui.

Thistles outside the Controversial Scottish Parliament Building, as it's officially known.
And a bee.

The utter lack of organisation permeating through our whole trip meant that we hadn't booked any show tickets. This left us trawling the free fringe circuit, which - so long as you didn't mind every show starting with a variation on the "yes, I have to do my own lighting and sound" moan - was actually pretty damn good.

Between the four of us we were bantered at by each of the first four comedians we went to see. This was possibly something to do with sitting in the front row most of the time. Under provocation I even went as far as punching Maff Brown, whose show we'd turned up to purely on the basis that his flyer included a recommendation from Bill Bailey. He seemed to take it alright though, and after his act, which was in fact one of the best of the weekend, we had a natter in the bar afterwards about Staines and other highlights of the Reading-Waterloo line. He gave me his card and I told him to come to one of my impro comedy shows in London. I suspect he won't.

We took in some jazz later that night at an underground café with Malteser cakes. I have never had a Malteser cake before. It was fast becoming a holiday of new experiences. Then a young lady whom you may remember briefly appearing in Timberblog last summer dropped by. We promptly discussed my direction in life, which had, over the course of the year, naturally changed completely; this was evidenced by her first question, "so... weren't you going to Amsterdam?"

Edinburgh from the Salisbury Crags

Now one issue with Edinburgh is that there is a dormant volcanic mountain sitting right next to it. Unfortunately when Timbers see this kind of thing, a kind of primal instinct takes over, and the mountain MUST BE CONQUERED.

And so it was that I dragged Bear up all 250.5 metres of Arthur's Seat on Monday afternoon. At the top, we found amazing vistas across the city and Lothian, astoundingly pure highland air, and for some reason, Jeremy Paxman.

Monday evening was the absolute last night of the fringe. We decided to bite the bullet and actually pay for some shows. This turned out to be an Error. Here's some advice: on the last night of the fringe festival, a lot of performers are 1. tired, 2. pissed or high, 3. not under pressure to get good reviews. Do not go to a ticketed show on the last weekend, go to free ones. You'll be much happier giving a tip at the end of a good free performance than wanting your money back after a terrible paid one. Trust me on that one.

Leith and the Firth of Forth, featuring the aptly named Royal-Yacht-not-appearing-in-this-photo.

On Tuesday Edinburgh turned back to normal, as did the weather, which had been gloriously sunny up until then. We did a few more sights: the literary museum, which boasted such exhibits as a pane of glass that Walter Scott scribbled his name on as a kid*; the castle hill and Princes St Gardens; and the Port of Leith with its star attraction, the former Royal Yacht Britannia. Which we didn't go on because we couldn't be arsed. The port was nice though, with its evocative views across the Firth of Forth to the Highlands beyond.

*When does desperate memorabilia finish and valuable cultural artefacts start? (Answer: not here.)

All in all it was a brilliant weekend. If you are reading this and you have never been to Edinburgh, rush out and book travel immediately.

Portobello Film Festival

2007-08-20T00:39:00.000+01:00

Timber's Weekend Excursions No. 45:
Westbourne Studios and the Portobello Film Festival

Westbourne Studios is the oddest building. It's the kind of place you can spend several hours in and still end up sitting there asking "what does it all MEAN?". The idea seems to be to cover several dozen completely different functions at once, meanwhile befuddling pretty much everyone as to what on earth the final goal is and what route it intends to take to get there.

In that sense it is not totally unlike the Barbican. Or the Centre Pompidou. Or in fact my career.

From the outside I was fairly sure it was an office block. Once inside, it briefly became the vast entry hall of a 1960s sixth form college. I was just getting my head round this when I realised that in fact it was a particularly spacious art gallery. Now admittedly the beer did not help my comprehension of the building. It's not even that I had very much, it was more the fact that the hall had turned into a bar for long enough that I could actually get a beer. It had definitely been an art gallery when I came in. However, it was noticeable the more you walked across the floor, the more it became a bar. First the occasional stool dotted around, then a pool table and a babyfoot casually placed in the middle of nowhere, and then more frequent stools and tables until you were very definitely in a bar. Or a student union at the very least.

Then I turned right and was promptly in a cinema watching some shorts by the Kourtrajmé company, which was basically Matthieu Kassovitz and Vincent Cassel messing about with some mates from the neuf trois. Lightly amusing. Worth catching considering it was free. Unfortunately we missed the film we were supposed to see, although we met the director of it, which led to conversation that can be described as fitful. In my defence it's difficult to concentrate on watching the right film when you still haven't understood what building you are in.

The roof that you see there in the photo - the concrete bit - is not in fact a roof at all. It's the A40(M).

Next week on Timber's Weekend Excursions: Scotland.

The Wombats - Backfire at the disco

2007-08-11T01:07:00.001+01:00

Benefits of having flatmates: there are people to natter to when you get home from work.
Negatives of having flatmates: having to turn up your headphones to max volume in an effort to block out the guy next door playing bloody Chocolate Rain AGAIN.

Which is where this comes in handy -

Great band. Great song. Terrible video. Brilliant.

(I particularly enjoy the joyously hubristic stadium-rock slo-mo breakdown at about 2.25)

And now for something completely different

2007-08-05T21:54:00.001+01:00

Lessons in identifying animals N°17: The Llama

(Including instructions on how to impersonate the Llama.)
For further information on Llamas click here immediately.

A Day Out At The Beach
Is better in Greenwich than Benidorm.
Including stone-skimming-and-moving-target fun.

I have a new flat
You can see Gherkins from it.

Premiership Preview

2007-08-05T20:12:00.000+01:00

The wonders of modern technology bring you the Premiership Preview blogentry in multiplex. You should find a similar but alternatively opinioned post going up on Mike's and Tim's blogs within the next few days. The sole purpose of such an exercise is to make all three of us look stupid at the end of the season.

Most reputable football journalists are forced to do the same thing. I'm sure they really enjoy it!*

*Sarcasm has been employed here.

Behold: this is what I have seen in the crystal football.

Manchester United's thoroughly ridiculous power up front opens up a 6-point lead by Christmas. They look odds-on for the title but falter when Alex Ferguson sadly bursts on the touchline during a 1-0 defeat at West Ham, inspired by star scallywag Craig Bellamy (the burst that is, not the win). Liverpool fleetingly top the league but Chelsea find stability and consistency when half their squad depart for the African Cup of Nations. In a live TV broadcast, Rafa agrees to shave his beard for charity; this has a disastrous impact on his team's form and they slip to third. Although Man Utd hit back under the temporary management of Doctor Carlos Queiroz, Chelsea move out of the slipstream to take the title with a game to spare.

Meanwhile Arsenal, Tottenham, Man City and Villa slug it out for fourth place until Villa get altitude sickness in February and go on a 10-game winless run. Man City look good until their chairman and erstwhile corrupt dictator Thaksin Shinawatra is investigated at the court of human rights, and found to be filthy with guilt. Their entire summer transfer dealings are revoked, along with any points scored while Sven Goran Eriksson was manager. This leaves them on zero, and they are relegated while Sven is caught on a hidden camera show complaining about the quality of talent in Manchester. He calls a press conference but Danny Mills lamps him before anyone can explain.

This leaves Tottenham and Arsenal slugging it out for fourth place, with Arsenal pipping Tottenham for the very simple reason that This Is What Generally Happens (cf. last season).

Portsmouth win the coveted muchofamuchness trophy for finishing 6th.

Newcastle's Michael Owen nearly manages to get into double figures, appearing in 9 different product endorsements despite his season ending in early September.

At the arse end of the table, Derby, Birmingham, Sunderland, Fulham and Wigan all valiantly battle to become the worst Premiership side in history, but fail by virtue of the fact that at least they take points off each other. Titus Bramble makes up for season-long comedy defending by netting a New Year's Day winner at Anfield, but Wigan still go down, joining Derby who were gone by April. The other sides are happily reprieved by the Manchester City situation.

The final table looks like this:

Chelsea
Manchester United
Liverpool
Arsenal
Tottenham
Portsmouth
Blackburn
Everton
Aston Villa
Newcastle
Middlesbrough
Bolton
West Ham
Reading
Sunderland
Fulham
Birmingham
Wigan
Derby
Man City

Madagascan herbal xylophones - a lesson

2007-07-17T00:39:00.000+01:00

Hire me and you too could rank number 1 for completely irrelevant searches.

So what do you actually do?

I have been in my job as a Multi Lingual Search Marketing Ninja for over half a year now and I still haven't satisfactorily answered this question. To anyone. It's not a very easy job to describe. However, at parties, I will still say "translator... kind of." This has the benefit of being succinct, it conveys a vague sense of international mystery, and is partly truthful. I sense certain Quality Assurance Executives reading this may well employ similar tactics.

Hurah for meaningless, jargon-filled job titles.

Anyway, I'll give it a go, if only to entertain Jumble, who is unemployed, and who will doubtless find the concept of "job" fascinating.

***

When I am not translating (extremely) minority interest websites into German, I am gainfully employed as a general sort of search marketing consultant type person. "Search" there means all things related to Google, Yahoo, MSN, and the other search engines on ye olde interwebbe. It is A Big Thing these days, don't you know. Even if it does strike me as a fundamentally hubristic industry with no footing in reality. But I'll get to that later.

So what do I consult on? Basically, helping companies get more money out of their website.

Sadly, this is not as simple as adding a flashing button to your site bearing the words BOOSTEZ VOTRE TRAFFIC. I help people change the design and wording on their pages to make it more user friendly, and also more attractive to Google. Don't ask... but Google likes things a certain way. Most of the guidelines are pretty sensible and make things better for the user anyhow.

Getting links back from other sites is also important. I used to think a link was just a link... a way of getting from one page to another. But no! A major way that Google decides whether a site is Good or Bad is the number and type of pages linking to it. If a lot of pages link to your site, they are effectively telling Google, "this is an important page." It even matters what the actual text you click on is, because that tells Google "this is an important page on this subject". Try telling that to the owners of the site who rank 1st on Google for "click here"...

I can't be arsed to go any deeper into this but check this excellent, although jargon-heavy, article if you want a long list of ways to get your site ranking higher.

Once your site is optimised, Google will (eventually - it takes a few months) start to reward you by showing your site higher in the results on relevant searches. In the meantime you can use Pay Per Click advertising to get instant results. You can make an advert, conforming to a certain format: Headline, line, line, Site Address. You'll see examples of these on the right of the page when searching in Google. Basically you then decide when you want the ad to show - depending on what a person searches for. This is done by creating a list of keywords that trigger your advert. And every time someone clicks on your ad, you pay money to Google.

My job is, effectively, with both normal optimisation and PPC, to intercept the guy typing in "buy Madagascan herbal xylophone" and present him with MY client's Madagascan herbal xylophone website and not someone else's.

It's also my job, once I've got him there, to make sure the page he lands on is designed in such a way that it is nice and easy and comfortable for him to then go ahead and buy a Madagascan herbal xylophone. Or two.

Does that clear things up?

***

All in all, it's been nice to learn some completely new skills while being paid for it. I knew absolutely nothing about profit-driven web design and general search marketing before I started with my company, and I've learnt a lot of transferable skills along with brushing up my maths (PPC involves a lot of stats and spreadsheet work... the joy).

I just get a bit frustrated at the idea that, if nuclear winter occured tomorrow and I survived, these particular skills wouldn't be up to much.

Not sure why that is my measure of a worthwhile and fulfilling job.

Removals Addiction Problem

2007-07-02T17:33:00.001+01:00

Jardins demain expo outside l'Hôtel de Ville.

Photo pilfered shamelessly from Sez.

This weekend I have been mostly moving my things from Paris to London, which admittedly is one complete human pregnancy* since I moved myself from Paris. In that time my things have collected impressive volumes of dust and damp and are currently stinking out my current place with putrid mustiness. Recommendation: do not leave the country before finding somewhere dry to store your books.

I had a bit of time on Friday night and Saturday morning to see friends. Also - quite fascinatingly, you'll agree - my watch needed a new battery. While I was busy planning how to fit all this into a few hours, Vinz, erstwhile lead guitarist of Eddy-band fame, sent a text informing me that he was working but that I should drop by his shop, and go for a kwafee. I made a foray into the Marais, dodged the gay pride manifs, and found his shop. It was a watch shop. It was, in fact, the watch shop in which I had last bought a battery for my watch, two years ago, before I knew Vinz.

We kwaffeed briefly and then I ambled off past Hôtel de Ville enjoying the giant watering cans and topiary armchairs of the Jardins demain expo. Apparently this is what our gardens should have looked like the day afterwards. I checked mine when I got back to London and it didn't.

The sheer number of people asking me directions over the weekend suggests I still look French. This led to some particularly complex situations; I was, frog sample, very confused at a gaggle of old ladies who asked for directions by starting, "vous êtes de Paris?"

NonmaissimaisnonmaissibutnnnnnnnnnngtellyouwhatI'lljustgiveyoudirections.

Meanwhile I gave notice on my current flat and am moving at the end of July. Anyone got a nice place in E1?

* For temporal illustrative purposes only. I am not with child.

Quiz: Spot The Muse Concert

2007-06-28T23:12:00.000+01:00

Is it:

Concert A
or

Concert B

Sebastien Tellier - La Ritournelle (Mr Dan's Magic Wand Mix)

2007-06-15T01:03:00.001+01:00

In my defence, £16 minus a beer equals not a very good cricket set.

Also I would have missed the chance to set up in the garden on a summer evening, and send down a few googlies to me old mum. And feel like I was 8 again. Can't really put a price on that.

(This particular piece of uncharacteristic soppiness and nostalgia I will put down to this bloody piece of music + video which despite myself I can't stop listening to + watching. It's from 2005 so apologies if it's old news.)

Fetching stumps from Bristol

2007-06-11T18:43:00.000+01:00

Timberblog: bringing you those cutting edge action shots
I even fielded this delivery too, as it drifted wide of off stump. Who says men can't multitask?

Due to a critical discrepancy between the Regent's Park kickabout crew's general desire to play cricket, and a general lack of any cricketing paraphernalia among us, I sent a smoke signal to my parents last week wondering if I could pick up my old teenage cricket bat and stumps from them at some point soon.

They replied saying that they were going to Ireland on Monday and wouldn't be back until mid July. But I would be welcome to pop down this weekend, "although obviously we can't change our plans at such short notice." (My dear Father obviously assumed I would be put out by the absence of an international welcoming committee and 6 course meal.)

It was all or nothing, really; this pressed me into action and I heroically sped down to Bristol on Saturday afternoon, picked up the bat and stumps, briefly said "hello" to both parents, and shot back up to London in time for cucumber sandwiches and ginger ale at Sunday lunch.

Mike has since questioned whether this was entirely worth it.

Camden Green Fair and Bikefest 2007

2007-06-03T21:11:00.001+01:00

My weekend tour of major London events (England v Brazil on Friday, Tess' barbecue on Saturday) was completed with today's visit to the Camden Green Fair and Bikefest 2007, which was Green in the sense of en-vi-ron-ment, as opposed to "the colour green", or "the village green", or "can it be that I hold here in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest green?"

We were treated to some West African music, followed by the dubious spectacle of an all-female modernist morris dancing troupe strutting around to the strains of Bohemian Rhapsody, and to top it off, a catwalk show of organic fashion.

We failed to see very many bikes. Maybe they were somewhere else. However we did come across this lovely sculpture of skewered furniture, which was apparently a "challenging and striking exposé of the recycling potential of ordinary household objects" (I paraphrase with wild inaccuracies).

It wasn't as good as Duncan's cup.*
Edit: Or in fact this, to reply to Tim Barton's comment.

* See the British Institute Newsletter, issue 3, (out of print) or the British Institute Art Exhibition Catalogue, 2003 (not in existence).

England v Brazil

2007-06-01T23:43:00.000+01:00

Wembley Stadium, about 30 minutes before k/o.

Sam and I had managed to get our grubby little hands on a pair of tickets for England's first match at the rebuilt Wembley Stadium. You will be interested to learn that it is very big, has many escalators, and in case this fact hasn't already been rammed into your brain by the publicity, contains more toilets than any other building in the world.

The first half, if you didn't watch it, was better than if you did, generally.

In the second half, after a couple of near misses from England, the prodigal Beckham swung a free kick to the far post where it was nodded in by captain John Terry. This was one of the two moments when it became truly apparent how much noise 88000 people can make (the other time being when Beckham and Owen's names were announced in the line-up before the game).

Please note the Nicky Shoreyness of the English line-up.
Reading's first England player since the probably equally amazing Herbert Smith in 1907.

Due to our overall (and as it turns out, well founded) pessimism about the prospect of aforementioned 88 000 fans trying to catch the tube at once, we left a few minutes before the end and consequently missed the Brazil equaliser.

In completely unrelated news, both members of my team at work have gone on holiday which means I am rather overdone at the moment. Hence lack of blogentries due to general shatteredness. However, I was unaware you lot were so demanding. Spear, your attitude is shocking, I expect a full account of your recent adventures on my desk by Monday morning. Jumble, you are a bad girl, get on with your work.

Timber's Weekend Excursions (The Shock Return Of)

2007-05-22T21:46:00.000+01:00

I am sure many of you have been wondering, following those exciting jaunts in early 2006 to Bobigny, Pantin, and Sceaux, among others, when exactly the next installment of Timberblog's entertaining occasional travel guide section, Timber's Weekend Excursions, was going to re-appear. Well fear not, for here it is, in a shock return. For it to do so today surely increases the shock value, since today is Tuesday, and Tuesday is commonly regarded to be Not The Weekend.

Fortunately here at Timberblog we laugh in the face of such linear and blinkered thinking.

In what could almost be seen as an achievement, I managed to leave London for the first time this year. I had a pitch to do in Oxford. This involved a jolly train journey. Did the pitch. Came back outside. The weather was outrageously nice. I had my final German exam to prepare for, so elected to sit out in the sunshine revising for it rather than go back to the office beforehand.

I'd forgotten what clean air is like.

Several buildings in Oxford have been used for the Harry Potter fillums. And as I may have pointed out before, my secondary school (click for piccy) bore certain similarities to Hogwarts - towers, ghosts, spooky old paintings, and horrible beings who sapped the very life from your soul if you went near them. We also had, it was rumoured, a complex network of tunnels running beneath the school, that no-one ever used.

We all knew about some of the trapdoors, but it was anyone's guess as to where they actually led. Some said it was just a few air raid shelters; wilder suggestions had tunnels running back to the previous, medieval site of the school, by the ruins of Reading Abbey.

In a daring recent escapade, a bunch of dudes from this year's upper sixth broke into the school in the dead of night and descended into the hole below Room 10. Luckily in this day and age, even poor little Reading School whippersnappers can afford to buy flash cameras, and for those of you interested, here's what they found.

C'est pas avec ça qu'ils gagneront

2007-05-13T23:46:00.000+01:00

Earlier this week I became very concerned that I might not successfully organise any kind of alcohol- and nibbles-related social gathering for the Eurovision Song Contest this year. Luckily, following an emotional media plea (well, a Facebook status change) I managed to procure a number of last minute invitations for Saturday night. After ruling a couple of them out on practical reasons - although frankly I'd have been happy going to Cambridge, if it hadn't been for the proviso of learning the Yassou Maria dance moves - I ended up with Bear and a bunch of randoms hosted by an Aussie who turns out to be a professional singer and former F1 pit "babe".

On further investigation, one of the randoms was a Parisienne, which was mildly exciting for me. There again, one thing I could never understand about the French was their attitude to the Eurovision. They always seemed to genuinely think that it was a competition to see which country could write the best song. Last year, frog sample, they proffered a very earnest piece of modern chanson written by a reputable songwriter and sung by a reputable singer.

This attitude extended to the televised coverage. Not for them the euro-weary witterings of Wogan. France3 had high hopes for the French entry and talked it up throughout the night. Not unlike Peanut Butter and Yorkshire Pudding, Finland's now-classic mauling of Eurovision traditions was thoroughly lost on them; as Lordi's guitars died out, Michel Drucker and his co-commentator noted sagely, "Finland have been entering this competition for 40 years, they've never won, and they're not going to win with that."

Lordi won, with a record 292 points; France finished third bottom with 5.

Astonishingly, something obviously made the French finally twig that maybe they were Doing It Wrong, and the 2007 contest saw them enter a deliberately bad song for possibly the first time (I'm not doing the research. You can.)

Unfortunately, rather than being so bad it was good, it was so bad it was unlistenable. This indeed seemed to be something of a theme. Is it just me or was that one of the worst Eurovision Contests ever? Only Ukraine came up with a memorable entry; there wasn't even the comedy value of the usual flagrant Westlife, Abba, and Shakira ripoffs. It was just great swathes of ballady dross. And won by a Serbian secretary using the bloody Corporate Chord Pattern.

Anyway, a positive to come out of it is that Emmanuella the Aussie resolved to enter next year, with yours truly as songwriter. I don't want to get ahead of myself but if we do enter, I think we'll definitely win. Emmanuella can certainly sing, and me - well - I produce novelty tracks that get over 1000 views on YouTube. Heh.

Well I was proud of it anyway.

Mediocre things come to those who wait

2007-05-09T23:23:00.000+01:00

I have put together this clever montage to showcase the culmination of 6 years of planning.

Ah, The Hideout on rue du Pot de Fer in the Latin Quarter. Vaguely dingy, quite small, tiny toilets. I think we spent most of spring term 2001 there. The Euro had yet to be introduced, we were still learning the names of métro stops, and the man on the street had never heard of Osama Bin Laden. With a student card on Wednesdays it was 25 francs for a pint all night. Which we considered cheap, despite student bars back in England probably selling them at half the price.

The first time Alex took us there, I managed to offend him horrifically at the end of the night - by mistake, I think. In fact, my recollection is that this may only have been one in a series of inadvertent indignities I visited upon him in first year. I was not very well adjusted at the time.

The Hideout is now long since gone. But for whatever reason - maybe its particular dinginess, maybe the type of music they played, maybe the reassuringly regular randoms that may or may not have been connected to someone in the group - the nights we had at the Hideout always seemed to bubble along with a good-natured atmosphere. And it was on one of these nights, back in the early days of university, that Sezinha and I hit upon the topic of football, discovered a mutual appreciation of Liverpool, and resolved to travel to watch a game at Anfield one day.

6 years later, we finally managed to go to a Liverpool match together.

They lost.

Still, on a positive note, I can at least say that I have witnessed Liverpool in a Premiership match (the only previous time I had seen them was a goalless draw in the old Barclays Division One at Highfield Road in 1991. Yes, that's 1 goal in 180 minutes of Liverpool matches, and even that was scored by the opposition. Sorry, did I say this was a positive note?)

On a not only positive but also very anoraky note, I seem to have added more stadia to my collection this season than in any other year this decade (new ones = Villa Park, Amsterdam ArenA, Memorial Stadium, Craven Cottage, and The Valley). Can I add Wembley to that list without the Anorak Police descending upon me citing my two previous matchday visits to the old, knocked-down version?

Can I have my evenings back please?

2007-05-02T23:43:00.000+01:00

Regent's Park Kickaboutery on Sunday
This is more or less exactly the photo that I would have taken that time when I said I would have taken a photo more or less exactly like this one, but didn't.

I seem to have lost possession of my evenings. Métro-boulot-dodo, but with something different thrown in between boulot and dodo depending on the evening. Frog sample, Tuesdays are métro boulot allemand dodo; Wednesdays are fast becoming métro boulot impro dodo. "Free" evenings seem to invariably end up with beer and friends (and with increasing frequency, Scrabble, for a reason which will no doubt become apparent).

My house is probably feeling slightly cheesed off at the lack of use it is seeing, so hopefully Emmeline's weekend visit will cheer it up with a sense of purpose in life. Meanwhile as I casually anthropomorphise I realise with shock that in my blogentries I have overlooked a tremendous recent achievement of mine (if I do say so myself) which shall without further ado be announced with great pride:

I passed an exam and am now a Google Advertising Professional.

There. I knew you would be impressed.

Venice, Bali, and Marrakesh are all great locations for a sunset shot.
This, however, is Rotherhithe.
(To be fair if you look very carefully you will see some famous silhouettes.)

Timberblog does requests

2007-04-16T21:29:00.000+01:00

(If you ask nicely)

WOT I DID LAST WEEKEND. An illustrated history.

On Friday I had a visitor from deepest Sussex.

In the morning we went to see the llamas
And found a hairy pig.

We also saw some buildings
This one is the Royal Naval College.

In the afternoon we climbed a hill
So as to see things from the top of it.

On Saturday and Sunday I watched DVDs much too much.
But was greatly educated in British comedy 2000-2006 that I missed by not being in the country at the time.

On Monday I had a young Bear to visit.
We kicked a ball around and made noise with instruments.

In the evening I took him to the Valley
And sat in the right stand, but on the wrong side.

Would someone like to explain this?

2007-04-10T00:16:00.000+01:00

I do not understand.
Click for bigger.

Identity Crisis

2007-04-03T23:53:00.000+01:00

A problem has arisen at work.

They have proposed printing business cards.

This is an issue. I hate being pigeon holed at the best of times. In addition, I have long had what you might call "difficulties" in defining what my job is, and the official full five-word job title on my contract - Multi Lingual Search Marketing Executive - is not only too long to fit on a business card, but it sounds bloody boring, and doesn't even cover half the work I do anyhow.

(Oh, and multilingual is just the one word, guys.)

If any readers can come up with a better solution, you win a luxury muffin from ASDA.

I just need something snappy but all-encompassing. If anything, I'd like to emphasise languages and creative PR, rather than the computers and mathematics side of the job. To set you on your way, here is a list of really bad ideas, which I also sent round the office. To little avail. There were a few suggestions, but let's say I'm still looking.

Multilingual search executive
Multilingual search marketer
Multilingual search guru
Polyglot euro expansion facilitator
Searchtastic megalinguist
International man of marketing
Marketeur sans frontieres
European advertising ninja
Untitled worker #1
Walking Babelfish
Office biscuit disposal unit

By the way, the building's on fire

2007-03-27T23:15:00.000+01:00

In a move that anyone who ever studied with me will recognise as "unprecedented forward planning", I spent several hours on Sunday and yesterday night writing and editing 500 words of German that wasn't due in until this evening. At 11pm on Monday, I sat back relatively pleased with the effort, and sent it to my work address in order to print it out this afternoon before going to class.

What happened next is exactly the kind of thing that happens precisely when you have, for once in your life, bothered to plan ahead.

Lately at work I have been translating an extreme biker clothing webstore into German. (Aside: do not get me started on how utterly ludicrous this situation is). Due to a minor confidence crisis regarding my levels of German I have been running more or less everything through a combination of online checkers, and frequently resorting to typing phrases into Google to see if they're idiomatic. 100 000 results = fine; 3 results from sites that aren't even .de = oh dear. The latter happens depressingly often.

I was in the middle of having my eggs generally aspirated by this when a woman burst into the corridor outside our office and informed my colleagues that the generator was on fire and we all had to evacuate the building immediately.

This was a suboptimal development.

We made our way down the emergency fire stairs. We could have used the normal ones, or even the lifts, which weren't affected by the fire, but let's be honest here, it wouldn't have had nearly the same cachet. Emerging into the glorious sunshine it became immediately apparent that our company's standard practice in case of a fire is for the whole office to head straight to the bar next door and order a pint. At 3 in the afternoon. With the office block cordoned off for the rest of the day, many of us stayed for a second. And a third. Und so weiter.

It was thus that I turned up to German class this evening both slightly tipsy and completely essayless, armed only with the excuse "my building caught fire and I couldn't print it."

Great!

Verschleppungstaktik

2007-03-18T17:29:00.000Z

Down on the farm
Some sheep, yesterday

My parents had the unprecedented experience this weekend of travelling to visit me without needing to bring their passports. With all the subtlety of a sledgehammer mounted on a tank mounted on a rocket, they had designated Mothering Sunday weekend as the ideal time to make a debut foray into the Docklands. I took them over to Greenwich for lunch. I like Greenwich, and in fact if you are reading this sentence there's a good chance you have already had the experience of me taking you there for lunch.

It has already been noted by some visitors that where I live "isn't in London at all." I disagree with this but it doesn't help my cause that if cross the main road (on which there is, suspiciously, absolutely no traffic) and perform a nifty shimmy up the hill to the left, you will find yourself in open farmland. Fortunately the parents didn't seem to mind that they'd come all the way to the big city only to find themselves hobnobbing with llamas and taking mud baths with a pig.

After an obligatory and thoroughly depressing "it would be nice to see where you work"-related expedition, I managed to dispose of them over a hot chocolate at Paddington Station. Luckily I had already arranged to go out with friends for the evening in Farringdon and relax after the stress of the afternoon with a pint or two. I had not, however, bargained on aforementioned friends buying me a head and shoulder massage from the brigade of guerilla masseuses who broke into the bar shortly after we arrived. This was indeed extremely relaxing and had the unfortunate side effect that I was far too chilled to make conversation with anyone else for the rest of the evening.

In related news, I think I'm supposed to be writing 500 German words before Tuesday about Leibniz, Adenauer, Mozart, and any other Germans famous enough to have a road named after them in Paris. Sadly I need to do this NOW, since tomorrow night is Scrabble Night II: The Revenge, and I wouldn't want to miss that. Anyone from the Institute want to send me their Nomenclature des voies essay?*

Note added 27.3.2007: Ta to those who sent it; luckily I also realised that the deadline wasn't until the next week (in fact, today, but that's another story).

The first sign of madness

2007-03-05T19:53:00.000Z

Every morning I battle with the alarm.

It is war.

Ah, in the days when I was a youthful student, I was capable of going 20 rounds with the snooze function.

Now, thanks to "work", I am reduced to 5 or 6.

The subsequent 8-minute dreamshorts are, as you would expect, extremely punchy and to the point, but often excessively odd. Interpret them as you will, but two recent ones I remember vividly are:

I am organising the MTV music awards. Oasis are scheduled to play a live set of four songs. They launch into Wonderwall, but after a short while, forget how to play it. The audience is nonplussed. I wonder whether I was distracting them by making random twangs on a cheap acoustic.
I am going out with a girl I do not particularly fancy. She is called Kenny Lunt. She introduces me to her mother, who is also called Kenny Lunt.

Hmm. This is not a very good blog entry, but it's better than the one I wrote yesterday and deleted.

50 Top Valentines Tips (Belated)

2007-02-18T23:56:00.000Z

London ExCeL: because irregular capitalisation makes an otherwise everyday word ExCiting.

Due to work deciding that they needed to spend £1 000 on [avoiding responsibility for] educating me in the world of online marketing, I spent most of last week at London ExCeL, a vast conference centre in the outer Docklands area. You will perhaps be able to detect from my photograph that the place has all the soul of a dead trout. Fill it with a large crowd divided 50/50 between besuited slimy marketing types and jean-wearing techy programmer nerds, and you have the kind of place I'd only go to if you were paying me.

Quite fortunate, then, that this was the case.

Whatever your own opinion on the festivities of February 14th, I'm sure you can imagine my boundless delight at being booked in at the conference all day. I can exclusively reveal that it made a galatically desolate trawling ground for potential valentine's dates (refer to my above description of the attendees for clues why). Giving up on being attracted to anyone present, I made my way afterwards to Soho, and among the restaurants heaving with creatively-challenged couples, found friends, and friendly randoms, at an impro show. This began to reaffirm my faith in life and whether it is worth living and suchlike.

Luckily I fully recuperated on Saturday, which was not only the weekend, but also a beautiful late winter's day, perfect weather for a kickaround in the park. Which is funnily enough exactly what we did.

I forgot to take my camera out on Saturday.
So I stole this photo from the London 2012 website because frankly it's more or less exactly the photo I would have taken anyway.

Stuff online marketing, forget valentine's bollocks. A kickabout in Regent's Park on blue-skyed winter day, then going for a pub dinner while watching Reading put out a reserve side and still get a result at Old Trafford is officially What Life Is All About.

Confused is my natural state of mind

2007-02-03T23:42:00.000Z

Doing justice to the docks at nightfall on a clear winter's day is something that this photo absolutely fails to achieve.

Several things have confused me recently. Now despite my massive intellect, clarity of thought, and other things I fake during interviews, I am in fact quite easily confused, especially when a great number of confusing things all occur in a short space of time.

Moving to London was the first thing. Although I dealt with it quite well, it was something that seemed to confuse a lot of people. However, I think the planets were aligned in a particularly mad way at that point, or the wind changed in the wrong direction and things stuck backwards, as things have been particularly confusing for me since then.

Eddy's album (= my lovely royalties) is, in retrospect, appalling. I say in retrospect; in fact I was perfectly aware before even recording it that it would be appalling. However, this is not what confuses me. No. One of the tracks I thought was particularly bad is top of the indépendents downloads charts at Virgin. Another quite bad one is currently third. Eddy always said he had lots of cousins in the country, I'm just astonished they know how to use a computer.

Upon washing and returning it to Magda, it turns out that that duvet set was her absolute favourite and she could hardly bear to be without it. I am at a loss to explain this.

I always said Reading were great. What is slightly surprising is that this continues to be factually correct. The Royals have 6 wins out of 7, are unbeaten in 2007, and hold a European spot in the league. How many other fans are living the glory years of their team, right now? (Chelsea doesn't count as they are filth)

My work and residence have become almost what you might call "stable". This is very odd indeed. You will be pleased to know that many other parts of life, including I myself, are not stable at all.

I don't miss Paris. Think I have moved enough times that I am completely numb to such emotions. It also helps when, while walking to join friends at the pub earlier, the early evening sky made Millwall Docks look absolutely stunning. No, really.

I'm going to lie down for a bit.

I told you they were up to something

2007-02-01T00:48:00.000Z

I have long suspected their fundamentally harmless image of hiding a sinister truth:

FIFTY-five nuns were on the run last night after racking up debts of £400,000.

The women — all called Maria — had secretly run a knitwear company on the side for ten years.

Their convent supplied 25 shops and they blew a fortune travelling to fashion shows across Europe to keep up with trends.

See 55 nuns on the run for further details. I fear this is merely the thin end of the wedge in terms of nun crime.

Meanwhile here is a picture of some snow.

General Von Choltitz and the Great Parisian Road Name Scandal

2007-01-15T19:42:00.000Z

This seems to be the first night I've had indoors to myself since the last blogentry, so today's nonsense will be peppered with photos of the last week to entertain you while I talk about something completely different. Frankly, I spoil you.

Hit the town with Sezinha on Monday and did some casual sightseeing...

I was much entertained at work earlier by the thoroughly preposterous news that France proposed in 1956 to become part of Britain. Yes, you did read that right. Anthony Eden, British Prime Minister of the time, turned down the suggestion of his French counterpart Guy Mollet, who returned a few weeks later with a request to join the Commonwealth, saying that he thought the French people would have little difficulty accepting the Queen as their reigning monarch. I find this conclusion somewhat errant, although the idea that France - pays de la Révolution - was about to become subject to the British monarchy amuses me endlessly. Sadly, developments in Suez meant that the matter was quietly dropped, and only came to light through recently released papers. Which came as Something Of A Shock to French 20th C historians, generally.

You may be interested to know that France went on to join the EEC, signing the Treaty of Rome the following year. The EEC became the EC at Maastricht in '92, and is now one of the three pillars of what you know as the European Union. Anthony Eden was voted, in 2004, the least successful British Prime Minister of the 20th Century. And Guy Mollet's later biography was entitled Guy Mollet: Le mal aimé (Guy Mollet: The Unpopular Man).

The Royal Exchange, with Tower 42 in the background

Which brings me backward one decade to 1944, and the fate of General Dietrich von Choltitz. Those of you who gave up history in year 9, like me, will perhaps not be aware that in the latter days of WWII, as Hitler was finally losing his grip in Western Europe and forced to retreat from Paris, he gave the order: "the city must not fall into the enemy's hand except lying in complete debris." If he couldn't hang on to the French capital, he wanted nothing left behind but scorched earth. Von Choltitz was the general who received that order.

I'm lifting a sentence here from a much longer article on the Von Choltitz story which you really should read if you have the time, but I think it sums up that situation fairly succinctly: "he was torn between his ingrained Prussian inclination to do as he was told and the realization that to obey would be a bestial act of mass vandalism for which he would be eternally held responsible."

Nice. (Though I would also add that we're talking possibly more than just an "ingrained Prussian inclination" when you're personally receiving a direct order from the single most notorious human of all history.)

Lloyds building
The sightseeing kind of continued with Mike on Saturday...

Paris was ready to blow. Dotted around its famous sewer system were U-boat torpedos installed by German troops. Quite apart from the Allies and Germans fighting on the periphery, rival Communist and Gaullist factions of la résistance were happily engaging in pitched battle on the streets. Hitler even sent an order for the Luftwaffe to start bombing the city. But the General, realising that such destruction had no real goal other than to appease the dictator, and indeed would kill as many German troops as French, refused to obey.

I'm cutting a long story very short here. It's difficult to find out a lot about Von Choltitz' background. As a successful Nazi General, who had presided over previous scorched earth campaigns, it seems he probably wasn't a totally pleasant man. However, his actions in 1944 saved Paris from annihilation, not just in refusing Hitler's orders, but also through his efforts to negotiate between resistance factions, which - admittedly more thanks to the French love of bickering than anything else - kept violence to a minimum.

The man who saved Paris. You'd think they'd at least have something named after him. This is a city which has a road named after a cat that went fishing, after all. Not to mention Naughty Boys Road in the IV arrondissement. And to top it all, this:

Fia's narcissism complex in unexpected roadsign-related boost disaster
(This photo only included to ensure Tim Barton reads to the end of the entry.)

But no. Not even one tiny street for poor little Dietrich.

Start as you mean to go on

2007-01-06T11:00:00.000Z

The Pink Room, Shagwell.

Not the ideal place for an otherwise eligible bachelor to bring girls back to.

Today I am moving flat, which will surprise no-one who has followed my adventures over the last half of 2006. It will be sad to say goodbye to the Pink Room, my first flat in London, and up there with the absolute worst decors I have ever lived in - nearly as bad as the Paris XV mirrors flat of 2003. If the pink wallpaper wasn't bad enough, the lace drapery topped it off, and then... that duvet. It looked like bad television reception, and came with an epilepsy warning. In a funny way I will miss it.

As the clocks struck midnight last Sunday, I was pressurized into making a New Year's resolution by the esteemed Dan of Cholseville. I solemnly resolved to try and live in the same city all year. "Settled" is not something I want to be quite yet (one or two readers in particular may have a deeper appreciation of this than others...) but it seems like a good plan to live London properly and that will take several months at least. What with moving, starting a job, catching up with old friends and making some new ones, there's hardly been any time to enjoy the city just for itself.

When you've had a bad day, this is just uncalled for.
Ever feel like even the random text at the end of spam email titles is out to get you?

I am also resolving to follow up on Tim's invitation and get back into impro here. This may mean having to go back to Paris again and retrieving my musical instruments, but hey, worse things have happened. My German needs topping up, so I'll take evening classes and grab course credits towards... a future degree (!), which will certainly not happen this year, but maybe this decade. In addition, my workplace has come up with a scheme that will allow you to "go and work somewhere cool" for a few days. In other words, you can travel wherever you want, work from your laptop, and it won't eat into your holidays. This would make me very pleased.

So, how was it for you?

2006-12-29T22:55:00.000Z

Studies suggest that I may have lived in more places than was strictly neccessary this year.

The long-term Timberblog readers among you (and those of you who have gone back to read the archives because you had nothing better to do) will be aware that last December I made some resolutions and predictions. Let's see how they went!

Predictions:
"2006 is going to be an auspicious year"
It was for Reading, who had the best year of their 135 year history.
It was for England, who won the World Cup.*
As for me, I started it living in a cupboard and working as a hotel receptionist. I think we can say things improved.

"[The England cricket team] desperately needs a leg-spinner"
Let's face it, they probably would have done better with me playing. Or at least, no worse.

Resolutions:
"buy a digital camera"
I did this. Success!

"find somewhere, anywhere, where I can play cricket in the Paris region"
I didn't find one, and then moved to Amsterdam. Less successful.

Watch this space for upcoming predictions and resolutions for 2007!

* This did not happen.

Get rich quick scheme

2006-12-16T23:41:00.001Z

Watney Market.
It's better than Les Halles.

Bear and I took the chance today to explore the local pubbery of Shadwell, looking for somewhere that would be showing the football. The pub at Shadwell station is boarded up, which seemed to rule it out for the time being. So we tried the one at Watney Market. The large England flag on the outside looked vaguely promising. Results were less so. We can, however, heartily recommend it as a place to go out on a Saturday afternoon if you happen to be interested in horse racing and have grey, or no, hair. The jackpot was finally hit at the Hungerford Arms, which is not in Hungerford, and has no arms. We were able to enjoy Charlton - Liverpool, only a couple of miles from the ground itself, surrounded by one bald man in a Liverpool shirt and twenty walking stick wielding grandads talking about the war.

Recommendation: if you ever find yourself in Shadwell, wanting to go out - try Shoreditch.

Meanwhile the boy Eddy has released his CD upon his adoring fans, meaning that tremendous amounts of money will soon be pouring into my French bank account. Those of you based in Britain will have to wait on tenterhooks until Thursday* when you will be able to use your credit cards to download the whole thing from fnac.com, virginmega.fr, and all good online music stores. Just in time for Christmas! And what could make a better stocking filler than 30mb of mp3 goodness?

*Obviously, when he said "21st December, just in time for Christmas", he actually meant 28th December, just in time to be late for Christmas.**
**Ok, now it's "5th January." Moi je jette l'éponge.

Ca va te coûter cher ma petite

2006-12-05T22:52:00.000Z

I am NOT impressed.

If you have two seconds spare this evening, you may wish to open Google, enter a mild inconvenience into the search box, and click "I'm feeling lucky".

Those responsible for this outrage can expect severe retribution.

You have turned me into this

2006-11-29T13:28:00.000Z

Fulham 0 Reading 1.

Managed to sit in the right end this time. Champions League here we come.

Things that worry me at the moment #1.

Context: I am staying at Pavel's temporarily, while waiting to move into New London Timberflat (only the fourth place, and indeed city, I've lived since August) on Friday. Pavel has a degree in IT+German - so his field of work is not vastly removed from the kind of thing I will be starting on Monday.

He arrived home at midnight last night, and I enquired, in that personable and sociable way of mine, which those who know me will recognise instantly*, whether he'd had a good evening out.

"I have been working," he said. "!" I thought.
"15 hour day. I think tomorrow I will get up at 6.40," he said. "!!" I thought.
"I can't face getting up at 6.15 again." "!!!" I thought.

Canary Wharf.
It may look pretty at night, but everything it stands for is evil and twisted.
Not unlike some girls you've met.

So, that is a timetable of 6.15 wake / go to work / work / come back / 0.15 sleep.

That's not a job, that's your twenties swilling down the plughole. I'm all for people being active and filling their day with Things To Do (boredom, in a big city, is a pretty shameful state, let's face it) but have you ever heard of variation? The spice of life? A change is as good as a break? If any one thing tries to take over my life to even half that extent - be it an office job, a Sheila, or trainspotting at Clapham Junction - I would like to put in a request right now for volunteers willing to slap me back to reality. I know how much some of you enjoy hitting me anyway.

* What?

Paying the price of living life at the limit

2006-11-20T19:12:00.000Z

Looking towards furren lands

Almondsbury Hill feat. Severn Bridge

It was quite refreshing to be treated as a meathead on Friday. A platoon of determinedly well-meaning babushkas had stormed the local school and commandeered two classrooms for a charity-related present-packing bonanza. Unfortunately old ladies are quite crap at carrying heavy boxes full of gifts and loading them onto lorries, and this is where I came in, apparently. I was not alone - they had managed to recruit a sum total of two whole young men - the other one being a guy called Douglas. From Brazil. Well of course.

I say "young men", but what I actually mean is "semi-intelligent vehicle for transportation of anything we can't lift"; it was immediately clear that none of the biddies intended on lifting anything at all.

Still, it allowed me to do a couple of hours' manual work, for charity, and thus feel good about myself in two different ways at once. Which was then ruined by the accusation on tonight's news that many of the children receiving the boxes of presents are also given Bibles, or Christian literature, in a none-too-subtle reminder of where the charity is coming from. I've also discovered that the organisation is run by an evangelist dude who has said some things I really don't agree with. So I'd like to offer an apology right now to all you impoverished Bosnian Muslim kids who regularly read Timberblog. I loaded those boxes in good faith and without an agenda, I didn't know what I was getting into.

So I dragged the parents out on a cycle ride in the countryside instead. I'd forgotten what it looks like. And wondered if there's a word to describe the kind of sledgehammer irony that Alex James now lives in a village almost exactly like this, making cheese.

Almondsbury village
With its "unique herringbone church tower - one of only three in England." [sic]

Going back to Paris

2006-11-15T13:49:00.000Z

Generally speaking it is quite odd going back on holiday to where you used to live. Especially when you only left two months ago. But with your intrepid blogger naturally having things to do, people to see, concerts to play (and frigging piles of sheet music to pick up because he was going mad back in Bristol with only his old grade 4 and 5 exam books for company), a jolly trip to Paris was in order, before December brings the impending doom of 9-5 work and what looks horribly like a serious career.

This made me realise that the reason I've not missed living in Paris yet is because I still think and act like I live there.

Hmm. I wonder if this is going to work?

With typical Timberish cunning, I have manoeuvred myself into the position where I can't live anywhere without thinking I'm from somewhere else. People asking me "so where are you from?" at parties always used to be complex, but now they're more or less impossible.

I am not from anywhere.

Still, this has the side effect of making me exciting and mysterious to such an extent that I have started giving lessons. These can be heartily recommended by Sofia, who in her infinite wisdom elected to come with me this weekend rather than visiting over any of the last 6 years when I actually lived there. Women are stupid.*

To see more photos, click here to visit the "Timberblog" pages on flickr.com. Anyone can see my landscape photos, but if you sign in - which is easy, you only need a yahoo address - and add me as a friend or family (up to you...), you can see people too. An absolute bargain if you ask me.

*And not very mysterious. But she's working on it.

When a compliment isn't a compliment

2006-10-30T22:29:00.000Z

This month I have been mostly looking for jobs in London. This has proved to be A Good Idea. The interest in me has been far more, er, interesting, than in Paris. So it looks like I'm going to be in the UK for a little while, getting ye olde career back on track. Ok so the word "back" was totally redundant in the previous sentence.

In an uncharacteristic piece of cunning, I left in France one thing that could work on its own for me - my songs, currently being pressed onto a couple of thousand CDs at great expense to Someone Who Isn't Me (this is also cunning). Who knows if anyone will ever buy them. Maybe convicted con man and right wing politico maverick Nicky Mig will spurt even more of his hard earned cash over the whole caboodle, but hey. I'll get a percentage on anything sold. Thanks to Eddy's mum, we should be looking at - hmm let me grab a calculator - at least 10 cents there.

Sadly no more Paris means no more Improfessionals, although the future guest appearances will hopefully be plentiful and frequent. Seera also recently had to leave for similar reasons - ambitions for the "sensible" side of her career - and I was reminded earlier of something she said happened when she started work in The Hague. I'll paraphrase, and let your brain add the various jargon and managementspeak thrown in, but it was along the lines of "we're very proud to welcome Seera blah blah she is a great lawyer and we're expecting a hell of a lot from her." If that doesn't give you a fixed grin and a desire to sink underneath your chair I don't know what does.

So imagine my manifest joy on receiving the following from a London-based international IT company:

"Great news. We have selected you out of XXX people... (blah blah etc) ...thought you had great language skills, were very personable and had the right attitude for the job. We are very excited about someone with your skills joining forces with us."

Timber's handy tip for the day: never put effort into your interviews. They might mistake you for someone intelligent and motivated, and give you the job.

Worse still, if I take this, I'm going to have less time to waste typing self indulgent blog entries.

Y'a des choses qu'on n'est pas censés piger

2006-10-19T18:28:00.000+01:00

Faybo took it into her tiny female head that, in the spare hour between moving all my crap into a cave and catching a train with four pieces of heavy luggage, it would be a good idea to climb up Montmartre.

Here she ably demonstrates that you can live 5 minutes from the place and still look like a tourist.

I pottered along to the Gare du Nord on Saturday morning to pick up, from an automatic machine, the Eurostar ticket I'd pre-ordered over the internet a few days before. Yes, another Eurostar ticket. The whole re-integrating-into-Parisian-life thing hadn't quite worked out as planned so - seeing as I wanted to move back to England soonish anyhow - I had taken the bull by the horns, did one more impro show on Friday night, and got a train for Saturday afternoon.

So, after six years of living in France - give or take the odd month or two living in, say, European train carriages, or Amsterdam - here it was, the return to the country that bore(d) me. England. Which of course had nothing to do with all my friends being in London now and Reading being in the Premiership, and everything to do with the job market being better. I'd just like to make that clear. While adding sensible noises about career ladders and work where I can really progress and develop my skills.

I walked up to the machine, slotted in the credit card on which I had booked the journey, and entered my code. At this stage one of the things that you don't particularly want to see is a message flashing up in red lettering, "CODE FAUX".

This was a setback.

I invented six or seven more codes (luckily it wasn't a bank machine so it spat rather than swallowed), none of which worked.

It continued to be a non ideal situation.

It was also a Saturday, so my bank wasn't open. And wouldn't be until Monday. With luck, I could get a new card with a new card and code for, say, Friday. Not that I had an address that they could send it to, mind - I was staying with friends.

Perhaps I should ask someone at the ticket office if anything could be done. Of course, anyone who has lived in France for any length of time will realise that attempting this when (a) I didn't technically have enough money in my French account to pay for the ticket anyway, because Amsterdam "forgot" to send my pay on time, (b) I didn't have any ID on me whatsoever, and (c) there are Parisians involved, was optimistic to say the least.

Bonjour, I said to the tickety wench when I finally hit the front of the queue, I seem to be having tremendous difficulties collecting a ticket from your machine downstairs, as it's not accepting my code. Can you check if the transaction has even gone through? And if not can I pay for the reservation, say, with THIS card?" (going beyond optimism here, and entering loopy la la land).

Non, il faut la carte avec laquelle vous avez reglé en ligne, she said with typical Parisian helpfulness and flexibility, taking the French card and feeding it into her electronic reader jobby. Vous pouvez composer votre code, she announced portentously, indicating the typepad where I was supposed to enter the digits.

Er, I hesitated. Non mais justement c'est ça le problème, vous voyez?

It was at this point that something which Really Shouldn't Have Done, happened.

Oh, it's worked anyway, she noted. Here's your ticket. Departure at 16h07 this afternoon.

Right, I said. I haven't put my code in yet.

No, I didn't understand that either, she said.

Typing test

2006-10-11T10:50:00.000+01:00

I appreciate this is possibly a minority interest blogentry - Fran, look away now - but while hunting for jobs, many of which involve computer literacy, I realised I had no idea what my typing speed was. So, as you would, I typed "typing speed test" into Google, hit the first result, and did an online typing test thingy. Perhaps some of you would like to try it and we can do an anoraky results comparison thing. You need to go here. They give you a paragraph to type in a minute, the countdown starts as soon as you type the first word.

I managed 73 words in a minute but spelt one of them wnorg, resulting in 98% accuracy, or an official WPM of 72.

If you are slower, then ha! I am more skilled than you.
If you are faster, then ha! You are a geek.

Obviously.

(If you can get more than 212, you are using a Dvorak keyboard, and you have just beaten the world record. Thank you wikipedia.)

The delights of the M4 corridor

2006-10-09T13:28:00.000+01:00

The art lecturers are, it appears, fed up of their students already. It's only 9th October, they can only have had a few weeks of class, and it's pretty cold down by the Seine, but the sketchers are very much out in force today. The islands were crawling with them earlier. They are, of course, attracted there to paint beautiful vistas of the same bridges and landmarks that often feature in the various Timberphotos with which I liberally plaster this blog.

But why? Every sketch of Paris' riverbanks made today has already been sketched a million times. Where's the originality? The breath of fresh air? When all's said and done, why not pay a bit extra, and go here?

Winnersh Triangle: better than Paris.
As always, click for big.
Note: some of these photos not taken at Winnersh Triangle.

Hond in de goot

2006-09-29T16:02:00.000+01:00

Ajax' stadium does a very reasonable impression of a UFO landing on a car park.

THE TIMBERBLOG GUIDE TO HOLLAND

Things wot are good about Holland:

* Dutch is ridiculously easy to understand without even trying to learn it.

* Supermarkets round your total to the nearest 5cents, meaning you avoid annoying amounts of coppers.

* There are many, many hot blondes.

* Amsterdam is very pretty but also very liveable in.

* There are no hills. It's easy to get around, you can go for days without crossing an Ordinance Survey contour line. Or whatever they're called here.

Things wot are bad about Holland:

* Dutch is a completely useless language to learn, as it's not spoken virtually anywhere else, and everyone (in Amdam at least) speaks English.

* The hot blondes are often over 6ft, which is impractical of them.

* There are no hills. The countryside is about as interesting as discussing 16th century roofing techniques with a deaf terrapin.

Après la pluie, le beau temps

2006-09-16T21:16:00.000+01:00

Before we start, a disclaimer. This blogentry contains scenes of underage drug use. Do not read any further if you are underage, conservative, easily offended, or American. If you do so, Bad Things will happen to you.

Yes, dear readers, today I tried something new. I thought, well, I'm in Amsterdam now, it's a Saturday afternoon, there's nothing much else to do, why the hell not give it a go. It's easier here than it ever will be in Paris. And I did it. And was very pleased I did. It worked for me. I lay gently back, relaxed, and enjoyed a very comforting and yet also uplifting experience.

For the first time in six years of living abroad, I had succeeded in tuning my radio to receive clear and intelligible Radio Five Live football commentary. Oh, and Reading were winning.

The overall effect on my soul and general happiness turned out to be, in fact, markedly better than that provided by the joint I was offered by a group of three 15-year-old schoolkids down by Sloterplas, which didn't seem too bad at the time, but whose aftertaste took one litre of deliberately bad cola, two thorough toothbrushings, and a whole 6-pack of Albert Heijn vloerkadetten* to remove from my mouth.

Which is why I don't advise kissing smokers unless you are one.

* possibly the best supermarket bread-based product in the world today. When I leave Holland, I'm going to forget all my clothes and pack my bags with these instead.

International moving: not something I recommend doing every month

2006-09-08T16:49:00.000+01:00

TIMBER'S HANDY GUIDE TO MOVING HOUSE

1. Pick somewhere easy to move to, preferably within the same country and ideally within the same city.

2. Under no account should you try to move your things by bus.
2.b. And certainly not on a 7hour international coach travelling overnight through Belgium.
2.c. Which then dumps you in a godforesaken hole of a suburban station at 5.35am on a Sunday.

3. Wherever possible, ensure before travelling that you have somewhere to move into when you get to the destination.

4. If you don't have a flat to move into immediately, consider arranging with some friends to stay at their place while you look for one.

5. If you have no friends, at least book a hotel room for the night in advance.

6. Consider bringing money in smaller amounts than 50euro notes, as you will find these are completely useless when buying anything from machines. Also note that shops Really Aren't Open at half five on Sunday mornings generally and that coach trips often leave you wishing to buy refreshment upon arrival. In addition a metro ticket would be nice to get you up to the centre of the city. You could of course walk the journey in order to pass the time before the shops and indeed ticket offices open, but that would be an utterly horrific and stupid thing to do considering your luggage situation.

It was at approx 5.35am on Sunday morning, sitting on the concrete floor of Amsterdam Amstel station with four heavy bags and the noise of the overnight station cleaner wondering if I was a tramp, that I realised I had comprehensively ignored absolutely all of the above.

Fortunately, thanks to the systeme D, the fact that Holland (unlike France) isn't completely dead on Sundays, and a man from the Philippines called Roger, the state of affairs improved considerably by the evening at which point I had procured a room, some food, and a very overdue shower. But seriously kids, don't even think about doing this. Not that I'm thinking of doing it again next month at all. No. That would just be silly.

Places to go, people to see, heinous crimes against architecture to photograph

2006-08-25T21:40:00.000+01:00

THE TIMBERBLOG HANDY GUIDE TO THE UK

Birmingham is in the UK. It has some lovely buildings.

Most people agree that this isn't one of them.

Equally, most people disagree with me when I say that this one IS.

Football is a popular pastime in the UK.
Supporting the away team while sitting in the middle of the home end is generally considered A Bad Idea.
(Particularly when your team scores first, then goes on to lose.)

Luckily, if you need to get away quickly, you will never have to wait long for a bus. The service in the UK is remarkably frequent.

In addition, passerelles are provided for shorter journeys, such as travelling from your bedroom to the local space station.

London is the capital of the UK. Like Birmingham, it also has some lovely buildings.

Most people agree that this isn't one of them.

Equally, most people disagree with me when I say that this one IS.

Luckily, in London it is also possible to meet a lot of ~~really odd people~~ friends.

Childish Excitement

2006-08-22T08:40:00.000+01:00

I have a jobby thing starting in September! I am going to my team's first ever Premiership away match tomorrow! I am seeing people I've not seen in aaaaaaages on Thursday! I am seeing Radiohead and Beck at a festival on Saturday! Tonight I will be sleeping on a settee in Stoke!

Do things get excitinger?

Here's a photo of l'Hôtel de Ville to be getting on with.

Staring into the abyss

2006-08-09T00:46:00.000+01:00

This is an interesting month, in the sense that I have absolutely no idea where I'll be at the end of it. Presumably France, ideally Paris, but you never know. Such periods of flux have become something of a yearly ritual. And sending off dozens of emails to prospective employers and landlords - I'm trying to keep the two separate this time round - is proving pretty time-consuming. Luckily I am not in ze sheet quite yet but Timberlife does seem to walk a hazardous tightrope between uproarious success and appalling failure without ever fully comitting to either (those of you who have ever lived in France will recognise this as efficient application of le système D).

Sometimes I consider taking drastic and definitive action, in a heroic all-guns-blazing, all-or-nothing gesture of defiance against the system. Not unlike Chief Leaf, who just left to spend two years in a remote Cameroon village, and has thus comprehensively amputated all four limbs that once held her to the career ladder. Or Luke, who's dropping everything to go and work in a Swedish restaurant in Perpignan. (Student city. Young Swedish clientele. Shameless, Luke, shameless, although possibly not quite so much as that nanny thing.)

Timber propaganda shot
You too could be this popular at parties.
(But only if you buy a digger.)

I suppose you'll have to read next week's Timberblogging to find out what happens. (I'm also thinking of bringing in other soap-style dramatic storylines to Timberblog. This will depend partly on audience reaction.) Meanwhile, regarding Timber's upcoming UK tour, nearly everyone has said "yes, I'd like to see you in London", which is great. Nearly everyone then continued "let's meet at half 7", which isn't.

Corrections Column
Qwik Crisp isn't a franglicism, as suggested on 23.7, it's the international trademark. We apologise for any offence, inconvenience, or freak microwave-related injuries caused.

Rolling Stones, Stade de France

2006-07-30T18:19:00.000+01:00

Rolling Stones, Stade de France
Originally uploaded by mattzparis.

Just testing the "blog this" feature on Flickr. This is where I was on Friday night! Well, a bit further back. And to the left. But, you know.

London Calling

2006-07-23T07:02:00.000+01:00

I happily purchased a bolognese pastry thing from Franny P the other day, took it out of its box, and found it in a cardboard sleeve thing (for microwaving) labelled Qwik Crisp. In the great pantheon of bad franglicisms, this comes fairly high, although its purely spelling-based badness means it can't quite compete with le relooking (a grammatically incorrect compound of what is already the wrong word) and the unforgiveably awful le pin's (greengrocer's apostrophe creating a bad plural which is then casually used as the singular with not the slightest regard for anything).

Then again, there was a processed poultry product in the next-door freezer compartment labelled "Chick Balls".

This is nearly as bad as the impro show we did last week, at a 19th-century château in the Picardie countryside. It was the single worst show of any sort ever. We were hired out to entertain 300 corporate guests. Slight issue: they were eating dinner at the time, and weren't remotely interested in any comedy impro that might have been going on. Especially as half of them didn't speak English.

Château les Fontaines - scene of stage death on a grand and repeated scale

Also didn't help that they were all middle-aged engineer types with the charisma and outgoing nature of an office carpet. So we did an hour or so of bollocks that no-one really watched, abused the audience thoroughly in the final scene, and left several hundred euros richer, our artistic souls well and truly flogged. In many senses of the word. Come to think of it, the château did look just like the Star Ac one.

Anyhow, this week has been more positive. The big news, in case you haven't heard, is that there will be a late August Timbervisit to, of all places, the UK. Timber will be appearing in Stoke on 22nd, Brum on 23rd, and London on 24th and 25th. Due to unprecedented public demand, we advise you to book early to avoid disappointment. Unless you don't want to see me, in which case don't.

Timber's Career Moves N° 27

2006-07-11T08:10:00.000+01:00

Quite apart from not being able to live in the same place for any length of time - 24 years of Timber and 13 addresses so far - I am also, since my first job as a paper delivery boy at the ripe old age of 14, proving to be remarkably inept at keeping the same job for more than a few months at a time. Or indeed even remaining within vaguely the same field of work.

This year, frog sample, Timberblog followers will note I have been mostly working as a translator, receptionist, teacher, and professional musician. I suppose if you look hard there are some transferrable skills in there somewhere. Which doesn't explain why, this month, I am a web site developer.

In fact a girl I met in April did ask me, within I suppose a few hours, "so... do you actually have a direction in life?" Actually, perhaps it was more tactful than that. But, you know.

Anyhow, it's only since being a web site developer that I have truly realised how fundamentally useless Internet Explorer is.

You see, it's a bit like preparing a romantic meal for the immaculately well brought-up girl you invited round for dinner in a fit of misplaced optimism about your unreliable cooking skills. What happens is you throw in ingredients, such as "head" and "body" and so on, stir them round a bit, add some seasoning, and then just when the dish is all lovely, ready to take off the heat and serve piping hot to the webby table...

PING! thwack

(sorry, I seem to have overstretched the elastic of my metaphor here, bear with me)

(ok I think I've got it back, hang in there)

...yes, as I was saying, immediately before serving it obviously you want to taste it to see if it's good. So generally you run it through a couple of tests, which involves looking at it in different programmes and asking friends to check it on different computers. Just to make sure it looks fine to everyone. And generally it does, with one notable exception.

You may not know this, but Internet Explorer was specifically designed for the sole purpose of irritating the hell out of designers. It's the single most useless programme ever invented for looking at the Internet. And it also happens to be the one that comes free with your PC, and which therefore nearly everyone uses.

Observe:

Sophie's lovely new website, as displayed in A Sensible Internet Browser

Sophie's lovely new website, as ruined by IE's refusal to handle transparent png files in any sort of mature and responsible manner

Worst of all, I know that Sophie herself uses IE.

If YOU are using IE right now, please consider changing to Firefox (or telling your company to do so). You can get it here - on a fast connection, you really have no excuse at all. It's free, it's safer, it's faster, it blocks pop up advertisements, it's morally more sound, hell, it'll even make you more desirable to the opposite sex.

(Although not as much as purchasing a new digger.)

Thank you for your attention.

Nous aurons toujours Paris

2006-07-05T17:23:00.000+01:00

Les leafs naturels de l'if, Sceaux
This is a reference. Approximately two of my readers will understand.

Parental visits are something of a challenge.

When my family first visited Paris in 1994, a combination of good fortune and ruthlessly efficient forward planning meant that we managed to experience pretty much all the major sights in three days. All well and good, you might think, but it means that since they've now been visiting me here for the last five years, it's more and more difficult to find things to entertain them with. We've long since moved on from the A-list tourist spots, scuttled through the B-list ones, and are now into the realms of "vaguely nice things that are sort of near Paris and might be worth seeing" - cf. the entry from two weeks ago.

So my progenitors (mmm thesauruses) were back up from Nice this weekend after two weeks of searching for wild flamingos (paternal) and improbably long-range cycling (maternal).

So, Sceaux.

Château de Sceaux

There it is. It's in the outback of zone 3, on the Chevreuse branch of line B. It's alright. There's a lakey thing (much like Versailles) and people playing football nearby, which commonly results in floating ball incidents, and teenagers debating whether to jump into water murkier than an Italian referee's history. Maybe you'll want to go there sometime and witness such a thing. There are worse ways of spending a sunny afternoon.

Meanwhile, quite aside from the parents, my lack of recent blogular action can be attributed to:

1. Spending far too many nights down the pub with people of various nationalities glued to the Weltmeisterschaft. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
2. Doing concerts with Eddy and wondering when, or indeed whether, the nice cheque will arrive in the post. I guess the good thing about having a well-known convicted fraudster as your manager is that you know absolutely for sure that he has a dodgy past. With most band managers you just suspect it.
3. Concluding no nice summer job is going to fall into my lap, agreeing to stay looking after a Paris hotel all July and August, then promptly having The Best Summer Job Ever suddenly fall into my lap.
4. Backpedalling like an epileptic hamster.

Parents, kangaroos, and whipped cream

2006-06-17T12:28:00.000+01:00

Uh-oh. Parents have hit again. They arrived on Monday in a week where I was already recording for a cd and trying to watch as much of the Weltmeisterschaft as possible. Perhaps not hugely surprising, then, that Timberblog hasn't seen any entries for a bit.

The band spent the whole of Monday and most of Tuesday in the studios recording the instruments for an albumy sort of thing. Result: nine songs done, and parents wondering whether they were actually going to see me at all. So I appeased them on Wednesday by taking them on an exciting trip to the Oise region.

In the morning, after another ticket-inspector-based near miss (cf. "A countryside adventure" from the June 2005 archives), but luckily happening upon the cheeriest SNCF employee I have met yet, who totally ignored the fact I was travelling on the wrong ticket, we took in Senlis, a town that goes back to Roman times and has that whole cobbled streets and medieval architecture thing going on. This seemed to please the parents, who don't get so much of that kind of action by the Patchway Roundabout. And yes, it was good to get out of the big city for a bit.

From here we caught a bus to Chantilly and headed to the château. On the way we passed the Grandes Ecuries (Great Stables). The Prince of Condé had them built in 1719, apparently convinced that he would be reincarnated as a horse. Hence their ridiculous size and luxuriousness. You can just imagine his consternation when he came back as a bathroom sponge.* Anyway, his château was destroyed in the revolution. The present day building was finished in 1881 and looks alright. So we walked around it a bit, found the place where they invented whipped cream, and made friends with some kangaroos.

* Information not historically verified.

On Thursday morning it was time for a visit to the Musée Carnavalet, which has the twin benefits of being just up the road, and free. The permanent exhibition tracks the history of the city of Paris from prehistory up to the modern day. The several scale models of the city as it was in the ( x ) th century were impressive, as was the sheer variation in exhibits - helpfully pointed out to us by the incredibly dull curator bloke in the 19th C art gallery section.

Finally, on Friday morning we went to the end of line 10 and walked to the end of line 9. This was rendered more exciting than it sounds by taking a diversion into the Parc de St Cloud, where you can get views like this, and where I will be seeing Radiohead at the Rock En Seine festival on August bank holiday weekend (woo!).

Parents have now been successfully shipped off to Nice.

Pie update

2006-06-03T21:02:00.000+01:00

The national pie deficit of France has been very well-documented. Or at least, I've talked about it a lot, which is more or less the same thing. So, being a man of action, I decided to do something about it, and wrote to one of Britain's leading pastry bakeries.

Clotilda the cow says: "Happy St Kevin's day!"
Note: this cow is not called Clotilda, and I think it's supposed to be a bull in any case.
Today is, however, St Kevin's day.

"I am an expat living since 2000 in Paris, a city of several thousand Britons, and a serious sausage roll deficit. [...] I wanted to know if your company has any plans to expand into Europe and of course particularly Paris. The French have recently cottoned on to the concept of the pasty but sadly they have adapted it, regarding it as little more than a snack. This has left me nonplussed. I'm convinced that there's a market gap just waiting to be filled by your products. The demand would be huge."

They were kind enough to reply very promptly.

"Thank you very much for your enquiry with regard to Shops in Europe.

"I am very sorry, but whilst we read your e-mail with great interest, we do not have any plans to open up shops in Paris .We are a vertically integrated company which means that... [blah, blah, blah, etc...] [oh, and a bit more blah] ...to set up in a new geographical location would require massive capital investment, due to the nature of our business operation, and as such we have no plans to locate in new geographical areas in the foreseeable future.

"We do intend to develop our business further in the forthcoming years, and hopefully may move to Paris, but as for the immediate future, I am sorry we have no plans.

"Thank you once again for your interest."

What can I say? The battle is lost but the war is far from over. And I will fight on!

A rainstruck Beave sings a street sussed serenade

2006-05-23T14:32:00.000+01:00

We had a fifth birthday picnic this weekend. This was the perfect excuse to get a bunch of people down by the river to eat and drink in the sunshine, not to mention drag in some random passers-by. I have pilfered some photos from Rafael's website to illustrate the kind of things that went on.

Uh-oh. There's a Timber on stage.

Do not underestimate our pulling power.
The gibberish gameshow scene attracts a passing boat.

Opportunist group of North African dancers borrowing our audience during the interval.

Clara models her new sunglasses. Reactions were mixed.
But wait, who's that style God sitting behind her? Maybe he'll be able to give her some tips.

Sarah the kiwi tries them on. And I'm still not convinced.
"Ah, Beave, I should introduce you. This is Seera."
"Hi Seera."
"Year," says Sarah, "he carls me thett. But my nime's ekcherly Seera."

Festivities continued until about 6ish, by which time Beave and I had made off back over the river, planning to walk up to Place de la République to find an Indian restaurant. This plan lasted until a few hundred metres along Rue de Turenne, when Beave noticed that we were directly under a friend's flat, and the window was open. And did I mention it was beginning to rain quite hard? In a very Dire Straits moment he shouted up to the window. She had two other friends over. Bargain. We elegantly gatecrashed, only to decide that we would go straight out again and reserve tickets for the 9pm showing of The Da Vinci Code at la Bastille. At this point, those of you who are not fans of getting drenched while making pointless round trips in the pouring rain will wish to note that the ticket office at Cinéma La Bastille only opens 10 minutes before your fillum starts.

This all resulted in dinner at chez Marianne, which serves a Jewish take on tapas, and which, as Ruth helpfully pointed out, was recently recommended in the Economist. You're probably best off doing what she and Georgie did, ordering a platter of 10 different items to share between two. With careful umbrella deployment we made our way back to the cinema, and saw ye fillum. Haven't read the book, so I can't comment on how well adapted it is. One thing I would say, however, is that Tom Hanks + Audrey Tautou really doesn't work. But overall it wasn't as bad as I expected, possibly because it's the kind of fillum that critics love to hate (but then, usually I do too. Hmm. Where's my cynicism gone?)

In fact I find it difficult to have strong feelings either way about it. Most of the harsh criticism over the book is that, to put it bluntly, it presents bollocks as fact. Ok, but it's hardly the first book to do that. People who can't tell the difference are probably the same people who don't understand why it's called Da twice. The plot requires a hell of a lot of suspension of disbelief, but again, that's not abnormal in the world of fiction. And I enjoyed the twists. I find it difficult to hate The Da Vinci Code, because contrary to popular opinion I don't think it's pretending to be anything it isn't. I just wish they'd hired someone less fundamentally uninspiring to play Robert Langdon, and someone better at acting in English for Sophie Neveu (sorry Audrey, you're great in French, but it all went a bit Emmanuelle Béart In Mission Impossible there).

Mangiamo Italiano

2006-05-15T20:38:00.000+01:00

The Improfessionals were in Villetaneuse last week to perform in front of 200 first year IT students at Université Paris XII. In a display of casual narcissism, we picked up copies of this month's Paris Times on the way there, and read about ourselves on the train. You will be pleased to know that Timber got the closing quote of the article, although I'm not convinced I actually said it.

The Villetaneuse campus is a monument to awful 1970s architecture. Apparently it was originally designed to be built in Tunisia, but funding fell through. So they built it in a northern Paris suburb instead. Not quite sure how that works out, but hey, tant mieux, it means that we can enjoy its myriad concrete passerelles and prefabricated buildings of the sort that were designed as temporary measures with the intention of replacing them 10 years later. Which of course never happens (cf. Reading School geography rooms).

So we performed in a lecture hall in front of reams of identical wooden benches only identifiable by the three-figure number stamped on them, and a vast blackboard with some fairly horrifying equations scrawled across it. The students take English as a unit in their IT course and had certain difficulties keeping up with the funny parts; as you would expect, the front row watched attentively, while further back was a guy who countered every actor's request for inspiration by shouting "Mousse!"

The others decided that after our exertions we should all eat an Italian meal together. As we headed back to Paris I spotted this fabulous looking establishment through the window of the bus. Unfortunately my argument, "let's go there, it'll be Really Good!", failed to convince anyone.

We then proceeded to spend most of the money we'd just earnt, at a suprisingly classy ristorante round the corner from Pigalle.

In other news, there is now a Steeve Sfax myspace page.

Summer concerts

2006-05-07T14:39:00.000+01:00

Radiohead confirmed at Rock En Seine festival, 25th August, near Paris. Two day pass 70€, one day tickets still to go on sale I think.

Sigur Ros play l'Olympia, 6th July, Paris. 30€50.

And not forgetting - Eddy Gatline au Sentier des Halles, 10, 17, and 24th June, featuring Timber... 18€ on the night

If any of these interest you, please get in touch. Tickets available chez fnac.

Congés payés

2006-05-02T19:31:00.000+01:00

Suddenly, I like the employment system.

Having finished my reception work last Thursday (in which David came and then spent at least an hour talking to a random Japanese-American tourist about nothing in particular) I was entitled today to my final paycheque. They buzzed my room and asked me come down to deal with a few papers.

I need you to sign here, said the gérant, to say that we've paid you everything we owe you and the contract has been fulfilled. And here's your cheque. Obviously you get a bit more than usual.

I do?

Yes, you didn't take holidays.* The law says we have to give you a paid holiday allowance. [Cites amount which exceeded normal monthly wage by almost as much again].

So that was nice.

*Not strictly true - see Même quand je suis en vacances je bosse from January archive - but I let it pass.

(Excuse the lack of meaty blog entries at the mo, I've been working on other things. This includes the Q-biq Xpression myspace page, and forthcoming work on Eddy's hitherto awful web site which I shall be improving if I have anything to do with it.)

Advertisement Feature

2006-04-26T18:26:00.000+01:00

Should you be a fan of football and wish to natter about stuff but don't have a pub to go to with your friends, fear not! Timber and Mike's World Cup 2006 Forum has arrived for all your bantering needs. Click here, or use the link on the left.

Timber's Multicoloured Personality Disorders

2006-04-18T04:09:00.000+01:00

To celebrate a year of Timberblog (which is outrageously moot because it's not like I blog every day and indeed I nonchalantly missed August last year and anyone who celebrates their blog's birthday should have their reproductive organs removed) I have taken a personality disorder test.

The fact that I took it at 5am while trying to get to sleep probably tells you more about any personality disorders I might have than my replies to any of the questions in the test.

Behold the results:

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid Disorder:	Moderate
Schizoid Disorder:	Moderate
Schizotypal Disorder:	Moderate
Antisocial Disorder:	Low
Borderline Disorder:	Low
Histrionic Disorder:	Low
Narcissistic Disorder:	High
Avoidant Disorder:	Low
Dependent Disorder:	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:	Low
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! -- -- Personality Disorders --

Hurrah! On reflection, this is unlikely to surprise anyone who visited me while I was living at TimberFlat IV.*

* There's a reason why the word "reflection" appears in this sentence.

Unending fame and fortune

2006-04-17T00:27:00.000+01:00

This week I have taken several steps towards realising my ambitions in several fields, and hence have created in myself a feeling of dynamism and going-places that in turn allows me to project a greater impression of healthy self-worth among my associate employee contemporaries. I predict this will last until at least half past three tomorrow afternoon.

Here's a photo I took on the way to the pub.
This shows that Paris is better than Woodley Industrial Estate.

Firstly, I managed to get myself published in the Guardian. Well, the online version of the Guardian. It wasn't exactly an article, and as such I suppose you'd be stretching things to call it journalism. And they did cut more than half of my contribution. But there it was, my name in a national newspaper, and a glorious 34 words penned (ok, typed) by my fair hand. Hey, it's a start.

Secondly, I also found myself on the receiving end of journalism, being interviewed for the Paris Times (I think the article is to be printed next month). Now ok, the Paris Times is a nothing paper, a monthly freebee with about 7 readers, but... Hey, it's a start.

Thirdly and finally, Eddy the crooner has finally got himself a website. At the moment it is, frankly, a complete mess, which will more than likely crash your computer if you're not careful, so I fully suggest you don't visit it. I did, and despite a bout of Windows system capitulations, I managed to look at most of the pages, leading to the rather disturbing discovery that Nicolas, otherwise known as celui qui m'ouvre les portes (that is to say, the dude who is investing in our series of concerts this June), is none other than weirdo politician, stocks 'n shares genius, and convicted fraudster Nicolas Miguet.

So that's all good and raises no moral issues at all.

A Really Bad Interview

2006-04-07T19:47:00.000+01:00

There are many things that can go wrong in a job interview, and this morning at La Défense most of them did. So why do you want to be a teacher, she asked. (I don't.) What made you apply here, she asked. (The advert for receptionist work). What makes a good teacher, she asked. A good teacher needs to be interesting and communicative, I informed her. (I am currently feeling as charismatic as a funeral and as coherent as the sentence of this end.)

Things to bear in mind for next time:

(a) You generally give a better account of yourself when you've slept more than 4 hours. Memo: hit head with brick 8hrs before next pre-noon interview.
(b) Ties go better with v-neck sweaters - this oversight not unrelated to point (a).
(c) Being interviewed for the post they are looking to fill, rather than job that you applied for, Puts You At A Certain Disadvantage.
(d) Though 100% genuine, the excuse "sorry I'm late, but just as I was leaving my flat I received a phone call from a company explaining they wanted me to teach business English in friggin Nogent-sur-Marne at half two this afternoon" is not going to create sympathy when you've just turned up 10 minutes late... for a post teaching business English.
(e) If the interviewer says, "so, what would your ideal job be? Obviously it's not working at [this establishment]," it's time to leave. Even if she did agree with me.

So I got out and caught the train back across Paris, and out the other end, as far as Nogent-sur-Marne. This was hence the fourth in the series of Timber's Weekend Excursions, and our first venture into the wilderness of zone 3. Arrived quite early and found it is a typical sleepy suburb, with the kind of houses you find absolutely everywhere in France, so nabbed myself some provisions from a boulangerie and sat on a bench to munch, and admire the view. And what I saw was this:

Nogent-sur-Marne, ville fleurie
The Nogent Tourist Office is situated directly opposite this lovely car park.

Two birthdays in one evening

2006-04-03T13:31:00.000+01:00

Beave is a certified April fool, born on a sunny 1st April in the early 80s. So Saturday evening was reserved for partyage. Saturday afternoon had already gone pretty well, what with (well come on, I had to mention it) Reading sealing the Championship title with a 5-0 dismissal of Derby County. I have so far resisted sending Sarah the Derby supporter a message about this, but it is difficult. When I first met her she remarked that she wasn't aware Reading even had a football team. Perhaps I will direct her to many joyous Reading videos I found archived here.

It was also time for another birthday on Saturday, with a further member of my Sarah collection, Chief Leaf, holding a swish cocktail party in the XVIe. This was kicking off at 9pm and I had promised to drop in before my coach turned back into a pumpkin. Slightly worrying then - what with Beave's capacity for pre-meal alcohol, Ruth's decision to crack open the champagne, and Georgie's sudden uncontrollable desire to become a nibbles waitress - that we didn't even get to the Indian restaurant (reservation: 8pm) until half nine.

Being the suave and sophisticated man of the world that you know and love*, I elected against rushing my almondy chicken thing, but time was ticking away and spurning the Chief would result in certain death. I have seen first-hand what happens if you cross her and my word it's scary.

* Product may differ slightly from illustration. Again.

Unfortunately I had already made a fatal error. While it was just about feasible to catch a line 6 train at half eleven, knock on the door of the party at midnight, politely leave two minutes later, and still be back at the hotel for half midnight, I had left my bag at Beave's flat before the restaurant. Now Beave's flat is on the 7th floor. In the wrong direction. And this is after much beer, champagne, wine, and a shot of what some of us identified as whisky, apart from the two girls who appeared to have received shots of peach juice in its place. (Perhaps they'd run out of whisky and hoped we wouldn't notice.)

I gave up at Châtelet and went home. I have subsequently received a smoke signal from Chief Leaf ominously informing me "You are very bad. If there's one thing I do distinctly remember about my party, it was your absence."

Oops.

No history my arse. 135 years more like. We were just crap for 134.

2006-03-25T20:06:00.000Z

I did tell you 2006 was going to be an auspicious year.

Reading, the best second-division team since the war, celebrate on a gloomy and grey day in Leicester.
Whoever flukes their way up via the playoffs will do it in front of 70 000 at the finest stadium in Britain.

If it needs spelling out, Reading FC, one of the oldest football clubs in the world, today clinched promotion to the top division of English football for the first time in their history. They also achieved this with 6 games to spare, which is better than anyone's done since the war. Not bad for a team whose first match, in 1872, finished in a 0-0 draw against my secondary school.

Without wishing to go overboard, I'd say we can now confirm that Reading are without a shadow of a doubt the best football team in the world ever. Even Chris Tarrant pretty much agrees with me.

This means that:

1. next year if French people ask me who I support I can actually say "Reading" without them saying "what?" Yes Liverpool were my first love, but supporting what was for 8 years my hometown club has far more indie cred and is better for my image. Or so says my stylist.

2. The following statement is true for the first time ever: tonight I wish I was in Reading not Paris.

3. children in small towns like Leeds, Nottingham, or Sheffield, frog sample, will start saying, "yeah, basically I support United / Forest / Wednesday, but my Premiership team is Reading."

To sum up - in a footballing sense, today could not be any more perfect unless Liverpool won the Mersey derby with an own goal from a former Man Utd player. You say what?

A dramatic error

2006-03-21T17:29:00.000Z

One thing I have learnt this week is that when someone kindly invites you to their show, it's generally a good idea to turn up at the correct theatre. Unfortunately on Saturday I comprehensively failed to do this. So I can't really inform you about what a lovely performance of The Wizard of Oz I saw the other day, because I didn't see it. Instead, I merely caused great confusion among two grey-bearded men on the door of what appeared to be some kind of bizarre family reunion. Who the hell has a family reunion in a theatre?

Walking back home from the wrong theatre
is better in Paris than in central Reading.

Anyway, with this notable exception, I did manage to turn up in the right place for the vast majority of things last week. Aside from meeting random Italian pop singers during the week and spending St Paddy's down the pub with a vast array of people none of whom were Irish, I even got some useful stuff done. We auditioned Christophe (le batteur) and Alex (le guitariste) in the studios on Sunday, and proceeded to forcefully separate bricks from mortar through the sheer power of noise. Soft rock it ain't. This was universally considered as A Good Thing, and the two musicians seem to want to carry on with us so that's all fruity. The Parisians among you may wish to keep a Saturday evening free in June - we're playing the Sentier des Halles three weeks in a row.

Beave and I finished the weekend making our way down to the Parc des Princes on Sunday evening to watch PSG destroy Auxerre 4-1. PSG must be the most frustrating team to support in the world - they are capable of a result like this, playing some beautiful football*, but it was also their first win in 8 league matches... says it all really.

* In the 57th minute, PSG won the ball near their own corner flag. Ponced around with a couple of one touch passes to get it out of defence, then knocked it about in midfield while the crowd started shouting "olé". 10 passes later, Beave turned round and said "if they score from this move, it'll be some goal". Then this only went and happened.

www.planetepsg.com is worth visiting, but only if you are in any sense interested.

It should be noted that René Bolf's earlier own goal was also a thing of beauty.

Eschatology and the Post-Tribulation Rapture

2006-03-14T01:03:00.000Z

The bottom of my road, yesterday.
It's better than Winnersh Triangle.

Two innocent looking middle aged ladies walked into the hotel reception in the afternoon while I was working. "Bonjour," I said. "Hello," they said in French, smiling warmly and dropping a copy of La Tour de Garde on the desk, "we wondered whether you'd be interested in our magazines."

"YAY," I thought very nearly out loud, "Jehovah's Witnesses!"

This was of course completely the wrong thing to think, because if you look delighted at the arrival of two Jehovah's Witnesses then they are generally going to assume that you are Enthusiastic To Learn About The Truth. Which is, funnily enough, precisely what they did.

"Do you know these magazines then?" one asked. Hell yes, I said, the Gingehovah only spent most of 2003 defending her faith against my apostatic conjectures, and tentatively inviting me to her Bile Study evenings. "Do you know God?" she asked. "My Dad," I replied, "is an Anglican vicar, and has a direct line to God, as it happens. We were introduced when I was a kid." "This month's issue", she continued undaunted and clearly gaining momentum, "is about morality and money. Which is more important to you?"

Realising that answering such a question would lead to (if previous Gingehovah experiences are anything to go by) a three hour argument followed by a break for a hot chocolate and then another three hours before she sleeps over and we're late for university the next morning, I pointed out that I was, in case she hadn't noticed, at work, and that it really wasn't the best moment to explore the metaphysical condition of mankind with someone I wasn't going to agree with even if she offered to make me pies for the rest of my life. But I did take her magazines. They are brilliant. I think they see their world through the same filters as Jean-Pierre Jeunet put on the cameras while filming Amélie, if you see what I mean, which all things considered you probably don't, but on the small offchance that you do, well, there you are.

By the way, if you do happen to be a devout believer in similar things, you may wish to consider using this useful site to let people know where you've gone in case you're ever unexpectedly taken up to heaven. A sort of spam from the afterlife, if you like.

Now, more importantly, in case you're wondering, there was a Timber excursion this weekend, to Vanves on the invitation of the cheeky Chief Leaf. Unfortunately, however, Vanves is not interesting enough to take photos of. Sorry about that. Suggestions are welcome for the next one if you have any particular requests.

I... know nothing

2006-03-07T09:47:00.000Z

I increasingly identify with this man.

Last week featured a highly amusing expedition up to the Stade de France with Beave, to watch France lose 2-1 at home to Slovakia. France wasted about a dozen easy chances to score, while Slovakia had about three half chances all match and scored twice - a stunning angled drive from Nemeth, and a clinically executed free kick, both from the edge of the area. Little Jimmy, the hotel's resident child - and budding football fanatic - was inconsolable on Thursday. I laughed cruelly at him and pointed out sensitively that, unlike France, England won. Meanwhile the Argies also lost, and Germany went down 4-1 in Florence. Anyone who complains about the England performance, under these circumstances, needs boiling.

Last week also saw possibly the most immature argument ever seen between two football clubs, in the run-up to the PSG-OM grudge match. Result: Marseille pettily refused to send their first team, turned down the tickets allocated to their fans, and turned up with a bunch of reserves. PSG, in the way that only PSG can, managed to turn what should have been an easy win into a 0-0 draw. I've been to watch them several times over the years, the Parc des Princes generates a fantastic atmosphere considering it's full of French people, but they really are one of the most frustrating, underachieving, and generally arse clubs in the world. (Note: at Christmas they were 2nd in the league and doing just fine. Out of the blue, they sacked their manager, and brought in a new president. They are now 7th and haven't won for 6 matches.)

For those of you disappointed at the lack of a weekend Timberblog excursion, this was due to a healthy social life on Saturday, and a completely unhealthy social life on Sunday.

In unrelated news, I have made my first short fillum. Click here to see it. This site will also let you make your own.

[Film rated 15 for strong language and mild sexual references.]

Timber's weekend excursions N°2

2006-02-26T15:57:00.000Z

Spent most of yesterday signing my soul away to the dude who's decided to produce us. It's the same guy who's giving us full use of his professional recording studio for free as often as we want, so I guess he deserves to make a little bit of money out of us if anything happens. Unfortunately, to have any sort of career in France you need to have filled in at least sixteen pieces of paper sent in triplicate to four different organisations each. Meanwhile our latest demo CD is virtually finished and, more to the point, will be in the hands of the director of A Major Recording Company by Wednesday.

After all that I woke up at the thoroughly ridiculous time of 07h30 this morning. It was snowing lightly, and after briefly surfing the excellent Archiguide for a few minutes, I decided that I needed to go to Pantin. Twinned with Moscow, as Fran points out, so it must be pretty cool.

More to the point, it is the home of the Grands Moulins de Pantin. This is the kind of building that Timbers can't resist. It's a huge flour mill just outside Paris on the Canal de l'Ourcq, part uncompromising heavy industrial factory, part majestic German castle. Built in 1923, the mill was heavily damaged during WWII but fully reconstructed in 1944. Production ran until 2000 and the site was completely shut down three years later.

Which is arse, because it means you can't go in there any more (though whether I'd want to so much if it wasn't abandoned, derelict, and unsafe, is open to question - cf. Timberblog archives and the entry about the Strahov). My new lifetime ambition is to write a 7-minute industrial hard rock anthem and use various parts of the Grands Moulins as the backdrop of the video. Preferably floodlit at night and with plenty of fire and smoke going on. Unfortunately it seems that some idiots around a table in central Paris want to demolish most of it and redevelop the site into shiny office blocks. This is why I need a record deal, and fast...

(...if I sell enough cds I'll just buy the whole factory myself and possibly live in it.)

Consult the Flickr link in the side bar for further photoage. And on a different subject, if you've ever caught yourself thinking that it would be a good idea to buy a small model railway for your 10-year-old child: please look at this page first. And don't say I didn't warn you about the consequences.

Ma chi sono io?

2006-02-19T19:40:00.000Z

Supergirl asked me for a cigarette last night. I didn't have one, but happened to be carrying a maraca at the time, so offered her that instead. She seemed quite pleased with it. But then, she was spectacularly drunk. So I talked to Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde instead.

I was only able to be there for an hour, so didn't bother dressing up. This is fine because when people ask who you've come as, you can tell them to guess, and enjoy the various struggles to answer. Beats being one of the Zorros, anyhow. Meanwhile Clara is convinced I am Harold from 1970s cult classic Harold and Maude.

I don't shag OAPs though. Just wanted to make that clear.

Separated at birth

2006-02-15T10:07:00.000Z

Düsseldorfer Partnerstädte

This morning I was in a weird mood. The sort of hyperactive thing where you feel like writing a novel, attaining fluency in an obscure oriental language, and completing a small photoproject on 1960s architecture before lunchtime. Why the hell I was feeling so active I don't know, I didn't even sleep all night. Maybe it was the cheap Cola?

Well I've managed the photoproject and have entitled it Jumelages fantastiques.

You are probably aware of the concept of Twin Towns. They seem to exist largely for the purpose of facilitating school language exchanges, as far as I can tell. Anyway. There is a suburb to the north east of Paris called Bobigny. It is, for whatever completely tenuous reason, twinned with the Portuguese town of Setubal. I have a feeling the Portuguese might not quite understand what they have let their schoolkids in for. Witness:

This is the Town Hall in Setubal.

This is the Town Hall in Bobigny.

There's not a lot more I can say.

Brajor Fain Muckage

2006-02-13T00:01:00.000Z

I have been introducing Beave to the pubs of Paris. I think we're up to 5 different ones already. Saturday was the Bowler, for rugby, and girls who said yah and wanted to talk about Cowes week and the Henley regatta. This passes me by a little, so I read the paper instead.

Friday was the Auld Alliance, and a night of Brajor Fain Muckage. It was ok to start with. Beave and I popped in there for a pint, and found that not only were they showing Reading - Southampton, but that Reading were already 1 goal to the good. Result, we thought, and sat down to watch.

So there I was with Beave, and you talk about old schoolfriends and so on. Then - as I guessed might happen - in strolls Eddy (who keeps asking me to introduce him to my friends, but I never get round to it) with a couple of his friends. So we start chatting, the problem being that I talk to Beave in English (obviously) and Eddy in French (obviously). This gets quite messy and very very franglais and a bit confusing. Probably not the moment, then, that you need to deal with Chief Leaf randomly turning up, who is of course a university friend and thus from another sphere completely.

And I can't cope with being social at the best of times.

Meanwhile we've also done the cosy Bombardier at Place du Panthéon, and the Mazet, which unfortunately was named after André Mazet, and not Edouard Mazet. Edouard was a legend. Observe:

Edouard Mazet's 1884 plan to alleviate Paris traffic.
For some reason it didn't catch on and they built the métro instead.

As you can see from the picture, Mazet's plan basically involved a sort of barge-shaped thing which travelled along lines of lampposts. He called it "The New Metropolitan Railway - without Rails, Wagons, Bridges or Tunnels". So, sort of like a pub without drink, seats, people, or walls.

He argued that building underground railways would never work, unless the city had been designed with them in mind from the very beginning. If not, there would be sewers, pipes, and so on, in the way. Of course, he also argued that an underground railway would not be constructed before a town existed, because there would be no need for it. (A settlement has existed on the Paris site since 3rd century BC, but believe it or not neither the Celts nor the Romans had the foresight to install the tunnels which would accommodate underground trains as soon as the technology became available a mere 1800 years later.) To the suggestion of overground railways, he noted that building bridges across Paris, and in front of historic monuments, would be very ugly. And so his solution was born.

Propulsion was supposed to be either by an on-board motor powered by steam, electricity, or petrol, or via a cable-car style rope attached to the lampposts. Quite what sort of propulsion the motor was supposed to power is apparently moot.

He was a Merchant Navy Captain, and was being completely serious. Personally I think it would have been a brilliant idea, if it wasn't for the several thousand major flaws involved. You can read all about this genius man here.

The best suggestion wins a cake

2006-02-06T13:19:00.000Z

I have decided that I need to see Brazil. Chakkers said it's good, and I realised that after idly chatting to an American tourist on the Amsterdam-Paris train last week who turned out to be 60s blues singer Geoff Muldaur, that I have now met its lead male, one of the supporting cast, and the writer of the theme music. Not something I can say about many fillums, and as good an excuse as any to watch it, really.

Meanwhile I was called upon this weekend to accompany a French beginners' improvising class in their first performance, at a little theatre in the 12th. The problem is that a combination of 1. spending far too much time in A-level English messing about with word games, obscure grammatical formulae such as zeugma and syllepsis, or ridiculous over-interpretation of text, and not paying any attention to the teacher whatsoever beyond checking which book you were supposedly studying in that lesson in order to have it placed smartly in front of you on the desk (I heartily recommend this course of action - it got me, and several classmates, an A), 2. regularly reading James Richardson's Italian football reports, and their abundant use of ludicrously elaborate similes, in the Guardian, 3. having a mind that does occasionally wander during impro performances, 4. there being several comely young French maidens on stage on Saturday afternoon (this is perhaps not unrelated to point 3.), and 5. knowing that I was meeting up with Beave in the pub afterwards and that 90% of his sentences would begin "I was at [ x ] today and there was this well fit bird," provoked the realisation that I needed to stock up on some new similes - in this particular case to express relative hotness - otherwise conversation could get a little repetitive.* So, basically, I am calling on you to be creative: I need different ways to fill in the gap, "she is as hot as a ________".

The first two pages of a Google search for "she's as hot as a" offers:
"...flame" (Aerosmith - far too formulaic)
"...two dollar pistol" (Your Choice, Quality Adult Erotica - meaningless, and not even erotic)
"...Mexican stop sign" (poster on ryanadams.org - creative, if not totally coherent)
"...cowgirl riding bare-back bucknaked in the middle of july!" (rezfox.com Native Online Dating - trying far too hard, and special minus points for the redundant exclamation mark)
"...chilli pepper that's been smothered in curry sauce and microwaved for ten minutes." (rottentomatoes.com Forums - a reasonable effort, although something more succinct would be preferable)

Girls (+ liberals and homosexuals**) can join in too, just replace the "she" with a "he". And let your creative juices flow. Knowing you lot, you will either post about something completely different, or not comment at all.

* New record long sentence on Timberblog.
** This is a reference. To something most of you won't have heard. So it's probably a bad reference.***
*** Oh dear. This is also a reference.

Toujours frôler le désastre

2006-01-31T13:46:00.000Z

Amsterdam: Whatever you take a photo of, your foreground composition will be bikes and a canal. Here, Prinsengracht and the Westerkerk catch the setting sun.

Timberblog once again answers those questions of space and time that you have always needed to know. This time we deal with: is it possible to finish teaching a lesson in Vanves at 15h and catch a Thalys at 15h55 (and still have time to divert and buy a sandwich at the legendary St Lazare sandwich shop)? The answer is apparently so, as long as you don't mind getting to the Gare du Nord at 15h53 and having to catch the back end of the train. The back end of the train which goes to Köln. Not Amsterdam.

Fortunately you have enough time at Bruxelles-Midi to get off and run up to the front end which, rather more helpfully, is going to Amsterdam.

Dam Square and, on the left, Fame - direct cause of major Timberwalletdeath

And so it was that I kept up my record of nearly missing the train every single time we do a festival. The Thalys arrived at Centraal Station at 20h leaving me half an hour to find the Rozentheater, which turned out to be 29 minutes' walk away, just down the road from Westerkirk and Anne Frank's old place. I came in and took my seat in the front row. "Oh, sorry, that seat's reserved," said someone. "Yes, it's reserved for me," I said (this is a satisfying thing to be able to say).

I wasn't performing until Friday so made my way into town on Thursday. After becoming very frustrated at the lack of decent record shops I finally found quite a good one just off Dam square. One thing I may have inherited from my mother is the inability to resist a bargain, and this place was full of them. My DVD collection promptly increased five fold (in my defence, I only had one DVD before last week).

The Improfessionals chez Nelis

The final members of our group arrived on Thursday evening and we drank at a place run by a woman who seemed to be called Nelis and who had decorated the bar with photos of her entire life.

On Friday it decided to be sunny, and as a result I had to go out and take all my pictures again. A selection will be uploaded to Flickr shortly. Our show (and the hour of work for which I had deserved this free 5-day trip to the Netherlands) wasn't a vintage one, but didn't stop us from making fools of ourselves on the karaoke night afterwards. We had a few fans up from Paris to see us, one of whom took some excellent photos, that you can see here.

Oosterdok, Zondag nacht

I finished my explorations of the city over the weekend. Found that, despite not speaking a word of Dutch, it's strangely easy to understand newspapers (it helps when the word for "since" is "sinds", "news" is "nieuws", and "Sunday night" is "Zondag nacht" - and so on). Hmm, I thought, looking at the Apartments To Rent page. I could live here.

Même quand j'suis en vacances je bosse

2006-01-24T09:57:00.000Z

Just a few points here, after making the mistake of listening to the Five Live phone-in this morning:

* The next time I hear anyone make arguments referring to the Sheikh incident as Eriksson "publically" criticising his players, I will go completely mad. He did not publically criticise his players. As far as anyone is concerned, it was a private conversation. How many of the people that call phone-in programmes about this would survive more than a week in their current jobs if their mates recorded and distributed what they said about their coworkers or boss over a drink down the pub?

* It's conjecture, but a very decent hypothesis, that Sven was going to leave after this world cup in any case. If so, what has the NOTW achieved with its campaign to discredit him and hound him out? Absolutely nothing, other than causing potential rifts in the England camp. Great work dudes.

* None of the "potential candidates" articles springing up seem to mention Big Phil Scolari. The man has 1. expressed an interest in the job, 2. won the last world cup, 3. reached the last european championship final, and in the process 4. dumped England out of both those competitions. Sam Allardyce and Steve McLaren's mutual most successful moment was playing a Waddington's League Combination final against each other in 2004 - they shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath. If Hiddink can be tempted, then why not; yes, he was lucky in Korea, but imagine what he could do with players the calibre of England's current crop. Two other propositions are the stuff of political nightmare - O'Neill is an Irish Catholic for frig's sake. And whoever first suggested Hitzfeld is a loon. Great manager, but there's one glaring issue. You've seen what the English have done to a "neutral" Swede; what on earth would happen to a German?

* People saying he was a crap England manager because of the defeat to Denmark (meaningless friendly, 4-1), Australia (meaningless friendly, 3-1) or Norn Iron (ultimately insignificant qualifier, 1-0) conveniently forget the wins against Germany (5-1 in their back yard in a vital crunch match), Argentina (1-0 in the World Cup and 3-2 in an anything-but-meaningless friendly) or Poland home+away (which no-one seems to notice is actually a bloody impressive pair of qualifying results). Yes performances were poor against some "weak" opposition (the Wales+Azerbaijan wins come to mind) but when Chelsea play badly and still win, it's a sign of "Champions". Something doesn't figure.

* Nearly every caller this morning criticised Sven's private life and the fact that he likes a bit of action with a number of ladies. Then five seconds later accused him of lacking passion. (It's at moments like that I hate being English.)

* On the same subject: watching from abroad, the British Press' reaction to his private life was frankly surreal. Sven had an "affair"? Big wow, as we used to say in primary school. For feck's sake, how can it be an affair when the guy's not even married? He has a long term girlfriend maybe, but that's his problem. He did absolutely nothing wrong, and it had absolultely nothing to do with his job as England manager. Except that I suspect he wouldn't have pulled Ulrika if he was a window salesman from Chipping Sodbury.

La, well, I'm off to Amsterdam for a few days for a festival disguised as delayed Christmas holidays. Which means no Timberblog until next week. If anyone happens to be around in the Netherlands currently, details are on the poster there, but I'm afraid our show is already sold out.

Learning to deal with parties

2006-01-22T21:44:00.000Z

Flo held a party at his flat last night "to mark the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall", which is easily the most spurious excuse for a party that I've heard this year. The fact that Flo was leaving for Amsterdam the day after, and was letting out the flat to a friend for the week, is naturally a pure coincidence. Did I mention he's German?

Now unless you are a man or wummun of enormous charisma, or an unashamed attention whore, then chances are you find parties something of an effort. There are occasional instances of me turning into an attention whore, but they are relatively rare and almost exclusively involve either a piano or women's clothing. Purely in a professional rôle, obviously. No, wait, not that kind of profes... I'll just stop.

Anyway, I often find parties something of an effort. Symptom of shyness? Nice idea, but unfortunately this is not the case. Shy people would like to interact more than they do, but feel unable to. Conversely, I feel perfectly able to talk to strangers, it's simply that I can't be arsed. I have a virulent (and frankly totally justifiable) aversion to small talk. It's nothing against the person; sometimes you just have to accept you're not making a connection and move on. Or cop out and stick with those you know already. Nothing wrong about an odd drink with good friends. Or, better, a good drink with odd friends.

Anyway, none of this is a reflection on last night particularly, just a general state of affairs. Last night fulfilled many criteria for a good party - a clearly defined chatter room, dance room, and chillout room, so you could pick which mood suited you. A clearly defined time I had to leave (counterintuitive perhaps, but it's always a good idea to leave the party while you are still having fun). And it also helps when the host is either a stud, or someone who ends up being "just friends" with hundreds of girls. I'll leave those who know him to decide if Flo is one or the other or indeed both. Anyway, to sum up, there was beer, there were friends, there were girls. And that's a decent checklist in my book. Impressively, one girl exacted physical violence upon me only minutes after I struck up conversation. But she was German. Then, in what Mike will interpret as a possible career move, I collaborated with Florence in composing mildly erotic literature out of fridge magnets. That was before she rebuked me for not recognising the opening 3 seconds of Rivers Of Babylon. One could note that she is also German. I got my coat, and left.

If you haven't worked it out yet: yes, the fall of the Berlin wall was very significant. But it very clearly wasn't the 10th anniversary last night.

See extra photoage

2006-01-14T21:49:00.000Z

In a fit of late night creativity and HTML-meddling, I have added a little jobby to the side bar thing which means you can take a gander at a few piccies of mine on flickr.

The photos I have made available to the general public are those of landscapes and buildings taken around the world (well, Europe at least). If you want to see piccies of, like, people, then you'll need to 1. have your own flickr account and 2. add me as a "friend" or "family" depending on how intimate you're feeling at that particular moment.

Meanwhile I would like everyone to sit back and appreciate the unabashed gloriousness that is Reading FC this season.

Clichés bohémiens

2006-01-13T23:02:00.000Z

If you're reading Timberblog, then the chances are you'll have met an unsigned musician at some point in your lives. Fools, aren't they? And I can tell you that when you are one, you meet even more. Their favourite topics of conversation are thusly:

1. How ( x ) has sold millions of CDs despite being terrible, while they, innovative and groundbreaking genii, have sold three (to the band's mums,who gave them away as Christmas presents)

2. How they were really close to signing to ( x ) once, but "the guy that liked us left the company the week before we were supposed to sign" / "their shares fell sharply and they couldn't invest in any more new talent" / "we turned them down rather than sell our souls" / etc

3. "Artistic differences" with other members of the band, other members of other bands, or anyone in the room.

4. Isn't that new album by (obscure band no-one has ever heard of) absolutely brilliant?

SO I'm about to spring the second one on you. Actually, if you're someone I know, then I've probably already done 1, 3, and 4. Sorry about that. Anyhow, the "nice noises" coming from a maison de disques a few blog entries back have, it seems, crescendoed into something of an orgasm.

Apologies for the needless sexual imagery. I live in France, go figure.

Eddy recorded a song recently with some random producer dude that he'd been in contact with somehow via a man who probably does have a name but who is usually only referred to as celui qui m'ouvre les portes. (On which subject, couldn't we all do with a celui qui ouvre les portes?). The producer dude had written this song, and already received nice noises from aforementioned record company, but hadn't found the right voice for it. Turns out they liked Eddy's version, and that all being well (and yes, you still have to take this kind of thing
with a pinch of salt, it's a fickle world) he should be scribbling his name on the dotted line sometime around the beginning of next month, and the song itself will be going out on good ol' NRJ not so long after that. Trop cool!

So, is this A Good Thing for Timber? Still a bit early to tell. Major plus point: Eddy is probably being signed, and I am his pianist and major composer. Even if I don't sign myself, I'll be working with a signed singer, which is as good as. Particularly if they take on the songs for which I wrote the music - which at the current rate should be about a third to a half of any future album. (The dude gets signed, and suddenly all his musico friends want to write songs for him - bizarre huh?)

Of course you can never tell if it's going to work out quite as smoothly as that. It's perfectly possible that the record company take him on and then forcefeed him their own songs. While I'm sure Eddy is a good dude at heart and would want me to carry on accompanying him after all the work I've put in so far, you can't expect a multinational to have any such sentimentality or indeed respect.

Hmm, bit of a serious blog entry today, but I guess you've either dealt with that, or you're not reading this line.

Anyone for a game of "spot the subjunctive"?

Jesus was black

2006-01-04T23:54:00.000Z

I'll just take a minute or two out of a ludicrously busy week or so before going to sleep. Parents are here, although they're off this afternoon. Delayed Christmas, exchange of presents, rushing around Paris trying to find new things to entertain them with, etc. Yesterday, among other things, we decided to visit St Denis' basilica (where loads of French kings are buried) and St Sulpice (where some stuff happened which was crucial to the Da Vinci Code but which like most of the book is actually complete trout droppings).

Basilique de St Denis, yesterday.

Oh no, British Institute Newsletter injokes. Sorry. For everything ever.

We grabbed sandwiches from the legendary St Lazare sandwich shop (I was on the verge of fixing up Chakkers with the girl working there last summer whom he clearly fancied, but he forbid me, and now there's a new one whom I find quite hot and flirted with as much as is possible during the course of ordering two ham sandwiches and a couple of beignets, which as you can imagine is not a great deal and certainly not enough to get her number - Chakkers, would you pop over and do the dirty work? Of course Father misses the point entirely and asks quizzically "do you know that girl from somewhere then?" Ok, this bracket is getting far too long). We caught the métro up out of Paris into St Denis and visited its 12th-century basilica.

They had a nativity scene with a black Joseph, black Mary and black baby Jesus. Kudos for this kind of thing. The constant Western portrayal of Jesus, and other biblical characters, as a white Westerner, is one of the biggest nonsenses of organised Christianity. The dude was from Israel. Probably looked more Arab than anything. If stereotypes run true, and Jesus showed up somewhere in south-central US tomorrow, they'd think he was a terrorist...

Back in Paris, we saw the cunning north-south meridien timeline thingy at St Sulpice, the "PS" stained-glass windows which mean something entirely different to what Dan Brown suggests, and this year's nativity scene, which took not only the biscuit but also made off with several fig rolls and a small fruitcake:

Utterly over-the-top nativity creation at St Sulpice this year.
Featuring fully-functional running waterfall and real gesticulating arm action figure shepherds.

Meanwhile on a less churchy subject it seems they're reinstalling a ferris wheel on place de la Concorde. You will probably know the story about the millennium one being dismantled in 2002, shipped to Birmingham and rebuilt - with one small oversight. They forgot to replace the tape recording, so as you rose up in the midlands, you heard about the marvellous views of Paris you were currently enjoying.

Ferris foul, and foul is fairground - Macbeth, I.i.11

But now it seems it's back. Or something very much like it. Any Birmingham readers noticed any ferris wheels going missing recently?

Ich spiele gern im Schnee

2005-12-30T15:33:00.000Z

Earlier it snowed, so I decided to bring forward one of my new year's resolutions and went out to buy a digital camera. Unfortunately by the time I'd got it, the good snow had finished, and it had started to rain, producing that monged dirty sludge that no-one is particularly fond of. But I took some pictures anyway, because I had a new digital camera, and I wanted to use it.

First new year's resolution: 5.2Megapixels. (Har. I'm so funny.)
Piccy = looking back at the Rive Droite from the Île St Louis.

Experts project that, now I can add my own pictures to this site, Timberblog will become approximately 37% more interesting.

Meanwhile my second, and more valid, new year's resolution (I've never even made one before, and now I'm making two... it must be the pollution... and I've decided 2006 is going to be an auspicious year) is to find somewhere, anywhere, where I can play cricket in the Paris region. I really need to play cricket. The other night I dreamt about delivering leg breaks in the nets, which excited me so much that I promptly woke up in the small hours and couldn't go back to sleep again without finding information on the internet about cricket clubs in France and sending emails off to them.

Hôtel de Sens and snowy garden

No, I'm not jumping on the Ashes bandwagon. In fact, this is more a result of the recent poor showing in Pakistan. England desperately need a leg-spinner, who unlike our current incompetents can actually get some turn on the ball. The solution I am suggesting here is me. Cricket is the one sport I was ever not terrible at. I regularly bamboozled the opposition batsmen in my youth, and once achieved figures of 4 for 3 in a glorious 100-run defeat of Sonning C of E in the East Reading Primary School 16-over league when I was 10. With a fair amount of application and a proper training schedule I expect I could get on the next tour to the subcontinent.

A Tasty Yule Blog

2005-12-24T16:16:00.000Z

I made the mistake of buying Eddy his first pint yesterday evening. This pushed the poor lad into a near-pathological frenzy of trying to pay for me for the rest of the night. Starting with an ill-advised second pint (it was still only about half six and I hadn't properly eaten yet), this was followed by a surreptitious attempt to cover my filet de canard (a plan which I bravely foiled) and paying for a taxi up to Montmartre (well if you insist on taking a taxi then yes you bloody well can pay for it). We had a very left-field taxi driver; as we came up to Barbès, he suddenly commented "à votre place, j'irai pas à la Gare de Lyon". Thanks for that. Just concentrate on the road.

So we found the Soleil de la Butte, which is a typical Parisian bar at the foot of some very typical steps going up to the Sacré Coeur. If you've ever seen a film set in Paris, you will have seen somewhere exactly like it. It's also on rue Muller, which will excite at least one Timberblog reader. As it happens, the bar has a small but very cosy and frankly quite cool live music venue downstairs. Sophie, a friend of Eddy's, was showcasing her own brand of mad French trip-hop. Definitely a bit different. Click to hear her song Oh Lou. I nearly stayed on for the second act, but left when I heard the first few chords of "comedy" oompah-chanson coming from the guitar. There are few worse things in the world than a French musician trying to be funny. I strongly advise you against clicking here.

Anyway. Fröhliche Weihnachten und alle guten Wünsche zum Neuen Jahr. Eat turkey. Drink alcohol. (Listen not to Slade and Wham!, but to some Sigur Ros instead.) Be Merry. Timberblog will be back before new year with some resolutions.

Yellow Devil Duckie. Yes.

2005-12-18T08:25:00.000Z

Devil duckie, you're the one, you make bathtime lots of fun, Devil duckie, I'm awfully dirty today (woh, woh, bee day!)

Devil duckie, when you float, it's like I'm bathing in a flaming moat! Devil duckie, you're my very best friend, hurray! (doo, doo, doo, dee day!)

Every day when I make my way to be clean I find a little fella who's red and yellow and mean (Rub-a-dub-keen!)

Devil duckie you're so swell, you guide me on my path to hell, Devil duckie, I'm awfully dirty - Devil duckie, you're a naughty birdy - Devil duckie, I'm awfully dirty today.

See what I mean about secret santa presents? Thanks Caspar. Shame I, er, don't have a bath.

The blog paradox

2005-12-15T04:47:00.000Z

If you do lots of interesting things, you'll have plenty to write about your life.
However.
If you do lots of interesting things, the last thing you'll have time for is writing about it.

This is why most autobiographies are ghost written. And yes, lucky Timberblog readers, it so happens that I live in a 400-year-old building. I was able to get today's blog entry written by a genuine 17th-century poltergeist who lives in the downstairs toilet and goes by the name of Pauline.

"Andrew came over for his yearly visit to Paris last week. For those of you who don't know, Andrew is an old schoolmate, known for playing a lot of Championship Manager, singing like a deflated walrus, and being completely teetotal. We recorded a terrible cover of Maroon 5's already dire song, She Will Be Loved, on Wednesday; strolled round to Faybo's and experienced her unorthodox interpretation of "crepes" on Friday; and then went to the football on Saturday. Perhaps there will be a few photos of the latter up on here soon.

"Timber also bought a shiny new computer last week. On loading it up for the first time, it asked me to give it a name. This disturbs me. There are only a few more steps from here to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation and Genuine People Personalities. It's bad enough people name their fish, let alone a laptop. On which subject, my boss' 11-year-old daughter, who like 20% of all the girls I know is called Sarah, won two goldfish at the funfair. In true goldfish style, one of them died before it had even been given a name. The other one got lumbered with "Nemo". And they say children are full of imagination. One day I will buy a cat and call it "Thursday" just for the hell of it (and because I secretly think this would be a cool name for a cat). Meanwhile if you have strong feelings as to what my new computer should be called, leave a comment.

"Things are getting busy with shows in the run-up to Christmas. Three gigs this week, one of which is appended to a random person's birthday party, which will almost certainly result in fun debauchery, alcohol-fuelled carnage, and so on. Then there's what would be the office christmas party, except that I don't work in an office, I work with improvising comedy actors. So you can imagine what that's like. And the oh-so-funny gifts you sometimes pull out of the secret santa bag.

"Yip, evenings are basically ending in beer+friends again.

Hi, Timber here briefly. I'll be back to writing my own entries maybe next week. Thanks Pauline, I reckon you imitated my style pretty well. What do you mean you're not dead? You're the cleaning lady?

Major news of the enormously huge variety

2005-12-04T21:16:00.000Z

A topic that I may have already touched upon - it, er, escapes my mind - is France's abject lack of pastry-orientated savoury face-stuffing paraphenalia, or more specifically, the great British pies and pasties. It is a terrific cause of concern for many of us furreners living in Paris. Indeed, one of the best-loved journalists of the now sadly defunct British Institute Newsletter, David Amazinglish, once wrote in its pages that he would offer a significant reward to any person offering information on where to procure a Cornish Pasty in Paris. The fact that no-one did, and that David has now left Paris to study in London for a year, speaks volumes, I feel, about the harrowing effect that a lack of pasties can produce on an otherwise healthy young man.

This afternoon I went to buy a new laptop from a dodgy but cheap shop in the 13th. Unfortunately this plan was dramatically foiled when the shop was found to be closed on Sundays. Like most shops in Paris. I would say "never mind, it was a jolly little jaunt", but anyone who's ever had to go to the 13th will see that this is nonsense.

Caught the métro back and got off at Bastille. On the side of a small boutique inside the station was a large poster saying "pasty". I walked past it. Pasty, I thought. The word went through my mind in search of something to connect to.* Then, suddenly, it hit. Wait. That poster just said pasty??? My word. I turned heel and rushed back to the poster, upsetting several commuters in the process. There it was, the glorious five letters of the word "Pasty", all in the correct order, followed by pictures of four different varieties of aforementioned foodstuff available at the counter, and - best of all - a small paragraph explaining in French what exactly a pasty actually is.

*This is a reference.

Anyway, you the Timberblog reader, like I, are probably thinking this is all rather too good to be true. I bemoan the lack of pie in this country and suddenly a shop opens at my local metro stop selling the concept of pasties to the French. But, justement, this is precisely the problem. They've gone and frenchified pasties. Result - they have created something almost but not quite entirely unlike pasties.* The ingredients, besides the pastry, have little to do with the true upstanding and morally correct pasty of yore. There's a bacon and cheese one, for example, or another with horrific vegetarian faff. They're served cold, not warm-from-the-oven like they should be. And this being the land of nouvelle cuisine, they were of course of a size that would hardly feed a small gibbon.

*This is also a reference.

Tomorrow I am going to try the chicken+spinach one, as this is the closest I could get to anything resembling a proper pasty, and of course they'd sold out of it.

In other news, my music is apparently interesting Sony.

An unusual occurence

2005-11-30T16:40:00.000Z

There are only two things I really miss about England.
This picture illustrates them both perfectly.

At about 0h30 this morning, something astonishing and unprecedented happened.

I was watching French Eurosport. They were covering sporting briefs, with a journalist Sheila providing the voice-over summarizing a number of the day's sporting events. When suddenly the cricket came on.

This in itself was odd. Since when did Eurosport cover cricket? Shirley it's only relevant to about 5% of the audience (if that). Does British Eurosport cover pétanque or pelote?

So here it was, a summary of the first day's play in the third test between Pakistan and England, and a poor French woman attempting to describe the events to a Francophone audience. It was vague to the point of extremes. The thing about cricket is that it's not always obvious, to the uninitiated, who is "winning". This had obviously made her task all the more difficult. But, the major thing is that here was a French woman talking about cricket. Mike correctly points out that this makes her, by default, my ideal woman. If only I knew who she was. This could be her, but in my opinion it is unlikely:

...just another google image result for "cricket pie".

Ich fühl mich so 50/50

2005-11-25T23:08:00.000Z

"Que de bonnes nouvelles!" Eddy tells me on the phone. Since we finally got the demo recorded, things are apparently beginning to move a little quicker. Some music industry bigwig wants to listen to our music, and has made noises about looking for a new singer in Eddy's style, to provide vocals on a track that some big French songwriter has written. All sounds remarkably vague to me, it'll probably end up like that tabloid splash a few years back about "top premiership star caught having affair!!" Rumours about who it might be went on for days until it turned out to be, er, Garry Flitcroft. Those of you not familiar with dependable but decidedly average Blackburn Rovers midfielders have the right to ask "who?" at this point.

Secondly, there's an appointment at Radio Courtoisie on Thursday. It's a Paris FM radio station, "plutôt intello", according to Eddy. He's been invited to discuss the music and said he'd mention his fabulous English pianist. That would be Timber, in case you're wondering. And then one of the tracks will be played for the entire capital to hear. Which, for me, is a step up from getting my previous musical project, Q-biq Xpression, and their pioneering album Really Bad Music, on pilot radio in Hull.

Sauf que.

Radio Courtoisie. Suffice to say I've never listened to it. Odd name for a radio station. I found their website. "La Radio Libre du Pays Réel et du Francophonie". Weird tag line. Shifting in seat uncomfortably, a little further sniffing around the internet and suspicions are confirmed: it's a strongly catholic and right-leaning station, borderline nationalist. Last year it received an official warning from the CSA (French broadcasting watchdog) for "inciting hatred or violence for reasons of sex, custom, religion, or nationality." They tend to invite right-wing politicians on for debates, including Le Pen and his National Front colleagues.

I guess when you're an unsigned artist you have to grab every opportunity to make it big. But I'm totally against this. Yes, so our music has, in essence, nothing to do with their political output. But it's like being championed by the Daily Mail, or le Figaro, albeit obviously on a smaller scale... the day we get invited to le Figaro I will also refuse. Principles? Perhaps. Artistic integrity? Maybe. You can make mistakes at the very beginning of your career which have repercussions over everything you do afterwards. People are so willing to give you a label and put you in a box. I do it myself. Even if Radio Courtoisie is holding out the tempting olive branch of free publicity, it just seems hypocritical to sell out to them now, when you're unknown and desperate, if you would never do it later on.

Varvara Prockopuck (le fabuleux destin de)

2005-11-20T17:30:00.000Z

Something that I am at a loss to explain about myself is a vague attraction to derelict stuff. Perhaps it's a carnal small boy's need to explore things that look unsafe, slightly spooky, and that you're probably not supposed to go into. And somehow it's even better when it's former communist. Breaching the defenses of Prague's enormous Strahov stadium in 2001 (i.e. climbing up a crumbling concrete staircase and through a rusty gate that some vandal had already forced open) was very good indeed.

The Strahov, decrepit and falling apart in 2001.
Biggest stadium in the world. Space for 250 000 spectators. Major flaw: there was absolutely no need for it.
(Now sadly converted into a shiny new training complex. Capitalism huh?)

Giant examples of Soviet monuments, design, and architecture, are of course dotted around the former USSR and the Eastern bloc. Lenin's statues, Stalin's Palaces of Culture, or outsized sports venues and civic buildings that are disused, uncompleted, never filled. I don't know what it is about them exactly. (To put it in pure essay-speak: I find something very evocative about these concrete carcasses making exaggerated eulogies to a flawed and fallen dream. In layman's terms: they're huge, they're wrong, they're ugly, and I can't get enough of them. Mike's blog features a classic example of this kind of thing.) And then there are the great and proud Soviet technological projects:

The legendary Tupolev-144.
Faster, more powerful, and slightly larger than Concorde. Major flaw: it tended to crash.

So we decided we needed to visit these places. Kaliningrad, Moscow, Kyiv, Chernobyl. And most of all, Belarus, the country that tries to pretend the Iron Curtain never came down. I particularly enjoyed the story about President "just call me Dad" Lukashenka dropping the 500-year old national flag, only a few years after finally regaining independence, in favour of a red-green effort designed by a Soviet committee in 1952. And then, as an afterthought, making Russian the offical language instead of, er, Belarussian. The problem being that I speak no Russian at all, and Mike's grasp of the language is rudimentary to say the least. So it would be difficult to get around.

Dinamo Kyiv.

Brilliantly marshalled side that played scintillating football based on secret mathematical formulae. Major flaw: had to sell all their best players.

So we want to go to the former CCCP, but speak little Russian, so ideally need a competent local to take on tour guide duties.

One obvious solution.

Search for English speaking wenches on Belarus bride agencies.

Of course, Timberblog does not approve of these terrible, exploitative meat-markets, promoting the image of the Sheila as little more than a trophy, promising a fake golden ticket to desperate Rich Western Man or desperate Poor Eastern Wummun. Catalogue brides for plastic marriages followed by VISA obtention and quicky divorce. But it's a fabulous way of comparing who you think is fit. I mean, it's a fascinating study in applied psychoanalysis with regard to male sexual instinct and identity. Hey, girls can join in too - just search for "males, age: 40-99, interests: computers". To start with I kind of liked the exotically named Natalia 61503 from Gomel, but decided she might be a bit of a gold-digger, and then became distracted by Varvara the Kazakh. Varvara Prockopuck. Daft name, no wonder she wants to get married.

Varvara Prockopuck.
Enjoys travel, hiking, and playing the piano - like me. Comes from Kazakhstan - cool. Major flaw: has an itchy neck.

There she is. Now I'm sure it's only a matter of time before she googles her own name and finds Timberblog. So, listen, dear, you're 19, that's far too young to be ruining your life getting married to some property speculator dude from New Hampshire. No, you want to be a tour guide. Your home town of Temirtau sounds brilliant, I've been attracted to it ever since I read -

"a grey skyline of mostly redundant smoke-stacks, blast furnaces, residential apartment blocks made from untreated concrete, and the ubiquitous, Soviet, above-ground utility supply pipes." - Simon Forrester, UNV Programme Officer

I was wondering if you'd show me around some day. In exchange I'll, er, teach you jazz piano improvisation, and take you hiking in the beautiful hill country of Créteil, Bondy, and Melun. Yes. And now I'm going to stop making stupid blog entries, walk across the islands, and buy a crepe from Faybo, who is valiantly trying to have as many jobs as I do.

Better than sex. Hell, even better than Lego.

2005-11-20T01:17:00.000Z

Mike ha detto che l'annotazione scorsa era "una scusa patetica per un'annotazione di blog". Coglione.

Dopo mi ha trovato questo site. Tutti i gol di Euro 2004 sul panno verde del calcio da tavolo. Mazza mia!

Il meglio site che ho visto quest'anno? Fuori di dubbio. Tutto solo, e la ragione per quella ho bisogno di tornare abitare in italia. Italia ti amo. Subbuteo ti amo. Mike... in gimporama sei una belva.

Intertextuality in brutalist architecture

2005-11-19T23:28:00.000Z

Trellick Tower, North Kensington, London

Ian Fleming named his evil Bond villain "Goldfinger" after the man who designed this building.

I can kind of see where he was coming from.

Meanwhile...

...this Le Corbusier building, part of the Cité des 4000 at La Courneuve, is named after Honoré de Balzac.
Anyone who's been forced to read 19th-century realist French literature will deeply understand why this is fitting.

And to conclude today's architecture lecture:
Portsmouth's Tricorn Centre, demolished in 2004. Seen here depicted in, er, yes, Lego. Sorry, couldn't resist.
...a new toy every day, huh? Further works of legocentric genius here.

Nattering with supermodels

2005-11-15T00:22:00.000Z

"I found this pen left in my room," she said, handing me a horrendous biro with some kind of blue-faced vampirical cartoon character on the end of it. "Oh brilliant," I smiled, "that's horrible. Thanks." She was quite pwitty, if a little shy perhaps. We had a chat and she said she was often in Paris, staying at our hotel on her own; then told me I should eat at the restaurant next door some time, and pick some dish which involved figs. I said I'd have to try it out (if I'm feeling particularly smooth, maybe I'll take her next time she's around...), thanked her for the pen, and got on with my work.

Yip, not much happened this evening, folks.

Intriguingly, she'd written on her fiche d'étranger that her occupation was "fashion model". Idly googled her name. About 4,000 sites come up, most of them involving photos. She's vaguely famous. Perhaps this is why:

Erika Stromquist. Nice girl. Swedish. Likes figs.

Color & Light, Glamour (US), Feb 1999, p.187. Photography: Pasquale Abbatista.

The Wrong And Winding Road

2005-11-12T22:25:00.000Z

A cd was slipped into my hand on Friday night. Result: casual narcissism. Music I'm currently listening to - Myself.

Old people, and anyone who bought the album "1", will know that The Long And Winding Road was the Beatles' last ever number one record, hitting top spot in the US in 1970 despite not doing anything in the UK. It's almost certainly the only ever hit single to be inspired by the B842. And it was also one of the six reasons Paul McCartney gave to the court when splitting the band up as a legal entity.

Songs are quite precious to their writers. If someone takes your song and meddles with it, it's a bit like, say, having your new born baby taken away by the nurse and painted green.

Jake and Dinos Chapman
Insult to Injury, 2003
Series of "rectified" prints from Francisco Goya's Los Desastres de la Guerra etchings

McCartney wrote the song as a deliberately stripped-down piano ballad. The original recorded version featured some inept bass from Lennon, who by all accounts was a particularly bad bass player. And that was it. Voice, piano, bass. Imagine his reaction, then, on finding that before releasing the song, producer Phil Spector had added 18 violins, four violas, four cellos, three trumpets, three trombones, two guitars, and a choir of 14 women.

Now this is where I can empathise.

Someone has taken my minimalist piano ballad and added a bloody accordion.

Bad Poetry Competition

2005-11-06T19:32:00.000Z

In the small hours last night, trying to go to sleep, I flicked onto some pop music show on TF1. "Et voici," the presenter was in the middle of saying, "Katie Melua avec son nouveau single, Nine Million Bicycles." Katie Melua has only been big in Britain since I left the country, so I thought I'd listen and see what the fuss was about. On comes aforementioned Georgio-British soft-pop songtstress gently cradling her acoustic guitar. "Excellent," I thought, as a few bars of unchallenging guitar picking opened the song, "this will have me asleep in no time." Then she opened her mouth.

"There are nine million bicycles," she smooched, "in Beijing". Mmm. So far, so educational. "That's a fact." Right. (Was this penned by a trainspotter?). "It's a thing we can't deny." Facts are generally things that you can't deny without looking a bit silly. You don't need to ram home the point, dear. Where is this leading to exactly? "Like the fact," (oh, a comparison), "that I will love you till I die."

The last time I saw anyone labour anything that much, she gave birth to a baby elephant.

William Holman Hunt
Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1876, oil on canvas

Still, it got me thinking about the worst poetry I have ever seen published. Occasionally, people are willing to do utterly inhumane things to the language in order to get a rhyme. New Order are usually good for some terrible lyrics, with one outstanding example being "Love, it's like honey, you can't buy it with money" (Crystal), which leaves me extremely nonplussed, or "The sea was very rough, it made me feel sick, but I like that kind of stuff, it beats arithmetic" (Slow Jam). Then there is Mike's favourite: "Love juice, love juice smells like... (beat) ...stale fish". The latter was, however, from a joke song performed as an encore for a crap audience in New Zealand, so not exactly a commercial release.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says that the absolute worst poetry in the galaxy was written by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex. A spot of internet research reveals that this is a warped version (for legal reasons) of Paul Neil Milne Johnstone, and if you wish you can read about him, and his poetry, here.

But for me, the single worst line of poetry in all existence is to be found at the end of verse 48 (yes, 48!) of Isabella or the Pot of Basil, by the celebrated 19th-century English poet, John Keats. You could argue that perhaps he'd run out of inspiration by this stage of the work, but in fact (without wishing to be dismissive...) all 63 verses form a grotesque paean to epic dross. Here, Isabella is digging up the earth, trying to find the grave of her lover - who incidentally was called Lorenzo, and not, sadly, Basil. Read, observe, and enjoy her reaction.

That old nurse stood beside her wondering,
Until her heart felt pity to the core
At sight of such a dismal labouring,
And so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar,
And put her lean hands to the horrid thing:
Three hours they labour'd at this travail sore;
At last they felt the kernel of the grave,
And Isabella did not stamp and rave.

25 hour party people

2005-10-30T22:23:00.000Z

Some of the 150 Belgians who sang Happy Birthday to Timber last year.
Photo by Tom Tollenaere.

Apparently this is Timberblog's 50th entry. And apparently I'm 24 tomorrow. I think it is going to be a Very Bad Birthday, as I am working all evening, and will probably be lucky enough to have some downtrodden single tourist come to reception and spill out their entire life story on me. Again. Still, it was never going to be as good as last year, when the clocks went backward on the 31st, ensuring that I had a whole extra hour of people buying me pints. This was after playing a gig where the host informed everyone it was my birthday, before instructing me to lead the singing on the piano. Happy Birthday to Me, I thought, as 150 Belgians sang along. For those of you with nothing to do next week, you could do worse than buying a ticket to Leuven and seeing the 4th annual international improvisation festival.

(Just make sure you go to the Flemish Leuven, not the French one. Not that I would ever make a silly mistake like that. Oh no.)

Showboating on the Rhone

2005-10-26T23:27:00.000+01:00

Péniche La Plateforme, Lyon III

I woke up at 10h on Tuesday morning with an immediate sense that there were more things I needed to do in the next two hours than I had managed to do in the entire weekend. My train was leaving from the Gare de Lyon at noon precisely. It had already been difficult enough to get a holiday from my night job, and of course I had to leave my room spick and span for the replacement to stay over. My room being, as it is, my room, was lacking in overall spickness and was in frankly dire need of spannage. Not helpful, then, that one of my superiors here at the hotel decided I also needed a long talk about all the things I'd got wrong on Monday, nor that I also needed to pack and make sure I had my tickets and all that nonsense.

You could argue that I need a course in time management, but there again, getting on the métro at St Paul at 11h53, and still catching a TGV leaving Gare de Lyon at 12h00, is a pretty nifty piece of temporal logistics if you ask me. (And that includes composting the ticket, Timberblog-archive fans!)

The journey down was uneventful other than the faint amusement of observing, out of both corners of my eye, the besuited but podgy middle aged man sitting on my right taking every opportunity to position himself as to gaze at the totally oblivious blonde Sheila sitting on my left across the aisle. (Ah, fleeting train-based lust. I guess we've all been there, huh?)

"Fleeting loves are beneficial and never painful. Love for a station or two is love without pretense and soon forgotten. Any contact beyond that pollutes the emotions and threatens to leave behind recriminations." - Aharon Appelfeld, The Iron Tracks, trans. Jeffrey M. Green

The destination, Lyon Perrache, was notable mostly for the absence of the person who was supposed to meet me. Somewhat fortunate, then, that I remembered the name of the quai where the péniche was moored, found it on a map, and was able to make my own way to it. Found my acting friends*, upon which the preparation for our show was mildly disturbed by the police turning up at 4 in the afternoon, flashing their lights, and asking whether we'd seen anyone fall into the river. So we did the show, Lyon seemed to like us, we told Lyon we liked it too. Our friends from Strasbourg followed but dragged out their show for too long (Sarah the kiwi, afflicted with jetlag, fell asleep while watching) before a truly bordellique musical jam featuring Timber and a number of instrumentalists I'd never met before. This stopped at 1am when the police intervened for a second time.

*Friends who act. Rather than replacement friends. As in "acting headmaster" and such. Just to make it clear.

A flotilla of cars then ferried all the performers back to an boarding school in the middle of nowhere - mass lodgings for the week (or, in my case, for the night). Dinner - oh yes, dinner - was served at 2am - no, wait, not served. Yer takes yer ingredients, yer puts em on yer plate, and yer shoves the lot in the microwave fer two of yer continental minutes. Of course this results in everyone being hyper - and remember, this is already a bunch of comic improvisers - everyone drinking a lot, and (perhaps a little less predictably, but what the hell) 20 people playing round-the-world table tennis until 5 in the morning.

Wake up time was, understandably, fairly late this morning. I gave some actors from other troupes their first experiences in improvised singing, before being entertained by the very hospitable Brogh, who lives in Lyon these days and like all Irish girls is gradually turning into Mrs Doyle. And finally made my way to the station, climbed onto my TGV.

"Pardon", I said to the girl occupying the aisle seat next to me as I edged past her. She looked up and smiled. Nice hair, I thought, vaguely, sitting down by the window and taking out a sandwich, a bottle of corporate fizzy sugar, and the intellectual-arse book I'm currently finishing, La religion est-elle une superstition? She took out a sandwich, and a bottle of corporate fizzy sugar. We finished sandwiches at about the same time, which I am going to put down to the prosaic fact that it takes most people roughly the same amount of time to eat a sandwich. I leant on the table and started to fill out some musical copyright forms. She was leaning on the table with a piece of paper, apparently doing some exercises in Arabic, from what I could tell. Nice hair, I thought, vaguely, as I finished my form, put it away, and then sat back, reading my intellectual-arse book in my lap and quite possibly leaning a little towards her in a casual sort of way. She was now working furiously on her lap and quite possibly leaning a little to her left in a casual sort of way. Her hair, which was still nice, was dangling against my sleeve. The armrest wasn't down, and in its absence we may have rested arms more against each other than anything else. She had got some books out about Islam on the table. Hence the Arabic, I guess. I wonder why she looks round like that occasionally. As she goes off into the corridor to answer her mobile, I think of the little note I could slip into her book, and I wonder why she had to be someone from Lyon going to visit Paris, rather than someone from Paris coming back from visiting Lyon. But then, Count Vronsky, why ruin everything?

Ah, fleeting train-based lust. I guess we've all been there, huh?

Surtout n'arrête pas de me raconter ta vie

2005-10-19T19:38:00.000+01:00

I have been listening to a fair amount of mid-to-late-nineties dance recently. This is odd. I like indy rock.

C'est pas que je suis timide. C'est que je n'aime pas tes amis.

Gigging at the Louvre

2005-10-17T00:01:00.000+01:00

Today we entertained the visitors at the Paris expat fair (see www.expatica.com), held in a salle d'exposition at the Caroussel du Louvre. In exchange we had a promotional stand for the day. This resulted in Clara trying to smalltalk the dude flogging courses in wine-tasting from the stand next door, while the carte blanche opportunity to approach unwitting young ladies and give them flyers produced a strange and unprecedented enthusiasm for marketing from Flo and yours truly.

Added bonus - the organisers presented us with gift boxes of wine and foie gras at the end of the day. Not that I eat foie gras. But, you know.

Meanwhile, it has been brought to my attention that yesterday's entry was a little inaccessible to the average reader. The exact terms used: "your a sad bastard". Thank you dear, your comments are much appreciated, and all criticism is noted. And will be used back at you next time you regale me with your enthralling tales of being stuck at Manchester airport, which once nearly distracted me from looking at the wallpaper.

Oh, and you can't spell.

The great Coldplay conspiracy

2005-10-15T13:07:00.000+01:00

One of the major flaws with Oasis’ (“difficult”) third album, Be Here Now, was that most of the tracks seemed to be overblown rehashes of previous Oasis songs. That’s not just an impression you get, it’s also musically true. It’s worth noting here that the opening single, D’You Know What I Mean?, was essentially Wonderwall with distortion and a different chorus (musico-boffs – try the old F#m-A-E-B on both songs). Don’t Go Away’s chorus borrows equally heavily from Whatever. Then again it’s not as if they hadn’t already lifted the E-G#-C#m-A used on both Digsy’s Dinner and Married With Children in order to make She’s Electric on their second album. The less said about the fourth and fifth albums the better.

Now, if you hadn’t noticed, Coldplay released an album earlier this year entitled X&Y. When I first heard the opening bars of Speed of Sound on the radio, I thought to myself (with unwitting intelligence, as it turns out) “hey, someone’s completely ripped off Coldplay”. A few seconds later, when the vocals cut in, “Oh. Wait.” Here’s the science: the chord steps underlying that piano intro are precisely the same ones underlying the piano intro on Clocks, an incredibly successful single from their second album. I’m not saying the two songs are the same – they may have been clever enough to shift the entire pattern up or down a tone or two, unlike Oasis who just play exactly the same chords - but there’s a suspicious similarity.

So out comes the second single, Fix You. And blow me down with a feather duster if it, in turn, is not a complete rip-off of The Scientist, a different incredibly successful single from their second album. Don’t get me going on the Am-F-C-G thing. I’ve lost count of how many songs have become popular in the last ten years on that chord pattern.*

I haven’t bought X&Y. If there’s a song on there that sounds like In My Place, we can assume it will be the next single.

Like football managers bringing in established foreigners rather than nurturing and developing young talent, the music industry continues to play the safe bet – oh look, Am-F-C-G works, it pleases the ear of the average listener, so we’ll just churn out song after song after song. Does anyone want to try and make a successful song from something other than four-chord blocks (one minor, three major, like you wanted sir)? Something other than bars of 4/4 grouped in multiples of four? And hell, can anyone release a boyband powerballad without transposing up one tone for the final chorus?

*Am-F-C-G, the corporate chord pattern. For reference: The Passenger, Iggy Pop; Save Tonight, Eagle Eye Cherry; The Kids Aren’t Alright, Offspring; Glorious, Andreas Johnson; Otherside, Red Hot Chili Peppers; Wherever, Whenever, Shakira; The Scientist, Coldplay; The Space Between, Tracy Chapman; Zombie, The Cranberries; Listen To Your Heart, DHT; One Of Us, Joan Osborne; Complicated, Avril Lavigne; Jeune et con, Saez; Dernière danse, Kyo; Une seule vie, Elle danse seule, AND Au paradis, Gerald frigging de Palmas; Tieni il Tempo, 883; and countless countless others, whether in Am or transposed. Google it and you’ll find hit songs from Russia, Brazil, Finland, Spain, Israel, Iceland…