What's Doing

With the dear lady wife away for three weeks you’d think that I would be living the life of the carefree bachelor. You know, out every night drinking, carousing and consuming curry. Well, that was last week. By Sunday I was a wreck.

This week you will be pleased to know that I am staying in, watching Auf Wiedersehen Pet recordings and generally geeking. Which is nice, because by the end of last week I was a mere shadow of my former self.

I may venture out to the pub a couple of times this week and next, just because it would be rude not to. But five nights a week is just a bit too much for the lightweight I am these days.

Cory Doctorow is a writer, and a blogger. On the day that his latest novel, Eastern Standard Tribe was published in the States (its not available here until the 1st of March) he also made it available on the internet in a variety of formats.

Much to my surprise, I then read it online. I’ve always been a firm fan of the paper book, but I slurped up EST on the screen of my iBook. Its helpful that the screen is so good, but reading what is essentially a web page was much easier than I had thought it would be. Though when I think about it I do spend most of my days reading documents of varying lengths on a computer screen so why not a book? Next up Project Gutenberg.

Oh, and the book is very good, highly recommended.

Its not that I’m missing the family or anything, but I couldn’t resist sharing this photo with you. Its my number one son enjoying his latest toy, resplendent in a rather fine hat.

The picture is currently gracing the desktop of my work PC and garnering equal amounts of aaahs and snorts of derision.

You can’t please all of the people all of the time.

News just in, the wife and child have arrived safely in Sydney and are currently snoozing.

Which leaves me alone in grey and wet London. There may be beer drinking and music played at an inappropriate volume.

Then this evening there will be curry. Thank you Mrs Patak.

Q magazine. How I fondly remember it. Andy Potter bought the first edition in, oh, about 1984 and I instantly felt like I was at home. I religously bought it every month for its first fifteen years, then rather patchily in the last five or so. I was more than happy, when I discovered this here intarweb, to find their web site at http://www.q4music.com/ and have linked to it extensively on this here little corner of the wibbly wobbly web.

But no more.

The magazine, as all good things do, has changed over its lifetime. Sadly it’s moved away from me over the last few years and I’ve almost given up buying it. Probably something to do with their promotion of artists who just don’t light my fire. If I was being harsh I’d say its following in the footsteps of Sounds and the NME, lauding bands which whilst they may be cool just aren’t very good.

But each to their own. There was still their website, with its treasure trove of twenty years worth of music reviews both mainstream and slightly obscure. Or at least it was. I tootled over there this afternoon and the archive has gone. The site is now just a thinly veiled front for HMV’s music store, concert ticket sales and a subscription service for a music related weekly email that is probably chock full of ads. No thanks, and sayonara Q.

For those not in the know, we had a light smattering of snow last night here in the South East of England.

Unfortunately for me during the two hours when it actually precipitated – as opposed to the two days afterwards the country will take getting back to normal – I was marooned in deepest, darkest, East London.

Why? Very good question. Last week a random motorist drove too close to our car when it was parked outside the house and ruined the driver’s side wing mirror. Regardless of the amount of sellotape we used it needed to be fixed.

After phoning around it transpired that we needed to get a whole new wing mirror (ouch) and that no one would order the part in so I had to get it myself. Which was tricky because Alfa Romeo dealers aren’t exactly thick on the ground in South London. According to the web site the nearest dealer was in Welling, which with my shaky grasp of geography I mistakenly assumed wasn’t too far from home. Silly me, its practically Dartford, which is as far East as you can get before you have to stop calling it London.

So I sloped off from work early yesterday afternoon to take a train to Welling and then walk the three miles from the station to the dealer, pick up our new wing mirror, walk the three miles back to Welling station and then take three trains to get home. Which was fine. Until I left Welling station. Which was when it started snowing.

I’ll save you from the expletives I uttered along the way to Ancaster Welling (bless ’em) or the human snowman I resembled as I stumbled through their door. Suffice it to say that when I did make it back to Welling station the rail network was doing its usual bang up job of coping with adverse weather conditions. I had to wait an hour in the freezing cold before a train turned up.

It took me until about ten o’clock (and half a bottle of red wine) to warm up. SWMBO is taking the motor to our friendly mechanic this morning. I’m just waiting for the phone call to tell me that we’ve got the wrong part and that I need to repeat the whole experience.

By the by, this is the 500th entry for What’s Doing. Who would of thought it.

This one is for Mrs P. According to this article pregnant women should get out more. There is some alleged link between sunlight and producing a loopy child. My (limited) experience is that they are all nutbags but that shouldn’t stop you sitting in the sunshine.

I think these things, I feel them even. Its just a shame that I can’t quite seem to find the words and facts to express them. Luckily for me there are other people on this here global network who can.

John Perry Barlow points to Doug Saunders talking about the parallels between Robert McNamara’s writing about the Vietnam war and the current situation in Iraq. Read and absorb.

I don’t know either. But I’m going to find out. I tendered my resignation this morning and from March I’m going to be a full time Dad.

I may do a little random nerding but the majority of my time will be devoted to the care and upbringing of the little man. This may result in some interesting posts, or I could just keep writing about the music I’m listening to. Whichever way it should be quite interesting, and hopefully a lot of fun.

A wonderful piece entitled It’s Political Incorrectness gone mad in the London News Review today.

I shall let it pass, but for two comments. First that they missed the unspoken postscript to every story in the Mail (including the sports news) that "it’s all that nasty Tony Blair’s fault." Second, that I live in the hope that the people of my acquaintance who do read this scurrilous rag do so for the travel articles and celebrity interviews and not because they think it actually reports the news.