Big Bang Theory - naughty pics

Our current favorite weekly TV is Big Bang Theory and this week has seen some rather naughty pictures posted online by, I think, Kaley Cuoco, after she and Leonard have converted Sheldon's bedroom into a sex dungeon.

Penny does look rather fetching in her outfit.

And I came across a rather nice photo of the girl who plays Bernadette - I once went out with a girl called Bernadette.  She didn't look much like this though.  She was a teacher from Cardiff!

Other Blogs 2 - Adventures in Speculation

Some years ago, this blog used to refer to my trading in financial markets.

I am back doing that again at the moment and I have a separate blog now for this.

The link is:

http://new-adventures-in-speculation.blogspot.fr/

And this one is nearly up-to-date at the moment!

Other Blogs 1 - French Renovation

For much of the last year I have been keeping a blog about our house renovation in France.

This is also not up-to-date and I need to tidy it up and get it finished.

It can be found at, http://a-french-renovation.blogspot.fr/

Dead Barn Owl

I came across a second dead barn owl in two weeks by the road this morning.

There are definitely quite large numbers of barn owls in our area of France - one morning I saw three within 10 minutes.

But they do fly low across the roads and presumably that is why they are frequently killed.  It does seem such a shame, a view I no doubt have because they are so rare in the UK.  I used to occasionally see them in the evening when I was fishing on the River Thames near our home - always a treat.

There were two detached feathers from its wings which I have kept and which are in a pot in my office.

Serafina Steer

And so I can start again on more normal posts

My current favorite music is the Serafina Steer CD The Moths are Real, especially the tracks Disco Compilation and Night Before Mutiny.  Of course I have only heard these because of Stuart Maconie's freak shows on BBC 6 Music - constant listening for me at the moment.

I am particularly taken with how life-affirming the track Disco Compilation is, with its message of the redemptive power of music to cure all ills.  To make it right, tonight, tonight . . . . as she says

Night before Mutiny has some of the most complex vocal phrasing I have heard on a track for years - truly great

My 1001st Blog Post

But is it really a Blog Post if it doesn't actually say anything

. . . . the joys of self-referential statements . . . .

My1000th Blog Post

Never thought I would publish this many

Post 999

What to write in the post immediately before reaching the 1000th?

Who knows?

The sooner I get past 1000, the better!

Post 998

It's amazing to think it has been more than 18 months since I last made a post here.

At the time, I remember I was thinking a lot about reaching the milestone of 1000 posts and wondering if I should wait till I had something special to talk about.  That delayed my usual posts of just random stuff.

Then soon after the last post, we decided that we would spend quite am a lot of time in France.  This would involve the renovation of a farmhouse and, as will be revealed in a later entry, I created a separate blog for this project.

So anyway, I do plan to start doing regular posts again on this blog over the coming weeks.

I wonder if I will ever reach 2000 posts or whether my total page views will reach 250,000?

A great song I've not heard for 25 years - Harare Mambos

I found on youtube a track that was one of my favorites years ago after hearing it on John Peel - the Harare Mambo's Kudendere.

The girl who sings the second verse has one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard

The Youtube link is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49sREunveaA

Recent reading 2 - Cedric Villani's Birth of a Theorem

Now this is a curious book.  It is not every day that a book about mathematical discovery is featured on Radio 4.  What I particularly liked about this book was the inclusion of various bits of the actual mathematics, rather than just miss it out as such books usually do.  True, the mathematics is incomprehensible, but that rather adds to the value of including it.

The account of the collaboration on the proof is also very interesting - especially the number of re-writes it went through.  And apparently you can win a Field's Medal before your proof has been accepted for publication.

Sadly I will never win a Field's Medal.  For most of my life this was due to insufficient mathematical ability, but for the last fifth or so of my life, it is due to my age.  Which is a better reason - similar to the explanation about why I will never play in an under-21 international football match

And why do the French produce so many great mathematicians?  And the Hungarians?  And Jews?

Recent reading 1 - Steve Hanley's The Big Midweek

There are quite a number of books related to The Fall - biographies of Mark E Smith, books about all the people who used to be in The Fall ("The Fallen").  One of my recent reads has been Steve Hanley's recent autobiography of his time in the band.

I saw The Fall about half a dozen times in the early to mid 1980s and, though I continued to roughly follow the band since, I do tend to look on that period as being the "golden age", especially as the track Smile is probably in my all time top ten (my preference is for the Peel Session version).  This corresponds to much of the period that Hanley was in the band.

I was particularly struck by the effort it seemed to be to keep the band going - the day-to-day stuff.  Indeed it remains something of a mystery how the band is still going.  As I write this I am listening to quite a recent LP by the band, Ersatz GB, not a record I know well.  And yet the current version of the band is the most stable there has ever been - I assume that is due to Mark E Smith's current wife.

Some years ago, there was a great documentary about The Fall in which Paul Morley wondered aloud whether we had all been fooled by Mark E Smith.  Whether he might not be the genius we all think, but instead was just a drunken tramp who we had all been tricked by.  Hard to tell at the moment I would say.

Knocking down an Outbuilding

I feel that there comes a time in all men's lives when it is necessary to do something manly with a crowbar, sledge hammer, heavy duty power tools and so on.  And at the end of the day, one hopes for a large pile of rubble to show the results of the day.

Today we started on demolishing one of the "petits touts" to open up the garden.  An hour or two is spent on the removal of the tiles and wooden chevrons from the roof.  This reveals that actually, the walls are really thick.  Moreover, one end is covered in an extremely hard render which is very difficult to break through.

Undeterred by such minor set backs, a few hours later it is clear that the petits touts is on the way down.

And by the end of demolition day one, there is something of the view we eventually hope to have of the opened up garden.

Day two sees some serious sledge hammering and the render gradually succumbs. 

There are few more manly sights that a man with his sledge hammer and the large pile of rubble he has created from the sweat of his brow - it is like Corbett posing with tigers in India, or Hemingway with a large tuna.

So the outbuilding is more or less down by the end of day two and now we have the issue of disposal of the debris.  This is scheduled for five or six weeks time and the current plan is to hire a tipper lorry that we can move several tonnes in at once - even so, it is possibly one day's work and three trips to the dump to move it all.  And then we still have to knock down the last sections and dig out the concrete foundations.

It does look more open though!

Building a Wall

It was -4 overnight, but the forecast is that today will be dry and sunny - perfect weather for building a wall across the back of the garage.

So we have a hole that needs to be filled.  We have 50 breeze blocks, carefully calculated to fill the hole (provided we don't make any mistakes)

We have a trailer with a quarter of a tonne of sand, 125kg of cement, a wheelbarrow and two spades.

We have a space on the floor where we can tip our sand

And another space where we can mix our cement/sand mix in the ratio 1:4.

The first row is always the most critical and must be dead straight in all dimensions - up/down and side to side.

The gaps are filled in, and row two commences with a piece cut into two, so the joints don't line up between rows.

This means that the occasional piece has to be cut - the joy of a large angle grinder.

By mid-afternoon, we have several rows in place, and are getting low of mix.  A maximum of five rows should be done on any one day.

So the next day is similar weather.  And rows 6 to 10 go in, with more cutting.  We have 3/4 of a piece left over when we have finished.

Was there ever a nicer wall built (in part) by me?  Most definitely not!

"Journey on the Crest" and "Wild"

With all the current comments on the movie Wild, I have recently re-read Cindy Ross's book, Journey on the Crest, one of my all-time favourite books.  Is the the fourth or fifth time I've read it?

There was a time, in the early 1990s when I did go through a brief period of thinking seriously about doing a long distance hike but it remained just a day dream.  The closest I came to doing one was when I walked the West Highland Way in 1994 (?).  Cindy Ross's book was one of the ones I read about that time and it remains one of the best books on long distance hiking.  One day perhaps I will go and see The Three Sisters mountains - that might be the limit of what I might do on the PCT!

And in the aftermath of Wild-related press coverage, a picture of Cindy Ross returning to the PCT 30 years later

After finishing Journey on the Crest, I decided I would read the book of Wild.  I did rather enjoy this but some aspects of it do bother me.  Firstly, the walk actually took place in 1995 but was only written about 15 years later and published in 2012.  Secondly, though she does do very well on her walk, she is fairly hopelessly incompetent and I'm not sure I liked that feature of the book.  Though I have no experience of the PCT, I think there is a very good chance that her experiences are quite different to how most people experience the trail.  For some reason, I am also slightly bothered by the fact that she "only" walked 1000 of the 2400 miles.  But the book is very moving and I enjoyed it a great deal.  It hasn't risen above Cindy Ross though.

The real Cheryl Strayed and "Monster"

And Reese Witherspoon, who is very good in the movie.

Some people online has expressed concern that as a result of the movie, the PCT is going to be overrun with idiots.  I am possibly inclined to share that view

A PCT website has a parody of Wild called Rabid, reflecting a 2013 thru-hikers view.  I don't know if it is a full work, but the extract I read was very funny.

Snow in our bit of France - now there's a rarity

Snow overnight - the deepest fall in the Charente Maritime for several years!

Watching Diva - a name from the past, Jude Willetts

I watched an old favourite movie this evening, Diva from 1981.  I think I saw this at a cinema in London when it first came out and it was one of the first movies that I ever recorded on video when I first got a video recorder.

I have always liked to think that I was most like Gorodish - living in his ultra-cool loft, with his strange, electronic music playing, going on about the "Zen in the art of buttering bread", his ridiculous jigsaw puzzle of the wave, the cute Vietnamese girlfriend . . .

But I was probably more like Jules, the postman who bootlegs the opera performance.

Gorodish is so cool

I'd still like a wave water feature!

I remember back at Easter 1982 meeting a girl in my home town.  She lived next door to one of my friends and was really into philosophy and cinema and David Bowie and such things.  We watched Diva together one night at my house - a rather fond memory.

And by the power of the internet, here she is, in a previous work role as Chief Executive of the British Society for Immunology.  Who'd have thought.  She is currently also on Linkedin I discovered.

Of course I knew her as Jude Willetts.  Definitely one of the most interesting people I met as I was growing up.

I wonder if anyone looks for me on the internet - I suspect not!