And in the meantime, here is a picture of a sleeping rabbit
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Category Archives: Messaged from the Outhouse
Melissa Kite: Radio4 fail.
So there we were, the best girlfriend ever and myself, gently ambling along the rural backstreets of Maldon District, when we started listening to ‘Any Questions’, Radio4’s flagship political panel program. ‘Oh great’, we thought, ‘no party political posturing’, as there was only one active politician (George Young, the leader of the House of Commons) on the panel. The rest was made up of Mehdi Hasan (New Statesman journo), Lord Adonis (ex-transport secretary under Labour and now director of the Institute for Government) and Melissa Kite. Melissa Who? According to the bamf on ‘any questions’ website, Melissa Kite is:
[..] a columnist for the Spectator and GQ magazines and was until recently deputy political editor of The Sunday Telegraph. She has previously worked for the Times and the Daily Telegraph as a political correspondent. Her Real Life column in the Spectator chronicles her struggles with new laptops, local councils and horses, among other things.
Right. Turns out that Ms Kite struggles with more than just laptops and horses. First she suggested that (because of him being the leader of the National Socialist Party) Hitler was a left wing mass murderer (because, you know, we shouldn’t focus only focus on these pesky right wing mass murderers like Anders Breivik).
She also professed her dislike for the High Speed in Britain because a) who needs those time savings anyway, b) the track would pass near her parents garden. Minutes before she requested a fiscal stimulus to kick start the economy. So a ‘grand project’ that spends 30 billion on infrastructure and would inject loads of cash into the builiding- and engineering industry would not be appropriate as it would inconvenience the parents?
Well, she didn’t like the response directed to her twitter account and tweeted:
now, im off to marbella so i bid you all happy namecalling, swearing, insulting, ranting and gasket-blowing. enjoy
It’s a shame on entertainment grounds, but I have the feeling she won’t be invited to Dimbleby again.
UK Soul Karaoke
Beverley Knight is a talented singer from Wolverhampton who has had considerable 
success over the years and is probably at this point in time the UK’s most successful female soul artist. Recently freed from the shackles of her label and now an independent, she decided to record a retrospective of the most influential soul tracks of the last 30 years emanating from the UK. A worthy project, you might think. And indeed, she chooses some absolute crackers for ‘Soul UK
So far, so dandy.
Today I got the album from iTunes and was pleased to see a digital booklet and some live cuts added to the covers. The tunes -as mentioned above- are indeed great. There is just no way that you can ruin ‘Southern Freez’, ‘Cuddly Toy’, ‘Round and Around’, ‘Mama used to say’ or ‘Say are your Number One’.
Nevertheless.
She doesn’t ruin them. Not as such. Her arranger does indeed does a good job taking some of these elektrofunk classic and re-gig them for classic soul sextet (plus strings). But by doing this, he sucks their manic energy completely out of them. As I am unfortunately old enough to remember all of these tracks being released, I remember being excited by how new and cool they then sounded, especially the electrofunk tracks by Freeez, Junior and (Stock, Aitken Waterman’s) Princess (yes, really). Now that they got the elegant winebar treatment, they completely lost their sparkle. Add to that Ms Knight’s vocal acrobatics and uncalled for ad-libs, this album grates quickly.
I am nevertheless sure that it will do well. You will hear it blasting out the Chelsea Tractors, out of posh wine bars, and I am sure Ms Knight will be invited to loads of corporate gigs, where she will be able to play these songs to the marketing team of private banks and will be able to crown the top-grossing broker of the year at the next CIB annual general meeting.
For the rest of us, dig out the crackly vinyl and listen to the original (or download the original from iTunes).
Honestly. What was the point?
Starrigger?
Thanks to a recent reddit thread on “the best sci-fi novels Nobody’s ever heard off”, I downloaded the “Starrigger
As the title suggests, this is trucking in the future, but for those of you who already want to click the bookmark icon for Salon or Slate, hang on for a minute: this is actually moderately high brow fun. The author is happy to mix up Kirkegaard, Einstein and Kris Kristofferson for a highly amusing take on the classic road movie, and has obviously a lot fun while doing so. The plot feasts on some outrageous time paradoxons, manages to include some jabs at organised religion and features a purple life form muttering ‘deary me’ when encountered in the dark.
The three novels have recently been released as an e-book on Amazon, and for the next long flight or holiday I can’t recommend them more.
Over the Aegean, in deep thought
Yesterday evening around this time I was preparing myself for another Monday, brooding during that terribly long 5 o’clock tea time of the soul that is Sunday afternoons. It is pretty much the only time of the week when I get grumpy and suffer what could be called generously ‘the blues’, as one reminisces over the short weekend and dreads the horror of what is commonly called Monday morning (btw, I find that the best way to avoid is just going to work on a sunday afternoon). Then a short text message changed all this and instead preparing myself for work I prepared for a funeral, desperately trying to get a flight and a hotel, all literally last minute. So instead of sitting on a train, this morning I nurtured the Lada over a far too hot and busy M25 to catch a flight to the Aegean.
Family is a funny old thing. You can’t choose who you’re related to (well, apart from your in-laws, and there I’ve been rather lucky) but fortunately the bunch I was thrown into the genepool with is a pretty decent, though rather small bunch. There is a few aunts and uncles and even less cousins, but luckily it’s definitely quality over quantity. Now one of them has left us forever, so here I am, in a plane on the way to northern Greece, in a rather rickety A320 in Aegean Airlines livery, trying to join the rest of gene pool to celebrate and mourn a life. I normally avoid funerals like the plague, but as the deceased and his nearest and dearest played such a crucial part in my and my family’s life that not coming would have felt sacrilegeous.
Sitting alone on a plane is a good time as any to meditate about what one of my colleagues called ‘a sexually transmitted condition with fatal outcome’ and morbid thoughts are hardly surprising when one is on the way to a funeral. What kind of legacy does one to leave for the rest of humanity? What is a good life? What makes it all worth it?
I thought long and hard about this (well, a few seconds, but with my attention span…), and I think it’s probably a good thing when one can say ‘I tried to live my life as comfy as I could and in the process made as many people happy as possible while trying not to piss too many people off’.
I am pretty sure that would be a fitting eulogy for tomorrow’s funeral as well.
With mixed thoughts from 50 miles before Thessaloniki,
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Messaged from the Outhouse 