Category Archives: Messaged from the Outhouse

Sheds, glorious Sheds.

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As a male of the species, living within Her Majesty’s commonwealth for more than a decade, there are some things that have left their imprint on me. By gradual social osmosis I have started to develop a taste for real ales (I am even a member of CAMRA, for goodness sake),  roast potatoes, instant coffee, gardening programs and sheds.

Yes, sheds.

If you think about it, the humble garden shed (or garden outhouse, in which this blog was conceived) is the ultimate getaway for today’s male. Persecuted by the pressures of washing his hands regularly, putting things were they came from, and not having various gadgets in a state of repair lying around, the shed is the location where we unfortunate bearer of the Y chromosome can hide away, listen to his favourite music, pick his nose, pass wind and play his favourite games while being surrounded by a tasteful cacophony of old motherboards, CDs, electric tools and speakers.

I always had the fantasy of having one of those (after having to say goodbye to the outhouse) again. Of course now being back in blighty I will not be able to afford an such an enormous structure (heck, my garden won’t probably be that size), but a smaller one could neatly fit into my future backyard.

This is where Shedworking comes handy. A blog on the same level of aberrant genius as Eggbanconchipsandbeans, this gives the aspiring shedworker everything he needs to consider when building one himself. In my case that would of course include being off the grid and have the shed’s innards run on renewable energy (there’s always space for phothovoltaics and the odd wind turbine on the roof of the shed) and with a wireless accesspoint in the house there would be no need for wires. The ‘time for dinner’ call could come via twitter.

So, another site that makes it into my elusive blogroll.

Tataaa!

Congratulations to Nasa!

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The Phoenix Lander has made it. 7 minutes of terror during entry, descent and landing have been survived, thanks to some brillant engineering. Sitting pretty on Mars’ polar region, it will now look for water and carbon.

I for one welcome my martian single cell overlords.

Picture courtesy of Nasa.gov

Eurovision Song Contest 2008. A review from the guest critic.

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The resident guest critic will today feature for the first time on ‘Messaged from the Outhouse’. C from D near M is an avid reader of this blog and wanted to share his views on that most important of TV dates in the European calendar.

Take it away, C:

“I just watched 3 hours and 16 minutes of Eurovision song contest 2008 in Belgrade (no, the contest took place there, I sat on my sofa in D and used the BBC iplayer). My only excuse is that it has been pouring down with rain all day and that I did all my gardening yesterday. So there.

I cannot begin to tell you how glad I am not to have gone to any Eurovision house party. Being quite partial to the Germans, I would have had to kill myself. Germany’s “No Angels” were worse than bad: their song (the title of which I cannot remember) was lame, the costumes were utterly crap and tasteless (even compared to the tiny glitzy Swedish, Ukrainian, Greece and Armenian numbers), and one of the four women sang constantly out of tune! They should have done the honest thing and give their miserly 14 points to the UK, who deserved better but ended up with the same result. Germany, UK and Poland (blond bombshell with crap song, good enough voice but horsy teeth) came last, although Andy Abraham’s song was quite funky and well performed (with crap lyrics).

Best voice of the show (and that’s what Eurovision is still about in my humble opinion): Boaz Mauda from Israel (The Fire In Your Eyes). He’s got an amazingly clear and beautiful voice of a mature women inside a short male muscular teenage body. Maybe he would have won if he had shaved his armpits, if he and his pretty boys-only back up singers had all taken their shirts off during the song and if they did not come from Israel (currently not very popular in international politics, is it). If they’d done all this, I bet they would have got the millions of German gay votes instead of the Russian guy.

P.S.: Just one question to all of you out there: Was I the only one thinking that when the Swedish singer came on they finally allowed aliens at the Eurovision song contest. Terry Wogan (commenting for the BBC, as usual, although maybe for the last time) uttered something along the lines of “a bit terrifying” but didn’t elaborate. I think he meant the eyes, too.”

The Hague Jazz Festival, Day 2

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Day 2 of The Hague Jazz Festival was spent by G and me in the large auditorium called ‘The A Train’. It started with class, panache and African rhythms thanks to the impressive and inspiring performance of Seun Kuti & Egypt 80. After that to my old friends and favourites Matt Bianco, whose gig was unfortunately hampered by terrible soundproblems (which aparently were due to the stage monitors). In the second half things got fortunately better, and ‘Lost in You’, ‘Wap Bam Boogie’ and ‘Cha Cha Cuba’ were highlights on a short setlist.

After an endless pause in which the stage hands apparently continued to grapple with the monitors, Level 42 featuring old war horse Billy Cobham came on stage just to suffer the same problems as Matt Bianco. Feedback continued to be an issue, and Billy was apparently not able to pick up the sequenced tracks from Mike Lindup’s impressive keyboard towers, so he had terrible problems to synchronise himself with the rest of the band, most obvious during ‘Lessons in Love’, when the band actually had to stop playing for Cobham to pick up the beat of the sequencers. Nevertheless, Love Games and Hot Water were fun as ever (although the rest of the set was a bit contrived with some rather unusual material being showcased).

All in all the 2008 Hague Jazz event was brillant. A relaxed, well organised festival with plenty of variety, great music and nice people. Thoroughly recommended.