An Egocentric Guided Tour

In view of a couple of questions that Tracy asked, I thought I'd be horribly self-indulgent and give you a guided tour of my blog. It won't take long, because I try to keep it reasonably simple and clutter-free, and I wasn't planning to post today, so if you're not interested please feel free to skip straight to the comment section.


Let's start at the top, with my title banner. This is a photograph of the mantlepiece in my lounge. When I started my blog, I didn't have a camera, so I fairly quickly got one, and this was the first thing I photographed with it. The busts are of Bach and Beethoven, and the clock in the middle is a super modern radio controlled one, though it's very nicely finished and looks like an old Napolean clock. Usually my keys, phone and wallet live on that mantlepiece too. The unsightly wire is a speaker cable.

Moving to the first sidebar, we have a very unflattering photo of the blogger, together with my email address. Then there is my virtual clock, which I love. I don't know why more people don't have one.

Under the clock there is a link to Wiktionary, which was added for Bee, who complained that I sometimes use British words that she has to look up.

At the top of the second sidebar is Aimilia Kenevezou, who is the blog's muse. She reads the main weekday news bulletin in her own inimitable style on Cypriot state TV, my main source of information about what's happening in the real world.

Underneath is my blog list. I keep this short - in general it consists only of those blogs that I read on a daily basis. Bee and Jean Knee are at the top of the list, and although part of me would quite like to have everyone in alphabetical order, I can't bring myself to move them down the list. They have been faithfully reading, commenting and hijacking my blog from the very beginning, and are not completely of the opinion that it is my blog. They might be right...

I should also mention Klearchos, since he's not a regular commenter. He has a fantastic blog, which is in Greek, English and Bulgarian. He takes wonderful photos everywhere he goes, describing the places as well as any tourist guide. I don't visit his site anywhere near as often as I should.

Then there's the blog history thing.

Underneath that there are some Linux/Ubuntu logos. Contrary to popular belief, Ubuntu is not a town on the US/Canadian border, but a version of Linux, the computer operating system that I use instead of Windows. The penguin, Tux, is the Linux mascot.

The only thing I've not explained is the title. "o vretanos" is simply Greek for "The Briton", because I first started looking at Greek blogs, and I wanted it to be clear if I commented that I was British, so they'd know why my Greek was so bad. Instead I spent most of my time reading English (or rather American) blogs, and the rest is history...

Es que vous parlez English?

Source

I loved reading Chris' account of his schooldays, and it started me thinking about my own far less interesting and distinguished scholastic career. I was a very lazy student - which meant that whilst I scraped enough qualifications to get into a decent university, I failed to get to grips with most of the subjects at school.

Once you've failed in something, it's very difficult to go back. I'll never be able to understand chemistry, or history, or French.

My most important failure was French. Once you leave school chemistry and history really don't seem that useful. On the other hand, a language might have been.

French was pretty much compulsory when I was at school. This was for historical reasons, perhaps dating back to when it was the only language that our royal family spoke, and that until relatively recently all our laws were written in. It was also the language of diplomacy, and in the 80s, the language of Europe.

Nowadays English is the language of choice in the European Union, since most of the newer member states use it as their second language. And in schools children are as likely to be taught Spanish, or if they're lucky Urdu or Chinese.

But we were stuck with good old French. I remember when I'd just started it at school, coming home with a list of words to memorise, probably the first 20 numbers, or something. I spent 5 minutes or so looking at the list and gave up. As I said, I'm lazy.

The next five years were much the same. Lists of words came and went. They were usually grouped by topic. Furniture, jobs, the beach. For me, all missed opportunities. If I ever end up sur le plage in the Riviera, not only will I not be able to chat up the bikini-clad beauties, I won't even manage to rent a deckchair, or buy a bucket and spade. All because I didn't learn that beach vocabulary.


I had another major problem with French, which I don't think I've ever admitted before to a living soul - the accent sounded really effeminate. I couldn't bear to try and pronounce the words properly, just in case...

When I got married, we went to Paris for our honeymoon. My wife made me do all of the talking, and I discovered that I'd remembered more that I'd thought. The major problem, though, was eating. She always had a Salad Nicoise, while I would confidently pick something from the menu, thinking that I could make an educated guess about what it was.

Unfortunately, I was never right. One evening I was presented with a plateful of meat that didn't look like it had been cooked. I suppose I should be grateful that I never actually got anything that was still moving.

But it wasn't all bad. Once, when I was 14, the teacher commented at the end of a piece of writing, "Sounds very French". Most of the words were spelt wrong, conjugated wrong, or whatever, but I'd caught something about the idiom. Of course, it wouldn't have sounded French if I'd said it out loud. I wouldn't have wanted to sound like a woofter*

*Not that there's anything wrong with it.

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To illustrate this post, I hunted far and wide, but could not find a picture of a typical Frenchman - you know, with the blue striped shirt, the garlic and the bike. So I had to make do with Brigitte Bardot. Sorry, but I did try...

A Day in the Life

Bee has announced her intention to document every hour of today, and post the results on Monday. I think she's being a bit inconsiderate - She should write it at 0:00 on Sunday and post it straight away instead of keeping us in suspense for a whole extra day, but I'm sure that it will be worth the wait.

I wouldn't dream of keeping you waiting, so I'm going to tell you in advance what I might be doing today.

Shopping

I will probably get some food, perhaps even some clothes, some beer and a new carrier bag, to replace the one that split. I might toy with the idea of splashing out and buying some banks (at £500bn they're practically giving them away), we'll see.

Reading

I've still got a pile of books to read, so I'll finish the Agatha Christie I'm reading (The Mysterious Mr Quin - a book of short stories), and move onto one by Henning Mankell. More realistically, I'll probably just manage 5 pages of Mr Quin.


Eating and Drinking

Having gone shopping today, and with Helena not coming until tomorrow, I'll almost certainly have far too much to eat. In fact, I'll probably eat all of the food I buy today and have to go shopping again tomorrow. I'm likely to have a cornish pasty and potato salad for lunch, some kind of ready meal for my dinner, and snack on crisps, breadsticks and humous. Washed down with Guinness, of course.

Housework

I will need to vaccuum, because if I leave it much longer I won't be able to find the floor. I also need to clean the bathroom, but I might just put some clothes in the washing machine instead - there's only so much time available, unfortunately, so I can't do everything.

Television

I will of course be watching the news at 6.00 (even though Aimilia isn't on it at weekends), and no doubt will find some other stuff to watch as well. As long as it's in Greek, it doesn't count as time wasting/vegging/being a couch potato.

Blogging

I'll write some crap in my blog. I'll mention that my first ever post was a year ago today, and that I've enjoyed myself so much that I've almost forgiven Bee and co for coercing me into starting it in the first place. I'll point out that my first post was about things that weren't happening, money, drugs and Aimilia Kenevezou, so nothing much has changed. I'll also say a big thankyou to everyone who's read and commented for making this worthwhile.

Thankyou.

Wordy Wednesday: Ancestors

Update

Before we progress to the "mainstream of today's symposium", I must just give you an update on the supermarket situation.

When you spend £50 or more in Sainsbury's, you get a fuel voucher that gives you money off overpriced "black gold". The elderly couple in front of me had got enough shopping to get over the magic £50, but reckoned without some special offers, which meant that they were in fact £1.13 short. So they went round the shop trying to find enough things that they wanted, but not too much, of course. Luckily I was feeling particularly patient today...

Oh yes, and one of my reusable bags has split after three uses. It says that if you take it back they'll replace it free, so that's another hassle for the next shopping expedition.

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Ancestors

In Princess Ida, W.S. Gilbert explains the evolution of man as seen by man-hating women's libbers. The story begins with the reason for apes evolving in the first place:

A Lady fair, of lineage high,
Was loved by an Ape, in the days gone by.
The Maid was radiant as the sun,
The Ape was a most unsightly one-
  So it would not do-
  His scheme fell through,
For the Maid, when his love took formal shape,
  Expressed such terror
  At his monstrous error,
That he stammered an apology and made his 'scape,
The picture of a disconcerted Ape.

This, is of course nonsense. As mentioned previously on this blog, scientists (who ought to have been doing something useful such as growing courgettes with barcodes) have discovered that the reason women like Brad Pitt is that he resembles a Neanderthal. And it works - All the women on Chris' blog went mad and clicked some link just because he mentioned the guy's name.

So perhaps we shouldn't be too proud of having evolved so far. You may have seen the story about monkeys who are working as waiters in a Japanese restaurant. Next time you get rotten service somewhere that claims to welcome customer suggestions, I think you should suggest that they trade in their useless human staff for some chimps. Perhaps if enough people do this, it might actually happen.

At the same time there is a campaign to get a BAFTA for Cheetah, the tarzan monkey. The monkey has a lot more experience in the movie business than Mr Pitt, and is also a very good actor - for years no-one realised that "he" was being played by a "she". That's impressive. Nevertheless, I bet the judges ignore this and give the award to Neanderthal Brad.

How does the feminist version of evolution end? Not happily, I'm afraid:

And to start in life on a brand-new plan,
He christened himself Darwinian Man!
  But it would not do,
  The scheme fell through-
For the Maiden fair, whom the monkey craved,
  Was a radiant Being,
  With a brain far-seeing-
While a Darwinian Man, though well-behaved,
At best is only a monkey shaved!

Perhaps the customers in that Japanese restaurant would agree with the last couplet, though...

Reasonable Rant

I don't rant very often. Not on my blog, at least. This is partly because I don't get very stressed about things, and partly because rants tend to be somewhat unreasonable, one-sided and hypocritical. Not always, of course. Obviously my rant will be reasonable and contain no hypocrisy whatsoever. Actually, I'm not sure it's violent enough to be a rant, but it's the best I can do, I'm afraid.

Last week I went to the supermarket during the day. I went quite early, because I imagined that this would be a good quiet time to go. I was wrong.

[Source]

There were a number of old people there. I expected that. Most of them were there when I was out shopping at the weekend, and still hadn't got to the till yet. I'm sure I've remarked before about how odd it is that the very people who don't have much time left before they die are the ones who seem to do everything so slowly.

I'm not going to rant about old people, because I don't want someone showing me this post when I'm old and pointing out that I'm slow and doddery and indecisive and manage to block the whole aisle for an hour whilst deciding which brand of denture fixitive to buy.

No, I'm much more concerned about the number of SAHMs that there were ahead of me at the checkout. What happened to those magic words "Stay At Home"? They should be indoors blogging, not making me queue. They should order their groceries on line - after all, they can be at home to take the delivery.

The lady in front of me had got almost a trolley-full of fresh vegetables. Now, I appreciate it isn't her fault that it takes so long to put this stuff through the till. This is down to those selfish good-for-nothing scientists, who instead of working out how to genetically engineer fruit and veg so that it grows with machine readable bar codes, are spending all their time inventing invisibility cloaks and boring people at parties.

I do wish, though, that she hadn't decided to buy a small dolphin-shaped something (lotion, body wash?). That didn't have a readable bar-code either, which meant a wait whilst someone went off to find out that the item in question cost 50p, or whatever.

She also bought some clothes, so I had to wait and fume and watch the checkout assistant carefully and neatly fold up said clothes...

Finally, it was my turn. The supermarkets have all decided that they won't have bags by the tills any more, to encourage people to use the recyclable ones. They had an announcement about it in the shop over the PA system. They could have told me before I left home. Then I might have remembered to take my super-green reusable bags (only used once). Instead I had to ask for some evil disposable ones. "Forgotten your bags?", asked the checkout lady.

This is terrible moral blackmail. I think that we shoppers shouldn't stand for it. We should make a point of asking for disposable bags. Then only half-filling them. In the face of civil disobedience they'll be forced to abandon this silly green nonsense.

I had managed not to buy anything without a bar code - none of that fresh healthy food for me, thankyou. I'd also got some clothes. I do all my clothes shopping at the supermarket where at all possible. It's so much easier. The lady was very good, and folded my clothes neatly - what excellent service, and how nice to find a shop where they're prepared to spend time on their customers.

I sneaked out of the shop, the nasty bags in my trolley screaming "Environment Wrecker!", especially as everyone else appeared to have reusable ones. Needless to say, I won't forget my bags next time...

Heirloom

How many of you are old enough to have learned how to use one of these at school? For once, I can gleefully say that I'm not. It's a slide rule, of course, and it's what people had before they invented pocket calculators.

It works on the same principle as log tables. I'm too young to have been taught those, too, though naturally I did learn about logarithms, so I do understand how they were used.

This was my father's, probably circa 1970, when he was getting some qualifications to make up for the fact that he'd left school at 15. My mother found it a while after he died, and being a young mathematics student I was fascinated by it, and started to use it. For most calculations it gives an accurate enough answer - generally 2 or 3 significant figures.

It's difficult to see a use for it in our computer age, and being plastic it's not very decorative. However, it is one of the few things I have that I really value - simple (it's just two pieces of plastic that slide), yet highly functional. I must admit, though, that the last time I used it was to draw a straight line...

Wordy Wednesday

Doombar

The other evening a colleague took a couple of us to a village pub out in the middle of nowhere, where we had a meal and a pleasant couple of pints. I'm glad he was driving, because it was down single-track country lanes, which I'm never that keen on.
Because he'd chosen the pub for the quality of its beer, I thought I'd try some of the real ale to go with the Hungarian Goulash - usually I stick to lager or Guinness. The first pint of Doombar was so nice, that I felt obliged to have another. Well, we had come a long way...

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Elementary

In town at the weekend, I bought the box set of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films, made between 1939 and 1946. There are 14 in all, which have been wonderfully restored by the UCLA, a project which took them 10 years.

Even though I like detective stories, I've never been too sure about Sherlock Holmes. He's always jumping to amazingly detailed conclusions from the tiniest bits of evidence, and too many of the villans smoke unusual brands of Turkish cigarettes. He's also not a very likeable character.


Nevertheless, I've watched the first two so far with Helena, who really enjoyed them. The first one was the "Hound of the Baskervilles", which has the ominous line at the end "Watson, the needle.", reminding us of Holmes' opium addiction. And the second was a WW II propaganda film, though not too bad considering.

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There. It doesn't take a detective to see from today's meagre WW offering that this week has so far been uneventful, but busy...