Sue Fenton

25 Things To Do In A Dull Town: the start of a mission to create some lunchtime entertainment

This isn't Dulltown: Dulltown is even duller than this. Pic: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

The company where I’ll be working for eight weeks is located in one of those places that was once a pleasant little Victorian town but that has since been subsumed into the dull urban sprawl that is Greater London.

Part of this process has seen the high street stripped of its character and sense of community by the reinvention of many independent traders that once served the community, as bland betting shops, smelly kebab bars, dull financial advisers and soul-destroyingly uninteresting electrical discount stores.

All the locals look rather weary, as though they’ve given up on their aspirations of moving either closer into central London, with its vibrancy and history and busy-ness; or out into the countryside just a few miles away. Instead, they’re stuck in the middle, with nothing to do, in a stream of commuter traffic, amid the unfragrant charity shops, characterless chain pubs and pound stores.

I realised early on that there would be little to do during my lunchbreaks – this Dull Town doesn’t set out to offer excitement and doesn’t really want the visitor to enjoy herself there. I decided I would have to go out there and create my own leisure opportunities.

So, I decided to make a list of Things to Do in a Dull Town at Lunchtime.

I thought 25 would be a nice round number. I’ll be there for about 40 days in total, unless they extend my contract – or get the hump and cut it short if they find out I’ve been disrespectful of their chosen location – so allowing for rainy days spent brooding over a baked potato at my desk, that would still leave me lots of interesting lunchtimes out.

As things stand, I’ve got rather stuck before I’ve even reached the 20 mark, and that’s including a friend’s facetious suggestion “get your tyre pressures checked” and my own – rather desperate – “go and look at the bypass”. I did consider stopping there and starting again at number 1, which would eventually generate more than a month of lunchtime excitement, but then I decided this would be cheating. Somehow, I have to come up with more ideas.

It’s my policy to exclude most shopping, eating and drinking activities, since that would involve spending money. There will be certain exceptions, such as those necessary to carry out Number 8 on my list: “beverage-criticising” (the art of sitting in a café and muttering, in middle-aged fashion, “doesn’t anyone know how to make a proper cappuccino/decent pot of tea?”)

So, here’s the list, in no particular order, each to feature in future blog posts.

1. Have my legs waxed.
2. Purchase three nice things from charity shops.
3. Walk as far as I can northbound in half an hour, and back again.
4. Ditto, but southbound.
5. Visit the church.
6. Walk in the park.
7. Visit the “town farm” – to include finding out what a “town farm” actually is.
8. Sit in cafés, muttering to self about the inadequate beverages.
9. Walk up and down the high street, listing the shops and deciding which I would allow to continue to exist in my capacity as self-appointed Town Planner – and which I would consign to oblivion.
10. Have a manicure.
11. Go to the library and read something educational.
12. See how many dogs I can count in an hour. Breed to be identified where possible.
13. See how many ugly people I can count in an hour.
14. Talk to strangers. On any subject.
15. Ask the chatty butcher (one of the independents the town does boast) for advice on what to have for my tea – and proceed to follow his advice.
16. Ditto the bloke who runs the fruit and veg stall on a Friday. This could turn into a cookery blog before I know it!
17. Walk to the bypass and admire its talent at diverting much of the traffic, making Dulltown’s high street quieter (albeit even duller), so I can stroll around taking the piss in relative peace.
18. Have my tyre pressure checked.

I am grateful for a suggestion for 19 (go and look at the strange outdoor exercise machines in the park) to a new colleague. Our meeting was somewhat of an accident, since we don’t work directly together, but it transpires we share a mutual distaste for Dull Towns with a propensity to publish our opinions on the internet. My fellow blogger showed a great interest in my List of Things to Do at Lunchtime but rather gloomily opined that only disappointment could result – she has tried most of them out during her time working in Dulltown, and said she ended up more disillusioned than ever with “this nothing place”.

My new chum has promised to write me a guest blog about her own experiences futilely attempting to have fun at lunchtimes in Dulltown, so watch this space.

Pic credit: Tom Curtis, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=178

I get a job, become inexplicably popular and start a fire in the pub – a week of strange variety

I'm exaggerating - it wasn't quite this bad. Pic: www.freedigitalphotos.net

Imagine eight acoustic guitarists, a bazouki player and a girl on a glockenspiel, all simultaneously doing their thing in the corner of a small-town pub, doing a cover of a Turin Brakes song, when a fire breaks out on the table.

Imagine you weren’t even there at the time – you’d wandered back in from having been for a pee and found the smoke alarm going off and a right to-do going on, with the nasty acrid smell of burning plastic, and bewildered musicians beating out a burning table with their bare hands.

Then imagine it becomes evident that it was you that started the conflagration, by leaving a pile of papers and folders far too close to a lighted candle.

And an expensive violin, which had been lying on the table minding its own business, has been scorched in the flames.

Embarrassing. Very embarrassing. The only consolation was that the landlord didn’t seem to mind – he seemed kind of tired and beaten, more than angry, almost as though this was just another of the tribulations of running a British pub. And, as luck should have it, the owner of the violin just happened to be… guess what… a professional violin repairer and restorer. What are the chances of that happening? She was very nice about it and said she could sort out her charred instrument in the workshop. So things could have been a lot worse, though I did feel a bit of a berk, what with this having been my first visit to this particular music night.

Anyhow, the next day was Wednesday and I got a call from a recruitment agent about a temporary editing position I applied for a while back. “It’s for two months and they want someone to start straight away,” he cautioned. “Yeah, yeah,” I thought, having heard that particular phrase before from recruitment types. It usually means “in about six weeks, when we’ve sorted the paperwork out”. But no, he meant “straight away”. “Will tomorrow be OK?” he asked.

WTF???!!! I played for time. “How about Monday?” I suggested, wondering how the hell I was going to get the stuff done I’d been lingering over. Monday, it seemed, was far too late, and we split the difference and settled for Friday.

You can imagine the scene as I rushed to get work clothes washed and ironed, my usual uniform being leggings, a lunch-stained T shirt and slippers.

More on the new job another time. It was better than I expected: the people were nice, the bus stops outside, and there were three types of teabag, free milk and a massive fridge in the kitchen. Any employer who thinks of their workers’ beverage needs in this way can’t be bad.

Anyhow, I got home after my first day and checked my emails to find that TWO people wanted to talk to me about proofreading and copywriting work. Two! In one day! Talk about buses all coming at once. One had been recommended by a website developer I did some work for recently and I ended up speaking to him on the phone till 10.30pm about his project. The other, the owner of a marketing agency, had, believe it or not, got my details from a guitarist I met while I was setting fire to the pub. I’d been so busy apologising to everyone over the violin catastrophe that I didn’t even realise this chap was vaguely in my line of work in his day-job.

It doesn’t stop there. Had another email yesterday from an old colleague and drinking buddy, who wants to meet up to discuss some writing work he might be able to put my way.

Quite why I’m so popular all of a sudden, after a fairly quiet spell, is thoroughly inexplicable. Maybe it’s my new perfume.

Pic credit: think4photop, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=2294

Technophobe male fails in bid to post a comment about my anti-men songs; I have to post it for him

One of my male acquaintances was keen to comment on my recent blog about the sexist songs I’d been writing http://fwords.co.uk/2012/01/25/my-unfortunate-reputation-for-writing-sexist-songs-leads-to-a-commission-from-a-disgruntled-friend/

Tony the Modern Folk Poet (aka Joseph Kilhane) has heard my little ditties at the pub music night so he has an interest anyway, and he seemed particularly to have taken exception to the conversation that followed my blog post in the form of comments. Kitchen Slattern http://kitchenslattern.com/ commented that women were often “driven to the knife edge of sanity by every little thing they [men] do, or don’t do as the case may be”. She told the tale of a friend who’d backed her car down the driveway and repeatedly run over a pile of gifts her soon-to-be ex-husband had given her.

I replied with another anecdote, that of a friend of mine who’d loosened the stitches in the seat of her soon-to-be ex-bloke’s work trousers, so that the next time he sat down at work his trousers split, making him unable to stand up again for the duration of the meeting.

Someone called Learning Curve (who didn’t leave a link) told how her man had complained his “balls were shrivelling” as he reluctantly did the vacuuming.

And Diane Henders http://blog.dianehenders.com/ said my song lyric  “Men, men, why is it never easy, I start off feeling horny and end up feeling queasy” – had made her “bellow with laughter”.

The Modern Folk Poet felt compelled to respond, but the poor lamb couldn’t work out how to do it. Clearly, the instructions that WordPress kindly provides, namely “Leave a reply..post your comment here… post comment” were not specific enough for him.

I’m not suggesting that he can’t follow simple instructions because he’s a man, by the way – there are plenty of men who know how to do things. If I say he’s a techno-idiot, that’s not sexist – the fact that he’s a man has nothing to do with it.

He did manage to email me his reply, though, so I’ll assist by posting it below. It’s well worth a read, as it shows how the Poet can produce a clever ditty on virtually any subject. And he can set most of them to music and perform them as comical songs on the guitar or mandolin.

“Having read this blog, I struggle
To understand its message
It must all be a joke? So?
Right! I laughed.
A woman living with a man?
Hates his guts? (but hasn’t gone)
Long-suffering? Self-sacrificing? Martyr? – or plain daft

And can somebody say from when
Women sharing homes with men
Today are still expecting
To become their slaves
I suggest it’s not the gender
That is likely to offend ‘er
But the way that said cohabitee behaves
And therefore, bad cohabitees – Are they always blokes?
Or could they be a her and not a him?!
It isn’t being male
That makes the idyll fail
It’s being inconsiderate and dim

There are males who do the cooking
(Not all of them bad-looking),
There are blokes who’ll clean throughout the house or flat
Admitted, there are others, should have stayed home with their mothers
But there’s women too, who should be doing that

The answer seems to me to be
A pre-cohabitation clause
Inserted in a document
That you both sign in blood
Is he into cooking?
Is he into cleaning?
Instead then, do you settle for a stud?

For still you stand upon the brink
With some gormless shiftless gink
Not thinking just how low you’ll sink
Or what he may become
You like ‘em muscular and tough?
Or maybe just a little rough?
I know, I know, it has to be
The contours of his bum

Some women too are dim and careless,
heartless, callous, inconsiderate ,
slovenly, preoccupied, untidy round the place
Do I sound misogynistic ?
No more than you sound misanthropic !
We’re all in this together – part of
The selfish human race”

Good, innit?

The Modern Folk Poet is available for poetry-writing commissions and live gigs. Here’s a link to his website http://www.modernfolkpoet.co.uk/ but it won’t do you much good going there, since someone else set it up for him and he doesn’t know how to update it and consequently never visits it. I’ll act as his manager and claim a commission on any bookings.

Pic credit: graur razvan ionut, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=987

Co-operatives, collaborations, partnerships – antidote to the default setting of corporate greed?

Pic credit: Master Isolated, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ images/view_photog.php? photogid=1962

I’ve always liked the concept of co-operatives, the idea of ordinary people joining together and sharing the labour and the profits of their labour, as opposed to fat-cat directors skimming off the cream and leaving a few drops of sour milk for the people who make their wealth possible, in the form of pathetic little bonuses and below-inflation pay rises.

Somehow, in our loony capitalist world, it’s become accepted that one particular group of workers, those that sit in offices and administrate, should be an elite who earn disproportionately way more than the rest. “But we bring in the money!” they cry in justification for enormous salaries. Yes, and we accept we couldn’t do without you. But we clean the toilets, or serve the lunches, or treat the sick, or produce the staff newspaper, or handle customer complaints, or deliver the post, or mend the computers…. And you couldn’t do without us! Everyone, every function, in a business is interdependent. No business can succeed without everyone performing their own role to the best of their ability. Where did this idea come from, and how has it taken root, this idea that those who perform one function should be so much better recompensed than others?

Directors of big companies; premier league footballers; and top bankers are the obvious examples. They’d argue “but we’re the best at what we do!”. That’s as maybe. Isn’t everybody in a company the best at what they do? They wouldn’t have been recruited in the first place if they weren’t. Who’s to say who brings more real value to a business – or especially to society? Why the huge disparity in remuneration? There are only 24 hours in a day and even those who need little sleep can scarcely work more than 16 hours a day, even if they wanted to. Even then, even working twice the hours of the “normal” worker, that’s no reason to be paid more than twice the rate of that normal worker.

Let’s face it – if we were living in an egalitarian society where everyone earned the same salary, the footballers would still choose to be footballers, the company directors would still choose to be company directors, the cleaners and porters and postal workers would probably still choose their jobs. We’d choose our jobs according to our own abilities and tastes. No one job is intrinsically more worthy of reward than others.

You might find, of course, that some would opt for what is currently considered to be a lesser role, knowing in their hearts that their current position exceeds their abilities. That would be fine – by all means, weed out those who have been promoted beyond their abilities though over-confidence, or through knowing “the right people”. Others would choose a job that suited their natural inclinations, that they couldn’t do under the old system because it wouldn’t pay the bills – like helping with literacy classes or looking after sick people, or rescuing abandoned animals or helping the homeless and dispossessed. Useful jobs.

Ultimately things would all even out and everyone would be doing the job that best suited their personalities and aptitudes and interests – and society would be all the better for it.

There is an alternative to the default setting of corporate greed, and it’s not new. The co-operative movement began in Europe in the 19th century, spurred on by the exploitation brought about by the industrial revolution, the idea being that workers should be self-governing, reaping all the benefits from their own work. No one person would be in the position of being able to command an income far bigger than the rest. Everyone would do the job to which they were best suited, everyone would work equally hard, and everyone would share in the rewards.

Probably the best-known today in the UK is The Co-operative Group http://www.co-operative.coop/corporate/, the UK’s largest consumer co-operative, which comprises the supermarket chain and insurance, travel, banking, legal and funeral businesses. The core idea is to sell products in a fair and honest way, support communities and make a reasonable financial return to the member-owners.

Then there’s the likes of the John Lewis Partnership, another major retailer, not strictly a co-operative but still with the aim of divvying up the profits among the people who create them. http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/. It works – the staff like getting a share of the dibs and the customers like getting the good service that is a result of that incentive.

Here’s another example of collaborative working. This week, I did an interview with office and meeting space provider Regus http://www.regus.co.uk/, whose UK regional director told me about a growing trend for co-working – where unrelated businesses choose to share an office for the opportunities that provides for company and networking. This has been particularly noticeable at Regus’s sister brand B.hive, which is targeted at women – and headed by well-known businesswoman Lynne Franks http://www.lynnefranks.co.uk/.

Regus UK regional director Celia Donne told me: “We have many examples of women who met at B.hive and who are now working together or finding ways to help each other. It’s like a private members’ club but with business facilities. Women, especially those in smaller organisations, tend to seek a slightly less corporate approach.”

Then there are the quirky little local examples, like the Spring Garden pub and live music venue in Hotwells, Bristol, which is run as a CIC (Community Interest Company). It operates as a non-profit organisation, putting all surplus money back in to music and drama and local interest groups. I’d provide a link except its website doesn’t seem to work, so maybe it’s gone out of business, which would be a bit shit considering I’m singing the praises of co-operatives. Anyway, it’s a nice little place and when I went in there the other day to ask if they had live music on Saturday the bloke behind the bar said “no, but you can come in and play if you like” which, considering he’d never heard my singing, makes him a very brave man.

And finally, in my list of examples of lovely collaborative enterprises, is the newly formed Golden Mustard Media http://www.goldenmustardmedia.co.uk/. The idea is that a load of creative types – writers, designers, marketing bods etc – club together to offer the same services that a larger marketing agency could do. Golden Mustard offers the whole gamut of creative services, such as design, marketing, copywriting and PR – and I’m going to be part of it, which is fab. The brains behind the idea is an entrepreneurial journo called Graham Garnett, who will bring in the business, sub individual projects out to whoever is best suited to handle them, taking his percentage in much the same way as any agency does. I’ll let you know if it works!

My unfortunate reputation for writing sexist songs leads to a commission from a disgruntled friend

This isn’t me. I can’t play standing up yet. Pic credit: photostock, http://www. freedigitalphotos.net/images/ view_photog.php?photogid=2125

My little group of chums at the local pub music night have the idea firmly fixed in their heads that I’m a writer of sexist songs. When a bunch of musical types get together, they often ask each other “what’s your genre?” and the answer might be Folk, R&B or Skiffle – or in extreme cases Delta Blues, Ethereal Pop or Thrashcore. No-one bothers asking me, because it’s generally accepted that my particular genre is UK Pub Rock Urban Folk Comic Misandry.

This reputation stems from an early piece that had the lines “Having seen you eat asparagus, I’d rather take a monkey home instead” and “your clothes, your hair, the way you breathe, the way you drink your tea – everything you do and say annoys and antagonises me”.

A later song produced the lines “It’s a mystery that I can’t explain – he’s like a retarded slug with water on the brain” and “what can you do when a man won’t listen… I think I’ll have to buy that man a hearing aid”.

I seem to be constitutionally unable of treating songwriting as anything other than a comedy vehicle, so I’m unlikely to ever be Diane Warren or Guy Chambers or that bloke whose name escapes me who writes all the Meat Loaf songs.

Anyhow, the upshot of the retarded slug song was a challenge from one of the blokes at the pub – couldn’t I write a song that wasn’t anti-man? I tried to oblige by devising something loosely based on that nice romantic tune of Dolly Parton’s, I Will Always Love You. Somehow, though, I couldn’t find the words to match the pathos of that song. It started off well: “I said I’d write a love song, just to prove I can…” but my subsequent difficulty matching content to melody is illustrated by this later excerpt: “Oh men, oh men, why is it never easy? I start off feeling horny and end up feeling queasy”.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised then, to receive an email at the weekend from a friend who appeared to be experiencing a certain amount of irritation with her resident male. “I’ve started writing a song,” she wrote, “can you do anything with this?”

She attached a poem that told a tale of a woman driven to distraction by close proximity to her husband. It was the old, old story of cupboard doors left open, washing up left undone, dirty clothes left strewn about, the kitchen left in chaos after a “cooking” episode for which he expected to be praised.

I was messing about at the time trying to master a new chord progression on the guitar – G, Gmaj7, G7, C, G, Gmaj7, A7, D7, G – and this worked well with a line from my friend’s poem that seemed to present itself as the chorus – “Men, you make us so perplexed. We always must remember that, you are the weaker sex”. After some tweaking and pruning to get it to scan with my melody, The Weaker Sex was born. I felt the chances were slim of my being believed at the pub when I truthfully insisted that these lyrics had not come from the pen of Yours Truly, and of course performing it would typecast me even more as She Who Writes Those Anti-Man Songs.

Still, I gave it a go. It was deeply rewarding, when I got behind the mic and asked “would anyone like to hear an anti-man song?” to hear the encouraging sounds of assent from the females in the pub. The men were less vocal, for some reason. They’d seen me approach the mic with only a single sheet of music, so they knew darn well they were getting whatever was on that piece of paper, so it wasn’t so much “would you like to hear?” as “you’re going to hear”.

Still, the song got a bit of a laugh, though when one of the women approached me on her way home and asked curiously “do you really hate men?” I realised my reputation as a sexist had been well and truly established. I quite like men really – well most of them, anyway. I’m going to try and change genres to something less controversial, like Vietnamese Trance or Salsa Erotica.

Boozy housewife, boar masturbator and feisty feminist – not me, but more of my favourite bloggers

Don't fancy yours much. Pic credit: http://www. freedigitalphotos.net

After nominating 12 other bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Awards yesterday, I ran out of steam and had to go and make my dinner, so I deferred the remaining three of the 15 I was supposed to nominate. Here they are now.

http://kitchenslattern.com Kitchen Slattern writes about cookery and domesticity, and believes that doing the housework “well enough” is far preferable to doing it well. She claims to have found “the easy way to do anything that needs doing around the house”, and as part of her researches has perfected the art of drunken vacuum-cleaning.

This “boozy floozy with a bad attitude” towards her domestic chores lives in New York and says Martha Stewart’s perfectionism makes her ass ache.

http://fortyshadesofgrey.blogspot.com/ Nat is a feisty, forthright, fearless and hugely articulate feminist from the UK, who blogs about sex, politics and feminism. I’d hazard a guess that she’s never been beaten in an argument. She also has a lovely turn of phrase when it comes to describing her adversaries – “spunkwaffling dickwits” and “piece of rotting crotchfilth” are among the gems.

Once gave me invaluable back-up when I was embroiled in an online discussion with a piece of rotting crotchfilth who’d taken exception to a mention I’d made of his dickwittish sexist attitudes.

http://occupylsx.org/ The blog of the Occupy London movement, this contains lots of info including details of this week’s High Court ruling that the camp should be evicted. The protesters will be appealing. Also current are posts about this week’s “trials” being organised by Occupy, to examine allegations against Tony Blair for war crimes and against RBS concerning the rights of its major shareholders – the general public.

Oh sod it, here’s some more. I’m on a roll.

http://www.editormichael.com/ Michael LaRocca is an American whose jobs have included teaching English in China, writing novels and masturbating boars. His blog gives tips on writing, information about English language and literature, and humorous “random ranting and raving”.

http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/ Hart Williams is another American writer – a novelist, illustrator and screenwriter. He has made me laugh with his acerbic comments on LinkedIn writing groups and he stands alone as the only person with whom I have ever got involved in an email discussion about panty pads. Blogs about writing and politics. Very highbrow and, politically, a progressive Democrat (hope I’ve got that right, I was going to say “bit of a lefty” but that might not be a compliment over there). His claims to fame include being accused in American media of wanting to shoot conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

http://vanbrown.wordpress.com/ Yet another American blogger. What is it with me and American male wordsmiths? I don’t even know many Americans in real life; they scare me a bit – if I went for a pint with one I’d be worried they’d invade the pub and appropriate all the beer so there’d be none left for me. The internet’s great for discovering ones that probably wouldn’t.

Anyhow, Van’s forte is amusing stuff about “dawgs” – he’s a great fan of the canine species – but he also does general humour and political stuff. Not sure if he’s another lefty or not – appears to be disdainful of both Republicans and Democrats.

That’s the lot for now. I’ll do some more another time, as it’s been fun.

Award details: http://versatilebloggeraward.wordpress.com/vba-rules/

Hoorah, I’ve been nominated for a Versatile Blogger Award, and in turn I name my own favourite bloggers – it’s a blogging love-fest!

Crikey, I’ve been nominated for a Versatile Blogger Award. I can’t remember the last time I was nominated for anything, other than to go to the bar ‘cause it was my round.

The awards seem to be fairly informal – it’s not like the Oscars or the X Factor or anything. There is no official judging process and no prize, other than recognition from one’s peers. In fact, cynics have described the whole scheme as being a giant internet chain letter – sooner or later, every blogger will have one. But it’s a bit of fun, and a chance to give a bit of a slap on the back to other bloggers who have amused, educated, entertained or informed you.

There are rules http://versatilebloggeraward.wordpress.com/vba-rules/, first of which is to thank the person who nominated you.

So herewith, thanks to Susan at http://lostnchina.wordpress.com. Susan is a Chinese-Canadian whose very amusing posts include the one that first attracted me to her blog, namely the one about her Chinese relations insisting on her wearing special lucky pants. Thanks, Susan, back atcha, as you say over your side of the pond, I believe.

The next rule is to select 15 other blogs/bloggers whose output you like, and to nominate them for the Versatile Blogger Award.

I don’t have time to do all 15 right now, so I’m going to go with the 12 I’ve done so far and come back another time to nominate some more. For now, my nominations are as follows (drum roll……):

http://chroniclesofeldon.wordpress.com Amusing chatter about life, parties, friends etc from a young American chap who goes by the name of Awkward Eldon. He sets the scene with a sit-com-friendly cast of odd friends and a dog who is described as looking like the Anti-Christ.

http://roboticrhetoric.wordpress.com Fluent and amusing chatter from “an inexperienced and impressionable youth of 18”, British this time. What is it with me and young men?

http://sw9red.wordpress.com/ Ooh, another young man – at least, I’m assuming he’s young and a man. Red runs what he calls “Brixton’s best-read political blog”. One of several blogs I like for imparting to current events a left-wing perspective that we never see in the mainstream, corporate-owned media. Appears to have been learning the guitar recently, so his politics is now mixed with stuff about music.

http://laughingnoam.blogspot.com/ A strange but interesting and prolific mixture of intelligent comment and humorous chatter about politics and society, with a left-wing slant. For some reason I thought Noam was another young man, possibly because of a recent adolescently-comical Twitter exchange about “bum fudge”, but a recent post says he’s been a fan of David Bowie for 30 years, so he (or possibly she) can’t actually be a teenage boy. In light of this, I’m not sure he’s strictly eligible for my nomination, but I’ll let it go this time.

http://wrapcloth.wordpress.com/ Nigel isn’t a teenage boy either. I know this cos he has referred to his grandchildren. He and I are both in writing forums on LinkedIn and keep ending up in the same discussions with scammers, loonies and argumentative forum members. In a small-world coincidence, he lives in the same Welsh town, hundreds of miles away, where my grandmother lived briefly in 1911, and knows the owner of the hotel she worked in.

http://unemployedhack.wordpress.com/ Hack isn’t a teenage boy either. He or she (I know which, actually, but I won’t tell) is probably in his/her 30s and writes about his/her experiences of being an out-of-work journalist, offering commentary on the difficulties of finding work, the benefits system, the greedy utility companies and the British media and political system. His/her cat is a major character in the blog and anything to do with cats is fine by me.

http://pigsinwales.blogspot.com/ Right – this one’s definitely a girl. I know this because I’ve met her. Liz Shankland was on my journalism course many years ago and has since gone on to become an expert in pig-breeding, smallholdings and similar rural pursuits. Anything you want to know about piggies or farming, she’s your woman.

http://malvikajaswal.wordpress.com Another girl! Malvika lives in India and writes about an eclectic variety of topics, including Indian culture, art and cooking. She gave me a nice recipe for dall which I keep meaning to try.

http://prettyfeetpoptoe.wordpress.com/ And another girl. Pretty Feet’s writing style is perhaps more closely aligned to my own than any of the other bloggers I’ve named, though she’s got shitloads more followers. Bah – who needs followers anyway, bloody nuisance, the lot of them. Pretty writes fluently and humorously about shoes, the Underground and living in London and stuff.

http://www.thewritersremedy.com Shelley is an American who blogs about her experiences of trying to develop a freelance writing career. Her blog includes handy hints and tips, commentary on scam sites and the like.

http://talkingquestions.wordpress.com Back to blokes. These are two Americans called Lee and Gage, who do a weekly podcast of themselves chattering on humorously about all manner of things. It’s a bit like listening to a pair of harmless drunks in a pub.

http://theactivists.wordpress.com/ Socialist artists, writers, photographers, bloggers, poets, illustrators, all dedicated to creating “a revolutionary information flow”. This blogs offers an alternative perspective on current affairs and challenges readers to think more deeply about their dependence on capitalism and traditional attitudes.

That’s the end of the nominations. I hope they all realise they owe me a pint.

As the final rule in the awards scheme, nominees have to reveal seven facts about themselves. Here goes.

Seven pieces of useless information about me

1)    I know how to train cats to use a cat flap. All you need is two clothes pegs and some tuna. And some cats. And a cat flap, obviously.

2)    The most expensive item in my home is a set of saucepans. I found out only after I’d scrimped and saved to buy a really decent set that the Beckhams have the same brand in their kitchen. I tried to take the pans back when I realised this, but the shop said that sharing a liking for high-end cookware with a not-too-bright footballer was not grounds for a refund.

3)    I get really annoyed when people walk slowly. They dawdle and idle along, blocking the pavement and walking three abreast and getting in my way when I’m trying to get somewhere. Or they trail behind me, puffing like wart-hogs, when we’re out on country walks. Pick your feet up and MOVE, for goodness’ sake.

4)    I picked up a recorder recently for the first time since I was a child, and found I could remember most of the notes. It was very exciting. For me, at least. Not sure the neighbours had such a good time.

5)    I have a qualification in map-reading and navigation and have co-navigated a two-day trek on Dartmoor (one of the UK’s remaining “wild” areas, for those outside the UK). Yet I still manage to get lost with annoying regularity when taking out friends who were temporarily impressed by me boasting about my navigation skills. Now, I mostly go on my own. Most of my friends are doing doggy paddle in the Grimpen Mire, so they can’t come with me.

6)    Inspired by a friend of a friend who wrote a comic song about lady gardens, to the tune of Sonny & Cher’s I Got You, Babe (it was called I Won’t Shave, Babe), I wrote a song about breasts, to the tune of Mary Hopkin’s Those Were the Days. It’s called Your Chest is Best, and includes the line “Oh my friend, we’re older and we’re wiser, but down our tops the bazoomas are the same”. I hope to record a video of this at some stage so you’ll be able to listen to it.

7)    I get unreasonably annoyed by catering establishments that don’t understand the definition of cappuccino. It’s one third espresso, one third steamed milk, one third froth, you arses, not a cup of milky mud with some scum on the top.

Another musical collaboration produces a song about regrets, relationships and cocaine addiction

Pic credit: Daniel St. Pierre, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=691

I shouldn’t be so astonished that a pub full of people can write and perform 10 songs in under two hours – because I know, having been part of the process before, that it can be done.

But even so, I was impressed by the speed with which a creative product can be assembled, given a bunch of willing musicians and would-be musicians, and an hour-and-a-half deadline.

This was the latest monthly session on Sunday of the London Songwriters www.meetup.com/LondonSongwriters/, whose mission is to throw groups of random people together, give them a theme and a deadline, access to some musical instruments, and see what transpires.

My “band” consisted of me, Tony the Modern Folk Poet (my pal from the local music club, the one who keeps writing songs about me being fat), a science lecturer called Keiran and a professional singer called Shola.

To begin with, as the organiser, Murray, gave us the theme (“beginnings”) it was just me and the Modern Folk Poet and I sensed trouble ahead. Collaborations aren’t for everyone; you have to enjoy and value others’ input, and if you’re not used to working in a team that input can become a distraction, or even a nuisance. All of the Poet’s vast catalogue of clever songs and ditties have been produced on his own and he has firm ideas about the writing process. His idea of collaboration is for him to write the lyrics, in a quiet room in his own time, perfect them, devise a basic melody then have a proper composer do the musical arrangement.

Explaining this, he self-deprecatingly likens his thoughts to shards of crystal, which would lose their sharpness and brilliance through exposure to less bright pieces of glass.

So I’d suspected the “chucking ideas around with strangers in a noisy pub with a time constraint” style of song-writing wouldn’t suit the Poet, and he certainly didn’t take to it like a duck to water. We’d got no further in 10 minutes than establishing that we wanted pathos rather than comedy in our song, and the clock was ticking. Then Keiran joined us and things started to move. Keiran told us about how he’d been talking to a homeless man in the street, and we thought that the theme of “beginnings” could relate to someone who’s become homeless and who ponders how his problems all began. It could be a broken relationship, a lost job, a drug habit…

The Poet wasn’t enjoying all this bandying of ideas – he muttered something about the sharpest knife in the drawer being blunted by rubbing about with the others – and disappeared to have a pee and a fag. Meanwhile, Keiran and I managed to scribble down a storyline that might work. (Bloke gets involved in cocaine, loses home, wife etc, looks back, regrets.) The rhyme scheme started out as a rather unusual ABC, ABC but it was a struggle to make the lyrics fit around this.

Our band’s fourth and final member arrived then. Shola is a professional singer and obviously used to this kind of thing. She suggested rewriting the over-complex rhyme scheme as a simple ABCB scheme. Most importantly, she suggested the catchy “hook” that would become the song’s main defining feature. We all agreed that the song would appear to be the narrator talking about a romantic partner, but that the last verse would be a denouement, showing that he or she was really talking about a drug habit.

Murray and the Poet both reappeared at this stage, the former to remind us that we had only 15 minutes left so should think about devising a melody; and the latter to suggest improvements to the metre and rhythm (the Poet’s always telling me I have no sense of rhythm). We scribbled down a final version and gathered round the keyboard (the Poet with his mandolin) to try and get a tune going on.

Somehow it happened and you can hear the result here

Despite the subject matter, it turned out to be quite a jolly, catchy number. Things fell apart somewhat towards the end when I was unable to read my own handwriting and sang the wrong words. But on the whole it went off reasonably well, given the fact that it had been such a rush-job, that Keiran admitted he could only play keyboard in one key – C – that you can’t hear the mandolin and that I sound like a pub karaoke singer.

Later on, during the open mic part of the afternoon, the Poet performed one of his comic songs, The Maid’s Day Off. It got a huge laugh and loads of good feedback in the anonymous critique session.  You can hear it here.

Castration, tax dodgers, flowers & Assange – strange search terms that have brought people to my website

If they're looking for info on these, they've come to the wrong website! Pic by me.

It’s fascinating to look behind the scenes at a website to view the search terms that have brought people to visit.

Of those visitors to my site that were the result of a search engine search, the single biggest number came via searches for the name of the person who produced the vulgar T shirts I blogged about on a couple of occasions. That topic also provoked the largest single number of comments on any blog posts I’ve done, not all of them pleasant.

The second single biggest number of hits has come, not surprisingly, from searches for F Words – though I suspect some of these visitors may have been looking for something rather different!

The third biggest number of visits resulted from searches on my name. Again, some may have been hoping for something else – other Sue Fentons are available, so many, in fact, that I did a blog on the subject. http://fwords.co.uk/2011/06/23/me-myself-and-i-%E2%80%93-and-the-other-ones-%E2%80%93-how-i-found-i-wasn%E2%80%99t-unique/

A huge variety of search terms have brought other visitors. Some of the terms are really rather bizarre. I blame myself for this – it’s all because of my tendency to chunter on about random topics instead of sticking to the initial purpose of my blog, which was to promote my skills and knowledge as a freelance journalist. It’s funny – you start off with a policy of earnestly discussing missing apostrophes and bad spelling and before you know it, you’re rambling on with tongue in cheek about bacon sandwiches, corporate tax dodging and fantasy dog breeding. That’s the beauty of blogging, I suppose – it brings out the true inner writer – but of course Google and the other search engines are always lurking about taking notes and suggesting you as a source of fascinating information on subjects that (in my case) include: 

Bagology

American death penalty

Greek flowers

Assange

Coastal pathway

Ode to a Nightingale translated into Arabic

Some are really rather bizarre, since I don’t remember having actually written anything on these specific topics – still, Google appears to think I’m an authority:

Lapland immigration strategy

Hairy arms

William Hague fascist

Chihuahua fights

Indecent behaviour within the British Army

Naked lady jumping into water

Ugly gorillas

Topman tax dodge is quite a favourite term – I show up well on this one due to a couple of posts I did on the subject a while back.

Another favourite one is piglet castration and I wasn’t even responsible for this one – it was a guest blog written by a college friend who breeds pigs. Another guest blog, by an journalists’ union official, got me hits from people searching on sacked for Twitter comments and similar phrases.

Other phrases that have brought visitors here include:

Crap press releases

Dogging

Obnoxious responses to Facebook misspellings

Larry the prime minister’s cat

Jane Asher

Commas

Daddy long legs porn

Space Hijackers

Italian tableware

Swearing

Arms trade hoax

Circumcision

Troy David

London protest

Bad English.

Of course, it’s even nicer to be found through searches that are actually relevant to my work as a journalist. One visitor today found me after searching “I want to find a freelance journalist in Surrey”. They (or someone) even looked at my online CV, details of qualifications and clients and fees. My curiosity is now piqued – who are they, and did they find what they were looking for, or did my chunterings on about bacon and Lapland send them scurrying off to get the Yellow Pages?

“Bagology” – the career I’d have chosen over journalism had I known it existed

Pic credit: duron123, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ images/view_photog.php?photogid=3506

I’ve been in some kind of journalism ever since I sat at a manual typewriter in a college classroom in Cardiff reading about libel law, learning shorthand and writing news stories about made-up events in a made-up place called Newtown that suffered from far more of its fair share of fires, murders and motorway pile-ups.

Doing anything else was never really an option although I had previously considered other ideas – then written them off as I wasn’t qualified and wasn’t likely to become so.

Working with animals – no, not clever enough to be a vet, not tough enough to deal with ill-treated animals.

Advertising – no, didn’t want to encourage consumerism and corporate greed.

Being a film director – no, cos I don’t know how to use a video camera.

Law – no, cos I can’t retain facts for more than five minutes.

A while back I did discover a bit of a knack for analysing people’s personalities and lifestyles from the contents of their wallets or handbags. It’s great fun in pubs and an ice-breaker at parties – get someone to empty their handbag on the table and tell them all about themselves. It’s a skill akin in some ways to palm-reading or phrenology except that you don’t need any esoteric knowledge. It’s interesting to see how comprehensive a knowledge of someone you can gain from analyzing their bags – for women especially, the bag is an extension of their personality.

As I say, it was a bit of a laugh for an idle hour in the pub – no-one told me the art of handbag-gazing had a name, or that you could make a career out of it!

So I was captivated by a press release issued today about a life coach called Debbie Percy, who is billed as “the UK’s leading Bagologist”. Leading? So there’s more than one? No-one told me it was possible to make a living out of three-pint party tricks – I’d have thought twice about journalism had I known!

Debbie has apparently “developed an extremely accurate means of understanding someone’s personality and lifestyle just by analysing the contents of their bag. This then enables Debbie to identify and address particular issues in someone’s lifestyle.”

The Bentall shopping centre in London is offering free “bagology” readings from Debbie to winners of a draw being run on Facebook. www.facebook.com/TheBentallCentre.

It got me wondering how I’d fare in such a reading, so for a laugh, I thought I’d analyse myself from the current contents of my bag and purse.

Notebook Forgetful, needs to write everything down.

Five pens Obsessive, hoarder.

Camera Anti-social – always taking pictures instead of talking to whoever she’s with.

Calculator Can’t add up.

£5 off book voucher Thinks she’s intellectual.

0.02p off Sainsbury’s voucher Obsessed with saving money, however minuscule the amount – can’t see the bigger picture.

Instructions for colleague in an local group I belong to, explaining how to update the website Lazy, tries to palm work off on others.

Handwritten list of long words uttered by friend who’s gone to uni, collated for amusement of mutual friends Bully, intellectually inadequate.

Hand mirror Vain.

Tweezers Has a mono-brow.

Comb (broken) Unkempt.

Two lipsticks – one red, one brown Split personality – slut and frump.

Emery board (worn out) Needs a manicure.

Two eyeshadow brushes, no eyeshadow Disorganised.

Press card Perpetually hoping to blag her way into something exciting.

WeightWatchers membership card Eats too much.

Collection of coupons to get 70% off wine glasses at Tesco Cheapskate. Drinks like a fish.

Collection of own business cards Egotistical.

Collection of other people’s business cards Aspires to popularity.

National Trust membership card Aspires to be middle class. Likes drinking tea.

Filofax Out of touch. Probably wears shoulder pads.

Mobile phone (bottom of the range) Technophobe. Cheapskate.

London tube map and street map No sense of direction.

Southern Railway penalty charge notice Fare dodger.

Leaflet about Shut Guantanamo protest Trouble-maker.

Appointment card for blood donation session Do-gooder. Probably hasn’t got HIV or syphilis.

Well, that was fun. If anyone enters the Bentalls competition and doesn’t win a handbag analysis from a proper bagologist, send me a list of your handbag contents and I’ll see what I can do!

“You hit the nail upon the top”: more ludicrous compliments & idiocy from half-wit spammers

Hitting the nail upon the top. Pic credit: Carlos Porto, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ images/view_photog.php? photogid=345

For some reason, I really enjoy writing about spam (perhaps because it is so entertaining I don’t need to think of anything funny to write myself), so I am pleased to bring readers the latest batch of illiterate rubbish that fills my inbox in response to various blog posts.

Let’s start with a compliment. “Rodney” tells me: “The website pattern is perfect, the subject material is really wonderful”. Thanks Rodney, be honest with me though, you haven’t actually read it, have you?

“Luke” was also enthusiastic. “Hey There,” he writes, “I found your blog the use of msn. That is a very neatly written article. I will be sure to bookmark it and come back to learn more of your helpful info. Thank you for the post. I will definitely comeback.” [sic]

“Eleonor” was even more effusive, though rather less literate. “Definitely believe that which you said. Your favourite reason seemed to be on the web the easiest factor to have in mind of. I say to you, I certainly get annoyed while folks consider concerns that they plainly don’t know about.” (Eleonor, we are soul-mates!)

“You managed to hit the nail upon the top as well as defined out the entire thing without having side effect, “ she continued. “Other folks could take a signal. Will likely be again to get more. Thanks!”

Rodney, Luke and Eleonor had filled me so with pride and self-love that I was positively insulted by a subsequent remark from “Elvia”. “After reading your blog post,” she said, “I browsed your website a bit and noticed you aren’t ranking nearly as well in Google as you could be. I possess a handful of blogs myself and I think you should take a look here [link supplied]. You’ll find it’s a very nice tool that can bring you a lot more visitors.”

Fuck off, Elvia. If my site gets found only by perverts Googling “rancid, bitter, middle-aged, hairy-legged failed woman journalist UK” that’s my bloody business, OK? No need to rub it in.

“Ethan” thought I was lacking in efficiency. “Next, take all the activities you want to accomplish in the first year, and break them down by quarter,” he suggested, apropos of nothing. Would sitting on a spammer until he bursts count as an activity I should accomplish, I wonder?

On a completely different subject, “Stephanie” informed me that “one major benefit of this oil it does is to reduce triglyceride a form of fat made in the body levels.” She neglected to inform me which oil, otherwise I’d obviously have rushed out and bought some. Actually, even if I knew what triglyceride was I probably wouldn’t want to pay a total stranger to help me reduce it – does that make me a bad person?

I simply don’t understand what purpose most of these ridiculous posts serve. The spammers clearly want people to look at their comments and then visit their sites, but why would anyone do so, given such irrelevant and ill-written comments?

What the hell is anyone supposed to make of comments like this one? “I mapped out my route and the first stop was Reagan National Airport where I was picking up a friend”. I’m not a bloody travel writer, “Seth” – you’re in the wrong website.

Seth’s not alone in having not the slightest comprehension of who he is or where he is. “Ryan” commented: “The boy, blissfully unaware of what he has just escaped, wanders up the hill to the graveyard at the end of the street, where he is taken in and raised by the ghosts and spirits who live there.” I’m so at a loss as to what Ryan’s purpose is in visiting my site that I can’t think of a single witty or sarcastic thing to write.

So, moving swiftly on in the hope that I recover quickly, here’s one from “Jesse”, who says: “If any of you know of a forum devoted to follow spot techniques, please reply here, or email me.”

I don’t have the first inkling what a follow spot technique is, and even less interest. Another spam post advertising “cheap London hotels” recommended a hotel that is (I discovered after looking it up on independent sites) very far from “cheap”. What on earth is the point – what are they hoping to achieve?

Perhaps the best offer I’ve had all week was for a brand of e-cigarettes. Apparently, this product looks “similar to a fabulous Marlboro” and the experience is akin to “having an breathed in measure associated with tobacco smoking flavor cigarettes”. Even better, “the cigarettes is supplied in the shape a fabulous vaporized the liquid brought to all the bronchi.” Not only but also, these “fabulous cigarettes repair you wish for not having the tar, untidy lung burning ash, smelly cigarette smoke, grey your smile unsightly stains, or perhaps second hand smoke. What this means is they are really possibly reliable roughly toddlers and children.”

Hm, that sounds lovely but I’m a bit bored now, so I think I’ll just nip outside for a cigarette.

I attempt to annoy a scammer by engaging in time-wasting correspondence with him – Part 1

Most of the scam and spam emails I receive go straight into the electronic circular file, but one captured my imagination today and I thought it would be rather fun to reply to it – all innocent, like.

“The Better Business Bureau has been filed the above-referenced complaint from one of your clients concerning their dealings with you,” was the shocking news that popped into my inbox.

“The details of the consumer’s concern are presented in attached document. 
Please give attention to this matter and notify us of your standpoint. 
We kindly ask you to open the attached report to respond this complaint. 
We look forward to your prompt reply.”

The email was signed by a “Paula Tap”, who holds the position of “Dispute Counselor” at the “Better Business Bureau”. It was actually sent by a “Susanne Cook”, whose email address appears to be in Japan, though I rather doubt this.

Presumably the idea is that one opens the attachment, for what purpose I’m not sure, but not having been born yesterday I didn’t. Instead I thought I’d write back to my new penfriends and see if I could waste a portion of their time.

I replied:

“Dear Susanne and Paula

I was very upset to learn that a complaint had been filed against me. I have always done my best to give a good service to my clients and it is obviously a cause of great concern if a client is unhappy enough to contact a leading authority in business matters, such as yourselves.

I am asking myself, why did the client not contact me direct in the first instance? Maybe I could have explained matters to their satisfaction. Had things got so bad that we couldn’t at least TALK, and try to reach an amicable settlement?

Could you please outline the basic details of the complaint? If it was that matter of the member of parliament and the lady snake charmer, I can say in my defence that I did my best under difficult circumstances and that I always strived to maintain a sense of dignity, diplomacy and good humour. I really feel I can vindicate myself if you could tell me the exact nature of the complaint against me.

If privacy considerations prevent you from revealing the precise details, I will understand, and please could I ask to you tell my client that any shortcomings on my part would have been the result of a concatenation of events, namely an unforeseen shortage of office stationery, the pressures of maintaining a long-distance relationship with a married man in Nether Wallop, Hampshire, England, and my boss’s unfortunate dependence on prescription drugs.

It’s far too long a story to go into now and in any event, I fear you would think I was making excuses for my incompetence, but if you could let me have sight of the official complaint I will do my best to remedy it, even if that means not getting to Nether Wallop in time for the New Year’s Eve celebrations.

We at the Scottish & Caledonian Allied Manufacturers of Buns and Sweet Tortillas are at your service.  

S Fenton (Mr)

Customer Service Representative”

The words are all mine, and I’m rather pleased with the unspelled-out acronym at the end (SCAMBUST), but I owe the initial idea of getting into correspondence with scammers, with a view to irritate, to www.scamorama.com, which has indulged in some hilarious exchanges of emails with various internet penpals whose sole aim in life is to extract money from half-wits.

If “Paula” or “Susanne” reply I will report back.

Forum members resort to festive facetiousness as the thread that just won’t die nears 300 comments

One space or two? Pic credit: Stuart Miles, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ images/view_photog.php?photogid=2664

Back in the year 1985 – at least it seems that long ago – someone posted a question on a LinkedIn writing forum asking whether there should be one space or two after a period (full stop for British readers).

At time of writing there had been 283 comments in reply. EVERYONE has an opinion they want to express on this issue. It’s astonishing really – the question surely isn’t fascinating enough to justify such an outpouring of international opinion. The answer is perfectly straightforward. It’s basically this…

For technical/typographical reasons, back in the days of typewriters and traditional printing, two spaces were necessary and desirable. Now we have computers and digital printing, we need only one space.

That’s it. Virtually all the participants in the discussion would agree with that summary. There’s no need for this incessant stream of comments, many of which repeat what has already been said before many times since the original question was posed. Yet still they come, as more people see the question and leap in to answer it.

As the thread got into three figures, one member of the group referred to it as “cruel and unbearable torture”. Another started a side discussion about the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin – another topic that people have debated endlessly over the course of centuries. Then about two weeks ago some of the residents started getting restless, asking whether the subject had not been exhausted yet and calling for the thread to be put to death.

Cynthia said “Isn’t it time to shoot this topic?” Larry agreed with her, adding: “The horse is dead. Let’s stop beating it.”

Timothy suggested that the carcass should be buried while Maynard wittily remarked that the thread had given him the idea for a new novel. “A man dies,” he wrote, “his corpse is reanimated as a zombie, and he goes on forever – a stumbling hulk with outstretched hands.”

I suggested that Maynard should put some vampires in his story too, then he could sell the screenplay as the latest in the Twilight franchise, The Curse of the Endless Double Space Debate.

Terry then nominated Tim’s comment as the last word on the subject. I betted him it wouldn’t be, and Gary pointed out that it couldn’t be, because not only had I commented subsequently but that he had, also.

“Somebody make it stop!” pleaded Stephen, and I wondered whether anyone who carried on the conversation could be made to carry out a forfeit of some kind?

Cynthia, who’d gone away for a while, presumably thinking the thread had been humanely exterminated in her absence, returned to beg: “PLEASE, SOMEBODY SHOOT THIS TOPIC! There’s nothing new to say that hasn’t been said in the preceding 223 comments.”

This is the interesting thing about it. People whose job involves the written word all seem to have a natural urge to express their opinions and show how knowledgeable they are – and if someone is actively seeking opinions, asking a question that we are able to answer, as in a discussion of this sort, that gives us free rein. The fact that the question has already been answered is almost irrelevant: we will shove our two penn’orth in regardless. I can be as guilty of this as anyone: if I see a thread on which I feel I can contribute some crumb of knowledge, I’m in there.

Maybe it’s because so many of us nowadays work from home, where there’s no-one to talk to – our internet chums become our instant audience, our sounding board, our sparring partners. If we want validation, admiration, even a bit of an argument, we can get it in seconds on internet forums.

In my defence, I wouldn’t usually choose to comment on a topic that could have been adequately resolved and put to bed weeks previously. In the present case, I suggested that surely it was time to talk about something else, to which Cynthia responded that it had been time to talk about something else at least 100 comments ago!

“Is mercy killing permitted in this thread?” enquired Maynard, while Barbara confessed: “At first I thought also enough, enough. But no longer. Now I am with the program.” She compared the thread to a tribal gift that keeps returning, and Terry remarked, philosophically: “It is the eternal wheel. If you miss a comment, don’t worry, for it shall come around again, just in a different guise. Should you depart this earth, take comfort knowing your grandchildren shall be on this thread.”

Maynard confided that as a result of the interminable discussion he had gone into therapy and said I was welcome to join him at the rest home. “The psychiatric staff are working out a treatment plan for what they have classified as “the one space vs. two space syndrome,” he said. I hope he’s having a nice time there: for now, I’m still here, lurking about waiting with baited breath for the next comment on the subject to pop up.

As I write, we’re at 283 comments – if you’re bored as the clock ticks round till the holidays start, and want to watch as the thread winds its inevitable way to the 300 mark and beyond, here’s the link

http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=80669496&gid=37917&commentID=62190321&trk=view_disc&ut=3v1Lt-hkrNSl01

Fantasy dog-breeding: a new variety that fits in your handbag but that will bite your hand off

Careful, he'll have your hand off. Pic credit: SnappyJack, http://www.morguefile.com

I was reading the local free ad newspaper on the train to London the other day and was intrigued by the Pets section.

I’d never realised the extent to which dog owners are now interbreeding their pets to create monstrous new varieties. I’d heard of the Jug (cross between a Jack Russell and a Pug) because I’d met one in a pub. I’ve also met the love child of a French Bulldog and a Pug – not sure what it was called though – a Frug maybe?

It all seems a bit strange, this desire to create new species just because you can. I mean, aren’t Jack Russells or Weimaraners or Dalmations or whatever nice enough as they are, without having to cross them with something else? After decades of creating a pure, distinct variety, owners are now deliberately watering down the individuality of their pets by crossing them with something else. I can’t work out if the owners of these peculiar half-breeds do it because they want to create a silly new dog or just a silly new word.

Here are some of the daft breeds you can get nowadays – the parentage is fairly obvious from the words.

Cockapoo

Goldendoodle

Labradoodle

Springador

Yorkipoo

Jackuahua

Westipoo

Pugalier

I’m not making any of those up – they are all readily available through the pages of the Reigate Friday Ad – and elsewhere, I’m sure.

It got me thinking, if breeders are going to muck about with nature by creating new breeds just for a laugh, why can’t they make ones that are really worth looking at? What if I had too much time on my hands and easy access to horny canines of various breeds, what would I create?

I’d love to try an Akitahuahua. The combination between a Chihuahua and an Akita fighting dog – fits in your handbag but takes your hand off when you try to get your keys out.

Or how about a Graschund (Great Dane and Dachshund)? Ten stone of muscle barely supported on four-inch legs.

Or a Newdle (a Newfoundland crossed with a miniature poodle). A muscular ball of black curls on dainty feet with a propensity to leap into puddles looking for people to rescue.

Maybe a mixture of a special needs Doberman and a Staffordshire Bull Terrier – a Daffy.

Or cross a Dogue de Bordeaux with a poodle and you’d have a Dogpoo!

Mating a Shih Tzu with a Jack Russell would be fun too, because a few months later (or is it weeks – my knowledge of canine biology is rusty), you’d have a Jackshiht – geddit?!!

Even better, bring a bulldog into the Shih Tzu equation and you’d have Bullshiht.

But my favourite fantasy cross-breeding exercise would be a dog crossed with a cat – something you could take for a muddy country walk that would have the intelligence to find its own way home if you lost it, could let itself in through the catflap, would daintily clean itself, scare off intruders but wouldn’t howl the house down if it was left alone while you went to the pub.

In which I co-write a song, rather to my surprise, and perform it in public

Pic credit: Nuchylee, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1824

With work being on the slow side, my endeavours lately have been focused almost entirely around creative pursuits, namely music. Having been songwriting for about a year now, alone and with no real idea what I’m doing or whether I’m doing it right, I decided it was time to get some knowledgeable input so I joined the London Songwriters Club http://www.meetup.com/LondonSongwriters/ and went along to their December meeting at the weekend.

The format was great – for starters it’s in a pub, which is always a bonus. Anyway, you get put into a group with two or three other people, quite likely all strangers to each other, and are given a theme and told you have an hour and half to write a song on the subject. Each team then had to perform their song, then there was a guest speaker then an open mic session where people can perform songs they’ve previously written, and get anonymous feedback from the audience.

My team began as me and a prolific songwriter and former music teacher called John Clarke http://www.youtube.com/user/TheDaddio1, who’s been playing the guitar since he was five. Our subject was “Winter” and John said it made him think of a madrigal featuring the line “April in my mistress’s face”. I suggested that we amended that, since the theme was winter, to “December in your face”, and we were off, with a song about a woman who fancies her bloke much more than he fancies her. His expression is always frosty, his eyes cold, his heart frozen, that kind of thing.

Then we were joined by a late arriver, Jennifer Lee Ridley http://www.myspace.com/jennyridley, a music graduate who plays flute and sings and who has the added attribute of being able to arrange and compose. That’s a skill I’ve noticed not many performers have got – some can’t even read music, let alone write it. Jennifer’s specialities include setting poems inspired by the great Romantic poets to music. She came up with a great line about December mist coming down like a shroud, which neatly took us into the second verse, then our final member arrived, one Melissa Dawson-Bowling www.myspace.com/melstarsmusicbox, who plays keyboards and sings, her genre being (my words not hers) power ballads. Melissa spotted straight away that we had no chorus yet, and suggested “With you it’s always winter, but never the festive season”. It’s hard to remember who contributed specific bits – I suppose that’s the way with collaborations – if everyone remembered every last syllable you’d never stop arguing over whose song it really was – but I think I did the bit about the narrator wanting her relationship to be warm like July, but it never is, much to her distress.

We also got a nice bit of assonance, with a line about “icicles in your eyes”.

John was already creating a very workable melody on the guitar, Jenny devised a nice intro on her flute and at the end of the session we were ready to perform – or at least they were. I left that bit to them, not being the strongest of singers myself. Jenny and Melissa did some lovely harmonies that were all the more impressive knowing they’d not performed together before. Click here to hear never the festive season

The guest speaker said our song was “delightful” and had a pleasing melody. Some readers might remember him if they are as old as I. Back in the 1970s there was a group called Marshall Hain, who had a hit with Dancing in the City. Well, the speaker was Julian Marshall, who was the Marshall out of Marshall Hain. He came from a musical family and got into songwriting while still at school, where he met Kit Hain. They went on to have one more hit before the group broke up, though Julian said they are still friends. They are still earning a nice sum every year from that one hit, which gives hope to everyone who’s striving to write a song, though it seems most of the money earned by performers these days is from live performances rather than from royalties on songs. Julian still writes and is now a music lecturer and runs courses in songwriting http://www.londonsongcompany.com/.

Anyway, on Monday I had to start a little job I’ve been asked to do – some web copy for a pro musician I met at a freelance training event the other week. She wanted 300 words about herself – to be trimmed down from masses of information about her musical experience and performances that could be found in various sources.

As I was working on this, an email popped up from John Clarke, who attached the audio of Never the Festive Season. The timing was perfect, since one of my chums from the pub folk club was due to pop round to drop off some sheet music I’d left at our mutual guitar teacher’s. When Bob arrived I dragged him in and made him get his guitar and accompany me as I devised my own simplified version of the song. Bob does a good line in Spanish style guitar, which lent a new aspect to the song, and we twiddled around for an hour or so.

Then in the evening it was off to the pub, where I was determined to perform Never the Festive Season. Tony the Modern Folk Poet, who has been giving me informal guitar lessons and telling me I have no sense of rhythm, in between showing me round his garden and asking me to explain the internet to him, offered to accompany on mandolin. This turned out OK after a reasonably tedious procedure of trying to get my guitar and his mando in tune with each other. The song went down very well – though I realised the tape recorder hadn’t been turned on, so I had to inflict it on the audience a second time. Luckily, they’re a tolerant crowd. My version was far simpler than the original, being dictated by my limited chord vocabulary (I mess about with minor chords and 7ths and stuff in the privacy of my own home but am pretty much a three-chord trick sort of girl under the pressure of public scrutiny) and rather slower (my singing pace being limited rather by the rate of knots at which I can change chords). Still, it came out quite nicely, I think, and the exercise has given me an appetite for more collaborative creativity.