Deadwood
I'm in humid Valencia for a few days - my fella is giving a couple of talks, so I'm along for the ride (I'd make a great Dr Who companion). Anyway, he's gone off to be feted for the day so I'm in the nice hotel room, thinking about trying the spa downstairs.
We're watching Deadwood at the moment. It's an HBO series set in the Wild West. It ran for three seasons and then they stopped making it, which is about long enough for me really. Because it's HBO it means that everyone swears a lot - and not just the odd "shit". C**ks*ck** seems to be a more frequently used word than "the" or "a".
My favourite character is Calamity Jane played by Robin Weigert.

She's normally drunk, completely bonkers and has a way of interacting with others which is both hilarious, bewildering and terrifying. The other characters rather unkindly, refer to her as "the half-woman". Her heart's in the right place though. This clip - where she gives some of her wordly advice to the Cat in the Hat, sums her personality up.


I just hope they don't give her makeover in the last episode.

As I suspected, I'm not very nice

I'm a O47-C89-E31-A10-N71 Big Five!!

According to the "Big 5" personality test, I score high on conscientiousness - I'm at the 89th percentile (that's the good news), but am also fairly neurotic (71st percentile), introverted (31%) and especially disagreeable (10%). The only average score I have is for open-mindedness, where I fall into the middle (47%). If I was a Sims character, I'd be sulking in my room, refusing invitations.

Today we visited Lancaster's slightly famous GB Antiques Centre - it got on the international news a few years ago when a bull from the abbatoir next door broke in and ran around a bit - literally a bull in a China shop.

We used to go there a lot before we moved to Bristol. In fact, my fella got most of his furniture from there in the early 1990s. However, I suspect that these days, a lot of the good stuff gets put straight to ebay. Here's a selection of some of what I saw:


This brings back memories. We had a bottle garden just like this in the 1970s. I suppose it was a good thing to have if there were small children around. You don't see them so much nowadays - I wonder why?


My grandmother had a doll like this on top of the toilet cistern. It was a fancy way of hiding your toilet rolls. I wonder if anyone ever told them though that it was probably more embarrassing to have a tacky doll on top of your toilet. Ah - the working-classes and their odd ways.


My fella was looking for Wedgewood (it's his latest thing), but bemoaned that there was just "repetitive tat" everywhere instead. I quite liked these though. I could imagine them belonging to a big happy Asian family in the 1970s - perhaps before some terrible tragedy befell them and all their furniture ended up in a job-lot.


Would you like to own a Sinclair C5? Then come to GB Antiques. This costs £700 and has been here for years. I always visit hoping that someone will have bought it - but like an old friend who nobody else likes much, it is always there to greet me.


File this under "things I would have in my house if my fella let me".


Same again. In my mind's eye I have a room which has lots of Tretchikoff pictures, lava lamps, orange chairs and possibly racist statues of "native" people. And this whicker minibar. I would serve blue cocktails from behind it and play "Mambo" on an old record player in the corner. Then everyone would dance. And talk about Foucault. Would you like to come to my party?


One word: fugly. Do they believe anyone would ever buy these? Even as a joke? I suppose if there was someone at work who you had despised for years and they were leaving, you could get them it as a present. But really! What were they thinking?

The whole visit was a rather maudlin experience. You pass stall after stall of tat - stuff from "house clearances" after some working-class nanna went into hospital and died shortly afterwards, and the relatives salvaged the nice barometer for themselves or grand-dad's war medals - anything that might fetch a "few bob". The sad thing is, that nanna would have had a lot of this stuff on display in a glass cabinet thing, or would have spent a good proportion of her life dusting it down every Sunday. And for what? To end up in a graveyard of 20th century working class rubbish... Your stuff does not complete you. It doesn't.

Dear God, hear my prayer

Look God, I know we've had our differences. In fact, I don't believe in you - but - this guy....



well really... I think the world would be a better place if you could make his head explode.

Thanks. Lubin. xx

"I've done a plait" - "It's right effective is that!"

I woke up this morning with the lyrics to Victoria Wood's "The Chippy" going around in my head. It must have been decades since I'd last heard it - odd how things never really go away.



I discovered Victoria Wood As Seen On TV in the early 1980s, by accident. I think it was broadcast on Friday nights on BBC2, without much fanfare. It was unlike anything else on tv at the time, and I was instantly hooked. I wonder if she knew the impact she was having on 1000s of sensitive gay teenage boys living in boring bits of the UK? The 1980s weren't very nice for us - and she was a whimisical, ironic oasis, with a gentle way of mocking the mundane concerns of ordinary British people.

Each show started with a rather breathless monologue, where she would be self-deprecatory about her weight or other things, and then there'd be a series of sketches, puncuated by a rather sour television announcer played by Susie Blake. When Susie said, po-faced as usual, "We'd like to apologise to viewers in the north. It must be awful for you." a lot of jigsaw pieces fell into place...



There was usually a song at some point, banged out on the piano, and then an episode of Acorn Antiques - the parody of Crossroads with the wobbly sets and bad dialogue.



Then "Kitty", played by Patricia Routledge would come on for her weekly monologue. She was a posh northern spinster woman who lived in Cheadle, full of deluded confidence and with opinions on everything. She reminded me of my aunt Ethel who was from the "posh" side of the family.



There were lots of women in Victoria Wood's sketches. When I used to go clubbing in Blackpool in the early 1990s, in one club, a screen would descend from the ceiling at various points in the night and clips of Victoria Wood would be played. It's odd even now, that if you get a group of gay men of a certain age together, they'll eventually start quoting from Victoria Wood as Seen on Tv.

There was also usually a mock documentary at the end with serious-voiced interviewer Corrin Huntley - my favourite was "Winnie's Big Day" - the one about the pensioners who won a competition by thinking up new names of shades for lingerie ("sprout", "ketchup", "bandage" and "liver") and became overnight millionaires.



For me, Victoria's humour went off the boil a bit after As Seen on TV. She did a series of individual comedy dramas, each one in a different setting, and then there was the comedy series Dinnerladies, which, rather than making fun of twee working-class mores, seemed to embrace them fully. The quirkiness of the original series was much muted. However, it's nice to see that these clips are still funny.

Guitar zero


The danger of playing Guitar Hero is that you eventually think you might actually be quite good at playing the real guitar.

So after I got onto "hard" level and was even able to come close to beating my fella's nephews (who introduced me to the game and are scarily good at it, due to having 20 year old fingers), I thought I might like to purchase a real guitar and see what happened. I have a bit of a headstart as I play piano and can read music etc.

So, on my last visit to Manchester I popped into that wonderfully old fashioned music shop on Deansgate, explained I was a newbie at it all and asked for something cheap. I also bought a couple of music books.

Anyway, I'm perservering. I kind of wish I'd bought an acoustic rather than an electric guitar as the amp is a bit of a bind and I'm too lazy to carry it around from place to place. That high E string though - it's like a piece of cheese wire. My poor index finger is all red and angry. People keep telling me that I will "grow a callous" there and it will be OK, but frankly, I don't want to. So I can pick out the songs in the "my first guitar" book I have, and I' getting used to chords - although with some of them you I suspect you need to be double jointed and have 8 fingers to do properly. My favorite chord is D7. I could play that all day long.



This one though - really - what sadistic bastard thought it up???



So far I'm a long way from the rock classics of Guitar Hero, but I can play Scarborough Fair. And it feels nice to be learning something new. At 36.

The Legend of Lylah Clare

I've been feeling a bit serious of late, so in order to get a bit of balance, I've ordered The Legend of Lylah Clare on DVD. It's not supposed to be very good, but it's directed by Robert Aldrich who also did Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte and The Killing of Sister George. As with Sister George it features Corale Browne, who plays evil critic Molly Luther with a walking stick as a great prop. Poor Kim Novak looks a long way from Vertigo here.



I suspect this might be the best scene in the whole film - a publicity junket goes horribly wrong - all thanks to the Corale Browne's spiteful tongue. If you can't abide the poor quality - fast forward to 2.00 where it starts to define high camp. I love all the gasps of shock from the scandalised audience.