Posted by Mark at 7:38 PM | Permalink

Comedy has always pushed the bounds and, once upon a time, journalism was investigative.

The saddest things about the Brand and Ross case, deplorable as it is, is how it was portrayed and investigated. We no longer have news, we have agendas. The papers who blew up this storm did so on the back of Brand’s attacks on them which same about of the “journalists” harassing his mother. The Sun, amusingly, has taken to defending Sach’s grand daughter as some kind of betrayed English rose rather than a dancer in a dodgy burlesque group who has a history of appearing in porn films. Ross has suffered from the age old English issue of Tall Poppy Syndrome. Brand was allowed to sack every BBC producer put in front of him so that the person who should have stopped this came from Brand’s own production company.

Radio is an intimate thing. We don’t sit around a bakelite box any more as a family, it’s a solitary thing. For that reason people feel they own the show and expect more than they do from television. Language, what we hear, transmitted directly to us has a stronger force and real radio presenters understand that.

Few people will win from this episode. Programming will go back to bland, safe output. The BBC will suffer when the discussions around licence fee and top slicing start again and radio, already in turmoil over the mess around DAB will suffer the most.

Posted by Mark at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It’s been a while since I did this but here’s an update on what I read this holiday.

Restless by William Boyd

England in 1976 and all of a sudden the wartime story of Ruth’s mother is revealed to her as Sally become Eva in a gripping tale of spying and betrayal.

The Ghost by Robert Harris

A ghost writer is hired to finish the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister (a thinly disguised Tony Blair).

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

A book restorer is charged with repairing an ancient Jewish text through which we learn it’s history and the stories of the people who have owned and looked after it.

Posted by Mark at 10:27 PM | Permalink

I put the ignition in the car and turn it, hear the beep and sigh.

This car has been troublesome to say the least. From it’s love of eating light bulbs, a dry joint and the fun of being towed off the motorway it has lived up to it’s fickle and fiery Italian heritage. I wonder just what has gone wrong now and look at the dashboard and there he is, for the first time this Winter.

It’s two degrees outside and, as I drive home, it gets colder and colder until the snow starts.

Was it really a week ago that I was wearing shorts, sitting in the sun, drinking wine.

Posted by Mark at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I sort by urgency, then date received, then by subject, then by author.

Every time I manage to understand what’s happened and remove a few more emails.

As the number drops down to five hundred I stretch, get up and go to make a cup of tea.

Posted by Mark at 10:11 PM | Permalink

“Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”
— Samuel Johnson

I’m sure I’m not tired of London but the sudden change in the pace of life, the change from hot to cold, the rain and the crowds just didn’t make today’s Apple Festival at Borough Market enjoyable at all.

Christmas shopping ? Perhaps it’s time to do it online…

Posted by Mark at 10:35 PM | Permalink

As I drive towards the motorway the clouds suddenly break.

There for a moment are two orange tears in the grey and that is all we will see of the final sunset of this summer.

From here on in, Winter calls.

Posted by Mark at 10:32 PM | Permalink

It seems everywhere I move there are piles of washing, post to sort through, emails to read and reply to.

I don’t even dare to open my RSS feed reader and see how much is waiting there.

Catching up is going to take quite a while.

Posted by Mark at 7:54 PM | Permalink

Typically, the best sunset happened as we sat on the bus waiting to leave the hotel.

Little did we know then that thanks to the over indulgence of a couple of people we’d get treated to a floor show on the plane involving the airport ground crew, the cabin staff and a large number of Cypriot police.

I like best the wine drunk at the cost of others.
Diogenes the Cynic, Greek Philosopher

Posted by Mark at 11:59 PM | Permalink

Every shop is closed. Every street is empty.

I can remember when my home town was like this. When you had to ensure you had something to eat that evening as the butchers was closed from lunchtime once a week. Even the local branch of Next is closed, much to K’s disappointment.

We wander around for a while then decide to find out what the strange tree with the rags hanging from it is. We’ve driven past it almost every day and there’s nothing about it in the guide books.

I’ve seen places like this before and it reminds me of Crossbones in London but that was a gate, not a withered old pistachio tree growing out of an underground stone arch.

The catacombs of Fabrica Hill were either natural caves or were carved from the hill in the 4th C BC. Used as a place of worship and as a refuge for the early Christians during the Roman reign & Christian persecutions they contain graffiti left by the Crusaders who were in Cyprus during the 13thc AD.

Today people come here to visit the catacombs, leave pictures and offerings of cloth tied to the tree and visit the underground pool of holy water, said to cure illnesses.

Perhaps that’s what Andreas needs today. “I was up late playing Poker”, he says by way of explaining his quiet mood. In between trying to encourage people in he talks politics then, embarrassed, he offers us a complementary bottle of wine before leaving on his scooter.

These are the last weeks of the holiday season here, the Christmas decorations have to be hung in the town before the weekend and soon the nativity will take place in the catacombs.

Posted by Mark at 11:42 PM | Permalink

“You always get a cockroach in a Cypriot house at this time of year”, said the man on reception rather proudly as if I should feel honoured to be a proper Cypriot.

Up in the hills over Paphos the soil is dry and dusty and the goats are wandering in search of something tasty to eat. It hardly seems possible that this is the same landscape which produces the wine we like so much.

At Theos by the harbour Andreas the waiter is on good form walking around with a gaggle of children. “Say goodbye to Mummy”, he says as they walk away from the parent, the child laughing happily. As another wedding party goes by he stops them, getting the attention of the whole restaurant encouraging us all to cheer and clap as he lets them walk past us.

Further along the harbour the other restaurant owners look on enviously.

Posted by Mark at 11:10 PM | Permalink

After a day spent exploring the Roman mosaics I was hungry.

In the town tonight we decided to try somewhere else to eat and the architecture and location of Ta Bania (plus the choice of Cypriot food) made us choose here.

“Cypriot meze is like sex”, said the waiter as he filled the table with bowls of tahini, tatziki, humous, olives and bread. “Take it slowly, very, very slowly”.

I think we could have sat there until the sun came up on the other side of the bay and never finished the plates of chicken, lamb, pork, kebabs, squid, sausages and salad.

As we staggered out onto the promenade (to be taken home tonight on the number 15 bus with it’s English driver and his choice of music - 70’s hits tonight, Vera Lynn last night) the waiter winked at me saying, “You know the best way to work of Cypriot meze ? And do it slowly, very slowly”

Posted by Mark at 11:00 PM | Permalink

“All the forms are done”, says the man at the hotel’s car hire concession. He picks up the key, goes to pass it to me then stops for a moment and hands it to K.

Our first trip out takes us the to the Tomb of the Kings, a large necropolis lying a little over a mile north-west from the harbour.

Carved out of the solid rock the tombs were used to bury the local aristocrats and high officials up to the Third Century and now sit in a hot, dry landscape next to the sea. The tour groups arrive and depart quickly, visiting only the main tombs with their Doric columns missing the smaller tombs with their frescoed walls. We wander around trying to imagine what it was like all those years ago and feeling like Indiana Jones.

Back at the harbour this evening, and with ancient dust still caught in my throat, I discover the national drink of Cyprus, the Brandy Sour.

Posted by Mark at 10:52 PM | Permalink

Entertainment in these places seems to be hit and miss.

Rather like Hi De Hi the entertainers are either trying to find a step up in the business or facing a step down. The magician this evening seemed to be taking a step down.

The show wasn’t that bad really. In fact one of the tricks was really impressive. Things took a turn for the worse when the magician and his assistant dressed up as clowns and got the kids on stage. Neither the magician nor his assistant managed to spin the plates on the sticks and the kids got quickly bored. The magician then disappears leaving his assistant to sell plastic flowers that squirted water.

Ted Bovis would never have allowed it…

Posted by Mark at 10:07 PM | Permalink

Just €1.30 and suddenly we are in the real Cyprus.

The number 11 bus from the hotel to the old town is full of chalet maids all dressed in white polo neck T shirts chattering away. I have no idea what they are saying but it’s good to hear a foreign language at long last. The bus drives through the tourist area with it’s collection of pubs selling British beer and restaurants offering meals that any child will love before dropping us off at the old harbour.

Paphos Harbour has been protected by a castle since the time of the Byzantine Empire. It was rebuilt by the Lusignans in the thirteenth century after being destroyed in the earthquake of 1222, dismantled by the Venetians, restored by the Ottomans and used as a salt store by the British. Today it seems to serve as a backdrop for the wedding pictures of the couples who get married in the town.

Old men with craggy, sea worn faces sell sponges along the promenade. At the bar we choose the waiter takes our order on an Ipaq and we sit with a bottle of Rose watching the late afternoon sun and finally enjoying being abroad.

“I have the best fish and real Cypriot food”, said the waiter at Theo’s sensing that I needed a good meal and he wasn’t wrong. There isn’t many places where you can sit next to the harbour wall and watch your fish delivered by boat and collected from it by your waiter.

Back at the hotel all the large family groups seemed to be out this evening. Were they one of the weddings we saw ?

Posted by Mark at 11:29 PM | Permalink

Posted by Mark at 11:05 PM | Permalink

It’s becoming apparent the issues in staying in a place with lots of old people.

At tonight’s meal the couple sitting at the table next to us get up to select their starters. After a few moments and old man walks by, looks at the table and considers sitting down at it. His face look troubled, he walks away a few paces then back to it again. The couple return and try to explain to him that this isn’t his table. Looking confused he walks away again then suddenly realises where he is and finds his table.

Outside it is raining again, K and I sit outside enjoying the cool air.

“As for old age, embrace and love it. It abounds with pleasure if you know how to use it. The gradually declining years are among the sweetest in a man’s life, and I maintain that, even when they have reached the extreme limit, they have their pleasure still.”

Seneca the Younger

Posted by Mark at 11:51 PM | Permalink

Walking back to our room this evening I’m struck by just how different this place is from every other holiday destination I have visited.

Other places have the luxury of land and don’t need to excavate but here they seem to put a lot of the facilities either underground or beneath the building. The entertainment theatre, gym, indoor pool and the kid’s creche are all hidden away making the resort very compact and with only two places to wander between.

The other thing we have noticed is that this appears to be the place to come to get married. “Is it today ?”, I asked one very nervous groom as he walked down our corridor this morning. He looked a little happy posing with his new wife at the waterside as people in swimming costumes stood and watched them.

It seems hard to get away from home here. We walked to the local shop and were served by a girl from Manchester. Even the rain has followed us this evening as we sat out for a few drinks at the bar. We already know the songs they play. I’ve not heard so much Mungo Jerry since the 1970’s.

At least that’s better than the entertainment in the onsite theatre. Two of the dancers stand out as capable, the rest seem not to care. The continuity is awful between numbers with long pauses and darkness (another flashback to the electricity cuts of the 1970s).

I put down my glass and wonder if the rain will be here tomorrow.

Posted by Mark at 11:24 PM | Permalink

I look out of the window and wonder if the mountains below me really should have that little snow on them at this time of year and just which mountains these in fact are.

The scarce scattering of snow gives way to the square fields of Turkey and then we are over the sea and heading to Cyprus flying over a small island bathed in sun on a clear blue sea with a dollop of white cloud nestling in the centre of it’s circular mountain range.

Travel since 9/11 has, quite rightly, become more and more controlled and subject to rules and regulations. Gone are the days when I’d wander up to the check in for my flight, check in my luggage with a few moments to spare, walk through security and onto the plane. Now you need every minute of the two hours before the flight to queue, check in and make it through security. I thought we had everything sorted to allow us to get to the plane with no issues but I’d not allowed for my trousers (comfortable to travel it with nice big pockets but enough metal work in the poppers to set off the metal detector) or K’s new beach bag which was being tested for explosives when I finally caught up with her. But a flight like this makes all the delays and checks worthwhile. Thirty five thousand feet above the earth, heading to the sun, not much can unsettle your day.

Well, apart from the Captain announcing that someone has been smoking in the toilets and has set the alarms off. Perhaps the easiest thing is to ban lighters, or the people who think that setting fire to something this high up, traveling this fast, with no parachute is a good idea.

It is all the more amazing as it seems you can smoke almost anywhere in Cyprus, even in the terminal building of the small Paphos airport. Stepping out of the aircraft (after a slightly alarming landing where we appeared to start landing in scrub land before a fast deceleration, a U turn and a taxi back up half of the landing strip to the ground crew) the smell of hot, baked dust hits me and I feel the sun on my face again.

Posted by Mark at 10:35 PM | Permalink

It’s not everyday I find myself almost naked in the local shopping precinct being manipulated by a Chinese man wearing latex gloves but with a four hour flight ahead of me I was willing to try anything.

A few days ago “something” had gone in my back and despite me laying on the floor and trying the sort of instant heat pads only advertised during ad breaks on ITV3 during the afternoon showing of Poirot it was still hurting.

In the last minute rush to get things before our holiday we noticed the local Chinese herbal medicine shop offered massages and I was ready to try anything.

“He can give you an hours consultation”, said the girl in the front of the shop as behind her stood someone who looked remarkably like a Bond villain.

After a lot of pummeling and pressing the gloves were lifted off my back and he said his one word of English as he left the cubicle, “Fished”.

I left smelling of liniment and walking tall. James would have been proud.

Posted by Mark at 6:39 PM | Permalink

A warm, sunny, Autumn day, the smell of steam…

Posted by Mark at 10:39 PM | Permalink

With one click I archive the few things I’ve left in my inbox.

They are the electronic equivalent of things that used to loiter in the bottom of the intray in years gone by, the things you can’t decide how to deal with or want to read one day.

As time goes by you forget the reason for keeping them but there’s the nagging doubt that just perhaps they will be important.

For now they are safe in a folder, the inbox is clear and the phone’s turned off…

Posted by Mark at 10:35 PM | Permalink

Across this afternoon’s warm Autumn air the smell of smoke drifts and draws me out to the garden.

Down the hill someone has a bonfire and all of a sudden the rarity of that strikes me. I grew up with bonfires. Every Autumn they were part of the ritual of tidying the garden for Winter or just the fun of standing with my Great Aunt poking the fire with a stick and feeling grown up and happy.

That morning I’d watched the local council van arrive and a man collect the green garden waste bags from some of the houses in the road. The waste is taken away and composted by the council for resale but still uses petrol, adds to congestion on the roads and takes away ash which can be used to improve the soil.

Fires have been part of gardening and our culture for years. From bonfire night to the chain of beacons used to celebrate the Millennium but now more and more councils have a policy against the nuisance of fires.

It seems from here on in Autumn’s arrival will be celebrated with a yellow van…

Posted by Mark at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I have to say I’m really tempted to get one of these.

RSS feeds to watch the stock market slide, Internet radio, my Flickr pictures displayed, weather, widgets - all very tempting.

But, Chumby please support iTouch and 6th generation Ipods and how about last.fm for us non American folks ?

Available now from International Orders for delivery to the UK.

Posted by Mark at 6:49 PM | Permalink

I’ve been spending far too much time at the vets recently.

No, nothings wrong with me and I don’t need any errm “attention” but since sharing this house with a cat it’s been obvious that while my weight has been increasing hers has been heading in the other direction.

Today’s trip was for blood, taken from the leg they shaved a week or so ago (the cat’s not mine).

I’m not great around any medical equipment and in my book a bandage counts as that. Whilst my Mother would watch open heart surgery and recount her days as a theatre nurse I’d be close to fainting at the removal of a plaster.

Removing a sticky bandage from a cat’s leg was rather a challenge then, especially as despite her age I know that her reactions aren’t that slow and her teeth are still sharp.

All started well with her on the sofa. She even extended her leg. I found the end of the tape and started to pull it slowly. Even when we reached the bit that was stuck to her fur she didn’t move, in fact she was licking my hand !

I am Androcles, Doctor Dolittle and Daktari all rolled into one. This could be my new career!

“Did you eat some crisps today ?”, asked K as she leaned forward to check on my veterinarian work.

“Yes, some Quavers”, I replied as I felt another lick …

Posted by Mark at 6:24 PM | Permalink

I’ve been watching and counting all day long.

Counting the amount of work email and social email I have left to plough through; items left to read in all my feeds; the tasks in Outlook and the lines crossed out in my Moleskin.

The countdown has begun …

Posted by Mark at 6:08 PM | Permalink

It didn’t matter that we had heard the story before what mattered was the familiarity of the day.

The same pub, the same drinks, the Sunday lunch with all the trimmings and only a moment to think about what will happen next week.

Posted by Mark at 8:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

“Just look at the tops of those buildings, I can remember when the whole of this town looked like that”, I said to K as we walked back down the hill to the town.

Just then it struck me just what the problem was with this place. Most of the town had been knocked down in the 60s and 70s to make way for new shopping malls, a town centre. But that’s not something you can manufacture. It comes from years of development, a mixture of old and new buildings both large and small that allow large business and one man to sell to the townsfolk.

In creating a covered, concrete and steel landscape the council sold for ever the ability to hold events that reached out to the townsfolk. Even charities need to apply the town centre management and to conform to their demands and health and safety requirements.

The reason we were in the old part of the town was due to the fact that every restaurant and burger bar was busy in the town centre. A ten minute walk away and the local Zizzi’s was almost as empty as the old shops around it. Shopping doesn’t happen here. There is no investment or attempt to get a Starbucks or a large chain here.

Rather like the dinosaurs in Mr Benn shoppers traipse backwards and forwards under glass missing the old architecture of the rest of the town, the chance to shop in an individual shop, to appreciate a cold, crisp day and then have a coffee in a warm coffee shop.

We have what everyone else has. A sterile, uniform, bland shopping experience which is the same as any town nearby.

What we need is re-investment in the old part of this town, an appreciation of what it has to offer and of what it can do for the town and it’s image.

As Tom Campbell of Fusion Assets says :

Town centres are the lifeblood of communities. There has to be serious investment in them. - Business 7

He said: “I want to see real investment in town centres. I want to see a change and that a difference has been made.

“If this is about filling gap sites then it is not my vision. My vision is actually about changing where people live, how they interact and giving them opportunities.

“Unless we are going to do it on a scale which makes a real difference we have to question why we are doing it.”

Posted by Mark at 7:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sometimes with a problem you need to approach it a different way.

Today, with an increasingly long list of things to do I put the pen and paper to one side and had a look at online to do managers.

Ta-da is more a list manager than a to do manager but that’s not really what I’m after.

do.Oh looks great on an iPod but doesn’t do all that I’d want from a to list manager.

Remember The Milk fits nicely with Twitter and iGoogle but has a less than intuitive interface - I can’t select every task and the set the due date tomorrow ??

So, after all that I’m back to a piece of paper and a pen because sometimes the only way to approach a problem is the way you thought of first.

Posted by Mark at 6:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You think it’s all under control and life is ticking along well at work it all changes.

The part of the job that I’d been working on so hard to get right, that’s taken hours of trying to understand, write procedures for and get agreement on and that has been in abeyance recently is now back with a vengeance.

I guess I knew it would happen at some point. The problem is I was hoping it would hold off just that little bit longer so I could catch up with all the other aspects of the job.

Posted by Mark at 10:51 PM | Permalink

Exciting news today from Lomography with their announcement of the first preloaded, ready to shoot Redscale film.

Redscale was a technique was probably accidentally discovered when someone wound the film into canister the wrong way so the frames were exposed from the wrong side, i.e the emulsion is exposed through the base of the film.

There’s some examples of this in the Flickr group Redscale Film.

Posted by Mark at 10:08 PM | Permalink