Ciaran’s Random Writings

Today we’ve been painting. Mia wasn’t interested in the paper, and preferred to try and paint her own face, the furniture and all the books on the bookshelf. I didn’t let that spoil my fun though, and pictured right is my impressionist masterpiece entitled “Dodgem”. It is quite probably my finest work ever. I’ll be doing a limited run of 100 signed and numbered prints, so send your cash now if you don’t want to miss out. £100 should do, but by all means send more if you’re feeling generous. The highest payers get the lowest numbers.

Earlier in the day, we made a brief excursion to Knaresborough, but Mia wasn’t in the mood for being dragged around for the third day in a row, so we quacked at some ducks and came home for sweetcorn fritters, which Mia refused to touch. She also lobbed her banana across the room, so it was probably the fact that we stuffed her full of satsumas in the car that was the problem. The fritters were very nice though.

This evening, burgers and chips. My basic burger recipe consists of some mince, some oats, an onion, some mushrooms and a beaten egg all mushed up together. The mixture goes in the fridge for a bit, if you can be bothered, and after that you cook them (I like our George Foreman grill thingy for this) until they’re done. I’ve done the chip recipe already of course. Nibby made some stir fried veg to go with it, and Mia wolfed everything down except the green stuff, which she put in a pile under her legs.

Tomorrow I have to actually do some work. Ouch. The only thing that might save me is if the money for the prints all rolls in between now and morning. I doubt Monet had these kind of issues to deal with.

Another trip to Swinsty Reservoir today, for a longer walk. Mia put up with three quarters of a lap of the reservoir in the pushchair before insisting on getting out. We tried letting her walk, but that just ended up with her alternately stomping off into the undergrowth to tangle with brambles, and heading off in the opposite direction. We had her hooked up in some ‘reins’, but while they are quite good for stopping her bashing her face on the floor when she charges off on some giddy mission, they don’t provide any steering control. After 20 minutes of making no headway at all, the only alternative was for her to ride the rest of the way on my shoulders, which she seemed to be satisfied with.

In the afternoon, a trip to Harrogate for more shopping, and a visit to the library.

Tonight in true Withnail and I style, we ate hare (braised), gunned down on our behalf by our friendly gamekeeper, rather than Jake the poacher. The potatoes were sautéed.

Today’s trip out, via the horse supplies shop, was to Swinsty Reservoir, north of Otley. For a change, we took the pushchair, which meant I didn’t end up crippled from carrying Mia for miles, and we actually covered some ground rather than waiting for her to inspect every single fallen leaf, which is what happens if she walks. In the end though, she got fed up of the pushchair and had to ride on my shoulders the rest of the way back.

As we were in a naughty mood, we decided to stray from the designated route, which was lucky because otherwise I wouldn’t have spotted the handsome old disembodied chap carved out of the keystone on one of the spillways between the two reservoirs. He’s positioned gazing out across Swinsty, and I’m guessing he’s some kind of Greek/Roman god of water storage, but I haven’t managed to identify him yet. He seems to be trying to break free.

If and when I do identify him, I’ll add him to the Wikipedia page I created about the reservoir when we got home.

Tonight we had butternut squash risotto for tea - it doesn’t sound very nice, but it is.

They don’t mince their words around here. This sign appeared just round the bend from our house the other morning. Naturally I’ve been itching to get a picture of it since then, and the opportunity presented itself on the way to Morrissons this morning. I’m not sure why the sign is necessary, since there’s always copious amounts of shit on the roads around here, mostly due to the horses. Perhaps the sign isn’t a warning to drivers, but an instruction from the farmer to the riders to keep it off his field.

In Morrisons, we bumped into my uncle, which was great because we haven’t seen him for over a year despite the fact that he’s headmaster of a school two miles away, and lives almost as close. Could do better. See me. (He didn’t say that, but I’m sure he made a mental note in red pen).

On leaving we very nearly literally bumped into a very unpleasant someone we really didn’t want to have to speak to, and upon seeing that her car was parked very near to ours, had to hide behind a concrete pillar with the trolley, waiting for her to drive off. It was freezing cold, but if you knew her, and you were on her list of people she might talk to, you would have done the same thing.

One of my favourite songs of the moment is When You Were Young by The Killers. There are lots of good things about it, but one is that it’s what I call a repeater (same short chord progression throughout, verse and chorus) and yet you don’t tend to notice. By contrast, you don’t have to listen to Champagne Supernova by Oasis many times before that hits you, not that I’m knocking it particularly. Maybe it’s partly because CS uses a tired old progression anyway, whereas When We Were Young has a fine one. It’s this:

E F# Gm B E

The reason it works so well is because the song is in B Major, which means the above translates to:

IV V vi I IV

The progression rarely goes to the I chord and doesn’t hang about there long when it does, so on the one hand you’re hearing a sound that’s mostly based around the IV, but you know it’s really rooted in the I. Now whether you know what the hell I’m talking about or not (and you may argue I don’t either), your ears/brain do know it, and that’s why it sounds good.

You may be wondering what any of this has to do with good old Bryan Adams. Well, the only other place I can think of hearing this progression, off the top of my head, is the chorus of his ‘classic’ Heaven. Whether you like the song or not it’s hard to argue with the catchyness of it, which pretty much all comes from that progression in the chorus. If you’re insane enough to have both songs, listen and you’ll see what I mean.

What I’m saying then I suppose, is that The Killers’ song is a finely distilled and concentrated version of a Bryan Adams classic. Sorry guys. I didn’t set out to say that. Since that awful film/song/video, whenever I heard Bryan Adams I see his denim clad figure standing in Sherwood Forest with an arrow flying towards his head. From now I’ll know who fired it.

P.S. Neither of the songs I claimed were ‘repeaters’ actually are, since they both make a very brief excursion elsewhere (in the case of When You Were Young, it’s a “ii vi I V” bridge). However, since I made the term up, I can do what I like.

Digging around in some old archived data, I came across the source code for the PC (DOS) version of Star Wars, which consists of about 750K of ASM files -  quite a lot more than I’d have guessed at. A couple of the other files indicate that this is a copy of the source we brought back from California after working on the final testing over there, so it’s definitely the ‘latest’ version. There’s also a compiled EXE, but unsurprisingly it crashes when I try and run it under Windows XP.

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This week, Mia has been testing the swings in three different counties. After much deliberation, the results are in and they make for interesting reading:

• West Yorkshire - Funny
• Derbyshire - Funny but dark and dingy
• North Yorkshire - Funny

Yesterday was a vicious brute of a day, so it was nice to see sunshine and clear skies this morning - a chance to conduct the third test, pick up some of the stuff that had blown over around the garden, and clean out the chicken house. Being Sunday, some flesh is in the process of being roasted behind me. This week it’s part of a pig, though I have no idea which part, and it will come with roast potatoes.

Tonight I thought I’d document the strange musical tastes of Baby Mia over the 13 months to date, mainly because I think it might be something interesting to reflect on in years to come, when she’ll undoubtedly be assaulting my eardrums with something hideous. She’s only really been able to choose from what we listen to, given that she doesn’t watch TV and we rarely if ever have the radio on, but since we listen to a very varied range of stuff, from dawn until dusk, I think she’s had plenty of options. From the word go she’s always found ways of making her preferences very clear, culminating in her current habit of jumping up and down and shouting until the correct music is selected.

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So, just when I’m wondering whether I can sue the government for the pointless years of drudgery I was forced to endure in school (surely a clear-cut case of false imprisonment), I read that the new plan is to raise the compulsory leaving age to 18. The leading proponent of this nonsense appears to be Education Secretary, Alan Johnson - the same Alan Johnson who left school at 16, incidentally.

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According to BBC News, at least four million people (and possibly many more) suffer from the debilitating disease of Toilet Phobia. Needless to say, this is currently the ‘most read’ story on their site. Now, several times a day, at least, I find myself infuriated by the moronic mangling and regurgitating of press releases that seems to pass for journalism these days. This is no doubt evidence of some kind of disorder of my own, and this particular story isn’t an extreme example, but nonetheless I am moved to write about it because, if nothing else, it’s more interesting than doing the washing up.

I’m not suggesting that there aren’t people for whom this is a serious problem, but “Millions ‘hit by toilet phobia’” is just ridiculous.

What defines Toilet Phobia exactly? Well, from the article, it can “simply be manifest as a mild distaste for public loos.” Erm, hello? Is there anybody, other than George Michael and friends, who doesn’t have at least a mild distaste for them? I don’t like public toilets one little bit. If there’s something wrong with this, then somebody please let me know and I’ll go and receive the necessary therapy and counselling. Otherwise, I’ll happily persist in my belief that public toilets are unpleasant places, for a number of reasons.

The sensational story has a more down-to-earth sister story, which tells of the plight of a chap who struggles with “obsessive compulsive disorder and constantly worries about dirt, germs and contamination issues.” Despite the title of the story, “Toilet phobia makes life hard”, he evidently doesn’t have Toilet Phobia. He has far higher standards of hygiene than the rest of us, to the point where it impacts his life in a mostly negative way. I say mostly because I bet he doesn’t suffer from colds and other infectious diseases, or food poisoning, to the same extent as everybody else.

Anyway, needless to say, behind all this there is a book and DVD waiting to be purchased.