The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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And in other news

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In anticipation of my forthcoming house move, I bought an armchair today, which was going for a song on FB marketplace. I arranged to pick it from the seller’s place of work at the auction mart in Hexham. This is the local livestock market but I know they do other stuff on the site too so I assumed I’d be picking it up from an office or a warehouse or some such. Imagine my surprise when I turned up and he open up a gate and ushered me into the cattle pens and in front of an audience of curious cows, I exchanged a handful of fivers for a lightly used Parker Knoll wingback chair.

Pedantry in pop

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I heard Siouxsie & the Banshees ‘Hong Kong Garden’ on the wireless the other day. What leapt out at me was not the covert racism (Google it yourselves) but the following couplet:

“Would you like number twenty three? Leave your Yens on the counter please”

Now then, young Susan, the official currency of Hong Kong is the HK dollar. They take Yen in Japan, and I can’t imagine there being a Cantonese takeaway in Tokyo.

Can the Massive think of any similar nonsense for an old pedant to get in a froth about?

ATM Ring doorbells

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Apologies in advance for the extreme dullness of the post.

The builder finished in my garage yesterday. He’s built me a WFH office out there. I’m going to move my computer from my dining table to the garage office in the next few weeks (when I’ve decorated). I (will) have a wired Ethernet connection from router to garage. Router is behind the front door.

I get quite a few parcels which don’t fit through the letter box (i.e. 12″ vinly, weekly veg box, eggs in trays). Mrs F now goes into the office 2-5 days a week.

I think I need a camera/intercom doorbell thingy and something to allow me to see who’s at the door and tell them I’m on my way.

Please, the Massive, tell me what to buy, so I don’t have to think too hard about it. I have enough to do with painting doors, frames and skirting boards.

P.S. The dodgers have an Alexa device sale on at the moment.

The Boring Thread

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At work yesterday I needed to order some diodes. I should have ordered SK56CHV6G but I copied the line above in a spreadsheet and got a pack of LL4148 instead. What* am I like, eh?

This morning, gathered round the office kettle, I had a long discussion with two colleagues about the relative merits of Precision, Jazz and Musicman bass guitars.

This evening, I’m meeting our new cat-sitter.

What tedium have you been involved in recently?

(*) Dull, that’s what.

Worst Thing I’ve Read All Month

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I’ve just forced myself to finish “Still Whispering After All These Years”, Bob Harris’ autobiography, on my Kindle. My god he didn’t ‘arf go on. Before I read it, I considered him a vaguely OK bloke who’d had a surprisingly long career in radio and TV. Now having finished the book I find him a strangely dislikeable bloke. A shameless grinning git who’s made a bloody good living out of a calculated mix of sheer persistence and comforting blandness. The early chapters detailing his childhood and initial entry to “the scene” are reasonably interesting but a bit long-winded. The long-windedness continues throughout the book but it quickly becomes an extremely detailed and often repetitious catalogue of every single facet of his not-very-enthralling career and seemingly every single person he’s ever had any dealings of any kind with. I was horrified to realise, at one point, that the book had reached the mid-2000s, I was bored shitless and I was only 75% through the book. It came as a great relief to discover that most of the remainder was an over-extensive index where Mohammed Al-Fayed gets 4 mentions and Frank Zappa gets 3.

Do not buy this book.