The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Apple Pie

by 14 Comments

500g Sainsburys puff pastry.

Halve the pastry, roll out into two circles, one slightly – say 2cm – wider than the other.

Put the slightly bigger circle into a pie dish and blind bake it for 20 mins (in total) at 180C. You’ll need to have some clay baking beans to put onto baking paper to weigh down the pastry circle while it gets partly cooked. Whip the beans and paper off after 10 mins and bake it naked* for another 10 mins. If you ain’t got beans, sacrifice a couple of hundred grammes of dried pulses like chick-peas or kidney beans instead. After 10 mins at 180 they will be like full metal jacket bullets, so just bin them afterwards. After the 20 minute blind bake (i.e. sans contents) it should look like this:

https://imgur.com/82eo03y

(Sorry folks, but I’ve been trying to get the images to actually appear in this post for about 12 minutes now, and a) I’ve lost the will to live, and b) my 15 minutes are nearly up, so hey, just select ’em and open ’em in another tab OK?)

OK, that’s built the basic container. Now for the scrummy filling. You can use any » Continue Reading.

Richard Thompson’s new role in Quality Control.

by 8 Comments

Look, the guy plays a mean guitar, ok? He wears a stylish beret rather well, and has interesting things to say from a Sufi perspective. His ex has a magnificent voice, and he always seems to be surrounded by stellar musicians whenever he commits a choon to wax.

Sadly, right now he’s busy sorting out all those dodgy CD copies of the “Hard Luck Stories” retrospective that’s recently come out. It seems the title of the boxed set is all too apt for many purchasers. So he’s now engaged full-time in opening up boxes of boxed sets and boxing the ears of those who boxed them up in the first place, before re-boxing the replacements which have been ordered in by the boxload. I hope. Any news from Richard’s “people” on this? Not holding my breath.

ATM – My Planet has dyslexia. Rega apparently no longer whizz for atomms. Chizeroony.

by 58 Comments

My Rega Planet has slowly developed a reluctance to play certain CDs. It barfs over the first track on The Best Of Van Morrison, for example, and refuses to cope with the last track on Legend by Bob Marley; these are both mass produced commercial discs that should play fine in any old machine. Feed the Rega a home made CD-R or a commercial disc stuffed with almost 80 minutes of music on board, and you’ll be lucky to hear it all. All of these discs play perfectly on the decent TEAC CD deck in my office, I might add.

So I sent it off to Rega for a ‘service’, via a local well-respected hi-fi shop. They charged me £106, which apparently is the cost for Rega to “clean and lubricate” the mechanism that allows the laser to track the disc surface. I picked it back up yesterday.

It still behaves in exactly the same way as described above. I am devastate. I am £106 poorer. I am NOT F*CKING IMPRESSED. I am pissed off to the max.

On the phone, the hi-fi shop unhesitatingly said, “bring it back, that’s not good enough, we’ll send it back to Rega » Continue Reading.

The Rover’s Return

by 88 Comments

So, the English pubs are to re-open in 13 hours time. Can’t see anything wrong with that, nor the carnage of opening all day on a Saturday when we should all be socially distancing. Still, it’ll be nice to go back to the local boozer, won’t it?

So, two quick questions at the massive- What’s your ‘local’ like and will you be going back to it any time soon?

My answer is that I am unlikely to be going back to the pub if I can help it. I never thought for a minute at the start of lockdown that I’d think this, but I really don’t miss the pub at all. My local (as in the nearest , but also most frequented) really isn’t up to much. The vibe is one of cheap booze rather than quality drink, you’ll get a fight in there around the pool table if Spurs have lost (google maps tells me that we are 67.8 miles away from White Hart Lane) and the jukebox is dominated by the greatest hits of the 80’s and 90’s. The pub has changed landlords about 12 times in the eight years that we have lived around here. » Continue Reading.

Track and Trace is working fine! We’ve got those vile journos and photographers beat.

by 6 Comments

incoherent rant mode Yep, the track and trace approach is payin’ dividends. Those extremists in the media, whippin’ up fear and violence while our streets – usually kept clean and safe by our great, really great, magnificent police force – are in flames are really shitting themselves now. Believe me. Yes, we know who you are, you sad people, and we’re coming to get you. All you left wing communist anarchists (sic) are going to wish you never stained the reputation of our great country with your vile fake news. We got pictures of you, using the world-beating technology we have (not Chinese) and we can trace you to your home, to your family, to your employer, and we’re gonna make sure you never soil this great country with your lies again. We’re going to stamp on this civil unrest, like you’ve never seen. Never. Believe me. Nobody gets to stop me playin’ a round when I feel like it, no matter how many stores they torch. /incoherent rant mode

1990 or 1980 to the present The Afterword Favourite Albums – I volunteer

by 46 Comments

Following the great efforts of @Dai and his and the suggestion from @Feedback_File – I would be delighted to compile an alternative list (don’t we all love lists) of our favourite albums from either 1980 or 1990 up to the present day. This should be a far more interesting list than one full of the Beatles, Dylan and Joni.

So can any of us think of our favourites from a time AFTER we were born or in some cases AFTER leaving education – I was only 4 when the Beatles (white album) was released.

#1 – Do we start from 1980 or 1990 – VOTE NOW! #2 – Once it is clear what preference we have, can we think, think again and… #3 – Can we then use Dai’s rulebook for presenting our Top Ten of the last 30 or 40 years?

ATM: Which USB keyboard should I buy to start learning how to play the pianer?

by 15 Comments

Seemples question; a billion possible answers.

Having grown up with a piano in the living room, yet also having dodged piano lessons at the time and having never subsequently got to grips with the little black and white devils, I’ve long harboured a temptation to buy a keyboard that I can put on my desk in front of me and plug into a usb socket on my office PC.

I don’t need to spend a gazillion on this – I’m not looking to blow serious wonga on a Nord for example. I suspect I’d rather have 61 keys than 49 from the outset, but beyond that it’s a mystery to me, and I don’t have a handy copy of the ‘Which? USB Keyboards’ report.

So whaddya think? Amazon currently steers me towards this baby:

M-Audio Oxygen 61 IV | 61-Key USB/MIDI Keyboard Controller Featuring Velocity-Sensitive Keys, 8 Pads, 9 Faders and 8 Knobs, Plus ProTools | First, Ableton Live Lite and 3 Premium Virtual Instruments

But is it really any good? Is there a better one I should look at? Can you only get rubbish for around a ton-fifty and should I raise my budget? What are » Continue Reading.

Elon Musk confirms that his child is indeed from the 5th dimension.

by 17 Comments

You don’t have to be a billionaire to exploit your own child by giving it a ridiculous name. You could be a humble musician. Like David Bowie for example, or Frank Zappa.

Obviously I know a few of the more outlandish monikers, but perhaps members of the Massive can alert me to some of the lesser known but equally stupid examples of tempting nominative determinism, where weird parents give their kids weird names, simply because they can, even if it makes the kids turn out weird?

Highest death toll in Europe. Never mind, there’s an app for that. Give me strength.

by 128 Comments

By the Holy Jesus, Mary Mother of God and by all of the apostles, what a shuddering shower of incompetent shitheads we have in the UK Government at the moment.

They are only out-classed for thundering dimwittedness by the orange comb-over balloon himself, who knows there are enough dundering fools within the USA to carry him past all the incredulity from his peers and on to the sunlit paths of religious and historical ignorance that will lead to a second term. If he hasn’t gargled himself to death with Paraquat before then (please!).

If we don’t have a thorough-going full-scale fucking revolution at the end of this global display of inadequacy from our leadership in the Free World, we deserve to be classed as the virus, and the virus deserves to be classed as part of the solution.

ATM: How do I get my existing iTunes Media files visible in a new install of iTunes?

by 43 Comments

I use Windows PCs almost exclusively. I loathe iTunes. I use it only for podcasts, of which I have a very large number in my iTunes Media folder. My PC where iTunes sits (sat) died recently (motherboard kaput). The iTunes media folder for that machine was on an external USB drive. I bought a refurbed Dell and plugged in the USB drive – no worries, look; there are all my iTunes files where they always were. I downloaded and installed a new instance of iTunes on the replacement box. So far, so simple and straightforward.

Not comes the bit that has me stumped. I have to negotiate the way iTunes is set up in a fresh install, and somehow pursuade it to show me the podcast files from my pre-existing iTunes library. The only trouble is, the options are all Apple-speak, or more accurately, iTunes-speak, and leave me clueless.

How the F*CK do I tell the damn thing to just go use the files I already have??????

Burning Shed – data breach ALERT

by 6 Comments

Just a heads-up for anyone who has or has ever had an account with the Burning Shed people.

They’ve emailed everyone for whom they have an email address whose data they believe has been compromised.

According to the message I received, they have lost a load of email addresses and passwords – nicked as a result of hacking activity – although they believe that no payment related info has been compromised.

Their web site is off line as a result, and they have nuked all the passwords that were currently in use.

If you think you may be affected, you might want to check your browser to see if the saved password you used for Burning Shed was also one you’ve used elsewhere. We all know full well that you should never do that, but like everyone else you’re human, and you may have been lazy about it…. so check up, and if you have re-used a password, start changing it wherever else you’ve used it, and do this immediately. As in NOW.

Why-eye eet’s dya twentee-wun. Lockdoon continues. Hoo is evorywun deeing so far leik?

by 57 Comments

First off; apologies to anyone whose accent is even remotely similar to something akin to Geordie.

It’s getting to feel like a Big Brother series now, after twenty days or more of stay-at-home-or-we’ll-all-die. Trouble is, it’s the only sensible way to proceed with a nasty bug doing the rounds, and we all (well, anyone with half a brain) know it’s true, so we have to just suck it up and get on with it. Unless we are David Icke, who thinks it’s something to do with 5G mobile phones. Or something.

I’m reading voraciously – I’ve burned through a couple of month’s worth of Waterstone splurges, books previously piled up in the music room ready for a period on the bedside table. They’ve each lasted only a few days. Some crackers, mind. I’ll have to write a few short reviews for this place and maybe someone else will investigate and enjoy them too. Most recent few were from Alys Fowler, Alan Parks, Emily Maitlis and – current one – Raynor Winn. Short reviews to follow – all highly recommended anyway.

I’ve very nearly finished re-decorating the living room now. This would normally have taken me over six months, maybe longer, » Continue Reading.

Bring out your dead! What are you going to be reading to while away the plague days?

by 98 Comments

Chin up, it’ll all be over by Christmas! Time to dig out those tattered unfinished paperbacks you bought when you were 16 because you thought they made you look sophisticated – the ones in the loft that you’ve never been arsed to dump at the chazza. Give ’em a second chance! You aren’t going anywhere more interesting for the forseeable, so you may as well get stuck in. You’ve seen everything worth seeing on Netflix and Amazon, and you can’t bring yourself to wade through any of those boxed sets of DVDs all over again, can you? Save electricity, open a book, put your feet up and pay attention to the page. That’s better. Proper relaxation, not artificial distraction.

This last week I’ve just done three Jack Reachers in quick succession, a guilty romping. Before that I enjoyed a very intriguing visit to The Stopping Places courtesy of Damian Le Bas. Next I’ve lined up Who Owns England by Guy Shrubsole.

What are you planning to read for the next few months while the world collapses?