Cantilever

David Bailey eat your heart out.

Here's a rather dramatic looking picture I took from our bedroom window this morning. Looking south towards the Pentland Hills (hazily silhouetted in the background here), you can just see the top of the Forth Bridge beneath that dark and threatening sky.

I've always fancied doing the occasional picture post, just like the rather fab ones which CBQ publishes over on his blog. Maybe I just need to take the camera out 'n' about with me more often rather than just pointing it out of the window now and again.

Have to hurry you

Watched some of that University Challenge night on BBC2 on Saturday. An enjoyable diversion.

What always amazes me is that whenever you see Bamber Gascoigne - now aged 73 - on the telly these days, he never really seems to have aged.

Wanking for coins...

Whilst I leave myself wide open to taunts of "Bah! Humbug!", you might have noticed that I have barely even acknowledged the current "festive" period, let alone even mention the dreaded C******** word anywhere on Avenues and Alleyways in the past month or so. I'm feeling rather pleased with myself as a result and I'm not about to change that.

Similarly, I'm not about to do any end-of-year round-ups either. Not that I would imagine any list I'd pull together would be of the slightest interest to anyone who happens upon this so-called blog. I mean, who gives a shit what my favourite album or film or TV show has been? It's not as if I'm Andrew Collins or Charlie Brooker - by any stretch. Having said that, mention of Brooker leads me, rather neatly, into one of the funniest things I've read all year...

Back in March this year, I sent out a plea to readers to suggest non-fiction titles I could read whilst away on my (now traditional) holiday to Gran Canaria. I was looking for something of the calibre of Stuart Maconie's Pies and Prejudice which I had read and loved whilst on holiday in 2007. I received three replies in the comments section (thanks to Inchy, Bright Ambassador and Flaming Nora) and, in the end, went with BA's suggestion of Charlie Brooker's Dawn Of The Dumb. Whilst ordering it on Play.com, I saw that its predecessor, Screen Burn, was also going cheap and so decided to buy both in one job lot. Good call. Both books were outstanding and made me laugh like a drain.

So, it might seem odd to say, but one of my favourite literary moments of 2008 was reading something which had been originally written and published in 2001. In a review of ITV's Popstars, Brooker describes panelist, producer and one-time light entertainment dancer, "Nasty" Nigel Lythgoe thus:

"Ahh. Nigel. Glamour with its shirt tucked in. He looks like a man ordering gammon steak in a motorway service station. He looks like Eric Idle watching a dog drown. He's got faintly sad eyes, the world's least fashionable hair, and the complexion of a man who's held his hair out of the window of a speeding car for the past two days."

Haha. Both collections were filled with that sort of stuff, but I have to say that the Nigel Lythgoe description was my favourite. Talk about "pageturners"; I managed to read both Brooker collections in the space of about four days. Thanks BA!

For the 2009 soiree, I think I'll order the Clive James and Roger McGough titles as suggested by Inchy and Nora. See... nothing gets wasted, does it? Unless you've any new non-fiction recommendations for me...?

Two sleeping bags, a jaggy polo neck and a pan of hot milk

In this day and age of YouTube delights such as Animal Kwakers, Paperplay and even the elusive Hickory House, how the fuck is it possible that there is still no posting of that hypothermia Public Information Film that those of us aged around 37 plus can remember involving a man stumbling deliriously through the snow?

He may have looked like he was drunk, but in fact he was dying. Thank fuck someone turned up with two sleeping bags, a great big jaggy 1960s/70s polo neck sweater and a pan full of hot milk to nurse him back from the brink. And tell me... just where is the videographic evidence of such good Samaritan behaviour? It's non-existent, that's what. Even a straightforward Google brings up next to nothing on this must've-been-a-dream PIF, except for this blink-and-you'll-miss-it mention here.

Come on you lot, tell me that this Public Information Film really did exist. I know I didn't dream it.

Bring your own bottle (and food)

This is a real shame.

The very wonderful Khushi's Indian restaurant in Edinburgh's Victoria Street went up in smoke on Friday night. For the uninitiated, Khushi's has steadily built up a reputation over decades in and around the Lothian area for being one of the finest Indian restaurants around. Their restaurant in Victoria Street is only a couple of years old and is (was) very much their flagship.

Khushi's is my favourite Indian restaurant in Edinburgh, but it seems I might be some kind of a jinx. During the 1990s, my favourite Indian was the Omar Khayyam in the city's Haymarket area. A fine establishment which also went up in flames around about 1997/98 if memory serves. Once it reopened, it just never seemed quite the same again.

Edinburgh's Old Town really seems to be a bit of a tinderbox at times. Who can forget the devastating fire in the Cowgate which destroyed the Gilded Balloon and a number of other surrounding businesses? The site was so badly damaged, it had to be razed to the ground. I haven't been down that way for a few years now, but I understand it's still a huge gap site.

I was in Edinburgh on the morning of 5 October 1989 when a gas explosion ripped through Guthrie Street in the Old Town. I remember walking down The Bridges towards Princes Street and seeing all the ambulances and fire crews parked up in the street below with a look of confusion on many people's faces. It wasn't until I got home later that day and saw the news that I fully understood what had happened (if I recall correctly, that was also the day that news of Monty Python star, Graham Chapman's death, broke).

Edinburgh went through a bit of a phase a few years ago when masonry would randomly fall from buildings. There was one occasion in summer 2000 when a huge piece of masonry fell from the building above Ryan's Bar at the west end of Princess Street, killing a waitress and seriously injuring someone else. What an absolutely devastating scene that must have been. The loose masonry was attributed to the building work carried out on the property in the late 1980s.

I strongly believe that, whilst shoddy building/maintenance cannot be ruled out in these instances, Edinburgh's seemingly insatiable desire to have a fireworks display every time someone drops a hat, has made a significant contribution to loosening masonry around the central areas of the city. There are fireworks every night of the Festival (probably the Tattoo?) with extended displays on Saturday nights. There's the huge end-of-the-Festival display and then, as the climax to the Hogmanay "celebrations", there's the massive New Year display. Having lived in central Edinburgh for a number of years in the past, I can vouch for how the soundwaves from these displays ricochet throughout neighbouring streets. We lived in Grove Street just off Fountainbridge and these fireworks would regularly set off car and burglar alarms and, if you were out on the street, you could literally feel the soundwaves. The millennium display was simply off the scale! Anyway, there's no scientific proof that firework displays are in any way a contributing factor; I'm just some geezer sat at a PC. What would I know?

So... the fire at Khushi's... just the latest in a long line of Edinburgh disasters. Hope to see them back up and running soon!

Low winter sun

Hooray!

If you count your days in terms of daylight hours, then celebrate the fact that this is the shortest day of the year. "But, Sky," I hear you ask in unison, "Why celebrate a day when the best you might expect is around six or seven hours of natural light?" Because, dear readers, from here on in, the hours of daylight will get increase steadily and it'll be Spring before you know it! Sorry to come over all 2003 for a minute, but I say, "Bring it on!"

So, in the spirit of enjoying the day-to-day, celebrating the here-and-now and not at all wishing my life away, I make it 97 days until the clocks go forward again.

The winter. It's great isn't it? Round of applause for winter, everyone!

Butterfly on a wheel

So, no new adventures or experiences to speak of since the last time I posted, I'm afraid.

I've been lain low for a whole week by what I thought - at first - was a bit of manflu. "Haha, sweat it out and I'll be right as rain for Monday," I thought. Wrong! It turned out to be actual flu, managing to whip up a neat side order of chest infection into the bargain. Okay so that's that. I won't bore you with any further detail (although you will note that regaling readers with every bit of minutiae related to their illness is, by and large, an inherent trait of bloggers the world over). Suffice to say I felt like shit for a whole week and still do to an extent. Nuff said.

Under normal circumstances, there are any number of things designed to cyphon away my life force, but when I'm feeling under the weather, they suddenly become around one million percent even more spirit-crushing than usual.

And the single most annoying thing which has probably got on my nerves more than anything else this past week has been...

Childish adverts with wilfully lo-fi/folky soundtracks.

I've written about T-Mobile's Vashti Bunyan "epic" before as well as Orange's nonsensical "trumpets-and-kites" bore-a-thon. This time, the one that's really been getting my fucking goat is that one for Dell Inspiron laptops.

A cursory flick through Google indicates that this pile of cack is soundtracked by the childlike chuntering of Kira Willey (who?) singing Colors. Whether you're some chick applying lippy in the back of a bus, a smug bearded twat with a load of vinyl or one half of a pair of business geeks, you can choose the colo(u)r of Dell Inspiron which best suits your lifestyle and individual needs at the point of order because, according to the voiceover, "Your's is here". Thanks, but I'll give it a miss if it's all the same.

In an I'm-so-delicate-I'm-not-going-to-even-open-my-mouth-properly-to-sing sort of way, Willey twitters, "I am green today, I chirp with joy like a cricket song..." Aye. Good for fucking you. It's exactly the kind of toss which would have been a perfect accompaniment for US angst-guff such as Party Of Five or Dawson's Creek. Seriously shit whichever way you cut it.

This advert seems to be getting shown on a continuous loop on Paramount Comedy 2 in particular (they have begun showing Man About The House and Robin's Nest again in the afternoons so it's worth a look if you don't mind endless runs of the Dell ad as well as promos for their own channel).

Another similar advert that's made me question my sanity recently was the Surf fabric conditioner one where some woman does forward rolls along a big pile of mattresses in her pursuit of (what else?) some stupid fake fucking butterfly or something. Aural pleasure on this shitcast comes courtesy of Lisa (eh?) Mitchell and her amatuerish, multi-tracked, barely-sung lyrics shoved over the top of some tuneless will-this-do xylophone-hit-with-glass-beaters plink plonk.

I find this sort of sickeningly twee, childish advertising patronising in the extreme and, if anything, makes me feel even less inclined to buy any of the products on offer. Does it float your boat or do you feel inclined to shove pencils in your eardrums to stop the sound of all this crap, sixth form music?

First tear forms in the right eye...

...this is the eye that's crying first...

Three, unrelated things I've just realised that I totally fucking hate...

Grand Theft Auto IV for PC
I'm not a big gamer, but I've always made time for Rockstar's brilliant Grand Theft Auto franchise. GTA IV was lauded on its release for Xbox and PS3, but sadly, the PC version (released in the past seven days) has been beset with problems, glitches and bugs - you fucking name it. I have had this on pre-order since October and was delighted when it fell through the letterbox on it's official PC release date (good old Play.com!).

I knew that it would only run on high specification hardware and so I bought and installed a new graphics card (which is well above the minimum requirement) and it still won't fucking work. But it seems I am not alone. Without going into tedious detail, the PC gaming "world" has been set alight with outrage and frustration at how this game will not work on any PC anywhere in the world. Rockstar are apparently aware that "some" (ie all) users are experiencing difficulty and are busy preparing a patch. I'm not holding my breath.

That pigeon toed / knock kneed pose that models do
Fashionable since that "whole" mid-90's geek chic look. Why do models persist in adopting this somewhat vacant and - dare I say it - totally retarded look? Are you trying not to pish yourself? Either pull yourself together or just go and sit with the rest of the fucking remedial class. It might "do it" for some, but it just makes me want to heave. Grow up - you look like you're seven.




Rufus fucking Hound
Come on you buffoon, that's not your real name, is it? Yes it's digital TV's Mr Rent-an-ironic-moustache. From Watch's Richard and Judy's New Position to Dave's Argumental and ITV2's British Comedy Awards After Show Party, our Rufus has done it all. Whilst everyone loves Ollie Reed's outrageous Aspel and Co appearance, surely nobody wants to actually look like that. Or do they? Enter Rufus fucking Hound. His raspy, contrived and deeply unfunny delivery grates on my fucking nerves. He just comes across as being totally boorish and lairy and has a constant look of surprise on his fizzog. He's a right git. Wipe him from our screens ASAP.

Anything else you'd like to add?