Thursday, April 27, 2006

At Least they were from a northern culture

Jim Evans wrote recently about dog wardens hiding in bushes in Exeter. Today he writes again with a very sinister development, and proof, if more were needed, that we in Exeter live in some kind of totalitarian police state.


CITY SEEMS TO BE GOING TO THE DOGS

12:00 - 26 April 2006
It made my blood boil to read about the mess, filth and damage caused by travellers, yobs, graffiti artists, muggers etc in recent editions of the Echo. On the morning of January 25, it was cold and windy. I was walking my 17-year-old dog Cindy up Trews Weir Reach Road. On the right hand side is a 12ft long grass bank with a 10ft wall and a bush at the bottom.

I passed a dirty white van half-way up, which was parked with two blokes sitting inside.

My old dog toddled down the bank to urinate.

When she came back, I put her on the lead and crossed Topsham Road.

After a few minutes, one of these chaps from the van said that he was a dog warden and my dog had defecated at the bottom of the bank. I said: "Are you sure?" He said: "Oh yes, I have done a temperature test and it was 86F."

So I went back to investigate and found a little mess on the grass. I bagged it and asked: "Are you happy now?" He said, with a smile: "No, I am not. I am going to give you a ticket and it's going to cost you £50 and I want your name and address.

"If you do not pay within 14 days, you will have to appear in court. The Civic Centre will deal with you."

I did protest but after several typed letters and phone calls, council officials insisted I must pay for my crime or go to court.

No wonder Exeter is in a mess - it's going to the dogs!

Jim Evans


Of course, I'm outraged by the conduct of this dog warden. The temperature of the turd should have been given in the metric Celsius, not the archaic Farenheit.

Gary's World. Of. Football.

My love of football has waned over the past years, but with the World Cup on the horizon, I’ve gotta admit that I’m more than a little excited. Yayy! World Cup!!!

Ahem.

Thus I have decided to turn my commentationing to the World. Of. Football. And what a day to start, with it looking like England having chosen their new manager.



A lot of people are disappointed that England have not gone for a homegrown manager, but I think that when you have the opportunity to get a guy with the credentials that this man has, it’s too good to miss.

Now admittedly I am not so knowledgeable about his recent achievements (apparently he’s worked in Brazil and Portugal), but his work in the 70s on the French Connection is more than enough to convince me that he has the attitude and passion that has been woefully absent from Sven’s current tenure. I also thought that the Royal Tenenbaums demonstrated the vast experience and maturity that he can bring to the modern game.



So welcome Senor Gene Scolari, I, for one, welcome you.


I don't care if anyone else has said this before - I spotted it ages ago, well before you did.

Friday, April 21, 2006

This is what happens when I watch Oscar winning movies

OK so I'm watching Oscar winning movie Crash at the moment and to tell you the truth I'm not liking it. Me and Oscar movies generally don't get on very well (I didn't like, among others, Gladiator, Shakespeare in Love, Braveheart, and I didn't have to see Chicago to hate it, obviously), but I really had high hopes for this one. However, in my opinion, it's a bit of a stinker. Script, awful. Story, laid down with a spade. Acting...

...Stop. This isn't a film review.

No. Recently I bought a new car so I could get to my new job. It seemed important. Whilst watching the film Crash I decided to read the manual for my car (I found it that bad). The manual advises you how to save fuel. One of their tips is to carry around less weight. For every 220lb, the car uses 1.75gallons more every 1000 miles. This got me thinking. What if everyone lost half a stone? How much fuel could we, as a slimmer, healthier nation save?

Well, after a few oh-so predictable "plot" twists in't the movie, I reckoned that the UK could save over half a million gallons of fuel (556818 gallons to be exact) per million car users, per year. Just think how much fuel the Americans could save. More car users, more weight to shed.

I think that's enough. Have I Got News For You has started. This is why I'll never watch Titanic.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

At Least They Were From A Northern Culture

Ridiculously funny this posting ain’t, but tonight’s E&E letter page has brought a triplet of humorous correspondence, one of which I would go as far to say is a bit of a classic in the making.

But let’s start with TA Griffin, or TAG, as I like to call him. Now TAG is renowned by E&E readers as being the most prolific of all writers. Not only is he relentless in his output, but he also tries to be as controversial as possible. However, in the past month, things haven’t been the same. TAG’s son Bobby, or Bill or Ben or something, ran away from the SAS because he didn’t agree with the Iraq thing. Thus TAG’s letters have been of the anti-war twist. This just hasn’t suited TAG: you can tell that he doesn’t like being on the side of the brown-cord-wearing, flower-in-the-hair types. Thankfully tonight the real TAG has stood up with a vitriolic attack on one of the greatest evils of the high street…Oxfam.

Apparently it is a non-profit organisation [but] why else do they do it? Getting first choice for the first books [and] Oh yes, to send the money to the poor in Africa.

Good to have him back.

A second little piece from M Golby.

Are There New Cycling Laws?

I see Charlie of BBC’s Casualty advises his son to ride his bike on the pavement. Is this now official and for all age groups?

Come to that, what about lights after dark? I think Exeter pedestrians should be told.


You wot? I’m not sure if this ironic or sarcastic or something, but I am not getting it. I haven’t seen Casualty for a while, but I thought it was a hospital drama rather than a Green Cross code information service.

But in my opinion this final offering is a bit of joined up thinking in a true E&E stylee.

A Family Fortunes question: name some of the problems facing the UK youth.

Survey says: Junk food. That’s got to be up there. Unplanned pregnancy. Yep. White bread, not so sure, but maybe in at no. 6.

But how to control these rampant problems. Sandy Wilson may have just hit on something:

Why don’t we just ban white bread, why do we need it?

An alternative would be to put the active ingredient of the contraceptive pill in white bread and maybe other junk food so that unplanned pregnancies don’t happen.


Now Sandy obviously has something against white bread and the people that eat it (the attack on junk food is obviously just to win over the waverers) so by putting the pill into it she can hopefully wipe-out the white-bread eating generations. You saw it here first.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

The Man Worketh

A real quick post to say "Hi" and that today I started my new job, which seem to go quite nicely and I think I'm going to enjoy. However, my brain is steadily drained over the working day so if it's ok with you I'm going to take it easy for the next couple of evenings with the blogging. Unless I find something ridiculously good to blog about. Or not, as the case may well be.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Strongbow

Before this became the Exeter E&E letter review page, apparently I reviewed adverts, hence the lame name of this blog. Problem is, as discussed on my recent trip to West Sussex to visit a friend, adverts have been really poor recently. Not in a so bad they’re good kinda way, but in a totally forgettable kind of way. However, and worryingly, they still work.

How do I know this? Because I have fallen foul of one innocuous looking drinks company’s campaign.

This company, we’ll call them Strongbow, have been running shorts where something annoying is on a wooden surface and has two of their trademark arrows shot into it. Their choice of objects is too predictable – a mobile phone and a Heat-like celebrity magazine. Could they be more 2001? If I was in charge, I would have had the arrows fire into the head of the bloke off the confused.com advert, or maybe Nicky Campbell. Thud Thud, take that annoying shouty bloke. Hoo-wee.

However, this advert has directly influenced my drinking habit. It didn’t cause me to drink rank cider. I began doing that again last year with the delectable Old Rosie tipple (or rant-juice as I like to call it) being a particularly potent favourite. No, the ad got to me with the final shot of a pint of cider with what looks like ice cubes in it.

“How ridiculous,” I declared to Mrs P when I first noticed this. “Who on earth drinks cider with ice in it?” my ranting beginning to freestyle, “I’ll tell you who: the la-di-das and don’t-you-know types of West Sussex, that’s who.” (Surprisingly I didn’t see anyone drinking cider n ice on my recent trip, but I knew they were there.)

Thus I thought I had dismissed it. Oh, but how wrong I was. This evening I sat down to enjoy a bottle of local cider. “Serve chilled” its label suggested. But my bottle had been warming on the shelf since Christmas. How could I get it to the required temperature quick? Surely I couldn’t, could I?

Yes I could, damn it. And I’m not proud either. But I will say I did enjoy it. So thankyou Mr Strongbow, you can add me to your list of advertising sheep. Albeit one that doesn’t buy your product.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

At Least They Were From A Northern Culture

The beauty of the Exeter Express & Echo letters page is that it has its regulars who you begin to build up a mental image of. There's the bored and lonely regular TA Griffin, the bored and lonely rambling LT Sargent, the bored and lonely fox-hunting crew, and the bored and lonely new breed of right-wing, anti-PC crew of Tony Parsons et al., led by the bored and lonely Colin Richey, all sat at home home with nothing better to do than write to a local newspaper (not like the busy and popular blogger who writes about them). Colin is perhaps the baddest of the bad - he delivered the line that led to the titling of this section of my blog - so you always know that when he writes, you're going to get some good old fashioned complaing about PC gone mad, bringing back the death penalty or the deportation of everyone who can't sing the National Anthem backwards.

Today Colin attacks the BBC, a nemesis of his, which nicely fits in with a PC gone mad template. Apparently the Beeb are remaking Robin Hood or something and aren't including Friar Tuck. Personally I don't see why they feel the need to bother to remake the show anyway, what with the definitive telling of the tale recently released on DVD, but hey. Colin's main thrust is that Tuck should be included so that we can laugh at him. And, as he adds,

Come on, BBC, grow up. Don't muck about with history.

Robin Hood as historical fact? Are you sure? And does it matter? It's hardly a hollywood movie of how they won everything ever, is it?

Sometimes you have to wonder the sense of perspective of the Echo letter writer. I mean, there are worst things going on in the world than a TV channel not including a fat monk. And boy, it used to be a lot worst before the war, as Jim Evans writes:

The wives struggled on one low wage with a large family, no handouts, holiday outings, school meals or new clothes, etc. There were four in one old bed and five in the other bedroom and no central heating, only a couple of thick blankets. If one of the kids was ill, the doctor charged mam a shilling.

"And when we got home from working a 25 hour day down t'mine, our dad would murder us in cold blood with his bare hands" and so on. We don't know how lucky we are, so why don't we say "good morning" to each other, asks Jim.

I walk a lot with my dogs and very few respond when I say "good morning".

The only ones who speak are the traffic wardens and dog wardens I notice hiding behind bushes, etc - dishing out tickets.


Dog wardens hiding behind bushes etc. in the park? And what are the traffic wardens doing there with them? Could this be more of Exeter's seedy sexual underbelly that has started to emerge onto the pages of the E&E?

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Lust for Exercise

Phew, things got a bit serious there yesterday, but somethings just need to be said me thinks. It is intersting to see that since the letter was published the E&E hasn't had anyomre homophobic correspondence...

Anyway, this blog is not about serious issues and the like. Therefore today I present a whole load of silliness to redress the balance. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you the award-winning short film* "Lust for Exercise", presented by Proud Mustang Productions. Find it here.



A few points:

1. Apologies to Iggy Pop.
2. Apologies to the unwitting star to who I implied that I wouldn't put this on the web. However, what I really meant to say was I would't put it on the web until I could be bothered to/found a way to.

* 2005 Dorlina Film Awards. Short films starring a Parsons (winner)

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

At Least They Were From A Northern Culture

I’ve had a lot of fun with the homophobic correspondence that has graced the Exeter Express & Echo over the past fortnight. But behind all of the bible-beating and God-talk lies the fact that a lot of what has been written is deeply offensive. Whether morals skewed by ancient religious writings or opinions clouded by a bigoted and insular life in overwhelmingly straight white communities, it is sad and disturbing that people not only hold these views, but also feel it necessary to write to a local rag about it. This only serves to promote the impression that a person’s sexuality should be something to be ashamed of and hidden, demonised and disparaged.

Of course, for each idiot who writes there are several who reply cleverly and humouredly, holding up the original correspondent for the fool that he or she is. I haven’t drawn attention to these letters (hey, I’ve got to get my blogs from somewhere), but perhaps to draw a line under the issue (the letters aren’t really saying anything new), I’d like to put up one letter to the E&E over the weekend that I hope will read by Claude, Tony and LT and perhaps make them question why they feel the need to judge and discriminate those whose lives and the way they lead them makes no impingement on their own in any way.


THE BEST THING TO DO IS IGNORE US


It's now 8.03pm. I've got better things to be doing. I should be down the pub. Instead I have sat here for the past hour reading through the last days' Points of view letters. I have been impressed by the fervour felt by both sides of the gay versus anti-gay argument. I have - apparently - variously distressed, angered and disappointed people. Worries me that. It really does.

I want to be a Christian and admire those who are, but I can't reconcile my differences. At least I'm honest.

How lucky those are who can feel the comfort of an all-encompassing faith.

As I pored over what has been written, writing a defence where I thought one was needed, I realised I just can't bear to do this again now. Being a 'right-on' person, I should place this letter in upmost importance. But I can't. Right now, I'm worn down. I'm tired of parrying semantics and rhetorical questions. I've had a hard day's work. I'm miserable.

So I leave you with this personal statement: Ignore me and my partner. Leave us to our repellent lifestyles. We suffer enough.

In public we have become masters of the unseen delicate touch that conveys our long-lasting love.

We walk on the beach at night so you'll never have to balk at the sight of us holding hands. We feel the gaze of eyes upon us as we go for a meal together and become the 'couple of poofters in the corner'.

At some hotels we remain unable to get a double bed.

When we shop I stumble over my words as I remember to call my partner Carl instead of Tweeky or Honeybun.

My kid sister comes home crying 'cos she's got a poofter for a brother. Took an entire week to get her to admit that.

As my partner and I swap over the driving seat each day to go to work, you would have to have amazing eyesight to catch the kiss as we brush past each other. You have no idea how it burns me when I see my boyfriend upset and I can't hug him and tell him it'll be okay - because we are in a public place, because YOU will see. So ignore us.

I'm off down to the pub, where you are. You can be assured we will behave.

Paris Stamp

Hartley Road, Exmouth

Goodbye To All That...

So this is really it. This morning I received the contract for my new job, plus pension plans, discounted gym memberships and the like. I start the day after Easter Monday. I’m not sure if I’m taking it as seriously as I should, but I think it is true that I’m looking forward to having a proper job. How long this will last, I’m not sure, but the spread betters are predicting between 4 and 12 hours. Oh well…

After 7 and ½ years at the Uni. of Exeter the time for change has come. Maybe I’ll return one day. There is one main thing that I’m going to miss – I’ll give you one guess.

Times up. And I’m afraid to say that you’re wrong. If you said “He’ll be missing the flexible working hours,” then you’re not too far away – although you ain’t getting no prizes. That’s because the thing I’m going to miss most is…Bargain Hunt.

That’s right, a weekly fix of 45 minutes of antique auctioning is the main thing that I’m concerned about losing most. No longer will I be able to take the odd day to work at home and enjoy BH over my cheese, ham and Branstons sandwiches. I don’t know why I like the programme so much – there’s no logic to it damn it – but, yes, it’s a tradition that will be hard to part with.