Chip's Place

Richard Whiteley has died. This makes me sad.

Most of you will likely be entirely unsurprised that Countdown has always been one of my favourite programmes - it's where I got my love of anagrams and wordplay from - and the numbers game has to be one of the most subtle ways of improving basic arithmetic skills for an entire country ever devised.

Here are some happy memories of the show :

Sitting down to watch it as the first show on the exciting new Channel 4 (much better than Superted as your first S4C show, GD...)

One summer at school, spending my pocket money on a big pad of paper so that I could play along "properly." I've watched so much of it I don't need the paper any more, at least not for 9 letters!

Having a pretty serious argument with Lily and Sarah over how you're not supposed to ruin it by shouting the conundrum out when you've got it, just say "Yes" then compare notes at the end.

The BASTARD edition! And the 831 edition. (I'm going to have to reconstruct that one - update later on.)

Richard Stilgoe, Stephen Fry and Geoffrey Durham as guest presenters.

Building it into my study day timetable, then cursing (only slightly though!) when they extended it from 30 mins to 45.

The 5-minute version they used to show at the end of the breakfast show - bitesize Countdown!

I'm now a little sad that I never appeared on the show - I auditioned about 10 years ago, but I was quite ill at the time, and didn't do myself justice. I might never get the chance now. I really really hope they don't cancel it, but it'd be very difficult for anyone to follow in his footsteps.

Goodbye Mr Whiteley. You will be missed.

posted by Chip : 10:49

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This weekend's been really good.

I won a Sudoku competition in the Times last week, leading to me receiving 2 superfluous Sudoku books, and my name appearing in Saturday's edition, almost 2 years to the day since it did the last time.

I picked up the Breadcrumbs book (so I'll have a go of it next week some time while I'm off).

Saw Phil, Geoff, Laura et al. And met Crazy Dave and Normal Dave. At last.

Went to The Tasting Rooms. Scallops and samphire. Yum. (And now 5 restaurants in a row without malfunction. What's going on?!)

Had a weekend of wonderful weather - just a little too much on the sticky side for me at times though.

However, as a result of that, 2 thunderstorms!

Bumped into many people in Ha Ha on Friday.

Just watched the last Doctor Who in the current series. The Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways two-parter is probably one of the best Dr Who stories I can remember. Up there with Genesis of the Daleks, Hand of Fear and Pyramids of Mars.

Ascot making town very quiet, hence the ability to turn up at the Tasting Rooms and get a table straight off.

posted by Chip : 19:48

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I'm sure I shouldn't really be looking forward quite so much to having a week off. But I am.

My last night in Boston seems a long time ago now - as it is. Just shy of 4 months, in fact! Two people independently mentioned it today. Perhaps I'm looking a little haggard. I'm not the only one - someone I only met last week said as we were leaving the office that she was really sick of how everything had gone the last few months, but that at least there was light at the end of the tunnel now. Just 7 more days...

I suppose part of the forward-lookingness is because it's Wimbledon once again. Early darts from the office in week 1 (if I can manage them). Lying on the sofa in the sun for the entire day in week 2 before cooking tea in the hour or so between end of play and "Today at Wimbledon" at 9.30, then bed at 10.30 - the catch-up on the sleep is good too! Not sure whether the "in the sun" bit is going to work with the new 8-foot telly on the wall, but I can live with one break from tradition. I must remember to enter the public ballot for tickets this year...

Last night's Taming of the Shrew was successful - the Shrew was indeed Tamed. Tsuki was playing Kate, which for most of the play didn't need a great deal of acting, but I think I detected a bit of dissonance in her soliloquy at the end - it hardly expresses true girl-power sentiments!
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Well, only the former, really. Can't really get excited over Ascot at the moment.

I watched the Butterfly Effect this evening, which, for a film with Ashton Kutcher in, was surprisingly highbrow, and also very good.

The hopefully spoiler-free version of the story is that, as a child, Kutcher used to have blackouts periodically, where he couldn't remember a thing that happened for a period of a few minutes, frequently when something nasty or horrible was going on around him (e.g. early on, he "wakes up" just as, apparently, his friend's father has been filming him and his friend naked as a prelude to, well, something nasty or horrible).

Since his dad had suffered a similar complaint, the doctors ran several tests on him, but couldn't find anything wrong. They suggest that he starts to keep a journal of everything that happens to him. Years later, in college, he re-reads one of the journals, and discovers something amazing...

Excellent film. It appears Kutcher is capable of playing other characters than his generic Road Trip / Dude Where's My Car? idiot comedy stoner. Although I could have sworn he had an N somewhere in his surname last time I looked.

On the topic of playing characters, going to Tom and Helen's tomorrow for a rather interesting-sounding evening. We're going to be performing The Taming of the Shrew in their lounge - probably not much room for set changes, I expect. Fake beards will be provided, although I'm not sure I should bother with one - a fake clean-shaven chin might be more in order.
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For once, no malfunctions. Just a very amusing event.

Mr Magoo is leaving to head down south for much more money next week, so tonight he had a leaving party in town. At around 8, several of us decided to go for some food, so we went over to him to say goodbye, good luck, etc. On explaining where and why we were going, his eyes lit up. An idea had been born.

"Could you order me something, then give me a ring when it arrives, and I'll run over, eat, and then come back here? Actually, ring me when you get there so I can pick something I like off the menu."

Genius.

So that's what happened! I don't think Lint and Flissy-Loo quite believed we were serious until I called him with the menu shortlist (which, given certain constraints he'd placed on the food - only beef with rice, and no Thai curry because that's what he had for lunch - was a very shortlist!). I'm going to miss him.

This, roundaboutly, also reminded me of the fun we (I!) had at D-Something's expense last Saturday. We were playing 4-way Mario Karts at Lint's when D-S went to the loo. I saw an opportunity and swapped the ports that my and his controllers were plugged into, so he would now be controlling the car on my screen and vice versa. We then proceeded to have a 5-minute race, which I won, despite having to deal with multiple derision from D-S for continuously driving "my" car into a wall, and still not having finished my first lap by the time "he'd" won the whole 3-lap race.

At about the point when he started crowing over his sudden rapid, even miraculous, improvement in ability to play the game, I creased up. I had a bit of difficulty breathing, I was laughing so hard - Psycho Hamster and Lint then got set off by it too. D-S was looking steadily more confused. Lint then asked him if he'd noticed the car having particularly unresponsive steering, or a bit of a lag between pressing the buttons and seeing the reaction on screen.

The penny finally dropped. It was a beautiful moment.
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Sign seen on the way home from work this evening.

"Thank You Teacher cards and gifts NOW IN STOCK!!! Hurry - end of term only 4 weeks away!"

Create a need, then scratch the induced itch.

Many things are wrong with society. This is one of my "favourites."
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I think we have an answer!

I forgot yesterday to post about my new no. 4 restaurant malfunction, so here's a quick summary.

Yesterday was really lovely and warm, so we decided to go for lunch somewhere without a beer garden and with oppressive low dark ceilings, somewhat reminiscent of a broom cupboard in winter - the Golden Lion. Someone who will remain nameless, but he knows who he is, collected the money for the 4 of us and went to order. Time passed - discussion topics included how big a boat is, whether homebrewed peach chardonnay is better or worse to drink than gnat's piss, how to hide a child's non-vegetarianism, and how to use a trampoline as part of a marriage guidance counselling session.

In fact, we were having such fun discussing varied topics that we didn't notice the non-arrival of our food for about 40 minutes - it was only when I spotted a couple receiving their food who I'd particularly noticed coming in a long time after we had done. At this point, much berating and haranguing of Anonymous occurred, until he finally went over to ask the bar lady (the gorgeous one, not the ugly fat one) what had happened to our food. We received no answer, but approximately 5 minutes later, after what, at a distance, looked like a fairly heated conversation between the gorgeous one and the ugly fat one, and a hurried phone call to (we hoped) the kitchen, our food arrived - nearly 50 minutes after we'd ordered it.

However, that's not the end of the malfunction. I'd ordered salmon and cream cheese on focaccia. Focaccia it was not. It might have qualified as a ciabatta several weeks before, when it was fresh. Now, it barely came under the heading of edible. I was planning on eating it with my hands (rather than with a knife and fork) but I was seriously worried about it re-chipping my fake tooth. Instead I had to wrestle with my non-pointed knife to cut through a former bread roll that probably hit about 8.3 on Moh's Scale, and then I had to eat it after that.

I will not be returning there for food. I wonder if I can end up knocking every restaurant in York off my can-eat-there list before Lint can get his beer challenge sorted!
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I spent yesterday in London (as, oddly, I also did on the first Friday of June last year) on a course learning about UK life insurance company taxation. And about time too

I've got a sneaking suspicion that nobody truly understands everything about UK life office tax - one of my friends has several times said that learning more about tax only gives you the ability to bluff more people that you understand it. I've never fully got why some of the rules are the way they are, and I was possibly put off from finding out earlier in my career by having to sit next to someone who, while being touted as one of our auditors' top tax experts, laughed frequently and loudly like a hyena, and sounded like a 5-year-old when speaking.

Still, the course was very helpful. I now feel that, while I still don't understand quite a bit about tax, I don't understand it to a much lesser extent than I didn't two days ago.

I also saw Badfriend, and stayed over at his place in the unappealingly-named Isle of Dogs, which really ought to rebrand itself, as the parts I saw (the ones where I could expect to come out alive to tell this story, at least) were pretty decent.

Despite some initial confusion over exactly where Canary Wharf was (on his part, not mine!), we met up and, after advising a woefully-lost person that she was miles away from Heathrow, went out for a very good Thai meal. Badfriend's main course appeared to have been cooked by the same person who invented those candles you get on birthday cakes that won't blow out. Then off into Greenwich, after running across the pitch of a Tunnelball game (all the rage nowadays), and wondering exactly what health and safety issues might be caused by flash photography in an underground environment. A brief but eventful (drinking a J20 imitation, getting frisked for a knife going into Wetherspoon's, having to wait for about 5 minutes while someone ordered 5 Aftershocks (of mixed colours, due to them running out of blue halfway through the order), 2 tequilas, 3 Remy Martin and cokes, an Archers peach schnapps and half a Kronenbourg, and finally being told it was past closing by an apparently lazy barmaid, who, 2 minutes later, rang the last orders bell) pub crawl then ensued.

As well as the bloke on the Tube who was telling his girlfriend about his friend who'd recently suffered from diarrhoea to the extent that he'd had to strip and change his underwear while at the pub last week, there were the usual odd people on the train back up to York.

There was an old lady who wouldn't shut up talking to a student, who'd just arrived back from a year in Nepal, about her son who'd also travelled to all sorts of exciting places all over the world, like Rome, Paris and even Stockholm.

Then there was the young lady who sat next to me, with an accent so incredibly public-school you could have cut diamond with it - first thing she did was ring her dad ("Hello, Daddy!") to ask if he'd managed to find the artwork she'd asked him to look for ("From Salvatore di Modena. No, Daddy, I texted you the spelling. What type of art is it that you've got me then? No, silly, what period? Well is it Renaissance, Impressionist, Dutch School? No, that's not the one I wanted - he was painting in the 14th century. OK, thanks for trying anyway, Daddy"). She also rang her friend, apparently trying to set up a date with one of their friends - "I was most partial to the company of that delightful young man who came out with us last week. I enjoyed the conversation we had greatly. Let's invite him round for tea this weekend. Oh, he doesn't have a mobile phone? That's most disappointing. Perhaps we could arrange it for some other time then."

And finally there was the guy who kept asking everyone if they had a Nokia mobile phone charger he could borrow. I don't think he found one in the end.
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