Lucky Exes & Less Lucky Kids

Yesterday, very early on (about ten past midnight) I learnt that Katy Carmichael (a.k.a. Twist from Spaced) went out with David Walliams for five years. She must have thought she was the one destined to make it big when Spaced came along - alas, it was not to be, as the length of their respective Wikipedia pages will testify. They both attended Bristol University in the late eighties, along with Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson. What gives? In my year at Uni there were barely four people I didn't totally despise...

Anyway, on to something completely different (who can believe I haven't used that one before?). Only one child in twenty is born on the day predicted by the doctor. Contrary to pretty much every other event in my entire life, I was early for my birth - scheduled to arrive on the 12th August, I rolled up on the 10th (cheques and cards in the post, it's coming soon). I was thus born on a Wednesday, making me full of woe (well, who wouldn't be, with the credit crunch and all) rather than Friday, which would have made me loving and giving (nicely dodged, then). If it were Anglo-Saxon times, however (go with me on this) then all I would have been giving was my life - all babies born on Friday were slaughtered, as it was seen as unlucky. And I thought I was full of woe...

Twice Nightly

<< Whiteley: "TWICE?"

Some days, you just take what you can get. So here's Sunday's effort: Heineken was first brewed in 1873. I read it off the label, I ain't gonna go check it now cos Dragon's Den is on, what are you gonna do about it?

Moving on, and onto something else that's been around for centuries - Countdown. Not only that, but the show's recent travails have left a bitter taste in the mouth (seamless). That's right, the game show that taxes the parts other shows can't reach is on the rocks at present, with Des and Vorders storming out of the show under threat of massive pay cuts. To be honest, it's never been the same since Richard Whiteley went to the great numbers board in the sky - if the nation's old people could just stretch far enough to reach that remote, ratings would have plummeted. Richard Whiteley was given the nickname "Twice Nightly" because he used to have two shows on Yorkshire TV each night - Calendar, and Calendar Countdown, which later moved to Channel 4 and became Countdown itself. I had always thought that this was a libellous suggestion about his sexual prowess. Now there's a mental image for you - two from the top and three at the bottom, I'm guessing...

Common Names and Wacky Crimes

<< How Not to Disappear Discreetly, Page 1, Exhibit A

Last night I was too busy being all cool and in London to do the blog, ruining my hot streak of 5 successive days where I've summoned up the energy to post something. I did learn, however, that there are 24 places called Barton in the UK, so it wasn't an altogether wasted evening. Our friend comes from one such Barton, which is, I dunno, up North somewhere, and she assures us that it is the best one. I learnt the other day that my home town of Devizes, Wiltshire has a namesake in Kansas. Devizes is latin for 'the gates', as the town once had a gate at each entrance, to stop the millions of people just desperate to visit it. Barton means, um, town with a bar in it, I imagine.

And so on to today, and an interesting fact relating to the bizarre story of canoe-based magic act John and Anne Darwin, who managed to pull off a disappearance trick that lasted a good five years. The cover of the Mirror late this year which featured the couple, who at that stage were not under suspicion following John Darwin's bizarre reappearance, grinning in the sales office of a Panama condo block, was perhaps the finest image printed all year. It was the start of the monumental collapse of a laughable, yet surprisingly successful, attempt by the couple to fake someone's death - a process known as pseudocide. That's not what they've been banged up for - no, that would be embezzlement and deception on a mind-boggling scale. Good luck to 'em.

Fact Me 'Til I Fart

As you may have noticed, I've been writing down one thing I've learned each day for the past seven-and-a-bit months, but the truth is that I usually learn a lot more than that in your average day - and today was as average as it gets. To celebrate, here is a dispassionate list of stuff I have learnt:

1. Dostoevsky is spelt Dostoevsky, not Dostoyevsky as I had thought.

2. 'Crime and Punishment' is about a crime, and the related punishment.

3. The weekly team meeting has been cancelled.

4. If you want extra cheese in your Reggae Reggae sub, it'll cost you 30p extra.

5. The Primark in Wandsworth's Southside centre carries an overwhelming aroma of B.O.

6. The Primark in Wandsworth is closed to those trying to enter the store a full quarter of an hour before the actual closing time, even if you're only nipping in to get some boxer shorts.

7. The 44 bus from Wandsworth to Tooting Broadway takes longer than advertised on the timetable.

8. The Pepsi Max draught pump in Tooting KFC has run out of syrup.

9. My old uni mates' band have made a video, with proper acting and everything. It looks like it cost more than Dizzee Rascal's video, which is a bit weird.

10. The rented DVD of 30 Days of Night is officially copyable.

11. As a siren approaches then moves away, it sounds to the ear as though the pitch changes. This is known as the Doppler Effect.

I thank you.

I Just Finished a Book

<< Pullman: Dark

Today I finished reading The Amber Spyglass, the third of Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy. I'm now in a slightly awkward position, as I'd love to talk at length about it, but will spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it. Anyway, it's very good - the trilogy was collectively voted the third best novel of all time, behind Geri Halliwell's books for kids. Or it may have been Lord of the Rings and Pride & Prejudice, I don't remember.

While that might be pushing it, it was definitely gripping, and has occupied me so intently during recent commutes that it's going to be a shock actually remembering anything about the journey. If you've been through Clapham Junction lately and have seen an egg-shaped individual waddling through the crowd with a Pullman tome pressed to his face, tripping over old ladies and small children as they desperately try to figure out what the fuck is going on, and what's with the thing, and why did that guy go there... well, that was me. Now I'm just gonna have to go back to scowling at people again.

Pantalaimon's name is taken from St. Pantalaemon, whose name is Greek for 'all-helping'.

That will mean a lot to people who've read 'His Dark Materials', and precious little to those who haven't. A bit like this post then - good job I chose a popular book, I guess...

Tour de Facts

<< Mark Cavendish: "Ah, what's the point?"

It's a fine summer's day today, and while we British may have nothing better to do than swelter in offices while our youths slip away on the balmy breeze, across the Channel, millions of people find the time to stand at the foot of a mountain and whoop at passing cyclists. That's right, the Tour de France is in full swing - we were but two hours away by car whilst on holiday, but driving to watch the world's greatest cycle race seemed a bit off. Initially, my burgeoning enjoyment of le Tour felt like the final passage into irretrievable sporting geekdom, but I have since realised that I'm way past that point already, and anyway, there's a lot to love.

For one, there's the lovely scenery - better than the fat builders' convention that passes for a backdrop at a football match anyway. Secondly, there's the fact that it may be the hardest sports event on Earth to win - a British rider, Mark Cavendish, has won four stages at this year's Tour, yet was so monumentally far from victory that he decided to pack it in altogether. Finally, you get a jumper for winning stuff. I wish my work did that - a polka dot sweater for the neatest filing cabinet drawer would really boost morale. The one down side, of course, is that some bad apples like to get a little boost from the lab, and in fact, entire teams are sometimes put under suspicion, and removed from the race, subsequently casting a shadow of foul play over each and every participant. Never mind that, just look at the mountains.



Speaking of which (wow, this is segueing like a proper sports report - just call me John Inverdale without the dubious racial stereotypes; John for short) the peloton (they have a made-up word for the group of riders - that's almost as cool as Skull Man) are heading towards the Alps, and the peaks, which are all known as 'cols'. Col de Cousteau, Col de Mangetout, Col de Johnny Halliday, they're all there. I had thought this had meant 'mountain' or 'peak', forgetting about Page 1 of my 'Parlez-vouz Francais?' textbook, which would have informed me that mountain is of course 'mont'. This is what 'col' means:



'Col' is the French word for a mountain pass.



The cols that the riders have to conquer are graded from 1 to 4, 1 being the most treacherous, except that the very hardest climbs are rated as being higher than 1, which seems fairly ridiculous, given that the purpose of any grading system is to cover from the biggest to the smallest. Have the mountains grown since the system came into being? Unbelievable. The most frequently traversed pass in Tour history is the Col du Tourmalet in the Pyrenees, which has been climbed 47 times in all, and stands very much 'hors categorie' at 2km above sea level. The idea of climbing it on a pushbike and then careening down the other side of it sounds more like punishment than sport to me, but each to their own.

Skull Man

Glory be, my fellow questers (I'm sure you're still out there, somewhere) - I am now a published writer. It may only be an article, and one of questionable quality, but it's out there, on the interweb, just waiting for a publishing supremo to read it, shrug wearily and move on. This is genuinely surprisingly swift progress, given my sluggish work rate and faltering ambition, and I'm sufficiently gushing with pride to post the link to it right here. Please feel free to StumbleUpon, Digg, etc it to within an inch of its life.

Back to reality, and there's no need to trawl the depths of the internet for any more blue whale riffs - I have in my hand a fact, passed to me by a colleague with an (admittedly unexpected) understanding of Japanese:

The Japanese writing on my T-shirt says 'Skull Man'.

This seems entirely logical, given that the ice-cool character perched atop the script is indeed a man, with a white, featureless head not unlike a skull. I am, however, slightly disappointed. I think I preferred the mystery, imagining that it was a piece of writing taken from a street sign, and said 'Toilets 100yds' or ' Free Mobile Phones this way'. To discover it merely offers an accurate, yet non-illuminating description of the mysterious figure above it has somewhat taken the shine off. Besides, if it had said Skull Man in English, there's no way I would have bought it. At least the Skull Man himself remains resolutely badass, arms folded, literally defying translation. Skull Man, I have just discovered to my delight, is a manga character from the 70s, and is (what else) a cold-hearted, lightning-fast anti-hero. Skull Man is way cool.