Meanwhile, in blogland...

Vicky has gone, but Laurel is back.

Barbara, Bill and Sarah are all well worth reading.

Groc and Chig both bitch passionately about that dreadful old homophobe Baroness Young - making almost identical points in the process. Groc is also giving away some great MP3s, incidentally.

I go to Amsterdam - and then so does Stuart.
I get bullied by a dental hygienist (You will floss!) - and then so does Rodney.
I go mentally numb from ten hour days at work - and then so does Elisabeth.

And I convert to BT Openworld Broadband at home in Nottingham, with spectacularly successful results. Goodbye 56k dial-up, and gimme gimme gimme them MP3s!

The Troubled Diva Old Curiosity Box – Item 10.
Jack Jones & Susan George - That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be (1972) (4.67mb)

At the time when this obscure, long-forgotten single was released, crooner Jack Jones and film actress Susan George were romantically linked in the public eye. In the light of the song's unusual, haunting lyrics, this makes it an even more bizarre choice for them to tackle. It is hard to imagine any of today's "celebrity couples" doing anything quite so challenging, and downright perverse.

The song is a cover of Carly Simon's debut US hit single - which I've never heard - but I think it is safe to say that the two versions must be radically different. This recording properly sits within the "theatrical" chanson traditions of Scott Walker and Jacques Brel, rather than the female folk-rock singer-songwriter traditions of the early 1970s. What's more, Jones & George have turned the song into a duet, changing the words of the chorus slightly in the process. This gives a the song a whole extra dimension.

It's not a great pressing, so a few of the lyrics are slightly indistinct. You can find Carly Simon's orginal lyrics here - but I strongly recommend not reading them until after your first listen to the track.

I'd love to hear a contemporary cover of this. Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue could do something quite wonderful with it, for instance.

Update: Sorry - you weren't quick enough. These MP3s are no longer on my server. I generally make them available for a week or so (sometimes less) before substituting them for new ones. Better luck next time!

First Christopher "Liquid News" Price. And now Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes. Not a good week.

Portkabin Diary – Week Three.
Now expanded into six exciting sections!

- Section One -

Without wishing to tempt fate, it does look as if my period of Portakabin purgatory has now ended, at least for the time being. Now that there are more of us in Nottingham working on the same project, people will be coming to visit us, rather than the other way round.

Just as it was starting to feel disturbingly like home, as well. I think I got out just at the right time. Hey - give it a few days, and I might even start to resemble a well-rounded personality, with a diverse range of interests and opinions - as opposed to the workaholic corporate drone which I have recently become.

---

- Section Two -

I’m exaggerating, of course. I’m in no danger of becoming a workaholic, now or in the foreseeable future.

Yes, the intensity of the past three weeks has certainly given me a fair few euphoric adrenalin rushes along the way. That feeling of achievement when you finally get someone else’s bug-ridden suite of programs to work, after two solid days of testing, debugging and tidying up – it’s as good as any artificial stimulant. But it’s not an addictive feeling – and I don’t have an addictive personality. What I do have instead is a tendency to fall prone to sudden, fairly intense enthusiasms, which fade as suddenly as they arrive.

In other words – I’m fickle. Loyal where it matters (of course!), but fickle with my interests and pleasures. I lose interest, and I move on. This could possibly be my saving grace.

Oh, and I'm a deeply lazy sod when it comes down to it. That's my other saving grace!

---

- Section Three -

A lovely Tuesday evening with my old friends M&M, in a pretty residential neighbourhood of Newcastle; this couldn’t be less like the grim industrial suburbs which I pass through every day on my way to the Portakabin. There are sweet looking houses in leafy streets. There are awfully polite and helpful middle class people working in the local Oddbins. It is all deeply reassuring.

The three of us go back a long way, but we haven’t seen each other in 7 years, and I have never met their children – now aged 11 and 9. Like all our other friends’ children, they are wholly delightful company, and a credit to their parents. We are so, so lucky not to know any out-and-out brats.

M&M have a newly installed kitchen which, frankly, is to die for. This impresses me almost as much as their children (well, you know what I’m like). It looks good enough to be in a magazine. In fact, it will be in a magazine – the June issue of Kitchens Bedrooms And Bathrooms, to be exact.

We have a lovely meal en famille; a chocolate cake is baked in my honour, and devoured around 11pm. M&M and I simply pick up where we left off 7 years ago (it has been far too long). As a result, I feel instantly re-humanised.

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- Section Four -

During the course of the evening, I discover that for the past 17 years or so, a whole set of people who knew me at university remember me for one particular incident. At a student party, I apparently told someone “I’m sorry, but you’re boring me now”, and stalked off to find someone else to talk to. What a bitch, huh?

I have no recollection of this incident, and my immediate reaction is to deny it outright. I mean, I just couldn’t possibly, right?

Later on, I begin to have my doubts. It does sound rather like the sort of thing which I would have found terribly funny back then – in my own head, that is. My sense of humour used to be so dry that it was sometimes impossible to know how to take certain of my comments. I would give no hint that they were intended to be funny – chiefly because I thought that they would be much funnier if delivered completely deadpan. In a way, I distrusted “obvious” humour – despised it, even. It was part of my intellectual snobbery to avoid the obvious and predictable wherever possible.

It is so strange to think that this odd little story has been helping to define me in people’s memories for all of this time.

---

- Section Five -

Bitchy humour, then. Oh, I can be so damn good at it when I want to be. It is one of my greatest and darkest skills. The same goes for K. When the two of us are alone together, we can be merciless.

Which is all well and good – we’re exaggerating for effect, and being grossly unfair for the sake of private amusement. We know what we’re doing, and how and why we’re doing it. It’s a private thing.

Normally, I don’t have any great difficulty in restraining my bitchy side on this blog. It’s a gift which I am loathe to share with you, dear reader. This is simply not the appropriate medium – too visible, too public.

Back in the early days of this blog – when my audience was still tiny, and when nothing which I wrote seemed to be of any great consequence – I wrote an observational piece with a distinctly bitchy slant to it. There are many ways to tell the same story, and I chose to tell this particular story in a rather cruel and mocking way. I felt quite safe doing this, as I could not possibly imagine any of the people concerned ever finding the piece in question.

To the best of my knowledge, none of them have ever tracked me down via this blog – I would be extremely surprised if they had done. However, a couple of people who know them have read this particular piece, and have since – very tactfully, I might add – expressed surprise at the way that I wrote it. It has now been removed from all my archives.

I have been feeling bad about this all week, and I need to stop obsessing about it. No harm was done. On the grand scale of things, it doesn’t matter. And yet I feel mean, and foolish, and guilty of poor judgement. A blogger’s occupational hazard? Yes, I suppose so. But I’m not going to let it happen again.

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- Section Six -

You remember when I told you about my fantasy band, The Placemats, and their fantasy singles and albums? You do? Of course you do.

Well then, maybe you can imagine my surprise when I found this in my Inbox, on returning from the Portakabin.I am shocked and stunned, to put it mildly.

I'll be bringing this weekend to a close by spending my Sunday evening sitting on the train to Newcastle. I'll be back on Wednesday night.

Some recent Briticisms explained.
Introducing a new occasional service for our overseas readers.

Portakabin. Temporary office accommodation, in the form of portable single storey crates which can be plonked down wherever the need arises. Portable + cabin = Portakabin: do you see? Commonly found in car parks and on building sites. Although originally intended as temporary, these ugly little prison cells have a nasty habit of hanging around for years on end.

Radio 2. The BBC’s national “easy listening” channel, primarily aimed at the over-forties. Has recently become noticeably hipper in outlook and musical content, with some excellent specialist shows.

Gordon Brown. Dour, brooding, Scottish politician who (as “Chancellor of the Exchequer”) has been in charge of the nation’s public finances since 1997. Rumoured to have a strained, troubled relationship with Tony Blair, formerly one of his closest political allies. Also rumoured to a bit of an unreconstructed “old Labour” socialist at heart. Has been stealthily been doing his bit to redistribute wealth without frightening the horses (and the newspapers). Serious minded, largely untroubled by spin doctors, and really rather a good egg, as politicians go.

Attachments. Weekly BBC2 drama series, centred round a London dotcom business. Widely mocked for its unrealistic portrayal of the heady world of New Media. Has progressively scaled down its attempts to represent this world, in favour of good old-fashioned shagging and drug-taking. Unlike most BBC dramas, has been running continuously for many months, presumably in an attempt to slowly accumulate a “cult” audience in the manner of its closest stylistic predecessor, This Life. Unfortunately, This Life was a cracking good piece of popular drama, whereas Attachments is not. Although far from dreadful, it’s just rather silly, shallow, unconvincing and inconsequential. Despite this, its associated website www.seethru.co.uk is really rather good fun, in a “quick giggle for bored office workers” kind of way.

Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen. Flamboyant, dandified interior designer and television personality. Long flouncy hair, long flouncy cuffs, leather trousers. Total queen, yet firmly heterosexual and completely relaxed about the confusion this has caused (has cheerfully given interviews to the gay press, for example). Potentially obnoxious, yet strangely charming and endearing. Has committed many appalling crimes in the name of “innovative” interior design. Particularly fond of “themed” rooms and “challenging” colour schemes.

Room 101. Light hearted television programme in which guest celebrities nominate the things they hate the most, as candidates for potential destruction in “Room 101” (an Orwellian reference, doncha know). On rare occasions, can be pant-wettingly hilarious, depending on the guest concerned (all time highlights: writer Will Self and comedian Johnny Vegas). Its unpredictability is part of its appeal. Troubled Diva would nominate the following for Room 101: DIY superstores, corporate mission statements, Switzerland, nu-metal and the “lifestyle” sections of national broadsheet newspapers. And Portakabins, of course.