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A Question Mark

Wednesday 11th June 2008

I received a flurry of email newsflashes last week from Manchester City Football Club. First the shock news on Monday that Sven-Goran Eriksson and the club had “parted company by mutual consent,” then the follow-up formality on Tuesday that Hans Backe and Tord Grip had also left the club. The surprises continued on Wednesday when a third email informed me that “Manchester City & Sven-Goran Eriksson have parted company by mutual consent” (I think someone pressed the wrong button) before a further email 25 minutes later announced that “Mark Hughes has been confirmed as Manchester City’s new manager.” My final correspondence the following day announced that Hughes had just given a press conference, and then it all went quiet. It had been quite a half-week.

A lot has been said about the Sven situation, and I was obviously agin his dismissal, but I decided to keep my powder dry, for everything to be settled before I said my piece. Then, a 5th birthday party and a 6th wedding anniversary intervened, diverting me (in the nicest possible way) from finishing this rambling, overlong discourse, but here it is now anyway, for what it’s worth.

First of all, despite the current well-aired criticisms of the sacking (yes, sacking) of Sven, it is worth saying that when he arrived he was not universally welcomed. I don’t think there was much outright antagonism, but there were quite a few misgivings from many City fans bearing in mind his reputation as England manager. In the end there was generally a wait and see approach, accompanied with the back-handed compliment that Sven had a proven record as a “good club manager” (whatever that means) who had won trophies wherever he had been; a record that was bound to founder at Eastlands, regardless of how long he stayed there. I’d say I was happier than most at Sven’s appointment, primarily because I was less critical than most of his time at England, where I felt it was hardly his fault that his team failed to live up to the unrealistic expectation placed upon it (although there were plenty of errors during his time there that he can lay claim to and call his own.) As City kicked off the season at breakneck pace, seemingly invincible at home and pretty useful away, most reservations disappeared, and I was happy that we had undoubtedly improved upon the previous season’s shambles, but cautious that our results were exceeding the quality of our performances, and that something was likely to give at some point.

A cheap shotBefore the start of last season there seemed less talk around about the purchase of the club by Thaksin Shinawatra. There were a few grumblings for sure, but amongst the fans the majority seemed not to care about his background or the fact that here was another moneybags owner who was going to skew the league ever more in the direction of the big spenders (indeed, that constituted most of his appeal), and this opinion didn’t seem to change over the course of the season; some even cheered his allies’ success in the Thai elections a few months ago as another feather in the cap for “Frank”. Personally I was extremely uncomfortable with his involvement, in part because of the allegations of corruption and human rights violations that hung around him, but also because I don’t like this trend towards ever deeper pockets buying success in football, even if it is currently our good fortune to be one of the beneficiaries. You will never get perfection I know, but I would prefer for us to be moving towards a situation where a club’s success was mainly down to appointing a canny manager who could handpick promising, talented players to blend a team that plays in the most entertaining way. I can’t tell you how much pleasure it gives me to go to the Premier League page on the BBC Sport website and double-take when I see a Hull City hyperlink staring back at me; but wouldn’t it be even better if we thought it possible that with a few key signings they could rise up the league and even challenge for the title in a few seasons time? Instead we know they will be fighting the drop until the day they are relegated, and it seems we are heading in the opposite direction to the way I would wish, ever further towards a league where the teams that succeed are purely the ones with the with the most pounds, dollars or bahts. You could argue that it is just this trend that has led us to the situation where the Premier League is the strongest domestic competition in Europe, but who benefits? Not the majority of fans I know who couldn’t care less what happened in this years’ European Cup final.

As last season began I had no interest in what happened to my team, genuinely feeling that the club I had supported since a boy was no more and that the team now playing in sky blue were a new club – Thaksin’s – bearing an historic name; interestingly that emotion is one I have heard a lot of other people express more recently. But when I saw Richard Dunne wearing one of those blue shirts on the first Match of the Day of the season such feelings disappeared in an instant, but my doubts about the direction the club would be going in didn’t. “Prove me wrong, Thaksin,” I thought to myself, and with Sven’s hasty and blinkered dismissal my worst fears seem to have been realised, although I won’t say I told you so (especially when stories like this show how ridiculous it is to lump all foreign / rich owner together as if they are inevitably as one.)

Let’s be honest though. Taking last season in isolation Thaksin’s involvement has hugely benefited the club. It was his money that brought Eriksson, Petrov, Corluka and Elano to Eastlands, without his involvement we would never have finished where we did in the league. We are not the first or only club to sack a manager prematurely – indeed City are past-masters at it – but few dismissals seem as out-and-out stupid as does Eriksson’s. So thanks for last season, Frank, but since I am intending to support City until I die I am also looking to the future, and that is where I am concerned. So what of the future, and how will this episode affect it?

For Sven the future looks bright; he’s not all that bothered by events I’m sure. He’s rehabilitated his battered reputation in England, received a tidy bit of compensation, and now has another new job to look forward. In all he’s probably better off out of Eastlands, he’s sorted. But what of the future of the other actors in this story?

On the playing side of the club, in the immediate future there is the fact that Richard Dunne, the rock of our defence, apparently wants away; how much has his desire to leave got to do with the sacking of Eriksson I wonder – how will other players react when their contracts are up for renewal – and how easy will it be to replace someone who currently seems so irreplaceable? He certainly won’t be replaced by paying silly money to Ronaldinho just because we can as has been mooted, a deal that, if it goes through, seems more comparable to the time Melchester Rovers signed Spandau Ballet’s Martin Kemp than to an incidence of a serious football club building a team to challenge for a trophy.

Before the appointment of Mark Hughes I worried about who would accept the job, and why. I have no axe to grind with Hughes, regardless of the identity of one of his previous employers, and he has a promising record as manager; but what chance that promise is given the time to further develop at City? The sacking of Eriksson itself suggests an impatient, short-termism from the owners of the club, and short-termism can breed a short-termists, mercenary strain of manager who will happily sign a three-year contract knowing that the worst thing that could happen is for him to be sacked mid-contract and to be paid off handsomely. I don’t want to malign Mark Hughes’s motivation, but if I were him and considering trading in the stability of Blackburn for the supposed risk at City it would be a no-brainer, win-win situation; he can sign on the dotted-line safe in the knowledge that in the unlikely event that he is given the time to succeed then all’s well, but no matter how badly he fucks it up and no matter how short his reign he will still get his pay-off and a ready-made excuse that his failure was down to his inability to work for Thaksin. Then he can still get a new job based on his unblemished Wales and Blackburn CV.

And finally, to Thaksin himself; what has this episode done to his reputation, and what does the future hold? Well the main thing that has happened is that many of those who weren’t interested in his background in Thailand before and didn’t care what effect a monied and dictatorial owner would have on the club in particular and football in general have changed their minds. Football fans can be a fickle lot, and no one will mourn Sven’s passing or brook criticism of Thaksin if the club goes from strength to strength from here on is. But I can’t help worrying about just how many managers we may have to go through – at a potentially diminishing rate of return – in the hope that one may fluke a bit of success in their first season; and if success doesn’t come, how long before Thaksin becomes bored, loses interest, packs up and moves on? And if that does happen, where will City be then?

Posted by Quinn | Filed in Sport | 4 Comments

Chameleon Day

Wednesday 4th June 2008

Immigration Minister Liam Byrne, glottal stops and all, was on Radio 4’s PM programme yesterday, discussing his plans for a “British Day” bank holiday. Apparently he has canvassed opinion and he feels the “idea…has really caught on” that we need “an opportunity, permission, if you like” to celebrate Britishness, and so he has selflessly decided to promote the idea; it certainly has nothing to do with Gordon Brown having banged on an on about the concept for ages, and we can also disregard the fact that most of the public will agree with any old spurious reason to have a day off work.

Unfortunately the tight-fisted git isn’t proposing that we get an extra holiday to celebrate our country right or wrong, rather the existing August bank holiday is to be requisitioned for the cause: the fact that this holiday is already the date of the Notting Hill Carnival, Manchester’s Mardi Gras and the Lower Puddleton Annual Summer Ram Roast and Tombola, events that may not want to be roped into this all new homogenised celebration, seems to have concerned Liam Byrne not.

But when PM’s Eddie Mair pointed out that choosing the August bank holiday for British Day meant holding it on a day that wasn’t a bank holiday in Scotland, Byrne began to get himself into a bit of a tangle. He maintained that some time in summer – and preferably at the end of August – would be the best date to hold this celebration; in other words, no move from the August bank holiday, as far as I can tell. Mair countered that this would still mean that this proposed British Day “in and of itself excludes Scotland”, and that while the Scots do have a summer bank holiday, it is at the start of August. Byrne reiterated that the end of August would be better, for no particularly good reason other than that lots of people are away on holiday earlier in August; although presumably no more or less than later in the month I would have thought, and the Scots are seemingly currently unfazed by this fact. Eventually, after several unconvincing defences of his position Byrne finally fell back on the phrase “all I’m trying to do…is actually to get this debate started”. To which, Eddie Mair, seasoned as he is in dealing with this piece of rhetoric, would have been well within his rights to have said “No you fucking weren’t! You were stating your opinion. Now; is it your opinion or isn’t it, fuckwit?”

And that’s all I’m really bothered about here; this incremental increase, year on year, in the number of people who when challenged on their opinions think it is acceptable to use this piece of sophistry, to excuse their stated viewpoint by claiming they only meant to “start a debate” on the subject. Who do they think they are, deciding unilaterally to start an impromptu discussion on a matter? Don’t they know that by law you have to be a Dimbleby to do that?

But you know, I really don’t mind people using the phrase when they genuinely want to open up a debate on an issue at hand; it’s just that usually they don’t. These are mere weasel words, worse than management speak, an attempt, when criticised, to wheedle out of any responsibility for your already declared position, to strike a pose of neutrality on a subject you clearly felt strongly enough about to have raised in the first place. Whatever happened to just stating your opinion, defending it, and sticking to it? Then, if someone raises a reasonable critique of your plans you can have the decency to accept that you may consider any contrasting opinions or objections, that you are open enough so that when the facts change you can change your mind. Anything, anything rather than this deviousness, this cowardly backsliding, this transparent attempt at deflecting criticism rather than tackling it head on.

Whenever we see someone who inappropriately claims that they are merely trying to “start a debate” on a matter we should boo them – and hiss them – at every mention of the phrase, don’t you think? Or perhaps that’s a bit harsh; I’m only playing Devil’s Advocate to be honest with you, just taking up an extreme position in order to get the ball rolling, for others to avail themselves of this blog’s comments facility to discuss the matter amongst themselves, to, you know, what’s the phrase…?

Posted by Quinn | Filed in Politics | 0 Comments

Herbert And The Watermelon Of Doom

Thursday 22nd May 2008

“Watermelon!” they shout, and the “they” in question are idiots. But there is perhaps just a nugget, nay a kernel, perhaps a smidgeon or even a grain of truth in that insult what “they” so easily hurl.

It’s a good term, is “Watermelon”. For those who aren’t in the know it is used by some to describe an old-style socialist who masquerades as an environmentalist in order to surreptitiously campaign for their sneaky statist goals; they are green on the outside, red on the inside, geddit? And they will exist, such folk; no doubt the term can be accurately applied to some knackered comrades who have surmised that the best route to achieving their dream of getting government to muck everything up is by going in via the green back door, just as during the ‘eighties the Labour party enjoyed a rapid conversion from being a broadly anti- into a broadly pro-EU party in order to palm continental-style social policies into Britain under the noses of the Thatcher government.

But I think such things can be overstated. I reckon most environmentalists are naturally of a more leftist bent in the first place, for whatever reason. It is just the way things are, and I don’t pretend to understand why, but some issues do seem to exhibit some strange, almost symbiotic relationship with a particular political wing for no obvious reason. While lefties tend to be more environmentally conscious, righties are seemingly more likely to be anti-abortion. This makes no sense as far as I am concerned, but as we have seen this week there is evidence all around.

But if we at least acknowledge that some people are genuine Watermelons, that they are not just greens who happen to be red but socialists who feel that the best way to advance their cause is by posing as environmentalists, then where is the balance, the yin to the yang, that equal but opposite reaction; or perhaps the even greater reaction? In other words, where is the term to describe what is for me a far more likely scenario; of someone who is a free-market anti-government type who opposes environmentalism instinctively, not because of the science (such people are rarely scientists) but simply because the response to climate change implies a reliance on government action that they simply cannot countenance? They are the mirror of Watermelons in that while they may pose as honest brokers simply putting an alternative view to all that shrieking global warming propaganda, in reality they will grab hold of any rogue paper going that shows that there isn’t a problem, so to loudly pronounce that all is well and government can stay in its box, as their dogma demands. Their creed of minimal state intervention has no answers to the problems raised by concerns such as climate change, and so it must be denied for its own sake.

In the interests of fairness then we need an antonym for Watermelon, but what should it be? Cantaloupe? Dry Lemon? I reckon a nice acronym would do; TWiTs, perhaps, although I can’t think what those initials would stand for. But this surely cannot be beyond us, and once we have solved this problem and identified the Watermelons’ natural enemy then perhaps we can think of a moniker for those (other?) people who, whilst complaining about the welfare and nanny states and the dependency culture they have spawned breeding feckless scroungers who expect the state to wait on them hand and foot, then object that they themselves are far too busy to even sort their own fucking rubbish into a few simple piles prior to collection for recycling and want the council to come along and do it all for them. Because they’re out there too; I just know it.

Posted by Quinn | Filed in Environment | 0 Comments

Were All Going To Hell

Wednesday 7th May 2008

Apostrophes can be a problem; just ask those brain boxes on The Apprentice who on last week’s programme debated for around three hours whether it should be Single’s Day, Singles’ Day or Singles Day. (Singles’ Day, in my opinion, as it is both plural and possessive.) But who hasn’t made the odd mistake, writing “it’s” instead of “its”, or “your” instead of “you’re”, out of sloppiness, say, even when we do know the correct usage?

However, this, from the ever-entertaining GrammarBlog, really does take the prize.

We need some copywriter's

The sheer weight of the apostrophe misuse here is astonishing; these are no mere typos, rather the work of someone whose grasp of the written word is so poor that “Punctuator’s” should surely join the rest on this list of the damned.

My favourite punctuation error has got to be “Thieve’s”, a word that is so commonplace and this attempt at writing it so wrong that a tiny child could spot the error at a glance; even “Thief’s” would be an improvement, although then I would be curious as to just what it is, belonging to the thief, that is in need of repenting. For different reasons I also love the inclusion of those pesky “Sport’s Nut’s” on the list; the realisation that they, along with “Loud Mouth Women”, “Effeminate Men” and some others will also get short shrift from St. Peter come the day is highly enlightening. I’m even more glad now that I abandoned my City season ticket a few years ago.

And what’s all that about “High Fallutent”? Do they mean “High Falutin’”? Or even, “High Fallutin’’s”? Perhaps even they don’t know.

PostScript: Please feel free to point out any of my grammatical errors in the comments box; it’s the only way I’ll learn.

Posted by Quinn | Filed in Fimbles | 3 Comments

Many A Slip

Thursday 1st May 2008

Has last night’s result finally put to bed the idea the Rafael Benitez is the master tactician with a near monopoly on the know-how required to win the European Cup? I very much doubt it, and I am ready for the same old clichés to be trotted out next season when Liverpool begin their next Champions League campaign.

Now I’m not really having a pop at Benitez here – although I confess that I’m not a fan of the man – rather having a dig at that brand of lazy journalism that has built up his reputation for the sake of having anything better to do. I didn’t watch the match last night but I did see the first leg on ITV when the increasingly dreadful Clive Tyldesley turned the hyperbole up to eleven. Up until the last minute of that match – as with the tie against Arsenal a few weeks before – it was all about how Rafa seemingly has this gift, this supernatural endowment that can’t help but keep dragging him towards his destiny, and yet another cup final. The newspapers diligently parrot the same line, comparing Liverpool’s oft-stuttering league form with their continued progress in Europe. Why the disparity between Liverpool’s performances in the two competitions? The real answer – a bit of luck here and there – doesn’t make good copy, nor does it fill airtime or column inches, and so this myth, this ill-thought out narrative without any real supporting evidence, of Rafa the genius and his unique understanding of how to win such vital matches, has taken hold.

The truth, I feel, is more mundane. It would be hard to dispute the fact that the Premier League is currently the best league in Europe; a quick glance at the teams involved in the Champions League semi-finals for the past couple of years seems good evidence of this. Liverpool, as one of said league’s representatives, seem to me more likely to do well just by dint of playing in that very league. They are a decent side no doubt, but it isn’t so much that they have failed to perform in the league whilst raising their game in Europe, rather that as they are the fourth best team in the Premier League, which is the top league competition in Europe, they are therefore one of the favourites to progress in the Champions League, which they have duly done.

Think about it; just how could Rafa be so supremely talented that he knows exactly how to get Liverpool to win away to Inter Milan yet he is somehow unable to figure out how to beat Wigan at home? It doesn’t make any sense; the rules of the game and the preparation required are the same. One attempt at an explanation is that Rafa and Liverpool are more motivated for cup matches, more prepared for the do-or-die nature of knockout competitions; but if Benitez does have the surgical skill to prepare for an individual cup game but lacks the broad brush ability required to play week-in-week-out in the league, how come Liverpool were bundled out of the FA Cup by a struggling Championship side? And just how can you identify one particular team as being especially suited to winning cups anyway? Were Manchester United considered good at knockout competitions when they won the treble? Were Liverpool thought of the same way during the ‘eighties when they pretty much owned the Milk Cup on a permanent basis? Or in both of these cases are we not simply dealing with two very good teams, and for very good teams don’t those cups just come with the territory?

The thing is we have been here before. Liverpool under Gerard Houllier were pretty much the same as Liverpool under Benitez; a good side for sure, good enough to do well in the premiership without really challenging for the title, and good enough, with the necessary dash of luck, to win a cup or three. And a decade or so earlier I remember Manchester United fans continually explaining away their latest league defeat and perennial ability to finish fourth in the Football League as being down to the fact that they were a “good cup side”. Well fine, it’s a good excuse, but let’s tell it like it really is; when we describe a team as being a “good cup side”, all we are really saying is that they are “not quite good enough to win the league”. And that epithet applies equally well to the current Liverpool team and their manager.

Posted by Quinn | Filed in Sport | 1 Comment

Crocodile Tears

Wednesday 30th April 2008

Yesterday, David Cameron decided to “’fess up” to the fact that he had failed in his endeavour to call time on “Punch & Judy politics”. I’m not too sure quite what part he feels he plays in such a puppet show mind you, but judging by Prime Minister’s Question Time earlier on today the Tory front bench are certainly managing a more than passable impression of the string of sausages.

But if we can take today’s PMQs as a guide then Cameron is better off sticking with making all those “loser”, “weird” and “strange man” jibes, as he seems pretty unqualified to do anything better. Asking all six questions on the seemingly solid topic of the proposed Counter-Terrorism Bill that allows terrorist suspects to be detained for up to 42 day without charge, Cameron was useless. Gordon Brown managed to defend the indefensible with ease while Cameron struggled to land a clean blow; and indeed that has more or less been the story of PMQs lately as far as I can tell. Cameron may be a slick performer but when he has to make the weather himself he seems flummoxed and clueless; only when events have done the heavy lifting for him – when Brown has already been on the ropes, be it because of the cancelled election, the lost data discs, or the abolition of the 10p tax rate – has Cameron been able to sidle up to PMQs and effectively deliver his sneering coup de grace.

Staying with that 10p tax rate though, I did find it bizarre for David Cameron to have said during his ‘fession on the Today programme that

I was very angry last week because I thought it was the week when actually we found out something about this Prime Minister…which is that that budget 2 years ago was a complete con.

Did it really take until last week for the penny to drop and for Cameron to actually become angry about something that any old fool spotted on the day of the budget itself, over a year ago? I can understand – although I can’t condone – Labour MPs being in denial over the details of the 10p debacle, but what’s Cameron’s excuse? And while he freely accuses Brown of dither and indecision, if it really has taken this long for a simple fact to sink into Cameron’s consciousness then I feel his only real rival is Homer Simpson.

Posted by Quinn | Filed in Politics | 0 Comments

Inside Out

Wednesday 30th April 2008

Oh dear.

Property investment training firm Inside Track, which claims to have created hundreds of property millionaires in the UK, filed for administration on Tuesday, the latest victim of Britain’s housing downturn.

The company, which says it has trained more than 100,000 individuals, said demand for buy-to-let landlord training had shrivelled as mortgages became more expensive and less accessible and as housing prices sagged.

So it looks as if my dreams of travelling in time will remain just that; looks. On a more positive note, however, perhaps I have now received the last of their smuggy and disdainful (but eminently compostable) correspondence that boasted of how you just can’t lose in the property market – especially if you stump up some £3000 in hard cash to pay to Inside Track in the first instance – and which gloatingly mocked and cackled at all those other sad, foolish saps and loser-types; too weak, too timid or just too alert to leap aboard the good boat Inside Track as amazingly it rose with the high tide but then strangely failed to defy the laws of gravity once that swell had subsided.

Which only goes to prove the age-old adage that a Devil in hand can butter no goose on time.

Posted by Quinn | Filed in Business | 2 Comments

A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

Thursday 24th April 2008

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?

Which reminds me, of one of my most abiding early journalistic experiences, back in the day when I was a young cub reporter for the now sadly defunct Daily Splim. The Splim, you may remember, was a somewhat revisionist, iconoclastic publication. It delighted in taking conventional wisdom and turning it on its head; by, for example, championing Bobby Davro as an unfairly maligned comic genius, or by declaring David Attenbrough an ignorant bore churning out programmes of mindless pap that dumbed down the nation. Sometimes we were frustrated when our revisionist view gained ground and become the new orthodoxy, whereupon we would have to return to the subject and re-revise all over again, as in the cases of Jeff Randall and - most famously - the late great great Jeremy Beadle, whose reputation fluctuated between berk and seer so often that it must have made his head spin. Eventually, of course, all this constant reworking began to take its toll, until that sad morning when I turned up at work to find a small well of nothingness where the Daily Splim’s office had stood just the day before; the relentless pressure had seemingly told and the newspaper had finally imploded, crumpling inward under the weight of its own carefully constructed contradictions and paradoxes.

Anyway, back to the point of the story, that assignment I was talking about. The editor of the day decided that she wanted to rehabilitate Cain, and I jumped at the opportunity to interview the man himself. Cain, you will recall, wasted no time in becoming the world’s first murderer, and when there were only four people around to speak of. We wanted to hear his side of the story; our only existing source, the Bible, didn’t seem to give him a fair crack of the whip, and I think any dispassionate reading of the book clearly shows that God blatantly favoured Abel in every regard. With the big man so biased against him did Cain every stand a chance of a fair trial? There was no chance of finding an honest jury made up of twelve good and true, there were no uninterested parties around and conflicts of interests abounded. Could Cain have legitimately claimed self-defence? Diminished responsibility? Was he fitted up? What of reliable witnesses? Even God’s famed omnipresence deserted him on this occasion as he was unaccountably elsewhere at the time of the murder, although that didn’t prevent him from bellowing some cryptic accusation about Abel’s blood crying out from under the ground, but noticeably after the fact. So Cain’s card was marked, but it all had the feel of a Kangaroo court to my colleagues and I. We wondered whether the received version of the tale was all part of the propaganda we still read in the Bible to this very day, which as with all histories and mythologies is written by the winners.

All of these considerations flitted into my head as I journeyed to my meeting with Cain and my train snaked into Eden railway station. The place was predictably deserted on arrival, save for the car and driver the Splim management had put on to take me to Cain’s bungalow. I exchanged glances with the driver as he idled at the barren taxi-rank but we didn’t speak for the entire journey, leaving the decrepit station behind and heading along that pot-holed and unadopted East Road towards the Land of Nod. In what seemed like no time we were pulling onto the driveway of a single-storey wooden dwelling in the middle of nowhere, its external walls ringed with purple bougainvillea. The driver waited outside as I trotted up the steps of the house; the front door was insecure, swinging open as I knocked and tentatively entered, whereupon I saw an old man, Cain, remaining seated in a battered wicker chair, gesturing for me to sit on an obliging ottoman opposite him which he had clearly prepared with a worn linen throw, a mug of cooling tea waiting for me on a side table.

Cain was charming but quite insane. Whether his mental state predated or was a consequence of the trauma of exile I cannot say. He spoke openly as we discussed his family life, which he insisted was happy. He spoke warmly of his brother, but only ever in the present tense, as if in denial of his crime. Each time I tried to steer my line of questioning towards the siblings’ respective sacrifices, to God’s reaction, and to the final time he and Abel spoke, Cain would go off on a tangent; smiling wistfully as he recalled Abel’s birth, of their birthdays together, and what he saw as Abel’s eccentric career choice, eschewing the honest toil of working the land for that crazy shepherd stuff. It was only when we got onto that famous rhyme - those lines with which I opened this post - and the matter of their parents’ respective roles in the family, that Cain became strangely animated, alarmingly so, and I gained my only, tiny insight into the case. What did those lines mean, I asked him? I confessed I never really understood them. They were rubbish, snapped Cain, worse than all that one-sided nonsense in the Book of Genesis. Listen, he said, staring deep into my eyes, my parents were devoted to each other, we were all devoted to each other, until… But let’s just say that if there had been such a thing as trousers back in the day then it would have been Eve who would have worn them. Adam did all the delving, sure, but also a fair bit of the spanning too, not to mention the lion’s share of the cooking; admittedly darning, being a bit fiddly, was wholly Eve’s territory, concluded Cain.

He sank back deep into his chair, then explained how it was only much later that male and female roles seemed to become so divided along gender lines; sharing the domestic workload was a technique utterly lost until the renaissance, when Leonardo da Vinci managed to master art, science and helicopter design while still being able to rustle up a top-notch pasta salad, iron the kids’ shirts and run the hoover about the place. With that Cain turned and waved me away, in all ways exhausted, our interview clearly at an end.

I mention this for no good reason.

Posted by Quinn | Filed in Fimbles | 0 Comments

New Fast Automatic Daffodils

Monday 7th April 2008

We wandered back up to the Lake District last week, and spring having been sprang there were certainly plenty of Wordsworthian daffodils playing host to us; but also, in a house shop in Bowness-on-Windermere, I spotted this wondrous sight.

Automated, perhaps?

Now, no doubt the scholarly amongst you will claim that there is no contradiction in this instruction; but by this simpleton’s definition, if you have to push a button to open a door, then it’s hardly automatic.

PostScript: Remember when this blog was more than just a collection of stupid pictures and videos? Me too. Perhaps this recent trend explains why my readership appears to have dwindled to an all-time low. But if we brave few can just stick together and keep the faith then who knows; something half-decent may happen along here before too long?

Posted by Quinn | Filed in Fimbles | 3 Comments

Into The Valley Of Death

Wednesday 26th March 2008

Following the drainage work done on our house to prevent it from subsiding into the mud, and the subsequent mayhem of having to cram four rooms worth of our accumulated belongings into a room-and-a-half while the plasterers and painters erased all memories of the cracks in the walls upstairs, we decided to take advantage of our insurance-financed first-floor “year zero” by awarding ourselves all some new bedroom furniture. So it is that my wife and I have been enjoying to the full all the associated pleasures of flat-pack assembly; the dowels, the barrel nuts, the instructions simplified to the point of incomprehensibility, and of course the inevitable accompanying medical complaint of “Allen key thumb”.

Through this chaos we managed to stumble upon my son’s old Fimbo toy, a first birthday present from my brother, if memory serves. Delighted, my son took it away to play with, but soon returned ashen faced, stating that Fimbo was “too scary.” Understandable, I thought; I always felt there was something not quite right about old Fimbo, which is why it was the perfect choice as the picture on my old Blogger profile, and is still the image for my About page, Gravatar, and so on. More specifically, however, I reckoned my son had simply forgotten that this Fimbo was the talking version – if you press its tummy it emits one of its famous phrases from The Fimbles television programme – so when it started to speak my son got a bit of a harmless shock, as anyone would.

But having now heard Fimbo for myself, I wonder if my son may indeed be onto something. Over the past few years has the absence of human contact driven poor Fimbo completely mad, or into the arms of someone or something much darker? See for yourself, if you can stand it. Too scary? I certainly think so.

Posted by Quinn | Filed in Fimbles | 5 Comments
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