Merry Christmas. I think my lack of blogging in the past couple of months has switched most followers off so perhaps I should commit to blogging more often as a New Year's resolution.

We are in Nelson for Christmas and relaxing as we always do here. There is some snow here but not as much as last year so our journey up on 22nd was a lot quicker. The scenery was just as spectacular though. The snow covered mountains were beautiful and the rivers and lakes partly frozen but with the absence of brilliant blue skies we didn't experience the same sights on the way up as we did last year. On the last trip the partly frozen rivers were bright blue as the sun shone through the thick snow covered ice. This year we had cloudy skies all the way up so the variety of colour was missing but it was still spectacular.

For the first time in years I didn't get any CDs for Christmas but I've been buying enough in the charity stores recently to make up for it. I did buy The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall on Christmas Eve in a second-hand record store in Nelson. I have it on cassette in storage but I'm gradually trying to replace my tape collection with CDs as I find them. I might struggle with a few of them though and end up having to buy a second-hand cassette player in a charity store for $10. There's plenty of options for these machines and I suspect that most of them actually work pretty well but for $10 I can afford to try a couple until I get one that works.

I'll have to buy a hif first though. I bought a hifi magazine last week and depressed myself at the price of the various boxes you can buy. Record players have taken off again as the music business has embraced this old technology again. Most bands are releasing their material on 180gm vinyl so the hifi companies are developing the technology to keep up. But from the evidence in that magazine, it comes at a price. I'm sure you can buy the equipment in the hundreds of dollars instead of thousands but it would be great to b able to afford the quality and have a room to house it and the rapidly growing collection of CDs. There's even more vinyl in the charity stores so I will have fun wen I eventually buy a hifi.

In the meantime I will have to rely on the iPOD and the cheap machines that they plug into. Either that or we buy a quality iPOD stereo and make do until we buy a house. I think I will have to continue dreaming for some time to come.

Tracey bought me the complete Monty Python box set for Christmas. This is all the TV shows, a couple of live performances in the US and a couple of documentaries. I also bought the box set of the recent Monty Python documentary that was shown on the TV in Canada in November so I have a lot of comedy to watch...if I get the chance. A friend of ours leant us a DVD set of House, Series 4 and I watched that in a few days, driving Tracey crazy at the same time so I will have to watch Monty Python in sections I think.

I finished a course on speaking in public recently and one of the assignments was to give a couple of persuasive speeches. One of mine was to encourage the class to listen to different bands instead of the mundane piffle that the majority of the world seems to be listening to. I listed the following to teach them:

1. Marvin Gaye's What's Going On
2. New York Dolls first anonymously titled album
3. London Calling by The Clash
4. Velvet Underground and Nico
5. Three Feet High and Rising by De La Sol
6. Bryter Layter by Nick Drake
7. Nod's as Good as a Wink by The Faces
8. Super Ape by Lee Scratch Perry and the Upsetters
and of course
9. The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall.

I wonder if any of them will listen to any of this selection or will continue listening to Lady Ga Ga. Sadly I think the latter.

Going Up in the World

We've just moved. We will email our new address very soon but the email addresses and phone numbers will remain the same. We have moved to an apartment not far from the bat cave so we now have windows and a view of, well, the outside. We can now see what the weather is like before we venture out instead of guessing. We have an outdoor pool, strictly summer use only and way more storage space than we had in the aforementioned bat cave.

We officially moved out of the basement today and handed the keys back. It was a mad dash at the end. I was on a telecon at work when my cell rang from the basement. I hit "ignore" because I was on this telecon with my boss and a team working on one of my projects and then it rang again. Big panic: Tracey had locked the car keys in the car and couldn't finish the clearing up. And the deadline for moving out was repidly approaching. I called for help and someone drove me over to help her out. We finished the packing and filled the car to the brim. It was so full I was having to push individual shoes into little nooks just to get it all in. We finally had to call a friend to take the remainder and she saved our skin. We are now gradually making our way through a mountain of boxes and we're both knackered; Tracey more than me because she's been doing the majority of the work.

We now have a brand new, but tiny fridge. It's barely big enough to take one of those monster milk carton you can buy here but it will have to do. It comes with the apartment.

Anyway, I'm going now before I collapse in a heep.

Big Stage, Crap Sound

Sorry, sorry, sorry. We've been too busy with finding a new place to live (a blog in itself at a later date) and work and side effects of medication and stuff.

The biggest event we have attended since the last post was our trip, with the kids, to the U2 concert at the local football stadium. Our local stadium is an indoor dome of a building with a roof that is kept in place by air blown into a serious of inflatable tubes, so if the air handling units that power this were to switch off, the roof would fall down. This is about to be removed for a solid retractable roof.

The stadium holds around 50,000 people in the stands but the stage was at one end and offered a 360 degree view of the band (hence the title of the tour: 360 deg tour - very clever) so the additional people on the pitch took the total audience up to 60,000. U2 had promised to offer a discounted price for 10% of every night on their world tour so our tickets cost $30 each, but we were in the seats at the back of the stage, but still had a good view. I'll qualify that; we had a clear view of the stage and the lights and the hge 360 degree screens above the stage and the band themselves but Bono and the biys were little stick men if you didn't watch them on the screens.

Anyway, we took to kids over the downtown Vancouver and arrived just in time for the support band, The Black Eyed Peas. They are not my favourite band in the world although they were exciting enough in the early, less successful days before Fergie turned up, but since, then they have descended into middle-of-the-road mediocrity in comparison and as a result become millionaires due to a huge increase in their popularity. Honestly, some people have no taste, hence the reason why Maria Carey sells so many records.

So the Black Eyed Peas were OK and tried to cover the huge stage as best as they could but the sound was disappointingly poor - but then the support bands always are. They were on stage for about an hour and jumped up and down and sang and rapped and stood with their arms wrapped around themselves like rappers do and Fergie walked around on unnaturaly severe high heels and a sparkly dress and other dances took to the stage and people cheered and shouted everytime the main fella shouted "Vancouver" and that sort of thing.

Then they left and the stage was cleared and we waited for the main act. David Bowie's Space Oddity started to pump out of the venue speakers and this signelled the imminent arrival of U2. Then they started playing a few of their recent songs and we discovered that the sound "issues" experienced with the support were not exclusive to the support. It was rough, loud and crappy ad it didn't improve as the concert went on. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't sore on the ears but it wasn't great for the expense that they had obviously put into the stage. In fact, here's a comparison for you, it was worse than the sound in the main hall at the SECC in Glasgow. Now that's crap. But the lights and screens and everything was good I suppose and they did play Sunday Bloody Sunday which was good to hear but the biggest issue that night was the fact that the kids were bored stiff throughout. Evie had never been to a concert before but didn't really know U2 and while Josh had been to see the Racontuers a couple of years ago, he was ill and needed to go to bed. We would have happily gone after the second song but we had paid our money and wanted to get some value. We left half way through their first encore so that the kids were in bed at some point before midnight but we certainly won't be going to another concert as a family during school time.

Sadly there's nothing else coming up in Vancouver to talk about so I won't be going to any shows any time soon. Although I got a short shock yesterday when I saw an advert in one of the local papers for a Norah Jones show and the words The Fall under her name. I thought, "surely not". That would be a diverse pairing too far for the Canadian consumers but it excited me for about three seconds until I realised that The Fall is the title of her latest recording. Still, it's worth thinking about. The tour could introduce Mark E Smith to a whole new audience...most of whom would leave the venue before Ravi Shanker's wee girl took to the stage. I fear I would do the opposite. orah Jones is OK if you are in the mood for that type of music and you're not bothered by an album of songs that sound the same all the way through. Imagine what one of her shows would be like.....?

I also noticed this past week that Morrissey has been up to his old falling-over-on-stage tricks again. He collapsed during one show and this has been rescheduled and then at the start of a subsequent concert he was hit in the head by a flying bottle and walked off. Aparently this show is not be rescheduled due to a rather extreme case of sulking. I rember the days when Morrissey fans would try everything to get onto the stage with their hero and he didn't mind that, so why the change now? Of course, he plays larger venues now where the stage is higher and further away, making invasion much more difficult. Actually one fan got onto the stage at the U2 concert and was flattened by a few very large security guards. That will hurt in the morning.

Nothing in Particular

Not sure what I'm going to write about this time....

I'm attending a class at BCIT at the moment on Effective Public Speaking. People at work were surprised that I thought it necessary but I guess I was comparing myself, unfairly, to the best of the best at Honeywell and coming off a poor second best. Compared to the general public who are not used to presenting in a public forum and the kids on the course, I'm not doing to badly at all and enjoying it.

We have to give a number of presentations throughout the 12 week process and one of the group has spoken about her diagnosis of bone cancer that eventually lead to the amputation of one of her legs. This happened to her at the age of 18 but she seems to be coping really well with it, both physically (you'd never know that one of her legs was a prosthetic) and emotionally.

Anyway, it inspired me to talk about my epilepsy last week which necessitated me to do a little research on the world wide interweb. It would appear that of the 40 million suffers in the world, 32 million have no access to treatment either due to poverty and geography or the fact that they live in a country that still believes that epileptics are possessed by demons. actually, due to the side effects of these meds, I tend to agree with them, but that's another story. I read that the first evidence of seizures can be found in Babylonian tablet in the British Museum. These will be around 4000 years old and they apparently talk about demonic possession. It took another nearly 2000 years before a Greek physician, Hippocrates, figured out that there was a neurological connection to the seizures rather than a spiritual issue but it took the medical profession until the 19th century to formally recognize this and start treating patients with the care and respect that they needed. This, and the fact that witnessing someone having a seizure is a pretty freaky thing to go through, meant that the condition had a huge stigma attached to it and still does in the developing world, hence the lack of treatment in those parts of the world.

However, as I've said before, if not being able to drink beer and feeling a bit shitty is the worst I have to cope with, I'm not doing too badly.

I downloaded a Pixies concert this week. They are touring in celebration of the 20th anniversary of their 3rd album, Doolittle and some of their European concerts have been released for download at 10 pounds. I also bought the remaining Beatles albums on CD so now have the complete set although not all in the new format. I still don't like the new format...it's cheap and nasty looking.

We're off to see U2 with the kids this week. Should be fun. It will be Evie's first concert so it will be interesting to see what she thinks of it.

Green Ideas

I attended BC Hydro's Power Smart Forum this week to network with customers and learn a bit about environmental initiatives. For the uninitiated, BC Hydro is British Columbia's power generator and they have a department called Power Smart who provide funding and general advice for customers to help them complete energy retrofit projects to their buildings so that they become more efficient consumers of electricity. The over-riding reason BC Hydro want to do this is so that the use of their electrical output is minimized and they have sufficient surplus to sell to California, where electricity is consumed with a voracious appetite for lighting and air conditioning. They also want to control their output to prevent having to build new dams and destroying more ecosystems in the northern part of BC.

The vast majority of the electricity in BC is generated via hydro dams and are therefore very low carbon emitters, although not carbon neutral, but we do import electricity from places like Alberta where they generate electricity by burning coal so we are not entirely environmentally friendly here on the Pacific west coast.

The conference, though, included some key-note speakers, workshops and discussion sessions that covered all sorts of environmental issues in support of the Power Smart drive.

The best speaker was Andrew Winston who is a "globally recognized expert and speaker on green business" and had a very engaging presentation offering corporations some advice on how to reduce energy consumption. He introduced the fact that China is busy constructing the equivalent of 30 Manhattans in China every year and to support this, half the world's cranes are in China right now. China's recession was 7% growth and I attended a talk on the North American economy on the final day and 7% growth is not a recession to anyone, but in these recent economic times, if 7% growth represents a recession in China then you can imagine what their growth figures were prior to the global financial meltdown.

He also spoke of what Wal-Mart are doing with their suppliers. They asked the top 100 suppliers to an event in Brasil last year and 3 days prior, sent them all an agreement that they were being asked to sign live at the event, but sent it in Portuguese. The agreement forced the suppliers to agree to provide their goods in an environmental and sustainable way. This included an agreement not to purchase beef from any land reclaimed from the Amazon (the rain forest area in South American as opposed to the web-based book store), so Andrew's argument was that countries around the world had been trying to stop the rapid decimation of the rain forests in the Amazon for 30 years and Wal Mart have managed it...Wal Mart, that evil corporation that apparently treats their employees badly, pays them very little and their rapid expansion round the world has meant the end of small local retail outlets everywhere.

He also suggested that a recent poll of MBA graduates would be willing to accept a lower salary if the company offering it can demonstrate their green credentials over other corporations. This mirrors what we have been hearing from the States where under-graduates are increasingly choosing universities for their green credentials. Frankly I don't believe a word of that. Whilst it may help them make the decision if they are stuck between two institutions, the main reasons they base their choice on, I suspect, are the course they want to study, the success and quality of the university and how much they can afford.

He gave a couple of examples of initiatives that large companies have tried in an attempt to reduce energy consumption.

Conway made their truck drivers to reduce their speed from 65 mph to 62 mph and they saved $10M, but the best story he told was the distribution company UPS who stopped their vehicles turn left. Turning left in countries where we drive n the right hand side of the road means lots of idling while they wait for the on-coming traffic to pass and increases the chance of accidents. So through this initiative that they drove with the use of GPS they saved 28,500,00 miles of travel and 3,000,000 gallons of fuel.

His strongest message, however, was his recommendation that we greatly reduce our consumption of beef. This industry is responsible for the decimation of the Amazon forests and other agricultural areas around the world, the processing of the meat is energy intensive and then you have to distribute the products all over the world.

Food for thought....

I'm a 606 Commenter

I've just left my first comment on the BBC's 606 website. If this thing works the way I think it will, here's the link...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/F14978413?thread=6985364&skip=50&show=50

I'm NorthVancouverJambo. I feel so empowered.

The comments were in relation to an interview that the Celtic bigwig made to the BBC in which he...yawn...talked about his wish for the Old Firm to move to England. I'm so bored.

To iPod or not iPod

I've been listening to music on Josh's iPod a lot recently. Ordinarily I would get my melodic fix while driving to and from work (and anywhere else for that matter) in the car but due to the fact that I can't drive until December, at the very least, I can't really listen to it there so I've had to rely on the iPod. Josh's is the Classic that has an 80GB memory and despite having 309 albums on it and a collection of digital photographs, still has over 56GB of capacity left. When we eventually get our stuff, even if I add all our other CDs on (over 400 more), it still won't be full and I'd be concerned that the iMac will start to run slower, but I'm not sure. Any ideas?

Evie and Tracey have a Nano each but rarely use them.

Anyway, my question is, do I need an iPod and if so, what type do I get? A Shuffle is way too small and the Classic is way too big from my recent experience. The new Nano has a camera and a decent capacity but the one that is grabbing my attention is the iTouch, but only because it has the ability to play games on it. Other than that I don't see the benefit. I already have a Blackberry for work so don't need another box that does stuff on the internet or store personal records.

This is, of course, all academic because I won't be allowed one anyway.

Reformation Days

I've read a number of articles on-line recently about various bands from the past reforming and playing live. The Pixies have been doing for a few years now and are currently touring their 3rd album, Doolittle. The Incredible Mr Ford and I saw them tour that record the first time around (1989 I think) and saw them at the Royal Court in Liverpool. It was an incredible show at an incredible venue, if you could excuse the sticky carpet. I've always wanted to see them again but the opportunity has never arisen. It doesn't sound like I will get the opportunity this time around either as they appear to be ignoring Canada but you never know. I could always fly to Glasgow...

The majority of the Faces are also planning a one-off reunion for charity but without Rod Stewart. This is one band that I would love to see live having been far too young the first time around. But it wouldn't feel the same without their illustrious leader. I suspect that they've fallen out after allegedly rehearsing last year with Flea on bass to replace the late departed Ronnie Lane. News coverage suggested that Rod Stewart wanted the majority of the cash from any tour and this clearly annoyed the rest of the band. I'm surprised they got that far with rehearsals in light of Rod Stewart's focus on his own solo career in the 70's as the Faces came to an end having tried to keep going after Ronnie Lane left. It saddens me that they couldn't make it work this time around and if the rumours of Rod's greed are true he needs to take a good look at himself, but that may just be media speculation.

The stand-in singers for the reunion are to include Mick Hucknel. Really?? He used to have an incredible voice (for Simply Red's first album) but he's deteriorated into middle-of -the-road rubish now and would make a mockery of the songs. The only other singer that would come close to Rod Stewart would be Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes. He's the only singer I would pay to see sing with the Faces if they came to town.

The other band I've heard about today is Mott the Hoople. Rumours of the Stones Roses reforming have been around for years but is unlikely to happen by the sounds of things but it got me thinking about whether I would like to see any of these bands a second time.

I' love to see The Smiths but that's the least likely reformation on the face of the planet. I thought about going to see The Sex Pistols when they played Glasgow a few years ago but thought might have turned into a circus. The Clash would have been excellent to see but that's never going to happen now that Joe Strummer has passed away. Sylvester Stewart has been playing live occasionally over the past couple of years but not with the other members of his famous group. Sly and the Family Stone would have been the greatest reunion I think.

Kiss are touring again and I have been thinking of buying tickets for Josh but I'm really not sure. I would only want to go to see what a Kiss show was like but I guess I can see that on the internet for nothing. They were never very good the first time round and far more interested in what they looked like than what they sounded like which is why they were never heard much in the Uk as I was growing up. In any case, there's only two of the original line-up anyway and Gene Simmons is far more entertaining on the TV now that with a bass strapped to his leather-bound body. I am a genuine fan of the man, just not his band. I heard him on the radio in the UK when he was plugging one of his books a few years ago and he sounded pretty switched on. He speaks his mind and possibly gets on people's nerves as a results but I like and respect him and he's come a long way from his origins. His Mother must have been (and continue to be) an incredibly strong woman having survived the Nazi's "camps" during the Second World War and bringing a young Gene to the States a bit later, bringing him up on her own. She's the reason he has been as successful as he is. He's a self-promoting, big-mouthed, money-making machine but maybe we need more people like him.

Anyway this post isn't about the Kiss bass player. So, who would you like to see reform that hasn't already? Post a comment and let me know.

Here's my suggestons:

1. The Smiths

2. The Stones Roses

3. Sly and the Family Stone

4. Pink Floyd (all of them)

5. The Faces (all of them)

6. The Velvet Underground (I know they reformed but that was for a one-off tour and I missed them)

7. The Las (again, I know they reformed for some shambolic shows at festivals but I only got to see rough versions on the internet.

8. Dead Kennedys

9. The Jam

10. ...erm....Abba (sorry, I panicked)

Thanks to the Black family for joining the army of followers. I'm not sure if 3 can be described as an army but I'm don't care. My hits on the blog have soared into three figures now. Admittedly most of those are me checking for new comments and followers but that doesn't matter. In fact, here's another quiz to set you: how can I get more followers? What would you like me to write about. Let me know. I could be your literary DJ at a wedding, waiting for prose requests instead of records.

Random News is No News

The last two weeks has seen me in bed for most of my spare time as I try to deal with the latest side effects of this medication, hence the lack of any posts. Sorry. In fact, this one might be a bit short.

I started reading War and Peace recently. I'm not entirely sure how long it will take me to finish but I am determined t get through it so that I can continue making it through the Big Read top 100. I thought that if I could get it out of the way early, it will lift a huge weight off my shoulders. Thankfully, I've already read Lord of the Rings. The next couple after that will be short ones I think so that I can get my numbers up. Perhaps a couple of Roald Dhal that I can polish off in an afternoon.

I had my biggest find at the charity store last week: 15 CDs. Someone had obviously dropped them in that day. Stones Roses, Brand New Heavies, The Shins, Massive Attack, Joni Mitchell, The Beach Boys and David Grey to name but half of them. I also picked up 3 of the new Beatles remastered albums in Costco for $13 each: Sgt Pepper, Let It Be and Rubber Soul. The new packaging is horrible being as it is, shiny cardboard, but you get a wee film with each that you can play on the computer and a booklet giving some of the background to each record. The recordings have been remastered which means if you play them on systems that cost thousands you can pick up nuances that were undetectable on the originals. And you can buy the set in Mono if you really prefer it. Frankly, I'm not into the Beatles enough, nor do I own a hugely expensive system to play them on but I am collecting their albums so thought the $13 price was too good to let go.

I've been busy loading our CDs here into iTunes. It was much quicker on our new iMac but iTunes itself is a little limiting. And when you go for the album artwork, they miss half of the records I have and on the few that they do have the artwork for, they get it wrong.

I downloaded a couple of Podcasts form the BBC this week too. Jonathon Ross was one. What you end up with is his radio show without the music. There must be a reason for this. Licensing on the music perhaps, but it rendered the experience a little boring. I like Ross and his antics on the radio but it's the music that I used to listen to him for so. I also downloaded a football show from BBC Radio Scotland which was better because I didn't have the expectation of music.

Talking of football, I see Scotland didn't make it to the World Cup...again. Came down to the last game against Holland and despite an apparent great performance, a defensive error in the last few minutes cost us the game and the chance to play in the play-offs. I suppose I'll have to support England then. I'm quite hopeful of their chances.

Ok, I have a basketball game t go to; Josh, not me. Better go.

Scotland the Grave

I've just read my mate, Donald's, latest email in which he's just commented, as constructively as is humanly possible, about the weather in Scotland, the fact that living in Scotland could be better the national team's chances against that footballing super-power, Macedonia, a game that we (like, I play for the team......) won 2-0, by the way. That means we need to win our last game against the Netherlands, which is no mean feat, and then hope that our resultant second place in our group allows us to qualify for the World Cup play-offs against a crap team...like the Orkney Islands, or a team from Mull or even a team made up exclusively of ladies from a terribly posh part of Vermont. Can this be arranged I wonder?

Anyway, it got me thinking about cheering the fella up, from the point of view of someone who used to live in Scotland but who now lives in a temperate rain forest climate on the west coast of North America where the sun's been shining steadily for the past few weeks and we can see eagles soaring majestically in the air, pretty much any day of the week.

Pheww; here goes.

1. You can buy chocolate that tastes like chocolate and not baby sick, any day you like, mate. I've written about North American chocolate before and won't bore you yet again but it's a real reason to be thankful, I can tell you.

2. You can go and see your favourite bands whenever they tour, because they always tour in the UK and rarely come to Canada. When you live in Vancouver you have to take what you can get and hence I've seen George Michael live. I'm not proud of it, but it was surprisingly good, I have to say. I've seen a couple of other bands too, but not much. The Raconteurs were particularly excellent last summer and Josh loved his first experience of a live show, but the opportunities in Scotland are far more than over here. On the other hand, when bands do tour here, you get to see them in ting places that they would never be able to play in Scotland. We've seen REM in a park and stood feet away from Michael Stipe, Travis is a wee venue and they came in through the crowd and Tracey shook Fran's hand and The Black Crowes in a theatre.

3. You can drink a pint of British cask conditioned ale in a pub that doesn't have numerous screens showing various different sporting events and have the aforementioned beer delivered by an expert at the correct temperature (room temperature) and not the temperature of ice. You can't taste beer at that temperature. I should know, I've tried on numerous occasions.

4. You have proper television. You have the BBC and all their wonderful programs made by people who love their art and are capable of producing superb, thought provoking drama, hilarious comedy, entertaining music shows or world class documentaries and not the dross we have to put up with over here. And that's just the BBC. The majority of the stuff here is imported American sewage, made for morons and sadly depressing. I'm not suggesting Canadians are the morons that I referred to in the previous sentence, by the way. They are a little further south.

5. Your radio (particularly the BBC) is second to none. Admittedly this is a mute point because you can listen to it on the world wide interweb as long as you keep in touch with what's on and listen to it within 7 days of it's broadcast, but frankly, I'm beginning to run out of reasons.

6. The scenery up the west coast and the north coast Of Scotland is breath-taking. It's even more breath-taking here but I've always been a fan of the Highlands and the holidays we spent up there were amongst the most relaxing I have ever had. Rent a cottage in the middle of nowhere, take a few books (none of your pulpy trashy fiction - take quality people), some choice beer/wine and some sturdy footwear and you're sorted. Even if (or when) it rains all week...who cares, because you are on holiday, in the middle of nowhere. It's everything that vacation should be; a complete escape from the trials and tribulations of normal working life.

7. The curry in the UK is only something that you can only truly appreciate if you miss it for a couple of years. The curry here is runny. That and the apparent lack of those spicey onions that you eat with those big crisps are the only issues I can think of moaning about, but when you can't get thick creamy curry sauce and spicey onion stuff with a pint of Lal Tu Fan (not spelling it properly, but John Hunter knows what I'm talking about) you'll understand just how good Scottish curry is, particularly in Glasgow.

8. Football is called football in Scotland and not "soccer". You've no idea how frustrating it is to have to say soccer all the time. I even have to say it when I talk to other Scottish people here for fear of confusing them. It's fitba, but if you say "fitba" they think that "football" is a terribly rough game played by wimps (they have to wear all that padding) and an ill-shaped ball...with cheer leaders, the world's most distracting sporting phenomenon. AND, if you want to see some proper fitba, you can go down Tynecastle and see it live and not the part time pish we have to watch here.

9. I need to get to 10 for our Don. Erm........Blackpudding. In fact, breakfast. Breakfast here is eggs and a few bits of other stuff. I hate eggs because, as most of you will know, they come out of chicken's bums and look, smell and probably taste foul. In Scotland you can have proper bacon and not the paper-thin stuff here, tatty scones, proper sausages, beans, mushrooms, toast and blackbloodypudding. Proper breakfast.

10. Made it...Next...the shop. Nothing remotely like it here.

OK, that should cheer you up sir.

Now, having said all that I wouldn't want to move back from here because I prefer Vancouver and have fallen in love with the scenery, the way of life, the quality of life, the people (not literally Tracey, there's still only room for you my Lover) and the record stores. We can see bears in the streets, eagles in the sky and whales in the ocean. We can watch basketball (shite), hockey (I'm being converted), football (mmmmmm) and baseball (HELP) all year round and ski in the winter. In the Spring we can ski in the morning and go to the beach in the afternoon and it's warm. You can ski in the morning and go to the beach in Scotland too but it would have to be Hillend (skiing on upsidedown brushes) followed by Portabelly.

Has this worked Mr Pretsell?

Anyway, I'm off. You'll be delighted to know that it's pouring here today. Bloody weather.

Goin to the Pictures

Before I start, I've still only got 2 followers and one of those was me pretending to be my wife (not in a weird way)...so actually I've really only got the Incredible Mr Ford. Thanks for sticking in there fella. I've been on other people's blogs and they have dozens of followers so what's going on. Rich and Mr Black, I think it's just you two out there so I will keep it up for us. How do the professionals do it? The set-up instructions talked about monetizing my Blog and adding adverts that earn me money every time one of the readers click on the advert. A nice thought but I think it would cheapen my efforts and it requires lots of followers. I don't want to monetize the Blog but some more hits and followers would be good for my faltering e-ego. Does anyone have any ideas? Other blogs seem to be focused on one subject and attract hits based on subject matter. Perhaps mine is too varied. They say that you should write about what you know so maybe I should write about music all the time. At least you two (Fordy and Bri) will read it anyway and you both like music, but I don't want to restrict myself.

I'm writing this from our brand new iMac. Very sexy it is too. iTunes works much quicker and downloads the CDs in a jiffy. Why don't I get the album artwork each time? One of you must know the answer. Garageband is a great application too. I think I will be the next Aphex Twin and make millions from the comfort of the batcave.

Tracey and I were thinking of going to the pictures tonight but there's nothing on. Well, there is, but we've already seen Harry Potter, Julie and Julia and The Ugly Truth. The latter is very funny, by the way, in case you haven't seen it although Gerrard Butler's American accent is awful. Anyway, it got me thinking about films I've enjoyed over the years so here's a few recommendations:

Big Night; a story of the owners of an Italian restaurant that serves excellent food but few customers. It stars Minnie Driver, Ian Holme and a few other's you'll recognize but it's one of those films that you never forget, for the right reasons.

Trainspotting; still a brilliant film (and even better soundtrack).

Notting Hill; I love Hugh Grant films. I don't know why. He plays the same character in everything he's in but I can watch them over and over again. Is this a guilty pleasure or does anyone else like them too? Perhaps it's the scripts. I don't know.

Hi Fidelity; the story of a record store owner so I was hooked before I saw it. Lot's of great tunes including the Beta Band and a great performance by Jack Black.

24 Hour Party People; this is the story of Factory Records and the Hacienda. It has a cameo from Mark E. Smith and has Steve Coogan playing the infuriating Anthony Wilson.

Gregory's Girl; I remember seeing it in the cinema when I was a kid and enjoying it and then watching it years later on the TV and finding it brilliantly funny.

300; I love the fact that this heroic Greek king has a Scottish accent. Maybe it's because it sounds more aggressive than an American one.

Angel Heart; Rich and I watched this with Morgan Bath at University and I loved it, especially the twist at the end. I wonder what Morgan is doing now. 

About a Boy; another Hugh Grant film but one with a Badly Drawn Boy soundtrack. 

As Good As It Gets; Jack Nicholson at his best playing a crabbit old guy and his growing relationship with his gay neighbour who he can't stand, and the waitress at his favourite cafe.

Kelly's Heroes; the best war movie ever with Donald Sutherland playing a hippy driver of a Sherman tank.

So I Married An Axe Murderer; one of my favourite movies, particularly the scenes with the Scottish father. One of the only acceptable Scottish accents from someone who doesn't normally have one that I have ever heard.

Meet Joe Black; strange but wonderful.

OK, that should keep you going for a while.

Quick update on the Big Read top 100, I finished Pride and Prejudice and started on War and Peace. It's 1000 pages of very very small text so I should be at it for a long time. Need to stick at it though because I want to be able to say I've read it one day. Jane Austin's novel was good but the style of writing took a few pages to get used to. I'll have to see the movie now that I've read it. I never used to like period dramas but I think I'll make an exception.

OK, back to downloading The Fall into iTunes.

Getting Better

It has been quite some time since my last Blog, due in part, to a week away in Nelson where we spent a week with my cousin Heather and her family and chilled out as usual. The kids have the space to roam around and Heather and Brain's boys keep them occupied which means that Tracey and I have the time to relax, read books, drink coffee and look at the spectacular scenery. Thanks guys for a great week.

The other reason for the delay in writing has been the fact that I have been struggling a bit on the medication. The neurologist had to change it because when I didn't have caffeine induced work to keep me awake during the day I was doing a great impression of a zombie, but without eating people. That wouldn't have been very popular. I'm now on new medication and seem to be back to normal in terms of my energy and the ability to stay awake beyond 4pm. When the meds were changed I had a couple of weeks on both as I was weaned of the old ones and gradually introduced to the new ones so the latter part of our week in Nelson saw me more tired that ever but since our return I'm back to normal. Let's hope it lasts.

So I have spent the last couple or three weeks continuing to buy CDs in Thrift Stores in Vancouver, something that we have been doing for the past year or so. Due to the advent of iTunes and other digital music sources, people appear to be ditching their CD collections to create space so audiophiles like me, who actually like to have an actual product to pick up, can add to their collection...for next to nothing. There's also a few record stores in Vancouver that have used CD sections where you can buy them a little cheaper than stores like HMV. Tracey and I found another one today on Commercial, in East Vancouver, and I picked up some more: Primal Scream, Money Mark and Super Furry Animals. They had some 7" singles pinned to the wall behind the counter. They had one King Kurt single, "Zulu Beats", (remember that one Donald) for $99.99. I was convinced no one in Canada had heard of King Kurt, let alone be prepared to part $99.99 for 2 songs. When I was paying for the CDs I heard that the Shuggie Otis album had been released on CD so that will give me something to search for. I read about him in the book "1001 Albums to Listen to Before You Die" but never expected to find it anywhere because he released it at the age of 18 and promptly disappeared into obscurity. He influenced the likes of Prince and OutKast so I am keen to find it.

We need to support our local record stores around the world and give me somewhere to visit when we wonder round the shops. I can't wait until we have our own house (when when when?) so that I can get the rest of the collection over and buy a stereo...with a record player. I am delighted to hear that vinyl has had a sort of resurrection in recent years with bands releasing new records on heavy vinyl. It must have an impact on the way they react to the stylus or something...more stable on the turntable. The tone is far warmer that CDs but you can't play them in the car. Talking of cars, Tracy and I saw a brand new Roller today. I'd never seen one before, but it looked awful. It's a huge ugly bulky clunky looking car. Not that I ever linked Rollers much anyway but it struck me as a shame that these classic shapes had been re-engineered into bricks on wheels with shiny bits.

I spotted another bastardisation recently - they've released a book called "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". It takes the basic text by Jane Austin and adds a new storyline about a plague of zombies roaming around the country eating people and forcing the Bennet family to train their 5 daughters to become ninja zombie killers. I guess it's classic literature for the comic generation but it seems a shame to spoil the original. It prompted me to buy the original and start it. Then I remembered that our friend Yvonne Wallace had emailed a list of 100 books (http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/) last year that the BBC had created after seeking recommendations from the viewers. It had Lord of the Rings at No. 1 and lots of other well-known classics and I was ashamed to see that I had only read 12 of them. So I have committed myself to make my way through as many of them as I can. I've started looking some of the out in the same stores that I buy my CDs and have so far procured War and Peace, Little Women, Moby Dick (not on the list but I thought I'd give it a go), Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Brigette Jones, Dune, David Copperfield, Birdsong, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Anna Karenina and Emma. That should keep me going for a while.

I wonder what the average number of books from the list people have actually read?

Mine's a Pint

Master Black asked me what my favourite beer was last weekend and, despite my inability to enjoy the stuff for the next couple or three years, I thought I'd blog about my favourite tipple for your delectation.


I started tasting beer when I was a small boy, tasting it from Dad's pewter mug at parties. As most small boys will attest this experience is rarely enjoyable because their taste buds have not developed a taste for much, let alone beer, and certainly not for a pewter mug. Metallic beer.... ! At the age of 15 or 16 I started going to pubs (sorry parents) with my pals, usually before the football at Tyncastle so that the smell of beer had departed before the half hour train journey took me home to Stoneyburn. It's amazing what 3 or 4 pints will do to a 16 year old when downed in an hour, but, whilst the social aspect was enjoyable, the beer still wasn't. We used to meet at the Auld Hoose in Williams Street, Edinburgh (now a Bert's Bar) because the bar maid (Yvonne I seem to recall...amazing how I remember) served us without asking any questions. The pub was made out inside with a hug fake tree that we used to sit in the branches of. You had to be there. I can't remember the mass produced rubbish I drank back then but I remember hating the stuff. As my teenage years progressed we would start going to parties at the club next to the Playhouse and drink Grolsch. I hated that too but the bottles came with a cool flip-top so I gritted my teeth and drank it. I eventually started drinking whiskey and ginger because it didn't give me the dry boke every time I tried it. Next came university in Liverpool where we were fed watered-down beer, a new one on me. This time it was Tetley Bitter or Guiness. I couldn't stand the bitter at that point in my life and especially not watered down, so I pretty stuch stuck to Guinness. The Incredible Mr Frost and I would occasionally mix Creme de Menthe with it and we had minty Guinness. Our favourite haunt was Flanagan's Apple in the same street as the infamous Cavern Club. This was an Irish pub on 3 levels that had folk music in the basement and 2 other floors of bar area. The Guinness there was great.


It wasn't until my late 20's that I started to like beer in it's own right. I remember being in an Asda in Liverpool where they had a deal; 4 bottles of beer for the price of 3, so I picked 4 I had never heard of before and took them back to Tracey's parents and drank them all during a relaxing evening.


Fast forward to our home in Glasgow and the off-licences nearby, Peckhams and Odbins where you could buy bottled beers from all over the world. I discovered Australian beers, American beers, beers from Germany and Belgium and a variety of Scottish and English beers from microbreweries (breweries that produce up to 15,000 barrels a year). Microbreweries have become more popular in recent years as drinkers searched for different beers from different styles that actually tasted of something more than the mass produced fizzy pop that the big breweries have been producing for years.


So here's a list of beers that I have enjoyed and still enjoy in Canada today. You may recognise some of them, but they are in no particular order:

- Innes and Gunn, Oak Aged Beer http://www.innesandgunn.com/ this stuff is aged in oak casks that used to be used in the whiskey trade and you can definitely taste whiskey, but only if you drink this from a glass and give the oxygen enough time to get to the beer. Don't try drinking this out of the glass or you won't taste it.

- Little Creatures, Pale Ale http://www.littlecreatures.com.au/ the brewery building used to be a crocodile farm in Western Australia and now produces a number of ales. I've only ever tasted the Pale Ale as that was all that was available in Glasgow. I've never seen it in Canada or the US but hope springs eternal (assuming i ever get back to drinking it, that is).

- Sierra Nevada, Pale Ale www.sierranevada.com this is another beer that I found in Glasgow but have now tasted the draught version in San Diego. Not sure whether I have seen it in Canada yet.

- Unibroue, Trois Pistoles www.unibroue.com this beer is sold in large bottles in the liquor stores in BC and it packs a punch at 9% ABV. I used to enjoy a bottle of this on a Friday afternoon when I got home from work. It certainly relaxes you after a hard week at work.

- Cairngorm Brewery, Trade Winds www.cairngormbrewery.com this beer isn't brewed all year round so if you see it in the shops in Scotland or on draught in the pubs you should give it a go.

- Badger Brewery, Golden Glory www.hall-woodhouse.co.uk this is a light beer brewed with peach blossom and you can taste the subtle hint of peach when you drink it. Hall and Woodhouse is an independent brewery in Dorset.

- Lewis Richards', Home Brew I'm sorry but this brewery is way too small for a web-site but if you ever have the opportunity to taste his IPA, take it. Very nice fella.

- Granville Island Brewery, Kitsilano Male Cream Ale www.gib.ca Granville Island is a fun place to visit for the day whether you live in Vancouver or are just visiting. This beer is my favourite, but their others are great too. We've been on the tour (very short - very small brewery) and you have the chance to taste their beers afterwards in their taproom. A tip - sign up when there are fewer visitors because they give you a small tasting glass but bring the beer in pitchers so the fewer the guests, the more beer you get.

- New Belgium, Fat Tire www.newbelguim.com this is a very refreshing beer in California where it tends to be warmer than anywhere else.

- Timothy Taylor, Landlord www.timothy-taylor.co.uk I've never been one for listening to what Madonna has to say but I heard her recommend this beer and decided to try it in Glasgow. Very nice.

If you're really interested in learning more about beers I would recommend the following web-sites

- www.beeradvocate.com
- www.beerhunter.com

Beer Hunter was either started by or inspired by Michael Jackson (the beer journalist, not the occasional singer) but now that he has died I suppose it has been carried on by others. Michael wrote a number of books on the subject, the best of which is Ultimate Beer, a review of over 600 beers. Tick them off as you taste them. I used to do that. Hey ho.

Mustn't Grumble

Post #7

We are currently enjoying unnaturally good weather here in BC at the moment with temperatures that must be in the low 30's regardless of what the local media are saying. This, and the thunder and lightning storm that hit on Saturday night, has caused around 100 forest fires in the Provence, no doubt stretching the already thin resources for fighting fires even thinner. Last weekend, as we were enjoying the sun at Harrison Hot Springs (a wonderful place if you've never been - actually, it's wonderful if you have been too) a fire was raging near the town of Kelowna and 10,000 people had to be evacuated for a few days as the the fire was fought and brought under control.

The family and I were over on the Sunshine Coast this weekend visiting friends from Scotland who are here visiting relatives and we spent a great weekend chilling out (an odd phrase given the temperatures but never mind) on the beach, watching fireworks and an annual parade in the local town. Thanks guys for a wonderful weekend.

The result of this, though, is that I feel drained of energy and struggled to get out of bed this morning. I felt the same last Monday after our weekend of chilling at Harrison and I have put it down to a combination of the heat and the meds I'm on and until the medical professionals figure out what caused the recent seizures (this may never happen apparently) and the source of the general fatigue (could be the my body getting used the meds or my body not liking the meds or something else entirely) I/we will have to put up with it.

My friend Brian told me about the ex-footballer, John Hartson's battle against cancer. He was diagnoses with testicular cancer recently and the tests revealed that it had spread to his brain and lungs. The news on the web today has suggested that he is recovering from a second brain operation, is recovering well and gaining strength, but there's gaining strength and gaining strength.

I'm also reading a book called "My Stroke of Insight" by Dr Jill Bolte Taylor http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b_0_9?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=my+stroke+of+insight&sprefix=my+stroke

It is her story of how, at the age of 37 this Harvard neuroanatomist suffered a rare form of stroke in the left side of her brain greatly compromised. As the stroke happened she was able to recognise the deterioration of various functions of her brain academically but nonetheless lost the ability to walk, talk, speak and think properly. I'm about half way through the book, on Day 2 of her hospitalization, but, not wishing to spoil the ending for anyone wishing to read this, she makes a full recovery and writes the book.

So as I moan and groan about how my minor condition makes we tired and prevents me from drinking beer (a love I have, particularly on a Friday night but hardly the end of the world), driving (notice now the beer comes first in this list mmmmmm!), swimming, flying on long haul flights and pretty much do anything after a day at work (erm...that's it), that's all.

John Hartson and Jill and numerous others; my mother who fought breast cancer, my mate back home who lives with CF, friends whose son was diagnosed with CF after birth and many others are constant inspirations to me and, on the really tired days give me the kick in the arse I need.

Brian told me about a couple of bands he has been listening to recently. The Friendly Fires www.myspace.com/friendlyfires sound a bit like an early Spandau Ballet, but good and Cajun Dance Party www.myspace.com/cajundanceparty sound just like The Kooks. All of this will mean nothing to those who have never heard of either Spandau Ballet or The Kooks but who cares.

More soon........

Canadian Chocolate..fit for your dog

Post #6

The family and I have been living in Canada for over 2 years now and we see no reason to return to the UK for anything other than vacation. We have met lots of great friends, I've continued my association with Honeywell and enjoy my role here more every day and we've been introduced to a few new experiences.

Skiing: we were on the ski slopes on Vancouver Island within days of arriving under the expert tutelage of my cousin Kirsty and her family. We've progressed from cautious snow-plough to cautious parallel turns (technical term) to tempting the Olympic downhill course at Whistler. Actually that was Josh and I one weekend when we up with friends. Josh and the friends skied straight down the hill, or cliff as I liked to call it, and I opted to ski across the hill and therefore made far more turns and consequently took about half an hour longer. I don't think I will make the team for these Olympics. For those of you unfamiliar with skiing, we have 3 grades of hill: Green, which is the easiest regardless of which hill you are on; Blue, which can range from moderately difficult to the aforementioned cliff; and Black, which is almost always cliff-like, frequently bumpy and often narrow. These grades differ depending on the hill you are on. For example, the black slope on our local mountain, Mount Seymour, is like the blues at Whistler and our blues are like the greens at Whistler. we have also learned that snow boarders are the skiing equivalent of the dark side, sneaking up behind you before turning sharply. This has two results: the snow boarder narrowly misses you and secondly, they make a very loud, very sudden noise, right behind you regularly necessitating a fresh pair of undergarments. If you want to see some photos go to http://www.mountseymour.com/ or http://www.whistlerblackcomb.com/



Football (or soccer if you live here): this sport, our religion back home is open to everyone; men, women, boys, little girls, of all levels of ability. From expert toe punters like me (I'm expert at hitting the ball squarely with my toe and nothing else in fitba) to little girls who have never kicked a ball before, like Evie when we first arrived. This is different to Scotland where fitba was really on open to boys who were pretty good (assuming you knew someone who coached a team) and amateur men who played on a week day night and took the sport far too seriously. So both Josh and Evie have been playing in a team since they arrived and I help coach Josh's team with a great Kiwi called Grant. We don't have to pass any coaching exams or courses run by the local authority, but nor do we have to submit forms so that the club can check our Police records. This is a little scary but it seems to work fine.

Baseball/Field Hockey: in the late Spring/early Summer Josh plays in a baseball team and Evie a field hockey team. We have to call it field hockey here because "hockey" is the game they treat as their religion here that they play on ice and if you are new to the sport you spend the entire game watching where the puck (think of the ball, but smaller, harder and kind of flat...so not really a ball) used to be 3 seconds ago. It's slightly easier when we watch my cousin Heather's boys playing, but not much. So baseball is the most boring game in the world, it typically lasts 2.5 hours and consists of small boys missing the ball a lot. Field Hockey is considerably more fun, being as it is considerably shorter in length and, with the success rate of Evie's team, including more scoring.

Spring time: in the Spring in Vancouver we are able to partake in the North American experience of skiing in the morning and lying on the beach in the afternoon. This is not something we were capable of doing in Glasgow. The closest we got to this was skiing on artificial ski-slopes which was brush matting. Imagine skiing over a large brush turned upside down. Now imagine how much skin you would have left if you fell on it.

Otherstuff: we have kayaking available, hiking, mountain biking and, of course, the wildlife. We regularly see bald eagles, bears, raccoons and pigeons(??) and in the ocean we have seals, sea lions, dolphins, Grey whales and orca.

However, it's not all rosy in the land of maple syrup. Their chocolate is just the wrong side of inedible. I'm not talking about some weird Canadian brand that we've never heard of, I'm talking about Cadbury's. It's something to do with the stuff they put into the chocolate to prevent it from melting, but the result is a chocolate that we would typically give to dogs in the UK. Canadian TV is awful, unless you have the really expensive cable, in which case it's lots of channels of awful content and a few decent shows and sports. We watch the BBC channel which is exclusively news programs, the Food Channel if our Jamie Oliver is on it and erm, that's about it. Of course it is perhaps deliberately bad to discourage us from sitting in front of it all evening and get out to enjoy all of the above activities, but even then, there's no excuse for dross we have to put up with. Those of you reading this from the UK should be grateful that you have the BBC's many channels (TV and Radio) and Channel 4. Equally frustrating are the Canadian takeaway curries. Horrible runny and, in some cases, quite healthy. If I wanted "healthy" I wouldn't be choosing a curry. They don't have pubs here but they do have sports bars. This means you sit at a table, have beer and other tipples brought to you by a waitress (almost exclusively very pretty, blond and wearing a dress at least one size too small). Then you sit with your friends and try not to be distracted by the myriad of televisions (monster screens) showing everything from hockey (the ice version) baseball, American Football, golf, and the most pointless of sports, basketball. A game in which a point is scored every 3 seconds by unnaturally tall boys whose shorts would make rather baggy trousers for the averagely heighted person. Every 3 seconds...which means there's absolutely no action or interest at all until the last 5 minutes. And people watch this, in bars. And the unnaturally large TVs, all competing for viewers in these bars, all have the sound up.

Other than this we are happy here.

Concert Prices

Post 5

Sorry Mr Ford for the lack of content yesterday but I am finding myself in need of a nap in the early evening these days and it's since I started taking my anti-siezure meds. Don't know if the two things are linked but I can only assume that they are. Even after a good nights sleep and a reasonably easy day in the office (no driving around to meetings for me at the moment) it's still the same so I may turn this daily post into a whenever-I-feel-up-to-it post. Maybe it's just old age catching up with me and punishing me and my body for years of abuse. No, that can't be it. I mean we drank a fair bit at university but that was 20 years ago and it was pretty watered down ale to be honest. And anyway, since then, my capacity for drinking in those volumes has reduced to somewhere on the wrong side of half a pint so it can't be that. The biggest problem though is not the unnatural tiredness but my enforced inability to drive. It's killing me. That used to be my time to listen to my favourite tunes, particularly the stuff that Tracey doesn't like which is pretty much all of it. Try listening to The Fall now. Not only that, I shouldn't really be left on my own either so I can't listen to "my music" in the house.

One thing I can do, though, is go to concerts, just as long as I go with someone who likes it too. Tracey and I went to see Coldplay the other week. We paid $70 each for tickets that the singer, Chris Martin, described as "suicide seats" when he saw them towards the end of the concert. And out tickets were the cheaps seats. Give them there due though, they gave away a free live CD as we left the concert. This was a nice thought but a) you can apparently download the CD from the interweb anyway so it's hardly unique and b) it probably retails for around $10 so we are still paying a lot of money to see a show from very high up in a hockey arena. It was, however, a great show.

We are also taking the whole family to see U2 this October at the big stadium in town. They have mandated that every show will have 10,000 at around $30...so we bought 4 of them...but we are behind the stage. It's a 360 degree stage so we should see something but the stage is up at our end of the pitch so the majority of the audience will be infront of the stage so that's where the band will be facing for most of the show I'm guessing. I will let you know.

Compare all this to the Raconteurs. I took Josh to see them last summer in the big park in Vancouver, Stanley Park and the tickets were around $30 each. It was Josh's first concert and he thoroughly enjoyed it but at least it was more affordable. And he can say this was his first show when he gets older and not be embarassed like his Dad: Hot Chocolate at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh when I was 10.

It's all very different from when the Incredible Richard Ford and I used to go to concerts when we were at university. 20 years ago the bands we like were playing live for 5 - 10 pound, or $10 - $20. These are the same types of bands that are playing in Vancouver now for $30. Not a huge increase when you think about it. So it's just the big shot bands and artists that are demanding the big prices and their promoters (Live Nation) and record companies that are probably taking the majority of the proceeds.

Everyone should come to the dark side and start listening to proper music instead of the only the mass (over) produced crap that makes all the big money for the record companies. I just hope that these artists are getting their fair share of the profits but I suspect not, hence the long line of artists that have filed for bankruptcy.

Here's some recommendations for my dozens (I wish) of followers out there. Records that should be considered by bands or artists that are not multi-millionaires. The Faces included Rod Stewart who definately is a multi-millionaire, but the rest of the surviving members are not.

1. Ogdens Nut Gone Flake by the Small Faces
2. Bryter Layter by Nick Drake www.brytermusic.com
3. Your Arsenal by Morrissey www.itsmorrisseysworld.com
4. Screamadelica by Primal Scream www.primalscream.net
5. A Nod's As Good As a Wink...To a Blind Horse by The Faces www.the-faces.com
6. Hour of Bewildrbeast by Badly Drawn Boy
7. Surfa Rosa by The Pixies www.4ad.com/pixies
8. Rings Around The World by Supper Furry Animals www.superfurry.com
9. Heavy Soul by Paul Weller www.paulweller.com
10. The 3 E.Ps by The Beta Band www.betaband.com
11. The Las by The Las

Happy Listening.

Ronaldo signs for Hearts (I wish)

Post #4

So Cristiano Ronaldo has been presented at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu stadium this week in front of a capacity 80,354 crowd after finalising the world record transfer of 80 million pounds (I don't have the pound sign on this North American laptop). The Real Madrid President, Florentino Perez wants to return to the Galacticos era where the world's best players play for the club. They have already signed Kaka for 56 million pounds and will no doubt sign more.

It's a risky move since the last Galacticos ended in some success and lots o failure. For example, the club refused to pay defenders the same level of salary as the attacking players and this saw the departure of Makelele from the last Galacticos team to Chelsea when David Beckham arrived at the club. Ironically, at this point Real Madrid stopped winning silverware and Chelsea started.

But the really interesting point about this week's event is the number of fans that turned up to see a young man put the strip on and juggle a few balls about. 80,354. What did they expect to see? Off their heads, the lot of them.

The nearest we've had in Scotland was when Dalglish returned to parkhead as Director of football for Celtic. About 100 people turned cheering, shouting and, probably drinking Tennents Super by the way pal. It was a similar scene when Celtic were in dire straits about a decade ago and the fans were screaming for the Board to be sacked. This happened on a regular basis and the great unwashed (literally in some cases - soap dodging beggers) of Glasgow's East End would gather outside the main stand chanting and singing and drinking more Tennents Super. Young BBC reporters would be dispatched to get a sense of the atmosphere and interview some of the fans for that night's tele and be talked at by the assembled hords.

The same thing happened in Newcastle (and is probably happening now - Richard, comments?) but nothing in quite the same numbers as the mad Spaniards.

I suppose I'm just jealous. Hearts could afford to borrow Ronaldo for a week let alone buy him and even if we could he wouldn't come. Who would want to play in front of (barely) 18,000 fans on a wet Thursday night against Hamilton in the League Cup...and lose. This is why Kaka rejected Man City's bid to land him. Not that they play Hamilton but you get my drift. No, Hearts have other problems to deal with, mounting debt, a tiny wee stadium and a Lithuanian owner who fancies himself as the manager and makes a roaring arse of it in the process. I wish we had a stadium that was capable of holding anywhere near 80,000 people. The closest we have come is using Murrayfield (60,000) for European games and barely managing to fill half of it.

No, us Jambos will have to make do with what we've got and aim for finishing 3rd in the league...the closest we'll ever get to winning the league.

Peter

Blog Instructions

Post #3

A few of you have asked about becoming Followers so I thought I'd share the method. Those of you with Google accounts (Gmail, Google blogs accounts etc) it's slightly easier but you start on the right hand side of the Blog:

click on the little box with the multi-coloured G Follow;
a new window will appear asking you to sign into one of the accounts that it offers;
if you don't have one you'll have to create a Google account, but I used Tracey's Gmail account, username and password and then clicked on a box - "follow this Blog"

Not sure what happens when you don't have a Google account but it won't be difficult.

If you manage to make it through this process it would help if you added a photo to your profile but I will leave that up to you.

Adding comments is easy too but I think you need an account too. I signed into the blog as me and bobs yer uncle. However, I think yo can add a comment with an "openID". Richard (the IT expert), is this correct?

OK, hope this makes sense. I'll post a proper Post in a mo.

Peter

Michael Jackson Ate My Hamster

Post #2

Well my followers...well, follower...well Richard Ford, I've made it to the traditionally difficult second post and only a day after the first one. Richard, I was not writing on the Blog when you emailed because I was working and didn't think it would be considered, by Honeywell, to be "work" in the true sense of the word, or in any sense for that matter. And then my Blackberry wouldn't let me reply so I had to send you an email from my work address and then you would have gone home so you'll have to read it tomorrow [big breath].

So I've thought long and hard about the topic of this post and because every news network across North America is still harping on about it I though I'd share my thoughts on Michael bloody Jackson. CNN, in particular, are treating his death like he was royalty; real royalty. Every time I go onto the network to get some real news I am treated to stories of his death, his kids, his huge debt owing to his spending habits and his will. We've had 3 nights of Larry King interviewing one of his brothers (Michael Jackson's brother, not Larry King's brother - what sort of a show would that be) at Neverland. We've had night after night of video of crying fans thinking that the world has caved in on them. It's as if there's no news in Iran, Iraq or Newcastle (wee Michael Owen).

However, it would appear that since his death on June 25th the sales of his music have increased through the roof. In the UK, 3 of his albums and 13 of his singles are back in the charts where 600,000 units were sold last week. I assume a "unit" is either an album or a song...not sure. In the North America we have 9 of his albums in the Billboard Top 100 album charts including the top 3;

1. Michael Jackson: No. 1s
2. Essential Michael Jackson
3. Thriller

The latter, I'm reliably informed by the BBC's website is the best selling album of all time. Other albums reside on the Billboard chart at 15, 25, 27, 34, 39 and 41, a collection of his studio albums and compilations. The top 3 are at this lofty place due to sales of over 100,000 each from the previous week, mostly digital downloads it would appear. 2.3 million songs were downloaded during this week too. Compare this with total sales for all Michael Jackson albums of 10,000 in total from the week before his death and song downloads of 7,000 and you can see the volume of sales, all because Michael Jackson died.

So if Michael Jackson is "the King of Pop" and all his fans are so distraught at the news of his death, where were they all when his financial difficulties hit the news in 1995? If they had bought all the records they are buying now, then, perhaps he wouldn't have been so skint. Perhaps he could have kept Neverland (sold to some real estate company a few years ago to raise cash).

Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that these people genuinely feel sorrow that he has died. But if Morrissey or Mark E. Smith died, I wouldn't rush out a buy the Smiths records or The Fall's CD...mostly because I already have all of them but that's not the point. My point is that these "fans" are not really fans at all. They don't love Michael Jackson for his music, they love the idea of Michael Jackson, the wealth,the glamour and the media-generated hype.

I saw a graph this evening showing the top 10 selling artists of all time based on units sold, according to the Recording Industry Association of America and guess where Jacko is? It's a trick question because the "KING" of pop doesn't make it onto this list. It is, in order from biggest selling first (in millions of units):

The Beatles 190
Elvis (Presley, not Costello) 168.5
Garth Brooks (who the hell's he??) 128.5
Led Zep 112
The Eagles 101.5
Elton John 91
Billy Joel 83.5
Barbara Streisand 78
Madonna 78
Mariah Carey (really????) 76.5
Pink Floyd 75.5

I think the fact that he's only produced something like 10 albums in nearly 40 years didn't help either. In around the same time (Jacko released his first album 4 years earlier) The Fall have produced 3 times this output and the same again in compilations botched together by a myriad of record companies that Mark E Smith has fallen out with. Its just a shame so few people buy The Fall records. There's me, the incredible Richard Ford, erm that fat lad we met at University in the pub up from Penny Lane and emmm that's it. Admittedly I chose a band with an unnaturally high output to compare Jacko with but the point is, how can he be the King of Pop if he's produced so few records and doesn't even hit the top 10 biggest selling acts of all time?

His spending was out of control. Where were his advisers? He bought the ATV Music in 1985 for $14.5M and with it, the rights to the majority of the Beatles music, then promptly had to sell 50% by merging ATV Music with Sony in 1995 to raise money. Then, according to the BBC, he secured a $200M loan with the Bank of America in 2001 using his half of the Beatles music as collateral to pay off debts and refinanced it again in 2006. At the time of his death it was speculated that his debt was $300M - $500M. How can it get that high?

I wouldn't mind so much if the media were focusing on his talent. Despite the fact that I don't particularly like his stuff (apart from the Jackson 5) I have to admit that the guy had talent. Song writing, singing and performing but this past 2 weeks has shown that it's all about the hype and not the music.

The First Post

My first post...ever. There's few questions going through my mind at the moment; what am I going to write about, who's going to read this, how do I punctuate this sentence properly? My wife has set me a challenge by suggesting that I will not stick to this task. She bases this on my past experiences of sticking to exercise (which I can't stand, unless it's playing football, sorry, soccer) but I enjoy writing and really only do it at work in the form of emails and erm, that's it really. I used to have to write tender and bid documents but now have staff to do that for me. They're not "my staff" but a shared resource in Toronto but they mean I don't have to write the documents. I used to write letters to customers but we don't do that anymore. And I used to write reports for my customers when I managed service contracts but I work in sales now and don't have to do that anymore either. So we will see. Time will tell.

I've started this Blog after reading , and being inspired by, a book called "What Would Google Do?" by Jeff Jarvis in which he suggests that all businesses, except PR firms and lawyers, should become more open with their businesses and use the internet to connect with more people (customers). PR Firms cannot become more open, he argues, because of the nature of their business and their clients but they are the few anomalies. Apple, the computer company, not the record company, was the other exception. Jeff's "first law" is "give the people control and we will use it. Don't, and you will lose us" and the latter half of the book describes how Google would operate other businesses such as real estate, the media, banks, manufacturing, service and utilities. Jeff is an expert on the media, lectures at universities and takes part in public discussions about the media. His blog is www.buzzmachine.com

I would recommend Jeff's book to anyone and have done so to the other members of the sales team at my work. I've asked for their recommendations for business-related books in return and received 2...out of 9...and one of those I had read twice about 10 years ago. I have a list of other books that I have seen recommended in books, on the internet and at training courses so I have enough to keep me going for now. The other recommendation from the sales team was the new Jeff Rubin book on the economics of the oil prices, "Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller". I've seen some of his speeches and TV interviews on the internet and read some compelling reviews so I think that will be the next one, once I've finished Napoleon Hill's book, "Think and Grow Rich". It was originally published in 1937 and is one of those books unearthing the "secrets of success". Hill was a contemporary of Dale Carnegie who wrote "How to Make Friends and Influence People", a book I read when I first arrived in Canada, not so that I knew how to make friends ( I was doing OK on my own thank you) but because it had been recommended in so many other books and by so many people I'd worked with in the past. Napoleon's book sounds like one of those self help books that claims to teach the secret to success through seeing your success to "obtain whatever you want in life". I bet it will be about identifying your goals, making a plan to get there and then working really hard. I will let you know when I've finished the book. It was recommended by another author that I have started reading, Jeffery Gitomer.

Jeffery was recommended by a fellow sales rep on a course in Phoenix in 2008. He's (Jeffery, not the other sales rep) is one of those motivational speakers for sales professionals who writes motivational books and has a weekly motivational blog and video on his website www.gitomer.com I bought one of his books at the airport on the journey home and read it in a couple of days which is good for me because I have the attention span of a goldfish. It was a short sales book and had great ideas and arguments about selling techniques. It was called "The Little Red Book of Selling". He also wrote "The Little Black Book of Connections" which described the importance and benefits of connecting with people to grow your network and increase your chances of success. He has other books that are small in size and coloured in some way and you can buy them on his website or in any good bookshop. You may even find them in your local library.

So, my first Blog post appears to have turned quickly into a recommendations post. Will this continue, I wonder? I'd like to think so. There's lots of other books, music, restaurants and experiences that I've enjoyed so why shouldn't I plug them publicly? So, the next question is how often I should post. Daily or Weekly? Jeffery Gitomer says that we should write daily to improve this skill so perhaps that should be my goal. I hope it becomes a quicker process in the future though; this post has taken an hour already.

Back to the recommendations. I'm also reading two aother books: "The World Accordng to Bertie" by Alexander McCall Smith and "The Book of General Ignorance" by John Lloyd & John Mitchinson. The first is the latest in the 44 Scotland Street series of books, set in the new town of Edinburgh and featuring at least one pub that I have been to, The Cumberland Bar (www.cumberlandbar.co.uk). This was a new pub when I was at university but was made to look old and was the first and only pub that I have been in that had no TV, fruit machines, jukebox or any other attractions. It just had atmosphere and great beer (and other tipples). So the 44 Scotland Street books feature this pub and a collection of characters who reside in or around Scotland Street. The books remind me of a certain part of Edinburgh that I call home. The other book is based on a TV show that we had in the UK where Stephen Fry asked two panels of "celebrities" obvious questions like "how many wives did Henry VIII have" and pour scorn over and deduct point from the idiot that shouts out 8. Aparently it was only 2, or 4 if you are catholic. One marriage was anulled, for example, and if you want to know the reason for the rest you'll have to buy the book or use the worldwide interweb.

I have apparently turned into something of a book lover in my old age. I don't know if it's the location (BC is certainly much more relaxing than the UK) or the aforementioned old age but I am reading much more than I did when I was younger. Perhaps it was because books were forced on me by teachers when I was younger as as I grew up I "didn't have the time" with career, parties etc. Don't know. But I am reading a lot now.

Alright, here endith the first blog. If I keep writing my wife, daughter (my son is at a summer camp) and I will achieve nothing today. Will anyone read it? Will I ever write another one? Well, there's one way to ensure both...tell lots of people about it then lots of people will read it and, as a result, I'll have to write more.

Peter