January 2006 Archives

Doing something like this, reported this morning in the Daily Telegraph, along with locking myself out of the house whilst collecting the milk, constantly plague my neurotic mind:

A museum director's nightmare came true when a visitor tripped on his shoelace, stumbled down a stairway and destroyed a set of priceless 300-year-old Chinese vases.

The three vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, had stood on a windowsill at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge for at least 40 years. Their prominent position made them among its best-known artifacts.

The museum refused to name the visitor, who was unhurt.

Steve Baxter, another visitor, who saw the accident, said: "We watched the man fall as if in slow motion. He landed in the middle of the vases and they splintered into a million pieces.

"He was still sitting there stunned when staff appeared. Everyone stood around in silence, as if in shock. Then the man started talking. He kept pointing to his shoelace and saying, 'There it is; that's the culprit.' "

Duncan Robinson, the director of the museum, said: "It is a nightmare you are always afraid of in a museum. I have been here for 40 years and now that nightmare has happened." The vases, from the Qing dynasty, were donated to the museum in 1948.

Margaret Greeves, the assistant director, said: They are in very, very small pieces but we are determined to put them back together."

Perhaps Gaz-mataz, Sussell Rebbings, or another member of the Fitzwilliam Massive will be able to give us more of an insight into this breaking (ho ho) news story.

Director Michael Winterbottom is apparently in a position where he can pick and choose what project he does next. As was made awfully clear by the self-indulgent "Nine Songs" from 2003, well 2004 for the full cinematic release but I saw it in a special preview a year before - not that I am gloating, absolutely not! This film, with one aspect very loosely based on the work of literature "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy". The pretext being that the book is unfilmable. So rather than trying to film it, Winterbottom constructs a story around the idea that a film is being made of the text, but concentrates on the filmmaking aspect. This means that he can pick and choose which bits of the book we actually see, and in the meantime the story develops more to do with the subtext, that of the filmmakers, becoming the major plot line of the film.

If you fell asleep reading that last paragraph then I don't recommend the film to you whatsoever. It is not a simple film to watch, and whilst I found it entertaining and interesting, the overall effect was one of glorified mediocrity.

The two main roles in the film are played by BBC-2 favourites Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. Much of the film is taken up by the apparent competition between the two 'stars' of the film, beginning right at the start with Coogan arguing with Brydon in the dressing room about whether or not Brydon's role is a supporting, or co-starring part.

The film shifts between costume drama, mockumentary, and soap opera fairly regularly. With some incisive critique of the film industry in this country especially and a whole raft of cameos to keep the name spotters happy.

This is kept up for one and a half hours and this was about right, for me at least. One of the problems with my viewing of the film was the fact that the film audio was out of sync by about half a second! This was not good, and a suprising let down by the usually excellent Art's Picturehouse.

All the acting was good, but for me the suavely understated performance by Jeremy Northam (a local boy from Cambridge) as the "director" was the best thing to see. Rob Brydon's impressions of Coogan were also pretty entertaining as well.

*** (out of 5)

Ever since the News of the World broke the story at the weekend that Mark Oaten, former Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesman, enjoyed the company of young male prostitutes, I have been mulling over the phrase "humiliate him with a bizarre sex act too revolting to describe".

I have today been passed information from my man in Westminster that would indicate that Mr Oaten's preferred way of being humiliated was to have rent-boys defecate on his chest or to urinate on him, whilst he proceeded with getting his rocks off.

Whether this is in fact what happened I doubt we'll ever find out, but it certainly ranks up there in the too revolting to describe (except on seedy second rate websites) category.

What is interesting is that rumours have also been surfacing recently about fellow Lib Dem MP and total heterosexual [1], Simon Hughes, who was alleged to have paid a prostitute to deposit little brown fishies in her knickers, which he then carried round in his briefcase. This sounds too bizarre to be true, but then we all know the fate of Stephen Milligan MP, who died in February 1994 after a bizarre sex act that went horribly wrong. He of course died of asphyxiation after strangling himself with an electric flex, whislt wearing stocking, suspenders and a black bin-liner over his head, complete with an orange in his mouth. A tragic case of auto-erotic sex gone horribly wrong.

Anyway, back to the point, it looks like that only leaves Menzies Campbell in the running, unless you count that new boy that no one knows the name of. You too will be able to order your commemorative "Ming Vases" from the Franklin Mint shortly after his coronation as Lib Dem leader.

[1] Simon Hughes of course hired black teenage male research assistants purely for assisting him with the process of dealing with parliamentary work, and any insinuation of sexual activity between them is absolutely false.

Once again the gang of chimps known as the nofear massive headed on down on Friday the 20th of January to this year's edition of the Cambridge Winter Ale Festival.

Filing in with the crowds soon after 5.30 we paid our entrance fees and, souvenir tankards in hand, grabbed the first beer we came across, then grabbed some seats.

The initial half to grace my glass was called "Whot’s Occuring" by the brewery at Great Oakley, it was not my favourite style of beer, being a bit light and a tiny bit hoppy for me. On another note I suspect that I am mildly allergic to hops and do prefer beer that is treated with other flavour enhancers. A nice mild or dark beer is my usual choice. So I gave this one 6 out of 10 as it seemed quite clean tasting.

What I was really after next was a Wenslas Winter Warmer by Elgood’s, I had fond memories of this from last year and was keen to repeat the experience. Once again though the beers were difficult to find, and only some were on during each night, I implore CAMRA to try and print out at least which stall the beer in question is located at on the programme. It is quite disheartening staggering about amongst the throng, trying to find a beer which, when you do find the correct stall for it, turns out not to be on sale that evening.

So I ended up with a Winter Warmer, but it was the wrong one! This was by the Fenland brewery from Chatteris. It was only a 5.5% one but, it was nice 9 out of 10! It had an almost liquorishy-chocolatey taste with nice dark malt. Being 2% less than the Elgood variant I thought that it was also a wiser choice as by this stage some of my friends were onto their 3rd half.

Less than an hour had passed by this stage and the hall at the University Sports and Social Club was getting up to capacity. We all elected to drink one of the strongest ales available for this festival, Burton Bridge – Thomas Sykes, a very healthy 10% drink. What could I say about this one? For starters it was dangerously drinkable, some may say a bit of a girls ale for the drinkability, I however am not one for challenging beers. If it has good taste and doesn’t make me shudder to drink it then so much the better. So I had two of these, one after the other, and gave it 8 out of 10. Would have got more but I did wonder if the brewer had dumped a load of honey into it. We even tried to pass it off as mead to a succubus who was in the area, but she soon realised that it was ale. Did not stop her finishing it off though – very high-octane stuff!

The toilets were in a good state. The CAMRA people must put so much effort into looking after the venues that take on. Back up top the next pot luck ale was a Rampant Gryphon, 6.2% and a proper Yorkshire bitter. Not for me though, way too bitter, 4/10.

By now I was really quite sozzled and thought that curbing my intake at this point would mean a low-maintenance hangover the next day. To avoid too much mixing I returned to the Fenland Winter-Warmer once more and supped it with pleasure. I might have had another half after this too, but I have to say that my hand-written notes are so illegible that this entry could have just been random drunken scribbling. Closer inspection of the names of beers that were available do indicate that there was indeed a Damson Stout for sale, however I cannot remember enough about this one to warrant a score!

Overall this was another atmospheric festival that was not too busy this year thanks to careful management from the Cambridge CAMRA team. See you next year!

Today's quiz. Can you guess which, not-on-the-tourist-trail, bit of Cambridge this is? The clues are the line of stationary traffic, the tonnes of rubbish, and the abandoned vehicles. Answers on a postcard please...

Listening last Sunday (the 15th) to Andy Kershaw on Radio 3 I was entertained, and surprised to hear a ditty by Robyn Hitchcock. It was called "Cheese Alarm", from the album "Jewels for Sophia". I was disappointed to see that it's been out since 1999 - and is getting difficult to get hold of!

Why couldn't someone have pointed this out before now? Why? Why? Why????

[ Hot off the press - our London correspondent has just filed this report with me ]

The hyperbole predictably spewed forth by the official media in Kuwait about the death of their head of State, Emir Jaber AlAhmed AlSabah, was correct in one aspect: his was a crucial reign, spanning a period of time during which Kuwait and its environs underwent drastic and tumultuous changes.

Kuwait has an almost unique position in the modern Arab world in that the country has a constitution that was written in good faith. Apart from Lebanon no other modern Arab state has a proper constitution. And, far better than Lebanon’s, the Kuwaiti constitution is a genuine national political document, whereas Lebanese democracy was never little more thinly-veiled sectarianism. Although Kuwait never enjoyed the personal and political freedoms Lebanon had prior to its all too predictable civil war, Kuwait did possess a sounder political infrastructure enshrined in its constitution.

The problem was that pre-independence, pre-1961 Kuwait was a medieval social and political entity with the ruling family in particular, the AlSabah, retaining a medieval view of themselves, their place in society and, indeed, their right to rule. This was in direct contradiction to the constitution that clearly established their role within a legal, rather than tribal, framework. If the foresight of the formers of this constitution, which included the then Emir Abdullah AlSalem, was that the ruling family would evolve and modernise, history has proven them badly mistaken, and that mistake was finally paid for in the reign of Jaber AlAhmed.

I read with interest the recently published report, from Imperial College, listing the relative densities of pollution in differing modes of transportation. You can see the BBC summary at the following link - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4598388.stm.

Why do we care about this? Well, as it happens there is a link between traffic pollution and cancer, according to the report here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4368093.stm

The first report, which can be accessed from Imperial College itself here is an investigation into the amount of particulates that occur in the environment around people, the team analysed taxi, bus, cycling, walking, and private car use. Whether traffic fumes scale in a linear fashion with the ultrafine particulates sampled in the experiments is unclear. What is interesting is the findings of the report.