Tennis frenzy time again

In the interests of trying to blog at least something daily, I thought I'd pay tribute to the boy Murray who has beaten Roger Federer (for the first time at a grand slam) and made it to the final of the Aussie Open. Now only Djoko Bloko stands in the way of a second consecutive grand slam win for Big Andy. And how fitting that this should be on Burns Night! (I don't know what this is but I believe it has some significance for those north of Hadrian's Wall.)

 

So no lying around in bed on Sunday like you lazy lot normally do...it's an 8.30 a.m. kick-off and it's on the BBC so free for all. I would normally be out on the tennis court myself but it is a bit cold and the courts are still covered in snow at the moment so it's a good excuse to stay in the warm.

 

Remember as always: if he wins he's British, if he loses he's Scottish.

 

Come on Andy!

Snowing again? It must be global waming

We've had no more snow today but then the existing white stuff is not going anywhere and Marshside Acres still looks like it did in yesterday's picture. I gather this is not the case elsewhere in the UK where frozen precipitation continues unabated.

 

 

Of course many of the schools are closed round here in what has become standard practice when a few flakes hit the ground. This is despite the fact that, according to the BBC web-site, there are no road problems anywhere in the county! But it takes more than (or should that be less than?) a lack of transport problems to prevent the determined head teacher giving staff the day off. It's amazing isn't it? Hospitals don't close, the staff at the small business next to us turn up for work, our paper gets delivered by some poor chap who has to battle across miles of frozen tundra to the Marshside Acres gates but as for the schools...there's some snow on the ground, ergo, we close.

 

 

So is our winter weather getting worse? It's laughable how many people declaim confidently on this topic, based only on their own hazy memories of a few years. They happily ignore the fact that the earth has been around billions of years and that their sojourn on the planet represents such a tiny fraction of this that no conclusion they can draw is remotely significant. The weather goes through all sorts of cycles and mini ice ages come and go. These things are but blips in the long term experience of the earth's climate. 

 

 

But blips can have a cause and what do you think is the most likely cause of these blips? Might it have something vaguely to do with Mr Jones down the road sticking some solar panels on his roof (subsidised by me, thanks very much)? Or Mrs Smith in the village who's just bought an electric car? Or even those damned windmills that march across the countryside like something from War of the Worlds (or in our area, stand around in the sea, currently becalmed but still taking a subsidy out of my pocket)? Or maybe it's got something to do with the source of all our energy and life itself. Doesn't this seem more plausible?

The Sun: a very powerful thing which affects your life

 There's a physicist called Piers Corbin who has a better record than anyone at predicting the weather and on what does he base his super-spot-on forecasts? Solar activity. As it happens, he reckons that a lack of this is likely to cause some pretty cold winters for some time to come, and no doubt various other weather anomalies. I'm inclined to believe him. I'm all for cutting down on carbon emissions if it saves me some money but that's a world away from the unbelievable arrogance of those King Canute-like people that think the type of car they drive is going to have an effect on the weather. The sun is just so much more powerful than anything that any of us can conceive. It's thanks to the sun that life on earth got going in the first place and it'll be the sun that will determine when life down here finishes. In the meantime, it's pretty obvious that if the sun sneezes, then we'll catch a cold.

Some windmills: not very powerful things which will not affect your life, only your wallet

Who's going to be the first world leader to blink in the extraordinary carbon-control stand-off and admit that all this renewable stuff is a waste of time and money?

 

 

For the time being, it's back out into the frosty wasteland to bag a bit of game for dinner. I hope the staff are out of the firing line! 

Exclusive: Manchester to be declared capital of the UK!

You read it here first: in one of the most extraordinary moves by any government, ever, London will no longer be the UK's capital. Instead, this honour will transfer to Manchester. It may seem crazy but then there's several precedents: Brazil springs to mind, various African countries I believe have shifted their capitals in recent years and how about the USA? I'm sure the capital was somewhere else before Washington DC came along.

 

 

So why is this happening and why choose Manchester? Well the first question's easy to answer: to save money. All those politicians, bureaucrats, judges and bankers will earn a lot less "oop north". And as to the choice of city, well where else? No sensible person could stand the Brummie or Scouse accent for any length of time and Newcastle's just too far away. Plus, although the Geordie accent's not so bad, you can't actually understand what they're saying.

 

 

Of course the more canny amongst you won't be too surprised: why do you think the BBC has moved so much of its operation up there? This was the first step of a plan hatched some years back but kept a closely guarded secret, until now. More than that, on BBC Radio 6, even many of the presenters based in London are from the Manchester area. It's a gradual takeover.

Media City: The BBC lay the foundations for Manchester's new era

Plus, Manchester has a lot going for it. It was of course the first city in the world (yes, in the world) to be industrialised. It was the here that the atom was first split and the first computer invented. The University boasts more Nobel prize winners than anywhere else in the UK (well except Oxford and Cambridge but then those places did have a head start of several hundred years) and thanks to the Prof Brian Cox effect, the physics dept. at the University is now, if you rank them on entry requirements, the best in the country (which probably means in the world.)

Physics at Manchester with Prof Brian Cox: it's not called Madchester for nothing you know

Then there's sport. The city boasts the top two football teams in the league. Plus, as most Manchester United supporters don't come from Manchester, that's a good reason for making the place the national centre of attention. Then there's our outstanding Olympic achievement, the cyclists, who have been based at the velodrome in Manchester for many years.

Fit for a toff: new executive housing goes up in Manchester

Culturally, where have most of the best bands come from recently? I refer to the likes of Oasis, Elbow, the Stone Roses, Everything Everything, Doves, the Smiths, Joy Division, Badly Drawn Boy and many others...you can include the Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets if you like. I would certainly include Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias and Cherry Ghost in my top picks and a bit further back you have John Mayall, the Hollies and 10cc. OK, there's also Freddie and the Dreamers and Herman's Hermits but let's not dwell on them...

 

 

And if you look down your nose at this noisy pop music, then where was Rufus Wainwright's first opera commissioned and performed? Got it in one. Then you have the Halle Orchestra and the Royal Northern College of Music. And, as my trump card, I give you poetry and the Bard of Salford, John Cooper Clark.

 

 

For the icing on the cake, there's the majestic countryside of the Peak District just down the road plus a number of excellent breweries who sell first rate beer at friendly prices. (Holt's, JW Lees, Robinson's, Hyde's take a bow...shame Boddington's has gone.)

 

 

Of course it's not all good. It does rain a lot but then that's arguably preferable to the water shortages you get down south. I mentioned the sad loss of Boddington's brewery. Another Manc institution which is sadly no longer with us is the legendary Plaza Cafe. There are a million stories about the extraordinary chicken biryanis (that's pretty much all anyone ate there) served up at all hours of day and night at this famous establishment. Perhaps the best is that of the student diner who missed the whole of his second year at university: he was so violently sick after a Plaza special that he suffered two detached retinas. (Who cares if this is true or not?!)

The sadly missed Plaza Cafe, Upper Brook St., Manchester M13. Prof Brian Cox stands outside pondering the meaning of biryani

So there you have it. Be prepared for much movement up the M6 and some new famous faces amongst the footballers' wives in leafy Cheshire. Cash in now: buy property in Manchester or, if you can't stretch to that, a few shares in a local brewery. Treble pints of Robbie's mild all round! 

There goes another new year's resolution

A belated happy new year to you all. I hope you all survived the festive season. We did but out waistlines didn't. Every year we buy enough food to feed us about 3 times over. Every year we say never again but then we do exactly the same again. Why? Tradition: if we didn't then it wouldn't feel like Christmas.
 

So here we are in 2013 and already I have broken my promise to post at least something on the blog every day. As you can see, this binge-eating spree has upped my lethargy level to new heights and even blogging has been too much trouble. But on the other hand, I have been working hard recording stuff on my new 24 track machine with which I am forming a deep bond. The stuff sounds great (biased, moi?) and it's remarkably easy to use. This is in stark contrast to my Roland keyboard. I 've had it for years but have never used the sequencer feature, despite various half-hearted attempts. So the other day, I sat down with the manual and was determined to crack the thing.

 

 

Now this manual is a massive tome, full of reams of instructions, rather loosely translated from the Japanese and pages and pages of technical data. By the time you'd absorbed all this, the damn thing would be obsolete and in fact this is exactly what's happened as everyone (except me) uses computers these days for recording music so even my brand new 24 track thing could be said to be somewhat antediluvian.

The fearsome Roland XP-80...what can it all mean?

Anyway, after an hour or two spent pressing various buttons and staring myopically at the keyboard's hopelessly inadequate LCD screen, I am ashamed to say I admitted defeat and gave up. Ridiculous isn't it? But I can't see how I am ever going to get to grips with it unless I attend a 3 week course and if such things ever existed then they wouldn't now, due to the obsolescence issue.

The wondrous Tascam DP24...the beating heart of the Marshside hit factory

This failure meant I had to play some tricky Steely Dan chords correctly several times over and use my old drum machine, which means days spent programming it. The Roland has better drum sounds but if you can't figure out how to record a pattern then it might as well sound like a cake tin. I honestly think this is the first time I've been beaten by technology which I suppose is not bad, given my advancing years. I know some people who can barely turn their TV on and as for tasks such as streaming music from the PC over the home network to the living room stereo...climbing Everest with one hand tied behind the back would be easier.

 

 

Still that's nothing compared to the UK's inability to cope with a few snowflakes. This has become such an annual news story and standing joke that we've now come to expect it but it really is rather poor, to say the least. Here at Marshside Acres, we carry on regardless and the Eastern European workforce are experts at gritting the tracks, cutting logs for the fires, breaking the ice on the ponds and cossetting the livestock. By the standards of their winters, our current weather is positively balmy and we have a job to persuade them against wearing shorts and t-shirts.

A snowy vista at Marshside Acres...asylum-seeking workforce not pictured.

They work hard but then with an influx of Romanians and Bulgarians due soon, they know they face stiff competition.


More snow expected tomorrow: bring it on!