Earlier this year, I had a go at learning a new language on one of those language apps. It wasn’t very successful and started to feel like a bit of a chore, which isn’t the point, so I gave up after a few months.
I still have an account, though, and this particular app isn’t keen on letting you go. I occasionally still get a jolly email from them asking whether I’m going to come back. I don’t mind that. I do my thing and they do theirs, and everyone’s happy. Things are OK.
Until now.
Suddenly it’s not OK. Now the little cartoon owl is angry.
The message just gets worse from there. “Keep Duo happy, do your lessons” it says. Then it tells you an ominous parable about your feckless ways: “Every year, learners say they’ll learn a new language and Duo gets excited. Then they almost forgot their lessons, and Duo gets sad. That won’t happen this year, right?“
Then there’s some other distracting guff, before it finishes with an outright threat. “I’m going to make you do your lessons… by any means necessary. No one wants to see Duo when he gets upset. A few minutes of daily practice can keep Duo smiling in 2024. And a happy Duo means a safe and happy you.”
After only 9 months since the last episode, and because Ian made me feel bad for that fact, here comes episode 33! I’ve dredged out from the lockdown archives this gem, where we discuss:
We’ve visited the nineties before, in our Four Word Reviewing Time Machine, and found it a strange place. Suggs was there, of course, which wasn’t so bad, but on other visits we were left traumatised by Clock and Vanilla Ice. So it was with some understandable trepidation that I opened the CD case for “Tubthumper” by Chumbawamba. Released in 1997, this might be the most nineties album ever made – the first single, Tubthumping, was a massive worldwide hit, but nowadays it doesn’t get the nostalgic airplay that, say, Oasis or the Spice Girls or Dee-Lite do. It belonged so much to its own era that it seems to have stayed there.
It’s been another year, a year with a lot to be thankful for. As I look around my empty living room whilst writing this post, I imagine all the people that have helped me in the year 2023 as well as those that I have offered my help to. Some of them are smiling, some of them are waving, some of them are wondering why I’ve materialised in their kitchen and they’re trying to waft me away like I’m a bad smell or a pernickety bird who accidentally got in through the window. What a lovely image.
Before we reach the end of December I wanted to offer up a list of thanks to those that have done the most for me. In no particular order, here’s that list (because if I didn’t give you it then none of this would make sense):
Kev – it goes without saying that Kev has contributed so much to the website by not actually adding very much. Confused? Very. There comes a time in the month when you feel as though two posts is your absolute limit and no matter what you do no other ideas will come to the surface. Maybe you can scrape another one but that’s all you’ve got left. Sadness. Melancholia. You strive to reach that four posts per month and sometimes you can’t. Then you look at how many rancid peas Kev has and all of a sudden you’re writing a paragraph about bookends that look like puffins and searching for pictures of sea salt. It’s the most uplifting thing. Thanks, Kev.
Calendar – every day calendar is there for me. Every day calendar delivers the goods. When I wake up in the morning calendar provides me with a little look into the past and it’s almost always excellent (apart from the ones I can’t remember and without context make very little sense).
The man in the charity shop – he’s always cheerful and chatty and knows the kinds of film and music I like. I think he predicts if I’m going to want a particular blu-ray and puts it out in the shop because he’ll ask me if I picked up so and so either when he’s serving me or the next time he sees me. He also handed me a massive anime boxset because I was wearing a Cowboy Bebop t-shirt. Class.
Preston Vanderslice – a name so ridiculous it cannot possibly exist, right? Wrong! It does exist and belongs to this guy who’s in a few Hallmark Christmas films. As soon as I saw it I couldn’t stop laughing. It’s almost a Matt Berry ‘Toast of London’ name. His acting is fine, I’m sure he’s a lovely guy but with a name so posh it should have a street in Covent Gardens it’s going to be a winner every time. Vanderslice raises a huge smile.
Crème Brûlée – up until this year I don’t think I’d ever eaten one. When Vikki and I were away in Norway the boat was serving these in a particular restaurant every day. It was a crema Catalana, orange and lemon-scented Catalan-style Crème Brûlée. It may have contributed towards some of the weight gain from that holiday yet it was totally worth it. I cannot put this into my mouth quick enough.
Thank you one and all. Now go away because I say so.
Do you remember eight and a half years ago, when we were rap stars? What did we do with all the fur and gold chains when that all ended? And how did three thirtysomething white northerners ever get away with recording four terrible, terrible rap songs?
The EP Space for an Ace might not be something you revisit on a regular basis (though I still think Turd Picnic is pretty catchy), but a far more appealing prospect is the video footage we recorded over the course of the weekend while we were making it. I’d just got a new camera and wanted to try it out, so we filled a tape with more than an hour of nonsense. A few bits have leaked out over the years (like this and this and this), but now I’ve finally edited the rest to make a pretty watchable 18 minutes of new stuff.
A lot of material was trimmed because it was rubbish. Other parts have been lost forever: a fair slice of the creative process for “Crash and Burn” exists only as silent pictures, because of a microphone mishap that Kev kindly makes me explain in the film. There was also a five-minute sequence with the three of us sitting on the sofa, talking to the camera and to each other. It looked hilarious, but we’ll never know what we were talking about now. Never mind.
Still, lots of stupid stuff survived, so I’m delighted to present – at last, eight years late – the Rapples in action, live from 2015. It’s pretty good.
Round here people like to put lights on their house for Christmas. You know there’s that house near you, where the people go a bit mad, and cover the whole thing in garish flashing multicoloured lights? Every year, because it’s their “thing”? Well, we more or less live in a whole town of people like that.
On our street, the people next door and the people over the road compete for the most Christmas lights every year. As a result we are trapped in the middle of the fairy light equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Here is the view out of our bedroom window this year.
And then, if you want a bit of a break from the light shining through the blinds, you can go round to the back, where this is the view.
Whilst galivanting around Edinburgh during my recent birthday escapades (god, he never shuts up about his sodding birthday, does he?) Vikki and I managed to take in a lot during a very small period of time. The Christmas market, which was due to open on the Friday we were there, actually didn’t until the evening which was after we had left. This reminded me of Bridlington and all the lovely things that were closed due to the timing of our visit. We did, however, get to walk around the lovely National Gallery which had huge paintings of this and that. Not being an art person myself it was nice to pretend to be a posho and gawp at all the Georgian and Elizabethan works of art all the while wondering when I could eat again and where the gift shop was.
I then came across a monkey in a painting and, boy, wait, there is actually a whole painting to go with the monkey. As I stepped back to look at the entire thing I realised that I didn’t have a clue what any of these paintings meant. Some were nice, some were food for the soul (blah blah blah), most were expensive firewood. I don’t know, you don’t come here for intellectual musings. I’m the dick and fart jokes department so let me tell you I was way out of my depth.
The plaque stated that, “the precise meaning of this rare secular work by El Greco is uncertain. The boy’s act of kindling a flame may allude to the arousal of the sensual passions. A monkey in art is often symbolic of vice, while the man grinning inanely could represent folly. The painting may thus illustrate the simple moralising message that lust appeals to our foolish and baser instincts.”
Art is subject to interpretation and any meaning could be correct. I will, however, volunteer my own thoughts:
Nobody is grinning inanely. The fisherman on the right is clearly a pyromaniac and is looking for some cheap thrills before he has to go back to, I don’t know, the North Sea or wherever he’s working. He looks tired more than anything else.
The boy needs a hobby. Maybe he’s lighting the thingy for attention? Come on, little Billy, go learn how to grift or dance for pennies on the corner.
Once you see the monkey you can’t un-see the monkey and therefore everything else in the painting is irrelevant. He may as well have only painted the monkey which is a stellar painting of a monkey. 10 out of 10
This may carry on into a regular series because I feel as though art and art appreciation could be a new career for me in 2024. I’m clearly very good at it and you should always do what you’re good at.
Congratulations! You’ve made it to the age of forty. After an uphill struggle through some difficult times you’ve made it and you’ve made it in one piece. Now all you need to do is sit back and enjoy the view through these novelty binoculars.
It seems as though I can’t go a few weeks without making a fool of myself. Last week I got lost driving back through Gateshead and almost drove into an industrial estate and then accidentally drove through a bus lane. That was fun. I don’t really have much of a defence other than it was dark and I was hungry so my hunger caused me to drive the wrong way. That’s what I’m going to write to Gateshead Council when they send me a letter asking to pay a fine for driving like a clown.
Let’s do something a little more contemporary though to really illustrate the fact that I’m potentially getting worse. Subjectively. Gingerly. Crimsonly.
It’s the end of the day and I am striding to my car. I don’t walk anymore you see I stride. I’ve got the prestigious job and the happy life so I take a manly stride to get me around places now. As I approach my car I see that the car next to me has parked a little too close because everyone is terrible at parking. I can open the driver door however it requires a bit of manoeuvring (I can never spell that word) to hold the door so I don’t smash it into the other car but also leave enough space to get my sorry ass into the seat. I manage to get my left leg in and I hear it, the sound that I have heard a few times before. I don’t feel as though I have lunged too far however by the sounds of things I have crossed a line and one that once crossed cannot be undone. I may as well have put my foot in the footwell of the adjacent car for what it’s worth.
I know the sound because it happened to me about a year or two ago. That is the sound of my jeans splitting. That is the cold air reaching my bare skin which up until recently was covered by my jeans. The material could clearly not take the isometric shapes my legs were making whilst trying to get into the car and now it’s all over. I still have to pick up some food on the way home and luckily I have some jogging bottoms in my gym bag, which is stashed on the back seat. In Asda car park I hide momentarily behind my door and pull them on over my now sagging jeans. Nothing left to do but stride around picking up what I need and head home like a grown-up, a grown-up wearing two pairs of trousers.
