Roll up, roll up for the world's unfunniest joke

Yesterday, the choir I'm in was in a Songs of Praise concert which was filmed for TV. At least, that's what we were told, but I have a strong suspicion that it was in fact a joke show. There's really no other explanation for the shocking disorganisation and uselessness which characterised the whole day.

First, we were rushed out of our first CBYV rehearsal to Hall 9, where we were apparently needed for a massed choirs rehearsal. Except it turned out we'd been called down 25 minutes early, so we all had to stand in the cold being shouted at for making a noise because there was a competition taking place in the hall we were supposed to be rehearsing in.

When we finally got into the rehearsal, it lasted about 15 minutes and consisted of the conductor giving vague and confusing instructions and then moaning when they weren't followed correctly. It was at roughly this point that we decided the conductor was the biggest git ever. On top of which, he was wearing a stupid shirt.

Because Stupid Git Man's Stupid Rehearsal over-ran, we only got a half-hour lunch break before we were ushered back into Symphony Hall for a camera rehearsal, in which we promptly commenced doing absolutely nothing for about 45 minutes. We then did very little for a further hour or so, learning that our solo in Siya Hamba (the Worst Arrangement Ever courtesy of Stupid Git Man) had been cut, because the director didn't know we were doing it and wanted to know why the other choirs his cameras were pointing at weren't singing.

By this point we'd pretty much decided that the day was a joke, a sham of a mockery and a mockery of a sham. But if any further proof were needed, we got it when we were called on for the performance, Mike beside himself because we were late onstage. He needn't have worried, though; the seating arrangements for the audience were in such chaos that the show didn't start for a further 25 minutes. Finally, to complete the whole fiasco, we were 2 minutes into our break backstage at the interval when Mike came beetling in to tell us we weren't supposed to have gone off at all and had to get straight back on stage. This we did, only for a primary school teacher to start moaning at us because her children needed to sit in our seats. A highly amusing game of musical chairs ensued, ending up with us all sitting in exactly the same place we started.

This is a ridiculously long post, and I don't know why I bothered relating it all, but I felt the detail was necessary to really convey the shambolic mess that, according to Mike, was the 2nd Worst Organised Day in the History of the World. To cap it all, I had a party to get to afterwards, so I couldn't even stick around to meet Aled Jones. For shame.

"Snow joke" - the worst snow-based pun ever?

Well, looks like the snow's over for now. Sniff. For the last two days we've had rubbish snow which didn't settle at all, so to all intents and purposes it was actually raining. It was like the worst of rain and the worst of snow in one horrible perverse package. Meh. Meanwhile, I hear that Yorkshire is knee-deep in fluffy white stuff (although Neil and Mark are the only ones who can really confirm or deny this), so I'm quite jealous.

While we're on the subject of snow, there can be few more pathetic sights than swarms of under-15s trying in vain to have snowball fights with an icing-sugar dusting of snow. It really is like watching starving children fighting over a grain of rice. On top of which, these apparently harmless antics actually stop further snow from settling, which is why we're in the sorry snow-lacking state we are now (well, probably not, but I'm blaming them anyway, because I can). Still, if they hadn't been doing it, I would have missed out on Sousan shouting at bemused year 7s, "PUT THE SNOW BACK!"

It's a snowy tragi-comedy!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

Yay! It's snowing! Well, not right now this minute (at least not in Birmingham) - but it has been, blizzards and hail and sleet and ice and all types of snowy goodness! Fingers crossed for a Snow Day... I was on the bus watching it snowing outside yesterday (well, it wouldn't really be snowing inside would it now) and I saw a snowflake land on the window and just sort of shrivel and melt into a drop of water... I found it weird that the drop of water was like the corpse of the snowflake, but maybe that's just me. And then I starting thinking about how ephemeral everything is, but then I stopped, because these are all sad and/or nasty thoughts and snow is pretty and joyous!

Anyway, to make up for marring your enjoyment of the pretty snow with crazy ramblings, I'm going to share with you this snowy link where you can make your own snowflake out of virtual paper! Yay for snow!

Three is a magic number

Today is my niece, Ebony Connor,'s third birthday. (I know the punctuation there is completely up the spout, but it seemed to make sense.) I don't really have anything to say about this (other than "yay!" and "bloody hell, how time flies" and "they grow up so quickly" - okay, three things then) but I thought I ought to acknowledge it.

The many adventures of Hamish McKilt

So, I just got back from Wales with Chantal. We were visiting her family friends Eddie & Jenny - they have the most amazing house in the whole world ever! It's all giant and sort of higgledy-piggledy, in that there are probably at least 5 different ways of getting from any given room to another. It's like Alice in Wonderland and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe all rolled into one! Well, I suppose technically it's not really like that at all, but in my head it makes sense.

Anyway... most of our time in Wales seemed to be spent on two immensely productive activities:
1. Writing the lyrics for "You Let Them Get Piers, Don't Let Them Get Me" - a song for Chantal's friend's musical about Edward II (her favourite king), to be sung by his lover Hugh de Spenser. So, you know, if ever a musical based on the life of Edward II makes it big, it's highly likely that I had a hand in it. (I don't imagine many musicals get written about medieval kings.) Woo!

2. Producing the traditional evening entertainment for everybody - this time a murder mystery with world-famous detectives Hamish McKilt (me) and Paddy O'Shamrock (Chantal). I was planning to put this on my blog because we had so much hilarity doing it that it seemed to come under the category of 'amusing incidents I ought to share', but having started I've realised that there's really no way to convey the hilarity, which makes me kind of sad. Still, we're planning to write up the script some time, so feel free to request a copy. If nothing else, it's done wonders for my Scottish accent.

So, after that largely pointlesss ramble, the lesson for today is: if ever you need help with a medieval musical or a fake Scottish accent, you know who to call. I'm sure you'll agree that's a lesson well learned.

In this week's Spectator: spontaneous combustion in three easy steps!

It's funny, I've been reading the Spectator online for a while now, and was surprised to find that it was reasonable, interesting and thought-provoking. Having subscribed to the paper edition, it's suddenly morphed into the maddening right-wing rag I'd expected it to be. Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against people being right-wing - in fact, reading the Spectator was partly an attempt to guard against me becoming a narrow-minded left-wing bigot (they do exist). But... well, maybe if I give a summary of the articles I've read so far in today's edition, you'll understand why it's made me want to beat my head against a brick wall.

1. Rod Liddle - "Make naivety history". We shouldn't cancel third world debt, because poverty isn't our fault at all - it's those nasty African dictators that are doing it, and we don't want to encourage them by writing off their debt repayments, do we now?

2. Michael Henderson - "Time to rescue BBC English". Why does nobody pronounce things properly any more? Verily, it is leading inexorably to the collapse of civilisation as we know it. [My problem with this one wasn't so much the argument as the fact that he had nothing better to write about.]

3. Mark Steyn - "Bush will not be mocked". All you English Tories should start supporting the war on terror, because if you don't, the ever-increasing Muslim population will take over the world! [Direct quote: the war on terror is "really about" the fact that there are "more Muslims, and more of those Muslims are radicalised...at a certain point, they won't need to release dirty nukes, because Islamification will be so advanced that many countries will simply find a way to accommodate it."]

Those summaries may sound like exaggerated parodies - but to be honest, these articles parody themselves. Seriously, what I've written above is a pretty fair summary of their arguments. If you don't believe me, you can read them yourselves at www.spectator.com.

Excuse me while I go and practise that spontaneous combustion thingy. Let nobody say the Spectator isn't educational...

Cheap at one-third the price

A while back, it dawned on Lailah and I that nobody checks your tickets at the screen doors in cinemas, so technically, once you'd bought a ticket, you could just stay in the cinema all day and see every good film going. Now, to most people, I suppose this would have remained a hypothetical scenario, but we were actually sad enough to plan an all-day Movie Marathon.

We couldn't make it the mammoth event we'd envisaged, because Lailah had other stuff to do (it's reassuring to know that at least one of us has a life), but we did turn up at the cinema armed with pizza, pasta, Pringles and other alliterative foods at 12.30pm today, and we did stay till 7pm. We managed to get in three films (Ocean's Twelve, The Magic Roundabout and The Sea Inside), without attracting so much as a suspicious glance, which I think is fairly good going. To be honest, it was probably a good thing we only had time for three, because we may have developed deep-vein thrombosis if we'd stayed there any longer. Still, three films for £3 can't be bad. You should try it some time.

Hopefully, we'll be doing another one at Easter (on an Orange Wednesday, just to really take the piss) - so if anyone feels like joining us for one or more films throughout the day, feel free to get in touch.

Amusing Incident of the Day (well, Friday)

I just realised I didn't yet put my Hilarious Spectator Story in my blog. It's probably un-necessary, as I've told most of the people I know who are likely to get it, but hey. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...

A few weeks back we decided to subsribe to the Spectator, you know, because I'm going to study Politics etc and I thought I should broaden my mind and read the rantings of right-wing journalists for a change. So, on Friday we got the standard "Congratulations, welcome to the Spectator, the best magazine in the world ever" letter. First Point that amused me was that it was signed by Kimberley Quinn. Second Point that made me laugh out loud into my breakfast was that the last sentence of the letter was "I hope this is the start of a long relationship."

The question now is, are the good people at the Spectator in on the joke, or is it all the Merest Accident?

The things people throw away...

Before I start, I know the end of the last post contains a sort of contradiction. Being lazy, I decided to publish it anyway.

Anyway anyway; the following is a list of bizarre things I came across whilst spending my Sunday morning litter-picking with Cole Valley Conservation Volunteers:

A pair of trousers
A spoon
Some guttering
An old sock
A carpet
An unidentifiable loudspeaker-shaped electrical device
A fireguard
A golf ball
A nail brush
Some butterfly clips
A broken mirror
An empty jar of baby food

Well, I think that's enough to demonstrate the startling irresponsibility and downright daftness of the people in my area. Lordy loo, what is the world coming to?

What is it with me and sci-fi related names?

So, I got a blog. I'm not entirely sure why. It's not as though I have lots of time on my hands, or anything interesting to say. But hey.
So, I called my blog "The X-Files". Just to clear this up, the fact that I use the name 'Obi-wan Kenobi' on the Travis message board doesn't mean I'm a Star Wars nutter, and the fact that this blog is called the X-Files doesn't mean I sit in fields wearing tin-foil hats waiting for UFOs. Yes, the name is in fact just a really awful pun, and not a reference to sci-fi in any way. I'd like to say I make no apologies for the pun, but I really, really do - it was just the only name I could think of. It seemed like a good idea at the time, even though only about two people still call me X, and it is rather late and I'm sure in the morning it'll just look like the Worst Pun In the World. In fact, I'm less than happy with anything about this blog so far, so it's looking highly unlikely any of this will ever be read by anyone except me. Hmm, talking to myself. Maybe I am a sci-fi nutter after all.