Word of the Day

Hoorah for Auntie!
The venerable (and free) BBC reports this evening - as Romney slinks back home with his tail between his legs - that he has been "excoriated" by the European press.

The word basically means "flayed alive."

What's not to love about that?

And then there's this … Shin-A-lam's half hour sit down protest in the Olympic fencing arena … in Lego. You gotta love those fencing masks.

It's a Never Ending Battle

WTF Monday - Return of The Apostrophe Police

No.

Do I? Don't I?

No, you don't.

An NBC "Production Decision"

Looks like folk in the US missed one of the best parts of the Olympic opening ceremony as NBC - who had the exclusive TV rights for the USA - didn't think Americans would be interested in a dance memorial to the victims of the London July 7th bombings.

"Dance? Dead people? Let's skip that and have another brewski."

Believe me (as one who was on the train just ahead of one of the bombs), I can think of other words than those of choreographer Akram Khan, who was "disheartened and disappointed."
And I imagine the families of victims of the 9/11 atrocities in the US would feel the same way were the situation reversed.
Khan's choreography (he also danced brilliantly) was both breathtaking and deeply moving.

There's only a small part of it available on YouTube at the moment (and that's a poor, hand-held iPhone-pointed-at-the-telly version) but look out for it in the weeks to come because it's worth it.

NBC? Fuck you!

Get Healthy and Do Good at the Same Time

Looks like the usual and the utterly predictable is happening all over again:

Millions of people were unable to buy tickets to "sold out" Olympics venues and yet thousands of seats allocated to corporate sponsors are empty.

Fuck corporate sponsors and their shitty ways.
I don't drink Coke and have never (and will never) eat anything from a Mc.Donalds' shithouse, so I cannot increase my boycott of the two main Olympics sponsors.

I'm appealing here and now for those of you who DO consume this crap to abstain from it and to eat and drink healthy things instead as a protest at the kind of corporate greed and wastefulness that negotiates a deal where they are allotted thousands of seats at Olympic events and then don't bother to turn up.

Go to your fridges and fetch those Coke bottles and pour the filthy stuff down the sink (it's good at clearing drains). Cross the street to avoid the unhealthy vicinity of Mc.Donalds' outlets.
And never buy any more of their stuff.

Just to be clear here:
Corporate sponsors who insult the public by not bothering to use the facilities they have denied to hard working people:
Fuck 'em.
Up the arse.
With a splintered gatepost.

… And Another Thing …

Anyhoo … back to the Olympic opening ceremony and hoorah for a thousand gloriously silly in-jokes that nobody outside these shores will ever get. Hee hee.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jul/28/world-media-london-olympic-opening-ceremony
and
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/28/richard-williams-olympic-opening-ceremony

As for other reactions, I especially loved the fact that on the news this morning a disgraced Tory MP* (who got sacked from the Cabinet recently for attending a Nazi-themed party - at least he's honest about his Fascist politics, unlike the rest of the Tory party or their Republican chums across the pond) accused the opening ceremony of being "leftie, multicultural rubbish" and "more left wing than that of the Chinese Communists."
Hahahahahahahahaha!

Left wing? A ceremony opening on England's bucolic mediæval landscape, pure and innocent and filled with farm animals and maidens dancing lasciviously around phallic maypoles, blissful and pastoral until Ken Brannagh turns up in a stovepipe hat and unleashes the Industrial Revolution on it?
Mad hordes of strutting, top-hatted Capitalists despoiling the rural idyll and enslaving the working people in a pandæmoniacal vision of a hellish industrial nightmare?

Leftie?

A glorious celebration of our amazing free National Health Service (during which Mary Poppins defeats Lord Voldemort) in the very week in which the insane NHS-hater Mitt Romney chooses to visit these shores on a fundraising tour and is soundly and roundly mocked and vilified by press and people alike?

Leftie?

I thought it was a beautifully balanced and unbiased, politically centrist ceremony.
If you want leftie, put me in charge of the next one.
Now THAT would be fun!

* Is there any other kind?

What Is It About Girls Who Play The Cello?

Hey, kids!
For those of you who - like me - much prefer to enjoy the sights and sounds of the Olympics with the inane commentary switched off (thank goodness for digital TV where such things are possible), and to accompany it instead with spiffy music, Natalie Clein's new album of Bloch and Bruch cello pieces came out this morning and I've been enjoying it over and over all day.
Go buy it.
Now.
Go on!
You know I'm right; I always am.

No sign of any You Tube versions yet, so if you're too cheapskate to pop out and buy Ms.Clein's new CD you'll have to be content with me posting a bit of her previous one: the first movement of her stunning and definitive reading of Kodály's bravura Cello Sonata.

Boffo.

By Jingo, continued …

Well, I may merrily mock (and mostly rightly) my amateurish country's attempts to get anything right but I must confess: Danny Boyle and everyone else who helped with the opening ceremony: that was fucking awesome!

Nighty night (actually well into the early morning). Let the real sports begin!

By Jingo

Well golly gosh and jolly hockey sticks, this evening sees the official opening ceremony of London's Recession Olympics.
Paid for by Coca Cola and Mc.Donald's (because of the obvious healthy sporting associations of gorging sugar, salt and fat in industrial quantities, and because we've got no money) and with no other food or beverages allowed on site it promises to be a strange spectacle.

Already, our charming English delight in amateurish cock-ups has been well to the fore.
We've been running a satirical TV programme called 2012 alongside the preparations for several years now and it has been remarkably prescient, with life imitating art quite beautifully.
In the first episode the Olympic clock in Trafalgar Square went wrong and the very next week so did the real one.
Their fictional transport manager managed to bring London to a halt and inevitably this week the trains have not been running and traffic is gridlocked.
On the TV show, the coach taking them to the site got hopelessly lost, and this appears to have become the common theme for athletes arriving at Heathrow (all week, they've been driving round and round London, unable to find the Olympic Village - athletes regularly Tweeting that they've been stuck on a coach for four hours with no toilet). The organisers hired hundreds of coach drivers from all across the country, many of whom had never seen London before and could not read a sat-nav device. It's been humiliating yet hilarious.

And capping it all, on Wednesday those same organisers proudly boasted in the press that they had done their research properly and that there'd be no embarrassing faux-pas like at the World Championships where the Khazakstan medal winner was saluted by the spoof Khazak national anthem from Borat …
… and yesterday all of that research paid off when the North Korean women's football team walked off the field in protest at having the South Korean flag displayed next to their players.

Ah, we do bumbling incompetence so well. We're sure to win the gold medal in that event.

Anyhoo … traffic chaos, broken cable cars, no trains, international pickpocket gangs, rip-off hotel prices, only junk food to eat and the choice between swelteringly hot and humid or pissing down with rain notwithstanding, here come the Olympics and there's nothing any of us can do to hold back the deluge of jingoistic tosh spewing forth from press and TV.

I'm quite looking forward to the opening ceremony, though I'll be watching from a safe distance (120 miles away). Those things are a guaranteed gold mine of unintentional mirth.

What I'm really looking forward to, however, is watching the world's top athletes really going for it. I'll turn off the inane commentary and put on some good music and watch amazing athletes do amazing things (once they've crawled off their coaches and queued for the loo).

Let the games begin.

The Official Olympic Tree

The Olympic opening ceremony is tomorrow (hence the complete and utter breakdown of our transport system), so I thought I'd show you what appears to be Norwich's entire Olympic celebration decorations.

Looks like we budgeted for one roll of Olympic wrapping paper and drunkenly forced a plane tree into bondage.

Why? Fuck knows.

Lose Yourself

The Stone Maze in Norwich Cathedral's Cloisters is unforgiving.

"Don't go in there." I warned my workmates.

"You might never find your way out again."

But did they listen?
Did they buggery.

Perhaps, many centuries from now, their bones will be found.

In the meantime …

WTF Monday - Buck It

Phil found this in the Buck pub at Rumburgh at the weekend.
I thought I'd post it as:

(Uno) the London Olympics start on Friday and this gives a pretty good impression of the looks, intelligence and healthy habits of the average English sports fan.

(Dos) It's dead; pretty much like English medal hopes, and:

(Tres) Rumburgh is such a great word.
"Rum" over here means "odd" - and "Village of the Odd" is strangely appealing. Plus, it really is a village of the odd; some rum buggers live there (having attended a few barn dances there in olden days I can attest to that).

Stained Glass Sunday

The big ol' west window of Norwich Cathedral.

And here it is in context.

Stained glass windows are a bugger to photograph:

if you want the glass, the surroundings are too dark;

if you want the surroundings the window is too light;

if you Photoshop one onto the other it looks stupid.

Hey ho.

Saturday Statuary

What's Cooking With Dive? - Nothing

I've not done a cookery post for a while and I'm not about to start again just yet, so here's a non-cookery post featuring my regular Saturday lunchtime treat.

Ingredients:

One decent chunk of AAA-sashimi-grade tuna;
Some wasabi paste;
Some soy sauce (low salt for me);
Chopsticks;
A plate to stop your table getting messy;
Something to read;
BBC Radio 3.

Non-cooking method:

(1) Slice the tuna as thinly as you want it.
(2) Assemble all the ingredients.
(3) Enjoy!

Old Dive's Motorsport Photography School

Lesson 2

"Care should be taken in your choice of location.

A good view of the track is essential … er …"

Argh!

 
Boy, howdy, I am having one crapola of a week. A massive (and ludicrously expensive) job on site, the client throwing his toys out of his pram, every single one of the consultants fucking up royally, and all at the same time. I'm having to do every fucker's job for them and dole out severe bollockings left, right and centre and somehow see that this damned building gets built.
And the site looks like the Somme as it hasn't stopped fucking raining since February!

So please excuse me if I go hide behind Andreas Scholl for a bit.

Interesting

While we were at Goodwood I took hundreds of photos.

Cars, cars, cars.

Just about everything made me go Oooh! and point my camera at it.

Then Phil insisted on going into the Volvo stand so he could look at a car he's been thinking of buying.

And, well …

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Fake Arne Jakobsen chairs!" I pointed and clicked.

"What about the cars?" he asked.

"They're Volvos. The chairs are the only interesting things in here."

Sorry, Mister Volvo, but it's true.

WTF Monday - Chazza's Childhood

The rich are different - as we all know too well.
Undeserving, parasitical, gorging themselves on the fruits of our labour.

While we got to sit in a cardboard box and go "Vroom, Vroom!" they got marvellous miniature cars to zoom around in.
One particular jug-eared buffoon got given toys such as this to play with, barrelling down the corridors of the Parasite House, scattering servants in his wake.

Welcome to Chazza's childhood toybox. Is it any wonder he grew up like he did?
That caravan is just plain creepy.
Sheesh!

Old Dive's Motorsport Photography School

Lesson 1:

"When panning, watch out for flagpoles."

Let's Hear It For …

… the - er - big O.

Definitely Not DC

In the beginning was the word.

And the word was the AC Ace.

Back in the fifties and early sixties

it skittered across the English countryside like a frisky lamb.

Born of a wooden cradle …

… around which were hammered thin sheets of aluminium …

… it was indeed a thing of beauty.

And then, in 1962, our old and dearly missed friend Carroll Shelby flew in from the Colonies and said "Woah! I wanna put a V8 in one of those things!"

And he made it so.

And a classic English sports car a tenth of the weight of an American saloon became the uncontrollable and truly deranged AC Cobra.

And race fans looked upon it and saw that it was good.

And it is STILL good.

This is the AC Roadster. It's marketed as 'the ultimate Cobra' and I must confess that when a candy apple red one sped past me just the other day I ached with longing.

This, however, is the real ultimate Cobra: the racing beast of the sixties.

At the Goodwood Revival Meeting this September there will be a special celebration of Carroll and the Cobra. I can't wait.

In the meantime, drool over these beauties.

Sigh …

Lol Coxhill's died. Another hero down …



The man was a jazz diva and one of the nicest people on the planet.
He'd famously jam with anyone, including me, but he was at his very best playing solo.
And yes, one urban myth at least is true: he WAS the inspiration for Joni's beautiful "For Free."

Our loss; Heaven's gain.

Bubbletop

Still at Goodwood, this is from the Queen's collection of cars, though I somehow doubt she bought it herself.

It's from an American visit in the fifties.

Let's hear it for the 1950 Lincoln Cosmopolitan Limousine Bubbletop.

Yay!

They don't make 'em like that any more,

which is a shame.

I like the people in this shot as much as the car.

… And A Thing of Booty

Damn! I'm appalled by my own crassness.

I really didn't think myself capable of such a crap title,

but there it is.

I hang my head in shame.

Hee hee hee …

A Thing of Beauty …

Hello … What's this I've found peeking from underneath a tree?

Adorned with real racing cars from the glory days of Lotus …

Why, it's this year's great big Goodwood statue!

An homage to the beauty and grace of Lotus racing cars.

Designed by sculptor Gerry Judah.

He says:

"The idea is to show the lightness of construction,

which is the engineering ethos of Lotus."

 Twenty-eight metres high and utterly beautiful.

Lord March's standard salutes both sculptor and cars.

There are six genuine historic Grand Prix racing cars

magically stuck to the thing.

The curves complement the curved turrets of Goodwood House.

Called "Light Curves",  it looks wonderful

in conditions of changing light.

Vroom …

The usual fate of the Goodwood Giant Sculptures is to be scrapped, but I think this one should replace the execrable mess of junk that has been erected as the focal point of the Olympic Park.

Ephemeral it might be, but it truly is a thing of beauty.

WTF Monday - Albino Manatee and Chips

First us: "Gourmet" fish and chips?
"Gourmet?"
It's potatoes and battered fish deep fried in a metal bucketful of cheap fat.
Gourmet, my arse.

And second: what's with the albino manatee?

Hostess Trolley

It's the weekend … and one's thoughts inevitably turn to a golf cart full of fake air hostesses … er …
or is that just me?

Torchy

What's going on here?

Scantily dressed weemen resting on their rowlocks

and taking pictures?

Aha!

It's Pull's Ferry, opposite the office at seven in the morning

and here comes the Olympic torch.

Serenaded by the Cathedral Choir (hidden under the willow tree),

regaling us with Jerusalem and Rule Brittannia

and a whole lot of other jingoistic nonsense,

the flame is about to take to the water.

Apparently the rather non-athletic people bearing the symbol of naked wrestling youth have been chosen by committee, being nominated for all sorts of good works,

though I have no idea who these two are.

All I know is that the little old lady beside me was getting rather excited at the prospect of somebody falling into the river, which - alas - didn't happen.

Watching the wide woman being inserted into the narrow canoe was entertaining.

And so the flame is off, rowed slowly up-river toward Bishop Bridge …

… accompanied by a small flotilla of local rowers and saluted by those who appear to have forgotten their boats.

Meanwhile, up on the balcony overlooking this historic yet charmingly amateurish event are the office early birds, desperate for bacon.

As promised, the capo di tutti capi gets jiggy with the frying pan.

Yay, breakfast!

By the time we'd snarfed bacon butties and coffee all the crowds had gone, leaving us with a slightly deflated feeling and a whole day's work ahead of us, darn it.

Couldn't resist this last one for the South Park fans.

TTFN.