ESC4P3

Last night I journeyed to the Hammersmith "Liver Damage" Apollo to see a band that recorded one of my favourite albums of all time, that band being Journey. Me and a friend from work left Bemuddlement Towers at around 5:30pm and by 6:40pm we were outside "the Trout" for the traditional imbibing of the pre-gig foaming Pevo. Suitably refreshed, we then headed for the venue.
Inside was heaving, however the merchandising was curious. No tour programmes but a rather nice selection of T-shirts, hot pants and even a Journey styled Soccer shirt. Given that the average audience age was approximately between 35 and 90 I suggested that maybe a stylish blazer would have been more appropriate, but sadly, none were available.
The support started at 7:45pm. I hate support acts, they just irritate me. I explained to my colleague that I have felt this way since I saw the lead singer of the "House of Lords" badly injure himself trying to slam dive into the crowd at an Iron Maiden show in December 1989. I think the phrase "the crowd parted like the Red Sea" was involved somewhere. My friend bought a tour T-shirt... I did not. I gave all mine to charity in 2005... I think I still have my "Page and Plant Unplugged", but I maybe mistaken. I have yet to open all the boxes that went into storage in 2006.
So, having elected to skip the support act, it was time for another beer. At the Carling Apollo, all you can by is Carling Lager... we should've stayed at "The Trout".
Journey came on at 8:45pm and left at 10:40pm.... they were brilliant. Please refer to other sites for detailed reviews.
I sat next to a fat Greek. I know this, because he was texting throughout the show using the Greek alphabet... he may have been a Greek Scholar, but he didn't look the sort.
One train ride and a Steak and Guinness pasty later, we arrived back at Bemuddlement Towers. I showed Mrs Bemuddlement a clip I recorded on my mobile phone. It was unintelligible.
Next month I'm seeing James Taylor. Nobody I met last night was impressed... especially the Toto fans.

Explanation of Commuting, Cartoon Stunt Guitarist and Recovering Vegetarian: #1 Commuting



Many people have asked me "Bemuddlement? What exactly does the title "Commuting, Cartoon Stunt Guitarist and Recovering Vegetarian" mean? Well it's not that long a story and maybe all these lines are not relevent anymore, but I feel that as I feel I am approaching an evermore productive period of writing, I'd give all my faithful readers out there an explanation.

Commuting refers to the fact that I used to perform a round trip of 90 miles to work and back 5 days a week and as you will see from previous posts, there was an awful lot to think about and an awful lot of "stream of consciousness" going on. I no longer travel that amount of distance. There is not a lot to inspire a driver on the M25, apart from road kills, parts of vehicles in the French guttering (I even learned what that was) and the occasional quip inscribed on the side of a van, such as "Clean Me" or "I wish my wife was as dirty as this van".

I now commute far less (55 miles a day) and the journey is far more inspiring, often choosing a cross-country route in preference to the dreaded M25. My guess is that the future will see the amount of commuting decreasing over the next 5 years, particularly if government policy on Carbon emissions filters into the workplace. Working from home will (hopefully) increase and the number of days in the office with inevitable decrease as a cause.

Looking back, I've done some crazy travelling, but I always said that there was something very bizarre and decadent about drinking tea and eating scones at 33,000ft at 5pm in the afternoon after a day trip between London and Edinburgh. Chin! Chin!

BLOGGER CHANGED!!!!

Bemuddlement blogger is now undergoing a substantial revamp in line with the new google tools. Stay tuned.

Little Victory

Tube of Polo Mints 28p
Inserted 50p
Returned 27p
Net profit 5p

Words of Wisdom #0001

Black shoes for business, brown shoes for lesuire

Digital Television Explained

The other evening, whilst enjoying another gripping episode of "Deal or No Deal" (which I daily pre-record and watch at four times speed over my evening meal), the present Mother-in-Law telephoned BuddlementTowers in a distressed state, wondering why she couldn't get a clear picture for Channel Five and QVC on her Digibox. The reason for her angst was that she couldn't get her weekly dose of Gary Sinise in CSI:New York and had to content herself with Hugh Edwards on the Nine O'clock news discussing the 210 kilos of Russian Polo mints (again).

I quickly identified her predicament as a clear case of poor reception on one particular multiplexer or MUX; however how can one easily explain this to someone not familiar with finer technicalities of modern broadcast television? I quickly came up with a simple analogy and I thought the technically challenged amongst you, may find the explanation I gave, of use.

"Let us compare television to toothpaste.

Analogue television is rather like brushing your teeth with a simple mono-colour toothpaste (such Colgate freshmint... other toothpastes are available). You select a channel (or toothpaste) and clean using a toothbrush (or television set). However, what if you only had multi-striped toothpaste (such as Aquafresh), but yet still wanted to enjoy the same, simple delights of a mono-coloured dental cleaning product? This is where the Digibox comes in. A Digibox separates the multiplexed toothpaste into it's constituent parts (or channels). Multiple channels (or toothpaste stripes) are broadcast on the same multiplexer (or toothpaste tube) and arrive on your Digibox or bathroom shelf. The user (or Digibox) would then delicately de-multiplex, or separate, each stripe on the bathroom shelf, into single strands of red toothpaste (Channel Five), blue toothpaste (QVC) and white toothpaste (Bidup TV), before placing them onto separate individual toothbrushes, or slots in the Electronic Programme Guide (EPG). The viewer, then selects the appropriate toothbrush, unaware of the other multiple channels, or toothbrushes. These toothbrushes are all broadcast on the same MUX or toothpaste tube. If however, your tube of Aquafresh emerges in a single strand of purple toothpaste, the digibox cannot decode the toothpaste into the separate channels and Gary Sinise, ends up looking like one of those pixilated villans as seen on the excellent ITV programme "Police, Camera, Action!""

I hope this makes things clearer.

"Is it me...?"

Dear Mr Motorway Service Station Owner,
I'm no professional complainer, but I do feel I should bring to your attention the miserable experience I had in your establishment on the M4 yesterday. Rather than highlight the whole sorry story, blow by blow, here are some positive, improvement recommendations. I'll leave you to fill in the gaps...

• I accept that the price of petrol is several pence higher than my local garage, but at £1.99 for a cup of "Regular" Americano coffee I estimate that comes to approximately £30 a gallon. Here is where the comparison ends, however one does expect a coffee to be produced in a little faster time than it takes to fill up with 10 Gallons of diesel.
• When it's 30c outside, please keep the doors and windows shut and let the air conditioning do it's job. This will reduce the number of flies in the eating area and make the large array of uncovered cakes on show, far more appealing to potential customers. Would it then be possible to place English/Serbo-Croat phrase books amongst the complimentary coffee stained editions of the Daily Mirror, in order that patrons can make themselves fully understood to your employees with regards to this hygiene risk.
• The digital display board claimed that the gentleman's washroom had been inspected "34" ago. One can only assume, from the state of the said facilities, that the units to be applied to that figure must be hours (or possibly, days).....

Song's I never Get Tired of Hearing #00001

Three Day's - Jane's Addiction : From the moment Perry Farrell whispers the beginning, to the finale 10 minutes and 48 seconds later. More mood changes than most artists have in a career.

You Know I Could Listen To..... #0001

The genius that is Lindsey Buckingham, all day.

Unnoticed Obvious #0001

Every now and then something crops up in converstaion that makes me realise something that should've been blatently obvious. Welcome to the first in this irregular series.

Today someone was referred to using a term from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". The term was "Kerr-nig-itt" (a phrase uttered by the tauning French sentry man, whilst hurling insults at King Arthur and his Knights).... I then realised that this man's surname (being Knight) was the realise a colleague used this term of endearment.

"So "kerr-nig-itt" and Knight are the same thing ?", I asked
"Errrrr..... yes", my colleague repsonded

Estimating that I first saw the Holy Grail around 1980, this joke has taken 26 years for me to get.

"Little Victories" - A Homage

One regular feature on this blog, is that of "Little Victories", those odd little highlights during the day when one feels one is 'winning' in life. Usually this means finding 5p left in the coffee machine, or an under priced bag of crisps in the vending machine.
What you probably don't know is that I took the phrase from "Porridge", a UK sit-com from the 1970's starring Ronnie Barker.
Sadly, this week, Ronnie Barker died at the age of 76. His writing, comedy and acting talents made his craft look easy. The legacy of the work he willleave behind is enourmous and will entertain generations to come.

Listening Post #0001

Overheard in Post office queue

Mother: No use looking at those birthday cards you've missed his birthday
Child 1 : Oh! I'll be 13 next birthday
Child 2 : I'll be 11
Mother : And I'll be 27!

Am I Getting Old #0002
Spotted this in a "High Fashion" establishment in Crawley (yes such things do exist). Can someone explain what type of person would wear this???

How about that? Blogger can now post images :-). To commerate this event, here's a lovely picture taken on the K750i of a sunset over Walton-on-Thames last week (as viewed from the Swan Public House)

Am I Getting Old...?

E-mail I sent to local radio station today

"I am writing to you in connection with a publicity stunt on the Running Horse roundabout in Maidstone, that I believe to be connected with your radio station. This caused considerable inconvenience to many people who use that roundabout, either to access the London bound M20 or to get into Maidstone itself. I shall explain.

As I joined the A229 this morning, from Burham, at approx 8am, I had to queue to get onto Bluebell Hill, an occurrence that only usually happens when there has been an accident. During the 15 minutes it took me to travel the 1 mile from the Shell garage to the Running Horse Roundabout, I witnessed two incidents that nearly resulted in motor vehicle collisions and one incident of "road rage". These all occurred directly in front of me and as a consequence of the traffic build-up. Drivers attempted to jump the queue of traffic or had to negotiate blocked exits on slip roads and roundabouts approaching the Running Horse roundabout.

At the roundabout, I discovered the reason for the delay. On the grass verge, was a vehicle festooned with Invicta Radio insignia and two young men enacting a Star Wars light sabre fight. I believe one was dressed as Obi-Won Kenobi (Episode 1-3 era) and the other as Darth Vader, who incidentally was the weediest Darth Vader I have ever had the displeasure to see. This was deemed considerable enough distraction by motorists, to slow down and cause the build up of traffic.

I'm no "killjoy" but I do think that this stunt was ill-conceived, reckless and potentially dangerous. Traffic at that roundabout is often very busy and requires drivers to concentrate fully on the road. The delay it caused to my journey this morning was frustrating, annoying and needless.

In the future please consider the impact such events have on road users, particularly during rush-hour, when many of us simply want to get from our homes to our place of work."