An evening with Liberace

Yesterday, my friend and I went to see Behind The Candalabra. Before she mentioned it to me, I hadn’t heard of it. When she said it was about Liberace, I still didn’t have that much idea what was coming.

In all honesty, Liberace is a name I’ve heard plenty of times but couldn’t have pinned it down to anything if you’d asked me. Somewhere in my mind, I thought he was connected to music but I also thought he was perhaps a general in the army during the war. I also had a feeling he was an artist. Basically, I had no idea what to expect when going to see this film.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it but I’ll give you the general gist.

A young boy, Scott Thorson, has a chance meeting with Liberace after seeing one of his concerts with a mutual friend. A relationship develops and continues on for many years, despite Liberace’s cover story for the public, that he is engaged to a woman.

The thing that got me thinking in this film was the situation that Scott finds himself in. He is your average Joe. He’d had a difficult upbringing. He was living in foster care at the time. He was only 16 years old. Then he went to see a concert with a friend and suddenly he’s entered this crazy world of money and cars and fur coats and plastic surgery.

O yes, the plastic surgery, I forgot to mention the plastic surgery. The relationship between Liberace and Scott takes a funny turn when Liberace adopts Scott and pays for him to have plastic surgery to look like himself. Yep. (Rob Lowe plays a fantastic role as the plastic surgeon, by the way.)

Imagine you were seeing a concert, of Beyonce perhaps. And by crazy coincidence, you got to see her backstage. And imagine she invited you to lunch at her house the next day. And her house was massive and full of gold things and she wore loads of rings and fur coats and necklaces. And imagine you and Beyonce had a relationship and you started wearing all the fancy fur coats too and had three or four cars. And imagine you became part of her stage act and lived in a world of craziness and money. And you had your face changed through plastic surgery to look like hers.

I mean, it’s crazy talk. But it really happened to an ordinary boy. It’s just incomprehensible, the wackiness of the world that Hollywood stars live in.

So now, I have to read the book. Do you ever get that? You leave the cinema and you’re already downloading the book?

Anyway, people, go and see this film. It’s funny, it’s brilliantly filmed, it’s extravagant and it is a feast for the eyes. The costume designer must have had a party on this set!

Falling off my bike whilst barely moving

My first big fall happened whilst moving at almost no miles an hour, on a pavement, with no-one around. My friend Joe and I were cycling to his home in Reading so had just set off on our epic adventure early in the morning. My bike was newish and I was itching to give it a trial run on a long ride. I was having one of those monthly spacially unaware days (women, you know what I mean) and as I cycled around a little bollard thingy on the pavement at a dead end road with no cars or pedestrians, I just went a little too slowly to stay upright. Something about my spacial unawareness made me totally unable to cope with the situation at hand and I just wobbled slowly toward the bollard, crashed the front wheel sideways into it and fell on the ground. The brake was broken for the whole ride and I grazed my leg.

The next falls were all after I’d had different pedals fitted and had started wearing cleats, shoes that have little blocks on them which click into a space on your pedals. The fall I had whilst cycling in the busy centre of London was because I hadn’t yet worked out how to get out of them while moving slowly uphill. It’s harder than you think because of your weight being on them. So as I got to a red traffic light, I couldn’t unclip and I fell, in front of the dozens of people waiting to cross the road and looking uncertainly at me to see if I’d stop and let them across. I was going no miles an hour. There were no cars. There was no almost-collision. I just went slower, slower, slower, right down to a halt, then fell off on to the ground. The handle bar turned sideways and stabbed me in the boob so I had a bruised boob for weeks afterward. And people really looked strangely at me. Someone hurried over and asked if I needed help but I just brushed her off, rather gruffly and stalked off, pushing the bike, mega embarrassed.

The next fall was similar to this. I was cycling slowly uphill so couldn’t unclip and was cycling with a friend who had looked down to adjust his gears and drifted sideways into my path. I braked, a natural reaction to stop the inevitable crash. But I hadn’t unclipped. So I fell in the opposite direction and really bashed up my legs, hitting the curb. My friend didn’t even realise any of what had happened. He just looked down to change his gear then looked up and I’d fallen on the ground.

Another time I had a plastic bag with some stuff in but I had a new bike with very short handlebars. As I turned a corner, the bag swung into the spokes and stopped my wheel dead. I tried pushing down on the pedals to keep moving but I ground to a halt then fell sideways into the road. To onlookers it must have looked very stupid. I turned a corner, stopped, then crashed to the floor. Again, no-one was around, no cars, no pedestrians. Nothing had jumped into my path. I just fell on the ground.

Maybe this is why I am not the world famous sporting star you probably all expect I should be by now.

Brave New Supermarket

It’s Wednesday and time for my guest Blogger to take over again. Enjoy it!

I’ve borrowed two-thirds of the title for this week from, as you will know doubt recognise, the famous Aldous Huxley novel. This is not because I’m going to try and emulate his literary prowess but because the words encapsulate what I’m going to write about today. You will need to have a good and creative imagination but I hope you will be able to embrace the idea that follows.

However, before getting “stuck in”, as we say, I couldn’t resist a couple of bits of trivia connections. You may remember the blog on 27.9.12 (The Lion Saltworks and Anderton Boat Lift) which mentioned the discovery of polythene at one of the Brunner Mond Company sites in Northwich (Cheshire). Well, in the 1920s, Aldous Huxley actually worked for a time at another Brunner Mond chemical plant in Billingham (Teeside, North-East England) and it is believed that the name of his character Mustapha Mond (in Brave New World) owes something to his experience there. (Mustapha comes from Mustapha Kemal Atatürk, 1881-1938, the first president of Turkey.) In a previous blog, 20.6.12 (The end of freedom) I mentioned Plato’s The Republic in which he wrote about the way society would function better if people were categorised into different classes. The difficulty for us is that he wanted people to remain within that class for the duration of their lives. Huxley takes up this theme but goes even further with the idea. The State will control the birth process of human beings who would fulfil each of the functions required; further control was to be imposed by limiting how far each person could develop intellectually & physically in order to prevent people moving from that particular class. Now we’re seriously into eugenics.

Ok so back to today’s subject. You remember the blog 17.10.12 (The reality (?) of mobile phones)in which I mentioned my frustrations on a supermarket visit. I was thinking of how, when the shop gets crowded, people are bumping into each other’s trolleys and can’t get to shelves because people are blocking their way. I also did think about a way round this and this is where my new scheme, my original idea, comes in. Before you dismiss it just think about it and I hope you will see the advantages.

The first thing to say is that what you are about to read is revolutionary, in more ways than one. (You will see why soon enough.) Instead of going into the shop you will remain outside at all times. (The outside area will of course be covered so in bad weather you are protected from the elements.)

You begin by backing your car into a marked bay which is at right angles to the shop. Once in the bay a barrier comes down in front of your car which does not lift until you have paid the bill. The marked bay is close to a revolving belt, similar to the idea in an airport at the baggage reclaim but in this case it is horizontal not angled. The customer chooses the items they want from a computer touch screen next to their parking bay and revolving belt. This belt moves clockwise in a rectangular loop into one end of the shop and out of the other. Inside there is a belt down the centre of each aisle which goes back underneath to the start point of the aisle. It’s a vertical loop instead of the horizontal one which takes the stuff outside. There is sufficient space either side of the belt for staff to walk up and down to the items required by the customers outside. It is slightly higher than the main belt and at right angles to it. It deposits items picked onto the rectangular loop which then carries the item outside to the waiting customers who simply pick them up and scan them before putting them in their bags or directly into their car boot. Each item has the bay number which ordered it on a sticky label or tag. The customer then scans it to confirm the order or replaces it if not right item. Once you have all your items you simply press “Finish & Pay”. (Remember the barrier won’t lift on the parking bay until you have paid.) Here is a rough drawing of how the system would look. Please excuse the quality (art is not one of my gifts – and I did say rough):

Line drawing of scheme at supermarket

Of course depending on the size of the supermarket they may be able to fit 20, 30 or more cars along the front. I used 15 just for illustration purposes. I’ve also considered the option of allowing people to send their orders through on the internet with an ETA so that most of their stuff, if not all, can be got ready to go on the belt when they are parked in a bay confirming their arrival.

Now just think about that. No more wandering up and down aisles; no more getting blocked by insensitive shoppers on mobile phones or chit-chatting with their friends in the middle of the aisles; no more queuing at the check outs; no more trolley pushing (so shop won’t need them any more!). How good is that?

I feel a visit to the patent office coming on, followed by Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsburys, Asda (Walmart).

The walking test

Happy Thursday all. It’s time for my guest blogger to take over again, so here goes. Enjoy!

 

Is it just me or does this happen to you? You’re walking along behind someone when they suddenly, without warning, just stop. Then you notice they’re either on the phone or doing something with their phone or they’ve stopped to tell their child off for something. You do a kind of side-step to avoid walking into them while they seem completely oblivious to the problem they’ve created. Last week I mentioned the incident, in my local supermarket, of someone talking on a mobile phone and leaving their trolley blocking the aisle. (This week, by the way, went without a hitch – result!)

I’ve been thinking of how this problem could be solved. My solution is quite revolutionary (in Rambler-opolis, anyway) – pedestrian lights. That is pedestrian brake lights (& side lights for when walking at night). Now, before you laugh, just bear with me while I explain. They would be positioned on your shoulders with the red lens facing to the back. They could be powered by a small watch size battery. Every pedestrian would have to have them so that people walking behind would know when the person was going to stop (as the red brake light would go on) and can then take avoiding action. Now I’m not sure at this stage whether indicator lights could be added. Wouldn’t it be great if you could tell which way a person was going to turn especially if you were going to do an overtaking manoeuvre just by the lights on their shoulders?

Think about this – we don’t allow people to fly planes, drive trains, captain ships, ride motorbikes or scooters, drive trucks or any vehicle without passing a test. However when it comes to the pavement (sidewalk) we seem to just let anyone do whatever they want. Just as you have to pass a test to drive a vehicle on the road I think there should be a “Walking Test” before you’re allowed out on the pavements. (Kids would be exempt until they reach a certain age.) Until such time as you pass the test you wear an “L” badge (front and back). Once you’ve passed you get a pedestrian licence or walking permit. There’d be an equivalent to the Highway Code for pedestrians – a Pavement Code, maybe? There would also be a Pedestrian Police Force who could catch people breaking the rules; they should definitely catch people talking on their mobile phone whilst walking – this is a big “No-No”. (They could also breathalyse people if they suspect they are “walking under the influence of alcohol”.) In Rambleropolis if you want to answer the phone you must walk to the side of the pavement away from the road where there will be a white line marking an area for stationary pedestrians. It will be roughly the width of one person. (The area could be also used by those wanting to tie up a shoelace that has come undone or adjust their tie or dress in general.) If you are using your phone you should remain still, in this marked area, for the duration of the call. You must stop walking. Once the call, or whatever you’re doing, is over you should check behind to make sure no-one is coming and then cross the line and resume walking in the main area. How easy is that?

This would definitely introduce a bit more order to the chaos of people just walking wherever they want. Then we could look at some more measures like pedestrian speed cameras. This would bring even more order to our pavements. Running would not be allowed as it’s dangerous to those moving more slowly and older folks. Speed cameras would pick up those who disobey, say those exceeding 6mph. Further on as systems develop I think maybe we could develop the idea of a white line down the centre of the pavement. That certainly would be worth looking into. Failing a driving test is something you talk about with your friends & relatives but imagine the shame of failing your pedestrian test. Yes, I think this would really spur people on to be good citizens.

(As a quick aside here, I think there should also be a test for people using trolleys in supermarkets that would include how to position the trolley whilst thinking about what to buy or whilst talking on a mobile phone!)

I can see quite a few nodding heads. I know what you’re thinking – why has no-one ever thought of something like this before? Well to be honest I was wondering that too. I can’t see too many problems with my idea so far so I think it’s off down to the patent office tomorrow to protect my idea from anyone trying to steal it and make a fortune. Remember, in a few years time, when everyone is wearing my invention, you read it first here! I would of course expect to earn sizeable sums of money from the royalties of my idea and will probably buy a decent car with a chauffeur so don’t expect to meet me on the pavement! Oh and finally would like to just wish you all “Happy Walking”.

Bird Droppings

It’s over to my guest blogger today for some fascinating facts on this subject:

 

Today I thought I would take a break from the more serious subjects I’ve covered recently. The topic today is bird droppings (or more commonly pooh). Unsightly mess? Spoils public buildings & many other structures – definitely. But how much do you know about it? Will you even carry on reading this because you think it’s boring and uninteresting. Tell you what – I thought that before I started thinking about it. It almost became something “to get excited about” as LLM might say.
I wonder if you’ve ever been hit by bird droppings from the sky as you walked along outside? I have. I was fortunate though, it landed on my shoulder (and therefore thankfully missed my head although it did get some small splashes) and left me with a stained shirt for the rest of the day. Yes, I was on my way to work walking from the train station. Oh well, it gave people in the office a good laugh when I arrived with the mess down the front. (“I see you had some visitors drop in on way to work this morning”, and other such witty remarks.)
So what could be interesting about bird muck? Well, in case you’re struggling, one of our national newspapers came to the rescue recently. It published a survey analysing droppings found on cars in different cities in the UK. It seems to suggest that it’s not just where you park your car that affects whether it gets muck on it but that it is related to the colour of your car. Is there a colour, for instance, which does or doesn’t seem to get hit as much as others? Yes there is but it’s not as simple as that. Before we go any further let’s look at the published table below:

Red – 18 per cent
Blue – 14 per cent
Black – 11 per cent
White – 7 per cent
Grey/Silver- 3 per cent
Green – 1 per cent

This is quite interesting as you can see that nearly 1 in 5 cars that are hit are coloured red. Hmm.. perhaps you won’t buy a red car next time. Before you get too carried away by this revelation just look at those figures again. Now you don’t have to be a maths whizz to see that the figures don’t add up to anywhere near 100%. I make the total 54% (and this is the full table as appeared in the newspaper). (You might have to add 7% if the white/grey means two colours tied on that figure but it doesn’t say.) What happened to the other 46% of the sample? Were they all colours different to the ones specified? If so why not include an “other colours” category? LLM covered “getting excited” about stuff but at this point I was doing “getting angry” (at the quality of this presentation). Why publish such a rubbish table which appears to show only just over half of the number surveyed? Is the paper really that bad at its adding up? (Is this turning into a “Chat 2” blast?)
Ok so let’s look at some more of the detail behind table. They looked at 1,140 cars across five cities: Brighton, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester and Bristol. Sounds like a fair spread, north, middle & south, but wait a minute, think about this – why no London investigation? (London is noted for its population of pigeons in certain areas so should have been a good area to get a lot of test results.) Seems like a fair number of vehicles but did you know, as of the most recent figures, there are 31 million cars in the UK (and 134 million in the USA). Now take the sample size and divide it by the total number of cars (& times by 100) to get a percentage – any guesses? I’ll tell you it’s 1,140/31,00,000 = 0.00367% – that is 1/272 of 1%! Just take a moment to think about that – not half of 1%, not a quarter of 1%, not even one 100th of 1% or one 200th of 1% but 1/272 of 1%! How small is that? Now come on, since when did a fraction of 1% as small as that represent a big enough sample to make inferences about cars across the whole country. And yet, there in a national newspaper, the survey is given some column inches with no ref to how small the sample is when compared to the total number of cars on the road.
So far, amongst other things, we have: an apparently incomplete table that doesn’t add up to anywhere near 100%; we have a sample size so small that it makes it hard to deduce meaningful data; and we don’t know why the capital of the country has been excluded from the survey.
Steam is (metaphorically) beginning to come out of the ears at this point but bear with me there’s more.

The next bits are what I would call basic. Think about it – we are not told anything about the locations surveyed. Were the car parks on open ground? Were the cars just parked in streets? Were there overhanging branches or even road or rail bridges which often have metal support girders underneath providing many ideal perches for pigeons? (The car park at my own place of work actually has a dual carriageway going over it so has two bridges & therefore lots of girders & therefore lots of pigeons.)
Remember too that the research did not consider the type of birds doing the fouling of the vehicles. (They actually spelt it “fowling” at one point in the article – haha.) Whilst they could not possibly see all the birds doing the deeds it is possible that they surveyed at a place in a city where there is a resident population of a particular type of bird –pigeons, sea-gulls or starlings for example. Btw, did you know that pigeon pooh is more damaging than say seagull pooh? I’m sure you want to know why so I’ll tell you – it’s because pigeons eat seeds and therefore produce grainier pooh and it’s that which causes more blemishes on your car’s paintwork. However what about all those smaller size birds: sparrows, starlings, blackbirds, finches, thrushes etc?
The article also gives you the useful info, from car polish experts Autoglym, that car paint damage is NOT caused by the acid or alkali in the pooh which I always thought – so I did learn something useful from reading it. I won’t bore you with the technical explanation – if you’re really interested you can look it up.
Did you know that insurers estimated that the annual cost of damage to paintwork from bird droppings is about £57 million? Best advice? – just clean it off as soon as possible. Well I’d never have thought of that!
In the car park where I work two people have yellow cars. Why is yellow not in the survey table? Does this mean it’s the safest colour to buy because the survey did not spot one yellow car with bird muck?
Another stat which might have been helpful is the colour distribution of cars on the road. Supposing, for instance, that 18% of all cars on the road are red, it would be no surprise that 18% of the bird muck survey were found to be red cars would it? This again is basic stuff which any normal person would ask. It’s like saying that a survey found that the average age of people going into a particular building was say 68 and you say why so high? Why were there not more younger people going in? Ah well, you see, it’s a day care centre for pensioners. Bigger picture springs to mind here!
It takes about 3 seconds to research colours of cars sold. Here’s the table of colours of cars sold (so not the actual total in the country, but does include yellow) for most of 2010:

1: black Cars sold: 465,249 Percentage share: 24.7
2: silver Cars sold: 402,537 Percentage share: 21.4
3: blue Cars sold: 310,331 Percentage share: 16.5
4: grey Cars sold: 270,863 Percentage share: 14.4
5: red Cars sold: 192,335 Percentage share: 10.2
6: white Cars sold: 188,463 Percentage share: 10
7: green Cars sold: 20,735 Percentage share: 1.1
8: beige Cars sold: 17,237 Percentage share: 0.9
9: yellow Cars sold: 7,621 Percentage share: 0.4
10: brown Cars sold: 6,967 Percentage share: 0.4

These figures do come to 100%. Again simple bit of research – look at the top 3 in the bird dropping sample (red, blue, black) and add up the percentage figures. It comes to 43%. Now look in the table for 2010 sales and add up the percentages for the same 3 colours – it’s 51%. Not that far apart I’d say.

Inference – the more cars there are of a certain colour the more likely they are to get hit! It’s not rocket science but it doesn’t make headlines and you know as well as I do that “headlines” sell papers.
Another newspaper gave the following table apparently for most popular car colours IN THE WORLD! And here it is:
1. Silver – 26 percent
2. Black/Black Effect – 24 percent
3. White/White Pearl and Grey – 16 percent each (tie)
5. Red – 6 percent
6. Blue – 5 percent
7. Brown/Beige – 3 percent
8. Green – 2 percent
9. Yellow/Gold – 1 percent
10. Others – <1 percent
We see that this table also does add up to 100% (you do have to add 16% to the 84% total because two colours were tied in third place).
Black, red, blue comes to 35%. Not that far off 43% really.
Now, apart from the fact that I was “getting angry” about this terribly presented (bird droppings) survey, I was amazed to note what I had come to believe over many years was actually being confirmed. I have on a number of occasions come to my car to find it has droppings on and yet the one next to it has none. When it first happens you don’t notice anything special but when it keeps on happening you begin to wonder: am I parking under a bird’s nest? Is there a tree branch over the parking place? Did I definitely remove the “Pooh here” notice from the roof of my car? Ooh… wait a minute was the notice invisible? – remember “Invisible Art” from 4.7.12. Better check that.

Ok so now you know the facts but will it influence the colour of car you next buy. Will you rush to the research paper and get the info and then decide to buy a GREEN car or even SILVER?
And you thought bird pooh was not that interesting. (Maybe you still do after reading Mr Angry’s rant.) What about readers of this blog sending in the colour of their car and whether it gets “pooped on” on a regular basis.

Last word has to go to the Ornithology experts who were quoted in the article:

“The British Trust for Ornithology is more circumspect on the role of colour in the ‘drop zone’ for birds.

A spokesman said: ‘We do know that birds can be attracted to certain colours during display but droppings on cars are probably more to do with where you park; if you park where birds roost then you are going to get more droppings on your vehicle.’”

Incredible! Would you have thought of that? – and they didn’t even do a survey to back their conclusion up.