White Wine in the Sun

There is so much more I want to say about this song, but it's 6pm on Christmas Eve, and I've only just had breakfast.

There's a reason for my cereal tardiness - I'm doing some overnight shifts for Crisis Christmas again this year, so currently live like a vampire. In a coming out at night and sleeping during the day kind of way, obviously, not a drinking other people's blood kind of way. When it comes to vampire analogies, boundaries can be important.

If I'd had more time and more sleep I'd attempt to explain the strange cognitive dissonance which happens whenever I start thinking about Christmas; something, funnily enough, I'm prone to do at this time of year. Although I don't think cognitive dissonance is quite the term I'm looking for; that would imply that I'm uncomfortable, to some degree, with having two wildly different and completely conflicting versions of the concept  of "Christmas" floating around in my head. But I'm not. Instead of fighting it out with each other, "This Christmas" and "That Christmas" live side by side in perfect harmony.

"This Christmas" is cold and snow (well, icy sludge now) and turkey with all the trimmings, and tinsel and shiny lights and dark evenings and watching telly. It makes perfect sense. "That Christmas" is sitting on my parents' veranda in thirty-something degree heat, going to the beach, air-conditioning, flies, platters of cold seafood.  It makes perfect sense too.

People - by which  I mean people who aren't me - tend to have very fixed ideas about what a "proper" Christmas is; how it smells, how it looks, what it feels like. I have two versions and they both feel utterly right.  It's weird. And it's just a symptom, I think, of a bigger mental battle which is to do with national identity.  The question of whether I'm an Australian who lives in London or a Brit who just happens to have been born and raised in Australia is one which quietly bubbles away in the back of my mind most of the time, and something I've been meaning to blog about for a while.  I still want to, but there is probably a better time to do it  than half way through the Ashes series.

For now, what I'll say about Tim Minchin's alternative Christmas carol is this: It's a beautiful song.  And regardless of whether or not you agree with its take on religion, it's something else which makes complete and utter sense.



I'll be back in a week or so, I expect.  In the meantime have a very Merry Christmas, whatever yours might looks like.

Radio Gaga

From a nice list of "15 Extremely Embarassing Scientific Predictions" over at Listverse,  this editorial first appeared in the Boston Post in 1865:

"Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires, and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value"

Practical value or not, radio doesn't come much funnier than this:



Unless, maybe, it's this:

Changing Rooms

Thought it was about time for a makeover.  Still tweaking.  Suggestions more than welcome.

Bad Santas

I'm feeling well Christmassy this year.  Much more so than usual, and I can't work out why.  I expect it might have something to do with all of  the snow, which is making it feel a bit like we're living on top of a giant Christmas cake.

I can appreciate that not everyone will be feeling quite so festive; at this time of year some people are all bah-this and humbug-that.  If  you are one of those people this is the story for you.

It's a jaw-dropping tale of war - and I do mean war - in the Santa industry.  (That's right, the Santa INDUSTRY.  I don't have time for lengthy extistential debates about Santa right now.  Let's just assume that even if he does exist, he's in such high demand around this time of year that it makes sense to recruit an army of impersonators to help out.) 

The Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas is a membership organisation for Santas.  Not just any old Santas, mind you - the AORBS are the top of the heap.   These are Santas who take their job very seriously indeed; the kind of Santas who have a Christmas grotto in their house and carry a stash of small toys and stickers with them at all times, even in the middle of July, just in case they are recognised by small children who have cannily identified them by their white beards and twinkly eyes.

It all began back in 1994, at a multi-Santa photo shoot.  The ten Santas, who were being photographed for a shopping catalouge, went out for a meal afterwards.  They all had so much fun swapping stories and tips that one of them, Santa Tom, suggested they ought to meet up more regularly.  Everyone agreed and AORBS was born.   The group widened over the following years, and in 2003 Santa Tim joined them.

Santa Tim was already a pretty serious Santa.  He had his own company - The Kringle Group - and offered services such as Santa referrals, a mail order costume service, and even an International Santa Claus University.  Santa Tom thought Santa Tim seemed like a pretty good guy, and recruited him to help run AORBS, which was growing at a rate he couldn't handle.  

So far, so good.  But, in 2007 Santa Nick Trolly joined the organisation, and here's where it starts to get ugly.  Santa Nick wasn't entirely comfortable with Santa Tim juggling both AORBS and The Kringle Group, and soon began asking difficult questions.  Santa Tim hardly helped matters buy signing a deal with a documentary maker to make films about  his own university and the AORBS conventions, receiving payments on behalf of both groups. This caused such a scandal when it was discovered that he eventually resigned from the AORBS board. 

Santa Nick took over as president and immediately began instigating some changes. There was some grumbling about this, particularly among the Californian santas who felt that Santa Tim (a fellow Californian) had been forced out of office by a power-hungry newcomer.  The disgruntled santas began to use the AORBS online chat forum  (called, pleasingly, "Elf-net") to air their grievances. Elf-net was being moderated by a cohort of Santa Tim, though, and Santas who used it to complain soon found themselves banned from posting.  Santa Tom, the same Santa Tom who set up AORBS in the first place, was one of them.

The banned Santas set up their own chat-forum and the bickering continued.  It began to get quite ugly; both sides threw insults and allegations at each other and law suits were threatened on a regular basis. There was a violent confrontation at a theme park, which no-one, least of all the security guard who was called in, quite knows the truth about; it took place during a Santa convention and  in a room full of Santas it's hard to tell who is on which side.

There are now two seperate Santa organisations, and they are still bitter rivals.  It's a fascinating story;  I heard it on This American Life* where, over the course of a twenty-or-so minute segement, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Stalin and the FBI were mentioned.  The comparisons aren't as far-fetched as you might think. 

*a podcast I've been hearing good things about in various places for a while now, and finally got around to tracking down yesterday.  This was the first episode I listened to; I'll definitely be back for more.

.

The logistics alone are mind-boggling

If you trawl through almost any blogger's back-catalogue, you'll find a post about the strange and wonderful search terms which have led people to their blog.  This is that post.

I'm quite excited - it almost feels like a rite of passage. The main reason I've taken so long to get around to it is that for the first few months my search terms were really nothing special; they were downright boring, in fact. But they've become slightly more entertaining now, I think.  Besides  it feels like a good pre-Christmas, year-in-review sort of thing to do.

Sowhich search terms have taken readers gently by the hand and led them through the streets of this blog?  At the top of the list, and making me feel even more guilty than I was already feeling (which was quite guilty) about abandoning those episode summaries mid-series, is pretty much anything to do with The Apprentice.  Oops. Did I mention how guilty I feel?

Aside from  some poor person looking for "jokes about Lord Sugar" (move along please, there's nothing for you to see here) most of the Apprentice-based searches involved Chris and his blue eyes. "Chris apprentice eyes blue", "blue eyes apprentice chris", "what colour are apprentice chris's eyes".....well, you get the idea.  There are fourteen more of these.  To your enormous relief  I won't list them all.  Someone wanted to know "what colour eyes does apprentice Chris have?" (BLUE, you fool, they are BLUE!) but it wasn't just eyes people were interested in; one odd-bod was more interested in Sandesh's feet.  I don't know why either.  My favourite Appprentice search was "apprentice Stuart Baggs muppet", and my least favourite, which popped up several weeks ago was "spoiler Stella wins the apprentice".  It didn't *completely* spoil the final for me, but it certainly made the result less of a surprise, and was very annoying.  Someone also came looking for "Shibby impersonation" and to that person  I can only apologise.  I'm rubbish at impressions.

Quite a few searches involved  questions about the Canterbury Tales, none of which I've actually answered.  Also, given that my Canterbury Tales posts were all bluffer's guides to the various tales the search term "Die bluffers" was more than a little worrying.  I can't help wondering whether this was the same person who came looking for "What to do on a Sunday night in Canterbury"; perhaps they were hoping for more  nightclub recommendations, less of the low-level literary analysis.  Speaking of people who might have been a little disappointed, I also feel bad for the person who was sent here as a result of their search for "the prettiest woman in the world"......but thanks, Google.  That one made my day.

Other recent search terms include "Death knight face paint", cute baby pigs (you'll find those over here), snake glass painting, spiders in face paint, water base snake face paint (what is the fascination with face paint? And why does Google think I might know anything about it?) and my favourite: "vampire hippo porn".  (Again - why, Google, why? And more to the point - HOW??  On second thoughts, don't answer that.)

Then there was this:

"i was doing sex few days ago know i have a problum of headattach can i am pregnent"

Hmmmmm....that's a tricky one.  But my head seems to be firmly attached as well - it hardly ever falls off - and I'm definitely not pregnant.  So you're probably OK.  I am no doctor though; you may be better off getting a second opinion.

Sunday Night Music Club

My favourite Christmas song of all time:



While this is just silly:

Hornets: Gentle Giants!

After finishing Stieg Larsson the third I'm still none the wiser about the hornet(s).  But  thanks to the sweetest website in the world (they really do appreciate you visiting their site; it says so right at the top), which is dedicated to fighting some of the bad press given to them,  I'm quite a lot the wiser about hornets per se.

I'm sure you've heard the sorts of ugly rumours which the team behind Hornets: Gentle Giants! are concerned about:

"Seven hornet-stings kill a horse, three an adult and two a child ". Such neighbourhood myths, held for generations, have led to the hornet becoming quite rare in many area of Germany, due to merciless human pursuit

If you click the link (and why haven't you yet?) you'll find loads of information about hornets, like where you can find them (The hornet lives throughout most of Europe, but is never found north of the 63rd parallel. It is also found in Asia, the United States and Canada. Meanwhile also in Guatemala.) There are also some instructions for building a hornet box (suitable for the settling and requartering of hornet peoples), as well as a very specific description of the first year in the hornet life-cycle:  November 5th. The last worker of the colony dies during a frosty autumn night.


Meanwhile, also in Guatemala:

Hornets dismember captured insects with their powerful mandibles removing head, legs, wings and abdomen. Only the thorax, with the proteinaceous flight musculature, is transported as little meatballs to the nest and fed to the larvae

 Even the description of their predatorary behaviour is unbelievably endearing.  I mean we all need to eat, right?  And how can you not feel at least a tiny bit warm and fuzzy about an animal whose favourite food is little insect-thorax meatballs?

I love it, and I'm not the only one.  Here's a testimonial:

Hello, I would like very much to congratulate you on your web site. I have had hornets living with me, in the roof of our home near Oxford, England, this summer, and they have you to thank for their survival. I first noticed that we had hornets in mid-summer, with one or two appearing at lights both indoors and out. Looking around the house I discovered their nest in an relatively isolated part of the roof. The nest at that time appeared to be only half constructed. My initial reaction was one of panic, and immediately visited the local hardware store to purchase large quantities of powder and foam wasp killer. However, I decided that I would research these beautiful creatures on the web before doing anything and I am really glad that I did. The foam and powder remains unused. I attach a few photographs I have taken. The ones of the hornets themselves were taken in beautiful early morning sunlight, when they were still a little chilled by the night air.

And also....

Thank you for your lovely web page. Today I saw a hornet in the Bare forest,by the big lake and I was very frightened but now I have read your page, I'm am only a little frightened.

Jasmine, age 7

I am not Lynne Truss, but someone should sort this out

I am being driven crazy by apostrophes at the moment.  Not all apostrophes, just these ones:

Same book.  Same title.  Different apostrophe placement.  Why?? WHY?? WHY??????

Initially I was under the impression that these were the paperback and hardback covers, which would have been even weirder, but as it turns out they're the UK (on the left) and the US (on the right) versions.  Different publishers. Same question though - why the difference in where the apostrophes appear?  How many hornets are there supposed to be?

I am not the only one to have noticed .  No one seems to have any answers though, which is what is driving me crazy.   It's not as if hornets are like fish and sheep - one fish, many fish, one sheep, many sheep, one hornet, many hornet.....nope.  It just doesn't sound right. 

So the apostrophe placement is technically correct in both cases, but definitely changes the meaning.  Which raises more questions.  Which one is correct?  And was the other one just a (monumental) mistake?  I doubt it.  More likely, there were many meetings about the apostrophe. I am imagining lengthy discussions about numbers of hornets, their capacity for loneliness and how many of them it takes to build a nest.  Perhaps the American hornets are just super-efficient.  (The Green Hornet - he was American, wasn't he?  I forget what his super-powers were, but I bet he was pretty good at building things.)

 I haven't read enough of the book to find out the significance of the title, but I've read the first two books and know enough about Salander, aka 'The Girl Who', to guess that in this installment she's probably up to a bit more than just irritating some flying stinging creatures. Or creature.  I don't think she'll find herself fighting against the Green Hornet, either, so my money is on the nest being a metaphorical, not a literal one.  Maybe the number of hornets isn't all that important.

Then again, I've just remembered, ages ago someone told me something slightly spoiler-ish about the title which, if it's true, suggests otherwise (sort of).  I don't know. Maybe I should just finish reading the book and find out. 

This all reminds me of my favourite misplaced  apostrophe, which I saw in a newsagent's window in Clapham, on a poster advertising a room for rent.  After the price per week, it said Bill's included.  To this day, I wonder whether Bill ever knew he was part of the deal.

"Be silly, loose, clumsy and loveable......"(WARNING : CONTAINS INFORMATION WHICH MAY SHATTER CHILDHOOD ILLUSIONS)

No, Virginia, it has nothing to do with Santa Claus. But who is this guy?:

Traits: Frequently uncoordinated, klutzy, ever cheerful, optimistic, heart-of-gold, jolly, likes nearly everybody, bumbling,awkward, devoted, sincere, honest, a dreamer.


He may strike the passer-by as a typical village half-wit, but in truth he is a kindly, eager soul, a little on the silly side but always harmless.  ...strives to be a gentleman......has none of the physical attributes usually associated with a "star". His back is bowed, and his shoulders are narrow, sloping down to seemingly heavy arms and a protruding stomach. As he walks, his head, stomach and knees seem to take the lead. This, however, has not stopped him from becoming a foremost authority on any kind of sport or occupation you can name

Have you worked it out yet?

The above is just a snippet from the briefing notes given to Disney employees before they dress in a Goofy costume and wander around the Magic Kingdom to meet and greet people. Which is what author James B Stewart got to do while researching the   (so far) excellent Disney War: The Battle for the Magic Kingdom.

There is more; the instructions go on to explain how Goofy laughs, how he should pose in photographs, what his autograph should look like (if the f isn't backwards you've got yourself a fake), the sorts of activities he should engage in.  There are several paragraphs just on how to walk. "Be silly, loose, clumsy and loveable", is the over-riding message.  I love the amount of detail and the attention to character. 

For a long time journalists weren't allowed to write about the costumed Disney characters who wander the theme parks; at leat not in a way which implied they were anything other than real.  Mentioning costumes or the people inside them was strictly forbidden - all part of the company's commitment to creating and maintaining illusions.   Then several years ago, during a run of bad publicity for the company, The Wall Street Journal ran an article which disclosed (among other things) that dressing in character is a standard part of the induction for top level Disney executives.

Sunday Night Music Club

It's CHRI-I-I-S-S-T-M-A-A-A-A-A-S!*






*nearly

Why, yes - that IS something different

I'm all about the ponies today. Fans of The Apprentice will understand why.

Containing more imaginary ponies than Stuart Baggs the Brand could ever hope to send charging towards an Amstrad computer,  horse-games.org  is a website which describes itself as having "the Biggest Collection of Free Online Horse Games."  One of their games is  Horse Flirt.  The name alone was enough to make me want to find out more, obviously, but then I read the description:

Here's something different . You play a role as horse in the restaurant . You are with your wife on table and beautiful Girl is on another . Take advantage when your wife is distracted and flirt with the girl of the side only make click with your mouse . If you score enought point you can go with the girl before the bar closes at 12 PM. But be careful because if your wife see you flirting you will end like PINATA . Flirt and have fun .

Want to know what the beautiful girl horse looks like?  She's the one in red:

Eat your heart out, Chris DeBurgh.

You can't see this in the picture above but it turns out that the correct way to flirt, if you are a horse, is to blow cigarette smoke on someone while making kissing noises.  Who says you can't learn anything from the internet?

I thought Horse Flirt was my favourite game at horse-games.org until I found this:

I know what you're thinking: badgers are not horses.  But once you've heard the excellent theme-music (Go! Go! Badger Racing!) I bet, like me, you are quite willing to overlook this fact.

For pony purists, there is the slightly more equine Horse Rock-star where you can dress your horse up in a rockin' outfit.  Here's mine:

I am particularly proud of the mullet. 

My favourite part of Horse Rockstar is the (quite stern) animal welfare warning which appears at the bottom of the screen:

Wish you could try it on a real horse sometimes? Ha! Fulfill you fantasies here and only here.

"Single gene creates snake-resistant mirror-image snails, and maybe some new species"

Definitely my new favourite science headline, courtesy of Discover magazine and coming via @David_Dobbs on Twitter.

You can click the link to view the whole article, but in summary:

1. Japanese Satsuma snails (yes, really, and I haven't even been saving up this story especially for Christmas) have shells which mostly spiral in a clockwise direction, and sit slightly on the snail's right hand side.  A small number of snails have anti-clockwise shells, which sit slightly to the left; a single gene determines which type of shell the snail will get.

2. Snails can only mate with other snails whose shells spiral in the same direction.  They're not being fussy, it's just physically impossible for them to do otherwise. (I am imagining all sorts of Romeo and Juliet type scenarios where poor, love-struck snail couples are tragically torn apart becuase the cruel, cruel hand of fate has bestowed the wrong kind of shell on one of them.)

3. Snail-eating snakes are designed to eat the snails whose shells spiral clockwise.  They stalk their prey from the left, giving them clear access to the side of the snail which is less protected by shell.  Then they use the backward pointing fangs of their bottom jaws to twist the snails out of their shells; there are more of these fangs on the right side of their jaws than on the left.

 4. All this means that if you're a  left-handed (anti-clockwise) snail, you'll be scraping the barrel when it comes to chooing a partner, but on the bright side you probably won't get eaten by a snake.  Not a bad trade-off in my book, but then as a left-hander I'm maybe a little biased.

A literary love story (with added mermaids)

There's nothing better than  a  gorgeous blog post like this one to cheer up a grim and grey Monday morning.  It's sort of about Donna Tartt's The Secret History but is mainly about so much more than that.  It's very romantic.  The blog post, I mean; not The Secret History.

The Secret History is still a good read though. Set in an exclusive college, it starts with the death of a character.  The story then goes back in time; the first half of the book details events leading up to the death and the second half explores the consequences.

Which reminds me: I've just finished Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray, which is also a good read.  It's set in an exclusive boys' boarding school, and starts with the death of a character. The story then goes back in time; the first half of the book details events leading up to the death and the second half...... yep, you've got it.  As a narrative structure, it clearly works.

Skippy Dies is great; it's quite dark but very funny in places, and you can almost smell the adolescent boys as they fly off the page.  Here are some of them (Ruprecht Van Doren included) talking about mermaids:

'Regarding the whole mermaids issue, being amphibious would certainly make it easier to have sex with them,' Mario says.
'Mermaids don't have beavers, you clown. Even if they were amphibious you couldn't have sex with them,' snaps Dennis.
'What's the point of mermaids if you can't have sex with them?'
'Well, I suppose the key thing to remember is that mermaids are imaginary,' Ruprecht notes.  'Although interestingly, some marine biologists speculate that the legend may have arisen from large aquatic mammals of the sirenian class like dugongs and manatees, which have fish-like bodies but human-like breasts, and nurse their pups on the water's surface.'
'Von Blowjob, find a dictionary and look up "interesting".'
'What I don't understand,' Geoff says, 'is why did the first fish, like the one who started land animals, suddenly decide one day to just leave the sea?  Like, to leave everything he knew, to go flopping around on a land where no one had even evolved yet for him to talk to?' He shakes his head.  'He was a brave fish, definitely, and we owe him a lot for starting life on land and everything? But I think he must have been very depressed.'

Sunday Night Music Club

I am not a penguin

So I coped (although I use that term loosely) perfectly well with a trip to Hamleys yesterday. For those whose knowledge of central London toy shops is limited, Hamleys is a  big......well, you're probably a step ahead of me already.

It's MASSIVE.  And full of bouncy, hyperactive employees who blow bubbles on you and throw boomerangs around your head and jump out from behind shelves and try and scare you with lion puppets.  Which is enormously exciting and entertaining if you're a small child; slightly unnerving if you are an adult (those puppets are more realistic than you might think.) It's all harmless fun though, and it's nice to see that the Health and Safety scaremongers haven't stepped in with cries of "careful, someone will lose an eye!" or "what if  little Sally is allergic to bubbles?" or similar. Yet.

What *has* caused more than a bit of a fuss at Hamleys recently is the company's decision to bring  live animals into the store.  There were some reindeer on display earlier in the week - actual , live, reindeer - and they would have been joined by some penguins making a one-off special appearance next Monday. 

To cut a long story short, a wildlife photographer heard about the reindeer and was outraged; he contacted an experienced social media campaigner who used a combination of twitter and facebook to encourage thousands of people to put pressure on the Hamleys management.  As a result the penguin event has been cancelled, and the reindeer have been removed.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, to be honest.  Something - and I can't quite put my finger on what it is - makes me feel slightly uncomfortable.  It's not about the penguins (or the reindeer); I entirely agree that Hamleys is hardly the best environment for them.  It's more about the speed and force with which everything happened.

There's a difference between challenging a company's behaviour and gathering together a gang of people to make them do something about it.  I don't want to use the term "bullying", but.......  The whole chain of events is a good illustration of the power of social media.  Here that power was used for good, but (and it feels incredibly naff to be quoting Spiderman at this point) the phrase with great power comes great responsibility keeps running through my head.  There's a fine line between awareness raising and rabble-rousing.

 I can't emhasise enough, I'm not suggesting that the latter is what happened here.  Although there was some fairly emotive language being used in tweets and blog posts during the campaign, the more I read, particularly posts like this one, the more confident I feel that the people heading up the campaign were, in fact, acting extremely responsibly; their actions seem for the most part to be well-considered and very reasonable.  But there's a tiny part of me which can't help think but what if they hadn't been?  That's the bit which worries me a little, I suppose.

Anyway. I bet you'd quite like to see some penguins now.  Here is a whole parcel of them  courtesty of the Edinburgh Zoo penguin-cam:

You can go here to see them in realtime.  Don't expect to get much work done for the rest of the day if you click that link.

These aren't just any old penguins, by the way.  One of them, an Emperor penguin called Nils Olav, has been knighted.  Yes, KNIGHTED.  From, er, Wikipedia:

 Nils was visited by the Norwegian King's Guard on the 15 August 2008 and awarded a knighthood. The honour was approved by the king of Norway, King Harald V.  During the ceremony a crowd of several hundred people joined the 130 guardsmen at the zoo to hear a citation from King Harald the Fifth of Norway read out, which described Nils as a penguin "in every way qualified to receive the honour and dignity of knighthood"

He's the one who looks like this:

Rosa Parks

It's Rosa Parks day.  On December 1st, 1955 she refused to give up her seat on the bus, earning a place in history books as a pioneer of the US civil rights movement in the process.

The picture on the right is a diagram of the bus showing where she sat.  Under the system of segregation which was in place on Montgomery buses at the time white people sat in the front seats and then filled rows towards the back.  Black people filled the bus from the back seats forwards, often having to pay the driver and then walk around to the back of the bus to use a separate door.  Once the bus was full, the front row of black people were expected to stand up for any new white customers who boarded.  Rosa Parks refused, so the bus-driver had her arrested.

Sometimes drivers would take money from black customers and then drive away before they had time to walk around to the back of the bus to board. This had happened to Rosa Parks several years earlier.  The bus-driver who left her standing in the rain that day? Same guy.

From her autobiography:

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

History like you've never seen it

For reasons which are no longer important, I recently found myself trying to remember whether St Thomas Aquinas was for or against free will.
It got me thinking:  If only someone could sum up the key points of St Thomas Aquinas's world view and set them to some sort of music....like, oh, I don't know, an iconic 80s pop classic, maybe.  

Well, OK, it's not exactly what I ended up thinking.  But even so, just imagine my joy when I found this early today:   





The good news is, that there is a whole channel on of these clips on YouTube.  Are you a  bit rusty on the French Revolution?  Here's some Lady Gaga.  Or maybe you need to know how to make an Egyptian mummy, in which case Green Day can help you out.

And look! Look! They have even done THE CANTERBURY TALES!!



It is a brilliant idea.  I am slowly making my way through all 47 of them, and am particularly looking forward to the story of Beowulf to the tune of 99 Luftballoons.  The Justin Timberlake / Sexyback take on William the Conqueror, also.

They can only read the thoughts you put down, carefully and with great love, on the page

IT'S OVER.  IT'S FINALLY OVER. 

I finished NaNoWriMo today.  By finished, I mean I wrote my 50,000th word, then wrote a few more to take me to the end of the scene I was in the middle of, then closed the document I've been working on all month with a massive sigh of relief.

It's been hard this year - really hard. And there is still plenty of work to be done. The story is nowhere near finished (except in my head) and it's full of holes where I skipped past bits which were too difficult or boring or scary to write. The parts I *did* write are full of spelling mistakes, cliches, strings of words which make no sense at all and clunky, cringe-inducing dialogue.  I'm going to have to do some serious editing before I'm happy to start showing it to people, and can't even begin to imagine how may re-writes it will take to turn what I have so far into something which could possibly be described as a novel.   I imagine very few of the 50,193 words I wrote this month will eventually make the final cut, but at least they're written down.  Which means, in NaNoWriMo terms, I have FINISHED.

As much as I love NaNoWriMo, I have to admit I'm glad it's over. Sacrificing quality for quantity has served a purpose this month, but I can't wait to start working at a slower pace again, and on a smaller scale.  Tinkering with stories - changing things, trying new ideas out, crafting and polishing sentences until they are just right - is one of my favourite parts of the  process.  It's sort of like a writer's version of pottering about in the garden shed, I suppose.  I've missed it.  I'm looking forward to mucking about with words again, and trying to get them right, safe in the knowledge that I can delete phrases and sentences - whole paragraphs even! - without having to worry about the detrimental effect on my word count. 

It will be nice to actually *like* something I've written again, too.  It has been a while.  I hate the fact that the few blog posts I have mananged to squeeze out in November have been rushed and error-filled and poorly constructed; my excuse is I've been wanting to get back to my NaNoWriMo story which is, of course, also rushed and error-filled and poorly constructed. (Is that irony? I'm too tired to tell.)

This comes from a  NaNoWriMo pep-talk penned by writer and McSweeny's founder Dave Eggers.  He's explaining what he loves about NaNoWriMo:

Knowing there are thousands of others out there trying to do the same, who are using this ridiculous deadline as cattle-prod and shame deterrent, means goddamnit, you better do it now because you know how to write, and you have fingers, and you have this one life, and during this one life, you should put your words down, and make your voice heard, and then let others hear your voice. And the only way any of that's going to happen is if you actually do it. People can't read the thoughts in your head. They can only read the thoughts you put down, carefully and with great love, on the page. So you have to do it, goddamnit. You have to do it, and you can step back and be happy. You can step back and relax. You can step back and feel something like pride.

He's quite right, of course (goddamnit). 

 Then of course you'll have to revise it ten or twenty times, but let's not talk about that yet.

Away

I'm not yet, but I will be from tomorrow, and I'm not going to be in front of a computer between now and then.*

Back Monday; have a lovely weekend. Stay warm.


* Normally at this point I'd say "so there will be no blog action for the next few days", or words to that effect, but given that NaNoWriMo has turned my November into No-No-Blog-Mo(nth), that just feels wrong. There probably wouldn't have been much blog action any way this weekend, but at least now you know it's because I'm too busy drinking champagne and shopping at the French Christmas markets and not because I'm sitting in front of a computer screen, swearing a lot and wondering what kind of IDIOT would ever think that trying to write 50,000 words might be a fun way to spend November.

2005: Australian man threatens to shoot down chopper with tomato-bazooka*.

I *love* the Today in History web gadget.  Especially today.

 

On a less violent note, today also saw the world's first jukebox unveiled, the debut of Life Magazine, Dr Who being broadcast on TV for the first time, and the invention of the horse-shoe making machine. 

 

If it happens to be your birthday, you share it with Otto the Great, Alfonso the Wise, and John Wallis, who invented the infinity symbol. (If you're not as wise as Alfonso, that's the one which looks like a sideways number eight.)  Also Harpo Marx (from the Marx Brothers),  and Maxwell Caulfield (from Grease 2, also known as The Worst Movie Sequel Of All Time) and a bunch of musicians, namely Bruce Hornsby, a rapper called Tha Dogg Pound and Ken Block.  Ken Block is the lead sister of Sister Hazel, who are a band you might (probably) have never heard of, but probably (might) have heard, because loads of their songs are used in films and TV shows.
 
I really, really like Sister Hazel.  Their music is great, which would be reason enough to like them, but I also heard them interviewed on a podcast once, and they just seemed like such nice blokes. Other great things about them: their hard-core fans are known as "Hazel-nuts"; they named themselves after a nun who runs a homeless shelter; they have a great song about a starfish, as per the video below. What's not to love?

By the way, if you arrived here because you are off to Tall Tales at the Peckham Literary Festival tonight, and followed that link in the program, then hello. You're in for a real treat. 

 

 

*The tomato-bazooka was home-made, apparently; the man was so irritated by the noise being made by a helicopter flying over his house that he rang Air Services Australia and threatened to shoot it down.  "Fruit is hardly a weapon of mass terror", said his solicitor.

Sunday Night Music Club

The good news is, after writing 9400 words this weekend my NanoWriMo project is back on track.  The bad news is, after writing 9400 words this weekend, I am wrecked.  Absolutely wrecked.

Just replace the word "September" in this song with the word "November", and you'll have a clue as to my mental state at the moment.






Don't get me wrong: after falling so far behind, I'm really glad to have caught up, and after this weekend there's no way in the world I'm not going to finish this thing, but PLEASE COULD SOMEBODY MAKE IT STOP?

Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry

Sorry.

It is Wednesday, which means there is ANOTHER Apprentice episode on tonight, and I still haven't done a round-up of last week's yet.  And that was the round-up which was going to start with a quick mini-round-up of the week before, because I didn't manage to do that one either.  On the round-up front, I'm failing miserably, is what I'm basically saying. 

Sorry.

Speaking of failing miserably, see that little NaNoWriMo progress bar over on the right? We are over half way through November.  Is 23,000 words more than half of  50, 000?  No it is not. No matter how bad you are at maths. 

*Sigh*

Sunday Night Music Club

The link is tenuous, but bear with me.

I've just come home from a lovely long lunch at Artisan and Vine, one of my favourite places,in the world.  It's my birthday tomorrow, and lunch was the culmination of an excellent weekend of birthday celebrations with various friends, most (all) of which involved quite a lot of wine and all of which were a lot of fun.

A friend gave me some cheese as a birthday present.  Not just any cheese; it's the cheese made by Alex James from out of Blur.  One reason I like Artisan and Vine so much is it's the kind of place where, when my friend said "it's her birthday and she's just been given some special cheese; would you mind if we had some bread so we can all try it?" the waiter didn't even bat an eyelid.

The cheese was ace, lunch was ace, my other presents were all ace, the whole weekend has been ace. It's been the best birthday I've had in years, and IT'S STILL NOT EVEN MY ACTUAL BIRTHDAY YET.  I have some seriously excellent friends.

All this means that picking a song tonight was tricky, becuase I wanted to mark the occasion in some way.  I nearly picked a "getting older" song, and then I nearly picked a Blur song and then I nearly picked an "all my friends are absolutely ACE" song and then I looked up Alex James on Wikipedia and discovered he has a son called Gallileo and then I remembered this:

It's only words.....

And to quote The Bee Gees/Boyzone (delete as applicable, depending on your age),  they are all I have. About 18,000 of them, to be exact, which means I still have to find another 32,000 before the end of November. 

I've also beeen loaned an excellent book of unusual words, which I've been dipping into and which is full of all sorts of interesting bits.  For instance:

When you're looking at a map or navigtional chart and see little pointy marks indicating dangerous rocks, those are called vigias.  The marks, I mean, not the rocks.  Those are just called rocks.   It comes from the Latin vigilia which means "keeping watch" and is where we get words like vigil, vigilance, vigilante etc. (Which reminds me, I haven't been to see what the Vigilant Citizen has been up to lately. I need to rectify this.)*

A mangonel (say it out loud; if there is any word that rolls off the tounge quite as nicely as this one does, I'd be surprised) is a contraption involving pullys and wheels and designed to throw large items - boulders, javelins, etc - during battles.

Pilgarlic is an old-fashioned word for being bald; it literally comes from the phrase "peeled garlic". 

*I have just checked; there is an advertisment on his website which says:

TOP SECRET - How to make electricity at home.  Discover what the electricity company has been hiding! 

I'm glad he's been using his time wisely.

Sunday Night Music Club -the early edition

I'm going out for dinner later, so thought I'd slip this one in early.

Why this song now?  Well, I'm listening almost exclusively to music which would have been around in Autumn 2002 at the moment, because that's when the story I'm writing is set.  Basically it came down to a choice between this, Westlife and Liberty X.

You're welcome.  Besides, it has that sort of melancholy Sunday night feel to it, don't you think?

Hard-core Stereophonics fans will tell you that this song was actually relased earlier than 2002 and they'd be quite right.  But then I did say I'm listening to music which was *around* in Autumn 2002, and since that's when the second series of The Office was broadcast, and that series used a version (not this one) of Handbags and Gladrags as its theme-song, it was EVERYWHERE in Autumn 2002.  Remember?


 

Test your powers of observation here

You may have already noticed; I've written 11 764 words this week.  (If you hadn't already noticed, let me gently guide your eyes downwards and to the right slightly.  And if you're still none the wiser about what this whole NaNoWriMo malarky is all about, let me gently point you over here.)  Yay me.

You may also have noticed, not many of those words have been ones I've written here.  And having raised your expectations last week with with my oh-so-prompt Apprentice round-up, I've let them come crashing down again by not even managing to get one of those written this week. I feel bad.

Yes, I'm afraid there's a steadily growing pile of tumbleweed just on the other side of this blog.  Sorry about that.  But you didn't really expect me to write 50,000 words of a novel AND keep up with  posts this month, did you? There are loads of things I *want* to blog about, including (in no particular order) that Apprentice round-up, a review of a brilliant book I read a few weeks ago, and my reaction to the NaNoWriMo backlash which rippled through the publishing industry this week. Also the lady I saw today at Royal Festival Hall, wearing a gold, skin tight leopard skin jumpsuit and blue stilettos and hula-hooping.   So it's not that I'm short of ideas. Just short of time.

Normal service should resume in early December I hope; in the meantime I'll do my best to get a couple of short posts up during the week.   Also in the meantime, here's something silly.*  But quite brilliant.



*Bonus related fact (which might make more sense after you watch the clip): It's my birthday soon.  Just saying.

Pots, Kettles, and a case of mistaken identity

Just now on University Challenge, Jeremy Paxman told off one of the contestants: "you know, there's no need to be so disdainful, just because you think the questions are too easy". Quite right, Jeremy.  That's your job.

This wasn't even the best moment of television brilliance I witnessed today.  Earlier this afternoon, I was watching  had on in the background and barely noticed becuase I was SO BUSY WORKING a quiz show called Pointless. It's hosted by Alexander Armstrong and involves contestants trying to come up with answers to questions which are correct but which no one else will think of.  (I have not sold it well; it's actually a very clever concept and deserves better than the daytime slot it has been given, in my humble opinion.)  Anyway, these two women had to name people who had been on the celebrity version of the Apprentice.  After much conferring, they came up with Abi Titchmarch. 

Alexander Armstrong did an admirable job of acting as if they had  given a perfectly sensible answer; but then the ladies realised they had made a mistake.  "No, wait, who do we mean?" one of them said.  "We've got that wrong.  Abi Titmuss.  TITMUSS."

"Yes, I think you probably did mean Abi Titmus" said Alexander Armstrong, trying not to explode into fits of giggles.  Erm, let's check to see how many of the people we surveyed said Abi Titchmarch, which is what you said, and so the answer I  have to take.    Not surprisingly, the answer was zero. Which is normally a good thing on this program, but only if the answer is actually correct, which of course it wasn't.

Sunday Night Music Club

Dark, isn't it?*

I thought tonight might be a good time for this; it's not the version I was originally planning to use, but I was so blown away by the fact that  Bon Jovi have covered this particular song, I couldn't resist.  Besides: it's not half bad. 



*You will probably be more inclined to agree if you live in England (our clocks went back last night.)  Or, anywhere else which is dark.  Like in a cave or something. 

Nano -WHAT now?

NaNoWriMo. It stands for National Novel Writing Month, and is how I will be spending a large chunk of November.  Hence the new little gadget over there on the right.

The idea is simple, in theory;  to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days.  I'll save you the maths - that's an average of 1667 words a day.  The whole point is that it's perfectly OK if those words are completely and utterly devoid of grammar, or plot, or factual accuracy.  In fact, they'll probably need to be; the only way to hit the word count day in, day out, is just to write with abandon, and worry about all that stuff later.  It's a good general rule for writing the first draft of anything, to be fair, but the beauty of NaNoWriMo is that you have permission to do it.

I signed up for the first time last year and secretly, I didn't think I'd finish. The first problem was that I hadn't written any fiction for years. I wasn't sure I knew how to.  But there was a bigger hurdle than that; my distinct (and often lamented on these pages) lack of self-discipline.  I was convinced that I would last a couple of days - a week at the most maybe - before the novelty wore off, my enthusiasm waned, and writing a novel in a month would be addded to the long list of ideas I've toyed with but failed to commit to. 

Still, I signed up.  The best advice anyone gave me before I started was "don't write the novel you've always wanted to write during NaNoWriMo." If you do, this person said, you'll care about it too much. You'll want to agonise over each word and every decision, to make sure you get it right. And you can't afford to do that during NaNoWriMo - there's not enough time. Write something else instead; have fun with it.

It was advice which made a lot of sense.  It also meant that on November 1st, when I sat down, and started to write, I had nothing other than a main character and an opening sentence in my head.  I was terrifed.

That day I churned out 1816 words.  The next day I managed 1990.  Then 1688, and, the day after that, 1673.   As my word count grew, and something vaguely resembling a story unfolded, I actually began to enjoy myself. I was writing complete tosh, and I had no plan, no outline, and absolutely no idea what I was doing, but that was half the fun.  And most importantly, I was soaring ahead of the daily targets I'd set myself.

I'd like to be able to say that the rest of the month went as smoothly as those first few days did, but of course it didn't.  A lot of the time writing felt like a chore, and some days other things - work, social commitments, housework - got in the way.  But on the good days, I loved it.  I became obsessed with the numbers - how many words I'd written, how many I had left to go -  terrified that if I fell too far behind target I'd never catch up; or worse, would become despondent and just give up.

But that didn't happen. Oh, I fell behind alright, several times, actually; but each time I managed to pick myself up again and keep on going.  Somewhere along the line, and I'm not quite sure when, I just knew that giving up was no longer an option; I was going to finish, no matter how much I hated doing it.

And eventually, I did finish.  With a couple of days to spare, in fact. 50,012 words. The manuscript - all 128 pages of it - is still sitting on my desk. It's a complete disaster in writing terms - full of ridiculously long winded descriptions (with targets like those, why use one word if forty three will do the job?), there's not a decent plot twist (or indeed a plot, for the most part) in sight, and the timelines are all out of kilter. I made several attempts at editing it into some kind of shape early this year before realising it's probably beyond repair. But I couldn't care less about that.  Even now, a year later, I'm ridiculously proud of those 128 pages. 

A lot of good things came out of my first NaNoWriMo experience. I discovered that I do have a tiny ounce of self-discipline after all; enough, at least, to churn out that many words day in and day out for a month.  It's what gave me the courage to leave my comfortable job for the great unknown; a decision I'm still convinced was the right one even if I still haven't quite worked out why.  It re-ignited my interest in writing, and fiction in general, and got me into a writing habit which has stuck with me, more or less, ever since.

In theory it should be much easier this time around. Last year I was still working full time; this November I have a few bits of work lined up but there are also plenty of spare  hours stretching out in front of me.  I've got a year's writing experience under my belt and have spent a lot of the last year immersed in the world of words and stories, books and authors.  Surely some of that has to have rubbed off?  I've certainly thought more about writing, and spent more time writing this year than I ever have before.

I'm just as terrifed though. Probably more.  After all, with some experience under my belt, and so many more hours to play with, I have no excuse for failing this year.  Plus, I've made a decision;  this year I AM going to write a novel I really care about. In fact, it's the exact novel I was warned not to write; the one I've been thinking and talking about for years.  The one which made me want to write in the first place.  I still don't know if I can write it, but there's only one way to find out. 

So that's how I'll be spending November, mainly.  The actual writing doesn't start until  Monday, but  for the last few days I've been knee deep in post-it notes and wall charts, madly scribbling down  ideas and  trying to come up with a plot.  To be honest I have no idea how to go about plotting a novel, but then again this time last year I had no idea how to write one, and that sort of worked out, so............

Bring on November, I say.*


*a bit nervously

The Apprentice Week 4: the eyes have it.

I am literally speechless.  So speechless, I may have to make up some words to replace the ones I can't find to describe the events of last night's episode.  (Yes, LAST NIGHT.  I imagine that, if you are a regular reader you too are speechless because you have been struck dumb with wonder at the relative promptness of this post.  It may or may not have something to do with fact I am meant to be writing a job application at the moment, but either way, well done me, even if I do say so myself.)

We start with a  summary of last week's episode.  Here's something I never thought I'd say, but I'm going to miss Shibby this week.  He was good for comic value.  Speaking of comic value, I have just realised how funny it was that Melissa said in last week's boardroom: "For the first time in my life I can honnestly say I minced my words in that pitch." She minces more words than anyone I have ever met.   It would have been even funnier if she had said it the week before, when they were mincing meat for sausages, but it's still pretty funny.

Next comes an early morning phone call (no surprises there), and *BAM* -  they're off to the Science museum.  Whose turn is it to be made to look stupid by failing dismally to predict the task this week, I wonder? Oh, it's Jamie.  We must be doing something about science, he says. Or museums.

In fact,  it's that task where they have to pick some products and then pitch them to retailers.  Alex is sent over to team Apollo to balance up the numbers, and Lord Sugar explains everyone will have their own order books this week.  He wants to see EVERYONE sell. EVERYONE.  They can run, but they can't hide.

Time to pick the project managers and......WHAT?? Melissa wants to be Project Manager AGAIN?? Jamie wants the job too. This is what happened last week. Am I watching the right episode?  Wait....yes, I must be, because they've picked Jamie this time. Meanwhile over on the team which no one ever wants to manage, Chris puts himself forward. Not surprisingly, there's no contest.  I've just realised two things about Chris; he is quite posh and has the most incredibly blue eyes.  How have I not noticed this before?  They are just like.....oh, I don't know.  Something really blue.

There's no time to ponder eye-based similes, becuase it's time for the teams to pick their products.  They each have to choose two, and contenders include a NASA designed face lift mask which looks like one of those virtual reality helmets which made a brief appearance in the 80s and never quite took off.  There's also a slouch-detector alarm for improving posture. You'd probably have better posture if you wore it, but only until someone punched you in the face for constantly making a very annoying beeping sound.

  Stella almost passes out when a fit bloke models an ab-sculpting t-shirt and there's some sort of weird double headed garden shovel contraption which I'm sure I would understand more if I gardened, but I don't, so let's just keep calling it the weird double headed shovel contraption. There's also a shower head which will somehow save lots of money on water bills, but no one ever actually explains how.  What the shower-head man  (and that's a description of his product, not his appearance, by the way) *does* go to great lengths to explain is that the wholesale price is £12.95 or for bulk orders, ones over 1000 units,  this can be discounted to £9.95.  BUT ONLY FOR ORDERS OF OVER 1000 UNITS, he warns them very sternly.  This is called  foreshadowing.

The product which gets everyone excited is something called a baby-glow, which is basically a hypercolour t-shirt (remember them?) for babies.  It changes colour if the baby gets too hot, giving anxious parents an early warning sign of impending DEATH AND DOOM.  (I am being needlessly flippant. It's actually a very sensible product which helps to solve quite a serious issue.  But where's the fun in saying that?)   Both teams love it.  Jamie's  team point out they have five kids between them. Stella shouts at Stuart Baggs the Brand for speaking rudely to the baby-glow lady.  I didn't think he was that bad, to be honest, but Jamie points out very sternly that Stuart might have cost their team the chance to sell the baby glow. This is also called foreshaddowing. 

Sure enough, baby-glow lady picks the other team.  Jamie's team have to settle for the weird double headed shovel contraption, (which I'm now wishing I had decided to call something shorter) and the shower head.  Meanwhile the other team are being so smug about the baby glow that I can't even remember what else they choose.

Jamie, Melissa and Christopher first pitch to Debenhams, who don't sell showers or garden tools.  Melissa thinks they should start to, though.  She tells them this quite a lot.  They don't agree.

Then Chris and his team visit Debenhams, where Chris pitches the t-shirt (oh, so that's what else they chose.). The buyers quite like it but are not sure whether it's underwear or outerwear.  Chris says it's underwear.  The buyers think that at £50 it's jolly  expensive underwear.   I wonder if this means he'll pitch it as outerwear next time?  I almost hope so; as much as I'm enjoying listening to Chris talking about underwear in his incredibly posh voice, I don't think I'll be able to cope with it much longer.  Especially if they keep showing shots of his incredibly blue eyes. 

Next it's silent Liz's turn to pitch the Baby Glow.  We haven't heard a peep out of Liz so far, in three episodes but finally here she is.  And she's good.  She even manages to keep a straight face while blasting a baby with a hairdryer, which is no mean feat. (That's an assumption, just to be clear; I have never actually done this to a baby.)

Back at the house, Jamie's team are planning for tomorrow.  Jamie's team have a meeting with B+Q lined up by Lord Sugar, and Jamie announces that it will be himself, Joanna and Chris doing the big pitch.   Melissa isn't happy about this. "What's wrong with me?" she asks. "This is my job, it's what I do".  Yes, but you are RUBBISH at it, screams an entire nation, except Jamie, who just looks a bit awkward.  Melissa has a big old rant but Jamie stands his ground -she's not going to B+Q. 

The next day, as well as visiting the big retailers Sir Alan has found for them, the teams are allowed to drum up some business of their own.  Chris's team take the baby glow to some boutique stores who think the packaging is cheap and nasty looking.  They are right, it is. How did no one notice this before?  Maybe they were all distracted by Chris and his incredibly gorgeous blue eyes.

Meanwhile, Laura, Shibby and Paloma are working the streets of Soho.  They've got individual order books, but they are all going into each retailer together. What can possibly go wrong? The first sale is supposed to be Laura's, but  the other two both step in to 'help' with the pitch and then try and take the order themselves. Needless to say, Laura's not too happy about this; after a bit of arguing they agree to take it in turns to lead the meetings and take the orders.

Cut to Jamie's team.  On the way to B+Q Jamie, Joanna and Chris drop into a local village shop and manage to sell 1000 shower units at the bulk discount price. Joanna also finds time to do some cold calling and arranges a meeting with a big plumbing discount store; Jamie dispatches the other half of the team to deliver this pitch.  Who'll be presenting? asks Joanna.  She has a vested interested in the answer as Jamie has decided she ought to get credit for half of whatever the other team manage to sell, and she's not happy to hear it's going to be Melissa.  Well, you wouldn't be, would you?

The meeting doesn't go well, but to be fair to Melissa it's not all her fault.  The shower doesn't work in the demonstration and Stuart does his best to fix it by chewing on it, which inexplicably doesn't seem to work.  The buyers decide it's too expensive for them anyway, even at the discounted price, and there's no sale.

Meanwhile Chris and Liz are at a big online baby retailer.  Liz does her hairdryer trick again; Chris handles the questions and flashes his baby blue eyes at the buyers.  It seems to have gone well.

Meanwhile the other half of Chris's team are still in Soho, trying to sell the t-shirt. they go to one shop, where Sandeesh closes a sale, and then try another shop, where it's Paloma's turn to take the lead. The guy in this shop likes the shirt but demands exclusivity.  (Come on..... he has had to have been put up to that by the producers, surely?)

"Sure", says Paloma, while Sandeesh quietly turns purple.  There's a discussion outside; Sandeesh isn't happy that this means they'll have to go back and retract their offer to the first shop, which means she'll lose her sales figures. She demands half of this sale be placed on her order book instead.  Paloma says 50% is too high, because it's a much bigger order, but that Sandeesh can have the value of her original deal and she will keep the rest.

Now Laura's not happy; she stepped in to finish Paloma's pitch, she says, and was responsible for closing the deal, so she should get a cut as well.  You might remember Laura; she was  the one complaining about other people taking over her pitches about twenty minutes ago.

The girls ring their project manager; Chris tells them that he is worried the deal won't count because the exclusivity would need to be agreed by the supplier. Could this be  MORE foreshaddowing?  Well, he's speaking in a very stern voice, so it's a good guess.

Meanwhile back on Jamie's team the gap between the two groups is widening. Stella, Stuart Baggs the Brand and Melissa are at a smal retailer  trying to sell showers.  We can offer a discount price, says Stella.  How many do I have to buy for the discount, asks the buyer?   60 units, she says.  HANG on....... anyone spot anything wrong here?  the deal is made.

Jamie's gang go to  B+Q and sell a gazillion items, then laugh at the rest of their team, especially because Stuart Baggs the Brand hasn't got any orders in his book at all. He did work hard in the pitches though.  Did no one see him EATING the shower head?  Surely that deserved some credit.  Nice leadership there, Jamie.  (I can't warm to Jamie.  Is that obvious?)

 We're in the boardroom.  Lord Sugar starts with Jamie's team.   You wanted the babyglow, he says.  Why didn't you get it?  I don't know, I mean, we have five children between us, says Jamie. It's Stuart Baggs the Brand's fault.  He doesn't have any kids. (I am being a bit harsh here. He didn't say that was why it was Stuart's fault.  And I can appreciate that this is a situation where having kids might mean you know a bit more about keeping babies safe; ie don't blast them with a hairdryer.  But I do get cross when parents think they know everything about everything becuase they have kids. And this seemed like as good a time as any to have a bit of a rant about it.) 

Next Lord Sugar mentions the Debenhams debacle and blasts them for trying to sell inappropriate items.  His ire over this is nothing though, compared to SHOWER-GATE.  The 60 showerheads sold at £9.99 were against the rules and won't be counted.  We will return to Shower-gate.

Over to Chris and we start with a nice close-up of those eyes.  Oh my.  They really are very, very blue.  Why didn't you have a model for the t-shirt, Lord Sugar asks?  "We thought it would be better to remain professional" says Alex.  Hmmmm....what happened to taking one for the team?  Remember Stella in a bikini, anyone?  I think Chris ought to have modelled it, with his nice eyes and his nice posh voice he could have sold loads of them.   Nick disagrees with me about Chris's voice, saying it's monotonous and likening him to a low flying heavy bomber.  I now have a rather lovely vision of Chris in a Biggles-style helmet (no goggles, though; they would hide his eyes) and flying jacket.

Nick takes the girls to task over their Soho squabbling.  It seems that neither of the Soho deals will count towards their final total. Harsh but fair, I suppose; they did take the first deal of the table after all, and the second one doesn't count because the supplier hadn't agreed to any sort of exclusivity clause.    I have a new theory about Sandeesh and Laura, by the way.  I think they might both be robots.  It's something about their eyes.  (I know, I know.  I am obsessed with eyes this week.  But seriously, there is something Stepford-esque about both of them.)

It's time for some numbers.  Street sales for Apollo, which is Chris's team, come to £3725.90, not counting the deals which didn't count.  But the other team blow this out of the water with a figure of £12 000.
At Debenhams, Jamie's  team get no orders (no suprises there), but £19 000 worth of orders go to Chris's team, for the Baby Glow.  Chris's team all start to look quietly confident.  But wait, there's still the specialist shops to go.  It's not over yet.   Seriously, have they not SEEN this program before?

It turns out B+Q ordered £63 750 worth of spades and showers,  giving Jamie's team £76518.80 of sales in total. That's an impressive number, and they all look relieved.  But we stil need to hear the final figure for the other team.  It's not over yet.  Seriously, have they not SEEN this program before? 

There is a dramatic pause before Nick announces that Liz (singlehandedly, apparently) managed to get £99 0000 worth of sales from the online baby store, giving Chris, his eyes, and the rest of the team £120,000 worth of sales in total - a record.  Melissa looks gutted.  I think she knows what's coming.

The winning team go to a spa, the losing team go to the cafe for the usual tea and arguing, and then the boardroom. 

Lord Sugar immediately points out that Stella, Stuart Baggs the Brand and Melissa were the real problem, bringing in only £897 of the team's total sales between them.  Jamie agrees, and Stuart Baggs the Brand blames Melissa.  Karren tells Melissa she's not good at pitching.  Jamie tells Melissa she's no good at pitching. Lord Sugar tells Melisssa she's no good at pitching.  Melissa tells them all that in fact she's very good at pitching.  Can you spot the odd one out?

Next Lord Sugar has a go at Stella because of Shower-gate.  He asks her how she could stand by and let the sale happen at the wrong price.  When I first watched the episode last night, I was outraged by this.  How dare he pick on Stella? I LOVE Stella! Stella to win, I've been saying.  But watching it again today (such dedication!) I realised that it wasn't that she just stood by to let it happen - she actually LED ON THE SALE.  So she deserves the blame in this case, and I say that with a heavy heart.  Then again, she also  tried to blame the others for not jumping in to say anything, and then claimed she didn't hear the condition about the bulk order price being limited to 1000 units in the first place, which was a bit lame.  I may have to re-think my position on Stella.

When he's asked who he wants to bring back to the boardroom, Jamie raves about how fantastic Jo was (I think Jamie has a bit of a crush on Jo, between you and me) and after being hurried along by Lord Sugar he chooses to bring Stuart and Melissa.

It's all car crash TV from here on, basically; the boys blame Melissa, who still thinks she pitched brilliantly; Melissa thinks the boys are ganging up on her, and makes up a stream of words to argue her case - analysation, professionality - before being fired and then hurling some vitriol at the boys as she leaves. It is hideous to watch.

Meanwhile Chris and his team have a lovely day out at a spa hotel having treatments and massages and cocktails.  This is a lot less hideous to watch.