CABINET OF CURIOSITIES (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

So here's the blurb from this year's BBC Short Story award

[Mick Harper]

This is my problem. Due to a recent Virgin subscription reshuffle I'm no longer signed up to Netflix. So I've got a notional (now) nine-ninety-something in the bank. I could use it to explore other streaming services (or re-sign with Netflix) but I feel my life needs wrenching right now.

* I noticed during Christmas I quite enjoyed reading books.
* I noticed when I got home and it was time for beddy-byes I had a pang because I had finished the William Paget book (q.v.) and I didn't have anything on my Kindle.
* So I spent £1.99 on a book they were recommending i.e. ordering without rising from my bed, but didn't enjoy it.
* I thought to myself, why aren't I (amn't I?) on Kindle Unlimited, it'll give me a good bedtime browse if nothing else.
* I looked just now and it costs £9.99, same as Netflix.

What's the prob? Make the change. But hold up! It's one thing paying a tenner on the assumption you're going to watch one/two movies every month, but there's no way I'm going to read more than one/two books a month so it's hardly likely I will enjoy paying a tenner for a book which is only on Kindle Unlimited in the first place because it's second string. So that's right out.

But hold up! I'm supposed to be wrenching my life so it may be more than one/two books and anyway that's cheap at the price for a good wrench. So I'll do the old 30-day free trial and see what happens.

[Grant]

I signed up for Netflix but hardly watch it now. My problem is there’s too much on it. The fact that there are hundreds of series available (often four or five seasons long) just blows my mind.

Mick, help me, what did you watch last year which was actually any good?

[Mick Harper]

That's a good idea and wilco if I am abelio. Everyone should join in.

But for now I have to report that when I started this Kindle thing -- which remember I only acquired because I had to view my own books when putting them in e-form -- the Unlimited price was £7.99. Then it was £9.99 when I looked for research purposes. Now it's time to join, it's £11.99. That is enough to maybe tip the whole thing into the nether regions.

[Mick Harper]

Netflix et al

The Golden Rule with all these services -- it applies in spades to Sky Movies -- is that
A. It is absolutely worth signing up because of the back catalogue
B. It continues to be worth it while the back catalogue is being recycled by the service (it's quite a weird process)
C. It ceases to be worth it when you are finally dependent on new material.

I will now ponder how to access my own Netflix back catalogue to assist Grant. I don't think there is any quick way, it extends back many years. Even last year might be a stretch. I've got all the ones I didn't finish watching because they keep reminding me.

[Mick Harper]

Just as I thought. In my Watch It Again cache, there is only a few I would recommend, some half-heartedly, many not specific to Netflix

[Wile E. Coyote]

We watched Cradle to Grave on ITVX last night, thinking it was a new ITV production which we must have just missed and were now cleverly catching up on, turns out it was a 2015 BBC 2 comedy.

Wait long enough, and the good TV, along with the average to good, the cult stuff and the appallingly bad, will turn up somwhere you have access to.

Films are more problematic, most of the back catalogues are bollox. Amazon has purchased the MGM catalogue, which is great, but you then have to pay more to see it.

[Mick Harper]

I began my Kindle Unlimited life last night (the 11.99 turned out be dollars). I plumped up my pillows and started inspecting what was on offer. First problem: I can't work out how to use my Kindle. I'm quite good at turning it on and having what I'm currently reading come up on screen, but after that I'm back to my usual practice of banging buttons randomly and/or trying to make head or tail of the Help section.

Eventually I got the Unlimited list. This was (a) the best sellers or most recommended or something, which I'm not interested in and (b) cost money which, however much they are reduced, I thought I was avoiding. Going onto the Unlimited site on my computer is not much better. Selecting History (for example) I get the latest works and includes historical fiction and barely disguised current affairs. Only a minority of them are 'free to download'. I'd have to scroll down into the thousands to find what I want. And remember, I don't know what I want. I just want to browse among, say, old works of history that are available for free. Is that too much to ask? Yes.

They offer free magazines too but since the only one I like is Viz and that isn't on their list, I ordered two (printed) Peter Simple anthologies for a pound a throw instead.

[Mick Harper]

I cracked it and had a moment of serendipity.

So you go to the preference dubry and click 'cheapest first' and that brings up all the free ones and automatically removes all the modish stuff. Then you scroll down and it's 90% goodies. So I quickly come across The Battle of the Coral Sea at 450 pages which will do me nicely -- I've only read snippets about it before -- and if it doesn't, so what? A bit later I come across The Chinese Civil War, of which I know even less so off it goes to my Kindle.

Same length, same publishing house, I notice, which is a bit weird. So I look them up and they're my publisher! My original one, Icon, sold them THOBR a few years ago. They'd better not make that fernuffink but I won't check just in case. Anyway I've already got that on my Kindle, it was why I got the damn thing in the first place.

[Mick Harper]

It may or may not be significant but between then and now I had a dream (I'll be brief). Imagine train tracks as far as your eye can see, something like the section between London Bridge and New Cross on the Southern Region only multiplied a dozen times. For reasons that are unclear I am in a car being driven by Hatty and she proposes driving across them. Here's the critical bit: she looks at me quizzically and I either nod assent or don't not nod assent. I want to make that clear.

Everything goes pretty well for the first twenty or so lines and we're both figuring the statistical odds in general of car meeting train given how often the average British rail line is occupied but gradually we are aware that we had been crossing the less used half of the tracks and the ones we now have to cross are fairly thick with the wretched things. We start having, not narrow escapes, but escapes until finally it is obvious we are going to be hit by one particular oncoming train. Hatty turns through ninety degree and starts down a fairly wide grass verge conveniently situated at this point and the train thunders safely past.

So convenient is this grassy lane that it is being used by loads of cars but going in the opposite direction from the one Hatty (I want to emphasise that) chose. We start swerving to avoid them until some very irate bloke starts shouting at us as we avoid each other, and I wake up. The whole thing was exhilarating, that's the bit that has me worried.

[Mick Harper]

I've got a hundred and some followers on Medium but readers of my stories tend to hover between zero and two. What kind of followers are these, for goodness sakes? According to their potted bio's they seem to cluster in the self-help industry so my guess is there's a Medium convention 'if you follow me, I'll follow you, and both our statuses will be boosted'. That may be the way self-helpers help each other but it's not something an AE-ist would ever dream of doing for the present. If I do want to get into double-figures I can always post up something with a catchpenny title, like this one:

What are women for?
To make money out of, silly

You’ve probably never heard of the R & A, but it stands for Royal & Ancient and is the governing body of British golf. You’re probably too young to remember but the R & A was among the last institutions in Britain to allow women in, at their HQ, St Andrews in Scotland — where golf was invented and later given to the world. The world has just answered back in the form of Saudi Arabia wanting to give the R & A a lot of money. In exchange for what?

The R & A really only have two tournaments worth anybody’s money: The Open (you mustn’t ever call it the British Open because there weren’t any others at the time) and the Women’s Open. The British (Men’s) Open has been going round the same half-dozen links courses since eighteen something or other (look it up, Miranda, and where’s that tea I asked for?) and none of them happen to be in Saudi Arabia. The Open predates Saudi Arabia by a good few years so it was pretty unlikely anyway.

It’ll have to be the Women’s Open. Cue jokes about taking out your driver but not being allowed to drive. Come on, chaps, this is not a joking matter. It’s one thing boxers and footballers taking the Saudi riyal, I’m sure they hit one another over there and prance about like prima donnas with balls, but women golfers? Have you ever tried to play golf in a burka? No, I thought not.

[Mick Harper]

I'm always a bit suspicious when established stars take out full page ads in the Guardian Review. It hardly seems worth it when they'll get oodles of publicity without having to pay for it. But in the case of Matt Lucas's new book The Boy Who Slept Through Christmas it was probably to draw attention to the exceptional number of raves it has already got

[Mick Harper]

Only two shopping stories for you this week. Life is vexatiously dull with inflation, Brexit and Boris Johnson being distant memories. On the way out I spotted an exotically foreign loaf in a craft shop window and popped in to buy it. It being foreign I cautiously requested the foreigner behind the counter to cut it in half which she cheerfully did. I was in a quandary about how to pay, it seemed ridiculous paying by card for a half-loaf of bread so I held out a ten pound note. "Oh, we don't accept cash," she said disconcertingly. Is this normal now in shops or just Notting Hill craft shops? Mind you, that half a loaf cost six quid so she had a point. Quite tasty but not, I think, a habit I shall be indulging in future.

On the way back -- unusually from Portobello Road -- I sought out my old resting place for a vape and a rest which is the doorstep next to the Blue Door, the one Rhys Ifans appears at in his underpants in Notting Hill (the film). I couldn't even get close -- the queues of tourists lining up to be photographed in front of the door stretched round the block. Possibly an exaggeration but the number of people, from every nationality, wanting a keepsake of a film made twenty-five years ago, is surely something to write about.

[Mick Harper]

I'm not proud of it but like a lot of people I was once addicted to cheese-flavoured nick-nacks. Then they just stopped making them. Not a word of warning, just cold turkey and sod you, pal. They made sure we would continue suffering by starting to bring out more and more flavours from scampi'n'lemon to barbecue'n'spicy, just not cheese. We had to grin, bear it and switch to cheesy wotsits. They're complete rubbish, just disappearing in the mouth, but they are our methadone so we just just soldier on as best we are able.

Today Tesco had something called 'crunchy really cheesy wotsits'. You know me, up for anything, so I bought a big bag. I like to share. They're cheese-flavoured nick-nacks. Let that be a lesson.

[Mick Harper]

After a lifetime of gazing at the world through smeary spectacles I got to wondering yesterday why the cleaning cloth had two sides, a blank white one and a printed brown one. So I looked it up on The Internet (there'll be one near you) and discovered you use the white side first to clean the surface and then the other side to remove the smears. Come on, buck up, you other glasses-wearers.